If I Speak - 119: I know I should forgive my enemies… but what if I don’t want to?

Episode Date: June 30, 2026

* Last call for our show at Crossed Wires in Sheffield this Saturday, 4th July! Final tickets: https://crossedwires.live * A brush with an old enemy brings up big questions about letting go and moving on. What does forgiveness really mean in a secular society? Is punishment ever the answer? Plus: advice for a special one who fears they’ve outgrown their 15-year relationship. Send us your dilemmas: [e-mail] Music by Matt Huxley.

So you might feel that you've had more than enough of us for one summer, but just in case you are a thirsty, thirsty little piggy with your snout at the content trough, why not join us at Crossed Wires Festival in Sheffield on July 4th? You can get tickets at crossedwires.live and there are going to be other live podcasters there as well. So just in case you want to add to your yapping diet, as well as if I speak, they'll be Blind Boy, there'll be bold politics with Zach Polanski and many more to boot.

So go to crossed wires, dot live, and grab your tickets there. This is If I Speak, fresh from melting in our respective sweltering homes. We're in the week before it gets up to 30 again, and it feels amazing. How did you cope with the heatwave? What did you do? So much watermelon.

So this is real like I grew up living amongst Cypriots is that you just get a watermelon, you dice it, you keep it in a big bowl in the fridge. Every time you feel hot, you get more watermelon. Lunch is a watermelon feta and mint salad. Watermelon was really very key. What about you? We discovered that if you open all the windows, it makes a wind tunnel. Yes.

Cross breeze. Yeah. So we made a wind tunnel, but because the wind tunnel tends to slam doors, we had to prop every door open. Yeah. So we made a wind tunnel. We also went to the parks for shade. So we went and the parks were completely empty. People weren't sunbathing because it was too hot to sunbathe.

So we did some shading. And I actually just got back from Marseille on the Thursday. So I came back and I came off the plane. It was the exact same temperature I just left, but with no sea. Yeah. And I thought, oh, this is hell. Someone said that London heat is like the air that comes out the back of a bus. Oh.

It is. It stinks. We were walking down Rye Lane and my boyfriend just kept pointing out all the different smells, like some sort of strange dog. Like a dog that could talk. Like that's if a dog could talk. Yeah, he was like, fish, piss. Shit.

And I said, good dog. We don't need to do that. Good dog. Good dog. We don't need to know. We can all smell it. We can all know what the spells are. But I just wanted you to be aware. I've got some questions for you though. And I want to answer them.

They were, this is the best that my sluggish heat brain can do. Actually, I was wondering this yesterday because we were, we cycled everywhere because that also helped us cool down. Create your own breeze. Exactly. And I remembered, Ash, that during the pandemic, your husband did something very loving with you, which was... Anal. No.

Sorry, I'm joking. That is also loving. It's also not true. Well, we all said it now, haven't we? And he taught you how to ride a bike. He did. And I was wondering, do you still ride that bike? I do, but it's a different bike.

So the first bike I got was a fixed gear, lime green, with orange tires and an orange saddle, which I loved. But then the far right circulated pictures of me on the bike and were like runner over if you see it. And because it was so distinctive, I was like, oh, there is actually kind of like a non-zero chance of that happening. So I got a less distinctive bike, but that doesn't mean I love her any less because she comes with gears.

I do like gears. And also she's got quite a chunky tire, which I like. So not like a full-on like BMX tire, but it's not, I find like, you know the bikes with like the really narrow ones and like drop handlebars. Yeah, the road bikes. I don't like that. I don't like that. I don't like that. I feel very vulnerable and wiggily.

I also have a non-road bike and she's quite heavy. but I do think that's why my ass suddenly got massively bigger during this summer because I started riding her everywhere and suddenly I had huge thighs and a great butt again Yeah, that's the thing is that if you want, if you want Big Bunda, no road bike Yeah, you've got to have a hefty bike Okay, I'm glad to hear you're still riding your bike That's really nice

Because I was like, I wonder if Ash still rides her bike Okay, cool Next question Ash of two summers ago Would she be pleased with the way this summer is shaping up for you. Ooh. Two summers ago, what was going on two summers ago?

Two summers ago, I was mentally a mess. So, yes. I mean, the thing is, I would say the one thing about this summer, and this is learning, is that I did that thing in winter, saying yes to loads of work things in my weekends and not really going, how is this stacking up? And is this both like giving me more time to do things that I want to do,

but also enough time to rest. But I would say that's a relatively minor quibble. What about you? Moyer of two years ago. How's she looking at the moya of Ardai now? I think she'd probably be quite surprised by how there's something stacking up. And not necessarily even pleased. And I think that's a good thing because I've changed a lot.

I think this is a summer of great transition. And the things that I want have changed. and the things that I think are important I've changed and are changing and I think she would be she would be probably quite flummox that I'm bored with all the stuff that she thought was really key I actually had a boogie with one of your friends

and friend of the show Annie Lord on Saturday. Did you? Were you at the party? Actually, oh my God, yes, she mentioned this. She has mentioned this. She mentioned that you there. There was a day party in East London that I went to and also not a friend of the pod but I'm sure a liker of the pod

our beloved colleague Jonah also there so also had a boogie it's almost like everybody in media in London descended was at that particular place

I was at a wedding a beautiful wedding a really beautiful wedding which I did a bit of DJing for oh it was so good they did their own vows I cried several times all right it was really good

yeah final question is your room right now cluttered or clean I would say it is not cluttered but it doesn't feel clean because we didn't hoover it this weekend like we probably should have If you don't hoover it

I cannot believe how quickly I hoovered this two fucking days ago And it's already you need to hoovering again I shed like a dog It's there is hair all over the bathroom all the time Where is it coming from? Where is it coming from? My room right now is so cluttered and I don't understand where the clutter has come from

part of it is boyfriend stuff that he, because he's currently here but a lot of it is me a lot of it is a crude me and I need to get, I need to do a massive clean out again I'm getting itchy, I need to get rid bare bones this shit I've got too many clothes I only wear like three of these clothes

there's you almost never need to buy clothes no I also bought some so I bought some shoes on Vinted you know the granny style Mary Jane trainers. Yeah. They look like grinding trainers, right, basically. I bought some of vintage and I came home and I put them on and I was so delighted. They were so comfy. And I cycled to the station that evening to pick up my boyfriend and by the time I got to the station, both souls had melted

off where the vintage cellar had clearly stuck the mat together with glue because it was 6 degrees. So I was flapping around like Pingu in Kingscost Station. And then I immediately was like, fuck this. I'm going to pay a reasonable price for shoes. So I bought £19.99 Mountain Warehouse. Granny shoe. Yep, I see that as a granny shoe. That is the kind of shoe that I associate with my auntie who, like every person in my family is a social worker.

Look at the insol on that, Ash. Oh yeah, you're going child removing. And when I unpacked these in front of the boyfriend, he went, that's definitely a shoe for a woman on a fixed income and I was like that's an amazing way to put her to a pension so the heat got rid of my shoes but yeah I bought new stuff and I instantly regretted it because it fell apart in my hands.

Didn't need. Did not need. What we need now though is an Ash Sarka middle segment. All right so we have a middle segment and it is an intrusive thought with a side of Christ. So I've been thinking a lot recently about secularism. And so caveat out the way.

Obviously, I think secularism is a preferable basis on which to organise a society. We are multicultural. We are multi-religious. I also think that saying, well, God wants you to do this is a way in which you get bad laws. etc, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

But obviously we're not just talking about constitutional secularism or legal secularism. There's also cultural secularism. And I do think that because of the way in which that cultural secularism has played out, there is a whole way of understanding ourselves and our obligations to one another that's missing. And so Alistair MacIntyre who wrote about virtue ethics and Christian Marxism, You know, he talks about this, which is the reason why he's like, yeah, Marxism is really good is because it's the closest political ideology to a religion. So he's like, yeah, and that's a good thing.

Because he's like, otherwise you don't really have a system of morality. You just have a system of preferences. And I do think that that's something which we talk about again and again and again is like the liberalism that's cooked our brains. And so everyone just has a set of individual preferences and ends up feeling like quite lost and disoriented. But I want to get into something in particular. which is forgiveness because I am in a situation and I probably will be in this situation

until the person that I'm talking about either undergoes a radical personality transformation or dies where I am being wronged. And I can safely say they're probably not listening to this pod. I'm not related to them. They are not a friend. They are not someone I have to live with they are not in my life in any meaningful sense, but they are continually behaving in a way, which is harmful, it is violating, it is cruel, and it is crass. I have no options for redress. Like, I can't make them stop what they're doing. Like, I think if I were to try and, like, engage with the situation, it would just encourage them and make them escalate even more. so I think that I just have to not touch it.

I can't hit them with the German suplex, which is what I would really, really like to do. And so we are in a classic, you have to move on situation. You have no other option, but you have to move on. I have to deal with my feeling of being wronged, find a way to move past it, to let it move through me,

even though it's still happening. And so religious people, and in particular Christians, would call this forgiveness. and they would say, I have to forgive this person, regardless of whether or not they've asked for my forgiveness, regardless of whether or not they've made amends, because that's the example set by God to man.

And I do think that we really struggle with this idea in modern culture, and that's not just to do with the overall decline in religious belief in society. I think that it offends our contemporary sensibility because we think of forgiveness as wiping clean someone else's moral slate. And I think that not only do we find that difficult to do, because when can you really wipe clean someone else's moral slate, I think that we actually have gone to the other side and we think of it as being morally suspect

because then we somehow become complicit in the wrong by forgiving the wrongdoer. And instead we've got all these other words. So we talk about accountability, right? I want this person to be held accountable for what they've done or I want them to take accountability. We talk about acknowledgement. I just really want them to acknowledge what it is they've done.

We talk about repair, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I'm not saying that these aren't in any way useful concepts. And I'm not saying that there's no good in them. But I think that the fact that we're turning, to all these concepts, I think it reflects how little tolerance we have for uncertainty. And it's sort of like, well, before I stop defining you by this wrong that you've done to me, I need to be sure that you won't do it again, which I totally understand, right? I'm human. I totally understand that feeling. But you're setting a condition which is

basically impossible because there are never any guarantees. Like, you might think someone won't do it again, but you always have to make a bit of a jump, right? Like, you always have to make a bit of a jump to sort of treat them in that way. And particularly on the left, I mean, you don't see this so much anymore and I think it's a good thing, but, you know, back in my idea, when I were alas, the big thing in vogue was accountability processes. And I've never seen a single one of them go well. Like, I've just never seen a single one of them go well. And it's not because, there isn't a good reason to want one. I mean, often the thing that's been done is something where you go, real harm's been done. And I understand wanting an alternative to a carceral process. But I've

never seen a situation where, one, the person who is asking for accountability, the person to whom harm has been done feels better afterwards. And I've also never actually seen it done in a way where you go, oh yeah, this is fair to the person at the centre of it. Because what ends up happening is that like the wrongdoer, they have to jump through hoops which just keep on multiplying. And ultimately the person who was harmed never feels that they've gotten what they wanted. And I think that's because deep down we're trying to eliminate that gap.

We're trying to eliminate the leap that's required in order to say, yes, this is enough. And in a weird way, forgiveness is a lot more certain because it's not about the other person's behaviour at all. Forgiveness is not about going, well, I know what's going on inside your head. It's not about being 100% sure about their future behaviour. You just know what it is that you have to do. And so if I were to secularise forgiveness a little bit and to take it a bit away from a Christian tradition, you would say you have to let go of attachment to the person who's done you wrong and you have to let go of attachment to the wrong and you have to let go of the attachment to thinking of yourself and feeling yourself as being wronged but like how the fuck do

you do that how do you let go of rage and resentment and your own desire for retribution how do you find peace when someone has harmed you whether or not they've shown remorse and I suppose this is my very big question which is is it possible to live by an ethic of forgiveness without having religion to back you up? Well, I guess my first question is, have you ever forgiven someone without having religion to back you up? Hmm. That's one of the questions I'm trying to ask myself. And that's the end of the podcast. It's like, I'm really trying to think, have I truly forgiven someone? I have a little book of grudges in my heart. And I don't like that about myself.

And so I can get like 90, 95% of the way there, but the ink is still in the book. I'm trying to think about this without mentioning my partner, but unfortunately he is religious. And I'm not religious. And I did ask him yesterday, how do you feel about forgiveness? And he said, oh, forgiveness is the most important thing a person can do. And he also finds it very easy to forgive people. And unfortunately, I don't think that's a coincidence. For example, it goes from big to small.

He's forgiven people and he said that have done terrible. He says he finds it easy to forgive people who've done things to him than he does to find it to forgive people who've done things to people he cares about, but he still manages it. And I presume from the conversation we're having, it did seem like because there is this infrastructure there, this moral infrastructure. that gives you permission to forgive and a framework of forgiveness, it is a lot easier than making up your own forgiveness. And I'm thinking about people in my life.

I also am a grudge holder. I do be holding a grudge. But there's some people where I have just let it go, but that might be because they're not in my life anymore. I'm trying to think of someone, it's hard, it's hard, because I'm thinking of this one person who, I haven't, I want to forgive and I talk about them in the language of forgiving. Is that enough? Does that count as forgiveness?

If you are able to acknowledge your role in a situation and say they're not an evil person, they're, you know, and we're not on each other's lives and I wish them no ill and I'm not going to go around trying to besmirch their reputation. I'm not going to hate on you in the magazines. I'm not going to hate on you the magazines. Does that mean that I've forgiven them? You know, is it enough to go through the motions of forgiveness? I think that's the thing, right?

Which is, okay, have I forgiven people? I can think of one person in my head where I genuinely feel at peace with the wrong that was done. And I suppose there are like loads of reasons for that. Like one is that like I don't see this person anymore two they are not in a position where they can do me any harm anymore

three I don't think that any of it was so egregious as to be like forever a mark on me four I can chalk it up to you everyone's growing up everyone's growing up everyone's a human being I really hope

they're not that same person anymore because not only would it mean that they treated other people badly, but because it's an emotionally stunted way to live. And so I don't, there's no, like, the ink in the book of grudges in my heart is as faded as it possibly could be. Like, you'd need some special blue lighting to find it again. Um, there are other things. And, you know, I'm thinking about, you know, the person who I love most in the whole world and thinking about my partner is that he's someone where I'd be like, okay, we're 95% forgiven. But, that 5% is actually a reflection of how vulnerable I feel around them,

not because they make me feel vulnerable in a sort of like, oh, you're trying to undermine me way, but I feel vulnerable through that act of loving you as much as I do. And I was talking about this with a friend of mine, and we were talking about unconditional love. And it's a scary thing to feel that there is actually a difference between love and the relationship, which is I don't know how unconditional my love for my partner is, right?

By which I mean, it's entirely possible that like, I don't know, he cheats on me with my sister or something. And I still love him and I go, oh, fuck, that was unconditional love. But the relationship is not conditional, right? Like, in case you're listening to this, do not cheat on me with my sister. That would be such a bad idea for you on multiple fronts. And so, yeah, that are 5% of like, you know, things in the past where, like, that was hurtful. and we had to move past it, is that, you know, you can still see the ink in the book,

not because I'm holding it against him, like, as a weapon, but because that was a moment in which I felt how vulnerable I was by loving him. And that vulnerability can never go away because I really do love him. I suppose maybe you should think about why we're in an ear of grudge holding. Because also when I talked to my partner, he said we were in a particular ear of spitefulness and grudge holding. and not being able to forgive. And obviously you touched upon this.

Maybe it's the lack of religion. But I know plenty of hard-right evangelicals who love a grudge. They've forgiven no one. They're forgiven. And it's obviously got something to do with what you talked about, their vulnerability. And this idea of being mugged off, I think, plays a large part, an idea of being humiliated

someone's see we don't like weakness at this point in time and I think that actually makes us weaker overall we don't we're it's a real shark in the water period I notice this with the media every time like a politician

you know does anything it's just a constant baying for blood and obviously I love this when it's kiss Starma but there's There's a constant... RIP to a real one. RIP to one of the unrealist men.

They've never quite escaped the uncanny valley. Oh, God. Whatever wax, you know, wax work somehow gained sentience and managed to be puppeted to the top job for, for, what is it, five years? My God. Anyway, anyway. He'd be so great in Malem II Swords

because you could just put him in as the real man and then he could, like, jump scare people. You could like when they have the bit where you go through and there's people who start moving scary bits. Living statues. Or you could just sit there and say things like, we will pursue sensible fiscal roles, which is scary enough. I've got no truck with that.

I've got no truck whatsoever. No truck with that. I love the flag. Anyway, sorry, that was detail. I haven't forgiven him. I'm sure he hasn't forgiven you for the wet wipe article. I bet that haunts him. I hope it horns him.

I hope it for one thing haunts it's that really, Really and truly I hope I have become a stain somewhere at the very back of Kirstarmer's busy little mind. Anyway, but the press, you know, the press culture that we have in this country, I think is quite indicative of a culture at large. Where it's celebrities, politicians, whatever, any form of weakness or slippage or something or the slight accumulation that it's jumped upon. And I think that that fear of humiliation and that fear of public embarrassment plays into the idea of why people can't forgive as easily because it's seen as admitting a weakness. It's allowing things to be done to you to forgive. It's seen as a passive thing. I think it takes away agency, whereas actually it's total agency to have the power and the breadth of mind to be able to say, actually, this thing is, it's not going to define me.

and it's going to wash over me and I won't forget but I will forgive you I will forgive you because if I carry that it's like the resentment is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die but there's definitely something about saving face and I think that also you know ego whereas I think religion

maybe the infrastructure of that is also getting people to put aside their own individual ego in service of a bigger thing Every single religion is basically saying you need less ego. Yeah. Right. Decentre your ego. Make it smaller.

Submit to something which is much bigger than you. And I suppose like you could see this as a, you know, a product of like, you know, post-enlightenment thinking is that you don't have that sense of submitting something bigger. The self and the ego is all there is. And that just keeps getting bigger and bigger because we find. new ways to project it. So reputation management went from being just a preserve of celebrities to something that everybody has to do because you've talked about this a lot, like we exist in the social panopticon that we've created for ourselves.

And there's an interesting way in which that gets internalised into how you conduct your personal life, which is you start thinking about your, um, your, relationships in terms of personal brand management. And I don't think that that's necessarily just like a, you know, millennial and younger thing. So I'm going to quote someone who I quote on this podcast an awful lot. There should basically be an if I speak bingo card at this point. And so like Esther Perel is like top right corner.

But one thing she talks about in the state of affairs is that the pressure has switched sides. So before someone who was cheated on, the pressure would be on them to stay in the relationship, especially if they're a woman. And now that's completely switched over and the societal pressure is telling them to leave, especially if they're a woman. And so I'm not saying,

and this is the thing, is that like I'm genuinely not trying to be prescriptive here, particularly not when it comes to something like what should end a relationship. There are some things I'm prescriptive about. violence is something I'm very, very prescriptive about, which is it actually doesn't matter if you forgive them, you still have to leave.

And I think that comes back to love can be unconditional, right? I have not fully understood where the conditions of my love for my partner are, but I know what the conditions of the relationship are. And so violence is something I'm absolutely prescriptive on. But I think something like infidelity is like a lot more difficult to set a hard and fast rule on. And I think people try and set these hard and fast rules. Because I remember having this conversation with friends

and they're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. If he so much does sniffed another woman. I mean, maybe the sniffing would be weirder than simply having sex with her. But like, you know, that's a way of trying to deal with your own feeling of vulnerability, which is like this person could really hurt me. And I think that

I think that relationships whether it's at the interpersonal level or the societal level, it doesn't work without forgiveness. And I think that's why it's so worrying that we can't find a way to do it. And like we demonise it as a concept. I think it's the ego thing. I think we're getting down to the quicker bit. I think it is because we are in the, as you said,

like individualistic, neoliberal. what would you call it, dregs, of what those people within that society should be constructed as. We're scraping the barrel of Ayn Rand's vision, you know? Yeah, we've gone past like the ideological, cohesive ideology part of that. And now we're just in the bit where people buy, a bird just fell out my window. People just buy shit from Timo and flock to the same five places on TikTok and Instagram to take photos. It's like there's no cohesive ideology, so end the gaps. It's sort of like what if a zombie society.

I think we're a bit of a zombie society at the moment, which maybe that's hyperbole, but it often feels to me when I'm walking around me in a zombie society. Like I'm doing an absolutely obnoxious thing of trying to get off my phone, which I've tried a million times, but I'm like, if I don't beat my phone addiction, then my life, as I know it, will be miserable. I just know that in my heart, I can feel it. and I was walking around Richmond Park yesterday

and we did a no maps thing so phones stayed in the bag maps were just following signs and stuff rather than our Google maps and just like so many people it was super super quiet in some places like completely empty just as for huge stretches and you got to the places that were like the most TikTok and they were sunny hoaching

and then everyone was sitting on their phones taking photos I just thought how how like individualistic it's just like we're like in a snap and prove culture where you have to show you've been someone, show you've done something, but you're not actually taking that in or experience it on a deeper level. It's all about I was here, show other people I was here, show and tell kind of thing. And I think when the ego and like rather than self-esteem is so prevalent in the way that we go

about and the way we encounter other people and the way we try and connect with other people, which is, you know, I also watched Toy Story 5 yesterday, which is all about. But the whole message of that is you have to go and play with each other in person. Otherwise, you won't know what a real friend is. That is literally the message. It's like, if you don't connect with people in person, you won't find the people you can create with and play with

and actually build a real friendship with. And if you try and just like connect via a device, that's a shallow base for real human interaction. And there's long-lasting bond. And I think that's also a thing. It's like, yeah, of course in a situation where everything is about sort of perception of status and hierarchy, then we find it a lot less easy to give the space and territory to forgive. It's like scarcity mindset. There's a scarcity.

I want to sort of like develop the forgiveness thought a little bit though. Yeah. Which is. How do we do it? Not just how do we do it, but like what role? does punishment play in your moral universe? So I think that punishment has a role to play in a moral society, right? I'm not a full abolitionist which thinks that care is the response to every single social ill. I think that there's a much bigger role for care than we currently have and a much

smaller role for punishment than we currently have, but I do think that punishment plays a role in a moral society. I'm not sure about the extent to which I think that's good within the context of personal relationships. Hmm. Hmm. As I would we shouldn't have punishment in personal

relationships. Yeah, or like, yeah, probably. But like, maybe what role does punishment play or has it played in your personal relationships?

In my personal relationships, with my ex-partners, it was definitely about mutual punishment system. I say we were both very practiced. The beatings will

continue until the morale improves. Exactly. The beatings will continue until love develops further. I think we also probably came from punishment households in previous relationships.

In my current relationship, there's no punishment, it always flummoxes me. Whereas in my friendships, I think I don't know if female friendships are worse for this, actually. That's something again my partner says in that there There is, you know, I think female friendships can sometimes go deeper in terms of emotion and excavation and help with personal growth.

I think on the other side of that, though, there is much more opportunity for hurt feelings, silent treatments, resentments that then go finally said. You know, there seems to be a lot more incidents that happen in the female friendships I know. Incidents is such a good word for it. Yeah, there's lots of incidents that I see. And I don't see as many incidents in the male friendships. But I also see, there's a lot more forgiveness in male friendships. I'm thinking of a male friendship in particular where, my God, one of the people in this friendship was fucking nuts.

But the men were just like, that's who he is. that's who he is and we just have to accept it funny enough the person in question was not good of forgiveness and actually physically punished some of his friends for what he saw as transgressions which weren't which weren't but they yeah they

I see men as able to forgive more in their friendships I think I mean I think in terms of personal relationships like again like Jordan Stevens was so great we need to get him back pod because his sort of honeymoon

power struggle, passionate friendship or like whatever it was, stages of relationship was really clarifying. Like, because I now reflect on like parts of the power struggle in my relationship where I go, ooh, we were punishing each other. Not in really big ways, right? Like no one threw anyone's clothes out of the window because that would that would mean you sacrifice the moral high ground

if you were to do something so obvious. But we would, you know, sometimes be a bit of silent treatment here, a bit of passag there, that kind of thing. And I think it's quite striking that we don't really do that anymore. We are just better at saying, I feel this way. And we've moved beyond going, you've made me feel this way. Or like, you've done this thing. Like, it's, I feel pissed off.

And I feel pissed off because I've perceived this thing in this way. And like there is just a lot more generosity involved on both sides of it, which is like, oh, I can see how that would piss you off, yeah. No, that would piss me off too and I'm sorry. Or it's like, yeah, you feel pissed off, but like, Ash, you're also, you're kind of hungry and it's been 35 degrees all day. Do you think it might be that? Like, do you know what I mean?

There's just more room for being like, the feeling that you have is real, but, you know, it's up for discussion to what extent that's up. that's actually my fault or not. And so I would say that we probably have moved on from even that small amount of punishment that was part of the vocabulary of the relationship. We have largely moved on from it. Now, again, that might be because we're in a second honeymoon period and a bigger, badder power struggle is yet to come.

Like, I don't know. But I think that that's something which is kind of striking about it. I mean, when it comes to, like, big punishment in relationships, there are times where I felt in previous relationships that was being punished for something because someone was treating me in a way, which was unfeeling. And on their side, it was probably callous,

and on my side I was experiencing it as cruel. But I don't actually think they were punishing me. I just think that I wanted love from them and I wasn't getting it. And that felt like punishment, but it actually wasn't. that's me putting myself in a situation which is unlikely to benefit me. And I think that ultimately that's why I can forgive that person. But there was a situation where someone really tried to punish me after I broke up with them. And yeah, I've told the story before and they chased me and my current partner out of the party

where we first got together screaming all sorts of abuse. And the thing is, is that like I obviously, I messaged him the next day being like, stay away from me and stay away from, you know, my friends and my loved ones. Otherwise, I will go to the police. But I didn't feel wounded by it. Do you know what I mean? I was like, your naked attempt to punish me has meant that you have sacrificed the moral high ground. Therefore, it doesn't bother me.

Yeah. Yeah, well, that makes it easy because then someone has actually wronged you in a way where you're like, it's actually, you're like, ha ha. You've gone so low, I can go so high. it doesn't actually feel like any loss of face for me. So let's bring it back to forgiveness because there is an element of taking the moral high ground when you go, I forgive you. And like I remember this when my book came out and I can't remember exactly who it was. But I can't remember if it was like Kathleen Stock or Claire Fox or Julie Bindle.

But it was that genre of, you know, UK political pundit. And my book was being presented as like, She's gone back on everything she once believed rather than, no, this is the development of the things that she definitely believed. And one of them, and I can't remember who it was, but I found it really funny. It was like, well, I just can't forgive her. And I was like, I never asked you to forgive it. I wasn't aware that I was in the market for your forgiveness. If you're selling it, I don't want it.

And what was so interesting about that to me is that like, it was about by invoking the language of forgiveness, even if it was about withholding forgiveness from me. It was about really establishing who had the moral high ground. Right, I'm scrabbling around in the gutter looking for your forgiveness and you cannot bring yourself to give it to me. And I think that that's a part of this story about forgiveness as well. And I think that that's maybe why people sometimes mistrust forgiveness within the context of like religion.

Because it's like, oh, fuck you. You think you're so much better than me. You're not. But I think it's often not religious people who are ought to, about forgiveness in that way because they're talking about forgiveness as power, you know, and that's something they won't give you. I hate the word give because we're using forgive. They won't bestow upon you.

They're not going to, it's like they have the power because they're withholding this forgiveness that wasn't being asked for the first place. That's not actual forgiveness. That's talking about who gets to be in the right, which is not false. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They're using forgiveness as synonymous with we're on the right side. of history and we're not going to let her come over to our camp. That's what they're saying forgiveness is.

Forgiveness to them is you can be part of the gang. Yeah. When you haven't asked to be part of the gang, it's implying that everyone wants to be part of that gang, that faction. I hope you have a lovely time in your camp. I don't want to nest there. But that's also not forgiveness. Like forgiveness is not necessarily agreeing with someone.

Forgiveness is just being like, we, I'm not going to put energy into being angry at you anymore because it doesn't serve me. That's forgiveness. How do you let go of attachment to feeling wronged? I think you have to look at what it's actually doing for you. Like I have a bad case of sometimes like victim mentality, you know. No one will do for me what I'm going to do for them. I'm doing, I'm busting a gut, I've martyred myself and no one's going to do it for me.

And get off the cross, lady, we could use the word. because she was the word. And again, boyfriend was like, first of all, you haven't asked them to. You haven't asked. And secondly, I think he was like, I think that's unfair because people have different talents. You can do one thing.

That doesn't mean other people can do it. And they can do things that you can't. And do you rely on people to do things that you can't. So, you know, the self-victimization, it's like, what is that actually covering up? And for me, it's a deep feeling of like people not caring about, me. I think so many people have that fear. Like even in the way that you phrased it, I can think of like two or three friends who have said the exact same thing. And it comes from that feeling of like,

how important am I really to people? How loved am I really? Am I loved for the things I do for people? And she might not actually get a question, answer to that question. You have to, you have to slowly let that go and work out how you let it go. And I don't think I have, the answer to how to let it go fully. But I think one of the things I'm doing, for example, is I am, again, part of getting with the phone addiction is to try stop comparing myself to people because I've realized that's something I've started doing a lot. Oh, comparison is the thief of happiness.

Exactly. I've literally written about that. But comparison just to so many other people and so many other things and also seeing what other people are doing for other people, you know, it's just it's not good. You have to do things. You have to, it's like lending money, you have to do it, knowing it might never come back to you and being okay and even happy about that. I think a good rule of thumb and this is like, generally put me in good stead is if you can see it on a phone, it's not real. Yeah.

And like if it's someone else's surprise birthday party that their friends did and like it's all over Instagram, then you feel like, but where is mine? Or like, you know, someone else's seemingly perfect. relationship or someone else's seemingly perfect appearance or like and I'm not sure how many like old boomer men um listen to this but like if they seem like if it seems like a hot rich East Asian is really into you they are an indentured scammer based in Myanmar and you know indentious scammers are amazing but like like they are they're an indentured scammer like they're probably trafficked and it's really bad If you can see it on your phone, it's not real. I think that's a good rule of thumb.

I think that's a good rule of thumb. But off the pod, because I don't want to, I don't want to like strisand effect, like the thing that's happening to me. Like, literally, I do think that it would encourage this person. But you know what it is. So hopefully we can agree that they're a real rotter. Yeah. do I just have to work to forget it? Like if I can't forgive, do I have to forget?

I think you have to unpick why it affects you so much because it's this particular person, this particular thing they're doing. It speaks to particular raw points within you. If it was somewhat, like there's so many people who say, so many people who say shit about you, but online you do get a lot of shit because you're a public figure. And I think obviously some of that affects you and some of that affects you more than others

and that's because it's hitting buttons. Yes. This is, this is, I was talked about this with my partner is that this is someone who is saying things about me online who once knew me long, long ago in the past and like my partner phrased it as like the whole foundation of your life and your mental health is a distinction between inside and outside.

And this is someone who is who has violated that that wall, that barrier. Well, it's like when there's, I had three people in my life who both used the word nasty, all three used the word nasty about me and then they got that review that said I was nasty. And it turned me mental. And I was so angry. And it's because I had to go and sit with my therapist and like,

obviously we did it on here as well, but really work out why I'm so afraid of being nasty and what that would mean to me. And unfortunately, that's another part of forgiveness. It's like if you do it, you do the unpicking and work on yourself and you can become more at peace with these parts for yourself because there'll be a shame in there. There'll be something about that.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah. Maybe one day I'll talk about exactly what it is because I think the elements of it like that you're talking about is that I know what buttons it's hitting and I know the ways in which it is like making me feel violated and making me feel vulnerable.

but I still would batter his head in. Yeah, and I think obviously battering is a normal response to this. What I would say is you have to pull these parts of yourself into the light and by that I mean, I know it sounds mad, but sometimes just sitting and writing down

out exactly why you feel violated and shamed and saying it out loud. Like someone at work recently says something about me that may be really upset and you should have just bottled that up and instead I just said to people, this is really upset me. It's really upset me because of X, Y, Z. And now, like, a few weeks on from it, I'm like,

I actually feel fine about that because I talked about it. And the thing that would have felt humiliating that I would have kept so close to me, like the real raw thing, I said out loud. And now I'm like, I can see actually that's not, that isn't, like, the person I was really upset with and really angry and resentful towards. And now I'm like, it's actually fun.

fine. It's fine. And I think I do forgive them. I think I forgive them for it. But it took admitting to why I felt so humiliated and vulnerable to people I care about and I feel safe with and also saying to myself, like, why has this affected me so much to do that? And I think that's the thing. You have to take away the power that they have. Because you're not being able to forgive them is they have a power there. They've hit something really deep. I think you've got to do two things, right? You do actually have to like tend and nurture and accept. and I'm going to use a super corny phrase here, your inner child. We have an inner child and like the more you try and run from it,

the more that bitch is going to be like, knock, knock, it's me, your inner child and I'm wounded. Like, you have to accept and love those parts of yourself that you feel ashamed by and embarrassed by and make you feel vulnerable. And you've got to keep that heater close. I'm not going to, I'm not going to, uh, what's, ah, fuck, what's the word? not legitimise, cosign, maybe. You're not going to co-sign that?

I'm not cosying that, although my boyfriend had started a new handshake, which is when we're about to do something terrible, like we're like, oh, back to work today, and then we just put a gun in each of this mouth and go murder suicide.

Right, shall we get to... Yeah, let's do dilemma. Dilemma o'clock. This is I'm in Big Trouble, which is our regular scheduled dilemma segment. If you're in big trouble, medium trouble, boquito trouble.

You email us that if I speak at Navarra. Media.com. That is if I speak at Navaramedia.com. Who wants to take it away? Do you or do I? You choose. You pick. I'll read and you go first. Because I'm actually interested to hear what you have to say on this one first. It's a bit of a long one, but it is an interesting one. Dear Ash and Moyer, I've been listening to the show since episode one and you've been hugely influential on me and inspired a deeper, critical look at myself and the world. You then say other nice things, but it's a long letter, so I'm actually going to skip that. I've been married to my husband

for five years, but I've started to develop serious feelings for another person. My husband, he, him, and I, they, them, were together for 10 years before we got married. So 15 years in total. We met at uni when he was studying for his master's, and I was working in a bar after finishing my undergrad. It was one of those love at first sight stories, and we went headlong, pretty fast, into a serious relationship, moved in together a year later. In the very early days of our living together, I discovered he used a lot of porn. We had a very frank conversation at the time and I was clear due to my history of severe sexual and interpersonal trauma that I couldn't be in a relationship with someone who used porn. He was really understanding and compassionate, I thought, and promised

he was done with porn and that our relationship was important to him. We were good in the years that followed. We experienced a few big lows, redundancy, burnout, mental health, family breakups and bereavements and hires, holidays, partying, long hikes, friends, weddings and babies. Still, we were strong, resilient and always prioritised fun and togetherness. In that time, I never had feelings for, nor could have even contemplated the possibility of developing feelings for someone else. The relationship was always strong, monogamous, loving and based on a huge amount of mutual respect and willingness to grow and evolve. However, for four months before we were due to get married, I discovered he was using porn again. Worse, he had developed secretly and over the course

of a couple of years a fully fledged porn addiction that was straying into some dark places. The discovery really hit me hard and I had a quite severe relapse of C-P-T-Sd. To give him credit, though, he owned his addiction. He went on a course of intensive therapy and self-understanding, but I'd ever really got a chance to process anything before the wedding or since. We tried going to couples counselling, but with my history and a bad choice of counsellor, it was just too much and we packed it in without making much progress. Neither of us wanted to return. Now, three years later, my husband has fully recovered from his porn addiction,

but I've remained in a strange kind of limbo. Rather than coming back over time, my sense of safety actually seems to be leaching away. Obviously, this is all massively impacted our sexual relationship too. And perhaps it's just the nature of long-term relationships, but a lot of the lighter moments and fun we used to have our dwindling. When I tried to bring this up or suggest fun things we could do together, my husband gets frustrated, citing time, money and energy as reasons we can't go away for a weekend or even a date night.

It's hard because of the financial inequality between us. He's in a salary job. I am unemployed and disabled. And that means I feel a lot of guilt for this, and he isn't keen on any of the free date ideas I have. Stargazing, bird spotting, picnics. And now, after I find myself starting to have feelings for this other person, I feel all the feels. This is someone whom I met in recovery from my relapse, someone who empathises with

so much of my experiences without me having to justify, explain or advocate for myself. They're also queer and neuro-spicy, like me. I know that a huge part of why I'm falling for this person is because they make me feel safe seeing and understood. But it's not all about the porn, it's also that I'm a queer person who has never explored relationships with people beyond the bracket of cis men. Should I tell my husband about these feelings I'm having for another person? How do I tell him without making him feel criticised that I do not feel safe in our relationship? Is this a long-suppressed pansexual gender fluid genie dying to break out of the bottle? Should I put it down to missed opportunities? Avoid this person and continue with life as

as planned. As much as that might feel like turning down the colour that's been coming back into my days. Please help a very confused special one. Why did she want me to go first? Because there's so much going on. I know, there's so much going on. Okay, I've written down a few things here. And the number one is, first of all, some wounds you can leave alone

and they will heal by themselves. Little scabs, you know. You've had a little cut in a bramble as you walk. If you fall down and fracture a limb, it might heal, but it will heal in a weird fashion, and most likely it will get infected and sepsis or it will fester and you might have to cut the whole thing off. And I fear that what you have done in this relationship, both of you, is allow a wound to fester. But I think even before that, there's a bigger question

of what does commitment mean to you both, like long-term commitment? Because you discovered this porn addiction four months before the wedding. But you, And you carried on with the wedding. So you made that commitment to each other. You made, you said, we are going to commit. This is the relationship. And then you discover this big betrayal. But neither of you dealt with it.

You didn't deal the ramifications of that betrayal. You did a bit of therapy and then were like, this is too hard. We're going to keep it light and fun. Now the lightness and fun has gone away. And what are you left with? You're left with the resentment that you've been building up. your husband seems to be moving away from you in terms of the shared language you had of that

lightness and fun that kept the realisationship strong and resilient because you could always go back to this shared sense of play you had together and now you are maybe to punish him maybe not also discovering parts of yourself or getting feelings for someone else if you were in a committed comfortable relationship where you're at a real point of strength I'd say have a conversation about opening it up, but you're not. You're in a relationship that needs serious work to get you both back on track, if that's going to be possible. So what instead you're considering is an emotional affair and maybe even a physical affair.

And that is less about this person, I think, and more about the conditions of the relationship and what's happening and how you might have been punishing your husband for years without looking at why and thinking that actually was better for the relationship if you both just stayed quiet and carried on and accepted it and hoped it would heal by itself. It wasn't going to heal by itself.

He violated one of the core tenets of what you thought you'd agreed in the relationship and he cleared and never actually signed up to it. And that is such a fundamental flip on what you think you're both in. what sort of terms you've agreed to this relationship, what sort of commitment you've made to each other, you realize that this person on some level can't be trusted because he said one thing and he's been doing another this whole time, you haven't actually known this huge part of him.

That is a huge betrayal. And that is something that you haven't just shaken off. And I don't know if that's something to do as well with the setup where he is the breadwinner. You are, you know, you already feel this guilt. So you're mixing resentment and guilt. And that is a very bad recipe. So I don't think you should either, you know, talk about these feelings.

I don't think you should, you know, it's just a case of a pansexual gender fluid genie trying to break out of the bottle. Because that could break out of the bottle when you guys are in a strong place. You could have a conversation about where you might want to take the relationship when you're in a strong place. It's not that. Why does this not happen before? I don't think it's about missed opportunities or avoiding this person. And I think the conversation you need to be having is, how do we start rebuilding our relationship, you and your husband? That's what you need to focus on first.

Is that possible? This whole thing, to me, screams of power and helplessness. And I actually think that you and your husband both feel like the other person is more powerful than them and gets to deter. determine the conditions and ground rules of the relationship more than they do. So I think that you feel that in relation to your husband, you know, cis man in a salary job, you're disabled and unemployed. But I wonder if he feels that some of those things that are going on with you, I mean,

you sort of describe it as queer and neuro-spicy. And I think, you know, the sort of care relation of employment and disability too. I wonder if your husband feels a bit like, hang on, you tell me not to use porn, I don't use porn, like, you know, you tell me I've triggered a C-P-T-SD episode in you, like, I take this really seriously, da-da-da-da, I think both of you are playing past the parcel with who's got power, and you're always giving the other person the stick. And the thing is, is that, you know, I'm saying this with a lot of empathy and I'm saying this with a lot of love because I think that so many of us have done this in our relationship

in ways which are big and small. I've done this in my relationship, which is when I felt powerless and when I felt helpless, I sort of use whatever it is I have to sort of remind my partner that he's the one who's got the stick, he's the one that's got the nuke and therefore he can never use it. Do you know what I mean? And so I create this structure in which neither of us can move. And I sort of like remind him so much of his capacity to hurt me that that boxes him in. But the thing is, is that that is, you know, immobilizing for yourself as well. And then of course the conditions are ripe, you meet someone else and you go, well, we're free from this dynamic and you understand me. and I feel alive when I am with you.

I'm not saying that they wouldn't be attractive or appealing to you, where you're not in this relationship, but that aliveness that you might be feeling is a product of this relationship and what to me seems to be sort of like quite an intricate dance that you and your husband are dancing together where it's like, you know,

who gets to define the term, of the relationship. And so my advice would be this, which is the current relationship you have with your husband cannot continue, right? The current settlement, the current way of doing things cannot continue. And it would not be advisable, nor do I think it would be really possible to try and stuff this emotional affair back into a box, back into a dark place and hope that it won't have any disruptive power because it will. I think that what you have to do is talk to your husband about what's been going on. I think that the explanations that you've proffered about that lack of trust and those feelings of betrayal around the porn use are important, but I would say bring that up

with a couple's therapist. If you sort of go, well, I'll fall in love for someone else, but that's because you did all those things, right? You know, that is, you know, that's a real, yeah I've done this but still you did something worse right that's a real move and and you know that is a form of self-justification I'm not saying that doesn't form part of the context of where you've ended up with the relationship and the dynamic between the two of you but deal with that in the context of a couples therapist second thing is I think like I know I've mentioned her already so like maybe I have to take a shot or something but like read the state of affairs I think you would find it really helpful um I think it challenges many of the ways in which we think about infidelity

and we think about what options are on the table for couples. This might be a crisis which renews the relationship between you and your husband. Like maybe it's a crisis that's so big that it allows you to dig deep into some of the things that feel very like embedded and, you know, it aren't dynamics that you want anymore. Maybe it results in the decision not to be together anymore. but I think that honesty is your friend here and so is structure. So being honest and initiating the conversation and taking responsibility for finding a couple's therapist that works for you.

You know, don't turn this into another form of learned helplessness. We're like, oh, no one possibly can, so we just have to keep muddling through. No, you're both adults. You clearly have a lot of emotional intelligence and a lot of perceptiveness. you can take responsibility for finding a couple's therapist that works for you. So be honest, don't go in with the blame and think about the ways in which this is actually reflective of the sort of, you know, the way in which helplessness becomes a form of

exerting power and control within the relationship because I think that feels relevant to me. And also, after all of this, you might end up leaving, but if you leave, you should leave only after you guys have explored the best versions of yourselves you could leave as, is what I would say. Yeah. Don't even like this, because you'll take the same things to another relationship. I mean, it's funny that I was talking about, like, you know, oh, maybe, you know, maybe cheating's

not the thing which always has to end a relationship. Like I do just feel really influenced by us to parole in that way. But I also think that, like, you know, and this is how I really feel that monogamy is not defined purely by the love and affection that you feel for each other. It's actually, how do you deal with feelings of disappointment, resentment, contempt and temptation? That is what defines monogamy. It's not what do you do when everything's good. Exactly.

It's what do you do when it's like any relationship. What do you do when it's bad? My therapist is always saying when there is conflict, it is how you repair that matters so much more in any type form of relationship. And that's what will build the relationship rather than when the going's good. We all like eating ice cream and walking down the street. chatting happily when the going's good. Well, about when the going's bad.

Can you weather the bad? Start to wonder whether lots of my relationships actually can. Anyway, on that note, goodbye. On that note. Bye. See ya. Peace.