Everything Is Content - Everything In Conversation: Sick Of Hearing About Your BF

Episode Date: May 14, 2025

For this mid-week helping of discourse we're asking... are you sick of hearing about your friends' boyfriends? Inspired by this piece by Asli, our conversation begins with boy madness and judgement towards single people, takes a detour towards the healing powers of female gossip before ending up somewhere in the region of Sally Rooney quotes and good old fashioned advice. Thank you all so much for your takes on this- as always they were the perfect blend of sharp-tongued, funny, insightful, thought-provoking and candid. If you want to get involved in next week's ep just follow us on IG @everythingiscontentpod. Also while you're here... ratings are so helpful for homegrown podcasts like ours, and we'd be eternally grateful if you could leave us a good'un. (Five stars if you're asking).See you on Friday for more pop culture analysis, recommendations and hot off the press discourse. Byeeee!O, R, B x Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm Beth. I'm Rachera. And I'm Anoni. And this is Everything in Conversation. The episode where we school you on the biggest pop culture moments from the week before diving headfirst together into a topic with your help. Remember, if you want to take part in these extra episodes, just follow us on Instagram at Everything is Content Pod.

That's where we decide on topics and get all of your juiciest opinions and hottest takes. But first, the headlines from the EIC newsroom. TMZ reports that musician Tory Lanez was transported to hospital after being stabbed by another inmate in the yard of the California Correctional Institution on Monday morning. He's currently serving a 10 year sentence for the 2020 shooting of Megan Thee Stallion. Actress Amber Heard welcomed twins into her family on Sunday, a daughter named Agnes and a son named Ocean. She said she was elated beyond words to celebrate the completion of her family. We hope she's thriving. Love Island star Eken Suh reportedly snuck into the official All-Star Bafta dinner and

after-party before being kicked out due to not actually being invited. Taylor Swift has criticised her lively Beldoni court summons. The pop star's spokespeople argued that her subpoena was designed to use Taylor Swift's name to draw public interest by creating tabloid clickbait instead of focusing on the facts of the case. The Cannes Film Festival has made some changes to its dress code, banning new dresses for reasons of decency and banning voluminous dresses and dresses with long trains to avoid the hindering of traffic into and inside the venue. This mandate came just one day before the festival began.

Speaking to graduates at Emerson College in Boston, Jennifer Coolidge opened her address by saying, I'm excited that I'm speaking with some very excited gay students and some less exciting hetero students. She then told them, when you find the thing you want to do, I really want to highly recommend just frigging go for it. Anna DeArmas and Tom Cruise are rumoured to be an item. Anna, 37, and Tom, 62 have been pictured out and about together since Valentine's Day this year, although sources say it's more of a professional relationship. And that's all from the headlines this week.

So we read an essay on Substack recently called, I'm sick of hearing about your boyfriend. You're trying to kill the man in your head, but what about the man in your bed? Written by Astley, the piece explores the preoccupation and tendency of so many heterosexual women to endlessly discuss and focus on the men they're dating, used to be dating or currently trying to date. Asli writes, quote, I don't remember the last time I met up with one of my girlfriends and didn't talk about their boy problems. I think about the time my friend decided to sleep with that one guy who had a girlfriend because he was giving her a lot of attention just when she needed it. She said she wanted a man to want her but she was so distraught by how he treated her that she ended up going to therapy afterwards. I think about

my friend who whilst getting a college degree abroad was begging her high school graduate boyfriend who had no dreams or aspirations to get some language courses so they could at least live abroad together. I feel like I'm going crazy. I feel like Miranda in that one scene in Sex and the City. How did we get here? How do we, as intelligent and self-sufficient women, keep putting ourselves in these ridiculous situations with men to the point where it's all we ever talk about?" End quote. So it's a very interesting essay and one we'll link in the show notes. It got us at EIC headquarters thinking about this kind of boy slash man madness and how for so many of us, it begins in adolescence and childhood and then can follow us all through our lives. Even if you

yourself aren't interested in talking endlessly about it, maybe men aren't your bag, maybe romance isn't really your thing, maybe you're in a long-term settled easygoing relationship, then it's still quite likely that a friend or someone close to you is doing it or has done it around you. So we asked all of you listening for your hot takes and you massively delivered. So thank you very much. And we'll get into that soon. But firstly, Ruchira and Anoni, what did you make of the piece? Because I mean, there's quite spicy lines in that. She really does not pull any punches when talking about the relationships

between men and women. Did you find yourself agreeing, disagreeing, nodding along? What were your takes on the piece and this topic? So, I agreed with bits and pieces of what she said. And then I veered also into this realm of thinking, God, I feel like you are being quite harsh to your friends there. So I think I oscillated between there's some really good nuggets of truth here, especially her points about the internet and how on TikTok there is this big trend of women basically platforming their boyfriends and utilising men in their life to kind of go viral. And that's a very strange dichotomy of centring men constantly even on the internet. I thought that was such a valid, interesting point in all of this. And I also thought it is so true. I'm not

alone in thinking that so many conversations pivot, center, divert towards men. But I also think when she said that point about I found myself parroting Miranda from Sex and the City, I was just thinking the reason Miranda says that is because they're all in their thirties, mid thirties. And she said that she had a friend on a graduate program. I'm not sure how old she is, but it kind of gave me the impression. She and her friends are quite a bit younger than Miranda and her friends in that series. And I do feel like there's a level of personal growth that everyone is forced to go to. Everyone's on a different path in life. I myself, I think was quite slow to developing that kind of, you know

what, I would be okay by myself. I don't need somebody in my life, but I still got there. I just had to take the road, the very long thorny road that I had to take to get there and nobody could have got me there otherwise. And if I had a friend who was thinking that about me, I would feel so devastated, honestly. So that lack of compassion and the lack of patience, I think I found very difficult to read. I don't think she's wrong, but it was difficult to read. Yeah, that's an interesting insight because I had the same thing where when I was reading it, and this is not a tall word that I want to use because it's so imbued with misogyny, but this is just the truth. I was like, God, she sounds really bitter. Even though I have said and

have thought all of the things that she writes, and I even have been in the exact same situation with having the exact same conversations, the two conversations she brings up at the beginning about a friend who's seeing like two kind of like emotionally unavailable guys who aren't treating her very well. I've had that conversation in the last like six months. Also a friend who's like boyfriend isn't necessarily being the best boyfriend, but then they'll suddenly be like, no, I adore him. So I could relate to everything she said, but I think it was the starkness with which she said it that I, maybe it's my own internalised misogyny. I had a bit of a visceral reaction to it at the same time as nodding.

It's interesting what you said about her being younger, Richa, because I hadn't quite clocked that because I agree. When I was in my 20s, maybe we might have like flippantly said we're talking about boys too much, but we were very much really enjoying talking about boys. But we had an interesting message from Anna, which I just read this morning, it said, I'm 26 and I don't know whether it's generational simply my circle of friends. When reading the subsect, I kept thinking that those boy crazy conversations described haven't been occurring amongst my friend group since we're about 21. As a 31 year old woman, I find that fascinating because it's so very much still happening between me and my friends in their 30s, in their mid 30s, in their late 30s.

I don't really begrudge those conversations though. If anything, I'm always grateful and feel glad when my friends can be open and truthful about what they're going through with their boyfriends, even if it can be a bit like, this is all we're talking about. I'm really interested in my friends' lives and I'm really glad to be in the loop because I want to know if something's going wrong just so I can have a little mark in my head to remember in case something bad does happen. And I think I'd feel more distressed if my friend was going through something and didn't feel that they could vent to me. So I wonder, yeah, how her friends would have felt. Maybe they wouldn't be able to pinpoint

themselves in this piece. I don't know. What did you make of it, Beth? Beth Paretta I think echo what you both said there. I mean, it's still a piece. I think it's never a bad time as a woman to read a piece like this. And I would send this to people, maybe with a caveat, like you might not agree with everything, but it's fantastically written. And just to know I did read her bio in her 20s. So I think just because she's such a fantastic writer, I sort of went, oh, yeah, this is a peer of mine. So yes, I think there is definitely a generational thing at play. But I think it's to read something like this, I think it may be too hard on some people. But I think it just gives you that bit of

a jolt to be like, am I maybe drifting a little bit too far towards the men being at the centre of everything? Have I perhaps slipped a little bit more towards that male centricity? Have I pulled away from my hobbies and my work and my friendships? Because I think that is the crux of the piece is when boy chat is all you talk about, when men are all you think about, what else? What do you have to trade in for that? What do you lose? And she sort of is arguing, well, me and my female friends, we're so interesting. We're so full of magic and fire and we can do what we want with our lives. But when we do this, it makes it a little bit less likely that we're going to do something else. So I think really enjoyed the piece as a single person as well. I think it's a quite good

little check-in and actually I found, nope, I have, if anything, just remembered that men exist quite recently after a really nice few month break. But yeah, really enjoyed it. On the TikTok trend thing, I have also noticed this. There was one, I don't know if either of you saw it, where it was women would post themselves doing something a little bit kooky, a little bit like dancing on a bar or a table or going a bit berserk with friends. And the caption would be something like, I'm not the girl you marry, but I'm the girl that you lay awake thinking about at 3am next to your vanilla wife. And I'm like, hang on, I saw this trend and I'm like, hang on a minute. Women are out here slagging off women that, you know,

fictional women in pursuit of even like a fictional man's approval and wanting to be picked by him. And I just thought that trend, and listeners, I'm sure you'll recognize what I'm talking about, was so offensive. And that's when I thought actually she's really got a point. She doesn't talk about that trend, she talks about another one. But the fact there are multiple trends that fit this bill, there's something to be said for the boy madness. There's only one boyfriend trend that I've seen that I actually am like, oh, that's a cute thing is when they're like, get your boyfriend that makes you like a getting ready cocktail instead of telling you to hurry up. And then it's them. And I'm like, oh, that's a cute thing is when they're like, get your boyfriend that makes you like a getting ready cocktail instead of telling you to hurry up.

And then it's them. And I'm like, that is a really good thing. I enjoy that level of content because I have in previous relationships had like a huffing and puffing boyfriend sat on the bed. I'm having the time of my life trying to do some kind of eye makeup that I've never attempted before and will be scrubbing off in about five minutes. And I am like, that is really heartwarming that you've got a man that's going to sit there for two hours and make you a cocktail. But apart from that, yeah, the other ones, it is a bit it. I weirdly think, I don't know if you will agree with

this or is it this is something that you find, but I think now the levels of boy chat with my straight friends has naturally decreased. I don't think, I mean, I think it depends if there's something live and, you know, something important that's happened like a breakup or a situationship that's gone really south or even like a good update that comes up. But we're also kind of widening the net of conversation topics. And I feel like we're having much more nuanced discussions around like family and possibly like things that have really upset us growing up in like trauma, I guess. And also nuanced discussions about work and the future and like where we're going with the world, like not to be super cringe

or like I'm in a Sally Rooney novel, but I do think it is different. And I do think even if the boy stuff does come up, it's not at the loss of other things. I've never really felt that. I definitely would have felt that a lot more when I was younger, but also maybe not because I think I was probably a huge contributor to that.

So I don't know, I do think the age thing is important here. What do you guys think on that? I'm just thinking the last time I went for dinner with my like five closest girlfriends from uni, we kind of went around the table, three of them are in relationships, two of them engaged, we kind of were like, how's your fiance? How's your boyfriend? There was like a one line response. And then I don't think we did speak about them for the rest of the meal. And we might have, me and Poppy who are both single might have had a couple of questions fielded about if we're dating any good stories, we both, it was a negative, we had nothing to share with the group. And then,

yeah, I think we were all talking about work. We spent a lot of time just talking about the food we're eating. So yeah, you're right. Maybe it is, those conversations haven't completely gone, but you're right. They're only really relevant when there's something to vent about, which as I said, I'm grateful for, or I do have some friends that want to mine me for my friends that are in long-term relationships. And this time I'm single, I'm sorry to say there is absolutely nothing to report. I still don't know that men exist. Beth Scott, they're much quicker than me. She's vol-cell and happy about it.

Do you find the mining difficult? I used to love it when I had stories. I'd be sending like 18 minute voice notes. Oh, see, I find it quite like I feel like I'm in a zoo a little bit. But then, I mean, you do get into it because it is nice to be, you know, to have something like a little gem. I mean, we got a message from someone who said, so sick of my single gal pals dating stories, but no, that makes me an awful person. But it's honestly the same drama every single week. And I, as much as I understand that it can be, I think there's, there's guilt on both sides actually from

coupled and married people, coupled and single people. I think we've got a really balanced take from both sides. I am one of the only ones. I'm like in a desert of, in terms of my home school friends, my university friends, my siblings, my parents, they're married to each other. I am the single one. Nobody treats kind of that, you know, nobody treats me bad. But I am living such a different day to day to people and I think people forget that and it's very, you know, but I'm still very interested in what everyone else has got going on. Even if it's nothing to do with me, people will vent to me about buying a house for half an hour or planning a wedding for half an hour or longer or, you know, where they're spending Christmas, the in-laws, stuff like that. I have no, you know, I don't have

that lived experience currently. I will listen because I love you. And I think sometimes, not everyone, and this isn't what the piece is about, but anyway, I think sometimes when your friends on a different vibe and you are in the relationship, I think you can be a little bit guilty of shrinking the other side of things, of kind of going, oh, for trivia on this, the boy problems. You go, I know about your dispute about the fucking pear tree in your garden to the nth degree. So I think a little bit of, I don't know, just a little bit of grace on both sides can go a long way. And I try and give it and I try and receive it. But sometimes I think

people do minimize what is a really big part of single people's lives, which is the search for something or like the navigating of this very difficult dating scene. We had a message from Polly saying, engaged and conscious not to overtake every hangout talking about wedding plans, which is so funny because again, in that group, one of the girls just got engaged and the first thing I said was like, can we come wedding dress shopping? Because I'm now thinking, will I ever get married? So anyone that's planning anything, they're buying a house, can I come and watch you do the redecorating? I don't know if it's going to happen for me. Let me live through you vicariously. I don't know. Maybe I just

enjoy. There is boringness when it's monotonous, but I actually think some of these conversations are way more interesting now that we're older because the stakes are higher. We know ourselves better. Our standards are higher. I think actually a conversation around sort of like emotionally avoidant man in London can be quite interesting from like a sort of anthropological point of view. I feel like we're doing philosophical research. And also I was just thinking about Sean Fay's excellent book, Love in Exile. It's something that we spoke about with her on our episode interviewing her, but the fact that every part of culture platforms and centralizes romantic relationships. It really is, I think,

a newer phenomenon to work against that. I don't think we're encouraged to do that in any way. So the writer is probably just like years ahead of everyone else around her. And that's fine. But I also feel like there's probably a friendship disconnect. I think it would be so easy just to find people who are just unbothered about that. But it seems like maybe she she feels backed in a corner with all her friends talking about their romantic relationships. Not every single person is like that. I'm just thinking there's so many people who just could not

be bothered about dating, romantic life. We've spoken about the fact that you guys are decentralising men, like they are invisible to you at the moment. I don't think it's not a common problem, but I don't think it has to be a common problem. Does that make sense? I completely agree. And I think it is that having a diverse friend group in terms of age and an approach, I think it just softens those feelings of, you know, for some of the commentators like, no, I really, I can't bear it. I think it softens that and like just grows that that kind of empathy towards not just the writer is an empathetic, but actually when you have loads of people with loads of stuff going on, you're not stuck in that sort

of it's a very specific kind of girl group that is, and it's typically quite young, or it's, you know, if you are all long-term single, maybe that's what's going to happen. If you have a more diverse friend group, it just doesn't crop up. I was reading the comments below the piece, which I found really interesting, and they were also very intelligent. And one comment that caught my eye was, it said, I've never been attracted to men before, so sometimes it feels like my friends are living under a mass hallucination. My tolerance for men is very low and I feel bad about it, but sometimes I wonder if everyone else's tolerance is too high. I feel like I'm losing my grip on reality sometimes.

And I think I've got some friends that very much like that, queer women who just cannot grasp. And I wouldn't subject them to my hetero man chat, if that's what I was stating, because of course it is. It's a slow form of torture. We understand the bars and hell, it's kind of like you have to talk to someone that understands or you will look like you're going, you're like a little squirrel and you're going, he bought me this tiny nut and your friends that, I don't know where I'm going with this, with this tower of pecans going, oh, it's amazing, I'm good for you. You do feel very foolish. I think it's about time and place. Who am I talking about this to?

Emily Jane said, long-term single here and I hate to see my amazing girlfriends utterly consumed by typically mediocre men. It's so sad to see a girl fall into the trap and the stereotypes of having their entire life revolving around men. And that is really interesting. That's kind of the crux of the piece. And I have to say, when you're single and you get comfortable with being single as I am now, and you kind of read more about it, it is, I mean, I've spoken about this before, it is sometimes interesting because the thing is, as an objective observer of that relationship, you're not feeling any of the like oxytocin and the love and the like, you're not in their sex life, you're not in their pillow talk. I do think there

is something about being single for a long time that can make all relationships look kind of bad. And you're like, this isn't how I'd want it. So it must be wrong. But it's like, just because you don't want a relationship like that doesn't mean that your friend isn't really happy living in the way that they're living. And I think I can be guilty of that too. I think that singleness can also give you maybe a walk through your relationships because it can be really easy to be single and being in a relationship can be really hard. And I think narratively, we often swap those things as if it's easier to be in a relationship but actually fundamentally I don't think that is true.

No, I completely agree with that. I had a chat with my single friend when I was in a relationship and I don't think she enjoyed me saying this but I was new into a relationship and just basically like sent a really long message and was like, you know what, I didn't realise being like working things out, talking about things, all of that stuff would be this difficult. I feel like I'm under a microscope and I don't really love what I'm feeling about myself. But before when I was single, I all I wanted was to be in a relationship. And I just assumed that things would be Rosie and Dandy and I'd be like lying in a cloud from that point onwards. And after she, when things flipped and she was in a relationship, she sent me a message back, kind of like talking about this conversation we'd had like a year ago. And she was like, it's crazy because I didn't want

to hear that. But it's so true. And now I'm in the same boat, but things are going well. But it's also not necessarily a walk in the park. So she quotes a very famous Margaret Atwood quote, which I'd kind of forgotten about and it's so good. And it goes, male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it's all a male fantasy. That you're strong enough to take what they dish out or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren't catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy. Pretending you're unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole,

peering through the keyhole in your own head if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur." Which is the same as that like John Berger quote, which is like men are watching women, women are watching men, watching men. And I do have to think about that a lot because even when we're talking about decentering men, and I'm trying to apply it in my own life, I think I'm still quite obsessed with men. And currently I'm just obsessed with not being obsessed with them. So I do think it is actually really hard to escape because so much of our shaped reality is about how

much value we hold in the eyes of men. And I think there is even that bit where she's like, when you're pretending not to care, I do wonder how much I'm still wondering how cool that might seem to a man that I don't care. Really, really deep down, I'm not, it's not conscious at all. But when I read that, I was like, I wonder if there is a bit of me that's like, is this actually like upping my value to use a bit of taterism because I'm like, I've opted out, you know? Yeah, I thought that was so spot on as well. It is just, you can never really escape it because even in the escaping of it, there's still kind of an orbiting around the same point really. I definitely feel that. Reading that quote was a reminder that I think we

are just a bit fucked in that regard because I mean, there obviously must be a way to truly decentralise men or decenter men. But I think a lot of the common ways that we read about online, the kind of like pop culture element of it, just like deleting the apps, wearing what you want to wear. I don't know, is that really completely ridding yourself of the patriarchy and really getting rid of their power or their kind of influence in your life? I don't know. We got a message from Genevieve who said, I don't think women are ever as central to men's lives as men are to women's, in parentheses socialized to be. And Isabel said, patriarchy equals condition to seek men's validation and discuss our progress. I think there is a degree of programming or

there is a degree of this just gets, this begins so early and that is why when you get to your 32, surely I know better now because I've done all the reading and I've done this. You go, but it's in my behavior. It's in cognition level, how much I scan the room for a man. I think women do it for a lot of reasons. One it is that we've got to achieve what we're told to achieve and what we, I would just say, yeah, read Sean's book, Love on Exile, because it will just, it gives you that schooling that kind of puts it in such plain, beautiful English about what it means to crave love like that and why we want it and what it actually offers us. But I think such a long time we are taught and we tell ourselves, well, this is going to be great. This is the point where I arrive in my own life. And so

to get to your 30s and kind of have to rewrite the whole narrative of what can make you happy and actually what is best for you and what is on offer is really tricky. And I think I have been giving myself a hard time, or at least in the last few years, as I try and undo this programming. I've done so much work on it, but it's really difficult to then kind of still maintain. I'm still like a romantic person. I still love, love for myself and other people, not to become more bitter and not to become kind of hateful towards the whole system, but also to just notice that there is still something in there that does. Yeah, scan the room for a man is still making decisions based on the approval of a figure that's not even there.

I think it's really trippy and it's really frustrating. It makes me kind of angrier than another invisible man. Do you ever get, I actually had it yesterday when I was crossing the road, it's really random, I'll get it like once a week or like once every few weeks. I suddenly had this like wash of melancholy go over me and go, oh my God, I've missed it. I've missed the window to like find love that this part of my life, the bit that we've been gearing up to since you're like very young. Cause it's the only concrete thing you're kind of told is going to happen.

You're going to meet a man and get married. And suddenly I go, oh my God, I'm 31. I have this out of body experience. And I just go, you've missed it. You've just completely missed it. Like you've, you're over the hill. No one's going to want you now. And I know logically, none of this is true.

And I'm also not doing anything to find someone. So it's like, but just something, it must be somewhere really deep a programming and I just get this. It's not even panic. It's like a real sense of dread that this next decade is just not going to be right in some way, because I've kind of messed up the thing and I have to really, I have to really sit with that and like, let it just go away. Even though consciously I don't feel that at all, I really don't feel like I'm in a rush. I don't think

there's anything to worry about. But every now and then that old programming kind of rears its ugly head. I would say if we asked married people to tell us if they often felt that, I mean, well, I know some now divorced, but some still in great long-term relationships, they also feel, I've had friends go, they haven't described it as such, but they've kind of gone, sometimes I think, oh, is this my life now? Is this what I get to do?

And you get to do all that, you kind of travel alone, do all that, I think it's such a human, not to discount it, because I experienced it too, when I'm like, oh, I'm doing things differently than I thought I would. Maybe my five-year-old self would find this absolutely awful, maybe she'd think it was so cool, but it is a very human experience to go, oh, I have to live this life because

I, you know, to live this life means I can't live that life, the sister life. And it's like a constant war. I think it's very human, but oh God, I relate to that so much. So I really also wanted to bring up Collette's message. Collette said, for context, I'm 33 married and have been with my husband of a year for 12 years. Well, I think yeah, it's not fun to only talk about boys. I do think it's super important that our friends open up to us about their BFs or HBs. For example, I think this can really help women work out whether their relationship is toxic or not.

I worry that women can be living in these relationships and experiencing X, Y, Z, and maybe don't realize that it's wrong or toxic or whatever until they vocalize their experiences to a friend. And I thought that was so perfect. It's the same way I feel about gossip sometimes. There is, you know, obviously damaging gossip, but there's also an element of gossip that helps you understand if something is normal or not. It helps you calibrate with friends, it helps you share, analyse, decompress, work out if something's right or not right or hurting you. And I think that is such a good point about that's what happens when we're discussing

our relationships with people. I totally agree with that. That's kind of what I was trying to say at the top. I also think it's one of the most amazing gifts we have as women is this community, the thing we've been socialized to do, which is trade secrets, share of information. It's like one of the best parts of being a woman that is one of the only ways that men are kind of really harmed by the patriarchy is the fact that they aren't able to communicate freely with their friends. And probably that is one of the reasons why they can often be

not that great partners because they don't, you know, have other outlets. But we did have a mess from Orla on the complete flip side where she said, it depends on the relationship. If it's all drama, always, I can't bear it. Stop wasting my precious time with you. Which I think maybe when I was younger, maybe my early 20s, I would have got frustrated with a friend. They're going through the same cycles. Now that I'm older, if I have a friend that's going through quite a cyclical relationship, if anything, I actually keep my mouth completely shut. I let them talk to me because I don't want to push them away. I don't want them to stop telling me. And I just have learned that sometimes you've got to wait these things out. Those things take a really long time for someone to leave.

It takes a really long time for them to recognize it. And the best thing you can do as a friend is try not to like interrupt or kind of cast too many aspersions or let them know how you feel because it might just push them away. So maybe that is an age thing, but I definitely, I don't, I feel like my precious time with a friend is can be done doing anything. And if they need to vent to me, I'm more than happy to listen,

but I may be a bit more patient with age. I'm into two minds about all this message. So I think it's such a great point because we are all so time poor and like often no money for plans and we're all like scattered across the earth. And sometimes like it is precious time to me. Like we might not have many more of these hours over the next 10 years. The time we have is precious and I understand the impulse

of actually not wanting to spend it talking about people that don't or won't end up mattering. You know when you're hearing someone talk about some first name, last name bloke who treats them like shit and doesn't care about them and you know that they're going to be blocked in a few months, you kind of go, could we not be connecting, laughing, talking about the things? Then you do feel mean and I think rightfully so sometimes you go, it doesn't have to be roses all the time. My friend's going through something. I can't time that. I do just have to now be an absorber. I really get the instinct to be like, I don't see you often. Please, can we just be here together? This bloke is a piece of shit. We don't like him. You know, he's wanting the best of your friends. That

never goes away. And also it kind of grows with age where I'm like, I really want to climb inside your head and yank out that poison. But we all have to go through it. I had to go through it to get to here. I'll have to get through more stuff to get to there. I get it. But yeah, I felt like all his message spoke to something that I have been, I do feel sometimes, whether I act on it or not. One thing that I also wanted to say is quite a few messages were talking about really relating to the piece. And one thing that I felt while reading it is you can just have a conversation with your friend and say, oh, by the way, like, I really would have loved if we could

have spoken about this thing going on with me. If you feel like you're not getting your time in return with a friend or being able to have that support for something that is non-relationship related but is still just as worthy to you, you can just say that and I feel like that context was possibly missing but also I don't know what the writer's friendships are like, maybe that isn't relevant to her side of things but I think it definitely was relevant to some of the messages that we got. It's really hard to insert yourself into a friendship. It's so easy to just be the martyr, listening all the time and then feeling resentful.

It's so much harder to have a conversation, but it's so much more necessary to have an honest friendship. And we read Dolly Alderton's amazing list of lessons that she had before her birthday, and that was one of them, and it sat with me ever since. On that, there's also so many ways to do this that I've been in venting loops and breakups where I know I'm saying the same thing over and over again

and I know it's really annoying but I like have to get it off my chest and I'll just like send my friend a voice note being like, you don't even really need to listen to this but oh my God, and I'm just saying the same thing kind of again and that it's just that ability to kind of get it off your chest and not be carrying it around with you.

And one of my other friends is really similar to me where she has to talk about something for about a year before it goes away. So we will like flash it out and cut it up differently, we'll reanalyze it. And it's maybe just finding the right people to do that with. And I've also learned as well through getting older that some people don't appreciate that. So I actually won't speak about it. So I do think there is a bit of responsibility on both sides for AU to be able to vocalize. I don't really think I have any more advice for you on this situation or just something where they might be like, oh, maybe they don't want to talk about this anymore. I'm finding the other person, if you are a bit of a venter, who I don't, one

of my fans, I don't even think we're listening to each other. We're just both venting at the same time. Like neither of us are taking it in. It's purely like an outlet exercise. Sometimes you just need that. So if any earlier you're like, I'm not living in like a wanky Sally Rooney novel. No, we love Sally Rooney. I can't remember what you said, Richira, but I literally, I highlighted a bit from Sally Rooney novel that I was like, I'm going to read this

because it was exactly how I feel. And it's from that book that we always get slightly wrong, the name of Beautiful World, Oh, Where Are You Now? Which I love and I think which we all love. And she writes, after all, when people are lying on their death beds, don't they always start talking about their spouses and children and isn't death just the apocalypse in first person? So in that sense, there is nothing bigger than what you so derisively call

breaking up or staying together because at the end of our lives when there's nothing left in front of us, it's still the only thing we want to talk about. Maybe we're just born to love and worry about the people we know and go on loving and worrying when there are more important things we should be doing. And I think that to a degree captures how I feel. It's not all there is in life, but sometimes it's a lot of it. And as much as I hope for myself and everyone listening that life is rich and so varied and so full, sometimes it is the most important question of like, what does this mean now? These feelings, who have I loved and who am I going to love next? And I just don't think we should discount it so easily.

Thank you so much for listening and for all of your opinions and takes on this topic. As always, we love being in conversation with you all. Give us a follow on Everything is Content pod on Instagram and TikTok. And please give us a review wherever you listen if you haven't already. We've had some amazing, lovely, gorgeous ones and we thank you so much for doing that. We love you. We'll see you as always on Friday. Bye!