How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - ON FINDING LOVE AT ANY AGE… With Luke Evans and Dolly Alderton

Episode Date: February 9, 2026

We’re taught that love should happen early, and if it doesn’t, something’s gone wrong. But what if that’s not true? In this episode, we hear from past How to Fail guests who found love later, or in their own time. Luke Evans reflects on meeting his soulmate in his forties and Dolly Alderton talks about heartbreak, celibacy to reassess the role of sex and romance in her life and learning that sitting with uncertainty can be the bravest choice. I met my husband in my late thirties and I've found that trusting your own timing is often what leads to real love. I hope this is helpful for those unsure of what’s next. Listen to Luke Evan’s full episode of How to Fail here: swap.fm/l/2AAJhVeDNGdKIJGdznR9 Listen to Dolly Alderton’s full episode of How to Fail here: swap.fm/l/XM98joc3GFEMTsLfkEfR 🔗 LINKS + MENTIONS: Elizabeth’s Substack: theelizabethday.substack.com Join the How To Fail community: howtofail.supportingcast.fm/#content 💌 LOVE THIS EPISODE? Subscribe on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts Leave a 5⭐ review – it helps more people discover these stories 👋 Follow How To Fail & Elizabeth: Instagram: @howtofailpod @elizabday TikTok: @howtofailpod @elizabday Website: www.elizabethday.org Have a failure you’re trying to work through for Elizabeth to discuss? Click here to get in touch: howtofailpod.com How to Fail is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment Production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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After you purchase, they'll ask where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. We grew up with the idea that love is something we should find early, decisively, and without too many missteps, preferably when you're in your 20s, that finding the one, and I put that in quotation marks, is not only a romantic ideal, but a marker of success. And so if it hasn't happened by a certain age, we're led to believe that something's gone wrong. Well, in this episode, we listen back to How to Fail Guests who've either found love later in life or in its own time.

And I firmly believe that it will happen when the time is right for you. And as many of you will know, I met my now husband when I was 39. Past How to Fail guest, Luke Evans, reflects on finding his soulmate in his 40s, and how many of life's milestones arrived later than expected. But, spoiler alert, they were worth the wait. Then Dolly Alderton takes us back to her early adulthood, reflecting with her trademark honesty and humour on failed relationships and painful experiences with men.

She speaks about choosing deliberate celibacy to reassess the role of sex and romance in her life, and she learns that stepping back and sitting with uncertainty can be the bravest choice. I've definitely found that trusting your own timing is often what leads to real love. And I hope this is helpful for those unsure of what's next. First up, let's hear from Luke. Your first failure is your failure to find your soulmate until you were in your 40s.

Yeah. And first, I need to just say before we talk about that, is that I'm not saying all the relationships before the person I've met, who is my soulmate, were a complete desert. Some of them were absolute car crashes, and I think we can all relate to that, and they don't need speaking about. But there are some that I learned things from, but as the relationship unfolded, we weren't compatible. It just realized that it wasn't going to work. And, you know, painfully or graciously, they came to a conclusion and we finished. Some of those people are still in my life. And some of them are very, very close to me. One of them is my best friend from 20 years ago.

we were partners for three years. We own a house together. I mean, it's really odd. But anyway, we're friends. But it's a little sad, I feel like, at getting to 40, I sometimes think, well, wouldn't it have been great to have gone through the whole journey with someone? But this is me being idealistic. And, you know, of course, that's not how it is.

And maybe what I've learned from these relationships and being alone and all those things. And I've learned so much that I can bring. so much more to a relationship now, I'm a very different person from 10 years ago, really different, which is weird. I can see that now. I value this relationship so much, and I value this person so much. Fran, let's give him his name. We've been together almost four years, and it literally has gone like that. It felt like we met yesterday. It's just seamlessly, just gradually growing and morphing into something bigger. stronger and happy.

It's always happy. It's positive. It's easy. Which I say, I don't say that flippantly. Easy is not a, it's a hard thing to find in a relationship. I don't think I've ever had an easy relationship. But I have it now. And as much as it's sad that we didn't meet earlier on,

I'm so grateful that in my 40s, I have met this person that just, completely it just top and tails my life. I feel like it's my traveling partner, my business partner. We giggle together. We go to the gym together.

We're also fine apart. We've just spent a month apart. You know, we're good. We're really good. There's a strength. There's a confidence I have because of him. It's just lovely. I wanted to ask you about your journey

with your sexuality. because of the way that you grew up and the internal shame that you felt at the idea that you would have to tell your parents and they would be told by church elders never to speak to you again, that is a crushing weight for a young boy to live with. Yeah. Do you think that informed, I mean,

it sort of delayed your progression into relationships? I mean, it delayed me. It delayed me coming out. I couldn't. I just had to keep it secret. I had no one to tell. I had no non-Jahehovah's witness friends. So I kept it to myself, my whole childhood.

It was only when I left home. And I didn't leave home because I wanted to. I left home because I needed to because I couldn't lie to them anymore. and I had to find my, I had to be who I knew I was. And I couldn't do that under my mom and dad's roof. Out of respect for them and their religion, but also out of respect for myself, I knew that I had to find a new life.

And I knew it was just on a 45-minute train journey to another city. I'd find new people. But at 16, that is a very young age to have to make that decision to go alone, to do it alone. I'd know brothers and sisters, no one knew. and I thought that was the best way I'll just start again and that's what I did

I'd had that plan from the age of 12 because I knew that legally I could leave home at 16 and so I just went well you've just got to suck it up for the next four years and get through it and then leave and I did exactly what I planned when I talked to my friends and they says when did you leave home

and I say 16 they're like 16 it's like chill like a child, you know. And I guess I was, but I just knew that I couldn't carry on there being with these feelings and knowing that it wasn't going to change. You know, this person, I'm not going to change. And I knew very little other than that. What comes across so strongly is how much you love your parents?

Oh, yeah. I mean, they're just, they're amazing people. And I'm so glad that I feel like this. I know a lot of people who have been in my position or similar, very angry, and it's totally understandable. And I see that, you know, to be put through this is wrong. You know, religion shouldn't force you to have to make a decision between being your true self and losing your family and everyone around you.

But I'm okay with it because I love my mom and dad. My upbringing was joyous. They are great human beings. very patient. I was a bastard as a kid. I was a nightmare. Like a teenager. Imagine. I was in the closet. Not what wasn't in the closet. I was screaming every night because I couldn't tell anyone. I was going through the hormonal change as a pubescent teenager. I didn't want to be in the religion. I hated knocking doors. Everything about my life was wrong. And I was just miserable. I was so miserable with my mom and dad. And they were so patient. They were so young.

They dealt with it all. Their only child leaves home at 16. And they didn't turn their back on me. Of course, they didn't know at that point. But I was moving away from the religion. And even that meant that I was possibly going to die at Armageddon. I hadn't put the icing on the cherry on the icing of the cake at that point. But, you know, it was a big thing for them to lose me, you know. And I didn't go to the Kingdom Hall.

I didn't knock doors. I wanted nothing to do with it. I wanted to start my new life. And they've just been so kind and accepting. Even though they have their religion, we have managed to find a balance where we both can respect each other and our choices and our lives and our journeys. They're different, but they can work parallel with each other. I mean, it is an amazing achievement that really, for all three of you. There's an incident in the book where your parents discover a stash of gay literature and worn that you'd hidden in the lining of an armchair in your bedroom.

like this, it's like there's a chair. Well, what you don't know, Luke, is that before you arrived today, we stuffed it full. But tell us that story. Yeah, so I had, my mum would go to Cardiff often on the weekend, and so I'd go on the train with her, and she'd love shopping. I hate shopping. Always have. And so I'd drop her off at Howells's, which is the department store or Debenhams or Primark or whatever, and I'd just go wandering and I'd look around the bookshops and I found,

I found this one little book shop in this little arcade in Cardiff. It was called Chapter and Verse and I'd never just found it. I'd never seen it before. So I walked in and I said, hello to the shopkeeper. And then I started looking around the books. And in one corner was the LGBT section. And I didn't really realize straight away, but as I pulled a book down, I realized it was Maurice.

the famous gay novel and then a book about safe sex and then a book about oh so many different books I mean and it was like I kept looking over my shoulder thinking he was going to come and tell me off

but of course it's gay literature he was I think he was a gay guy himself that was the moment I've had an outlet where I could learn just about that I wasn't on my own there was even a romantic novel about gay men.

So I started to build up every week. I'd come to Cardiff with my mum. She'd go to Devonam's and I'd go and spend my pocket money that I'd saved or from my little jobs I used to have in the valleys. And I'd buy books and I'd just built up a collection of different things. Different books. Some of them were photographic. Tom Bianchi and Tom of Finland.

No, lots of different books. And I used to hide it in a quick save carrier bag in the line. lining of a chair that was my old sofa that my mom and dad had. They bought a new one and I took the armchair. And I was the only one that knew it was there. And one day I went to look for it and it had gone. And my whole life flashed before my eyes in that very moment. I put the cushion back on the chair and I sat on it. My whole body was shaking because this was the moment I was dreading. I was like, you're so stupid. You shouldn't have put it there. Because I knew the only two people that would have looked with my mom and dad.

And so I had to confront my mom and dad about it. I packed a case upstairs 13 years old, 14 years old, thinking that after the conversation I will have to have, that they will tell me to leave. Because that's what I would have been brought up to know. I knew other families in our area, our district, where their son had been thrown out, and they'd never spoken to him again.

But I was ready. I was like, okay, I clearly had processed what if, before this moment and I knew that this is what would happen. So I went and confronted my mom and dad about it and they'd found it months before and they hadn't told me, which made me feel even worse. And I said, where is it? And she finally said, well, your father took it into the garden

lit a bonfire and burnt it page by page. And we don't want to talk about it again, which is a very common thing for parents, often, maybe not so much nowadays, but if you don't talk about it, it may go away. Also, for us to talk about it, there was this huge thing that would happen if we accepted it, acknowledged it, it would mean some serious shit would go down. And none of us wanted that. Although I thought that was the end.

I thought I would be on a train to Cardiff sleeping on a park bench, literally. That's what I thought. But it didn't happen. We didn't talk about it for many years later. And it made it even more frustrating. I probably got even more angry at that point, you know. It's a lot of internal tension for a young man to deal with. As you mentioned, you do go to Cardiff.

You start being coached in singing by a fantastic singing coach, Louise. You met Charlotte Church, Charlotte Doorstep. You became very good friends to Charlotte Church. You got into a relationship with an older man who was your boss in a call centre. Who was very nice to you, but you were saying to your parents, oh, he's a friend and a nice landlord. And then at some stage it does get to a point where you get very, very low and you have to tell your mom about your true self. Yeah.

And I want to preface this by asking how you feel about the terminology around coming out, whether you think that that's an accurate phrase or whether, because I know some people find it borderline offensive to imply that there's anything they need to come out about. I mean, I'm not offended by it. I mean, it's, but it's sad that, you know, gay people have to do that. And it usually comes with massive anxiety, upset tears, the thought of losing people, not being accepted, being rejected. I would rather have not to have had to have done it, for sure. And how old were you when you told your mum? I was 19. She reacted in a way that seems typical of her, which was very loving.

She had to force it out of me, but she knew I was upset and she didn't know why. And I just said, well, remember, by this point, I'd been living a happy life, gay life in London for three years. So I was coming home with some kind of strength of identity, but in a very broken way, because I had just broken up from my first relationship. And I had nowhere to go. I'd moved out. And, you know, so I said, if I'm going to tell you, I'm going to tell you everything. I'm not going to hold back. And a lot of it you're probably not going to like.

hear. And she said, well, I'm your mother. You need to tell me because it's upsetting to see you like this. So I just let it roll. Two, three hours. We went for a walk. We sat on the swings in the park at the bottom of the street. Oof, the sun went down. We processed as much as she could process. And then we went back to the house. And she said, let's not tell Dad yet. I think I need to process this. She's so clever. She knew exactly how to manage the situation. And, She did. I wasn't a Jehovah's Witness, really. No one knew me as a Jehovah's Witness. But, you know, it's a big thing. It was a lot for her to deal with. But, yeah, she managed it. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Starting something new can feel terrifying. Whether you're launching a new idea, brand, product or podcast, whatever it is, you can never be 100% sure it will work out. And at some point, you have to take a huge leap of faith. Trust me, I know.

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Reggie, I just sold my car online. Let's go, grandpa. Wait, you did? Yep, on Carvana. Just put in the license plate, answered a few questions, got an offer in minutes. Easier than setting up that new digital picture, Fran. You don't say. Yeah, they're even picking it up tomorrow.

Talk about fast. Wow, way to go. So about that picture for you. Forget about it. Until Carvana makes one, I'm not interested. Carvanna made easy on Carvana. Pick up these may apply.

I think what's really lovely about this conversation is that you are very known, rightly so, for being a beautiful chronicler of relationships and failures at relationships. And yet we haven't talked about that yet. And I love that because I just think you've had such insight into other aspects of your life and what that has taught you. But we are going to come on to the big, the grand finale. The grand finale. No pressure, but some pressure. No, but we were talking earlier about that notion that because we're both writers,

we like to tell each other narratives. Yes. In other parts of our life, which I think is such a perceptive thing to say. and you were saying that you felt it in your romantic attachments. Yes, the recent failure that I'm going to discuss for my third one is incredibly recent, as Elizabeth knows, because the day of the last failure that I'm going to refer to, she very kindly took me out for Rose. And I cried into it. I mean, it was only three bottles of Rose A followed by some vodka shots.

And Dolly got accosted by fans at this pub that we were at. So she was in the midst of this really emotionally rending conversation. with tears in your eyes and then these three lovely women came up and were like, are you Dolly Alderton? Immediately Dolly has to sort of press the tears back in. Go, yes, I am, yes, I am.

And the worst bit was I was crying to you about this big failure in romance and these girls said it couldn't have been more ironic really. They were like, you've just taught us that it's really great to be on your own. I was like, that's really good for you, I'm really pleased. Well done for finding self-respect and autonomy. me, I hope I can find it one day.

Yeah, so I have had a bit of a rocky time with dating in my 20s, a lot of which I take full responsibility for. I went into therapy when I was 27 and a lot of the work that we did was about how I can break out of bad habits and how I can find kind of true intimacy with someone, how I can be a better partner, how I can choose a better partner, how I can be more honest with men, how I can be more vulnerable and open and soft and ready to be loved in love. I think we made great progress in that room and I think that cognitively I made great progress. I had a long period of deliberate celibacy to reassess the role that sex and romance had had in my life. I read a lot of great books and I did a lot

of soul searching. I did a lot of thinking and I talked to a lot of exes and everything was great. This is a very recent work. This has been work I've done over the last two years. In my world of narratives, the script that I had written is I have come to this conclusion about what kind of partner I would like to meet and what kind of partner I'd like to be. I'm in a really healthy place now with how I feel about men and sex and love. The next person that I meet in the story of my life is going to be wonderful. And he may not be Mr. Forever, but he'll probably be a lovely relationship. but there's a high chance that this could be my person because I'm here, I'm ready, here I am world, throw me the man. And the only two men that I've had brief liaisons with since I've done all that work have been absolute rotters. And I have given over my heart to them in some small way with trust because that's where I am. The fact is actually they're not, I don't think they were rotters. I think that life is difficult and complicated. and everyone has their own baggage and stuff that they're dealing with.

But in both of those instances, I ended up feeling like massive collateral damage and feeling in the disaster that was their stuff going on with them. And I felt so sad because I just felt like, well, I've done all this work and I've been on this journey and I'm ready to be this person and meet a person that can meet me at that same place and be grown up and be kind to each other and be honest and be trusting. And the way both men behaved was almost identical, actually. It just knocked me for six.

And I think the reason it's really important that that happened to me, I actually would go as far as to say, the hippie-dippy in me would go as far as to say those two men were sent to me as a present from the universe because I think it was the universe saying to me, you cannot script life. You cannot control life. And that you may decide that this is the narrative

that most suits you now, but you can't control that. And actually, Ariel Levy, who's a writer that I love, who had an enormous amount of tragedy in a very short space of time and wrote a book about it called The Rules Do Not Apply, she said that the lesson that she learned from that experience and the lesson she hopes is embedded in the book is that you can control and analyze and argue stuff on a page. That's what you and I do for a living,

and have that awareness and have that understanding of people, have that understanding of yourself, but you cannot do it in real life. All you can do is you can understand yourself as best as possible and you can behave as best as possible, generally, but particularly I'm talking about love, but you can't control what the other person is going to do. You can make as good decisions as you can and you can either choose to trust people or not. And then the rest of it, you just have to relinquish control. That's been a good lesson for me in the last few months in particular. Because I think the key for me and I don't know if it's the same for you is that when I'm rejected romantically is not to think, oh, what can I do differently to change that person's mind?

Because it's a failing in me and it's a failing in my people pleasing tendencies. Yes. I cannot have someone make this decision about not wanting to see me anymore. Yes. That makes me feel like a failure as a person. Totally. And it actually makes me feel panicked. That's what I identified.

It's like panic and fear. How do you step away from that, really? How can a human being handle that? I think, you know, something that I found really difficult in the most recent heartbreak that I fell foul of. Something I found difficult is because I've decided in my head, because like you, I'm a sort of secret control freak, because I've decided in my head this is how I would like to be treated as a human

and this is the code of conduct for me in romance now with all the kind of thinking I've done about this. I got really angry that there isn't this advisory board. Like there isn't an adjudicator. I was so upset and angry. It felt so unfair that I was just like, how can you treat me like this? I wish there was like a guild of people

that could be like, by the way, Dolly is right in this and you have been bad and this is your punishment. And that like lack of order and control, basically it's control. I found really, really upsetting. Like, no, you have got this wrong and I'm the one getting this right and I've done all this work in thinking

and you should be punished for the it wasn't even like punishment I just felt like redress Yeah that's it that's it because I felt like I was going mad And actually this is only very recent for me Thinking about how one should behave When thinking of other people's hearts

For a long time I was not respectful in romance and love And I didn't think about other people And I was very selfish or I lied I wasn't a bad person. I was just carrying a lot of unaddressed things. And a lot of the time I was in a lot of pain. So the only way that I can make my peace with it

and not obsess over what have I done to fail or indeed how can I have an advisory body tick that person off is to just accept that we're all coming from our own stories and context and the nicest thing that that last man did is the last time we saw each other and I said, how can you do this to me? Is he said, I want you to know that the way I've behaved is literally nothing to do with you. This is nothing to do with you. There's nothing that you've said.

There's nothing that you've done. There was not a moment that changed anything. I am in a world of pain and mess and I'm just not really thinking about you. This isn't really anything to do with you. This is to do with me. I'm thinking about myself all the time. I'm not thinking about you at all. You're almost irrelevant in this equation.

This is about me. Which is hard to hear, but it was such an illuminating moment of like, oh yeah, this is all about them. This is not a failure of mine. And it's such a torturous game to look back on things and work out, was it this or was it that?

Was it when I said this? Was it when I did that? And I think if you behave with kindness and you're generally honest, that's the best you can do. And look, what other option do I have now? I have two options. Either I pick myself up and I carry on believing in love and making careful decisions, but being honest and kind and trusting people and I feel I should trust them, or I just don't have a romantic life. So, you know, those are your two choices, I think. Relinquishing control and saying, it doesn't matter how much Google stalking I do with them. It doesn't matter how pretty I look on the date. It doesn't matter how perfect a girlfriend I try and be. I can only do so much to control the same. situation and actually I have to surrender to the unknown of what could happen and the variables

of another human they're not a part in my film that I've scripted they're in their own film as well they come with a whole long history that means they're unreliable that means that they that no matter how much I analyze and think and no matter how I present myself I can't control how they behave I think that's such a beautiful thing to say because actually love ultimately is about opening yourself up to the possibility of failure and the possibility of her and because you can't love unless you're fully vulnerable. Totally. And that's so scary.

Yeah. But also... What do you do? Exactly. Have a life of no life. You know, I see the appeal of it. I've got to say the easiest time of my life was the year where I wasn't dating. But, you know, I believe in love and...

What do I do? pick myself up and carry on. Yeah. Well, the alternative, as you say, it's like shutting yourself down, not just to love, but to life. Exactly. And you're never going to do that

because you are Dolly Alderton. There she is, my life coach again.