If I Speak - 129: How did the pandemic change you?

Episode Date: September 22, 2026

What if we still haven’t processed what the pandemic did to us? Was Covid a permanent turning point for our social lives and mental health? Ash and Moya identify an ongoing yearning for connection amid the scare stories and the manic bounceback. Plus: is it your fault you’re still single? Send us your dilemmas: [e-mail] Music by Matt Huxley.

I haven't had any coffee this morning because the plumber being, we had to walk here at like 7.30 and they didn't have time to have a coffee. And then if I had one now with the plumber doing plumbing things, it just wouldn't be conducive. It wouldn't be conducive. I also haven't had caffeine this morning because I had a tummy upset yesterday. Oh no. Why was your tummy upset? I don't know.

I don't know. I can think of three things that I ate before. Like I went to a friend's barbecue, not that I'm accusing them. I would never ever accuse them. But there were babies there. There were babies there, who, as we all know,

are vectors of germs. And then when I got home, I made a pasta, which wouldn't have done it, but also a salad. Like sometimes you can get like one manky leaf that wrecks your shit.

It sounds like literally wrecks your shit. It sounds like you are accusing the babies. I'm not accusing anyone. I'm just saying that if this were an acute-poir-ro investigation, we would have three suspects. Maybe it was murder on the Orient Express and they all did it. Maybe it was a combination of germ, manky leaf and barbecue. I will say at the risk of sounding like my prudish anti-toil itself is that it was vomiting.

Ah, congratulations. So, mashallah. Okay, well, I have questions for you. Okay, fabulous. Well, what podcast is this? Oh, who cares about that shit? No, this is if I speak. This is the podcast for what do you always say, the neurotics?

Neurotics overthinkers and hotheads. And hot heads, which encompasses a lot of people. That's wide demographics, which is why I think, I hope our listener stats are going up. I haven't checked in recently. But they seem to be. We're getting loads of comments. 3% amongst the Hutthead community. Yeah.

That demographic is shooting up is great. But now it is time for 72 questions, minus 70, because we have not got the time or the energy. And I have three for you, including an axis. Ah. I've got an axis. So the first one I have now immediately changed based on our last conversation, which is, okay, Poirot or Miss Marple?

Oh, that's really hard. That's really, really hard. I think ultimately I've got to go Poirot in terms of its impact on me. The Little Rees-Sels is it's in there, you know, it's a thing that I say. But maybe that's just internalized misogyny. Where do you stand? Marple. Marple.

Marple to the core. Marple is my comfort watch. but only Joan Hickson. I don't care about this new Rutherford nonsense. It's actually Margaret Oatham came before Joan Hickson. Who's the new Lenn? Geraldine something. I'm a, I'm a Hickson truther.

It's got to be David Touche, you know? That for me is the quintessential pourre. Yeah, they made it better in the 80s and 90s. Okay. Another question before we get to the Axis. Least favourite dog, why? Okay, I actually have precise dogs in mind.

Anything which is Pomeranian terrier chihuahua because in my experience I'm sure you get some good ones but like one I don't like the bug eyes I don't like bug eyes and two I find with little dogs they actually don't get trained

properly so they become really annoying and like I get it okay, because I'm a little dog that wasn't trained properly. Like, I totally understand where they're coming from, which is the world is scary, everyone's trying to test you, and you're trying to set some boundaries nice and early, right? Totally get that.

But in my experience, they're just so loud, just so, so, so, so, so loud. So that's where I am. What's your least favorite? See, I think I'm opposite end of the scale. I don't like Chihuahuas, but I love a little fluffy brainless dog. I love a fluffy brainless dog.

I dislike, sorry to say, don't like pugs, don't like staffies, sorry guys. Oh, I love staffies. I know, I knew you like staphys. I love those sad faces. I think you have the same sensibilities as my boyfriend. He likes proud dogs. He likes dogs that look like dogs.

I like ridiculous animals, like a dash out. So I'm not a huge fan of Whippets. I'm sorry, I know there's a huge Whippet community out there. Big Whippet community. Too skinny, too, you know, I don't like bigger dogs as much, unless they're massively fluffy. You used to offset the size. When I was growing up, our childminder had this staffy called Boisey, who I think was was, Boisey was named after Boisey from, I think it was Coronation Street.

No, it's only Fools and Horses, obviously. Only Fours and horses, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, only Fores and this was at the time where there was like, you know, there was a big moral panic around staffies, like a really big one. Like every time a child got savaged, it was like Staffy that did it. But Boise was the most gentle dog ever. So her house would be full of kids because she was childminding for like a fair few of us. And she had, at the time she had two kids of her own who were toddlers.

And so just everyone wanted dogs' attention. Do you know what I mean? And then the two toddlers are like pulling at the ears and sort of, you know, trying to get the mouth open. And Boise, when he would be sick of like, you know, any other dog. would have growled, right, at a minimum ground. He would heave a sigh, which sort of had just the weariness of the ages. He would just go, and then he would, like, go upstairs very slowly to, like, this one bedroom where the kids weren't allowed to go because he knew that was his safe space.

I love Boise. That's a Disney dog. That's a dog that's, like, a lady in the tramp. He was fucking great. But, like, you'd, like, take him for a walk, and he, like, like, Okay, sorry, I'm just now talking about how much I love dogs. But I love dogs that do this. I love dogs that know to like ration their strength.

So like if a kid was playing like tug of war with him, he'd be putting nothing into it because he'd be like, oh, I'm going to try and let you in. And then if it was like an adult man, there'd be a bit more. But like it was only if you'd take him to the park, you could see what he could really do because you'd like go for a tree and just like bring down a branch with his jaws. And you're like, oh, okay, you've really been holding back.

Yeah, you're a big beast. You're a big beast. Okay, axis time, which I've tweaked several times, and I'm now going to do the one that my boyfriend would advise me not to do, but I think he's wrong. I don't think he's right. Okay, so at the vertical axis, we have prude and crass. Okay, we know where I am.

Do we? And then the horizontal axis, we have vagabond and gentlemen. I would say, generally, prude gentleman. generally but sometimes crass gentleman right I think like you get like it's sort of

it's contextual right like if I've had a few drinks in me we're obviously crass gentlemen and also when I'm bothering my partner which happens in the mornings because he wants to sleep in and I want to wake him up

so we can have play I'm very very much crass gentleman Like I'll wake him up by just, like, this morning. I was like, you know, I'm really scared of ectopic pregnancies. He's like, why are you saying this? Why are talking about this now? I haven't even had my sheddies.

Seven in the morning. Like his sleep mask is still on. Like, I'm really scared of ectopic pregnancies. There is another version of this. Well, I first I want to hear where you are on this one. Oh, I'm obviously a crass gentleman, I think. Yeah, you're crass gentleman. Look how much gel I have in my hair.

I'm not a vagabond. You're not a vagabond. I don't let myself loose enough to be a vagabond. The other version of this... I know a couple of crass vagabonds, though. I've got a couple of crass vagabonds in my life. Yeah, I'm acquainted with them. The other version of this was Tweed gangster,

the vagabond gentleman. So there's the other version of that as well. Yeah, but like the thing is, is that if you identify as gangster, then you're not. Yeah. You're not. so someone else i'd probably put you more gangster than twee though i'd say you're more i'd say i would like i'm twee i don't think i don't think you are i think you've got you've got a twee

self-image but i don't think that that's what's pulsing through your veins is very like don't fuck with me yeah you're like i'm a cottage mouth yeah i'm gonna chew through your wires bitch right okay on with the show on with the show on with the show No. But look, I think to be a gangster is good. I just think it's impossible to self-identified because everyone wants to be gangster, but maybe you're actually crocheting.

Yeah. Yeah, that's... But gangster's crochet, I think. That's an archetype. You know, that you have the gangster and he's listened to classical music. He's crochet. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's the one that will take off your fingers one by one.

Yeah, he's the most dangerous. Okay. Right, so I have an intrusive thought today. Listeners may remember that this kind of came up as a little tangent, I think a couple of episodes ago, and I thought that it deserved its own show. So the intrusive thought is this, which is, I don't think that we have grappled with what COVID did to us,

what the lockdowns did to us, what that meant for how we feel about social interaction, how we feel about each other. And I think that there are some pretty, like, sizable society-wide differences which are kind of intangible because it's really hard to remember, you know, what life was like. You can pick on anecdotes or little flashpoints, but it's really hard to recover a sense of what social rhythm was like.

And so all the research shows that we live in an age where in person social contact is shrinking. And last week some research for, from IPPR came out, which showed that the number of young people in England with no close friends has risen fivefold since 2014. And a growing number of people say that they're not happy with the friends that they do have. Now, as per the research, there are multiple reasons for it. Austerity, COVID-19, rapidly growing social media use, economic insecurity, difficult transitions into adult life, such as, expensive rent and unaffordable house prices.

But I do actually want to hone in on the pandemic. And I do want to hone in on lockdown specifically. So I'm not going to get into this whole thing of like, was it the right thing, was it the wrong thing? What about the Swedish model? Yada, yada, yada, because I don't want to talk about what could have happened. I'm just interested in what did happen and what that's done to us. So we know that there was a global increase in depression, anxiety,

other forms of mental health issues, but we didn't bounce back, right? So there was a big spike with lockdowns, but you didn't see an immediate fall either. So what basically all the research seems to say is that that mental health is here to stay. So yes, economic factors, yes, elements of post-traumatic stress, maybe.

But I think it's also the fact that social isolation once it becomes the norm, and you've got all these things which help, facilitate social isolation. So the wraparound of entertainment and like digital platforms, etc., etc. It becomes really hard to put that process into reverse. Something which I've been thinking about a lot is that connection is interaction plus reciprocal obligations. That's how you get a sense of connection. So it's not just interactions because obviously you can get loads of them. it's the sense that there's interaction plus mutual obligation.

That's how you feel connected to a person, to a community, to a sense of being folded into social life. And that's exactly the thing which I think so many people are struggling with. Like we get so many dilemmas from people yearning for connection in some way and feeling like they don't have enough of it. And I think we can all think of people in our lives who feel that way and who articulate that yearning in different ways and who also articulate the sort of obstacles

to finding that connection in different ways. And I just don't think you can blame it all on the cost of living. Like I don't. Like I know people say, oh, well, like going out is expensive or whatever. But like people were also like poorer in the past in all sorts of ways. And like living alone has also increased. Like it's not all just the cost of living makes, social connection hard. It does, but there is something which I think is more profound than that.

And so maybe the point that I would like to start off with is that digital immersion, weak and doubt tolerance for the discomfort of embodied interaction. And COVID gave us a legitimate material reason to be scared of interacting with people in person. it's been really hard to shake it. But yeah, what do you think? I mean, maybe we could also start with, like, what were your experiences of coming out of the pandemic like? It's interesting.

The pandemic is such a repressed period of time for me. It's very hazy. I can't remember exactly when the lockdowns were. I just am like, oh, sometime in this, some time in that. I think what I really experienced in the pandemic was the sense of fraying bonds of social obligation to one another. like you say, where, and it was particularly generational as well, it was interesting because it was like young people who weren't at risk

were very, were chafed against the obligations, especially in the big city where I lived in London, there was a real sense of we can just do what we want. And we have a freedom to do what we want and that's fine. Obviously when you're around other people, you'd mask up, etc., but there was a lot of behaviour going on that I would say would be frowned upon by those who were at risk, for sure.

But there was also a sense of like real secrecy and then versus us thing about that because if you mentioned that or talked about that openly with members who weren't within the in-group, then you would be shunned. And, you know, if you said online, even something like, I'm not sure about these lockdowns. My God, that blowback,

It was a very, very feebrile time and also both incredibly policed. I did a lot of work at the time about lockdown regulations and what they were doing and how vague they were and how they were then folded into the policing courts. I think it was actually the public order bill. They were folded into two different bills that then were used to crack down on protest even further. And then obviously you saw other examples of how that vague regulation was used. by institutions and by people who belong to institutions to misbehave or commit crimes like

Wayne Cousins use lockdown regulations in order to kidnap Sarah Everard. So it was a time when you felt that social contract really breaking with each other and to the government particularly in that. I've been fraying for a long time, there have been a lot mistrust already but it was it was sort of when polarisations really exploded. There were huge protests with the Black Lives Matter protests, but there was a huge anti-vaccine protests, which brought together this big coalition. And I went along to observe a couple of these,

and I was so shocked at the cross-section of people who appeared in them, versus even the Black Lives Matter protests. It was just such an interesting cross-section of people from all sort of like genders, demographics, really drawn together by this animating, thing where usually they'd be at complete odds. That really scared me as well.

And there was a sense of like, I don't understand the world that's being formed around me anymore. I don't understand the rules that govern it. I don't understand what's making it. And I'm literally being made to shrink further into a bubble where everything, the only way I can understand it is through online. And my person, My personal experience in terms of like what I went through, et cetera, was I obviously didn't see my family for ages.

My sibling is a sister's got immune suppression. So I had to stay away. Also like those phrases which like entered all of our vocabulary like clinically vulnerable. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? It's like like this new way of understanding ourselves and each other just like came in all of a sudden. Yeah, who's vulnerable? and it was also a big time of guilt.

There was a huge feeling of guilt because I personally benefited a lot from the pandemic. It was the first time I'd been able to clear my debts because of furlough. I was able to keep working at the same time in other jobs because I've freelanced and I helped out with shifts. So it was, you know, you got followed for my main job, but I still had other work.

I moved in with my then boyfriend for a bit. So my rent was. paused for a while like it was I didn't lose anything massively I obviously hates being cooped up but I still worked out in the park I learned to ride a bike on London's roads I think I got a new job but yeah I started working a new job during the middle of middle did I yeah yeah I think I did in the middle of the pandemic I well did I do there was so many things I learned to DJ like I also quit doing a substance halfway through because I first I hammered it and I

like, no, you'll stop this. So there were a lot of really good things that came out of the pandemic. Immediately after my relationship ended, that was probably good overall. There was, oh my God, that post-pandemic, like, bonfire of the relationship. But what I think I got out of it was a sense of,

I think there's a sense of suspicion that, about judgment, there was suddenly a real sense of suspicion and judgment and dislike of other people. And the, and I've always really liked people. My boyfriend said the other day was like, you really like people, don't you? When you go out and you have like a mundane interaction,

you come back and you're buzzing. I was like, I just really like, I think I like people. But there was suddenly a real sense of like, fuck you, you know, like, I thought, fuck you to everyone from the people who jumped the queue to the people who made the queue, you know? Everything was like, fuck you. Like, there was an irritation.

There wasn't a sense of grace that you give other people. when you were in a club suddenly people would push you after the pandemic. There was a lot of, when you're in cinema, suddenly there was a lot of like anger. And you could feel this tension. There was a weird tension everywhere. I think that's still there.

Yeah. I think there's so much in what you said and you can sort of pick any one point and like, you know, follow that path. But just to pick on this thing of not liking people and people not liking each other and irritation and contempt is that I do really think that that's one of the big

intangibles that came, like became really strong after the pandemic and is still with us. I think that there is this sense that lockdown really meant that you didn't have to live with people that weren't like you, right? We literally even called them bubbles, right? You'd have your bubble of, you know, shared households or like, you know, the six people you'd interact with. and I think that that really weakened our tolerance for people who lived really different kind of lives from you. And there was a sense of my priorities, right? You know, what are my priorities here? And those could be articulated in ways which came in the guise of sort of social responsibility,

which is, well, I'm the one looking out for health. but that would become a way to deal with a conflict, right? That would actually just be a thing that you were reaching for. And I guess on this point about people leading really different lives. So me and my partner moved in together. We saw that lockdowns were coming. It was, okay, we're going to move in together because it already happened in Spain where my best friend lives

and her and her boyfriend at the time, now husband, were in different places. And she was like, fuck, I don't know when I'm going to see him again. And so because they were, what, I guess a week and a half, two weeks ahead of where we were, that was on our mind. So we moved in together. And at first it was just the two of us because his housemates went back to their respective family homes. And we both have, you know, laptop tippy-topi jobs.

You know what I mean? Like, dig-dick, dig. So you still worked, you still had a sense of the outside being scary. And I think that in a way people like us, I actually would say it was probably white-collar workers who were the most on it about compliance, I would suggest. and the contrast I have in my head is with my brother-in-law who works in a factory, worked in a factory during that time. It was an essential industry, so I had to keep going to work. And I think he felt a real sense of quite legitimate frustration,

which is, you know, all these white-collar workers are being paid to stay at home. I've got to go out into work. But then also I'm being told what I can and can't do. do. And I think that maybe, certainly when I think about the way in which the left frame things, it was always invoking the essential worker as like a sort of secular saintly figure, where it's like you must, you know, comply and not socialised because of them. But what I would say is that in terms of the essential workers I knew, apart from people who worked in the NHS, which was actually obviously very different, but essential workers who didn't work in the NHS

and had to go into a place of work, in my experience, they were the most like, oh, just fucking like, let me do the things I want to do because they weren't experimenting with making sourdough. Do you know what I mean? Like, they weren't using all this extra free time to sort of immerse yourself in nesting and domestic life. And I think that that's something which is a divide and a feeling of like resentment and suspicion that has endured.

I think that we've come out of the pandemic and never recovered a sense of understanding of one another because people have stayed on these parallel tracks where there's not a crossover. I think it's definitely, it definitely embedded an idea of who has it worse. And the Depression Olympics were already in place. Yeah.

That was already something, you know, since 2012 I'd already been going. But within, because within the pandemic, I think for a lot of people, it felt like the only vehicle for change, was the internet at first, then things that were already ongoing or patterns or trends or behaviours

that were already being encoded by the internet 10 times worse because people's screen time was going up so much. And the other day, the writer P. Moskowitz was very, very good, wrote a substack about the munchification of the mind and they compared sort of internet usage in all, you know, apps and convenience culture to the suburbs of the night,

in the 1950s housewife figure, this idea of docility. And how, where possible, people swaddle themselves within these sort of like gadgets, tech, internet, but it's now in the mind. So they wrote, you might be queer or city dweller or leftist of whatever, but I think you're more like a housewife than you know. there you sit in capable of friction and capable of leaving the safe little box that has been created for you

and addicted to the amyloerreliens ameliorioriorites ameliorance within it what is the equivalent of a housewise valiant prescription and her daily dose of her favourite soap operas that would be a fun question for you to ask yourself and I think the pandemic really encoded this idea of like your safety is within both the home but even more within this digital space

and that's where you can both enact change and now that's where you find community. There were lots of mutual aid groups that happened at first and then a lot of them descended into fighting on WhatsApp. I thought that was really interesting. You cannot have a WhatsApp group of that many people without it descending into fighting. Like you just can't.

And I think that there was also something which is I think during the lockdowns is that I had a very bad idea of what was going on with me emotionally and psychologically. Like, I thought I was doing really well. But then every time, every time me and my partner would get a particular bottle of wine, I think it was like a fucking Vionnier or something.

Like, we'd end up just getting really crabby with each other and, like, someone would cry and we'd have a fight. And I remember we were like, okay, we can't have French wine, it makes us bad. And I was like, no, actually, maybe what it is is just like, it's two of you locked in a house together and you've got none of the things which unconsciously sustain you like on a day to day basis and you're you're dealing with it like you know I wouldn't say that there was you know there were some people who had like quite a spectacularly bad time do you know what I mean like really like in the pit of depression or substance misuse or

behaving in ways which we're really volatile. And I think because we weren't doing that, I was like, well, we're obviously just fine. But there was a sort of dysregulation that we couldn't understand. Like we couldn't even see it as dysregulation. One thing I think the pandemic encoded was a sense of negativity about what humans were capable of with each other,

which is like, oh, the mutual aid group descends into infighting. the politicians can't help or have a party. You go to the shop and you smile at someone and they snap at you instead. Yeah. Because they're scared of you. And I don't know if this is actually the same for people who did come up against the worst of the pandemic. Because I think some of those who, you know, watching their loved ones die in NHS care saw some of the sort of like best and most compassionate sides in that because it's like the doctors, the nurses. as they were cited over and over again

as sort of the heroes this pandemic. But those who were just enacting almost that slight remove and walking around in this uncanny dream state, you got this drip down effect of everyone, no one is to be trusted and they don't trust you either. And it was this sense of like, where have we gone so wrong that we can't find the shared sense of, you know, solidarity within this?

And it happened at first and then it's sort of, Where is the Blitz spirit? That kept getting invoked. And it was like, maybe the Blitz was full of people. But the Blitz was really fricking is trustful. Everyone was like, they're a German spy. They're doing this, you know? Like, the Blitz was full of gossip of rumor.

I mean, I think that's true. But I think it's just different from being locked in your house. Like, I do just think it's different from being locked in your house where then your contact with the outside world is mediated through WhatsApp or social media. where like, you know, certainly on social media, like your feed is like being algorithmically shaped and we know that that's sort of done to sort of stimulate feelings of outrage

rather than feelings of like love or connection or whatever. And then we also know that like communication on WhatsApp is hard, like tone is impossible. You know, being able to reassure someone while, like being able to give someone meaningful reassurance whilst you're saying something difficult is basically impossible. over text.

So like, you know, I do just think that many of the avenues of like good stabilising social connection were just completely cut off and we were being funneled down much more dysfunctional channels. I suppose there's something which I want to talk about which is to do with like health and disability. So I've got some friends who really really. got totally fucked by long COVID. I mean, like, fucked.

And I think that that's a part of post-pandemic life, is that people who were not dealing with long-term health issues, were not dealing with disability now are in a way which I think, I'm not talking about, you know, and they're resentful because they're bad people. saying that like I think it's really difficult because people come back and what they're saying is great we can go back to normal even though no one can but like that's another point and what they're saying is like well my body will not allow me to like it will not allow me to go back to

normal so again it's this feeling of like parallel train tracks which never never come back right like you were together and you were crossing over in your life all the time and now it's just you know this distance is put between you. I think that that's a part of it. And like, when it comes to friends who've had long COVID, I think that it, I think the first time I saw one of my friends and spent significant time with them

after their long COVID diagnosis, I found it really hard to adjust to in a sort of selfish way because I was like, I'm finding this really difficult to reconcile who you are now with who I knew before the lockdown. And, like, suddenly you encounter what your, like, unconscious expectations are with someone. And you're like, okay, time to adjust. And I was like, fuck, big adjustment.

Like, and that feeling is obviously going to be 10 times, 20 times more for them. I think what I will also say is that, like, that is real. And the sort of. I don't know, heightened awareness of some of this stuff also has meant that, you know, anxiety has always had physical components. Do you know what I mean? Like anxiety has physical expressions and the sort of feedback loops that exist between mind and body are complicated. And it's impossible to know what starts where. But for, I would say, like, most of my friends with anxiety, what the pandemic did is that it gave, it really,

enforce that sort of hyper-fixation on sensation, which can be like a real, you know, it's a sign that like an anxiety spiral is kicking off. And I was talking to, I was talking to someone I know about someone they know about how they're experiencing anxiety. And it's the sort of real fear of, like, you know, a particular bodily thing happening, which is just like really unlikely to happen. But they're so fixated on like the sensations in their body. And it's like, oh, like, and it made me reflect on friends with anxiety where like there is that real sort of feedback loop between like experiencing a sensation fixating on it, sensation gets worse. Like anxiety sort of is a widening spiral like that. And I do think that the pandemic, like that's probably always been a part of how

people have experienced anxiety, but it gets it gives a sort of like, um, legitimacy to it. It's not saying maybe I should stop fixating on my body. Like, Like, this is a fixation which isn't taking me anywhere good. Pandemic is like, no, you should. You should fixate on these micros sensations because the illness is real. The threat is real. Hmm. That's so interesting.

It's not something that I have encountered. I think I encountered the sort of the opposite in my circles. At the time I live with someone who I, basically, just before the lockdown, I had a birthday party. And that was the last party before lockdown. And everyone obviously got COVID. And then we locked down the day after. And we were like, okay, well that's good. We're in quarantine now.

Anyway, come down quarantine, great. And my housemate at the time was an essential worker. I wouldn't say what kind. But they definitely had COVID. But they refused to admit that any of their symptoms, which is like they couldn't taste anything. They had a terrible flu. It was COVID.

So they kept going to work because there was so, and there was someone who was very anxious. But it was really interesting to me that there was so in denial of this thing because it was such a stigma to have this virus. they just could not admit to themselves that they had it. But they were so vigilant when it came to other people. Really? Yeah, it was such a dissonance.

Whereas I've always been quite like, yeah, I feel like I've got COVID. Like the other week I'd flew and I was like, oh, this is COVID. I can feel it's COVID, you know. There's a certain feel of COVID to me that's very different. And maybe that's part of the anxiety from my book. Like, I can tell when I have COVID is this. It's a very specific feeling. It's a specific headache and it's a specific feeling in my stomach.

I feel very, I feel like I'm disassociating when I get COVID. I get very dissociated and I get maybe like a scratchy throat, maybe not a snotty nose, but it's like I feel really disconnected and like spacey. Yeah. Oh, it's COVID. Oh, here you are going in. Which tells you that I didn't fear it as much as maybe I should have and I was very lucky. Like I had it about three times.

I just quarantined each time. And I got my vaccine really. early. I felt like I was just lucky. And then my poor sister was just locked up, you know, locked up, um, had to properly be away from society for two years. So it's like you say, there's parallel spaces. But the anxiety I saw in people was anxiety. I saw, I saw a more philosophical anxiety arise about like what the fuck is happening with my life. What am I doing? And this sense that like, even though we try to go back to normal, there was this sense that the world had tilted on its axis and no one really wants to admit that COVID is when that happened.

But everyone's like, it's wrong. Like this is, this is, you know, we're living through a time that no one's ever lived to see before, which is like, yeah, technically true, but also everything always happens, you know, like, it's cyclical. It's not our first plague. It's not our first plague. But, and the response, you can see it in this other way. It's like, you know, when you're talking about how COVID created a generation of people

who were disabled who previously weren't, that's a mass disabling event, right? just like World War I. And that's an adjustment to a new normal for so many people who never expected that to happen on a scale that wasn't predicted, same as World War I. And the response to COVID, I think, economically was very like World War I too.

I've talked about the Roaring 20s recently. And this, you know, we're just going to party and we're going to spend. And that really happened. That really happened. The 2020s, the early 2020s. Well, not the slightly later in the 20s, 2022 onwards.

It was just spend, spend, it's all up. And now we're going, now if I've run out of money and realize that we're definitely heading for an even bigger recession. And you can see that start to bite. Like, it's fascinating looking at the little signals of this and who's going to listen to them and who isn't.

Everything from, what was it the other day that happened? We're talking about the city at the moment, which is Glasgow. Loll. And how the spend on, you know, there's more people than ever coming to the city. but spend on attractions is down. And it's those little things where it's like,

okay, you're getting more tourism, but the spends down, I think that's happening in places like London too. It's like spending everything from retail to beauty. We talked about this recently, but like it's all down. Yeah. It's telling you something. Yeah. I mean, I was also, again, there's just like so many aspects of this, right?

Like I think another one is, like we were referencing it jokingly, but like so many people broke up after lockdowns were lifted. I wrote about this. But there was also, there was the second pandemic, the polyamory pandemic, which was 2021, 2021, 2022. Ongoing. Every, well, I think that, I think there's been a dip, right? You know, I think it's higher than it was pre-pandemic, but it's not, it's not at its peak.

because I think that so many people were in a way trying to go, what am I entitled to? Like I've missed, you know, I've missed all this time of like life. Like, what am I entitled to? And I think that a lot of relationships struggled with people asking that question. Now, obviously, E&M and also UNM, unethical non-monogamy, are like one form that that struggle takes. But like I definitely remember coming out of the pandemic

and it was difficult to know whether this was just we'd hit that stage in the relationship or if it was specifically post lockdown that me and my partner, we would describe it as our tug of war years. The power struggle? It was the power struggle. It was very much a case of like

who's pulling who, out of the foxhole and both of us trying to like bed down and like assert our weight and our right to shape what the relationship is and what the dynamic is and so on and so forth. And I would say that that only came to an end, 2023, when we got married. Like getting married was the sort of resolution of the thing, not because necessarily the issues had been all put to bed, but because that for us, the same. solution looked like a lifelong commitment and changing the shape of the container in which the relationship takes place? I think very, I think what you're speaking to there is this thing,

when people came out, they were like, I want to do everything all the time all at once. And I, me and my friends used to joke that pre-pandemic hinge was the last like helicopter out of Saigon, you know. After that, the apps became unusable. But I think it is less about the apps And I think it was more that people didn't want to commit to anything anymore. I don't know why exactly the pandemic. I haven't quite got that worked out. But there was something there about this thing being foisted and suddenly everyone came out. They were like, I'm wasting life.

I need to do everything all the time all at once. But that has led to, I think, even more on you. Because just consuming and like mindless hedonism is good for a very short period of time. It's not good for an ongoing time. And eventually there is real. relief and joy to be found in making an active commitment to something or someone, I think. And maybe that is committing to a polyamorous setup. I don't know, but a lot of people who were doing the polyamorous setup weren't really doing polyamory. They weren't committing

to multiple people. They were just shagging a lot of people. Very different things. I mean, I think we should do like a polyamory special one day because we need a polyamorous person on because otherwise it's just us slagging of polyamory and that's not fair. Ringman, that's not fair. But I think like, because I think that sometimes with polyamory people get involved in like semantic arguments. Do you know what I mean? Of like, well, this is real polyamory or this isn't or whatever. And I guess I'm less interested in that.

And I'm, you know, to a similar extent, I'm less interested in defining what monogamy is. And I'm much more interested in like, how do you actually feel about the thing that you're doing? And I think that what's interesting to me about that sort of post-lockdown period is that so many people felt that it was like, a greyhound coming out of the traps.

So it wasn't necessarily, you know, E&M or whatever as like a sort of careful negotiation between partners, however many partners that involves of like, okay, how are we going to do this? It sort of felt like almost like a form of mania. Like if I don't do this now, when am I going to do it? And that sort of like it, the content of that is by the bias, the feeling that matters.

because like a relationship will break down if two people are running in opposite directions. Yeah, it was very, I got this feeling that and it wasn't just related to relations, but it was that I don't do this now, then when. And it was this idea like, I'm going to miss out. Am I doing life right? Am I living as fully as I need to do all the things? And that included, you know, just running around. But then there was also an unwillingness to let go of what was already there.

So it was like, I won't, I'll stay in this relationship. relationship and I'll just shag around rather than being like maybe you need to leave this relationship behind, maybe you need to leave the city behind, maybe you need to live X Y, Z. And I think maybe that was, I don't know, maybe that came from a fear of like, you know, in the pandemic, you didn't have a base and you don't really want to fully destabilize. Also, lockdown might always come back. Yeah, it might always come back. It might always come back.

But I think it did delay a growing up, a maturity. But maybe that was also just in London, because London is already. of piece pants. So I'm not sure, but it's interesting talking to my partner about this. I won't share his thoughts too much, but, you know, it's now he's ready to settle down. And I wonder if it would have been earlier if there hadn't been like pandemic in the way. And I think that's probably true for others, this idea of settling and when they settle. And the ones who were settled maybe got unsettled much earlier than they thought there would be.

I don't know it's definitely done a lot of it's done a lot of stuff that were only just now starting to maybe be ready to think about before it was too early and also in the rush and like I just want to have fun I just want to have some fun those years were hard I just want to have some fun and now I'm a bit like maybe my conception of but that's also growing up like I'm 31 now yeah like during this time you're also aging and changing

maybe we can like wrap up on a question which is if you had to identify a way in which the pandemic changed you, what would you say? I think it kind of gave me my career. That's not true. I think it took my career to a different... It definitely stepped up my career.

But maybe we've done that anyway. It's too hard to say. How did it change me? probably quitting that substance than I knew I could quit things that's probably that is probably the biggest change and I started going to therapy

those are probably the biggest change and I broke up after the pandemic it laid bare those cracks even more and that was really good for us it's too hard it changed me in so many ways that I probably am not even aware of fundamentally and I've got my friendships got deeper

as well it's just with such formative time it's too hard to say I can't choose one do you have one do you even have one there's two that I can think of one is that it like annihilated my desire to go clubbing to be honest like it's never come back in the same way

like ever ever ever like before I'd be like yeah if I can get on it like all the time and it just eliminated that desire which again it's difficult it's difficult to say if I would be different now had the pandemic not happened because obviously I would have gotten older during that time but like that was definitely it just did not come back for me in the same way.

But the second thing is probably like, you know, so if that's one thing where I go, oh, that's maybe sad that I lost that. One thing where I go, oh, but maybe glad is it made me really conscientious of like making a home the way I want to make it, which isn't just about what things do you have or like how do you decorate. It's like, what do you use it for? What's happening here?

Like, how do you create the space that has the effect on people that you want it to have? Like, how do you host well rather than just, like, you know, shoving people into your house share? Like, how do you host well? I think that that was a lockdown benefit. I wonder if it actually created more of a sense of precarity for me. Because I went to my ex's house and he hated me being there, halfway to. through. Our landlord was like, bye

as well. There was a constant sense of like nothing lasts and just everything's in and out and you can't predict what's coming next. So maybe exacerbated sense of precarity as well. Anyway, anyway, the listeners,

special ones, write in with your experiences. Yeah, I want to know. I really want to know. You can comment under both Spotify and probably Apple or two, I don't know. You can comment and soon hopefully if we'll have other places

you can comment with your thoughts and we do reply. Let's move on to I'm in Big Trouble, which is our regular scheduled dilemma segment. If you are in big trouble, email us at if I speak at navaramedia.com. That's if I speak at Navaramedia.com. I would like to remind you of the retraction period. After you send your dilemma, you've got 24 hours to retract. You do not have 25 hours to retract.

You do not have 26 hours to retract. You have 24. And most of you are very good about this. Very, very good. So well done. We've seen some great retractions, some top-tier retractions. And we honour them. We honour them.

Right, I'm going to read this one out. Because I want you to go first. I know. Dear Ashen Moyer, long time listener here, and I just wanted to say, every time I listen to you to chat, I always learn something surprising about myself. So thank you for that. I have a dilemma, which is perhaps a dilemma,

which has already been answered in some capacity, but I think it's a universal one, so I'm going to ask it anyway. I am 28F and single, and have never been in a serious long-term relationship. Over the last nearly decade, I've fallen in love with friends, kissed strangers,

travelled across Europe to see situationships, and probably been on 50 first dates. In this time, I really have had some transformative experiences and had romantic connections that have impacted me in so many aspects of my life, which I am honestly really grateful for. I'm glad I was single that whole time in retrospect,

so I got to build relationships with so many amazing people. But truly, if I was honest, that whole time I was hoping someone would become my partner. There have been four people who I genuinely thought I would start a long-term relationship with in the last couple of years, but after a while of dating them, they all ended things with me. After taking a while off of dating apps, and after taking a while off of dating and the app,

to reflect on my intentions. I met someone who I really liked and got on well with on Hinge. We were seeing each other for two months and I really thought things were different. He was kind, communicative and showed me so much affection. Then out of the blue he ended it, saying he felt a genuine connection but thought about what he really wanted and didn't want to waste my time by continuing to date. I'm not really sure what that meant, but it was a rejection and I just had to accept it. I just can't work out where after so many amazing dating experiences, I always seem end up in the same place where when things get a bit serious they pull away and reject me. I was worried I subconsciously only like avoidant or unavailable men, but the last few people

I've dated I thought were really different. I do tend to be attracted to slightly wild, independent and kooky people who are up for a bit of an adventure, but surely that's not synonymous with being unavailable. Now that I'm really set on only wanting to date with the intention of entering into a long-term relationship, I just feel a bit paralysed that I'm doing something wrong, especially the older I get, I'm not meeting as many new people, people or finding as many hinge matches as I once did, lull. My friends have called it bad luck and I know that I would make a great partner too, but after so many rejections, I can't help but feeling I'm playing a part in this situation too. I guess my question is, do you think I'm just drawn to

avoidant or unavailable people and these rejections are just inevitable? Or is it just bad luck? And I have to pull my boots up, keep dating and eventually someone who matches my energy will show up. How do I break the curse of the two-month dating rejection? Help a special one out who's at their wits end with navigating modern dating. Where do you live? If you live in London, it's all of those things. I do think London is particularly bad for commitment phobia. I think it is a city full of people who have their heads turned by everything from a WhatsApp message to an Instagram,

real and get distracted and don't want to settle down as much. But I think special one, I can't say 100% what your issue is, probably because, A, there isn't one specific thing alone. There's several factors. But I would warrant that you probably are going for avoid and unavailable men ultimately. Otherwise, you would never ask the question three times within the email because you know deep down that that might be a pattern between the people you're dating. but that would mean that actually you need to turn the mirror on yourself,

what are you bringing to these dynamics? Why are you going for these people? I have a friend who's doing a lot of interrogation and therapy at the moment and they have concluded that they are actually more terrified of intimacy than they could have ever imagined. And they only have been able to figure this out through the help of a therapist and really observing themselves.

in a dating context. To bring it close to home, it was only when I went to a therapist that I could actually see what was attracting me to certain people and what signs others would have, you know, abandon a connection based on

and where I was pushing forward with one. So, you know, I'm getting excited because they text me, and there's some delays between their replies and they're like, excited again and don't mean it. That's actually just means they're, you know, unreliable communicators. You know, that was them being an unreliable communicating.

That was me getting excited at the idea of losing the affection and then gaining it back. So you have to really start doing almost a study on yourself. How are you reacting to these people? What are the things you are reacting to? When do you get most excited about them? You say this guy that you date for two, she must as kind of communicative.

Great. What kind of communication was it, though? Was it just he was being nice and saying when he wanted the next date? Did you talk early on about what you both actually wanted? Was there any, you know, did he, was it out of the blue, out of the blue? Like he'd been saying, I want to keep dating you.

I see this really going somewhere. Was it out of the blue in that? He was just having a nice time and then, so he was like, actually, I don't want to keep doing this. When are these conversations happening? When I met my now boyfriend, I've said this before, I think, but like he was the first guy in ages where I didn't need to send any of his text to a group chat to analyze. He called me very early on.

It was... But a smart man. There was a smart man. He said there's no paper trail here. There's no picture. But there was a real sense of like, oh, both forward momentum, intention, and the communication was such that even I could not twist it and turn. it into something else. It was very obvious. And that wasn't a promise. It wasn't saying we're going to, you know, this is going to work out and I'm going to always feel this way. But it was,

the intentions were on the table from the get go. And the way that we made time for each other, the way that he allowed me the space to start being vulnerable with him and trusting him, there were some bonkers things that I did. Like, uh, when he stayed with me for the first time, I didn't want to make him the same breakfast as me. And he was like, what? And it's actually When you don't want to share food, it's actually a sign of not liking intimacy. Oh my God. Oh, my God. I had a boyfriend who never wanted to share food.

Yeah, it's a sign of fearing intimacy. Fearing intimacy. Now, I fucking love sharing food. I share it all the time. But I didn't want to make him say breakfast. I was like, you won't like it. And it was really like, you won't like me. It was, you know, and he was like, that is mental.

He was like, that's mad. But he's stuck around. You are mad as a wasp sandwich. Yeah. But it's that kind of thing where you, like, have to observe your own behaviors. What are you actually bringing? You're talking a lot about these men. You're not talking about yourself.

I don't know what you bring with this. Ash. So the thing that I first thought when I was reading out this dilemma is that you say, oh, I've been single all this time. But then you go, well, I was in love with a friend, while there was situationships that I traveled for, while I was dating. And the thing I would say is that I don't think that is being single. I think what that is is being in relationships where there is not the legible,

recognized category of boyfriend and girlfriend. And that's an important distinction because then the question, is why is it that it's at the point of that kind of mutual recognition of status and like socially recognized status of what you are to each other that it doesn't progress like that's actually the thing it's not why am I single it's why is it it at the point of becoming something socially recognized that it it doesn't work I would say, I think, Moya, you've obviously, like, tackled the, like, avoid an unavailable thing very well. So, for me, there's an interesting thing about, like, kooky, independent, adventurous, etc., etc., is that are you making effectively an aesthetic judgment on men where it's about if this guy,

were to desire me and to want me, it would say something about me. It would reaffirm an aspirational image I have of myself if it was this guy who would want to be with me. Because I suppose that means that perhaps you are putting yourself in situations where it's guys who are unlikely to give you this thing that you want, which is sort of like, yeah, socially recognised category of partner. Because there's something in that proving, something in that chase, something in that if it's this guy who chooses me, it means this. Which means you're putting yourself in situations where it's unlikely to happen because it's the overcoming of the odds that's driving you rather than the desire for the things.

itself. I think it's very wise advice and gaps that I could not fill. Complement with an E. Complementary with an E. But that's all I've got for it. In terms of like what do you do differently? I guess it's think differently about what you want. Behave differently, right?

Be upfront with what you want. Lead with the fact you want love and the people that that repels. They're not the ones who are meant for you. and see if you can make some new mistakes. Really look at the man in front of you as well, rather than an archetype. Yeah. Is this person...

100%. How does this person actually make you feel inside? And if you feel like you need to go to sleep around them all the time, not in a boring way, that's a good sign. Yeah, like, it's like, oh, my nervous system is calm. Yeah, I'm calm. Well, it depends on what your nervous system needs. If your nervous system needs waking up, maybe,

to wake up it. Anyway, I think that's one thing which does become more structurally difficult as you get older. Like I was thinking this because I was talking to a friend of mine who is dating in his 30s and dating women in 30s. And we're just talking about like you both have these very established lives that you're bringing into it. Whereas like, you know, I met my now husband when I was 24, 25. So I'm an adult and my life is coming together, but there's a sort of up for grabsness about some of it. Whereas if I was meeting him now, both of us would be coming in with an awful lot of things,

which are kind of set in stone. And how you negotiate that, I think does become a bit more difficult as you get older. But the way to make it easier is just to be straight up about the fact you want love. Like don't, you know, don't try and create loads of ambiguity because you think otherwise they're going to be scared by it.

Yeah. I think you have a hard thing which are like, I want love. And then you have your, things which are flexible, could I move cities? Could I, you know, do I want to stay here? Like, what do I actually want life to look like? And what would I be open to being a bit of a question mark right now? And that sort of works.

Also, for the right person, home can be many places. She says, from Glasgow. Right. I'm only here for a bit right now. See, that's why you're a gangster not tweak. You can just be like, oh, yeah. Well, it's because I'll tell you afterwards. Okay, right.

Bye. Bye. Bye, bye, bye, bye, bye.