If I Speak - 04: Can you teach an adult to have empathy?

Episode Date: March 12, 2024

Ash and Moya tackle a Big Theory about how we punish criminals and respond to a listener who doesn’t know how to end a situationship. Plus: what the hell are ‘energy vectors’? Got a problem? Tell us: [e-mail] *Gossip, elevated.* Music by Matt Huxley.

Hello, it is your least favourite chatty patties. You are listening to If I Speak, the podcast where we try and make ourselves feel better about our lives by talking about what's going on in yours i'm moya lothi mclean and with me as always is the yin to my yang ash sarkar ash how has your week been um i had the flu moya so yesterday i was laid up on the sofa like properly shivering and like my teeth were chattering and i had a temperature and i full-on hallucinated that my sister was in the house to the point where i could feel her hand like coming over to like touch my cheek and touch my forehead to see how hot i was and my temperature broke and i sort of sweated it out and i messaged

her i was like were you like anywhere near my house and she was like bitch I'm at work I've got a job like what are you talking about so yeah had a full-on fever delusion how are you that's so interesting I always think about you know how people manifest apparitions things like ghosts etc and the obviously being sick what your brain does when it's under pressure is really fascinating me me well I say me and my friends me and a man I once texted from a dating app um once I was talking to someone I was really sleep deprived this was quite recently and for some reason often when I'm sleep deprived I'm in King's Cross because I'm coming back from

some you know a day out etc and loads of trains coming to King's Cross because I'm coming back from a day out, etc. And loads of trains come into King's Cross. And to get to where I live in London from King's Cross, the best route late at night is a bus ride. And so tired that I'm hallucinating things. And on this occasion, I started hearing choral voices. I was completely sober. I just really really tired and i started hearing this like i was so tired i started hearing this sort of like choral voice in my head on the bus and i said oh i can hear the angels to this person and then we started talking about it a bit more and i was like why do i conceive of them as angels and in my and i've come up with

this theory maybe i should say for the big theory i've come with this theory that uh when people are really you know the brain is under mass suppressor when your neurological systems are under some sort of stress uh they produce sounds like oh and it's actually that which we've conceived of as angels in the first place so the only reason I think these are angels is because people in the old timey days heard these voices when they were like stressed or sick or you know having psychosis I'm like what could that be and didn't have enough science to say oh it's my brain doing this and instead of like it's the angel speaking to me so now when I'm really tired I'm like I'm so tired I'm speaking to the angels wow so that was actually a mini big theory which could be a new segment

that we do I would say though my sister has a lot of really really great qualities but an angelic voice is not one of them well just wait till you're tired enough ash i think you have some questions for me is this true is this rumor true this rumor is true we're gonna do a segment called 73 questions minus 70 which i find very hard to say because my maths is so bad my brain rejects it rishi sunak you were right you were right get me back in the classroom which is where we take turns to ask the other three questions that our opposite knows nothing about prior to being asked hit me with your rhythm stick so in the grand tradition of vogue's 73 questions here are my 73 questions minus 70 numero uno what is the most woo opinion that you genuinely hold so like hippie shit crystals chakras sage hit me oh oh this is so hard because I hold quite a few. Probably that we are all existing on energy vectors

and some of us are maybe a bit destined to cross. What's an energy vector? It's a fancy way of reframing fate and destiny. I don't even know if I hold this opinion properly, but I definitely go back to it when I'm stressed and I need to believe in something bigger than myself, which I think is the root of all religion and also the rise of Western diluted astrology

in place of faith. Also, while the trad caths have come back, everyone wants a framework to believe in. Mine is energy vectors that make me feel a little less scattered when I don't know where I'm going. Well, maybe this answers my second question, because my second question is, how did you meet the person who you'd called your best friend? Were you just on energy vectors that were destined to cross? Oh, okay. So there's, there there's i have a group of like the girls the soulmates and i have a we call ourselves bestie besties within that and we just met at a party

um we just met at a party but i honestly could like i would say there are people in my life that i'm just very very close to and most of them if you go back to the origin story originally it would be one person from Twitter and then through these people we've all come into play but I don't want to I don't want to like single anyone out too much because okay so you've got this group bestie besties uh was the party that you met at any good or did you bond because it was bad the party was my party ash so actually okay this is a good this is a good story uh the party we met at was my birthday party and it was the last party before lockdown so it was on the i want to say either lockdown was the 13th of march or it was the monday after in 2020 it was my 25th birthday party uh and lots of people dropped out because they'd heard of this thing called COVID

and there were newspapers full of the fact we were going to lock down and I insisted we were going to have this party. No, we're going to have this party. COVID can't get us. I'm a bad bitch. You can't kill me. I wasn't a bad bitch.

I was dressed in a horrendous outfit. My style pre-2022 was honestly, I don't want to ever look at photos of myself again. And anyway, we had this party it was really really fun it went on for 24 hours and everyone got COVID everyone got COVID we were punished but the good news is because we were convalescing from the party then we went into our own mini lockdowns anyway so people weren't leaving the house because they felt so bad after this party and then it turned out they felt bad because of covid but they're already locked down so you met you met your best friends at a super spreader event i met i met one of my best

friends at the super spread event the other the person who brought them is also one of my best friends and actually another one of my best friends i'd invited to that event and it was the first time that we'd like properly met in person so there were two different besties who came into the group from that party and all of them were struck down with the plague and finally last question is it better to be always there when you call or always on time my whatsapp status is always on time but my answer is always be there when you call. Are you a punctual person habitually? No, but I force myself to be because it's a mark of respect. So I've had to force myself to show that respect to others

because I don't like it when people are late on me. But I'm not. I don't think anyone I know is habitually. A lot of us are brown. I'm mostly, for real life stuff I'm generally punctual and when I'm late it's because I'm trying to look cool and carefree and like I've got other stuff going on but I'm actually just hiding around the corner being like now you've revealed that ash people know once I hid on one of my very first dates as a young young adult i hid in a bush when i saw the other person arrive because i didn't want to seem too keen yeah no that makes

you look really relaxed and not neurotic um but that was 73 questions minus 70 we had some bonus questions in there which kind of defeats the object but there were interesting answers what can i say i'm a creature of compulsion that's just a conversation ash that's just going back and forth which is what this podcast is really about this isn't conversation this is podcasting this is podcasting actually do you know what is podcasting telling me your big theory that's podcasting we're coming up to a segment we wish some of us wish anyway we're coming up to a segment

called the big theory which is one of the repeating segments we have on the show basically one of us says to the other I have a big theory they outline this big theory and the other person decides whether it's bollocks or not and Ash it's bollocks or not.

And Ash, it's your turn to field me with your intellectual musings. I feel a little bit bad about this big theory because it's a bit heavier than the kind of thing we'd normally talk about because it emerges from something that's going on for me right now, which is a family member is in prison. I'm not going to get into what they did because that's just not fair on anybody. I will say it's definitely not like a miscarriage of justice kind of situation. So rather than getting into the specifics of what they did, I want to get into how we make sense of wrongdoing and accountability. Because when something like this happens, naturally, everyone's looking for an explanation. The people who are related to the person who perpetrated the harm are looking for an explanation, the person

and the people around the person who experienced the harm are looking for an explanation. And I think of all the questions that are being asked, it all boils down to the same thing, which is how much control did this person have over themselves? Why did this happen? And how do we locate it in that individual? And the thing is, is that that is something that's impossible to know because we don't even know for ourselves how much control we have over ourselves. And yet we can't get away from this question. It is asked in every single culture on the planet, how much free will do we actually have? Because you might be a hard determinist and basically a determinist thinks that your actions are already predetermined by some factor that isn't within your control. So it might be to do with the society you live in or the experiences that you've had. It might be to

do with your brain chemistry. It might be to do with how all those things interact. Or you might think that actually those things are important and they play a role, but we do have real autonomy. Somewhere there is a choice and we have freedom over that choice and the reason i'm thinking about that is because in order for us to have a system of punishment we have to believe that people have autonomy because otherwise why are you punishing someone that doesn't have a choice over what they did right there's no point in punishing someone to try and make them understand that what they did, right? There's no point in punishing someone to try and make them understand that what they did is wrong if they didn't have any control over it in the first place. And punishment, it's the only way that our legal system recognizes the suffering of victims.

And there are some people who think that we shouldn't have police and we shouldn't have prisons. And I do think that we can have far smaller prisons than we currently have. I think that what policing is could be changed, but I'm not like a full-on abolish all the prisons, abolish all the police people, because I do think that there is some value, not an absolute value,

but some value in recognising the harm that's been done to victims and saying that there is an element of trying to balance out the scales here, right? Punishment has some kind of value. But punishment isn't the same as accountability. And to define accountability, I think that accountability requires empathetic understanding. So to be accountable for something, you've got to be able to put yourself in the position of the other person. And you have to imagine what the experience was like for them. And to move away from just talking about things that are literally crimes. We crave that understanding as human beings. And that's why relationship therapy 101 is getting clients to repeat what

they think the other person has said. So going, tell me what you understood by what so-and-so just said. And the reason why you do that is because you're trying to get someone to say, this is what I think it's like to be you dealing with me um and it's actually something that me and my partner do when we are arguing and we get at an impasse we go okay can you just tell me what you understand by what I'm saying and it's actually really annoying when you're not the first person to suggest it because it's such a like fucking like baller move and you're like oh for fuck's sake I wish it was me that came up with it but but that kind of empathy is is so difficult when you're talking about violence because sometimes violence is perpetrated by people who are incapable of empathizing with others and they

might be incapable of empathizing with others because they've had to adapt to a life where to show empathy is to show weakness and you can't survive if you empathize with others or it might be that they're incapable of empathizing with others because of some kind of neurodivergency it might be a combination of the two and I suppose one of the things I wonder is can you teach an adult to have empathy and so I guess this brings me back to my original question on top of that, which is if someone doesn't have the choice to change themselves, if you can't get them to empathize with other human beings, does it mean that there is no such thing as accountability

with them? And are we just stuck in this trap of punishing people who don't have control over their own behavior? And yeah, obviously that's to do with the particular thing going on in my family relative being in prison and trying to make sense of what they did and why they did it but I think it also applies to our daily lives how do we deal with wrongdoing when we're not sure how much control someone has over themselves first of all this is not a big theory this is a mystery question that's my first first feedback this is not a theory this is a question and it is a very big important question and one that i'm not even sure i'm equipped to answer but let's do a little dialectics shall we should we do a little back and forth um i guess my first

question is obviously you're talking about about six different forms came up there of the types of transgressions or wrongdoing that you're asking can we have accountability do we have autonomy over this you mentioned you know violent behavior but then you also talked about conflict resolution within your own relationship, which two, you know, I would say poles apart forms of conflict or forms of interaction between two people. So things I was thinking throughout you explaining or asking, can can we demand accountability from people how much free will do people really have was first of all obviously we must have a degree of autonomy right there must be a degree of autonomy i think people hold because it doesn't matter how neuro neurodivergent you are there is a there are choices you make, in this society anyway, to commit an act of violence.

There might be factors that make you more predisposed or have furnished the way to the act of violence or furnished your choice in how you navigate a situation. navigator situation um but you are making that choice to pick up your fist or pick up a gun or go after someone on a dark street like these are all individual choices and steps up to them um so there's obviously a degree of autonomy in that i don't think anyone is wired in a way where just because they don't feel empathy for someone it automatically means that they will they don't have accountability or they don't have autonomy over their actions because there's still a gap between i don't know not feeling empathy for someone or not being able to um not having been nurtured in a way that produces empathy and then getting up to a point where you're harming someone there are there are a load of choices in between that that you have to make to get to that point so i believe in autonomy my other my other question on that though is are our systems of punishment our model

of punishment still fit for purpose even in a world where we have autonomy are these still the best ways of dealing with people even if we're saying yes this person had autonomy in what they were doing the models that we have the prison models the policing models are these really the best manner or are we talking more about a preventative model where you look at people's the choices people make and how to disobey them even if they don't have empathy even if they don't have any of these things we talked about in these you know worst case scenarios how would a preventative model work better and i'm not i'm not going full abolition i don't

have the answers for that i know michael always goes but what would that world look like well i don't know and i'm not i'm not getting into that right now what i'm saying instead is i don't think the models of punishment we have are fit for purpose otherwise surely they would have worked a lot better in the rehabilitation of people who we can agree in these circumstances have or to have committed a violent crime have had autonomy in committing of that crime i guess to like answer some of those questions about pulling together the different things between a violent crime and dealing with conflict in relationships, the reason I look to those things together is because I do think that the basis of morality is empathy. And I think that empathy and being able to imagine yourself in someone else's shoes

is the basis of a moral society. And that's key to emotional regulation. So you regulate your emotions because you can imagine what it might be like to be at the receiving end of someone's completely undigested, uncritiqued, unfiltered emotional outbursts and I was thinking about like the way my mom would discipline me when I was a kid her biggest gun her single biggest gun and she had to use it very very sparingly was you've really hurt my feelings because I would be a complete mess if she said that like we could be arguing and arguing and arguing but if she said that, like we could be arguing and arguing and arguing, but if she said, you've really hurt my feelings, I would just be on the floor, like fetal, like critical hit. And I think that that was about a model of discipline, which is based on a kind of empathetic understanding and love is saying, well, you love me and you don't want me to be upset you don't want me to be hurt

and so that's reciprocal you trust that I don't want you to be hurt either and if you were to say that you were hurt that would mean something to me and so it should mean something to you that I say that I've been hurt and I think that that's something which can operate at that very small micro level of like a parent-child relationship of like, don't throw your Ribena on the floor, going up to how do you deal with interpersonal conflict. And that being a kind of emotional regulation, which I think does prevent violence or allow someone to understand violence that they've committed. and obviously right now i'm talking about it very much within individual choices but we do have some systems in society where we've tried to implement that so i'm thinking here about probation so my father-in-law is a probation worker and he works with men who've committed violent crimes.

And they speak in groups where they're having to try and make sense of the things that they've done. Now, obviously, that occurs within a system which is really not ideal because if you've been in prison for that violent crime, it becomes difficult to stabilize your life again and to do things like hold down a steady job and earn enough money and have like a stable place to live. So the context in which you're trying to do the self-reflection and self-critique is really, really difficult. But there is some way in which the teaching of empathy and empathetic reflection, people are trying to bring that into the system. And, you know, I heard something interesting from a different relative who works with the criminal justice system in some way. And what they said to me is that when you're dealing with male violence, particularly male violence against women,

so not male violence between peers, but violence committed within the context of an intimate partner relationship or where there is just a clear power imbalance between the two, is that you see changes in behavior when the male perpetrator is scared of something worse happening to them like prison and then when that fear like eases off they're no longer scared of a worse abuse happening to them then it comes back round so i agree with the idea that you can transform society and you can change the norms by which we live and you can introduce an empathetic model of discipline rather than a punitive model of discipline and I agree that you can you can take lots of people out of the prison system which I think

does brutalize people further I don't think it's a good system but the central question of how do you deal with a lack of empathy in individuals for me that still needs an answer like what are the things that we could do to make people and in particular men more able to imagine themselves being somebody else and have that kind of emotional regulation that comes from that? I think the obvious answer is you'd have to completely deconstruct patriarchy if we're talking specifically about men but I also think that affects women too. Recently had a slight crisis and returned to bell hooks reading'm reading communion at the moment which is the search for female love and i think the second or third of her works which focuses on this idea of love and empathy on which she said that all her politics were built which is quite interesting

because i also know that she uh made some very wild comments while being a landlord that didn't seem to suggest a politics of love and empathy at all but we you know we move um i think a lot of this comes down to when we're talking about empathy and particularly in the period we live now it comes down to this you know if you look at patriarchy then it encourages emotional castration it encourages domination and power as a model of self-actualization over this idea of being open, being vulnerable. And I think a lot of feminist revolution, rather than wanting to embrace the vulnerability, it instead said we have to be equal in dominating. equal in dominating so to reach the same status to defeat patriarchy it was actually the the idea was you mirror patriarchy and i'm not saying that's for every single aspect of feminism or feminist movement i just think that's the mainstream way that a lot of feminist thought has been corrupted and curdled and accepted so the stuff that's got through has been you know be a girl boss be this be that you look at the way

that we manage interpersonal relationships and talk about them in the mainstream and a lot of it is this idea of like cutting off feelings and uh you know saving face and saving pride and or like literally literally like attaching a monetary value to everything like all this stuff about like what a man should be spending on a date I was like you realize that this is just making misogyny worse yeah because you're saying that your role and your value is to be like a sex dispenser and you come online after a certain amount of money has been spent what do you think that's going to do in terms of making someone more or less likely to objectify you now i'm not saying that going dutch on dinner is a guard against objectification but when you're sort of saying to a man your value is money and mine is sex that's two halves of a shit dynamic

yeah i mean i would say in those debates specifically it's not even sex that people are talking about they're talking about desirability it's specifically, it's not even sex that people are talking about. They're talking about desirability. It's not that you spend money on me and we'll have sex. It's you spend money on me. I'm proposing a trade. What you get is the company of a beautiful woman who's dressed in a lovely dress and I get a free dinner. It's not even about sex. It's about the scopic optics, I think it's called, or scopic capitalism. the um scopic optics i think it's called or scopic capitalism the visual setup of being out to dinner with a beautiful woman uh which yes does further entrench you know misogyny and objectification of women but isn't even about the actual act of sex and is more about the vision it's about sexual status it's not it's about sexual capital but it's not the act of sex is not actually within it and

that's that's something very important to know as well, because I think we're moving into relationship territory here, but I think that the way we approach, I say we, the way some of us approach sex or view sex in modern dating is very much linked to this also lack of empathy. And I think the way we navigate into personal relationships is due to this lack of empathy. We're encouraged to solely think about ourselves, our own feelings, ourselves as protagonists of reality constantly in a way that shuts out other people.

And I do think it's obviously like an enhancement of patriarchy. It's also an enhancement of patriarchal capitalism and how we, it's just like you're on your own. You're on your own, kid. You own kids you're an individual you're born alone you die alone and everything in the middle is just this you know state of war scramble to shore up yourself shore up your territory never surrender don't let anyone hurt you don't let anyone take you for a mug don't let anyone disrespect you it's all about hardness and invulnerability which is the opposite of being able to empathize the only only when I my relationships got so much deeper post a breakup because I was so raw and I really needed support and I for the first time ever I properly let people in and properly let people kind of hold me and see me being like ugly and vulnerable and not having all the answers.

And now I think I know so much less. I think I ask people so much more. And I think I'm able to empathize more because of that with other people's situations. And it's really helped my politics. It's really helped me grow. It's really helped me see other situations and slow down. helped my politics it's really helped me grow it's really helped me see other situations and slow down I think a lot of it is the patriarchal system we live in because it's morphed beyond even patriarchy yes it it primarily benefits men but it is a system of domination I think we live

in a domino art crew how would we even say that a dominator we live we live in a system of- A dominion. Yeah, but we now live in something that I think is pure capitalist id. It's domination, it's individualization. And the way we, the tools we use every day to make sense of that system and to connect with others, like social media, just further entrench that individualization, just further entrench that feeling of you yourself

you're the only perspective that really matters but i guess to maybe bring it back to the thing which started it all off it's like yes we're all bound up in the system of domination and we have our hard edges but we also operate in a society where there are lines and those lines are crossed and we call that breaking the law and sure some of those laws are arbitrary and even some of those laws are in themselves immoral but others are an attempt to regulate behavior in line with minimizing harm. And it comes back to that question of what we do with those people who perpetrate harm in a way which treats them as human beings, in a way which recognizes the suffering and the pain that they've caused in a way which is geared towards minimizing the risk they pose in the future to other people. And all of those things are in tension with one another.

You know, Norway's got one of the lowest re-offending rates in Europe its prison system is a lot more humane less focused on the punitive punishment element more focused on rehabilitation but even then it's not it's not perfect and I think that sometimes we when I say we I also mean I you reach for the big systemic analysis where we go oh but if we just transformed all of society this stuff wouldn't happen and that's also that's quite bad for understanding like a specific situation where you're going well what do I do with this person what do I do with them how do I make sense them? And maybe the place I've got to get to is accepting that I can't make sense of them. There are some things that I can't know. And that's difficult for me because I use knowledge and knowing about things as a way

of feeling in control in chaotic situations. So this podcast is an enablement for one of my adaptive mechanisms. Let's solve some people's problems. All right. Dilemmas, dilemmas, dilemmas. We have had a lot of them, but I think we've got time for one this week. this week this is from someone who reached out on instagram dear if i speak how do i break up a situation ship that's been going on since february i like the person but feel like it needs to evolve or die how do i break off a non-relationship moya i know you've got something to say on this one what i've got to say is you know how to break off a non-relationship. You just don't want to. What you're really asking here is,

why does this person not want to be in a relationship with me? That's what you're asking. Because otherwise you would have just broken it off. That's my answer. That's it. Yeah, I mean, the question of like, how do I break up is answered by, you just break up.

There's a million and one different phrasings. I have personally helped craft i was responsible for co-creating the perfect breakup text which is for various reasons which i'd rather not go into we can no longer see each other what are the reasons well they're various what are those reasons uh i would rather not go into them it's like a fortress no entrances no exits that is a horrible breakup text and if i received it i'd be very angry just so you know various reasons who the fuck do you think you are various fucking reasons you can't explain your reasons to me i'd be taking you to small courts claims you would small claims court i'd be taking you to

small claims court immediately being like i need to know these reasons now i have been missold ppi like that would kill me i'd be so annoyed with you if you wrote various reasons to me i'd rather just be like hey it's been fun i just don't want to see you anymore bye like that's fine that answers all i need to know i mean look i think we actually need a section of this podcast called Embrace Toxicity, because sometimes my advice really is just embrace the toxicity, just maximize toxicity. But I think you're right. This person is not asking how do they break it off, because they already know how to break it off. You have some kind of conversation where you go, this isn't working for me, right? The thing that we're doing, it's not working for me. And you give your reasons and then you take responsibility. This is the key point. You don't go into it trying to persuade

someone to change who they are. You take responsibility for breaking the thing off. And that's the thing is that like, I too have been in situationships and was doing Gandhi-style satyagraha, passive resistance. It was like I made myself completely inert because I was so scared of losing access to this person in terms of romantically, sexually, their company. My sense of self was wrapped up in feeling desired by them. And it meant that I really didn't want to take responsibility for the direction things were going in or not going in. And I gave them all the power. And then the power. And then when finally they broke up with me, I was like, oh, I didn't actually like them that much. I liked the idea of myself in terms of what it would reflect on me for if I could finally win them over. And then it meant that when they broke up with me, I had nothing.

I didn't have them. And I also didn't have a sense of self that was worth the respect, you know? And I felt like total shit because of it. I felt really, really bad. And the thing that that taught me was that, you know, this does kind of reflect on the previous conversation about autonomy. But if I don't behave like I've got agency, people will not treat me like I have agency I will not be treated like an adult I will not be treated like I've got value and like I've got worth because I've willingly given up all those things which make me an adult which make me a grown-up which make me able to participate in social life so break up the situationship and realize that you've got, you know, a relationship

is made up of, you know, well, not just two people in modern society, but very often commonly two people. That means you're 50% of it. You're 50% of it. You can't give someone 90% of the power because they don't have it. They only have half. You have the other half. Or if, you know, it's a polycule, maybe you've got a 10th or an 8th or a quarter, half or if you know it's a polycule maybe you've got a tenth or an eighth or a quarter whatever do you know what's funny i've never been in a situationship and i think there's various reasons for this um one i don't know how to read signals of people i thought you were just gonna say i don't know how to read you're like so all of these what's up conversations i don't know what they're saying say, I don't know how to read. You were like, I don't know how to read. So all of these WhatsApp conversations, I don't know what they're saying to me.

I don't know what they're saying to me. No, sorry, but being illiterate does not preclude you being in a situationship. People have been in situationships since the 13th century onwards. People are in situationships all the time. I've never been in a situationship for multitude of, for various reasons, your favorite phrase, for various reasons. I think one is, as I said, I don't know how to read the signals of people. I'm not good at approaching people. I think the other thing is if I'm not fussed about someone enough to date them, I just call it because I'm too busy. So I don't end up in the sort of back

and forth that is necessary for a situationship because if I like someone I want to date them and if they don't show enough interest or energy in me then I don't really have time for it I know I know that's something I can't really handle so I just don't end up in these interland places and I do think it's a bit of a failing of mine I would kind of love to have a situationship I think it's a rite of passage everyone needs to go through but in this letter I totally agree I think the key thing is as well you want to be told whoever whoever wrote this letter you want to be told that you have permission to say to them I want to be in a relationship with you because you said I think it needs to evolve or die how do I break it off I recognize this language as the language and I you know I might be projecting but the language of people when they are hurt

when they are worried about losing face when they want to make out like oh i'm in this casual situationship and i have all you know i have so much control and all this if you had the control and agency that ash has been talking about you would have just broken off because that's what you wanted to do what you want to do is you clearly want to say to this person i want to be in a relationship i want to take this further or i want to evolve this but you don't want to say that because it feels like you're losing face. I know this sounds complex, but I think the 4D chess that we play in modern dating is complex. It ties us in knots. You have two choices here. One, you break it off and say, this isn't working for me.

Two, you say to this person, hi, I want to date you properly. If you don't want to do that, we break it off. I suspect that you're going to have to break it off either way because you've been in this for how many babies have been born in this time you've been in this for nine months it hasn't evolved anywhere that might because neither of you pushing it but in my experience i found if it hasn't evolved in nine months that is because one person doesn't want to be in it in a more serious way and from the sound of your letter that person isn't you that person is the other party i've got one last thought on this dilemma and this is i think generally applicable i actually don't think there's such thing as a situationship right there is no such thing as a situationship there are only relationships without mutual obligations and that's what you found

yourself in you You're in a relationship where there is no language of mutual obligation, and it's really disempowering. And it means that you have to do this mad dance of keeping someone interested, but not scaring them off, keeping them in your orbit, but not making them feel trapped. And that's why we end up doing these sort of crazy contortions of passivity and also like signaling and attraction. And that's what a situationship is. It's a relationship without mutual obligations.

And of course, no such thing exists. There are always mutual obligations. You're just in a arrangement where those things aren't articulated or recognized. And that is quite disempowering. So yeah, be honest with this person, tell them what you want. Don't start bargaining because if you really want a relationship and it's that valuable for you to have, you deserve a lot more than being in a situation where you're never going to get one. And also situationships don't exist. I think this may be all we have time for. I think that is all we have time for, which is very funny as well, because my book is actually

open to the page on situationships. Energy vectors, energy vectors. Is this book your diary? Is it an entry that says, dear diary, I am actually in a situationship. I will forget this in nine months time. I honestly don't have a diary i am actually in a situationship i will forget this in nine months time i honestly don't have a situationship in my life i would love to have a situationship which is a non-relationship a negative bond one in which one party inscribes its end in it i would love to have a situationship if anyone is listening yes if you want a situationship with moya or to send us one of your dilemmas, do please email ifispeak at novaramedia.com. That's ifispeak at novaramedia.com. If you're interested in the situationship position, please put that in the subject headline

so I don't have to read it. But if you're interested in issuing a dilemma, you don't have to make that clear. We'll you our spirits will find each other on the energy vectors this has been a really wide-ranging one from the prisons of society to the prisons of our hearts moya thank you so much for joining me ash thank you for talking with me about everything from situationships to accountability see this girl she's got range. She's got a four octave range of the soul. This has been If I Speak. Goodbye.