Adulting - Let's Talk About... Milestones

Episode Date: July 13, 2024

Hello and welcome to this new season of Adulting, where we will be discussing a different topic each week. Let's Talk About... is a feature I host on my Instagram, which I absolutely adore, so I thought I would try out developing it further by adding an audio element.This is the first episode and so things may change from here on out; please do send me your thoughts and feedback I would love to hear from you.As mentioned in the episode, here is the link to my Substack: https://open.substack.com/pub/oenonef/p/the-wriggliest-path?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=webI hope you enjoy,Oenone 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 and welcome. Welcome back to Adulting. This is the first episode in a new series, new to Adulting, new to the podcast, but actually something that I have hosted on my Instagram for quite some time. If you don't know, it's called Let's Talk About. And basically, it was born out of this idea that social media can be quite an insular thing. We often consume content in the dark of our bedrooms at night was just the glow of our phone. Maybe we're stalking our exes, cousins, wife's baby's dog. Maybe we are starting to feel insecure because we've looked at too many

pictures of women in bikinis or loved up couples or whatever it might be. There is that element of social media that can feel quite isolating. And I realized that not only was I lucky to have an audience in terms of how I've built my career, but I had access to this hive mind of people. And I really wanted to be able to pick your brains and not just feel like it was a one-way street with the odd conversation in my DMs and comments. And so we started up this conversation called Let's Talk About, where each week, my audience, you guys would submit topics that you want to talk about. They could be as broad or as specific as you like sometimes they're very topical sometimes they're evergreen we'd all vote on which topic we wanted to talk about that week and then we get into it all of the messages are always

anonymous and over time we got really good at getting really into the thrust of having quite serious quite open conversations and what I found was even more exciting was not only did it open up a dialogue between me and you, but also you with each other, because I'd post your thoughts and then someone would respond to that. And it was just amazing. It's kind of one of my favorite things I've ever done, to be honest, with my platform. And so I thought maybe a nice thing to do would be instead of like doing this kind of post on Instagram where it felt a bit clunky I could having read all of your messages and absorbed everything we've spoken about kind of give my thoughts and feelings and sort of like consolidate everything and you could kind of

listen back to the conversation we've had so even if you didn't participate on the day you can get a feel and I always think the top are really useful, very current and actually often quite applicable to my own life and so each week we'll be doing this and the first topic that we're going to be discussing is milestones. More specifically the submission was why do we want to reach milestones by a certain age? This one not only feels like a lovely segue on from adulting timelines um but also it's quite personal to me i've just gone through a breakup i'm 30 and that feels a bit different i'm sure we'll come on to this later in the episode but i definitely feel like instead of moving forward on this kind of traditional trajectory of being in a relationship moving with a partner maybe

getting married maybe having a baby done a little sidestep and moved into my friend's spare bedroom and have put all myself into storage. And as much as the breakup and the kind of uncoupling that comes with it is hard, I was a bit worried that I might feel some sort of shame or like I wasn't doing the right thing or like I suddenly was behind my friends. And that feeling did exist a bit at the beginning but now that I'm in it is what it is and if you want to read more about my breakup I actually started to substat because I don't know it just felt heavier and different this time so I'll link that in the show notes and I kind of talk to you about my emotions and feelings in going through another breakup but first of all I guess let's clarify what we're talking about as

milestones. The things that kept coming up were buying a house, getting married, having children. And these seem to be viewed kind of in opposition to career progression or traveling. It felt like there were these two camps. You either follow the milestones or you decide that you're going to really pursue your career. You're going to go traveling. you're going to really pursue your career, you're going to go traveling, you're going to focus on yourself or whatever it might be. And so many of you wrote in to say that you really want that fuss about achieving these milestones or really in a hurry to get there, either because the world feels like it's not set up to be able to do that. Like no one can really afford a house unless you have parents

that can help you with the deposit or you are in a very, very financially lucrative career women especially in a lot of the messages was our biological clock just that fear that we aren't in a rush but our bodies might start to rush us I wanted to read some of the responses as to I when I asked you know why do you want to talk about this one response was I have such a huge fear that my parents won't be here for long enough to know my future kids. The pressure we put on ourselves because it ends up in bad decision making. Societal pressure is crippling and our collective mental health can't take it. I'm queer. Everything looks different to the normal cishet timelines. Gross, but sometimes I want to get things done whilst I'm still hot.

Hand over eyes emoji, which made me laugh and I feel you. It's a load of BS. It enforces the narrative that life is slipping away and we only have so long. It serves the system to have us working and reproducing so society and media glamorises it. It's difficult having my timelines questioned by family, society. When I'm happy happy it makes me doubt myself classic millennial crisis our timelines being completely off from our parents social media pressure people aren't always honest i.e finances who help them buy a house travel etc every milestone these days seems tainted or unachievable. There's so much pressure from

film, celebrity, family, traditions. What if I want to just have no responsibility fund for the rest of my life? Work is seriousness enough for me. So those were just a few of the kind of shorter submissions that came in. And then we had longer messages, which I'm going to share in a highlight on my page. You can go back and read. But I wanted to start on that last one, because I think it's a really interesting conundrum that we're coming up against in the modern world, against the backdrop of economic unrest and what has been quite a political crisis. Hopefully, we're going to see a little bit of a resolution after finally coming out of 14 years of Tory rule however we can't or feel like we can't anymore just work to live as in like a nine till five where maybe you know you're not obsessed with it but it pays your bills

pays your rent or your mortgage gives you enough money to go for dinner with your friends once a week maybe have a night out that kind of life just kind of simple I guess not only is it kind of unachievable in that no one's really making enough money everyone's purse strings are really squeezed but it's also now seen as undesirable and I wonder how much of that is down to the capitalist systems making us feel like we have to work harder we had to prove ourselves our careers have to be our identity in order for it to be worthy so much more than I ever thought think it was before I don't know if this is exacerbated by social media but having a career as a badge of honor has really become less for certain people in certain careers it's like your job has to be something which you love

and if it's not your passion then what are you doing and even if you don't feel that way what are you doing because you can't just work a normal job and live a normal life anymore and so I think that's a really sad luxury which isn't even a luxury that's been stripped away from our generation where we life is to be enjoyed and work is just work now work is your career it's your identity it's your passion and so the systems around us have changed but the ideology around when we when we should and what we should be doing hasn't and I think that's what we're really rubbing up against because I don't know how I got to 30 I don't know where this time has gone. I feel like my career, as much as I'm pushing it forwards in terms of, I feel like I'm getting better at what

I'm doing. I feel like I'm getting closer to the mark of exactly what it is that I want to achieve. My salary is undulating. I don't feel like I've been linear in any of the paths that I've gone on, whether it's relationships, career, friendships. And so I'm constantly, like I kind of wrote in my substrat piece, I'm constantly looking for an anchor just to hold me down. And at the minute, everything feels up in the air. I feel kind of out of control. And I think that's true for a lot of people of our generation, because the building blocks of stability that would give us sort of those ideas that we have a place to go, whether that's owning a property or feeling like your career is going to give you that progression and that income that you need. Those things have kind of gone out the window. Add into the mix

this kind of newfangled way of dating and that everyone's kind of gamified dating and that everyone's kind of looking for a newer, sparklier person. Everyone feels quite disillusioned by love and relationships. How many have politics? I mean, I don't want to make it all sound so drab, but I think that is where the crux of the issue is. I wanted to read you a message I received. I've just come out of a seven-year relationship and in the process of ending an eight-year stint working for an incredibly stressful company. I'm 30 and own a flat with my ex. Because I was so consumed with working towards goals, becoming an associate director, having babies, getting married, I completely forgot to be happy. I didn't even realise in it that I was miserable. Societal pressure agreed so I put my head down face forward and didn't even realise in it that I was miserable. Societal pressure agreed, so I put my head down, face forward, and didn't have any introspection.

Since this happened six weeks ago, I'm now in the process of trying to understand what I want. Without the true friendships I have, I don't think I would have been here. Having friends that remind you that milestones can be different, and there is no purpose in hitting said milestones, if ultimately you aren't happy is imperative and needs to be talked about. I'm now reforming relationships, setting boundaries and focusing what I want for my next chapter. Changing milestones is challenging and needs to be discussed. I love this message and I found it very relatable and every time I go through a big life change it's always my friendships that

I come back to. It's kind of the women in my life that pick up my pieces and put me back together. And it's funny because we don't often talk about friendship when we talk about milestones. We focus a lot on romantic love and building a family and that sort of heteronormative nucleic image that we have of what a life post a certain age looks like. And I think that that is a failure on society, especially for women. I think if we look back historically at the way that women sort of became isolated through marriage in terms of being at home, running the house, doing all of that emotional labor and looking after their husbands whilst, I'm talking kind of very traditionally and generically, the husbands went into work, perhaps had some form

of social life, perhaps spent time drinking with friends in the evening and women were working in the home. When I think about marriage and family like that, it's not something I strive for and it's not something that I would enjoy. And some people might find comfort in that. Some people aren't huge socializers, but I do think there's an importance in having community. And my community has always had its strongest, usually when I'm single. Women are very good at banding together and talking about emotions again I'm using huge sweeping generalizations here that concept that that person who sent in that message is talking about is so familiar to me that I kind of had gotten into that I had a great relationship the relationship I just had it just ended for reasons that were kind of outside of both of our control in a strange way it was kind of like

he just wasn't ready but even being in that relationship I kind of I kind of a little bit pulled back and fell into this false sense of security I was like we have a home that we share I was living in his home and I'm 30 now and I guess we're just going to carry on like this you know we'll have a baby we'll get married I ever so slightly wasn't putting as much effort into my work because the emotional labor of being in a romantic relationship is something that exists if you're that kind of person you invest a lot of time into romance that's not to say that's not worthy but it's just an interesting dynamic it's that saying that you can't have everything going well at once you can't have your career and your relationship and your friendships and your social life or whatever all on top. Something always has to give.

And I've known that to be true. When I'm single, my relationships, my career are often much stronger, but I'm single. So that's just the nature of the beast. And so I, after this breakup, have been thinking about how am I going to move forwards I've invested a lot of the last decade in love and that's definitely a worthy task and those relationships taught me so much and I really enjoyed being in love with those people and learning about them and sharing parts of my life and the endings are always difficult some are harder than others but I thought do I really want to give that a go again and everything tells me that I should because I'm 30 and that's you know that's the age when actually you're supposed to be investing your time in love that's the age when you should be really worrying about your biological clock

I'm someone that has gone through phases of not being sure if I want to have children and not being sure if I want to be a parent and so this won't be applicable to everyone because I have some friends who are desperate to be mothers and it feels like they're calling a knife and they love it and they are so happy either to have achieved it or are really looking forward to that period of their lives. But I have other friends who are more similar to me who are like, okay, well, if it doesn't happen, what does that look like? And that's what I've been starting to think about more lately. What if these milestones don't happen for me? Right now I'm in no position to buy a property. I don't have enough savings and I don't have the family backing that could help me with that. So

let's park that for a little bit. And I don't know if I want to go back into the dating game and spend time getting to know someone over again and telling them everything about me and I think it does take time to know if you're compatible with someone and I don't know that that for me right now I said to a friend the other day and she was like I agree I want to look at life like that too I said I'm going to look at life like operating on the basis that I'm not going to meet someone and I'm not going to have children. Not being like negative or nihilistic or depressing, but like freeing myself up to not feel that panic. I read this book when I was 27 by Nelfazal called The Panic Years. And it was all

about how she had a breakup in her late twenties, which forced her to start doing calculations about when she'd have to meet someone in order to have a baby by this preordained time that we've all kind of marked somewhere on the measuring tape of our lives. I kind of see things very literally in my head, and I kind of have these markers. And when I got past them and I haven't done that thing, I feel this kind of sting or ache. I'm like, oh no. So I was like, let me free myself up from that because as much as fertility is a real issue and my biological clock is real, what if I kind of, instead of forcing it in terms of like, instead of making sure I do everything in my power to have a baby within a certain window, what if I just focus on my career, get myself into a setup where

I'm fully independent? Both times I've had a breakup, I've had to move out and I find that quite tiring, quite draining. I want to have an anchor like I spoke about in my piece. I want to have a home. So what if I just work hard enough to either be able to rent somewhere for a long amount of time or even think about saving for a deposit, which does feel like an impossible goal. And that's my one focus. I focus on my career and my friendships. And if love comes along, gorgeous. And if I'm able to have children in the future, beautiful. And I'm not saying it's not things I don't want. I'm not saying I'll never have a family. I'm just saying, what if I decide to lift my foot off the pedal on that one? Because there is every possibility I could meet someone at 33, at 35, at 37 and have a baby at

those ages. Sure, maybe society is going to tell us that's going to be less likely and maybe it will be less likely. And this is different for for everyone you have to come at it where you come at it from but I think from my personal point of view I'd rather do it this way around than meet someone and kind of force a relationship in order to have a baby and maybe in 10 years time be unhappy that I did that this is so personal to everyone babies are something that keeps coming up in all of my friendship groups whether or not do we want to have them if we do want to have them how are we going to have them and I'm having conversations with women who are 27 to 37 every single lunch I go to every single dinner it's like should I be trying to have one

now I don't feel ready and that person could be in their late 30s and it like, I just don't feel like I'm ready for that now. Other friends who are much younger, like I'm desperate. I need to get pregnant like right now. So it's really personal. I don't want to sway anyone's view, but I just kind of, I let out a sigh of relief. And so did my friend who I said this to, and I was like, what if we just say it's not going to happen? Don't worry about it. Because a lot of the messages that are coming in are women being worried about their biological clocks in terms of milestones. That's like the biggest worry because it feels so outside of our control. But at the same time, these people are people that I don't even know if I want to have kids, but if I miss my window, will I regret that later in life? Like,

will I look back and think, God, I should have done that. And I'm just operating on the basis that I'm just going to tell myself that you won't regret it. Another message I received reads, I think social media has so much to answer for, especially in exasperating traditional milestones. Depending on who you follow, it feels like more and more big engagements, weddings, pregnancies, buying a house are visible and celebrated on Instagram. Yet it feels strange, less acceptable to make a marker of posting a promotion or passing an exam. I think the fact that less of this stuff is posted makes celebrating it feel weirder or less than. So it's a revolving cycle. It feels like you haven't made it until you've hit these traditional milestones with an Instagram post to

go with it. In the various Let's Talk About's we've done in the past, we've talked about weddings and marriage and specifically the way that they are snowballing to become these huge, hugely extravagant events. And this is definitely exacerbated by social media. Engagement rings are getting bigger. People are wearing three dresses instead of one. The venues are getting more expensive. Hendoos are becoming more elaborate. it's really becoming a spectacle and I think that this feeling of kind of keeping up with the joneses of there was actually an influencer who got proposed to with um a lovely ring had a lovely engagement and people were kind of like stitching her video her reel of her engagement being like oh my god if a guy proposed to me with a ring that small I would say no and she actually came

back to them and was like but I don't care about having a big ring and actually I really love my fiance so why does it matter the fact that we're judging each other or these milestones based on the the really kind of like basic parts of it like a marriage is is should be about the the union of two people, if that's what you care about. Don't get me wrong, I'd love a big party. I'd love to wear five dresses, but that really isn't the important thing. And certainly if you're not sort of like that kind of way inclined, you're not kind of that kind of person, I'm a huge show off, I'd love it. But if you're not, I hate the fact that people are feeling pressured into it.

And I also think that there's this weird kind of increase in this traditional idea i definitely see lots of influences getting married younger again i quickly want to preface this by saying i'm not judging anyone i'm just looking at the trends it's not about individuals but this kind of trend of this traditional creating this traditional nuclear family at a younger age also kind of feeding this narrative that women can have it all which we especially can't which we're seeing more and more it's simply the world is not set up for us to do these things unless you really are in that kind of one percent or you are you know you have some kind of setup which allows for it and so I wonder if like we want to have this wedding like this person says not because we're even desperate to have it but because we feel incomplete in some kind of way because every single time I log into Instagram

someone's holding up their left hand withering on it saying whatever and I'm so happy for every single one of those people um all of my friends that have got engaged it makes me so excited and happy for them and I love them and their partners And I can't wait to celebrate their love in time to come. But I get what this person is saying in that, like I said, it's all just become a spectacle. And I wonder if that's warping our concept of what is happening in reality. Everything is becoming so much more expensive and okay I'm going to go off on a tangent right now because this is something I'm thinking about I hope also this is my first episode on this so if you don't like the way I'm doing this when I mean it's only me talking so I guess I probably am talking too much but I'll be thinking more

about heteronormative relationships in general and also again about that thing I said about what if you imagine that we're not going to have children? What if I posit something new to you, a different idea? Say we live to a hundred, everyone's going to live to a hundred and we could have a baby at 50. Like how would that change our pacing on this? Like would we even bother trying to seek out a serious relationship in our 20s or 30s? Would we seek joy in flings or, you know, a one or two year relationship with someone that we love in a really passionate way, but there is no sort of the logic of the relationship isn't there? Because I think one thing that's really important in long-term relationships is that there's an antagonistic

truth that someone that you could love really passionately and have a beautiful relationship with, maybe have amazing sex with, or have this kind of real lustful passion, is also maybe the person that the building blocks of who you are don't fit together that neatly. It's a square peg in a round hole. Maybe they're someone that you wouldn't be able to trust completely. Maybe you don't love the way that they live their lives maybe there is just this fundamental fundamental mismatch in your personalities but you can have this beautiful love fandu casino daily jackpots guaranteed to hit by 11 p.m with your chance at the number one feeling winning which beats even the 27th best feeling saying i do who wants this last parachute? I do.

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Guarantee requires play by at least one customer until jackpot is awarded or 11 p.m. Eastern. Research and supply. See full terms at canada.casino.fandu.com. Please play responsibly and i think that the issue in society is every time we fall in love or every time we have a relationship we want to shoehorn it into this traditional long-term thing if it's not long-term love if it's not a marriage it's chalked up to failure it was a bad idea it was toxic i don't know i kind of love the idea of like a six-week fling with someone who, you know, has completely different morals from you. It isn't someone that you're going to be

with forever, but it kind of builds into the tapestry of experiences you have as a human. The reason I bring this up is because I think there's this, it feels more puritanical and evangelical that we are celebrating marriage to such a great degree, especially weddings and all the money we put into it. It feels like slightly old fashioned to be trying to get this person that we are supposed to spend the rest of our life with at such a young age when we're living so much longer and have so many more options. it's different because again it i'm whenever i talk right now i'm generalizing i'm talking about the trends and you know the collective movements that are happening rather than the individual because there will be individuals who there's a young woman i've heard who got married at 19 and had

her first baby at 24 and i'm like obsessed with her she seems extremely happy she seems like she knows exactly what she's doing and i do think people, and I think it's a personality type, are able to find the love of their lives and able to commit to them forever and will live happily ever after. I just think that actually a lot of us aren't built in that way and that monogamy is so like the air that we breathe and the way that we think. And I don't mean monogamy as in opposition to polyamory. I mean monogamy as in one long-term love as opposed to lots of different consecutive loves that we might have that add texture and flavor and story and teach us things about ourselves and open up parts of ourselves that we would never know if we were the same person forever. I kind of think love like that is very exciting. The reason I got you

to imagine that we could have babies until 50 is because the thing that puts a spanner in the works of that sort of love story is the fact that if you want to have a baby, of course you want to have stability. Ideally, you want to have a person that will care for that baby with you. But I'm just trying at this age to reframe life, think about how long it is rather than condense it into I think there's this idea that we have to start life and life start life with a family so you know you have your 20s you're mucking around you're studying a funny career and then boom you're going to move into this house you're going to start a family and you sit back and you propagate and you you create and you educate and you bring in this new generation and your life kind of starts,

but it also ends. You lose your freedom and you have to give all of yourself into this little family which you're raising. And that's a gorgeous thing. And some people really do believe their life starts there and that is all they've ever wanted to do. And I wonder if we have to just realize that everyone is so different and that not only are these milestones quite unachievable right now because of all the reasons I've outlined, but they also just might not be for you. You might not be someone that's going to thrive in a marriage. You might not be someone that's going to find the ability to stick with one person forever. And I also find this interesting because when we look at divorce rates, this is true of so many people. I think it's 40% of marriages or

50% of marriages end in divorce. Affairs are rife. I've looked at the statistics so many times, I find it so interesting just because it kind of in some ways does go against our nature, but so much of religion is still kind of soaked into our moral understandings and our ethics. And we don't even know where it's come from. It just feels like this is the way things are done. But when you dig deep, it's all kind of created. It's man-made. It's not necessarily the truth. It's a created truth that we've all been brought up with and decided to buy into, that this is the way we have to live our lives. And I just, I don't believe it's true, even though it hurts sometimes to feel like, but I want to do that. And also I think a lot of the

time, actually, let me read you another message because this will explain well what I'm trying to say. The message reads, I worry sometimes people pursue these goals as a means of validation for their existence. Let's start at square one. You're already valid as an individual and should choose these other parts as an add-on to enhance. This is something, again, I've been thinking about. I think it's so true. I think that it's a very human thing to want to make sure that in the eyes of a society or in the eyes of your family and your friends, you're doing the right thing. Maybe your parents will pester you about when you're going to get into a relationship. Maybe you feel like you need to be doing X, Y, Z, you know, in order to prove yourself. But this is quite a weird thing to say, I guess guess but none of us asked to be born I find

quite a lot of comfort in that sometimes so like we didn't ask to be here but we are and so we have to give ourselves a bit of room to remember that as much as we owe our lives to our parents and obviously everyone's setup is different maybe you've got a difficult relation of parents but as much as that the traditional sense is sort of like we owe so much to our parents and we do I feel like I owe so much to my parents I also owe a lot to myself I owe it to this life that this like one experience this one go I have to make sure I'm doing things yes I'm being sensible and I don't want to be completely hedonistic and just like party my life away or like send myself into the ground by just using pleasure over everything

else. But this isn't about pleasure. This is like, what ways do you want to live your life? If you took that little voice out of your mind, and I definitely have a little thing in my head where I, and I'm starting to learn to push back, but a voice that will kind of go, but what will other people think of that? Or what would your mom and dad say about that? Or what would your sister say? And saying, but what do I actually think in this moment? Because we're always trying to protect people around us. And it's why we give advice. It's why when a friend comes to us with an issue where we want to tell them to do the right thing, even if we know that actually in their situation, we would do the wrong thing. Because sometimes the only way to figure something out is by experiencing it and by making the wrong decision once, twice, three times until eventually

we go, okay, no, I've tried that. And now I'm going to do it the way that I kind of knew all along was right, but I had to do it. I had to see it for myself. So it all comes from a point of care and empathy and wanting to make sure that the people around us are in the best place they can be. But I think so much of life is about experiencing things, the hard and the good and the stupid and the maybe slightly immoral, in order just to recenter and be like, okay, no, actually, this is what I need to be doing. And a lot of that is supposed to be done, I guess, in our childhood or in our twenties. But I think these mistakes go on forever. And I think that there is this idea that once we have these building blocks, you know, like a home and a partner,

we'll kind of be shielded from getting things wrong again, because we've got that place where we're finally safe and we've achieved what was set out for us. But there's so many more things that we can do. And actually, validation only goes so far because it doesn't necessarily always make us feel good. I don't know how many of you, and I'm sure there's lots of people out there who've chosen career paths based on, you know, what their parents thought was going to be the best job for them and maybe are really unhappy even though they are achieving all of these things.

And there was another message I received actually, which I think is also super true. I see a lot of my friends who've had babies and or have got married now feeling unhappy and often expressing envy of my free inverted commas life single 34 living unapologetically for myself and it's a reminder that the grass will always seem greener and you never know what goes on behind closed doors for those who have achieved the milestones we're talking about i live by the statement that comparison is the thief of joy, and it's so true. And I think that there is also fear. The reason we compare and contrast and want

to do these things as by the book, as it were, is because there's a lot of fear of the unknown. And especially for our parents, I think there's this fear that they want us to be safe. A lot of maybe even like control coming from parents or sort of strictness comes out of a fear that if we aren't on this path, then we're going to get left behind. We're going to be hurt. It's going to be unsafe. We're going to put ourselves in positions that we won't be able to cope with. But I think there's also, there can be fear in doing those things if they're not for you and I worry that we're also preoccupied with hitting these milestones that we're not actually living and

someone else sent in a message about this which was you know I've done this tick tick tick tick tick and then I still every time you know you get to the next thing you're like well I bought a house but actually my house is a bit too small and also I've done this and you will have experienced this whether in small ways or big ways where you finally get a thing and by the time you got it you forget how much the person the version of you 10 years ago was desperate for it because you're already looking to the next thing and there's something called the hedonic treadmill which is this idea that we're on this treadmill and we're constantly achieving things and we never sit back and enjoy the fruits of our labor because we're constantly looking forwards. And it means that actually, once you get on the treadmill, it's very difficult to get off.

And so as much as we might go through these big life changes, whether it's a breakup, whether it's losing your job, whether it's finding yourself in financial difficulty, they do force us to be still and re-evaluate and look around. And it might be really uncomfortable. It might be extremely difficult. Some people, you know, might feel like they're at their rock bottom. But there is something that comes with that, which is sort of a slight serenity in a strange way, because you know that you've got to work towards getting yourself up off the ground, back to standing rather than being on this treadmill. are, I guess I'd say like very type A, that are very good at fitting into society's boxes very neatly. Their personality favours the structures of the world. Often it's men with privilege who, you know, we don't need to go into this, but a really good book to read is Invisible Women by Caroline Criado-Perez, which talks about the ways in which the world is set up for men and a statistic or like a fact that kind of flies around all the time is about how women are often really cold in offices because they

are set to the temperature of how men regulate themselves and not for women so there's just all these kind of like little ways in which certain structures are set up for men or people with privilege or certain people that fit in certain intersections and so i mean like that's that's something that we could talk about till the end of the day but I know that you're all very okay with that kind of thing I think this is more about your intrinsic understanding or our intrinsic understanding of thinking about what we want versus what we perceive gives us credibility in this world and I think especially at a time where everything feels so difficult and so hard, it's probably one of the best times to uncouple yourself from these milestones. If you're not achieving them, if it's not what you want, again, there will be people that are really happily going along and feel like they're in the right place. The further along I get without having ticked these boxes, the more I'm actively

wondering if I should stop trying. And I don't mean like give up on life. I mean, start looking in different directions. And there are so many interesting people who've lived so many interesting lives and they've done it in such fascinatingly wiggly ways. I think that the problem is that social media is actually like one of the biggest exacerbators because, you know, platforms mirror society, as I talk about in my book, Bad Influence, and things that fit into the very specific and traditional and, you know, honored paradigms and parameters that we really champion are the things that also get really boosted by the algorithm are the things that people want to engage with it creates a sense of safety

I also did want to quickly touch on how this impacts men I've been talking about women and you know biological clock and all that kind of thing and the fact that you know we focus on that a lot when we talk about milestones and I think often we feel like women are more impacted by this. And I do think that is still true. But I had some interesting DMs and one of them read, I know so many men in my circle that still feel a ton of pressure to provide, even if they're fully supportive of their female partner as an equal. I've had men tell me they would love to have pursued another career, but couldn't because

it doesn't pay as well. I, as a woman, never thought twice about choosing a stable but lower paying career I'm passionate about. So it's interesting to think about how societal pressure manifests for men. And I had some messages from men kind of corroborating this idea that they felt like they had to be the breadwinner. They always wanted to feel like they were earning more than the woman. They always felt like they wanted to be able to provide and i was at a lunch the other day and i had a really interesting conversation with asha barber who you guys might know and we were talking about how so subconsciously even if we don't know it we as women also do

look for or have to have a partner in order to achieve certain things in order to have financial stability we live in a world where a single income cannot get you very far i can't afford now as a 30 year old woman with like a a job which can pay pretty well i can't afford to rent a flat on my own and i think that's a real shame i really think that people should be able to afford to have their own spaces and so i also wonder forget about babies how much of sort of like rushing into partnerships is to do with single tax, is to do with this idea that, again, buried so deep because I would love to profess that, you know, I'm not someone, I'm really independent, but I don't know how much of our seeking love and these kind of structures and these partnerships is down to the fact that also

there is this idea that we need to be provided for or cared for financially in some kind of way and that you know men are still paid more the gender pay gap is still a thing and as I kind of said those people that suit this world are tend to be men and so maybe we seek them out uh or we seek out relationships not only for to have babies and not only just for love and and romance and all the rest of it but also because the world is still set up to favor that and and it's really hard to escape that and it's really hard to to see or recognize that people in partnerships are able to get to certain places get from a to b quicker than someone who's single but i'm trying to luxuriate

or enjoy the fact that i don't want to speed up for something because I don't even know if that's what I want. If you know that's what you want and you're happy and everything, great. But I think that we need to see everything as it is and be really frank about the fact that there is still this truth that even if we feel like we've moved past it, even if we've intellectualized it till the end of the world, even if we want to believe that our relationships are equal, they still will not be for as long as policy and law and legacy and ideology and for as long as we have this patriarchal thread in our society,

or not even thread, just rule and way of thinking about things i guess what i'm trying to say here very ineloquently is that of course that men feel the this pressure the specific pressure because it is the equal and opposite of the pressure that women feel which is that women have to create life, really dumb it down, I guess. And men feel like they have to provide for women to be able to do that. I know that sounds really basic and kind of like, I'm going into some kind of like Darwinian theory. I'm not. It's just, again, it's like these, sometimes I think we feel like we've come so far, but the hangover from every kind of philosophy and psychology and just idea that we live in.

Everything still coexists. And so the fact that men feel that pressure doesn't surprise me because it's a difficult thing to undo the years and years of this patriarchal rule and religion and shared ideology. It's all still existing and that the struggle that we're facing is with the the slight change in tide in terms of like how we view things and the way that we speak about men and women and the way that we are now trying to understand how we can be more equal and we've thrown to relieve the ways that we actually aren't sorry that was my tummy rumbling it's exactly what i kind of said at the beginning our our ideas about what we want and how we want we've thrown to relieve the ways that we actually aren't. Sorry, that was my tummy rumbling. It's exactly what I kind of said at the beginning. Our ideas about what we want and how we want to live

our lives have changed, but the structures that we're living under are pretty much still the same, even if they're dressed up differently or even if we use a different language, you know, a lot has to change for a lot to change. I hope that this episode has been interesting. I'm very aware that I've been blabbering on for 40 minutes. I came into this quite open-minded in terms of how I was going to structure it. I now think in future episodes, maybe needs a little bit more structure. Ideally, what I'd love is for you guys to send in voice notes, and then it feels more like a conversation rather than just me.

But I love this subject. It's something that's kind of constantly on my mind both in terms of like with work with something that I'm working on and also just personally kind of tussling with a lot of these questions and I never feel like I have an answer and I'm often circling back and readdressing and thinking no maybe that is right I don't know so I hope that this episode has been in some ways interesting thank you so much for all of you that sent in your. I'm going to create a highlight on my page titled milestones. You can go and check every single message that was sent in and reflect on it in that way. And going forward, I'm going to try and put an episode out like this every week, hopefully better, not like this,

but an episode on a different subject. We will choose the subject on Tuesdays and we will discuss it on Wednesdays. and then the episode will go out on Sundays on here. Please let me know if you have any feedback, slide into my DMs, tell me what you did, what you didn't like. Constructive criticism is more than welcome. This is kind of like a daunting new thing. I feel like I very want to get quite deep and personal and I don't want to overexpose myself too much, but it's very easy to do when I'm simply lying on my bed with a microphone. So yes, I hope you enjoyed this. I hope it was even remotely interesting or comforting or gave you some pause for thought,

or maybe you vehemently disagree with everything I've said. There's so much in this episode and I feel like I've kind of really focused on the aspects of sort of like babies and marriage and that kind of thing. Perhaps just because of my personal situation, I'm sure there's lots of other areas we could have discussed. Okay. I'm going to stop talking now. I really hope you enjoyed the episode. If you did, it would actually be amazing if you could leave a review, a five star review on Apple, just because I haven't actually put an episode out on the stream for ages and it kind of helps other people to find the podcast um lots of love and serenity and peace and hope in whatever you're doing and i will speak to you next week i guess bye fandu casino daily jackpots guaranteed to hit by p.m. with your chance at the number one feeling, winning.

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