If I Speak - 10: Do I have to be nice to my friend’s partner?

Episode Date: April 23, 2024

Ash and Moya ask if honesty is the best policy when it comes to our friend’s partners, before tackling two dilemmas about unwanted friendship and non-monogamous marriage. Plus: an important new personality test. Catch Moya in conversation with Yomi Adegoke, author of The List, at Intelligence Squared in London on 29 April – use the […]

Hello, If I Speakers! A quick, exciting message from me, Moya. On the 29th of April, I'm going to be interviewing best-selling author Yomi Adegoke, live in London for Intelligence Squared. And in partnership with them, we're giving all If I Speak listeners 25% off tickets. That's right, 25%. If you're yet to read Yomi's amazing novel, The List, it follows a high-profile journalist who's made her name uncovering abuse scandals in the age of Me Too. But when her fiancé is named

in a list of anonymous allegations, online politics becomes personal. I read this book the moment it came out and it is massively thought-provoking. I'll be interviewing Yomi about life lived online social justice victim blaming trust and forgiveness to get 25 off tickets for the event click the link in description or visit the intelligence squared website at intelligence squared.com forward slash attend and use the code speak 25 i'll repeat that use the the code SPEAK25. See you there. hello welcome to another episode of if i speak our personal platform for airing our grievances this is a very snotty moya loathing acclaim and with me is an equally croaky ash sarkar ash happy birthday for very recently 21 again well my brain might be 21 again but my lungs

are those of like a 60 year old coal miner so broadcasting live from the respiratory ward of my house wait Ash tell us about your birthday come on give us some details what did you do okay all right so I turned 32 yesterday um in a couple of days, it's going to be the big get together. So I get taken for a fancy dinner by my husband and then just meeting lots of friends at the pub. I organized it all really last minute because I hate organizing stuff for my birthday. It just makes my skin crawl. I do not enjoy it. I do not like it, but I do like seeing my friends. all I do not enjoy it I do not like it but I do like seeing my friends what I did last night though was I just had like a small dinner with my husband and two of my best friends so one is a woman who I've been friends with since we were 11 and the other is a woman who I've been friends with since

literally like the first day of the first week of uni and she said something which I thought would be good to share with the audience of If I Speak which was some excellent dating advice. What she said was that you should always go for someone whose instincts are better than their principles and it's so simple and so good because one of the things that she said is that you know before she was with her you know now fiance she was always getting with guys who would trumpet about how good their politics were and sort of how feminist they were and all of this kind of thing and would end up treating her quite badly leaving her like very very hurt and the thing that she realized was rather than going for someone who can brand themselves as a moral person just make your judgments about whether or not they're nice

so simple so effective i mean i think what you're saying there is actions speak louder than words i think not just actions though it's about how someone puzzles through something that's challenging what are they bringing in to solve a problem and what she's saying is look for someone who's going to feel their way through it rather than having some very dogmatic abstract principles that they're going to apply instincts better than principles oh i mean this to apply. Instincts better than principles. I mean, this could apply to the whole of the left, couldn't it? I've got some questions for you, not to be like happy birthday, but my birthday present to you is three questions because it's time for 73. I thought I was asking you questions. Oh, wait, I thought I was asking you questions. That's fine. You can ask me questions. I can ask you questions that's fine you can ask me questions I can ask you questions okay let's just

ask each other questions wait wait we should probably decide who okay let's play a quick game of rock paper scissors okay to decide who asked the questions okay on three and we say what our thing is so that people can hear ready brilliant ready one two three paper ah scissors okay you didn't i mean you win anyway but you didn't say i mean i held it up to the camera no one can see this is an audio podcast all right i win you win you win i get to ask you yeah three questions in the spirit of vogue 73 questions minus 70 because we have neither the time nor the intellectual property rights. I've got three quickfire questions to help the listeners get to know my illustrious co-host, Moya Lothian-McLean, just that little bit better. So number one, what is your urban spirit animal?

Examples include bin fox, parakeet, tube mouse, and pigeon with a manky foot. Are we allowed to say spirit animal anymore? I'm not sure that people like that very much. What urban animal do I feel most aligned to? This is a really great question. I'm disgusted by most urban animals, which is very animal purist of me i'm from the countryside and the fox is there we have like big bushy tails uh the rats there i don't see crucially the wood pigeons are not manky they're just wood pigeons what is my favorite urban animal i don't like

urban animals um can i say cats Am I allowed to say domestic cats? Or is that a cop-out? Do I have to... Do you know what? It'll be tube mice. Tube mice are the cutest ones because when you're coming back late and you see them all running on the tracks

and they're very happy and it's really peaceful. I like tube mice, but I sort of despise every other classically urban animal, unfortunately. What is your favorite smell have i asked you this i definitely have because i think about it all the time you asked me favorite flower oh because i was do you know what's really weird this week when i thought i was doing the

questions i was gonna ask you favorite smell and then i scratched it because i thought i'd asked it you uh my favorite smell oh it changes all the time oh this is so hard uh i did make a list of them at one point creosote was up there um and fire lighters i love the smell of fire lighters uh there is actually a candle a specific candle it's called last light and it's from my favorite candle company which is called the botanical candle company and it's this it's seasoners as well it's this really like musky woody scent and that's one of my favorite smells of all time. But I think if we're just going for straight smells, it's going to be like creosote, firelighters,

citrus of some sort, some sort of citrus with like a lemony smell. I love that. And the smell of sort of like really clean, a particularly clean like laundry smell or like green, green green clean smell i can't describe it sort of cucumbery elements of cucumber uh those are my favorite i love woody smells and i love like gasoliney smells and i like citrusy smells those are the three sort of pillars of my

my scent palette great for your birthday i'm gonna get you some horrendous chemicals and amazing last question how would you describe the role you play in your friendship group oh oh oh oh i'm so glad you asked this because we just came we just had okay so my friend emma just told me about a new axis that she has um and the axis is okay this is for you as well so vertically there's two sides to it okay one side of the axis is mummy and the other side is baby then there's a horizontal axis and you've got surf and you've got tyrant so i am a mummy tyrant so the mummy is the one who like does all the caring and the sort of like, have you got sandwiches? Like I've got the loo roll. Don't worry, we're at a festival.

But also the tyrant is the one who's like, we're doing this, we're going here. I'm the one reading out the directions. I've bought the tickets. Like I've mapped it all out. We're doing this. I'm a full mummy tyrant in both my friendships and relationships.

What are you? I'm a mummy serf. Mummy ser friend dave emma's emma's boyfriend is also mummy surf and it's so sweet mummy surfs are great mummy surfs are really nice because they're really caring but they'll also just kind of do what you say um yeah i just i'm not i'm not particularly decisive and i don't like playing uh leadership roles about what to do and that's why i hate organizing my own birthday hate doing it what's your what's your husband baby tyrant this is a this is i would say baby tyrant good match good match you complement each other really well there um yeah so i'm a mummy

tyrant in my friendship group i'm a mummy tyrant and that tells you all you need to know we should do more of these axes and quadrants because i've got a lot i've heard of some great ones okay maybe we should bring that in that's that's a new thing and if people at home if you have an axis that you want us to put people on then send it in and we'll do some axis plotting where can they send it in moya they can send it in too if i speak at navarra media.com that's all one word if i speak at navarra media.com beautiful ira glass couldn't have recited that better god he has such a great voice doesn't he i mean it's just and it's weird because it's squeaky so it shouldn't be good but he's like i was sitting in the studio like ir tell me more um I also love how vague the intros are so

this American life is always like this week on this American life we talk to some people who try some things yeah others who don't there's more coming up that's an incredible Ira Glass impression how did I not know you could do that we need to start I think I can do a decent Ira Glass I can do a decent Lana Del Rey when I don't have a cold and I can do a pretty good Bill Clinton oh wow that's all the three that you really need um oh we need to we do need to move into the next segment but I did find out something interesting the other day which is it's very hard for people from certain countries to do different accents because our tongues because of the way our languages sound we're used to making different sounds so for example australians can find it really easy to do an american accent because they've they like

the australian accent has so many different like sounds or whatever they can they can kind of reshape it more easily whereas the american accent is so much like flatter than the Australian. Sorry if I'm butchering this, but Margot Robey was talking about it. That the Americans find it harder to do it the other way. But the Australians, that's why the Australians are so good at different accents. That's so interesting.

Are there noises, so not noises, are there sounds from different languages that you can do? Like, can you roll your R's? No, I can't. And this is why I can't speak Spanish. But I did watch a TikTok video the other day which sort of started teaching me how to do it and I for the first time I could do like a

like a at the top of my thing but I need to practice like every day to be able to do it but I can't roll my r's um which is a real failing you sounded like a rattlesnake. I don't know what language you were trying to approach me. Okay, let's go on to our thoughts. Your thoughts, in fact, Ash. Do you have a thought for me? I have a very intrusive thought. My intrusive thought is this. How honest should you be when you don't like your friend's partner and just because I know that my friends do listen to this this isn't a reflection

of anything that's super urgent or contemporary going on within the friendship group but it is something that has come up again and again in various ways so there have been friends who've dated people who I don't think have treated them well and you can be kind of a bit more honest about that particularly when your friend is turning to you because they're hurt and they're confused and they want advice. So sure be sensitive about it but in that case I'll pretty much always say what I think just maybe with a bit of padding. Where I find it difficult is where a friend is dating someone and you think they're rude or cold or mean or a bit weird or kind of a bit jarring, maybe a bit artificial, a bit fake. I find it really difficult to know if I should say what

it is I think about this person, particularly because I'm in a really committed relationship. And I'm not saying that once you're in a committed relationship you're on Mount Olympus and everything's fine it's just that the dynamic is a bit different when you're talking to someone who's you know trying to find love and maybe resents the advice that they get from their coupled friends particularly when it's unsolicited um it's also difficult when there's a level of commitment involved between your friend and the partner who you don't rate and yeah there are times where i think that lots of people have experienced this a friend of yours is dating someone who's got zero interest in their friends who've got no curiosity about the social world they don't make an effort to convey warmth or even a desire to be in the same room um

and yeah i know this sounds bad but sometimes there is something quite satisfying about when they do eventually break up and you can take the silencer off and you can just let it ring um and your friend can be like oh you know this person's so mean and you're like yes and here is a very long list of all the ways in which i observed this and couldn't tell you when you were together but yeah like not gelling with with your partner's wider social world that doesn't necessarily mean you're treating your partner badly and I guess what I'm saying is like how honest should you be when what you want to say to your friend is like your boyfriend or your girlfriend is treating me shoddily and I don't like it oh this is a difficult question because I am sort of I'm gonna say a diseased thing I'm

gonna say one of my disease things which is this has never bothered me it doesn't bother me when a friend's partner doesn't want to be part of the social group and is basically non-existent I like them that way i don't want them around out of sight out of mind not interfering with my friendships unless it's some big occasion like a birthday when it's nice to see them with my friend other than that like i don't give a fuck i don't give an heck uh they could they may as well be dust but that's just my own selfishness and not wanting my relationships to people to change. There are partners that I've met who are really lovely, but I think again, because of my own issues, when I relate to people in a couple, I get quite, I don't like it. I don't like relating to people as a package because I find myself, I do tend to

just like put people together and be like, they're're a unit they're a group rather than on their own individual terms there's one new couple actually that I'm thinking of actually I mentioned earlier Dave and Emma who I've recently met and like I don't have that with them I I love hanging out with both of them I think they're amazing um but for like my long-term friends who I've known for ages and ages I hope Dave and Emma don't mind me mentioning the names of this podcast it's all very complimentary um but for my long-term friends who I've known for ages and ages I hope David and Emma don't mind me mentioning the names of this podcast it's all very complimentary um but for my long-term friends I've known for ages and ages and I already have that initial one-on-one bond with I do think there's a there's a territorialness that I have where I don't I don't want some new covenant spoiling the spoiling the gaff I don't want to have to like meet them and also then if I meet them

and I don't like them, that's the fear and I don't like them, then I have to mask it and it's just like this person's around all the fucking time now. You've got to pretend you get on with them. But should you let a friend know that you don't like their partner?

I think unless the partner is doing something aggressively awful to your friend where you think you should be stepping in and trying at least to intervene or the partner has done something really egregious to someone in the friendship group um that could be classed as harmful then i don't think it's your business honestly to really let the friend know when you don't like their partner unless it's directly affecting the one-on-one friendship you have with that person um and that their behavior is changing because of the partner uh but I don't know there's been partners where I'm of my friends

that I've not been like mad about and but I've always made an effort with them and we've had like a civil relationship and usually they just end up breaking up anyway because it's always my fear if you give a friend that if that someone's like that it's my it's my kind of my theory that if someone is like that and they're not nice to their partner's friends or they treat them badly it probably belies a level of contempt I think that will come up in the relationship anyway because they're not really interested in making an effort or getting on or they they can't they're not able to like plug into that side of their partner which is a pretty important side if you have very close friendships and I think that leaks back into the relationship anyway and it's always my theory that if you

just carry on showing like that much love to the person that you're friends with they'll like reflect on their relationship and probably probably decide in the long run when you know inevitably cracks appear that that person doesn't maybe value them as much because I do think I do think it probably does show there's a there's a lack of valuing when you when a partner doesn't want to like as I said involve themselves in their other in their partner's friendships or make an effort with them but I just don't think you should tell them I just do not think you should tell them you don't like their partner like you never know what's going to happen with that relationship and it's not the friendship you have the friendship you have is here the partner is there in my opinion so where I disagree with you is this idea of like keep the partner really really far away i

don't want them participating in the friendship group because i don't want to have to split my time between my husband and my friends and there are actually lots of ways in which being part of a friendship group which includes people who i've known for decades, includes people that he was really close to first, that has made our relationship better. We feel very supported by the community around us. And one of the things that we've worked out is that actually our favorite way to go on holiday isn't just the two of us where we can get a little bit crotchety with each other it's actually to be surrounded by friends um living with friends again really really suits us so i think there are all these ways in which being part of a community just selfishly for me and sharing my community with him has made the relationship a better relationship to be in and

it's also opened up different avenues of support for him um he's developed really close relationships my friends to the point where they're people that he'll also go to for advice and guidance and things and i think that that's been something which has been helpful and again nourishing to our relationship i think on the thing about you know i can accept that you just shouldn't tell a friend when you don't like the person that they're seeing or their partner and that you should wait until you know the last nail has been hammered into the coffin of their relationship to be like and here are all the things that I think about them but there have been times where I've met someone that my friend

is seeing I've thought that they're just not a good person and I've worried for my friend I've met someone that my friend is seeing. I've thought that they're just not a good person. And I've worried for my friend. I've worried for their heart and what's going to happen to it. And then their heart gets put through the mangle, right? It gets completely torn up. And I'm like, oh, like, should I have been more honest here about it because you know when friend was saying so what do you think about blah blah blah and you're like yeah they're really great whereas in your head you're like no I think that they're a real shit a complete turd do you think your friend would listen to you because I don't think they would I think they'd be annoyed because they're not really asking what do you think they're asking for an endorsement and if you just say yeah they're fine they're great or like it was really

nice to meet them that's that is that is what they're asking at this stage and I think if you condemned someone who just been introduced to you the friend would get mad sorry but I'm I think that you don't really have a way out of that position um and also when my friends broke up with partners that I maybe didn't rate that much I haven't ever stuck my knife in that I can think of there's one person who had a relationship with one of my now best friends who I wasn't around for that relationship and only was there in the aftermath of it and I always slag them off but that's because they are I just I just think that they are very very unwell um in the way they relate to people and I will slag them off any chance I get but that's because I do believe that their behavior is actively harmful to my friend um but everyone

else it's like is it gonna help them to slag this person off I can agree with them if they're saying like fuck this person or you know they're such a off? I can agree with them if they're saying like, fuck this person or, you know, they're such a moron. I can be like, yeah, this is really unkind of them. But I probably won't prefer my deep thoughts about their specific badness in my eyes because it's kind of irrelevant.

It's just like, what does your friend think? How can you analyze in a way that will help your friend rather than just putting everything you've thought about this person throughout the relationship onto them because we also don't see all sides of relationship we see what our friends tell us um and i'm usually more focused on how can i help my friend come out of something better than they went in um or with like more love and care than this person has given them um but also yeah on your point as well about like you know introducing your husband to all your friends and having that community i do want to

stress when i say i like it when these partners are at like arm's length if they're people that have come to my friends after i've known them that is my own unwellness that is not normal that is just my pure disease um and me being me being sometimes slightly lazy about changes that's not like that's not like the gold standard that's not something i'm saying that people should approach these relationships with uh and also remember that i am an avoidant who is very like if you what if you break up what happens when you break up as I have had partners that I have integrated into my friendship groups and then we have broken up and they have been very weird in the aftermath with my friends so uh that's that's purely my own sort of like being

burned from those experiences and also sometimes like there's been partners who haven't treated me very well and I've also treated them badly but in when they've been around my friends and integrating those friendship groups then they have tried to almost use my friends as a way to gang up on me in like or belittle me and my friends have like pushed back against this but they have privately said to me oh that incident that happened like when they were trying to you know I felt I felt really uncomfortable with that I felt like they were trying to humiliate you a bit and like they've said things there and it's not been this damning indictment of the person but they have like spoken up and said I did feel uncomfortable with what they just

did I hope you're okay so I think there's ways to talk about individual incidents but until you kind of reading the room, I wouldn't go all in and be like, I hate your partner. Unless, as I said, that partner is doing something that is kind of like you're seeing your friends glow disappear and you suspect the partner might be there,

but you have to let them come to you. You have to be like, how are you? Like, are you okay? What's going on? Like, how are you feeling?

How's the relationship? And not just immediately going guns blazing, being like, I hate this motherfucker. Like, because your friend will not open up. They will close down and they'll feel judged because they are attached to that person do you know something um i have felt the opposite when i've been with a partner who wasn't that nice to me and one of my best friends was like this dude is a fucking egg what are you doing dump him

I didn't dump him in fact the egg broke up with me but the fact that one of my best friends was so blunt about it and also really funny about it it made me feel quite loved and protected because then when I came out of this relationship with my self-esteem in tatters the fact that my friend who you know is not one to sugarcoat things in any aspect of his life had been like I said he was a whopper then and I maintain that he is a whopper now like it actually made me feel very very loved and very very held um I guess what happened with that relationship is also like a cautionary tale for like how much you share with a partner so we weren't together for like a huge amount of time like maybe six months nine months something like that nothing crazy um he broke up with me my self-esteem was quite low

I was like I think I just need some space from you really and I just don't really want to see you around and then he tried to get a job with Navarra behind my back crazy that is crazy what a thing to do what a thing to do and it would have been in a role where he would have had to be working with me directly and I was like what a response to someone telling you leave me alone no exes allowed um yeah i mean do you think the gender of your friend matters there because you mentioned it was a he and i wonder if it's if you're kind of able to be blunter and people are able to feel less judged if it's a man giving a woman advice about like you know they've judged that this man is also awful and you're kind of

more willing to hear it maybe than sometimes when it comes there is a gender dynamic I think sometimes if it is a woman giving a woman advice there is an element of you're judging me for making these choices you think I'm pathetic all of this when the actual friend's trying to speak you out of care but there is that sort of like shadow hanging over it what about a woman giving a man advice because another dynamic which I've observed sometimes is that within a friendship group women can be quite almost possessive of the men in their friendship group and so then when like another woman enters the fray there can be a little bit of like and who are you and so i've always wanted to you know quite consciously play against that and be as like warm and welcoming as possible

that was really difficult when a friend of mine went out with someone who was just so fucking mean like was just 360 degrees bad vibes but I didn't want to say anything to my friend who was like very much in love and I didn't want him to feel judged or belittled or that we didn't get this person who he had very very strong feelings for and it was only when after they broke up I remember like you know we're all at house parties standing outside and it was like me and like two of our two of our other female friends and we're all like waiting like it was a Mexican standoff right guns drawn like who's gonna go first it was like who's gonna be the first to say like i did not like them like i did not like this person they were really mean i don't know it depends it depends on the the man um i do think sexual

ies he plays a role in this like probably it's interesting how i would give advice to a straight man versus I would give advice to a gay man bisexual man who knows I don't want to essentialize it too much but I think as well from the past like I've been more sort of like open and willing to kind of give generous advice to my gay friends because I think they'll listen more whereas my straight friends like sometimes I will give them really detailed long advice and they'll be like, wow, that was so helpful. That was really useful.

And then they just ignore it every time. They ignore it every time and they do what they want. And most people will do what they want anyway, but there is a level of sort of, thank you so much for that, like long advice I asked for and all these questions I asked

and then it's sort of like, la la la la, this time can't, it's not for me because I can't read vibes. Which is fine. But yeah, I think let's just go back to the question and have an ultimate answer. Ash, do you think you should let a friend know when you don't like their partner? I think the answer is no, but I will always want to.

And my answer is 90% of the time, no, unless, as I said, there is a harmful element to the relationship that you think there needs an intervention for. But most of the time, just like outside our mind. Organize stuff without them. That's my policy. Shall we move on to dilemmas yeah let's this is the segment is called please remind me i'm in big trouble can i read out the first dilemma as a treat yeah go on thanks um okay ready i'm a 22 year old guy who's in a bit of a sticky situation with a friendship we met in

school and we used to be fairly close never best friends but we ended up hanging out together a lot we spend time together within our shared friendship group that being said our friendship seems to be based more around circumstance than a really meaningful connection in the past few years i've learned that I don't enjoy spending time with him. Others in the friendship group feel the same way. Hanging out together has felt like an obligation, as if I'm doing him a favour. I don't want to pretend to be his friend anymore. He's done nothing wrong, but I've grown apart from him and I can't remember what made us close in the first place. To address this, I've tried to hang out with him less frequently, hoping he'll get

the hint, but this hasn't happened and he regularly wants to meet up I tend to come up with excuses because I feel awkward with him the current situation keeping the relationship ticking over against my will feels unsustainable he's had some mental health struggles over the years recently his girlfriend couldn't get through to him and was really worried about him. She messaged me to ask if I could check up on him because she thought I was his best friend. This shocked me. While I was obviously concerned about his well-being, I was also uncomfortable learning he considered me his best friend.

This might sound selfish, but his welfare felt like a responsibility that had been placed on me without my consent. The other members of the friendship group were comfortable leaving him behind, but I feel locked in. I think he's in a really dark place and it feels abandoned by those around him what should i do oh so when i was reading this submission i was reflecting on what things were like when I was 21 22 and within my friendship group particularly amongst the men there were there was a lot of depression and there were a lot of 21 year old 22 year old men who were really troubled and really struggling and I think sometimes lacked the language to call on each

other for the support that they needed so instead it was trying to like keep the party bus going and create social environments which were based around fun going out drinking and drugs as well which was maybe not so good if you're having struggles which originate in your brain chemistry in some way and it was only when we all got a bit older that we could start naming things for what they were and rather than treating behavior that was coming from a place of poor mental health as like a kind of erroneous act that kind of came up out of nowhere and made a particular instance volatile seeing it as a pattern and i think that our listener is well away to identifying the pattern and locating it within you know this, this, this person's, you know, poor

mental health and their struggles and being in a dark place. So then the second thing is, well, what do you do about that? I completely understand feeling like, oh my God, I've got this responsibility and it's been placed on me and I didn't ask for it and I don't want it and it doesn't feel like it's coming from my feelings or my desires I think that nonetheless maybe you do have some responsibility but you've got to work out what size it is and how much you can share with other people so I think rather than feeling like everyone's moving on and you know you're sitting there going do I move along with them maybe you can say to your friendship group like I really don't feel good just leaving this person behind and I don't want to deal with this by myself and you guys have to help me you guys have to help me provide like a supportive network for for this guy and to also introduce some conversations about what's

going on with him that he you know opens up about what his needs are because yeah it sounds a bit like you know oh it doesn't feel compatible doesn't feel fun doesn't feel natural difficult to talk to that sort of says to me that this is someone who is just not in a place mentally to be able to like go along with the normal flow of things maybe needs to be met where he is rather than trying to participate in the place where all of you are but yeah i don't know what do you think moya i mean i i think it's difficult because i don't want to pretend that just because someone is mentally unwell that also means that you might be friends with them if they were mentally well you might not like it these could be two separate things that you don't get on

with this person really and you don't have much in common with them or like you don't feel like you have you click on a level where your friends the the letter writer says they met in school so you're thrown together um they were never best friends but they ended up hanging out a lot together that to me says it was more of a circumstantial relationship than a than a friendship uh i don't know if any of them went to university but the friendship has maintained since school and they're now all 22 there's obviously out of your friends you are the one who actually has a bit of empathy and compassion though otherwise you wouldn't be writing this dilemma in because you don't you feel responsible you've taken the responsibility on yourself because you can see everyone else in the friendship group is

kind of happy to just leave it and drop it but you obviously have enough emotional intelligence where that brings you guilt because you know he's in this dark place also his girlfriend thinks that you're his best friend so he's he's for whatever reason you've somehow become the person this guy believes he's closest to or at least tells people he's closest to um and i can understand how resentful you'll feel of that if that's not something you share and also you've been trying to slowly fade the relationship but the thing is because you're slowly fading it and everyone else is just fucked off you're kind of the one left as his best mate his lone reed the question of what should you do i do think if you just ditched him

now you would feel very guilty about it and i'm sure you'd be able to compartmentalize it but it would eat away at some part of your soul and i find with young men that kind of guilt and shame is particularly poisonous because there's often not the language to deal with it. So you just weaponize it and turn it into a failing on the part of the person or resentment, more resentment against that person and to create a narrative where it's kind of,

oh no, it's their fault. It's their fault we did this. I think maybe what needs to happen here is for a few months you gotta you gotta suck it up you gotta suck up that you're gonna have to see this guy a bit you don't have to see him regularly but actually you do have to see him regularly sorry uh but not like lots but I think with the people in my life who I feel an obligation to but I also find very difficult for various reasons um I was given some good advice recently by my house

mate which is like you give what you can and i think there is still part of you that can give stuff there is still part of you that could see this guy but you do as ash says you do need to change the ways that you're doing it so maybe it's just like a coffee to talk about stuff once a month at the same time i would try and find him some new friends it's not your job but if you can bring him to social situations and introduce him to people or like ask what he wants to do or you know does he play a sport or do something like football etc is there places you can try and build up his sense of community introduce him to and then you slip away a bit more while he's got

better structures in place I think that would alleviate your guilt and it shouldn't all be on you I do think you should ask your other friends to help with this and say look if we want to move away from this guy we kind of got to find him a bit more of a support network to do this if we don't think we're equipped to do this then just leaving him behind at this time is not good but it's the question of how do you want to practice community what would happen if you were being left behind how would you feel and how can you maybe get into a better place your early 20s can be very lonely people have moved on stuff you're all changing you do not have to stay friends forever but it's a good time to practice i don't know being that kind of like empathetic generous person that you might want to

be and get rid of that guilt by just you know being proactive about having a friendship with this person that isn't really intense you're not his main point of contact and you say that but you also find him other outlets too where he can maybe get more support or encourage him to go to you know professional spaces etc but i think taking him along to spaces where he might find more of a group that he's got more in common with could help I don't know maybe that is absolutely useless to you it's just my initial thoughts one of the things that I was thinking as you were speaking is that there have been times where I've had some like very intense connections with people who've needed a lot of support within a short space of time and they're not actually people who I see anymore and I don't think that either one of us feel like

oh we really let the friendship down at that point no like they were going through something at a time and I had specific ways in which I could be supportive by being a person that they could meet up with for a coffee and talk about what they were going through and to encourage them to do things like c-cap therapy reach out to other friends and family so on and so forth so that they could build a supportive infrastructure around themselves and that didn't go on forever and ever and ever like actually it was intense at the time I needed support in supporting them but it didn't go on forever and i think you know what you said moira about like a combination of things in their life which could be supportive so yes maybe accessing therapy would be something that'd be really

good for them a talking therapy would be really good but also building in activities which get them outside of the house and outside of their head, I think is good. And I don't want to be one of those people that's like, exercise cures mental health. Like that's obviously very fatuous and I don't want to do that. But collective physical activity is just fucking good. It allows you to connect with other people. It allows you to do something with your body that gets you out of like very dark cognitive rumination and i think can help foster a sense of community and i think especially for men who have relationships with each other which can be centered around circumstances whereas for women circumstance might bring you together, but then you really go

like straight to the bone marrow with each other and sort of like plug in with each other with these really emotionally deep relationships. Sometimes you do need to create circumstances that can hold you together. And so, yeah, maybe encouraging him to do that kind of thing would be really good. And yeah yeah and i think the last thing to say is that what your mental health is like when you're 21 22 not necessarily what it's going to be like forever yeah it gets worse should we go on to another dilemma um do you want me to read out another dilemma or do you want to read it i can read it out go on this is dilemma number two i had a friendship breakup almost two years ago and i still think

about her every day the truth is i was in love with her and i know at some point there were feelings and attraction from her too which we briefly acknowledged but decided not to act on because we lived together with both our partners at the time i was also scared that acknowledging and acting on these feelings would ruin our beautiful and probably a bit intense friendship. We ended up falling out anyway on a hiking trip together. She'd just been through a big breakup and I was trying to be a caring supportive bestie but I got really upset when she ditched me for a tinder hookup for the last three days of the trip. She thought my anger was disproportionate to our actions and we parked the disagreement, saying we would take space and reach out again in a few months. However, neither of us did and I've now moved to London and I'm in a loving and happy ethical non-monogamous marriage.

A year later I saw her by chance and reached out by text but after a very brief superficial exchange, she left me on read but she watches all my Instagram stories and likes my content. she left me on read but she watches all my instagram stories and likes my content i think if i'm honest after our trip i was hurt as a friend but my anger was probably also fueled by being jealous of her lover i still think about her every day but i don't know what to do about it should i write her a letter and tell her i was in love with her i think i probably would start a romantic relationship but i don't think i could bear another intense friendship moya you didn't have a friendship you had an emotional affair that's all there is to say like that wasn't what you had was not a friendship what you had when you say intense friendship you're like i was in love with her we talked about the feelings and

attraction we had we decided not to act on it because we lived together with our partner um i was scared that acknowledging and acting on these feelings would ruin our beautiful and probably a bit intense friendship you already acknowledged it and you it wasn't a friendship you were in love with her she was attracted to you she had feelings for you you went on a hiking trip where the uh what's it called before a volcano erupts where's the geologist where the geologist i don't know whatever the i don't know i'm not a woman in stem woman in stem uh but everything that you felt erupted in a different way if it doesn't come out through sex or like actually uh consummating the feelings it will come out through anger the line between hate and love is very thin it is almost

you know they they switch sides and when you can't express the feelings in the way you want they usually curdle and turn into something a lot more aggressive um and now you'll say like you say i would start a romantic relationship that's because what you had before was just a non-physically consummated romantic relationship with this person and when she was having figures physical relations with someone else you're furious for obvious reasons you're in love with her um but she's not interested she's not interested anymore for whatever reason she might still have feelings for you she might still want that connection to you via your instagram stories but she hasn't responded to any of your reach outs uh she saw you and still did not respond to you um you don't need to write

her letter and tell you tell her you were in love with her she she knows on some level you had feelings for you talked about it you discussed it um she also knew like i'm telling you in a friendship when someone has some sort of feeling for you whether it's romantic or sexual your behavior will give you away i'll just i'll say that i completely agree with you what happened was an emotional affair this isn't a form of friendship this is your ex and one of the things that gets my goat all the time is that people have what i call a legalistic approach to a relationship so they'll go okay well we both sit down and we sign the contract that says you

are my boyfriend you are my girlfriend and that is the status of relationship no a relationship is not defined by the title you give it it's not even defined by whether or not you physically consummate it it's defined by the intensity of your bond the feelings of obligation that you have to one another and the feeling that someone is obligated to you in some way, even if you don't explicitly express it. And I think that's really important because obviously you had some expectations of her here on this hiking holiday for when, you know, you both broke up with your partners and you maybe expected that this would be the opportunity to be in a relationship together whereas when she's saying well no maybe I want something different you know I want to have a tinder hookup instead you experience that as a betrayal a betrayal of

the relationship that you had in an unexpressed way and maybe you had good reasons to feel betrayed maybe you didn't but I think acknowledging that Maybe you didn't. But I think acknowledging that for you, what you're experiencing was a relationship betrayal rather than, you know, a kind of, you know, oh, well, you know, she said we'd spend this time together and we didn't. And as a friend, friends should stand by their commitments. No, no, no, no, no. That is not what happened at all. I think when it comes to like the listener's present situation about I'm in an ethical non-monogamous marriage but I'm still in love with her um I'd like start a romantic relationship couldn't bear another intense friendship speaking as a former side piece to you know a polyamorous man like really that that year that SZA released Control

was absolute fucking chaos man like too many side chick anthems and i took it way to heart speaking as that person what i'd say is that one it's entirely possible to be like ethical non-monogamous polyamorous or whatever and still have a relationship outside of that which is too much for the relationship to bear even though it's permissible there's actually an intensity to it that just means that you can't have that and like maintain your main partnership at the same time and the second thing is that maybe she doesn't want to be a side piece when you've got a marriage and maybe that's not interesting to her yeah i want to add uh i think there is an important difference between and i don't know what the listener has

made it between the ethical non-monogamous marriage and the polyamorous marriage because if you're if i take your word you're an ethical non-monogamous marriage then i don't know whether that includes having full-blown relationships outside. I'm guessing by the fact you said romantic relationship, you are allowed that. But a polyamorous marriage is the one where you do have, and sorry if I am getting this wrong, but I think this is right, where there is more space to have concurrent, really important romantic relationships that are kind of full-blown. You have like your primary partner and other partners, whereas ethical non-monogamy tends to speak more kind of to smaller sexual affairs as far as I'm aware. I think that's important, but it's obviously important to you that you're like, it's all ethical. It's fine. It's ethical now because we've gone non-monogamous.

It's cool. I'm presuming before you weren't non-monogamous, which is why you were saying, no, we were friends then we were friends and it's so fine we were just friends um I think what you need to look at now is like she doesn't want contact or she doesn't want to have the relationship you envisage um because you've reached out she doesn't want to talk to you but you need to think about okay you're still in love with her or you still have a fantasy about a relationship with her or what would that be um and you miss her and how are you going to deal with those feelings how are you going to live like keep living no with the knowledge that this romantic relationship is not forthcoming and we could be so wrong you might

send her a message and be like hey i want to shack up with you as well and she might be like that's all i've ever wanted to hear but i'm just guessing the fact she left you on red that is not something she wants to sign up for that she's not ready for that or she just doesn't want that so you need to think about how you can stop thinking about her every single day um because you're fixated and you're finally admitting that you were in love with her or that you still are in love with her. And this reignition of seeing her again has just made you realise that what happened was you took space and it wasn't,

like you might have ended the friendship or whatever, but there was no ability to process the feelings. There was, because none of it was out in the open, you didn't get to like really understand what was going on between you you got no answers and instead your brain has been filling the gap and what it's filled the gap with is this idea of like the love that you had for this person the fact it was unconsummated i think i think maybe you just need to have sex and then it'll be fine maybe that's actually the answer well maybe maybe maybe it can help you move on but i think the mission needs to be move on rather than get her back in your orbit yeah i

think that's what needs to happen and there's one last thing that i'll say that is um picking up on a theme about you know you never got to make sense of what you were doing this is often the case when two people are dancing the plausible deniability tango, which is you craft so much myth around yourself about how everything is okay. And you're like, oh no, this is just an intense friendship. Oh, it's just really close. Like can really warp your own understanding of what's going on. And it takes time to unpick all of those, you know, knots that you wove around yourself and give yourself that time to do it. It was a relationship and it was a relationship which took place

in very complex circumstances, which were curtailed and shaped by your obligations towards other people. And you never got a chance to look at it in the light at that time properly with each other. So look at it in the light with yourself. On that note, we will be departing from your ears. This has been If I Speak.

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