Adulting - Adulting 2.0: Shon Faye

Episode Date: February 12, 2023

Hey Podulters! Welcome to Adulting 2.0: The Timelines.Shon Faye is journalist, podcaster and author of the best-selling non-fiction book, ‘The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice’. Following graduation from Oxford University and a subsequent job as a lawyer in the city, Shon's timeline shifted when she 'had a complete implosion, quit her job, moved back to Bristol and came out as a trans woman.In this episode we chat about all of these moments, as well as addiction, dating, friendship, childlessness as an identity and so much more.I hope you enjoy, and as always please do rate, review and subscribe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly. Hello podaulters, welcome to the first episode of Adulting 2.0 Timelines and what a way to start the series off. This week I speak to author, journalist and podcaster Sian Faye. After studying English literature at Oxford University followed by a graduate diploma in law, Sian moved to London and worked as a lawyer before her timeline completely changed. In her own words in her early 20s she says she had a complete implosion, quit her job, moved back to Bristol and came out as a trans woman.

We spoke about all of the above, as well as dating, addiction, childlessness as an identity and so much more. I really hope you enjoy. And as always, please do rate, review and subscribe. It helps others to find the podcast. Happy listening. Bye. Hello, Sean. Hi.

Thank you so much for joining me today looking very chic thank you um thank you for having me so the first thing i want to talk to you about because i literally just read it the other day is your new substack letter and in that you've actually written this quote because i thought it was so good you were like it's absolutely true that children come to define your social landscape in the stage of life and not being a parent feels like an identity I've acquired at some point in the last few years and I wonder if you could talk about that a bit more yeah sure so yeah I wrote um I created a sub stack and wrote that post about the fact that I'm well I'm rapidly approaching 35 I turned 35 in a couple of

months from when we're recording and I am thinking thinking a lot about it. It seems to be hitting me, not completely negatively, but it's hitting me a lot more than 30 did. I don't know why. I think it's because you really are out of the young person bracket when you're 35 and 30. It just didn't, it didn't feel like that huge of a step up. Whereas like with 35, I think, yeah, I'm thinking a lot about the age I am and where I'm at in life on the approach to that birthday and one of the key things I've noticed that has happened more in the last like five years between 30 and 35 is that there is this huge reordering of your social circles around children especially if you're a woman you have mostly female friends or like yeah yeah good proportion of female friends because a lot of the women that I spent my 20s with have had children and then people you know

whether they have children or they're planning to children are a consideration that you're hearing all the time fertility will I meet someone because I want to have kids I don't think I want to have kids me and my partner have decided we're not going to have kids. It's just very much, it suddenly becomes a really crucial reference points of conversation. I've always known I don't want to have children. I've always been quite clear on that. I've even like walked away from relationships where that's come up because I'm so sure that I never want to have children. And suddenly that's something you have to explain, you have to justify it's it's a point of conversation that people are interested in and also it's even stuff like I have to

sometimes even with myself remind myself like when I choose things like can I just go on a holiday now or maybe I'll move or like maybe I could move to New York for a bit like all the things that may or may not happen and I think is this being like irrational or drastic because no one else is doing this I have to remind myself well actually a lot of the reason that people don't do this stuff is because they have kids and you don't you write a bit about how this has meant that you've skewed some of your friendships to being towards people like in their 20s because they are freer and they don't have the burden of you know super serious relationships or children and I wondered if you were saying like you have to remind yourself do you sometimes feel like it's a sense of shame you're getting for not acting in

this almost like in vertical responsible way or doing things which just feel like they're for you do you know what I mean do yeah I do do you know what like I'm just going to go there with the basic example it's like I have a new appreciation for the fact that in like Sex and the City Samantha is like 10 years older than the rest of them which like again I loved Sex and the City, Samantha is like 10 years older than the rest of them, which like, again, I loved Sex and the City when I was 16, didn't realize that like, you know, now I'm actually older than Kerry is in the first couple of seasons. But like, as you get a bit older,

you appreciate more of the stuff. And Samantha being like older, it would make sense that if she's in her early 40s and it's the late 90s, like she hasn't married and had children, that she would need younger friends. And I suddenly have got this new appreciation of it because I sometimes feel like that around younger women and I can feel sometimes an element of shame about it like oh am I yeah am I being

like immature in some way or am I I don't know developmentally stunted but the reality is is that I actually don't think in a maturity level there's a huge difference necessarily between like 34 and 27 which is like maybe the average age of some of my younger friends the reality is is that we just have socially ascribed the idea that you should be running around after kids picking the kids up from school sort of like stressed hair in a bun like you know talking about child care as the grown-up thing because it's the very normative thing to do at this stage of life like you're in sort of mid-30s but it doesn't actually mean that you've got like a degree of maturity

more so than you had at 27 it just means you have kids no I completely agree and I felt like I didn't necessarily mean about the age gap in your friendships but about like the fun that you're having or things you're doing I got to this point where i sometimes will look at me and my friends in the pub and realize like oh my god we're those women that when we were 16 we'd look over and be like oh my god there's like 30 year olds in the pub drinking like pinot noir or whatever do you mean you'd like judge these women because you think there is this age bracket where women suddenly shouldn't be like out and about and i'm starting to feel like sometimes i see younger women i can see them kind of looking at us as if we're old and we're so young but whereas I feel like with

men you have much more freedom like as a guy to be out and having fun and going for drinks with your mates and there does come a point when suddenly I felt sometimes even with some of my circles where I can think they're like is she gonna calm down at any point yeah I get that I think I'm I benefit from my like proximity to the like queer community for that because I sort of feel like a straddle if you like the straight world and the gay world because I have lots of connections to both and actually like in in kind of like especially in London I feel like the gay or wider LGBTQ plus community because there is less of that normative script about the times in which you do things and because nightlife is so important to

queer people as more than just like somewhere you go and get drunk and like sleep with people in your early 20s it's I tend to go if I want to go out and have like a really good time I would probably go out on the queer scene which for me like because yeah because it's like if I'm in a gay club there's no one there I'm going to sleep with it's not somewhere to date I'm just going to have fun but also it's quite like there's I don't know there's like an age blindness there that I don't think I feel is judged as I might do if I were in like ski-ins in Peckham where everyone is like 18 and I'm like why am I here so I just tend to gravitate towards the gays basically is what I'm saying and then you can feel there's a reason why a lot of like I can see again why like Jennifer Coolidge in

in White Lotus like has become such a meme like this idea of being this like quite fab older woman surrounded by gays there's a reason why that's true is because like you're able to I'm lucky that I have queer friends that can pick up the slack because they don't have the same timeline in their head that some of my straight friends do yeah I think those are heteronormative timelines where they are obviously so much more impactful on people that live more traditional routes of life because you fit the script so perfectly already when you feel like you want to deviate away from it then it like feels more shocking whereas I guess if you've been brought up in any way sort of marginalized you're already viewed as outside of the yeah the normal order of things in verticals well we just pick all this stuff up we

we pick up and internalize what's reflected back at us and like if all you've ever known just because you haven't had to seek out a group of friends like most queer people will have to be like right i'm at school i'm the only gay person and especially if you're my age gay is not considered a great thing to be necessarily at school so you have to realize that you go somewhere else and find your people to be cringe and I think the thing is if you from school from uni work onwards if you're just if you've just always kind of found the people actually I don't know I think some people float their whole lives never finding their people that a lot of straight men I think do yeah from my experience of dating them they're just with the same people that they were friends of boys that they were friends with at

school and they have nothing in common with them it's really sad but i yeah in general i think if you're if you're floating along but then everyone else it's like it's weird to not be settling down with your life partner at 27 it's weird to not want kids by the time you're 33 it's you know that's gonna just i wouldn't cope with it it's not that I don't feel like I've got this like fab like streak of independence it's just that I found enough people who aren't doing that that it doesn't make me feel abnormal I'm aware that in society at large it's abnormal but like in my day-to-day life the friends and the people that like I think oh they're leading the life that I think is aspirational or oh that I think this person's really cool and what they're doing is really interesting with their

life and they're 40 so it's like providing a possibility for me to do something that isn't like doesn't have this narrative of unmarried childless floating around still going out you know when's she gonna settle down I don't have those pressures yeah it's funny because even when you don't want to I remember when I was in my last relationship and I I knew it wasn't working I still was thinking like well we've been together for like four years now so maybe we should be like getting engaged because we live together and I at the same time was thinking I think I'm gonna break up with him but then on the other hand I was doing all this like mental arithmetic for like what the right point would be to like escalate this thing just because it like that was fitting the the narrative

that was supposed to be happening and there were so many other parallel universes where I could imagine I would have stayed in that relationship for those reasons and it was absolutely the right thing to not do that but I do think so many people make decisions based on these outsider information yeah totally I mean just yeah I mean I'm laughing because I have like a specific experience of that I'm just I'm gonna I'll just lay it out for you it's that like one of the sort of things about being like a trans woman when you date straight men is that because like a lot of straight men will have there's a little bit of a stigma about whether or not you're calling to question their heterosexuality all

of that stuff there's like an element of forbidden fruit that you're kind of like a slightly exotic choice all a bit grim but like nevertheless it's there and one of the ways that it can manifest I've noticed a pattern that I have and I've spoken to some trans friends who've had the same thing is I often find like on dating apps or whatever I've ended up dating a lot of men where they've just got out of a really long-term relationship and now it's like a red flag to me if I'm looking for something more serious because I'm like oh I'm like I think Dolly Alderton said this in an advice column to someone once about like some girl that realized she'd been around rebound she was like you're basically Lanzarote like you're the someone that they go like fun or whatever like to get drunk and but they're not gonna be yeah and and a lot unfortunately it's horrible but like a lot of

men will automatically would view me that way because I'm trans and because I lead outside the box but one of the things that's interesting about that is from those like brief flings I've had with men where they've had like they've just got out of the four-year girlfriend and they thought they were gonna get married and all fell apart and so they're like and ultimately they'll go back to that but like I'm a pit stop maybe on the way and they see the periods between relationships it's like not real right and and the girlfriends are the real bits and then but it's interesting because I almost think it's the other way around it's like but what are the bits between the relationships telling you yeah because I think one of the things that they're sometimes attracted

to about me is something that's like not part of that daily life I'm not someone that they're friends with me I'm not someone that like that they would meet through work I'm not you know I'm a sort of step outside the box but but what I find really interesting about talking sometimes when I've spoken to those guys and had slightly deeper post-coital sometimes conversation is you learn a lot about like yeah about like this pathway that a lot of people but like in this case men see themselves on and and not really understanding why it's failing and often not realizing and they'll be like oh i was really unhappy with my ex for a really long time but like we got engaged and then it all fell apart and i don't know why it's like because you probably just felt like you were doing it for other reasons it's like when you and i actually have these yesterday but you know it's not always really

right with wingmen but this one was you know and they share like this is a wife this is a girlfriend i do think all a lot of people do have these really basic ideas in their head of, I'll date this person, but they're not marriage material. Even if they are completely in love with this person, actually really well suited to them, they then add in all of these outside metrics to calculate what's going to create the perfect person.

And loads of people pick on details that are not actually useful to them. They're just what look right on the outside well yeah that's interesting i mean it touches on what my next book is about i'm working on it at the moment it's called love and exile and one of the central themes on it is about how i've historically felt unlovable and about how like trans women in a heteronormative society we're not well we don't view ourselves as desirable partners which can lead to all sorts of things like one we pick bad men because we're just so grateful and or at least let's say me I don't want to speak for other trans women but like

I have picked partners that necessarily didn't always treat me very well because I thought I was grateful that anyone was interested in dating me openly at all I romanticized partners because they wanted to date me all these things but one of the things I'm tackling in the book is that despite the fact that I have quite like radical politics all that stuff is that there's a big part of me that's always longed for the like really traditional because I don't think it's open to me like what happens if I just got married and became a housewife I don't cook like why do I like I don't want kids and I don't cook like why do I want why do I have this fantasy of being a housewife like

it's almost like what's going on there but it it's like, it's all being taken care of. And it's because, but these are like the antithesis of what my actual life is like, where I feel like I'm constantly having to explain myself in the public sphere. I constantly have had to educate loads of men that like have dated me. I constantly feel like I'm doing all the legwork. And it's like the idea of just being completely passive,

like being like Betty Draper in mad men or whatever I mean like this like slightly miserable 60s housewife like so I'm interested in like where does that come from where these fantasies of something that I think I've thought I wanted at certain times and have really pursued but I would actually hate in reality and I think it's because i don't know like i think yeah i think i think i'm just really interested in the idea that like we that's so drummed in and if you're told that it's not open to you it becomes really tantalizing so to what extent am i craving something that i know doesn't even work for a lot of the people it is open to like women who aren't trans men who aren't trans like you know a lot

of people get divorced a lot of people are deeply unhappy we know this and like their marriages like i know all this rationally so i'm craving something that i know isn't really working for a lot of people that are doing it but i think that's because we're taught that it's like the most special thing like to be proposed to is to be told that you know someone has chosen you out of everyone and to be a housewife it's like you've got this man providing for you and even i again rationally think no i know that i would hate that i'd hate to have someone else be in control of my finances i hate to have none of those freedoms but i do have these fantasies as well sometimes but i think it comes from the fairy tales and these old stories which are so imbued in in the way that society talks about what love is

when so often it is actually just like a dressed up abusive relationship of control yeah more often than not when you were talking about finding yourself desirable and and feeling like you weren't deserving of love is that something that you've overcome or you still is that something you still have to fight yeah that's something i have to still have to fight i think i've come a long way with it i'm actually like i'm having therapy right now specifically around that i've had lots of therapy in my time but I specifically went to a therapist a few months ago and was like this is a missing piece that I've done all this other work on myself but the way I view myself around and in relation to

men I know is dysfunctional and it always has been and I need to look at that and it was so interesting because I thought it was all to do with my gender identity but actually it's much deeper it's also about my parents marriage what my messaging about love was growing up. But also, like, I went to an all-boys English public school as a very feminine kid. And so I had this really odd thing where I was quite badly bullied. And I was there when, like, all-boys schools, like, 14-year-old boys it's like like masculinity concentrate and it gives you such a specific perspective on men and males because they're boys at the time but males that actually made me realize I like with straight men in particular like I don't I have a residual like

dislike of them and distrust and so what it was leading me to is thinking like oh you're but I'm still fancy them so it's like you know this really screwed up thing where I'm like oh I have to like I can't really trust you with anything I just have to make you like me it's like I have to extract validation from you which makes you behave and frankly in same ways and means that no relationship is really intimate or whatever so I'm really having to look at that stuff and by understanding where it's all coming from I'm sort of trying to make changes but it is difficult I've just come off all dating apps and I all coming from I'm sort of trying to make changes but it is difficult I've just come off all dating apps and I don't think I'm going to go back on them I think dating apps I used to think they were great and I used to talk about how much I loved dating apps

even like 10 years ago ok cupid and when tinder first came about and now I'm actually looking and I'm like maybe I never liked them I think it was just that they felt less like the risk of rejection was a lot lower and that like there was a screen I could hide behind and I'm a words person and actually I'm quite enjoying having to like put myself there at things and talk to men because if I don't want to then what's that about like maybe I have to sit in the I'm a big believer in having to sit in the discomfort sometimes do you think that when you're at school what you were able to have access to which maybe loads of like girls growing up don't is when you can see sort of boys when they have

that pack mentality and they're acting out and doing that boys will be boys stuff which normally thankfully yeah you wouldn't see unless you're in the inner circle because I like sometimes you hear it or see it and it is revolting but luckily like do you think that's what you then would always go back to and think is that the real person that you are behind this man that you're showing me do you think yeah totally I mean like that's I mean like one thing my therapist said to me is you think all men are it sounds like you think all men are still 14 year old boys and you never really got past that and probably it's true because what happened with me I mean I was friends with a couple of the gay boys at my school, but like in general, and we were all like homophobically targeted anyone that was femme or gay or whatever.

And then, so yeah, and because in this, particularly in a single sex environment, there were no girls around to like, like you say, like, so where they probably would have restrained themselves and they're performing masculinity for each other. Like misogyny is a way to show that you're a man homophobia is a way to show that you're a man even though you're like a little boy it's like and and that that's a really grim way as someone who ultimately and and i think i was worth i think i ended up worse off than the gay boys because what what the what the gay guys i went to school with will have done it's been like whoa that horrid, but I never have to mix with straight men again.

And most of them don't. They get all female friends. They go to uni, they get all female friends and they get all gay male friends. And I did that for a little bit. But then obviously as I started to realize, no, I'm trans.

And once I transitioned, there was like an, Oh fuck moment. I actually have to date straight men. And I'm quite quickly. What I did was just, I got dating apps and I would start but I didn't I I've only just started having like straight male friends in the last year like I had boyfriends I

used to be I don't know any other straight men apart from you which I used to think was kind of almost like a serve like oh that's but actually I don't know that it's that it's that conducive to a healthy relationship because it suggests something about the way I see men that isn't healthy if I actually want to like have a healthy relationship with one I mean I'm quite but I don't have that many straight male friends to be honest but I've always got a boyfriend I was thinking this I do have a few but not that many but yeah so that is that is interesting but even what you're saying about kind of where you realize that you're kind of performing to make them like you and it's just classic pick me and I used to be like that as well when I was younger like terrible for

acting in a way that I knew was like catering to this male gaze even though it so wasn't like me and then you've got to spend this whole time keeping up this like preface of who they think you are yeah and then you never actually get you can never be truly intimate because you're not showing like yeah and I think for yeah and for trans women I think the thing is is that one of the big narratives around us is that like this continued insistence that straight men wouldn't find trans women attract and like so for example some of my exes their ex-girlfriends who weren't trans before me like would be quite horrible like obviously they were jealous and they were still upset about their breakup or whatever but they'd be quite horrible when they

found out like quite like homophobic biphobic about their ex right because you see me like oh you're gay now you're sleeping with a man that sort of stuff and so you're aware that there's that narrative around that's like oh like but like it's just like it's just nuts like straight like all trans women I know that sleep with men can sleep with straight men whenever they want to. Like, it's just, we do really fall into the mix. It's just stigmatized. It's the same as being like a plus size woman.

It's that like men might, like, might be the same thing to make these really awful fat jokes or whatever. But actually, if you speak to any fat woman, she can have sex with like whoever she, like whenever she wants. So, so, but there's a, when you're like placed really low in these like desirability politics but you also know that actually there are like men in your dms or whatever all the time what starts to happen what happened to me i think was a belief that sex was all i had to offer and that like actually it was like a hit back against its society in the same way that at times I've thought like, I've been obsessed with being pretty because I'm like, this is a big fuck you to society.

Like, I'm hot. It's just, it's coming from quite an unhealthy place. Similarly, with men, I think I thought, well, if there are men in my DMs constantly sort of like, yeah, sort of like solicitit like basically telling me i'm really sexy whatever that's what i have to offer like they're never going to date me i'm not marriage material i can't be the mother to their children and so you invest more and more in this kind of like almost mistress type i'm not saying i slept with married men to my knowledge but like i mean like this mistress like i know you mean like you're a secretive fruit yeah and you come to almost like fetishize yourself and and that's and that's really damaging and I and I and yeah so I've come out of that but

all of that stuff goes into the feeling unlovable because you're reaffirming this call and then when you do get a boyfriend you put him on a pedestal for doing nothing apart from the fact that he's your boyfriend it's like he's already like an amazing guy because because he's picked you i was wondering if because what we do in society automatically anyone that falls out outside the bracket of like heteronormativity is already overly sexualized so especially like if women come out as gay it's like suddenly this really sexual thing it's never really about the like if a girl maybe not so much so much now Like if a girl, maybe not so much now, but if a girl came out as a lesbian,

everyone would be really focused on like, what type of sex would they be having? Yeah. Rather than like, oh, she's going to fall in love with a woman. And I feel like that's kind of this, a similar thing.

It's like, if you're dating a trans woman, suddenly the focus is all about what does your sexual life look like? Yeah. Rather than being like, they're just dating a woman who's trans. Yeah. And that's the story kind of thing. Yeah. And think with yeah and with my experience with men is that where

they've been nervous around that is one what their male friends will think well actually also their female friends as well but a lot yeah a lot of like fear around that and the idea that like it because you are like it's the strange thing because it's not quite the same as being gay but nevertheless it's a conversation that they have to have with friends that maybe they've not been a straight man they're not used to having to explain themselves but they are also concerned about it I think sometimes with cisgender women because in the same way that a lot of bisexual men are is that there are a lot of like straight girls going around who do say stuff like quite openly like I wouldn't date a bi guy and it's kind of a fucked up thing to say and it's quite still quite acceptable like even London I've heard people say that oh I wouldn't date a bi guy and it's kind of a fucked up thing to say

and it's quite still quite acceptable like even London I've heard people say that oh I wouldn't date a bi guy and you're like why you should be investigating that like that's that's not really an okay thing to be saying like so confidently with your chest like because but it's because it's almost like this like we're quite regressive 1980s like oh a bisexual guy's probably going out and having sex on Hampstead Heath and coming back it's really regressive when I think there's a bit more of an openness about bi girls definitely for bi guys not so much and so I think and and and straight guys that date trans women aren't bi if they're not into men but it's similar in that I think they're worried that like if they openly date a trans

woman that that could taint them in some way in the more straight dating market if it doesn't work out and they go back on that like somehow other women will judge them for that do you think there's like you know when you're saying that the ex-girlfriends of like the guys you dated have said horrible things about them like saying oh you're bi now whatever when they're not do you think that there's an element of like competition coming from straight women where they suddenly feel like they can't they're not if he's into trans women that's not something that i'll ever be able to be and also the same with bi men do you think it's women thinking like oh well like my competition pool is just like doubled kind of thing do you know what i mean i wonder if because women are like so often pitted

against each other if there is like this element of sort of like yeah i think it's a few things i think like the thing with biphobia there is just not understanding bisexuality that like the idea that by people you'll never be enough for a bi person and all all that stuff and that like yeah there's a lot there that's just not ever really been unpacked around bisexuality and masculinity too is that like lots of yeah the heterosexual men's heterosexuality has to be really untainted i mean lots of like straight men are going around having gay experiences too any gay guy in london that's on grinder will tell you that there are like straight guys that are getting blow jobs or whatever like loads of it goes on like if i think about like the women

friends i know that like mostly have had boyfriends like largely moved through the world straight but have had sex with a woman it's just not that uncommon no i got drunk once and had sex with a woman i got drunk three times i had sex with three different women but i'm straight and i kind of believe like that's how they identify that's true of men too it's just men don't talk about it i think and i think if a man said that people would be like oh so it would be immediately you're gay whereas women can like have loads of sexual experiences with women and people are like oh that's funny yeah there isn't that same yeah so there's that lack of understanding around it and then I think I also think like it's also about transphobia is that I think for a long time I think it's changing but I think for a long time I when I was growing up like trans women yeah

were viewed as objects of ridicule and and yeah and this idea that like yeah kind of like we're just like sort of gay boys pretending to be women really is what a lot of people thought of us so that's like what people think a trans woman is so they can't really buy into so I think for some women it would be quite threatening to be like oh so the so so the guy that I am dating also finds a trans woman attractive. Yeah. Which suggests like a lack of knowledge or a lack of education about who trans women are. Can we talk, I don't want to focus on too much, but I want to talk about the In The Guardian.

Because this like ties so well into the stories of like the timelines. And I'm sure that we'll come on to talking about this in a bit. About how it's impacted like the way that you feel moving around the world now. But there's a bit when you said that you had a complete implosion quit a job move back to Bristol and then you came out as a trans woman and I imagine that that point in your life it must have rehashed so much of your timeline so much of what you imagined was going to be happening yeah could you talk a bit about like at what age you were when this happened yeah I so I yeah after university I trained as a lawyer and then I was living in London in my mid-20s and I was a trainee solicitor in the city training to become a commercial lawyer and at that time I I'd been out as gay since I was a teenager gay male obviously

and it was always like from university onwards onwards always very what we'd now call gender non-conforming but no one used that language at the time but like I used to like wear full makeup from when I was a teenager I used to wear heels I used to you know like I just was always kind of considered like I don't know yeah Sean is doing their own thing and even for gay men it was like quite I stood out and I guess I didn't you know we I'd never heard the term non-binary until I was about 25 and the minute I heard it I was like well that's me because it just described what I had basically been doing with my gender for a long time so I I was sort of like yeah in the gay and the maybe non-binary space but then I was going into this quite sort of corporate environment every day

just like in a suit and definitely just seeming like a gay guy and I think what started to happen yeah I'd been exist in this really gender fluid way pretty much from like sort of 18 onwards but like where the gender crisis really sort of stepped up there was because just because of the physicality of aging to be honest is that your testosterone starts to I was really sort of I still look pretty young for my age now and so when I was like 19 20 I genuinely could just wear makeup in a club and people wouldn't know if I was a boy or a girl and I never realized that was something I was deeply attached to until what started to happen obviously is the testosterone was starting

to win out and I was starting to masculinize right and I started to become like deeply unhappy with my body and my appearance and I started to where I started to realize is that i was like getting more and more depressed about that and i used to always think like the idea of being like an older man literally makes me want to kill myself and i didn't necessarily share these thoughts with anyone but and it was even stuff like i um there was a point where i was advised like for my career that it would be better if i cut my hair and not have it long and i'm presenting a much more kind of like you know like short back and sides like yeah i don't know masculine suit way I thought you were gonna say yeah kind of kind of that vibe yeah and all of that just like seemed so anathema to me

and I just realized I was on this path that was being led by my own body that like I wasn't going to be able to be this like cute little androgynous late teenager for very much longer because I was you know in my mid-20s so that was like causing I mean I met yeah I'm always like it's funny to describe because like I think to someone that's never had gender dysphoria it's like explaining death to someone that's never been bereaved is like to say oh I was just feeling depressed and sad about it I think it can't like it can't quite capture that. It's like grief for something that you've never actually experienced.

But it's like this sense that something's really wrong. And it had been wrong for obviously pretty much my whole life. But it was just, it stepped up a level. And then around that time too, I started to actually meet trans people in London. And they were a different perspective on what I thought a trans person was from like all the culture that I just described like late night tv trans people as objects of ridicule and so like the more and more I met trans people I was like oh that I sound that sounds like me and then like I met a trans woman at a party I was on a lot of drugs at like 4am and I remember just like

grilling her poor thing about like she was on hormones and stuff like that and I was just like it was just something that I instantly kind of knew I was gonna have to do in quite a profound way so there was that going on and then alongside that I mean I'm quite open that I'm in recovery now I'm an alcoholic addict um that's how I identify myself sober alcoholics and clean addict but at that time I didn't know necessarily that I was, but I was already by that time an alcoholic. And so I had all this gender confusion, but I was also drinking really problematically and taking more and more drugs. And of course, when you have like a big thing like that, that you're sitting on and all that tension, if you're already inclined to like misuse substances in order to like self-medicate, the two just came together and basically like

completely overwhelmed me and quite quickly I wasn't able to function at work anymore my training contract came to an end I wasn't able to like continue as a commercial lawyer my entire like social life in London was wrapped up in drugs so I did that like thing some people call it like doing a geographical you're like right I'll just go back to my mum's house for a bit and get back on my feet not change anything but just get back on my feet because yeah things have got quite bad and quite chaotic in my life and of course like if you move back in with your mum and you move back to like a place where you're not as immersed in like a big queer scene and you know some of the pressure is taken off like things external things did get a bit better but I had

to I started a really long process which I still see myself in like eight nine years later of because I got to the point like of basically feeling like I didn't want to live anymore and then there was like a couple of like crunch moments where it's like well if I am gonna continue to live I have to the things that have to change and the first thing that had to change was gender um but it wasn't it wasn't the only thing and I think I'm I'm keen to always talk about that more now because I think sometimes there's this that I felt pressured to be like I was unhappy I transitioned and then everything got better because that's the palatable way to sell transition to people is like oh it'll make all your problems it made all

my problems go away therefore you should let people transition but actually when you've got like a lot of the whole build-up of trauma from childhood onwards it takes a long time but like it was untenable like and it was the foundation like without my transition none of the rest of the stuff could have happened like transition and sobriety are the two things that like are the reason i'm still alive basically those two foundations and then everything else is built on those is how I see it thank you for sharing that so it's obviously like quite a traumatizing point of your life but also you've come out the other side very happily so you talk about a bit in that sub stack where you said how you talk about your blackout drinking and you talk about how you know you you realize that when you

think about being younger or like your memories and stuff you can't remember lots of things because you kind of tried to forget a lot and also how this meant that when you kind of look back on your life you realize that because of trauma and perhaps because of existing at times in a gender which you didn't align with there's probably chunks of your life which kind of don't maybe feel that real or kind of feel hazy so when you even though you're so accomplished and so established and as I said you're almost turning 35 you've all also started this life as a woman in your 20s so like do you have a weird thing where at some points you feel like you're still

so young because you're like a young girl in some ways yeah well yeah you do because you you almost lead multiple lives because like like for example when my first boyfriend after I transitioned it was basically like a full first boyfriend experience because I'd actually like dated I mean I never had a serious boyfriend when I identified as a gay guy but when I went to start dating straight men that was like a whole embarking on something that like was new again like yeah sure I'd been on dates before I'd had sex before I'd done all that stuff before but like it's completely different dynamic and so yeah so you're like relearning all these dynamics and it is it is different because of the gender power play that's there and in some yeah so in some ways there's like there's there's that like well I mean even if you want to talk

like in terms of sex and intimacy that like I feel like I had multiple kind of first-time experiences because of different gender placements and stuff like that so that skews the timeline a bit because you feel like yeah there's some parts of you that have lived like a hundred lives in quite a short space of time and others where you you're playing catch up so sometimes I do actually that's why we were talking about the younger ties back to the younger friends thing some of my younger female friends I think the reason I have affinity with them is because some of the things that they're learning I might be seven years older but I'm learning some of the things at the same time as them because yeah because I've moved out of the

young woman phase where like I'm yeah I'm now getting to a stage of like maturity in my transition and I think for at first I really really didn't want to admit that like transitioning is kind of like going back to like a bit of a regressed adolescence because your body change you go I went through puberty in my mid-20s like I grew breasts in my mid-20s like that is like it's it's just a very unusual path to take in life to have your body change and therefore in real time people change towards you but unlike a teenager you're not you're not you're not a child you don't get the grace of a child you're expected to also act like an adult and that's why i think a lot of the reason why

probably substance abuse because you get it was like tapping out but i don't want this responsibility i'm gonna i'm gonna absent myself from this like confusion i'd never even thought about that so true if i think about like my teenage hormones and everything you go through do you do you have all of that because how oh my god that is terrible that's actually actually thinking about having to deal with that in your 20s is a lot yeah well even the fact that like my my sister I was back at Christmas for Christmas with my family and we take we take a picture at the Christmas table every year and my sister did it this year and she was like oh my iPhone has just done that thing where it shows me the set on this day for like the last like eight years and she was like basically it's

like a catalogue of like the drastic way in which Sean's appearance has changed because like I was like show me the first one and it literally just like the rest of my family just look a bit older but it's just like my entire physicality has literally changed because like I've been on hormones so long and it continues to have like an effect on your body shape face everything and so yeah it's just like even the fact I don't look that I don't really like you know when there's like an Instagram where I could take me to share a pic on your instagram story share a picture from 2012 if i i choose because i've got such a big instagram account like i often don't do those because i don't have a problem with old photos of me but like i get that it's sensational and i don't necessarily want the idea of people screenshotting that

yeah but like that's that in itself is like a really odd experience that like if i like it's not this like oh look at me with my it's like I look very different so so it makes a sense that you would dissociate I think from certain parts of your past yeah blackout drinking certainly doesn't help the fact that like there were periods particularly in my life like I was always a bit more of a binge drinker and user but there were obviously times where the binges were like there were shorter gaps between them and that does I think rot your brain a little bit you can't you don't have that recall and a lot of the stuff you can't really remember because you were just fucked the whole time but the but the other thing too is yeah I think there's something about that trauma thing that I grew up I grew up in a in a family that

was like affected by addiction as well as a child and that brings with it a lot of secrecy and shame and being a queer young person as I say what I talked about going to school is I think you build up this mentality like don't look at the past let's get on we've got to move on now and that's why it's so interesting learning about trauma I know that's it's a conversation that seems to be really much more popular now on TikTok and other these platforms about trauma and some people think it's gone too far and everyone's saying they've got trauma but I think I would have thought if you'd asked me like five or six years ago I'd have thought what no there's nothing like I don't think I have trauma because like I don't feel sad about things

but I don't remember anything and I don't like and I'm drinking all the time and I am and I find it really hard to relate to people and then you actually like read about what trauma does to a person and it's not this conscious thing like oh I'm really upset about that like I have no relationship with my dad and when I was at university I remember telling people that like oh no I haven't seen my dad for like 10 years and people would be like oh I'm really sorry and I'd be like that hasn't affected me at all which isn't a normal response like like a parent a parent leaving does have an effect it should have an effect if it doesn't have an effect it still has it's just hidden yeah and so um and so I think that's what I have done a lot in my life and I do think being trans one of the things about being trans is that and I do see this with

younger trans girls now as well like in their early 20s it's a strange thing now that I have sometimes with younger trans women where I feel the age gap and I feel like I'm there to impart wisdom but I think when you're transitioning it's so hard to do it's so expensive there's so many hurdles all this stuff it's so easy to it's such a major project literally if you decide to medically transition it's something that's going to be like almost like a part-time job for several years of your life and you're going to have to raise a lot of money to do it too because it doesn't happen really on the NHS is it's so easy to bank all your happiness on that. Like when I get the surgery, when I complete this surgery, when I get these hormones, everything's going to get better. And of course,

that's not really true. Like it will make certain things better, but you'll also get new problems and you'll get new difficulties. And some of the stuff isn't going to be fixed by a surgery in the same way that like, if you were saying that in the same way that you get lots of cisgender women who think that changing their appearance is going to change their life or like getting a new man is going to make them feel better about themselves like you know just just feel like growing up is a lot I feel like my sort of marker of what growing up is is actually coming to accept the again and again the idea that like the more I expect external things to fix me the more I'm going to be disappointed and also that you never reach an end goal because I remember thinking I had therapy in lockdown I kind of had a bit like you where you suddenly realize you've

got all these things inside of you that you didn't know that I thought was fine because I was in a good relationship have friends everything seemed to be going right but there was little things where I'd react to certain things with things that upset me but I was for the most part on the outside I was fine and then I had therapy and I was like right I've dealt with everything and then as soon as I kind of got through all these really buried things it's just a constant like life is constantly unpicking things putting stuff back together you're never actually fixed or sold or better because every single day there'll be a new thing yeah and you could be thrown a curveball at any time by anything.

And it, you know, this is all that obvious stuff, but it wasn't that obvious to me when I was younger. I really thought, I think I really thought that if I just, you know, and I think it's one of the reasons why I've had the career I've had. I've kind of probably on this podcast, I've made myself sound like if someone's not really aware of me, that I sound like kind of a bit of a fucking mess. But also counterbalance to that is that I'm actually someone that's been like quite a high achiever in my life like you know I was like a

straight A student I went to Oxford you know like I became a lawyer then I became a writer and then I became a best-selling author like all these things that are actually like things that I know objectively are impressive but I do actually sometimes think like the drive that's made me do those things it's the same thing that's made me quite self-destructive at times too. Which is really believing like if I work hard enough and do all the effort and I pour myself everything into something that it will fix something. And sure, it can improve things. But look at the end of the day, it's just a job. It's just a book.

It's just a job it's just a book it's just a university like none of these things have necessarily the things that have usually made my life better have been things like well not being so hard on myself letting go of narratives that don't serve me anymore being vulnerable with people all of these things that I literally made me want to die when I was like a teenager or early 20s, yeah. A chance to win with every spin and a guaranteed winner by 11 p.m. every day. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600. Or visit connectsontario.ca. Select games only. Guarantee void if platform or game outages occur.

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this might seem like a bit of a weird question obviously the transgender issue which i know you call it that because you found that phrase just very irritating and reductive it was an incredible bestseller it's an amazing book and now you do fall into this category of being like an activist and how was that how does that identity fit with you and like how does that change your way of like viewing your life because being an activist is a really tough job it means you're on like kind of this pedestal to talk about things and it does mean in some ways you can't really rest I don't know if that's the right way of saying it but do you know what I mean yeah well I struggle with that because like I I personally don't think of myself as an activist and I try and like it's so

interesting because the term has become like so loaded because it's almost actually there's almost like I would say like a sub-genre of like influencer activists where there's a lot of people it can almost be like quite a commercially viable thing now to call yourself an activist you know there are people who that's the it's a career path for them and and then there are like people who are doing the really unglamorous activism of like doing protests making signs sweeping church halls whilst people have like a meeting about what next action they're going to do an airport wherever to stop deportations you know that to me is what activism is quite unglamorous and so i don't really feel worthy of like the title activist when i think of those people and then i don't want to also be thought of as an

influence activist because i'm like no i'm a writer i want to be taken seriously in the writing kind of realm so i mean there's there's a lot of semantics about what an activist is but I do get like when I have like professional bios or it's in a lot of like the way yeah I know and often I'll if I get sight of like a bio before I'll get them to take it out right it's it's a block I have with it nevertheless I do think because of the book I wrote whether I call whether I like the term activist or not yeah whether I like the term activist or not what what that sort of like work does is it put it does like it does still does all the things you described is it put it makes people want to put you on a pedestal it makes people some people afford you a certain degree of reverence all of these things that I don't think I'm worthy of it's

why I've started to be more open since my book came out about stuff like my addictions my mental health the fact that I have spent a lot of my life you know being quite self-destructive person and not always probably the healthiest person to be around in my youth the reason I want to be open about that is because I don't want to be put on this pedestal where I'm made me it freaked me out when my book came out I was being spoken of like I was perfect yeah because actually one of the key things is that like they're tied is that like I wrote this book because I wanted to contribute something that's going to change the way that society treats trans people because society treated trans people really badly until like five minutes ago and it sort of screwed me up and it screwed a lot of my friends up and so you can't you can't like

you can't it's really weird when you when you get people and you put them on pedestals to a point where it almost makes it seem like they have to be perfect when it's like well the whole reason that they're probably doing this is because they've been damaged in some way which probably means that they've not behaved like a perfect angel their whole time their whole life so for me it's really important i think to like have have space for both but i what i've tried to do now i think is because i wrote one you know this very sort of definitive book was partly to get that out of my system and then it does allow me freedom to write about other things because now i feel fine saying no i don't want to talk about being on a panel about trans issues no i don't want to like write your article for the independent or the guardian or whatever about trans issue i've literally written a whole book on it you

can leave me alone yeah yeah that was gonna be my next question because i think what i guess in another round a bit way what i was trying to ask was in becoming a woman which is or or like finally being able to present as the woman that you are you then have to take on this responsibility of like being in defense all the time of your identity and I wonder how annoying that must be in that you've you've like reached the point where you know you've had your medical transition so you you have got rid of that feeling where you like you are the gender that you are and then you can't rest basically because then you have spent the whole rest of the time explaining yourself or explaining women like you

yeah no it's true and I think I actually think it's only like in the last couple of years I've got to a point where I've been able to like feel calm in that I think it's just because now it's like yeah I'm sort of like it's so well actually my transition now is so like my decision to transition was so long ago and i'm changing pronouns and all that feels like sufficiently long time ago now but i'm a bit like i think i just got bored of it i'm like this has been so long i've been walking around being a woman now for like several years there's also just a point where you're just like everywhere i go if i'm on the bus if I'm in a shop whatever people like she her her you know move out this lady's way to their child whatever you know it's like I'm not gonna go on

and like have to justify like the fact that you think that like this is a new topic for you and you're not really convinced whether or not I'm really a woman it's just I think you just have to live enough of that time to be like look I don't really care what you think like and also I think it's that I've you know I just don't mix with people who aren't like sort of to grips I don't have big conversations about being trans with any of my cis friends because I just assume that they're like up to speed yeah so it's just not the things we talk about and that that's why I found like this break from dating it because I'm like I don't now at this point there were men that I dated in the past where I was having these deep like having to give them like sending them YouTube

clips and stuff like that like you know watch this you know oh I'm gonna have to talk to your sister about this and you know this is how you explain it to your sister or whatever and at this point I'm like who has the time like I don't have to do this with my sister I have to do this with my friends why do I have to do it for some guy's friends like he should be doing it or preferably yeah they should be there already yeah and so I think like I think where I'm getting to with that is yeah is that I've just got to a place of like ease with it now and I think the book it was weird when my book came out and doing a book campaign and going and doing a BBC politics programs and doing mainstream interviews because it really was like my gender identity was my work like it was not something I ever talked about or like you know was there in my social

life but then it would be almost like right I'm gonna I'm gonna pick up my briefcase and go into work and be trans today you know it's like it's this like really peculiar thing where you you're almost like I've been gay for pay it's like you know like trans for like yeah this aspect because that's what people wanted in the relation to the book and now I've just come out that publicity cycle and I'm working on a book that's not really anything to do with that. And yeah, like I really don't talk about it as much anymore. And yeah, but I can still see like there are some especially younger trans women who get really, really. I understand it's so it can be so all consuming this like fear, especially with what's happening in the country at the moment, the government.

But how anti-trans the mood is, this need, whether it's on Instagram, Twitter, twitter whatever to like constantly be explaining yourself and i'm just like just don't don't would you say because i find this with loads of things but would you say that online is actually not that reflective of like the wider world like you say you can move around in life no one's looking at you thinking anything i mean but if you said like if you're online it seems so much more hostile do you think that's true or do you think it is yeah no i think it is more hostile i mean one people will say things they'd never say in person but also people band together yeah and there's like an obsessive element to some transphobia online especially on like twitter it's just i think it's become like i was looking at it weirdly because like weirdly people like lawrence fox keep coming off on my freaking twitter i think people like retweet them and it's like it's the same as like the anti-vax people it's almost cult-like it's actually nothing

to do with transphobia it's almost like become a war in of itself but it's lost sight it's like i don't really understand it but there's all these specific especially like media type women who are in their 40s and 50s who've just become obsessed yeah with writing these articles and it feels tribal from their side yeah I think I think that's true and I think yeah it's just not my experience I mean like there are contexts like you know there's volunteer work I do there's a couple of things I do where I step outside of my comfort zone and I mix with like the people that are not like young millennials left-wing queer or queer adjacent people in southeast Londonondon whatever like i step out of my bubble basically

you know like there's a couple of volunteer things i do with like older guys like proper like cockney east ender types who like in their 60s and i don't know yeah like i've just actually generally found that they're fine with it like you know like you know they don't because they are so unfamiliar with trans people I do normally have to tell them I'm always like I assume from my husky voice that's coming across but sometimes it's like no they just genuinely don't and they're just like you know they they're not gonna say like they might just be like yeah they're just like fine with it I want to talk about first about the book about finding love and also being childless by choice

and what do you imagine because even I like thinking about that I just think of freedom like the rest of your life that is so exciting because you aren't tied down by these little terrorists running around the house and so you could do just so many different things and if you thought about like what your five to ten year plan would look like and what you would want because I think we do even though and I think that I do automatically think of a family even though I don't necessarily know that that's what's going to happen for me do you know what I mean yeah so I guess the thought for the book came from the fact that three years ago I ended a relationship with someone where I mean looking back I don't think it would have worked out anyway

but what I see now is that this was someone that like, despite his imperfections, did very much like love me and wanted to be in a relationship with me, wanted to build a life with me. However, he had very heteronormative assumptions about what his life was going to look like. And I think from my side, what I had done looking back is I had invested a lot of hope in him. I thought he was going to save me from myself, really. I was still drinking at the time for a lot of our relationship where I've been struggling with that. When I met him, yeah, he was my first proper boyfriend after I transitioned. And I invested a lot of hope in him and I had to end our relationship because he very much wanted children and I didn't. And it was the most consciously painful thing I've ever been through in my entire life. I literally felt like

someone had died and I didn't get over it for months and months and months partly because we went straight into lockdown and I was just blindsided and I really didn't know I'd sort of broken up with people before and I'd also spoken to like female friends on the phone and I literally was like felt like I had to go around calling people being like I'm so sorry that I was not that bothered when you like broke up with your boyfriend five years ago because I didn't realize it felt like this like it's so painful and it was like all consuming and so the reason that like having something like that happen to you where it's like and i've been through yeah as you've probably picked up i've been through quite a lot of shit so like for that to really stand out it's so painful it what i realized is often when a relationship like falls apart like sure he was a nice guy

or whatever but he was just a man is that like what often is so painful is that it's the dreams that you had dying and with him I guess I'd invested so much in him that what that end of that relationship meant is that oh I was back to square one with like what do I do now and I was 31 yeah COVID obviously threw a spanner in the works of everything but I was like what do I do now and I was 31 yeah COVID obviously threw a spanner in the works of everything but I was like what what am I doing with my life because I just thought well I've got this boyfriend now we're probably gonna like move in together and all that stuff and that and so you get to that ground zero and because we had we had broken up because I didn't want children too you know he really didn't understand where I was coming from because to him having wanting to have

children was normal and it was the, one of the first times I'd been made to feel quite like abnormal for not wanting children. And I think like getting over that breakup and then, you know, working out what is my life going to look like now? How am I going to lead a happy life? And crucially, how am I going to make sure that like, I'm not clinging, even if I get into a relationship again, I'm not clinging so desperately to someone like that so that like it's a bit healthier less codependent I think yeah it made me view again like what does actually not having children look like because it was something that I just never wanted and I'd never been made to feel unusual about it but like yeah it does mean complete

freedom but also I think what it made me realize is well what my experience of it there was that I had lost someone because of it because it meant that actually there was a whole host of people that when you are like committed to being child free there are a whole host of people that you cannot date and I was like for fuck's sake so like you know and I still sort of think this it's like I'm sober right so I cannot date someone that loves to get on it and drinks loads I just can't like it's not it's not going to be good they don't have to be sober but they can't be a big drinker I'm trans so I have to be someone that's like woke about trans issues no so this you know it's like not gonna be like ashamed whatever oh and now I also have to think

about this I have to someone that's oh who doesn't want children and isn't gonna like there's not gonna be that anxiety so it was like oh this is yet another thing i'm going to have to manage but what i've like tried to do is like like you say describing the freedom aspect to it it's like you can turn all those things out is you have to see those things as like a source of abundance yeah is like one of the joys of being like a sober person is that you get to be like in a society that's constantly encouraging you to like tap out and not be present you are present in your own life and that's got its own kind of thrill too and like it makes you so conscious and you have to be so present in your own life the whole time if you're working like properly at your sobriety that it does give you the opportunity to be

properly connected to people in a relationship in a way that you haven't before not having children means that you have to form a basis that isn't what we everything we've talked about is like oh this will be a good dad for my kids yeah like that's not the basis on which i'm gonna have a relationship with someone and i don't have to and what i am free of is that i am not a 34 year old cisgender woman who really wants kids who has this panic that my body is going to turn on me and i feel like right he seems fine launch on let's get the sperm and see how it goes which i do think like maybe they don't think that's what they're doing but i do feel like that's a little something i know i think i do think it is because it is that panic thing and what's interesting as well i was thinking if

you're dating men that stay major to you if if they want kids this is the age whereas at 25 26 you could be going around saying oh i don't really want kids and i'm like yeah that's fine because they're not actually like they don't want it but this age 35 i think is when men if they want children that's when they're sort of like right okay i'm gonna have kids yeah but like what do you think about because i went through this after my ex i still don't know if this is true i was like maybe i don't believe in long-term love i'd kind of had two long-ish relationships and they always seem to kind of for me start like wearing or not working more after about three years and I was like maybe we're just meant to be with have like loads of concurrent three-year relationships and maybe that's like how it would

be better to be and I'll just be like the rich auntie that has loads of chihuahuas like do you see what are you viewing love like are you still thinking about you want long-term love because often long-term love is bound around children again and like the need to be together for longer or are you open to you know shorter relationship like what what are you viewing love as i think it is you have to remove all those expectations yeah and i think i have the opportunity what they're like the child free thing the sober thing the trans thing not being in the heteronormative space or do is like they remove a lot of burdens that other people have to carry is that i can make that i have the freedom to make my life and I'm lucky as well I'm privileged I have money I have

a career all that stuff so it's not like thanks um so I have like an opportunity to like create the life I want and I think one of the things I'm looking at for the book so my book is quite political is I look at like where do these ideas come from and like romantic love right like the philosopher Alain de Botton says that like we basically got all of our ideas about what love is are like 200 years old because they come from this like idea that you'll have a soulmate who you'll recognize by instinct these were like all invented in like late 18th century France by poets it's the the idea that you you know because like 500 years ago the idea that you would be in love with the person you were married to would be insane like it was like a dynastic thing or like

if you were a peasant it was because they were in the strip of land next to you yeah so like this idea that you should be truly in love with your partner is like actually quite old and like it never really worked out for women like i don't feel like women are grandmother's ages and a lot of them did not have a great time they just couldn't leave their marriages so a lot of our ideas about romantic love are quite new and then alongside that what they all say is that like we'll be able to do it all on instinct you'll meet the one and it will just be right and it'll be easy and stuff like that and then when it gets hard people like oh no love's hard work but what we're never really told is that actually what what Alan de Botton the philosopher says is like love is a skill is that like actually it requires like a high degree of like to make it work in a healthy way if you want like a healthy

fulfilling partnership it requires like a willingness to change a willingness to compromise constant communication and to be honest I swing sometimes when I hear all that I'm like I don't know if I can be bothered like when your own life is quite good single you're like yeah taking responsibility but that's like what bell hooks says isn't she said that love is a verb not like yeah and I think that is really true but I always get I get this well you know people go marriage is such hard work and I'm like god is it because like is it or are we just like you said making excuses for relationships that fundamentally don't work but we're like well that's what you know marriage is marriage is a chore and and I do sometimes wonder sometimes I look at like you know there's there's a really good book called

Love Factually and she talks about the three stages of love you have like lust something else then you just have like where you're just basically like partners and friends and it's like having someone around and that's like the end stage of love and I was like I don't like the sound of that one I'm like I don't know if I can wait that long and then get there and then that be it like what if I never fall in love again because I love falling in love do you know what I mean yeah no totally and I mean it's so interesting isn't it that I think again like if you look on Instagram now this is a conversation I think people especially women of our generation seem to be having more and more because it's like how Esther Perel is now such a big guru I mean she's been around like her book came out like 20 years ago

but now she's had this like huge wave of celebrity and I think it's because we're all desperate and COVID's only intensified it of like being told like why is thing are things not working out the way that we've told they should and there's lots of factors at play but like I think the reason Esther Perel is so popular now is because what she has always basically been saying is that like you have to like even the fact that like you're to have a sex life in a long relationship is a is a hard thing to do because to actually find someone sexy they have to have mystery you can't have intimacy without mystery yeah so you have to find a way if you want like an exciting sex life with someone that you've known for 10 years or 20 years you have to you have to work at creating mystery around each other otherwise you're going to find

mystery elsewhere and that all like kind of makes sense but it's just amazing that like yeah i think i think one of the things that she says too is that we're expecting as well what's changed is that friendship hasn't changed that much the employer-employee relationship hasn't changed that much in let say, the last century. But what we expect from marriage and relationships really has. Like, we now increasingly, we don't have churches anymore.

We don't have, like, this wider community often, especially in big cities, of, like, lots of people there to provide you with care needs. And you don't have, like, the grandparents living in the same house as the, like, the grandchildren or whatever. We don't tend to be able to look after our older people and people getting older and all

that stuff is like we're increasingly expecting at this one person like yeah it's like the fact that like on instagram everyone's like proposal caption is like i'm marrying my best friend you're like that's great obviously but like it's weird that you expect it to be like oh this is my best friend who i also fuck who also like who also like supports all my ambitions who like it's all just gonna like like be my emotional resource and my therapist and like it's gonna be there if i get sick and it's like that is a lot for like one person to carry for like more than a few years it's loads i remember seeing someone saying this like you don't just have one friend often you have loads of different friends and one of your friends will be like oh this may i always go out with this is

the friend that i ring when i'm stressed whatever and it's like but with the partner like you say you just suddenly expect them to be able to cover all bases for you and actually they can't and sometimes it's good to recognize where their strengths are and then outsource yeah the other bits from other friends or therapy or whatever i have a friend that i went to university with and i was literally with her yesterday she's in hospital at the moment she's sick unfortunately but she we all rallied around because she's been ill in hospital and she was saying literally we were talking about yesterday she was like in some ways it's been easier being single because like all of my friends have rallied around for help and she was like and i'm fully like and we've all split the load and there's quite a lot of us and she was like I do often think if I had like a man or

whatever like I'd probably be expecting to do that but like he might not be able to like one he might just be a bit useless or he might just not be able to deal with it like with his own work and everything like that and I actually said to her there was a couple of times in my transition where I had surgery and I had a boyfriend and it was the saddest thing ever because like just through like not being that like clued up they just like wouldn't come and meet me after I had a boyfriend and it was the saddest thing ever because like just through like not being that like clued up they just wouldn't come and meet me after I had like been discharged from hospital and there's nothing lonelier than when you have an expectation of like a boyfriend and they don't do something for you whereas now if I was in a hospital having surgery I'd be like on the

whatsapp group being like right who's coming who's coming around that night when I'm on sedatives to like cook me a meal and I would and I would feel like i was like i'm not alone in the world whereas there's nothing lonelier than looking to one person that person fails you absolutely and i've i've been thinking about the state that after my breakup i think and especially when i was growing up i put a lot of emphasis on romantic love and boyfriends because i wanted them to kind i thought they made me more important or like they men were kind of the only people that could validate me as like a credible human because it meant that I was like attractive and someone was romantically interested in me and I didn't always put as enough like stress on my friendships and

then when I had my most recent breakup I spent the whole year basically just hanging out with my friends and playing my friends all the time and I was like they are the loves of my life really like they do everything for me and it's like it's so it's so funny why we do I think that's another issue is romantic love is amazing but i think sometimes we value it too highly in our lives and like you move in with them you live with them you do everything with them and you can lose whole sites of these other great loves that you have well and what's also weird right if you go through like a big breakup it's like what i said about that awful thing three years ago that how awful i found that breakup is

i couldn't get over how this person that I'd spoken to about everything that went on in my life every day for the last like for the two years preceding suddenly just wasn't going to be in my life anymore yeah and then you look at like now I look at like friends and it's like think about like how many people have dated in the time that I've known this person it's like you're someone like of course it's not as the immediate intimacy of a relationship I'm not saying that's replaceable and I'm not saying like down with all relationships just with our friends but like yeah like some of these people that I'm you know you don't and friends come and go too sometimes you like friendship breakups can be awful too but you some of these people have had much more

longevity in my life and when you go through one of those like awful breakups where you really love the person and they just disappear yeah when you go through like one of those awful breakups where you really love the person and they just... Yeah. When you go through like one of those awful breakups where you really love this person and then for whatever reason, as I did, because it was a compatibility breakup, I knew that the only way to respond to that because we were still in love with each other is that when you're still in love with each other, you absolutely can have no friendship. You can't have any contact. So that is really surreal and it only takes like i feel like one of those to permanently be like look i might get in another relationship again i might hope it works out but i'm not gonna like forego all my friendships

because it could happen again like you've got to like you know it's not being like pessimistic about the fortunes of your relationship to think not putting all your eggs in one basket. And I think also, and we'll try and leave it on this side, I know I've been picking your brains for ages, is that with relationships, I think every single time we get into one, or maybe not everyone, but I think, I guess quite actually, you get into it and because they're the one in that moment, you're like, this is going to be forever.

Whereas sometimes the best relationships come from when you're just like, I'm just enjoying this as it is and trying not to plan too far ahead because like you said what happens when you break up is you don't just break up with that person that moment you break up with like the 40 years in your head that you planned and like the house you're going to live in and the relationships that you're going to form with other friends and all these like fantasies and actually like i i realized there was no such thing as the one on my like eighth boyfriend i was like wait they've all been the one they can't all be the one yeah I know I mean I that's why I guess yeah people sort of like romantic is always like people say hopeless romantic yeah because it's almost like hopeless it almost implies that it's like a bit of a kind of like oh poor you thing but

yeah I mean it's tough I yeah I don't know that I would ever it's hard though because I've I've been single now for actually I've been single for two years it's not been anyone let's say that like I've been in love with for two years and so when you have a long period like that you actually lose you forget like how intense falling in love can be yeah so like now I'm a bit like when you said that I was like come on babe but then at the same time like I think I'd probably be the same way because like I've just described all these reasons why I like my life now and all that stuff but like ultimately I still believe that like if someone walked into my life who made me want to like give it another go I would because I haven't given up on like romantic love

but it's yeah I think it's just recognizing I think it's that you can keep all that hope alive but you have to it's still just healthy anyway to realize that you shouldn't it takes you know it takes a village is that you need more you need more than just investing everything in your partner because they got also just even if they're the best partner in the world they can't give you everything and it will just make you so resentful at them too when they can't meet your needs i think that happens all the time i think it does man that's what i find yeah difficult about long term love because i just think god if that's what it is then don't send me out oh yeah and i know in therapy sometimes i've talked to my therapist about what like healthy partnership

looks like without all the baggage like yeah if it's healthy stable sane and I'm I one time just said to her I just paused and I was like this sounds really boring which I know is like very like Lana Del Rey I'm damaged vibes but like I have to be honest this is the other thing I keep learning it's like all the things that we're taught are signs of like really great like exciting love it's like the butterflies in your stomach the passion the absolute crying rage is just so in love and that's just not no good and then like the good love is the is that I think Jamila Jamil said something like you should fall in love with someone that makes you feel like six out of ten happy and you build from there and she's like something that doesn't make you feel like you're gonna fall off your child's excitement they just are quite yeah safe well I my last my

last the last sort of like boyfriend I had it was a very classic I mean I it's a bit of a cliche love bombing now isn't it but that's what it was essentially was like almost like cinematic levels of intensity no like never met someone I've gelled with so before whatever and it ended horribly yeah and actually yeah but it shouldn't be like that but for me for ages I was like fully one of those people who's ready to go on TikTok being like my narcissistic ex well well well like West Elm Caleb or whatever those girls did where they're like he's a scumbag but when you actually like look at your own partner you're like oh kind of like well I can be loved but I don't believe someone can fall in love with me in a week no but I just feel like I feel like what I learned there yeah yeah, if you look, is I was receptive to someone being intense in that way.

Someone like doing the grand gesture, someone, because part of me wanted to believe that, part of me wanted to believe in the fantasy. And also because it just felt a little bit like, like I felt a bit anxious around him the whole time because he was quite like intense and unpredictable. But that felt, that felt to me like exciting and love. That is pleasure as well, in a way.

It's a bit like a drug, isn't it? It's like they're a bit dangerous, but yeah exactly oh I've loved this thank you so much for joining me so everyone can order the transgender issue that's already out it's amazing I listened to it as an audiobook which I really enjoyed you reading but your next book my next book is yeah books take ages I'm currently writing it it will be out this sort of like February it's slated for publication February 2025 which now is only two years away when I was telling people it was three calendar years away people like what but yeah so I guess if I was going to plug other stuff that is forthcoming I also write an advice column on relationships for American Vogue

every two weeks called Dear Sean and yeah my sub stack is seanveigh.substack.com. Which I love. Everyone go and read that first one because it was great. Thank you so much for joining me, Sean. It's been a great time. Thanks. Bye.