HuffPost0%
We Dug Up Stephen Miller's Dubious Dating Advice — And Relationship Experts Say It's Telling 57%
By Katherine Speller0%
7/4/2026, 12:13:34 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 30 faulty reasoning types, including Hasty Generalization, Biased Writer Voice, and Appeal to Authority, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 41.1% saturation with 623 hits. Analysis detected 4,137 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,517 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 54.1% and a BS Rank of 57% (9,477 of 21,887 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 56.70% of the article peer group.
Earlier this year, the wife of President Donald Trump’s deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller revived an old joke about her husband on Fox News — and now we all need to think about their relationship for longer than we’d like.
In the segment, Katie Miller shared how her “sexual matador” (ick) of a husband “gets [her] going” with morning speeches about defeating the left, offering a rare glimpse into the couple’s dynamic.
And, as it turns out, her husband previously doled out his own dating advice on “Jesse Watters Primetime” in 2024, when he first earned himself that cringe “matador” label.
“Well, let me give advice to any young man that’s out there.
I’m married now, I have children.
But I wasn’t married that long ago, I was single, I was on the market,” Miller said, per The Independent.
“If you are a young man — it’s very important in election season — who’s looking to impress the ladies, to be the alpha, to be attractive ...
The best thing you can do is wear your Trump support on your sleeve.”
“Show that you are a real man,” he continued.
“Show that you are not a beta.
Right?
Be a proud and loud Trump supporter and your dating life will be fantastic.”
But it’s that other part — ”be an alpha” — that we couldn’t help but poke at a little more.
Miller’s real-ish attempt at advice for single young men is something anyone scrolling past manosphere content creators in recent years will find familiar.
So we had to get dating and romance experts’ thoughts on just how far anyone should run with Miller’s advice — and what alternatives they’d actually recommend.
<strong>The ABCs Of Alpha Males</strong>
This fantasy of the “alpha” man is ubiquitous in the larger culture of the manosphere — suggesting that to be desirable, men need to embody a very specific, if reductive, kind of masculinity that aggressively asserts dominance over others (most often women and “beta” men).
The traits most associated with being an “alpha” in extremely online human circles include: a lack of vulnerability and deprioritization of emotional connection, obsession with financial success, a rigid (if deeply unimaginative) pecking order of attractiveness and cruelty toward those who don’t adhere to it and a distrust or outright dislike of women and their autonomy.
Shockingly, the dating experts HuffPost spoke with don’t necessarily see these behaviors as conducive to building healthy, equitable partnerships between so-called “alphas” and the people they claim to want to date.
“I think the ‘alpha male’ advice overly simplifies a more complex problem and thus, causes more difficulty than it solves,” Lorain Moorehead, owner and licensed psychotherapist at Lorain Moorehead Therapy and Consultation, told HuffPost.
”It can often have manipulative or domineering undertones.”
Sophie Roos, a licensed sexologist, relationship therapist and author at Swedish relationship magazine Passionerad, also notes that the so-called alphas tend to deal in very rigid “winner takes all” terms — which can be pretty reductive when navigating the ambiguity of real human connection.
”These ideas rarely go hand-in-hand with being an emotionally intelligent, kind and respectful partner, both to yourself and the [person] you’re dating,” Roos said.
And, unfortunately, a lot of the performance of this mythologized “alpha” behavior creates more challenges for men in the long run — particularly when it comes to living with authenticity and cultivating their own emotional intelligence.
Plus, it has to be pretty exhausting to keep up the act.
“The biggest risk is that men are forced into a hard and macho character, which they aren’t even comfortable with themselves.
This just because they think that’s what’s expected from them and the behavior which will make them the best relationship,” Roos said.
“If you think you always need to be emotionally disconnected toward your soft slides and dominant, you’ll never be able to create a happy long-term relationship in which you both feel good —so that’s a big problem right now where young men are tricked into this trap into becoming someone neither they or women like.”
<strong>Why This ‘Alpha’ Advice Doesn’t Seem To Die </strong>
Despite the flaws and oversimplification in the advice, why is it that it stays so ubiquitous in dating discourse?
Part of it, our experts say, is that a lot of people drawn to the advice are the ones who crave the simplicity and structure of fulfilling a very clear assigned role — even if it’s a caricature.
“These influencers are grasping for a set of rules to apply in a world they were not raised to understand,” Caroline Millet, a former matchmaker and coach at The 6 Steps Path, told HuffPost.
“They want an easy, clear, one-size-fits-all answer to getting what they want without fundamentally changing their understanding of how culture has evolved and re-examining their roles within it.”
On top of that, this advice tends to make it to the most vulnerable folks at the most vulnerable time, Millet adds: “It feeds into the human nature of wanting easy answers.
It targets young men and boys at some of their most vulnerable times of development, when they are going through major transitions in life and their roles in the world, and they often have emotionally withdrawn from their parents and prioritize input from outside sources over what their parents have to say.”
“Most of it is clickbait,” she said.
“Easy answers are the easiest to sell.”
“They want someone to tell them what to do.
Manosphere influencers offer up an intoxicating blend of easy answers, pseudo-science, pop psychology and misogyny that hits vulnerable audiences in the sweet spot,” she added, encouraging people to engage more critically with this advice when it’s offered.
”Ask yourself what the person telling me this information has to gain.
Do they need to me to buy into an entire worldview that also consists of supplements and workouts?
Or workshops in rooms full of men who are just as confused about dating and relationships as I am who all paid $5,000 to be in that hotel ballroom?”
Add to the reality that dating is actually hard — it asks for vulnerability, curiosity, empathy, cooperation, creativity and well-cultivated social skills — and it makes sense why someone might be drawn to a “cheat code”-style answer that asks less of them.
“Look, dating is tough.
It’s not for the weak.
It takes a lot of courage to put yourself out there again and again and stay strong.
Additionally, no one is actually taught how to do it.
The stories I could tell you from clients are wild — the things people think they can do or say on a date.”
Moorehead also adds that there’s an “illusion” of control at play as well, which can appeal to people who really struggle with the harsh reality of dating: You are never 100% in control, because there’s someone else there.
“I think this advice is popular because dating is an area of life that even the most determined and driven person feels they have to relinquish control because it involves the preferences and considerations of a second person,” she said.
“Following this advice gives the illusion that the individual has taken back control and is not at someone else’s discretion.”
<strong>Being An ‘Alpha’ Vs.
Being Actually Attractive</strong>
So if taking the “alpha” route doesn’t lead to ample romantic or sexual success, what’s the alternative?
For our experts, it’s cultivating those other skills and traits that are considered more desirable.
“A confident, competent, self-assured person doesn’t need these rule sets.
They have their set of values, their integrity, and their awareness of the world set and flexible enough to adapt with changing circumstances, so they simply are,” Millet said.
“They don’t see themselves as part of a masculine culture.
They see themselves as people and see women as people.”
Moorehead also recommends that people drawn to this advice might benefit from reflecting more on how they can really invest in themselves — fill their own cups a bit, connect with their own emotions and desires outside the manosphere context — to better set themselves up to meet and connect with the kind of partners they want IRL.
As for Millet, she encourages the men who want to date women to look to those women for a clearer, more honest answer to “what women really want.”
“Go ask the strong, confident women in your life what they look for in a man, how they want to be treated, what do they consider a good dating flow and trust them,” she said.
“Just like you don’t take advice from your trust-fund friend who has never had to work on how to get a promotion, you don’t ask toxic men how to have a successful relationship.
You ask people who are in relationships that seem strong and healthy how they do it.
You ask the type of women you would love to date what they want.”
<strong>The original version of this story was published on HuffPost at an earlier date.</strong>
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