Man Goes ‘Girl Sober’ For 3 Months And Says It Resulted In More Productivity & Less Emotional Confusion
Will he do it again? Absolutely not. But it definitely made an impact.
fizkes / Shutterstock When you're out in the dating pool, it's easy for the pursuit of a partner to completely overtake every other part of your life.
So, one man on TikTok decided to conduct an experiment to see just how much headspace dating was really taking up. He arrived at a surprising conclusion.
He went 'girl sober' for 3 months, avoiding any romantic interaction with women.
Kyle Pickering, a musician and TikToker, wanted to see what would happen if he removed dating from the equation, so he decided to go "girl sober."
What on Earth is "girl sober"? Well, he basically made a rule that he'd have no interaction with women in any romantic capacity. "I committed to one, no going out with or to meet women," he said in a video about the experiment.
"Number two, no talking to or texting women romantically," he went on to explain, "and number three, no scrolling women's social media pages."
He struggled a bit with that last one, especially when he saw his ex now has a new boyfriend. He couldn't help but go down that rabbit hole just a bit — who among us could? But for the most part, he held fast to the rules — and he has no regrets.
Pickering said going 'girl sober' made him more productive and less emotional.
To be clear, Pickering isn't exactly eager to ever perform this experiment again. "I actually only broke the streak because a very sweet woman asked me out on a date," he said.
And though that date didn't quite work out, he says he had a great time and doesn't regret ending his "sober" streak for the date.
But his period of "sobriety" definitely had its benefits. "Over the course of these three months, was I more productive? Yes. Was I more focused on my business? Yes."
Branislav Nenin / Shutterstock
He also says his emotional brain was a lot clearer and that swearing off women for a time left him less "emotionally confused."
Despite the benefits, however, he says he's not eager to give it another go. "Will I do it again? Probably not. But I have a good reason for that," he joked. "Me: I just a boy. Women? Pretty. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk."
One woman applauded Pickering for finding a positive way to sort through the role dating was playing in his life.
"I love this guy," TikToker Hope Woodard said in a stitch of Pickering's video. "I love that he's having this conversation."
She applauded Pickering for finding a way to think about these issues without being disrespectful and misogynistic, pointing out the way some men "don't know how to have healthy conversations kind of in general."
But what most interested her was how different that straight men and women's approach to the idea of dating "sobriety" seems to be. "Like his number one rule is no going out, and I'm like, what?" she said, finding it interesting that for Pickering, going out seems to be inextricable from meeting women.
She was particularly intrigued by his swearing off social media, which seemed emblematic to her of the ways straight men and women use social media differently, namely in that men don't use it for "the performance that [women] must do."
But the biggest difference that struck her was the "emotional confusion" Pickering mentioned, which seemed to sum up how differently men and women think about things and approach their emotions.
"Boys, y'all don't know what's going on for us 99.9% of the time," she said, explaining that she is constantly telling her girlfriends they have to "spell it out" to their boyfriends when they're in conflict. "You can never assume they know anything, girls," she said.
In any case, Woodard and Pickering's meeting of the minds seems to have had quite an impact on both of them — a "friendship" has formed between the two. Or that's one word for it, anyway. "Flirtation" might be another, more accurate term.
As productive and enlightening as it may have been, it doesn't seem likely either of them will be going "girl sober" or "boy sober" again anytime soon.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice, and human interest topics.