If I Speak - 128: Does a widening income gap spell trouble between friends?

Episode Date: September 15, 2026

Moya and Ash think about how money changes our priorities. Should rich friends should pay for their poor friends? And how do income gaps affect our romantic relationships? Plus: what to do when your partner reveals an addiction. Get tickets for Ash at the Southbank Centre on 26 September: https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/ash-sarkar-the-future-of-relationships Send us your dilemmas: [e-mail] Music by Matt Huxley.

Starting. Commence podcast. Let's go. That was not one of my best bits. It wasn't, but you know what? You can't be expecting hits. Nothing but the hits, nothing but the hits, nothing but the hits. No, you can't be, especially not with me.

This is, if I speak, you know the score. we are a podcast for neurotics and for hotheads. I'm Ash Sarker, you are. I'm Moly the Maclean and I would like you all to do something for me. I want you to send this podcast to a friend that you think should know about it if I speak. Let's share the love. This is, when special ones come up to me, they always like, I sent your podcast to a friend or my friend sent it to me. Share the podcast.

We want loads of listeners because we're going to have a massive show this year. Oh, we want you all to come. We're going to do a big Christmas fun. We've got like 11,000 listeners a week, is that right? Is that fair to say? We've got, we're pulling decent numbers. We're pulling decent numbers. We're pulling decent numbers.

But that is not the topic of today's show. We're not glazing ourselves. I understand you have questions for me. I do. First question, where does glazing come from? Is it about calm? I think it might be. Because it feels like one of those things that's drifted over from.

the like 4chan terrible porn-filled pipeline and now we just all say glazing oh okay unless I've just got a really dirty mind maybe okay I'm not gonna look at up listeners tell us where glazing comes from

I always imagined it was glazing like you'd glaze meat or like you'd glaze with icing yeah like a donut but I'm also seeing Bukaki Is that I say it? Listeners can you tell us where glazing comes from. Anyway, questions. We have questions for you. 73 questions, minus 70. That's all you're getting. If you need any more explanation,

see previous shows. Question number one, who's more annoying? Disney adults or Harry Potter adults? Harry Potter adults. Explain. So I saw a Harry Potter adult on the train recently and I'm sure they were a perfectly nice person. I'm sure that there's absolutely nothing that's wrong with them and everything I'm about to say is an expression of my own interior ugliness but they were like holding like a long box which you know sort of said like olivanders on it so they'd clearly bought that from one of the official merch and they had a griffindore tie they always have griffin door ties and for me there is just something about adults cosplaying as

children that I think screams stunted emotional and psychological growth. So I actually think that one of the great things about Disney is that it's meant for parents to watch with their kids. So there's always a little something in there where you go, like, that there's a wonder to it, which even... parents can sort of enjoy. Like in sleeping beauty, like all of the backdrops were hand painted

and it was so meticulous and took like a really long time. Like you're not really doing that for kids, right? Like only an adult can appreciate that as being sumptuous. There are obviously all kinds of like jokes, particularly in the later ones, which only adults will get, although dream works do it better.

And I think that there is a way in which they're pulling from older stories like obviously Hamlet with the Lion King where I go okay this is for kids but I can kind of I can understand I can understand the Disney adult better whereas Harry Potter Harry Potter and the Philosopher Stone is just Star Wars a new hope with the names changed and that's fine you don't need to be telling me stories that's that is fine I do I don't I don't object on that point but I do have other points but go on but that's just I that that's just my feeling on it but like where are you

Where are you? Okay, so I definitely think Harry Potter adults are more annoying. And I've been thinking about this recently. I think one, it's because they're more pervasive in public life. So because Disney exists in self-contained worlds, right? You can't romanticise these streets of Edinburgh as like Disney World. So you see less Disney adults there. They're not coming to London and posing outside every landmark

or milling about Kings Cross Station as Minnie Mouse. because it is not a Disney location. But because Harry Potter is all about this secret world that exists just behind the facade of everyday life, there are Harry Potter adults everywhere. We went to Manchester, like, early on our relationship, and went to John Ryland's libraries. And there were loads of international students

just fucking dressed in Hogwarts robes, chilling in the library, because it looks like a bit of a Harry Potter's-library. Anything that's slightly old and a bit gothic becomes Harry Potter-ified. And that's the issue. And because there's such a roaring trade in Harry Potter, so many different like stores that have once been American candy stores

and now wizarding magic stores, Harry Potter has taken over Britain, whereas maybe it's different in America and there's more Disneyification over there. But because Harry Potter is so British-based, we see a glut of Harry Potter adults all the time. So I think it feels a lot more pervasive. And they are people who are very much still waiting

for their Hogwarts letter and always will be. But the other thing is that like our age. So the wave of Disney adults obviously exists. They're there. But because I think Harry Potter, the generation that grew up with Harry Potter, like our generation. It's a millennial sickness. It's a millennial sickness. And unlike Shrek, it's a lot easier to bring into your daily life.

They've grown up. Not only have they passing it to their kids so it's just getting more and more traction, they are still wanting to be the kids. So that's why Harry Potter adults are more annoying because they insist or bring it into everyone else's existence. On Shrek, that's my housemate's favourite film. He fucking loves Shrek. It's so much. No, men especially, but women too, people who make Shrek their person, people who make

anything their person, are annoying. But do you know who's demure? Lord of the Rings fans. Very demure, very mindful. They'll go to their little Sarah Hall Festival, whatever it is in the Midlands. They'll go do their Tolkien thing. You don't see them fucking wandering around Worcestershire with hairy feet. They have their Lord of the Rings set.

It's like Disneyland. They have their set places. they enjoy it there. I don't care what happens in the privacy of your own home. Harry Potter fans, though, they bring it into everything. Do you think it's because of, like,

um, restrictions on carrying knives in public? Like, if you're a real Lord of the Rings person, you're going to have a sword. You're going to have a sword. Well, it depends if you being a hobbit. They had a little daggers. Yeah.

That's the thing. Is that you can't, you can't, no. I don't think it's that. I think it's that the Lord of the Rings get up is a lot more cumbersome, a lot more fanciful.

Whereas again, Harry Potter, it's just a little black cloak, a little Gryffindle tie, and your little wand, and these are all easily accrued and worn accessories, whereas Lord of the Rings, that's real commitment. You're really putting your per se into it if you're Lord of the Rings fan.

All right, give me a second question. Give me a second question. Sorry, just for you want to talk about that. What it, okay, so it's September, as we know, great month, wonderful month. What is your back to school vibe? Just done a horrified face. Yeah, because I don't really,

understand the question. Do you not get a back-to-school vibe? We were like, okay, I'm going to get some more stationary, this is what I want for this year. I'm so feeling fresh. I'm really excited for the new projects. Are you still not feeling that? It doesn't feel that way to me. Oh, Ash, I love September. I love September. We've talked about this before. I love Conkers. I love the Conkers song. I like leaves. I like the chill in the air. I like the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. Is that going to happen in London though? Sometimes you go to walk from the Welshers early enough.

It's going to be heatways. You see some mists. I love all that stuff, but it's been a long time, a long time since I've thought of it as back to school. I guess I'm a Harry Potter adult. Also, I worked a lot this summer. I worked a lot this summer, and I've continued working into September.

So, well, same, but I feel, for me, when I say back to school, well, I'm like, September, as I've said, always feels like the start of a new year. So I feel like refreshed and ready to do something. I, I, I, I, I'm a calendar new year girl. Oh, interesting. Imagine if I said, I'm a tax new year girl. Okay, well, shall I swap the question out? I'll swap that question out.

I'm sorry. That's fine. I bought a rug the other day. Yeah? I bought a rug. Tell me about the rug. I love rugs. No, no, no, no.

I'm not telling you about the rug. I'm going to ask your question. What is your favorite piece of interior design purchase that you have made? Okay, all right. Now we're fucking cooking. Now we are cooking. So I actually have a dealer, right? It's a guy who has a particular Facebook marketplace store.

Tell me more. And he is a collector of, of beautiful mid-century things. So I go to him for all sorts of ceramics. He's my go-to guy for if I wanna get a special present for somebody. Like my friend got married and so I got them a set of coffee mugs from the 1960s, possibly DDR. Like they look really beautiful.

And he's got, I've not bought a piece of furniture from him yet because he actually rarely sells It's more like ceramics, ornaments, glassware, da, da, da, da, da, da. He's my fucking guy. Can you send me the link after this? I'll send you the link. I normally gatekeep really, really hard, but I'll send you, I'll send you the link. So I've got, I've got pieces from him that I really, really love that are in the house.

There's a big stoneware jug that I particularly love that I got from him. I got this like little vase for my housemate for his birthday because it's got like a sort of Scottish Highland scene on it painted on and it turned out that he'd been up the Monroe, the very Monroe that was painted on it. I do not know. But like he's got such good shit. Other than that, there's a kill-in rug downstairs. Again, Facebook marketplace.

All my good shit I get from Facebook. Facebook Marketplace. I love, love, love it. Or kitchen table, which came with the house because it's so big that they couldn't physically move it out. So do you just want it? So it's really, really long. It's made of like

a very heavy, very substantial wood. And it's the kitchen table but also functions as a kitchen island. So now you've got me on thinking about interior design. Interior design is fun as fun. It's so fun. It's so fun. Vintage is also really good.

I've never found good stuff on Vinted, not yet. There's, if you get the algorithm to start suggesting you the good shit, it's like Facebook Marketplace, but from all over. So it's like eBay now, but it's really, you can get some really great stuff, although I'm nervous. Like some things are probably fakes, you know. Those Tiffany Star lamps are too cheap to be Tiffany Star Lamp's. Yeah.

But I know a good deal in Richmond who has some real ones, and I will be getting one. Nice. Nice to send them to me. The thing is that my taste is like, the aesthetic of the house is a, compromise between three people who would think generally like different things. Like I'm like I'm so mid-century-pilled and like I haven't been able to convince the boys yet that we need a Noguchi-style coffee table. But I will get there. Is all your house mid-century? Is such a question? Is

all your house mid-century? No, no, no, no, no, no. There's some farmhouse, which my partner loves. He loves just like farmhouse shit. Funnily enough, so is my boyfriend. Even though I was the farmhouse child. Yeah, because his parents, this is now just a conversation about furniture, which might be really boring. That's the third question.

From all the furniture, it doesn't matter. The sentence I was about to say, doesn't matter. We can move on. What if my third question is, what shapes your furniture leanings? A tapered leg.

Yeah, what shapes your furniture leanings? What furniture style is your favourite and why? Just mid-century. I just love, and there's something specific about, I've got, like, I live in a Victorian terrace house and mid-century furniture in a Victorian terrace house. It's my shit. And the thing is, is that what shapes it is class.

It's class and the sort of like microgeneration that I am a part of. Like that is the best way to signal taste, but not necessarily money. Mm. Furniture has become such a huge... It's become... In lieu of having... It's funny because I said, no, a lot of people...

For example, okay, my friend is moving house soon and he has moved from rent to property to rent a property, and there's always a little bit of our budget, etc. Like, you know, in the savings... Well, not savings, in the overdraft constantly, he has amazing furniture. I've noticed this so much about my peers. We collect furniture in lieu of having...

a real house to lodge it in. And I recently have had to detach from my furniture. I've given some of it away, some of it, I'm like, you might have to get rid of this. And hopefully in the house I will, fingers crossed, eventually be in, we're thinking about how we're doing stuff. But it's really interesting. We both have very similar furniture leanings. So we've been talking about the different ways we want to different rooms.

And again, it's class. It's like we want a farmhouse kitchen. We want a sort of Victorian smoking. era like cigar smoking living room with all mahogany and chesterfields and then bedroom want that to be like very light very textured like muslins um i want a wall hanging or a tapestry behind the bed like a slight medieval page but not actually yeah i want the bayot tapestry that's why it's coming back to london but i want a tapestry but that's like i don't want to go full medieval like i don't want a four post of bed and anything that dark i want more of like the the foresty greens

and then the tapestry but it's really interesting how much our taste the lines and I'm like oh my god we're so in sync but it when I think of all my ex-boyfriends they all bought me mid-century furniture you know their class background was very similar to me I'm not saying it's just and it's you know there's that great essay by Lauren O'Neill I think in Vice where she talks about the rise of the crushed velvet sofa in its class connections and it's it's just really interesting these these monocas of taste monocas metrics monocas not the white road something metrics metrics of taste totem how totems of taste and totems of taste and

you know you could do a whole analysis of how the flat screen TV moved from elite to seeing as like the working class everyone's got a fucking flat screen TV we don't even we don't have a TV anymore darling it's very ghosty large TV you know but we'll be back to fucking terrestrial and the aristocracies houses soon having to adjust the area yeah the aerial TV that's going to be the new back to back to vinals and stuff the latest speakers are no longer no longer anyway those my questions right let's move on because Otherwise, I'm just going to talk about furniture, which is a real sign. I'd love that.

Of mid-30s. Oh, my God. It's such a sign of it. The way I talk about floors and this renovation now, oh my God, I've shown so many people the pictures so are floors. Cabinets. Like, I now think that the way that I used to be like, oh my good, girl, you're so sexy. You look so fucking great. And now, like, you're cabinets.

I've got real opinions. I'm like, I love the Belfast sink. Oh, we're having a shaker kitchen. These words used to mean nothing to me. I know, and I remember when my mum would utter them and I'd look at her with this kind of contempt, like, and now... I've been bonding with my aunt talking about kitchens on the phone. But look.

Our aunt, Auntie Chal, will be messaging now with a mystery question for the main segment of today. She's more like a cousin, chal, I'd say. Aunties are in positions of authority, though. Yeah, but Chal's got cousin vibes. Okay, well, that was actually a Slack notification, so I'm still waiting. That was the wrong ding. You have Slack notification on your phone?

Ash, even I don't do that. That's insane. Turn them off. You can check Slack anyway. It's not good for the mental health. Crazy work. Here we go. Ho, ho.

I would say it's salient. Producer Chal asks, Does a widening income gap spell trouble? a friendship or relationship. Ooh. He wants to go first. Okay. I'm going to begin by talking about one of my best friends who I love dearly.

And what I really like about him is that he doesn't like a lefty shibboleth, right? He sort of will like, you know, go out of his way sometimes just be like, I think this is stupid. and he is a snob with a capital S. I like people who just are who they are and I like in a way that he's kind of snobby. I think in a way it's almost so obnoxiously cynical that it can't really be that offensive. But we were talking about a particular bar in venue

that's in North London, that all of our friends like to go to. All of them like to go there and he fucking hates it. Is it the pub or is it the bar? It's a bar slash venue. I'm not going to see where it is. I know, but I'm trying to think of the one,

is it the one that's under threat of closure all the time? No. Okay. Bar slash venue, not under the threat of closure as far as I understand it. And my friend fucking hates it. Like he really, really, really. hates it and it's his favorite like he loves a complain anyway right that's how you actually know

he's happy and thriving so when he stops complaining there's trouble that there's trouble so he was he was on his favorite theme which is this particular bar and venue and everything the toilets are fucking disgusting the bar staff are slow the food he now concedes has improved it started doing some like all right pizzas um he's like I'm too old to sit on a bench for hours, like, I need a fucking chair. Actually, everyone needs a chair. What the fuck is wrong with you? Provide some chairs.

And then he sort of was like, it's not worth it for pints being 20p cheaper or whatever it is. Now, I have another friend. I have a friend whose dedication to drinking. Sometimes may verge under problematic. I know exactly this is. And he loves it. street drinking.

Right? I know exactly who this is. And I have, I participated that with him like sometimes just to be like I'll do the thing that you want to do. And he wasn't there when this other friend was saying like it's not worth it for 20

P. a Pied Pine. But if he heard that sentence he'd be like any saving is pints in your pocket. Right? Like he really, like it's genuinely difficult sometimes to be like can we drink somewhere which isn't the pavement because he's like but it's just cheaper to get

tins from the supermarket like why would you pay a markup for you know a pub and I'm like because maybe it's nicer and more social there like I don't know so here we've got two extremes right um we've got snobby McGee and we've got I'll drink uh red stripe out of the shoe if it means saving some money and the thing which is interesting to me is that there's a way in which you can make it a conversation all about income, right? They have different incomes. Like, that's just a fucking fact that they do. There's a big income gap there.

But that income gap is also a gap of what they value of, like, what they think is necessary to have a good time. Like, I actually think the snobier one's less interested in drinking. is like, you know, I can drink less and like have a good time whereas the one who's like every penny that you save on the pint like you're just spending that on more pines. Like it's not it's not like that's the savings it's like oh I'm trying to have a kid or whatever. It's like no, no, no, no, that's just going on more pines.

And so like the what you think of is like the economics of the night out are really different. Like I actually am not sure that if we went to, obviously if we went to one of the cocktail bars that snobby friend likes to go to you will be spending more money right that's just fucking true like you will be but if we went to a pub that he wanted to go to i don't think that you'd end up spending more money i think you'd just end up drinking less and that's all right but for the other friend that's a no-no so that's my first foray in is thinking about these the study and contrasts between two friends i think it really does like what you identify there is priorities and priorities is i guess the question is if there's a widening income gap, does it change the priorities or does it just exacerbate the priorities that may be there before,

but maybe not possible to live out? So something I've been seeing in my friends a lot is obviously now we've hit our 30s, there are people who are buying houses, there are people who are deciding that actually they want to move away and live with their partners. Who's that?

there are people who you know thinking about changing jobs like our priorities are starting to divert or sometimes our priorities the same but some people don't have the income to live out their priorities yet

but maybe that means that isn't priority because they're not moving heaven and earth to do the thing they want to do like you can have if you want a kid but you can't have that kid in this one city because it's too expensive people move to then have the kid so

I think when you all have the same income or rather you have actually how am I going to put this? When we in our 20s it looked very much like we were all doing similar things and the question of income didn't come into it in the same way because even though some of us had more money

when we would go out drinking or clubbing our priorities were the same I think it really is priorities like our priorities were we want to go out we want a club we want our ideas are fun are broadly aligned like some of us yeah might have a quieter one or two, but mostly it was like we more want to go partying, we want to, you know, do this. This is our idea of fun.

As you get older, your ideas of fun do change at different times. Like, yes, there is an alignment. We, for example, so I had a like mini going away do, which was just me, three friends, two boyfriends, not both mine. Oh my gosh, she's so chic, she takes her lover. actually a long long conversation about polyamory where we all were just slating it the whole time anyway but we were just laughing because the next like night or the two nights later I was doing a club night and no one I knew apart from a group of friends whose partner one of their

partners was playing that's why they were coming were coming and it's been four years since I started this club night and when I started this club night everyone I knew would come to it that'll be messaging me for guest list it's been like a year and a half since anyone wanted that I know at my club night. We still get lots of people in. They're all strangers to me. Because my friend group's priorities have completely changed. The ones who are still partying to that degree,

they're not coming to my fucking club night. They're off and fold. They're at fabric. They're doing loads of drugs. My friends now, we're like, let's have a little Ethiopian meal. And we want a little Ethiopian meal. And we're going to have a little pint.

And there are people within that who still party. Like, my best friend, she's a big festival person. She goes out. she went I beat her twice this year but it's very like it's a different type of partying like if she does that she's like well I'm not going to go out for like the next two weeks or whatever because I'm tired and I've got stuff to do it's not like we used our priorities are different her process like she wants to work on her next book like she's got loads of stuff she has lined up she's you know she's got things it's not like we used to go out get absolutely shit-faced

and just like do it again and do it again like we like different things we really enjoy each other's company in a different way, it's changed. So the income, even though there's income gaps still between us, because our priorities are the same, we don't feel it in the same way. Like, one of them's buying a house. One of them is not in a position to buy a house. I'm, you know, eventually want to get rid of my share in the house. There is different income gaps. Our process is saying, similar in relationships. Like when I've been in relationships, there's been different income gaps, but our priorities have been the same. So it hasn't really affected it because we've both, we've decided on common goals that we're working towards. Like, okay, this is our

goal, you know, for current flat, this is our goal. We're going to put money towards this. Someone might put in more, some might put in less. When I was in another relationship, my partner made a lot more money than me. And we split everything like 60, 40 until I started making the same amount of money and was on parity. And that partner like paid for therapy for me, like help me out. And then I started helping them out. And it was very much like our priorities were aligned. So we didn't feel the gap. So I think that's an interesting thing, which is that like what happens when maybe you've got the same priorities and you have very differing abilities to make that a reality and what do you owe each other? So within partnerships,

committed partnerships, there is at least a sort of model that's sort of like societally recognized of like, you know, you get together and like, you know, finances which were separate become more shared and you sort of work out how you do it. Between friends, that is not so obvious at all. And so there's a situation that's in my life at the moment where I've got two friends who are a couple and they, I don't mean this, I don't mean to sound like Experian, but like they don't have access to capital, like they just don't. And so there are things that they want in life and like milestones that they want to achieve and levels of stability that they want for themselves, right? Which is exactly like me, right? Exactly like me in terms of like actually what,

what do you visualize as being a good life for the both of you? but because of that lack of access to capital because, you know, knowing from their family is giving them money, because their incomes are what they are, because they,

you know, didn't have a sort of well-timed bereavement which, like, delivered an inheritance at the right time, they've been stuck on the rental market. And like, we helped them move house a few weeks ago. And it was actually like,

they were genuinely very upset. They were genuinely very upset about having to move again, about like, you know, they were living in one place where the flat was like really beautiful and quite big but was like far away from their network and their community and like chose to move into a place which was like smaller but closer to community but that's like having to choose and having to like pack up all your stuff and just go through it again and like the flat in many ways like it wasn't what they wanted in terms of like the living environment.

is that that was a real like our priorities are the same but the ability to sort of deal with it is different now like there happened to be like a bit of a bolt from the blue which is that like my snobby friend you may be surprised to learn lives in a fairly big house has just gone through a breakup and so he's like hey why don't you guys come live with me like you can take the top floor and they've worked out

a financial arrangement which which works for them but like there's sort of like that's a situation where it's like two sets of people have needs and it can be met by the same thing but I also think it speaks to a sense of like well what are the obligations we have to one another as a friend group when there are divergences of income right um like and I think that so many people have tried to deal with this in like ad hoc ways so you know like go fund me's when like some someone needs it. But like where the line is is then really interesting because I think that it can be quite simple and straightforward to be like those with higher incomes give to those with lower incomes when they're asked like within a friend group.

I've sometimes had people ask for things. So I'm like, but I'm not sure if that's reasonable. And then I'm like, well, I feel like in this weird position, right? Which is, is it a sort of like bourgeois attachment? Like I'm thinking about, you know that Dave Chappelle, sketch where he's clutching money to his chest and he's got the crown on. Oh yeah.

Like is that the feeling that I'm speaking to or is there this kind of confusion? Because like, you know, a natural confusion that arises from the fact that like friends have agency over the authorship of their lives. Yeah. Which is different from what you'd expect of a partner. So like me and my partner don't split the mortgage exactly equally. Like it's fairly equal but not exactly equal to. accommodate the fact that I am

Mr. Moneybags. But wrapped up in that is like a negotiation right. A negotiation of like quite frankly what he does with his life like you know he's jokingly said to me like

oh you know I'm gonna fuck it all off and retrain as a yoga teacher and I'm like if you have a job that requires you to be barefoot and around thin women you can go fuck yourself. To be fair my mum did that and she was wasn't around thin women, it was elderly pensionist. That's not the kind of yoga teacher he'd be in, I know it. I mean, he would earn absolute, he would earn so much money from those thin women.

He would fucking clean up ash. If you're prepared to let that happen, the tips can be crazy. It better be 60K minimum, which I don't know any yoga teachers. I think, I generally think if your particular partner did that in London, I think he could. I think he'd be so bored as a yoga teacher, sorry. I think, look, I think he'd be really bored. But the sort of joke is that they, It's not just about like the, you know, how much money do you make?

It's that like because our, because there is a difference in our incomes, which means that I'm like paying more into the mortgage, yada, yada, yada, but also locked into a particular pattern of earning to sort of facilitate him doing the kind of work that he really wants to do, which I'm, you know, the work that he does do, I'm very supportive of. It requires him to wear shoes. But like, there's a negotiation there. And so I guess like the thing I kind of want to fling back to you is like, is it fair if a friend has a lower income and they are in some way asking for you to use the spending power that you have to like redress that balance somewhat to facilitate them to do something?

Is it important that you agree with the thing that they're doing? What you have just put forward is the Carrie Bradshaw command. There was an episode of Sex in the City, which I don't have you seen this episode? I've never watched Sex in the City. And you would love it. But I said, because I save it for emergency occasions. I'm still only a bit through season five because I started in 2024. And I saved for emergencies when I really need comfort.

So I'm, and my friend's like, you could just rewatch it. I'm like, no, I'm, and eking it out. But there's an episode where Carrie is like, she has no money and she's, basically, her boyfriend has bought the flat. I'm trying to remember it. Bought the flat. They break up. He, I think, is going to sell it

or she can't afford to live there anymore. Something's going to happen to it. And she realizes she's had no money because she spent it all on shoes. She's spent all in money in shoes. And she gets really mad at her rich friend Charlotte because she thinks Charlotte should be paying for her flat.

She thinks Charlotte should pay for her flat. She has this big blowout where she's like, Charlotte, you're rich, you should be helping me. And Charlotte's like, what the fuck? I don't know you that. And at the end, she does then pay for the flat. I think she gives her a wedding ring to pawn so Carrie can pay for the flat because Charlotte's just gone through a divorce and she's got a really expensive amazing apartment from the divorce.

But the whole point of the episode is what do your friends owe you? What do your friends of higher income owe you if you are on a lower income? And I don't know if there's a blanket answer because on the one hand I could say, well, are they the deserving poor? But then you go to crazy work where it's like you get to be the arbiter of who is. is deserving and who isn't deserving. And as you say, then you're the person making the decisions, attaching value to what that person's chosen. But then again, if your friend's just like farted about and is like,

I want to make it as a lute player and I think you should fund my lifestyle, yeah, that is asking a lot. It's asking a lot. I was in a lute player situation. I was in a lute player situation where, somebody wanted to become a loop player, right? They, they, like, jacked in what was quite a well-paying job. They do come from, like, a much more, like,

low-income, deprived background. But they had a well-paying job, and they dragged it into become a loop player and wanted their friends to financially support that. And I hate to say it, but I didn't. I think there's a limit there because the way I see it is this, right? I want a certain type of life

and I realise they could no longer afford that life in the city I was living in and I had to make choices, difficult choices. And I think those choices are on me and I wasn't in a financial emergency and I chose to, you know, give up some things and leave and do some other things. And if I said to me, guys, I'm going to give up, say if I quit my job, I haven't quit my job,

but if I quit my job and I wanted to still stay in a city and I wanted to take like a year off to write another book. And I said to my friends, guys, I really want to do this. You need to pay into my go fund me. I think they'd be well within the rights to say, no, go fuck yourself. No, I'm not doing this, you know, because I haven't really made any, I feel like this should be a level of like, okay, I'm going to give this up and this is a negotiation and then you can invest in this and I'll give this back. Like, pardoner schemes, for example, which I think are a good community informal way of like... What's a partner scheme?

A partner scheme was done by Caribbean migrants mostly and it was literally where everyone pays in a little bit every month or a lot of bit every month and then everyone in turn would get the payout. So you pay out like £100 and then someone would get that money back over, you know, one person, it would be one person's turn and they get the lump sum and then you pay an again. again, another person would get lump sum. This is how a lot of people bought houses back in the day, but obviously houses were cheaper.

So it worked more. But I guess it works like a mutual aid fund. It's a mutual aid fund, essentially. And that's a lot. That, again, is like you're giving money, but, and you're not judging what someone does with it, but everyone gets a turn. So there's a balance and there's a parity to that, right?

Whereas when it's just one person saying, I would like this money from you and you, as my friend, are obligated to give it, I think there's a difference because you haven't agreed those terms that someone just putting an expectation on you out of the blue. Whereas if you have agreed terms mutually, then there is no room for the judgment of what someone does with that money because the terms are we're all paying in,

we all get a go. Whatever you do with that, that's your business. So I think that there's something about like, you know, if we're digging into the sort of like go fund me culture, which like, I don't want to, I guess I don't want to call it a culture, but it does feel like this quite distinct thing. And I'm, I feel like,

I see more of it because it's on the left, right? So, like, recently there was a go-fundee situation because a friend of mine had a bike crash. And I was like, more than happen. Do you know what I mean? So I'm just like, oh, it's a really fucking shit thing. Like, you know, kick in 50 quid, help him get a new bike. Right.

That just to me seemed like such an obvious, like, bad thing happened. Like, there was no sort of leveraging of, like, politics or identity for it. Though that's in there because they're a very politically committed person. but it wasn't leveraging that as like you do this because it's politically good it's we're doing this because we love him and he's having a shit time right and so that to me just felt really like natural right it felt like a very natural thing to want to do I actually feel quite put off sometimes when identity is being leveraged now that that

that varies in different ways right like you know if it's like a whip around for someone to have top surgery or something I'm like yeah actually like it felt it feels almost like of like more meaningful wedding gift or like something like that or like you know more meaningful than like paying in someone's honeymoon where you sort of being like I'm really helping you live the life that you want to live like I'm down with that but I've seen some leveraging of identity where I'm like are you fucking serious like are you fucking serious and and it comes steeped in guilt and shame so like um it's I don't want to go into the specifics of what it was because because it's too obvious.

But like there was a situation where like someone's saying, oh, we need to raise money for this person because like they need to go on holiday because of these facets of their identity. And I was like, no. Like, like, no, like that's not reasonable. Or like, you know, the loop player situation. The ask came like draped in guilt.

And like there was also some kind of like slightly fucked up business of someone making the ask on their behalf. like kind of talking a bit of smack about like oh well try and make sure that these people kick in because I know that they've got loads of money and they should use their privilege for this and I was like get your hand out my fucking pocket like get it out but that's the thing is that's that's not it's not parity that's the problem you'll I think financial obligation or obligations to each other works when there is a sense of reciprocity and that reciprocity doesn't have to be financially. If someone doesn't have the ability to be financially reciprocal,

that's okay, but that has this idea if we have this mutual respect, we understand what we're doing here. It's like a holiday fund, for example, it would be so, it would be, it would be much more sensible and much less guilt if like you're a group of friends, you might be low income and you set up a holiday fund and you all pay in like a fiver and then someone every, you know, six months gets to use that to go on holiday. You know, like there's things you can do. It's a subsidy situation. Whereas I think the problem is that different types of fundraising are being used for inappropriate causes. Maybe that's the wrong way to put it. Or like it's not matching the type of fundraising to the cause at hand. So emergency stuff, that's your GoFundMe's, that's your very

individual asks. Stuff which is like living costs in an increasingly restrictive world that everyone is suffering from, you need something which recognizes the group struggle and the group sort of like we all pay in and maybe there's some members of the group who pay in a bit more like that's mutual fucking aid use them appropriately and have like a regular thing going

because then you get so much more out of it if I was paying it I would happily pay into a mutual aid fund where some of the lower income people get more out of it. I already do pay into like different mutual aid funds that I don't benefit from because it's like a philanthropic thing I pay money to charities but like

I think in a group situation why not set up a partner's scheme. So I think that like, you know, if we're sort of like looping back around, it's to like the question, which is like, does it spell trouble if there are like gaps in income? I think the thing is, is like, it creates problems that you have to negotiate, right? Problems that you have to navigate. And like, some of it can be sort of like, you know, the very minor thing about snobbiness about where you're going drinking tonight, right? Like, and the way in which that illustrates different priorities, but there's also a much more central thing about control. And I think that

like one of the things that we've been talking about is that like money is itself a form of control because it invites negotiation and accountability, right? My partner is accountable to me in certain ways, one, because he's my partner, but two, because there's an asymmetry in what we're putting in. And that becomes really difficult when you're friends. And one of the things, you're sort of saying is that, well, in order to navigate that, you have to create a kind of reciprocity. Because otherwise, like, you're in the space of being, like, sort of like, in a position of having to account for yourself.

And I think that to bring back the identity politics part of it is that I feel that when you do have those GoFundMe's, which are like very id-pol heavy, that's a way of trying to like overturn the power relations so it goes the other way and sort of say, well, actually, like, you can't express that desire to, like, negotiate or to understand or to hold accountable because you should be feeling guilty for who you are in relation to them,

which I think is just, like, toxic for friendships and relationships of all kinds. I also think that, I know we've talked quite long about it's back, I could honestly go on forever. I think another thing about money is often money is really about, anxieties and you know some people are very blase about it because they feel much more security. For example, I'm definitely, I always like being the breadwinner now. That's mental stuff because it's control in some ways. But it's also, and it's about security. And I have, I have a lack of,

not a lack of understanding what's the best way to put this. I constantly undervalue how much money I have. I constantly operate from a place of scarcity and needing to make more money. And it's definitely, like, for example, I kept saying, oh, my move's all about money. It's about money. It's about saving money. I want to move so I can save money. No, it was I move for love. I move for love. That was the fundamental thing. Like, I'm making different choices or I will be moving for love if it all works out, et cetera. But the plan is move for love. And the money on top of that is more, it's more about my anxiety, about security, about bringing value, because I've attached a lot of value to money.

And if you have a secure relationship with someone, for example, okay, so my best friend makes a lot more money than me. And she bought a house and she was a bit worried. She was like, because I was talking about, you know, not being able to afford to live in London or not being able to afford to live out the life I want in London, realizing that. She was a bit worried about that.

And she was like, you know, was it referencing me or did it? And I was like, no, not at all. like I genuinely only feel happiness for her that she has achieved this thing. And weirdly, her higher income, it doesn't, it doesn't bother me. She's, we have a very, like, reciprocal relationship in so many ways. And when we're out and about, we often, like, we'll buy it to the rounds and it's, it doesn't matter, you know, we'll buy another friend dinner and who doesn't make as much. It's like a very sort of, like, informal thing.

And it's never, it's not really come into our relationship at all. Like, we'll joke sometimes about one of us being posher than the other or something like that. but the actual economic gap hasn't played in. And it's interesting, maybe it's just because we're from similar enough financial backgrounds, but my anxiety doesn't play up there maybe because I feel secure in that relationship. It's not something I actually aspire to.

And also I can't imagine having that level of money because it, you know, some circumstances that come by. And I think my thing is like, what's in reach and what can I take? What can I, what can I day now? But I can't imagine having, like, only when I bought a share in a house did it dawn on me, how much money is actually worth. How much money I'd ever need to get something.

How much money I will not have. And I had to sort of like reconfigure the value. Because obviously like day-to-day purchases, you know, I can afford a nice meal out, etc. And it really showed like the privilege of my position that I hadn't really, it hadn't dawned on me. And then when it dawned me, I was like, fuck. Damn, money's really worse something.

But there's people I know in London who spend their lives subletting their apartment because they can't afford the rent that month, going away, swapping house-swapping. Like they live a very precarious life, They seem quite happy doing that. I think let's, yeah, move on two dilemmas, because I think you're right.

I think we can talk about this for ages. Like, there's just so much here about, like, the income gaps which maybe feel big but are small and they feel big because you're close together. And then the income gaps, which are really big, but you almost never notice them because they're never going to show up in your life. I think my final thing for people would be,

if you're experiencing resentment and difficult, because of a widening income gap in a relationship of any sort, I think you should actually look at what that is covering. I think it will be less about the income gap and I think it will be more about priorities and whether you feel, what your side of it, like what your priority is and it's probably about judgment about the way

the other person is living their life or something that you want. That would be my take. What a searing hot take. Great, we are at, I'm in big trouble. our regular scheduled dilemma segment if you are in big trouble small trouble medium trouble email us at if i speak at navaramedia.com that's if i speak at navaramedia.com um moya do you want to read this one yeah i will i will um hi ashen moya thank you for your

perspectives and insight on this podcast and in your wider work i'm writing in with a dilemma i'm in a committed relationship with my partner of five plus years we have lived together for the past year and a bit, and overall it's been really wonderful. We've spoken about the future at various points and are clear that we want to have children together. Up until more recently, it was clear the time wasn't right. We lived apart and had different focuses. I even had an abortion several years ago, as we were not ready, but in a way the experience clarified that this was something we wanted, just not at that moment. Recently, my partner, after some probing from me, revealed he's been struggling with a drug addiction for the past year of so. He places the origin of this to an accident that he

in. Initially I felt sad that I hadn't noticed, and he hadn't felt able to share this with me. It's been hard since then, as he says he doesn't have much, if any capacity, to think about the future, or even to be able to give me love and affection as he used to, as much of his energy goes towards trying to recover from this. I try to be as understanding as possible, but there's a part of me that wants a timeline. I know this is unreasonable, as these things aren't linear, but I suppose I want to know when he'll be himself again, and feel ready to think about our future together. I suppose my question is how to navigate wanting certainty about how long things will take and the thing I don't want to think about whether this will ever change.

Any thoughts you have will be gratefully appreciated with gratitude, special one. So there's another dilemma in our dilemma's inbox, which is from someone asking about or asking for advice about a situation that they're in where they discovered that their partner had a gambling addiction, which had been kept secret from them. And so just in case that we don't get to that one, like in its specificity, I suppose, I want to make clear that, like, I feel like what I'm saying is relevant for both. Which is there is no getting back to before, I don't think. Like, your partner may not be an active addiction ever again, hopefully.

Like, I really hope they're never an active addiction ever again. But from everything I understand from friends of mine who are in recovery, like, you are all, always an addict. You always have to reckon with that part of yourself and the fact that it exists. And, you know, you need to keep going to meetings. Like, it's not picking it a scab and keeping it alive forever, but like you, you do just have to have to go and like preserve that understanding of who you are so that you're able to manage your addiction. And that obviously has huge implications for their friends, their family, and especially their partners. You have to understand that your partner will be an addict for the rest of his life. That doesn't necessarily mean that

the relationship has to end. That doesn't necessarily mean that he'll be in active addiction for the rest of his life, but it means that that becomes part of what the two of you have to manage together to a greater extent, to a lesser extent, at various points. I know that there are things like families anonymous that you can go to, which is for the family members and loved ones of people struggling with addictions. And that might be a helpful thing for you to be able to, like, get some perspective. Like, I can't tell you in terms of, like, how long things will take, like when you'll feel that you've moved out of the more like acute phase of it. Like when might you be able to put some of your needs and your aspirations for the future back on the table?

Like I can't help you answer those questions. But there are people who can. And that might be a helpful thing. Yeah. I mean, everything you said basically. Everything you said. What would I add? to this, you have to prepare for the worst. You have to prefer for the idea that your partner

might be in and out of sobriety for the rest of his life. That might not be true, but you have to prepare for it mentally because you need to understand yourself. Is this something that you can commit to? You are now the partner of an addict. And as Ash said, he might be an active addiction, he might not, but you are a partner of an addict and that is your identity changed as well. If you are prepared to commit to that identity, it will mean accepting there is going to be ups and downs that you will also need to bring a lot more people

into the relationship. I mean, I know that relationships should be community things anyway, but when you have someone in addiction, addiction really is a sickness that feeds on individuality and loneliness. It heals with community. that's why there's, you know, anonymous groups because it's not just the 12 steps or whatever program that's chosen,

it's the communal nature of sharing this illness and sharing the recovery, that's where the power comes in. It's building that, like, support network so that when you, when someone feels that their, you know, their anxieties are triggered and they want to relapse to numb themselves or whatever, for whatever reason they turn to this substance, they have someone to call, they have their sponsor,

they have, you know, support networks, they have people who can take them away from that impulse. It's about building an entire different resilient network. And I don't know what treatment your partner is going to go through. Like you haven't mentioned how that's starting, whether it's going to be an anonymous group, whether it will be initially rehab. But it might take a couple of false starts to even begin that.

I have people I love very dearly who've been in and out of sobriety. And it's very hard. What else would I say on this? for yourself, I would definitely seek out the support groups. For alcoholics, it's Alan. I don't know what it is for Narcotics Anonymous, but there'll be a family support group. Again, you need the community.

Friends and family, obviously, and books. I listen to so many books. I read so many books on addiction. It's an addiction. It's crazy. Obviously, this is also one framework. Like, that's another thing that will change about your life. if your partner commits to addiction recovery, you will start seeing the world

through an addiction framework for a while. There are other frameworks to see the world in. There's psychoanalytic. Like there's very different frameworks. And they can really complement each other. Like don't think you have to commit to one or the other, but you will start for a while talking in addiction framework. Everything's an addiction.

Everyone's addicted to something. And then other times you'll have a completely different framework. someone who's really good on this in Substack is P. Moskowitz, they write really well on addiction and frameworks and even though they're psychoanalytic, they wrote a really good one recently on seeing the world in different ways. But I would really listen to the stories. Like I would seek out the literature.

That's something that's really helped me understand exactly what this disease does to a person and how it changes them and how your life will never be the same. And that sounds terrifying. And I get that it is, but it doesn't mean the end of a life. it doesn't mean that you won't have these things that you want. It means that you cannot put a timeline on it and you have to decide for yourself,

is that something I can live with or is this something I actually can't? And I know it sounds heartbreaking that you might have to consider ending the relationship, but that is something you have to think about because otherwise you will end up in a place where you resent it and you haven't taken in all the knowledge. You've buried your head in the sand and you haven't been able to make an informed decision.

The best thing you can do in this case is like making an informed decision because the worst thing is just sort of like saying, I'll stand by you, whatever that means. And then when whatever that means happens, you resent it and you walk away anyway. I think just on that, like, I think that consider ending the relationship is really good advice for all relationships,

not to introduce a precarity of like, ooh, I could be out any day now, but actually to really help you go, where are we? Is this kind of unhappiness, the sort of unhappiness tax that one must pay in a relationship. Is it a crisis which I think we're going to move through?

You know, how does this stack up against the other things which are really, really important to me? I have the option to leave. I always have the option to end it. And, you know, my partner's much more of a person who's like, what are you talking about? No, I'd never leave you. I would never leave.

And I was like, you know, I know why you're saying that. You're saying that as an expression of love. but you actually like it puts the existence of our relationship into an active place an active choice a place of agency and decision making you know so I think that that's advice which I would give to everybody which is thinking about ending the relationship is not a sign that you want out it's a sign that you're really thinking about what does it mean to be in it yeah unless obviously you're going to bed at night thinking I want to leave in which goes leave.

That's different because that's not what does it mean. Another thing I would say on this is don't make yourself this person's nurse either. Don't make yourself a saviour. Don't make yourself the nurse because then and don't like don't make it into you're recovering for me. You cannot do that because then when their recovery fails, the relationship will fail to you. Also, some people want to fuck their nurse but no one wants to fuck their mother. Well, actually they do.

Well. But the point is you're not meant to be in relationship with a parent because when you, we'll get I meant to this another day, but my therapist said a great thing the other day, where she was talking about why people have affairs, and it's like, well, people have affairs when the dynamic becomes, like, child parent because people don't want to have sex with their children. I'm afraid. Well, they shouldn't.

They really shouldn't. On that note. On that note. Boy! Boy! But yeah, a special one, it's very difficult. And I know what we've said will probably be not what you want to hear. And I totally get that when you're grappling with these things at first.

I remember it was like, you just want them to get better, but they might never. And the nicest thing you can do is honestly the best thing you can do for everyone is accept that they might never get better and go from there. You're in a new reality. Yeah, your reality is shifted and it sucks. But there can be great realities that come out of this one. It's just you have to start from a place of knowledge.

And on that note, now we're going to end and not talking about the children. I really feel for you, really feel for you special one. This is just like fucking really difficult and there's no way around the fact that is an incredibly difficult situation to be in. Yeah. I've had a lot of addiction dilemmas recently and gambling ones.

I think there's a... I don't want to say there's a bit of a crisis going on. I think there's a bit of a crisis going on. I think there's a bit of a crisis, especially with gambling. We should have an episode on that someday. I actually want to do a sort of post-pandemic episode where we really reckon with what the pandemic did to us and what lockdowns did to us psychologically.

Who should we get on to talk about that? Special ones, if you have suggestions of guests for our post-pandemic reckoning episode, send them in. Send them in. Also, send them guest recommendations. If you want to hear someone talk to us. Yeah, I like that. Because I'm terrible at thinking about guests.

I'm just like, my next door neighbor. I feel like I'm quite good, but then I have to action it and then I fall apart. But now I've got more time on the hands. Okay. Right. We're going to go. Bye! Bye-bye.