If I Speak - 08: How to cultivate optimism

Episode Date: April 9, 2024

Moya and Ash think about how to stay hopeful when the future looks bleak, and give advice to listener whose marriage is suffering from major communication issues. Plus: Cowboy Carter. Got a problem? Tell us: [e-mail] *Gossip, elevated.* Music by Matt Huxley.

we're back not necessarily better than ever but definitely back this is if i speak with me moya lothian mclean and me ash sarkar look i'm aware that when this episode comes out the world will have had two weeks a few weeks to sit with it but i just need to get it out there cowboy carter uh yeehaw baby um i i accidentally started off a bit of discourse online when i said that jolene doesn't work if you're not threatened by her it just it doesn't work and i love the rest of the album i think it's really really great but unless you're rattled by jolene you've got no reason to be singing her name so you can't really have it as a like i'm secure in my marriage and he loves me and he'll stand by me go away do you know what I don't like the cover of Jolene but I don't actually think it's about her being secure she wouldn't be singing it if she like

Beyonce throughout her career has always been singing stay away from my man and then she had the whole album about her man cheating on her so I don't think Jolene is actually a song about security I think it's a song about bravado she's like stay the fuck away like there's another line in i think is it bodyguard yeah i don't like the way she's looking at you somebody better hold me back there's a lot of like these bitches be after my man on this album um but it's all bravado like it's it's really just i would agree i would agree were it not for the choral bit at the end which sounds beautiful right it sounds like a beautiful rolling vista but it introduces a male voice saying i'm gonna stand by her she's gonna stand by me right so you're almost bringing

in this external force to establish that the marital harmony is real whereas if there was this sort of question mark of going is this bravado or is this an accurate telling of it i'd be like yeah no that that works that's an interesting take on this song but the fact is is that she kind of pulls her punches and goes no no no no he'll really stand by me and brings in a male voice to say it so that's why I think it's not vulnerable just because a male voice is saying it doesn't mean the male voice means it there's things called wedding vows that are broken constantly and have been broken within this marriage I what was that there was another

point I wanted to make about Cowboy Carter actually what is your favorite songs on Cowboy Carter I think we should talk about Cow carter for a little bit you know what that was my icebreaker question no okay okay wait wait there wait there the other thing i want to say was the other thing i want to say was this proves that beyonce is a monoculture because when you did your tweet the last person in the world i would have expected to respond to it responded to it and that was michael go's former advisor talking about how much he liked the cover and in the world i would have expected to respond to it responded to it and that was michael go's former advisor talking about how much he liked the cover and in the comments arguing with him was the chief executive conservative home and both of them weren't arguing in a way of like oh i don't listen to that rubbish they were fully like invested and engaged with cultural critique

on like positive or negative about the new album they were like locked in and i was like okay well i guess the monoculture still is here in places yeah yeah like you know a beyonce tour can can change a country's gdp you know the policy wonks lover but i've got some questions to fire at you cowboy are you ready yeah i'm so ready i'm so ready number, what is your favorite song of Cowboy Carter? I'm going to pretend like I didn't hear this question before. Two Most Wanted, the duet between Miley and Beyonce that is absolutely my favorite. It's so my favorite that I lost my little mind

and on a train back from visiting my family, made a fan edit of Thelma louise clips set to two most wanted because when i first listened to it is ostensibly a love song right you know she's it's quite sexualized and all of that but i also think people have been taking as a song about just like ride or die friendship um and that's sometimes the way i think about it when i'm listening to that song i'm like you know pedal so heavy like the two most wanted like didn't see you coming but I'll be your shotgun rider till the day I die I'm like that's how I feel about my friends and I need to learn to drive now I'll be your shotgun rider on this podcast till the day I die I just think it's such a

beautiful song Ryan Tedder was involved in writing it which made me a bit embarrassed because that is the king of ballads and i got sucked in once again but he earned his plaudits and the harmonies i actually cried listening to that song it's so good it was it was so beautiful i loved two most wanted i also loved the cover of blackbird loved it loved itved it. Okay. Question two. In your heart of hearts, are you more cow, boy or cart? I have no idea what any of these words are metaphors for. Cow. Tell me what that means. More cow.

Tell me what that means. No, it's pure free association. So you bring your meaning to it cow because I feel like often I put myself in the position to drag the cart and the boy rather than sitting on the cart and letting myself be dragged which one are you I'd say I'm a cart explain the reason why I'd say cart is that i think that often in my relationships i take on a functional role and i pride myself on doing it i go okay well i'll establish my worth by doing this thing not having needs of my own but but carrying other people so i'd say in my heart

i am a car that's very interesting i'm dragging you i. I mean, I just thought it was a nonsense question and that's why I penned it. Okay, final, final question. What is your earliest food memory? Oh, there's one that's coming to mind, but it can't possibly be my earliest food memory because it was when I was about 10. I don't know what my earliest food memory is.

It's probably eating like cobs my grandma made or ice cream or something. I don't have, my earliest food memory is. It's probably eating like cobs my grandma made or ice cream or something. I don't have, this is the weird thing. What are cobs? Cobs are bread rolls. They're what my grandma called them because she was from Derbyshire. Baps, they're baps.

Yeah, you don't know about this down south, sorry. Cobs forever. But it was probably that. The weird thing is I don't have like loads of childhood memories i mean i'm sure most people have this maybe many people i have bits and pieces but i don't have like coherent childhood memories i have like standout events that must have been formative in some way but so i will say that my earliest food memory is either eating rubber pizza at little chef r.i.p i called it rubber pizza at Little Chef, RIP.

I called it rubber pizza because it tasted like rubber and I really enjoyed eating the rubber taste. Or having crab soup for the first time in Cornwall and having like my head blown off by how good it was. Or mussels that same holiday, mussels in white wine, sauce or whatever the fuck it is. Oh, that's always stayed with me. That was an incredible food experience. or whatever the fuck it is oh oh that's always stayed with me that's that was an incredible food experience there's a really interesting thing about childhood memories where you don't know which ones are your memories and you don't know which ones have been kind of implanted by the retelling of family stories around you and you can't tell which ones you were there for or

which ones have been misremembered by other people. And there is a poem by Gillian Clark about this exact thing. So I think that my implanted memory might be one from a birthday when I like just put my face in the cake because I was presented with it and I didn't know what else to do. But I probably can't remember that. There's probably people remembering it for me. So I think maybe my earliest food memory was eating dim sum for the first time at chinese new year and being like oh my god a whole world of savory flavors i love it so i love i love that both our memories are just of having like our little palates blown by adult flavors that's that's i mean that's the thing trust kids with grown-up flavors no don't we we're physically not developed

for grown-up flavors i didn't eat peanut butter for 25 years i didn't like peas i didn't like tomatoes like my palate wanted just sugar i ate so much sugar as a kid i was addicted now i can't i physically cannot eat like a whole easter egg without feeling just like my tongue is gonna fall off it doesn't appeal in the same way your palate does develop so don't don't trust kids with adult flavors i was addicted to starch dried pasta my mom would have to keep me away from dry like uncooked pasta because i would just want to like crunch and munch down on it and like get all that starchy wheat goodness i just love starch still do that's such a cute image little ash like chewing on starch pasta that's so cute what do you got for me for the main segment small question for you ash based on an intrusive thought

that i keep having how can i live a life when i feel like there's no future oh fucking hell yeah exactly exactly so I've been thinking a lot about hopelessness and how to handle both acknowledging the legitimate material cause of it particularly among our age group but also whether it's possible not to succumb to it altogether basically feels really hard, right? I'm going to let my id out. Usually I'm the one who's like, optimism, let's be optimistic. But I'm just going to take on the role of the avatar for a lot of the audience fears and say,

it feels really hard when I think about the current political and social landscape that we have to grow old in. Because in the UK alone, there's been 15 years of decline and that hits you wherever you sit on the political spectrum um wherever you turn you know like housing health transport you've been smacked in the face by decline and neglect it feels like options have narrowed and meanwhile our tech habits or at least my tech habits shove into my face this idea of like you need to constantly consume to distract yourself from what's going on outside but also here's all the bad news you want to distract yourself from so I'm just switching between

vinted and like Instagram and then you've got this feeling of powerlessness on top of it like political power powerlessness that I am constantly battling like my vote doesn't matter that my emails to my mp to stop the arms trade to israel go unread like the marches of millions of people protesting genocide we're out there every week and the politicians are barely listening and there seem to be such obvious fixes that could be made to the world in the short term and the long term that would massively improve the quality of life for so many people but there's little interest in doing this and i just have so much circular thinking about a secure future and i can't envisage it maybe it's my age

um but what i wondered was how do you stop yourself falling into a pit of despair because that's not really politically or individually useful but what's the what's the alternative what's the fucking alternative ah comrade this is i think takes us to the classic gramsci aphorism about pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will and that's a really difficult place to be. It's difficult to be in touch with the reality of the world and also feel like you've got the capability to change it, that you've got the facilities for that big man. And so for me, if you reflect on this and think about what things were like in the past, I actually think previous generations did have to deal with the sense of there not being a future. Because it wasn't that long ago that everyone was utterly convinced that they were going to die in a nuclear winter because the Cold War was going to turn hot.

And you reflect on the writings of the 15th and 16th century, everyone was like, yeah, no, the end of days is going to happen literally literally any minute like antichrists everywhere false prophets everywhere bad kings everywhere tyrants the end of days is coming what was different about previous generations wasn't that they had this real sense of there being an optimistic future i actually think there was quite a narrow window of time in which people thought that it was the sense that there was quite a narrow window of time in which people thought that it was the sense that there was meaning so your problem isn't that there's no future and that's how you feel the problem is well what meaning can there be around that because before end of days no future that's fine because there's god right like you know nuclear war you know future, but that's fine because I can kind of make a life for

myself, right? I can do it. I can have a family. I can have a house. I can have this kind of, you know, financial security for myself. Whereas for you, it's like, okay, no future. And also none of these other things around you, right? Really secular society and also really financially insecure society. So what do you do about that? The answer that I've been coming to for myself is to think about what kinds of community I can build. And that's not just about having really good friends, though that's a really significant ingredient. It's what do you do with those friends that feels politically meaningful? How can you rely on that community for meaning making and also to talk politically and plan politically together? Like one of the things that I've realized quite recently is that, you know, for a communist, I didn't do a lot of communist stuff.

I did a lot of social democratic stuff. And I was like, oh, fuck, I've been doing that for years now. And that made sense when you could have had a social democratic government, you know, led by Jeremy Corbyn, but now you don't even have that. Like, what does it mean for me to be a communist? And I couldn't work that out by myself. You know, that would be completely paralyzing and immobilizing if I was simply to consider that question by myself as an individual. So what I've done, I've got a group of friends where we've realized that we've got this kind of shared political experience. Then we go, all right, what do we do about it? And you sort of strategize together um and so yeah i think that you know in terms of how i'd

respond to your intrusive thought i think you're right to identify that there is a lack of faith in the future where you're wrong is to assume that there was faith in the future for previous generations so what i would suggest is what can you learn from those previous generations in terms of what they did about it what can i learn from previous they had like you said you talk about this political organization what i feel has occurred though for a lot of people our age is we haven't had the frameworks of political organizing that perhaps existed in the past and you know traditions that you're tapping into such as communist consciousness raising that's like a very clear through line but a lot of people who maybe in the past would have joined some sort of group whether that was I don't know the local Labour Party meeting or they'd have just

gone to like Women's Institute there would have been some sort of social group for them to tap into but I feel like our generation is really atomized and that's not to say there's no one in our generation who doesn't go out and have uh you know group activities that relate to sort of their place in local community or political community but I think more than in the past don't do that and there's a lack of like intergenerational intergenerational relationships as well that I see part of this is to do with the movement patterns I think if you live somewhere where you've grown up or you live in like a smaller place you're more likely to have those connections but if you live in like a big city and you're moving around a lot being evicted a lot then you're not going to form those same steady

groups or things will change quite easily I just see this complaint as well of like loneliness I don't particularly feel lonely um I have to say I feel I feel quite okay on that front but I think that the loneliness does play into the wider thing I'm talking about which is this idea of like trying to find meaning I think what you said is is very good advice and that you have to find something either bigger than yourself or something that connects you to the local community but I don't think a lot of people know how to go about doing that I did a panel recently with um several of the radical feminists who produced art and agitprop

that's currently on exhibition in the Tate Britain, which is called Women in Revolt, the exhibition. And one of the questions from the audience was like, how did you form these feminist workshops? How did you form these feminist groups? Can we get a step by step, play by play? Because they just didn't know how to do it. Like, how do you come together

there's this and that initial step of like getting people together there's some big block on it or there's like this idea that no one will come or you just people will flake out and often they do um i think that's true i mean one of the things that i've been doing quite deliberately is i've been listening to the entirety of mike duncan's Revolutions podcast and it's fucking sick because it takes you through all these different revolutions in history from like the French Revolution to like the Bolivarian Revolution. I can't wait to get started on the Russian Revolution. No spoilers, please. I don't want to know what happens to the Tsar. And it gives you the sense of what it might have been like to navigate the political climate at the time

and why people made decisions that they did, even if those decisions turned out to be, in the words of Talleyrand, worse than a crime. It was a mistake. And I think that that's been quite useful for thinking about the ways in which people just sort of did shit. And yes, there were structural reasons for why that might be easier, right? People are much more tied to neighborhood, were a lot less atomized by technology if you wanted to interact socially you had to get out and do that in cafes and in salons and it sort of made me think yes we are at structural disadvantages but we need to get over ourselves a bit like take the risk of being embarrassed and trying something

that might not work like loads of shit didn't work in the history of political struggle more things didn't work than did work right and sometimes you just hit upon that sweet spot of like you know political opportunity where most of it is dumb luck and maybe something happens another really really great book for thinking about what it's like to be someone who wants to completely change the world around you is hillary mantel's a place of greater safety and it's about the french revolution and i read it because i knew nothing about the french revolution i didn't study history unlike you so i was like i've just got a big old gap between the tudors and now and i should probably find out what happened in between those things. And it's written from the perspective of three of the most famous

revolutionaries of the period, George Danton, Camille Demoulin and Maximilien Robespierre, who I stand by, the only thing that he got wrong was going mad, but actually he did have to do a lot of guillotining and that was probably necessary um that's my spicy opinion for the week um but again it gives you the sense of what it was like to be people you know what it was like to try and form these political relationships and i did find it really really inspiring so i was like okay well like these guys literally had to like set up a salon and like have a you know wealthy patron you know the comp de mirabeau i've got you know whatsapp broadcast lists i do have technology that could make this available to me the reason why i'm not doing it is because i'm scared of failure and you just have to be a

bit less scared of failure because doing nothing you're failing already you're failing all the time anyway at least doing something you have a little chance of success you know i wonder what my question is like what something should i be doing also if you're someone who isn't maybe doesn't consider themselves as like political as us but still has the same issues of feeling like there's no future or they're like blocked off from the things they'd want to access where do you go then what kind of group do you form then or what kind of things do you look to for trying to bring some meaning back into your life when all the world is telling although it's

not all the world when it feels like all the world and that's part of the problem it feels like all the world even if it actually isn't is telling us that the two things first of all there's nothing for you you're not going to buy a house you've got all these things closed off you're not going to be able to go back into adult education or do any of this stuff it's too expensive sorry sorry peasant and then the other thing is saying but if you buy this new rare beauty blush you'll feel really good for at least 10 minutes yeah and part of that is cultivating, and this is a very unfashionable word, self-discipline. Like I've been trying to do it because I've noticed that when I feel down, I start scrolling consumer products and I find it very soothing somehow. And once I realized that I

was doing it, I was like, how fucked up is that? Right? How fucked up is it that when I feel a sense of dread, sadness, purposelessness, I want to buy something, right? Like capitalism, like it's got me. I can't remember who it was, but it was someone in Nixon's White House used to famously have a poster which said, if you got them by the balls, the hearts and minds will follow. It's like capitalism got me by the balls and then my heart and my mind followed, right? I'm just sort of this, you know, horrible trapped lab rat. But, you know, unlike a lab rat, we humans have capacity for self-reflection and understanding.

You can identify what your thought patterns are. And if you can identify what your thought patterns are and if you can identify what they are you can start to try and change them um one of the things that you said in our last episode and i really really took to heart is like i think you just think about yourself too much and it's about i think what you what you identified is like the immobilizing power of rumination, right? There's always a million reasons not to do something, right? There's a million reasons not to do something. And the person who like I really feel a bit inspired by is my partner's got this ability to have an idea and do the idea right and he just does it all the time and he's like set up loads of different organizations and he just likes to watch them go and I'm like how do you how do you do it you know because in my head I'm thinking

about all the reasons not to do something and he's just like oh it doesn't really bother me that much like it's just that simple it doesn't really bother me that much and his theory and i think this is a good one and this is helpful for people who maybe don't have loads of experience in political organizing by the way i don't have loads of experience in political organizing either i just talk shit for a living and then people go oh you must be an activist i'm like no no i'm a shit talker there's a key difference activists are useful his theory is that all you need is two mates right with two mates you can do anything right three people who are friends can start anything and i think there's a lot of truth in that what if your two mates every time you present them with an idea are feeling so full of hopelessness

that they are like oh couldn't be done couldn't be be done. What do you do then? What if it's just one mate on your own? You know, I just don't think that that can't be changed. I've been changed by it. I've been changed by having these like human golden retrievers in my life who are just like, try something today. It's changed me. What you're saying here is is really to cultivate more relationships with delusional straight men who get shit done yes they are so useful you need to we this is something

this is actually something that i think about a bit which is harnessing the power of and i'll say entitlement here but i don't always mean entitlement in a totally negative way but i think a lot of men are socialized to have an entitlement to wanting to carry out ideas that they have and this is something I learned from past boyfriends and I took on some of their skills and things that I used to be really bad at like I don't know even go I get social anxiety about even going up in a restaurant and worrying that I'd be embarrassed if they said they would have a table so I wouldn't go into restaurants and ask or like ring up and through like partners I learned to have that sort of like bullishness not in bullishness it's not rudeness

it's like being able to go and ask for things just simply ask for things ring up people so now when I travel on my own and you know foreign countries it's so much easier for me to navigate the world because I just think what would my ex-partners do and they would just go fucking ask is the restaurant open even if it looks closed they'd be like oh what's good where's good to eat around here they would ask questions they would they would feel that entitlement to actually interacting with another human being that i think sometimes i just don't have and i'm like why on earth would and it's like even if you get rejected for something it's okay um but yeah this this is about like the entire discussion you're right it's about trying to find meaning in my life and

knowing that that meaning might not bring like widespread social revolution and i can't carry that on myself um but it's not i don't i i want to say that's not just meaning for me like when i look around and see how unequal society is and how many people are just stuck in a hole it's like how can i do something that will change that and i need to accept that i don't have and this is something that from a group that i've started actually going to for other reasons which is you don't have power over other people you you can't you are powerless over other people you can only try and affect it yourself um and you can build community through that but it's remembering that you know you can't expect to change everything

you need to go to small scale. That's actually a lesson that big media companies should learn because I see so many big media companies start with like loads of capital, loads of funding, claiming that they're going to change the face of media and then they shut down within a year. Whereas when you start small scale and build it up,

that's how you actually do something sustainable that has longevity. So maybe that's the lesson I'm also taking away. Thank you, Ash. That was very useful. I think you're totally right to embrace the power of delusional straight men because also like you know in terms of the organization that we were delusional gay men too to be fair like oh yeah yeah like everyone's fucking delusional but like but like the most

delusional person in our entire organization is aaron bostani and i just remember like every time we had a meeting this was like in the early days when like we were all volunteers nobody got paid we were paying for kit out of our own pocket like our strategy meetings would be like in a costa like and Aaron would be like we're gonna outlast buzzfeed we're gonna outlast vice and I'm like what the fuck like what are you talking about and he was right so like sometimes you do just need to be like ambitious and delusional you know like napoleon conquered europe he then like you know was exiled twice to two different islands but he believed he was a man of destiny i will take think like napoleon i'm going to take the delusional initial confidence but i would like to jettison some of

the other things that come along with the examples that you have cited of delusional initial confidence but i would like to jettison some of the other things that come along with the examples that you have cited of delusional straight men and i would like to learn from them their mistakes that they might not even realize are mistakes so i don't want to be end up exiled although i'd happily be exiled to saint lucia if anyone is thinking about it. Shall we do a problem? Let's solve someone's problem. I think it's my turn to read it out. I would love to hear you read it out.

Let your dulcet tones wash over me. I don't think my tones are dulcet, but that's a problem for another day. So we do have a name for this segment. It's called I'm in Big Trouble. So this was a listener submitted dilemma for I'm in big trouble I've been married about two years cishet dynamic for context our relationship has always been quite up and down and we have almost broken up several times always initiated by me because he has done or said something I find unkind and or disrespectful.

And when I tell him I am upset by that, he just says it's my problem. He's a very upfront, blunt person, which is attractive to me, who does not have a lot of empathy, less attractive. He had a very difficult time growing up with some pretty difficult circumstances, which I do try and take into account, but it's hard to zoom out when he is making me cry and then getting angry with me for crying. This is my biggest issue. He doesn't care when he upsets me, in fact it makes him angry as he feels I should manage my emotions better. Recently he asked for my help with some DIY which I was happy to attempt. I wasn't physically capable of doing exactly what he wanted and although I was trying he was getting more and more impatient. He was not being kind. I told him he was upsetting me

and if he carried on he would make me cry and unfortunately this is what happened. He said if I couldn't stop crying I should just go inside and I told him if he couldn't stop being a dick to me I wouldn't be able to stop crying so I left. Once away from him I stopped crying and got busy with other stuff and emotionally moved on. He spent the rest of the day with a grumpy attitude until I asked him what was wrong and he had a big go at me for acting the way I had. His take on it is that he had not made me cry, I had made myself cry and I should have managed that better so I could help him get the job done. He doesn't think he has anything to apologise for, in fact he thinks I should apologise for throwing a fit and acting unreasonably.

I'm mainly upset about the fact that he doesn't care that he upset me, if that makes sense. I understand everyone acts like a dick sometimes and that doesn't mean you are a dick intrinsically, but if you love someone and they are crying, surely you should care about that, whether you think the cause is stupid or not.

This was a few weeks ago and things have been okay-ish since, although I haven't been very happy. We didn't repair, we just brushed it under the carpet. Today we agreed a division of tasks. He then changed his mind about it and wanted me to do his tasks because mine took less time than expected and he was tired. I didn't immediately agree and he got annoyed. All of the above came up again and he threw lots of other stuff at me like he thinks I don't ever do anything unless it is fluffy and I don't ever do challenging things. I told him if that was true we shouldn't be married which is true but obviously wasn't helpful. I asked for examples and felt like they were all bullshit so anyway I'm upset and disillusioned with him and my marriage and right now i'm just feeling like really i could walk away but because he is telling me i'm wrong

and how i'm feeling and reacting i'd like an outside perspective please sorry this is long my over-detailed explanations of things are another thing he gets annoyed about moya i kind of want to start with you because you are married. Here's what I think. And I'm not sure how popular this is going to make me. I think our listener already knows what's going on, which is that they're two people with completely different communication needs and they're driving each other crazy. Neither person is willing to change what their threshold of good communication is and they probably shouldn't be together. But what this person is asking for, both from their husband and from us is confirmation that they're the victim and the

husband is an aggressor of some kind now i don't feel comfortable saying whether that's true or not i obviously only have this little snapshot from a relationship what i'd say is that if your need is to be affirmed as a victim within an ongoing dynamic that's not healthy from you right you are looking for a kind of affirmation of your abject status and i think there's something in that and you already know that this is the thing which which isn't really working out and you know this this listener keeps saying, you know, I want him to acknowledge that he upsets me. Well, why? Why? What you, you know, what you should be wanting for him to stop upsetting you and for you guys to find a way of communicating together that works for you. That's not what you're asking for. You're asking for him to agree that he's hurting you. for. You're asking for him to agree that he's hurting you. And that might be valid, might not be valid. But I think that the hard truth is that you're not going to get that. And even if you did, I don't think it would change the situation. So I think that the writing is on the wall here, but also that our listener is bringing something to this dynamic, which is the desire to be recognized as a victim.

And that's something to examine. I don't know. What do you reckon? I think it's really interesting. I had similar conclusions to you, but I was in a relationship that had, at least from the description here, a very similar dynamic. And I felt very similar when I was in that relationship. I felt like my partner didn't like me. I felt like everything I did annoyed them. I felt like I was constantly being picked up for small things I felt like that when I was communicating uh I was being constantly misheard and I was like just surely like if you

care about me why would you not hear what I'm saying and it was only after we ended that relationship could I look back at my communication and look back at the way I'd also behaved in that relationship and kind of get where some time he was coming from I didn't think it made what he did right I didn't think it made how he treated me a lot of the time fair but I could also see where I had come to him with a style of communication that didn't work at all how I'd been kind of immovable in some ways how I hadn't been able to keep I the way I thought was communicating was completely different to what I actually was um I thought I was being so like this this this this is what I'm saying and actually what I was saying is the way I talk now which is a complete garbled stream of consciousness that often I hadn't sorted out what I was actually

trying to say and only at the end of the relationship did I know it was the end because I'd really worked on that stuff and I was behaving exactly the way he said he'd wanted me to behave and communicate and still he found new he even acknowledged that he said you are now doing all the things i see how hard you're trying i'd gone and got you know he'd requested i did certain things um for the sake of our relationship such as uh get tested for adhd which i went and did um i'd really worked my communication style i'd really i calmed down I listened I didn't impulsively react to stuff and he recognized all that and then he found something else that was a problem with me and said oh this you know you're working really hard on this but this and that's when I knew it was over

that's when I knew it wasn't just a case of our communication and like we could work at this it was a case of this relationship we were we were incompatible but also he didn't want to be in the relationship and deep down i didn't want to be in the relationship anymore so i think about that what i think about this letter as well is you write that you've initiated breakups quite a lot um i'm interested to know how long you were together before you got married uh the how many times you've initiated what stopped you breaking up on those occasions um what made you decide that you'd want to get married how long has this dynamic been persisting um because i think when people think about you know marriage and that commitment and what would end a marriage

this idea of like these big bombastic things but it can simply be that you are in a relationship where every day you feel a small amount of misery at some point. That for me is enough to say like you should not be in the relationship if you every day there is a small amount of misery and tension and friction that's not going away. The thing I would advise though is if you want to walk away from this marriage with no regrets, you do have to try and make those changes yourself first within the marriage. And I think there should be some effort to really sit down together and try and see if this is something where you can both work on your communication, like a three month probationary period or something like that that where you are both really trying and you're both really trying to hear each other if it doesn't work out after that you know that you need to properly

leave but i think if you leave on these terms you won't have had any growth and you won't have had you won't have done the inner work that means you can leave knowing and being able to see the flaws that you've brought to this as well and be able to see the ways that your communication might be contributing to the dynamic and it will leave you off in a poorer position if you don't actually try that might sound counterintuitive i'm not sure and one other thing is um there's that theory of you know gotman's theory of the four horsemen of uh end of relationship and i think it's contempt defensiveness criticism and stonewalling and within this there's definitely contempt there's definitely criticism and i mean from him and from you i don't know i think there's defensiveness as well

i don't know about stonewalling but you aren't happy and the question is will you ever like I can't say whether you will ever be happy within this marriage or whether he will but I do think there has to be some effort to try and change because then at least you can leave if you end up leaving with the knowledge that you have grown and changed and been able to recognize your own role within those dynamics so in future relationships friendships etc you can go forward knowing that you really fucking tried that's just that's just my approach i think that's really good advice because you know maybe if i was to reflect on what i was saying what i'm saying is that this marriage can't continue. So that either means that your marriage changes,

how you communicate changes, how you are together changes, or you're not together anymore. I think there's two things that I would add. And this is, again, thinking about where am I in this? Not just how can I invite other people to share my perception of what's wrong with my partner, but where am I in this? If you're saying, we've almost broken up several times, always initiated

by me because he has done or said something I find unkind and or disrespectful, that's not a breakup. That's a tactic. That's a tactic to try and get him to agree that something that he has done is wrong by raising the stakes and again I'm not saying that you're wrong in your perception of what he's done but ultimately if you're doing this maneuver again and again of going I need you to recognize me so I'm going to do this bluff of walking away that's not coming close to ending your relationship that's a part of your relationship um and I think something that I'd add is that I do recognize this dynamic from a friend of mine and it wasn't actually with her partner it was with one of her housemates who was very very aggressive and he would shout at her and he would create this

aura of hostility and she would try and make herself so small in the flat that they shared. And it was genuinely, incredibly distressing for her. Really, really distressing. But at the time, what she was saying is, I just want him to recognize the impact it's having on me. And the thing I was saying is like, is like, well, that's a shit horizon. Why isn't it? I want the behavior to change. Why isn't it? I don't want to feel like this. And I think that this is particularly the case with women and because of the ways in which we're socialized into our gender to say, well, I just want to be recognized, right? I can understand you endlessly. I can empathize with you endlessly. I can accommodate endlessly if you recognize me. And I think that that can happen as in the case of my friend, even in contexts where there isn't a romantic or a

sexual relationship or a partnership like a marriage. You know, it's a script of gender that women often find themselves playing out again. And you have to change that script because it's not good for you. It's not going to lead to more happiness if he just recognizes that he's upsetting you, right? Because you're still getting upset. And two, what you're asking for is recognize I'm a victim and you're the aggressor. That drives other people crazy. That does completely drive other people crazy. So what you're ending up with is not a healthy relationship of mutual recognition and support. You're sort of saying, okay, how I reclaim power is for you to admit you've got all the power. How I reclaim power is for you to recognize

that I am a victim and you're a perpetrator and again it's not trying to get into you know how materially true that is but it's observing that that dynamic what you're asking for from him is not a recipe for a happy marriage either for either one of you yeah i don't i don't really have much more to add to this i would just say you both really need to sit down and come up with this short-term plan of how you're both going to try whether that's starting by having a break where you say okay for a week we're both going to go away and really think about this and if he doesn't agree to that well you already know that he's not trying and he doesn't want to try anymore um but on your side there has to be an effort to try and change the communication within your power because as i said if not you will come out of this

with what ash has talked about which is this very entrenched view of a one-way dynamic where he has all the power and you have none uh and that he is always upsetting you and there's nothing that you're bringing to this that contributes to the situation and by that I don't mean that you're wrong in thinking that the way he talks to you and treats you and you know when you're having an argument he's throwing absolutely like you don't ever do this and you always do this and you're turned into this absolute you know demon annoying demon and how that makes you feel that that's wrong but I always think within relationships or relationships that are faltering or failing there is real root and opportunity for growth on your part that you can take from it and then as I said wherever even if you leave the relationship where you end up staying either you stay in a better relationship where you've both worked together

and built something from the ashes of this previous dynamic, or you leave the relationship much more self-actualized, much more resolved with the knowledge of your flaws and faults and how you communicate when you're upset and how in future you can work with that and around that knowledge just greater self-knowledge and that's always a gift whatever happens but I really wish you luck because it's horrible when you're stuck in these dynamics and you feel whether it's true or not you feel disliked and you feel unloved and he might be feeling the same thing but it it it feels awful

and the fact that you've had to write in and say can you tell me if i'm wrong and how i'm feeling reacting says you don't trust any of the emotions around you and going on you're really seeking this external sort of validation and i think if you do the work that we're talking about the work i think if you just have a go at examining the stuff we're talking about, really sit down and treat it and maybe as if it is work, you know, make make the list and all of that. You will feel much more confident in yourself and how you go forward. If you confront the things that you are scared of confronting yourself, like the flaws, we're all scared of looking at our pain and looking at our flaws. I promise it will be worth it, whether you stay in this relationship or not,

but good luck either way. I love Moya's final thought. Shall we wrap it up then? Let's wrap it up with a neat little bow. If you want to share your problems with If I Speak, you can email us at ifispeakatnavaramedia.com. That is ifispeakatnavaramedia.com. That is ifispeakatnavaramedia.com. And if we can, we'll read it out

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