If I Speak - 21: What does it take to be effortlessly cool?

Episode Date: July 9, 2024

Ash has a theory of cool that involves nonchalance, style and timing – but Moya’s not so sure. Plus, advice for one listener who wants respect in their situationship, and someone dealing with a newcomer to the family. Come and see If I Speak live at the London Podcast Festival on 15 September! Tickets available from […]

Hello, hello, hello special ones! It's If I Speak back and ready to do it all again. With me, as always, is my fellow C-suite occupant of Derangement Incorporated. Moya, how the hell are you? If we're in the C-suite, I think that means we need a large pay rise. We should be getting that 100k big time private money if we are in the c-suite and wear city suits and do absolutely nothing with our time that's c-suite right would you say in derangement inc are you a ceo a coo chair cfo it's really well what are you because it A COO? Chair? CFO? Well, what are you? Because it all depends what you are. I'm feeling very chairman of the board at the moment.

You are quite chairman of the board. Although, as I've said, my friends do call me Chairman Mayo after Chairman Mao. I feel like I might be a COO. I think I'm a chief operating officer. Operations feels like structure staff, you know doing outlines i feel i feel like that's maybe where i'm sitting in derangement incorporated but who knows maybe i will take a back seat in derangement incorporated become less deranged soon but summer has got to me someone's gone straight to my head ash i am deluded excellent as i always say this is a podcast which thrives because of our neuroses and if you've got neuroses of your own just remember you can always submit your dilemmas to us by emailing if i speak at navaramedia.com because as we've just made clear the positions of cfo and ceo of derangement open. But first, 73 questions minus 70 must be

answered. That's three questions. You got anything for me? Okay, question one. What is your favourite picture you've taken recently, either of yourself or of someone else or of you? Oh, what's my favourite picture that I've taken recently? Let me just have a quick look through my phone to see because I have a terrible memory for these things. Oh, okay. I know what my favorite picture is. I took a picture of my best friend, Max, looking really, really stressed. And I can't remember what we were talking about but he is constantly like a bit exasperated and always just like oh my god and I like caught him in that exact moment of like hands to temples being exasperated by something or someone can you show me the picture we won't air this but I want to see it yeah yeah I'll show you the picture I

want I just want to see oh that's a great picture i can confirm this that's a really good picture i love that picture the colors are nice colors are nice the it's a candid that really it does show expression it shows like i can look at that picture i was like i know who this guy is like that's that's a good picture um okay question two what is your this is a hinge question what is your perfect sunday what's my perfect sunday um well a perfect sunday is different from a sunday that actually exists all right because the sunday that actually exists is i wake up i do a yoga class often with a friend of mine and then we have breakfast. And then I spend the entire afternoon feeling incredibly anxious about absolutely everything.

And then Monday comes around, all right? That's the standard Sunday. The perfect Sunday would be wake up, have a nice lie in with my husband and my cat because that's often when maximum like goofball energy happens and that's my favorite then i would probably still do the yoga class with my friend and have our breakfast and gossip then maybe cycle around the marshes or something like that um it would be great if the football was on it would be very

very good if the football was on on that sunday maybe go to the beehive watch the football um in this perfect sunday of course i don't have to work on monday so i could maybe have a couple of beers a couple of madries something like that. And I think that my ideal like Sunday roast would be at home with my husband and my housemate because my housemate's really funny. He's just like a really funny and like in his own way, very deranged man. And I think that when you get the three of us eating a big meal, just he's going to say something unhinghinged and that for me is an element of a perfect sunday i don't know is that that's probably not very adventurous but um why does a perfect sunday have to be adventurous that is a perfect sunday for ash sarkar it's like community

love bending your body around watching the football having a meal and a laugh what's better what gets better than that that's that's called being wife material you're so you're such a wife i need to make you some sort of hat that says wife guy maybe when we hit x amount of episodes you'll be getting that embroidered hat just wife yes chief wife guy that's what you are uh okay third question in honour of themes that have come up about both Dilemmas and the Brat album by Charlie XCX. What makes you envy a person? Like, some thematic links between people that you envy. Yes.

So what I think is interesting is the difference between jealousy and envy, right? Because jealousy is triggered by something that you jealousy and envy right because jealousy is triggered by something that you have and you're feared of you're afraid of losing and envy is about being covetous right so i think i covet the quality of being very easy in your body and um sexuality when in public i covered that quality because i do not have it that's a great answer also lends itself to that axis you presented to me a while ago which was the jester uh vamp axis which led to a big discussion among my friends as well what makes you envious what makes me envious having the confidence to just go and do something i envy reporters who just pick up the fucking phone and call a source and like what's

going down in clown town i talk myself out of doing stories all the time and just doing it and there's so many reporters out there who you know aren't the best writers aren't the best this and that but they just go and fucking do it and therefore it gets done i really envy that as a as a quality i wonder if everyone envies the confidence of others in some way that's an interesting theory maybe our listeners can tell us if they're if they're things that they envy if it comes down to this underlying idea of like confidence in some way of someone else but i'm sure there's other stuff it depends on the person like some people might say i envy that person's ass it's there's gonna be differences there's gonna be like differences i don't think it's all confidence i don't envy anyone else's ass i'm proud of my

ass say but that's because that's because if you start envying other people's asses i think it leads you down such a dangerous road for yourself it's more like i've tried to train myself to envy traits that maybe i could cultivate in myself at some point that's that's some that's that's maybe a discussion for the future okay healthy envy you've got a massive theory though and it's really big such it's really big i've got such a huge theory i've got to like crack my knuckles to get ready for this theory it's misdastatizing's growing. The theory is getting bigger by the second. So here is my big theory. My big theory is that the whole idea of cool, by which I mean fashionable, aspirational, but sort of nonchalant and easy with it. It's just a way to keep us locked into consumerism because at its heart, the idea

of cool is saying that what you own indicates something about your value as a person. Because I think when you strip away all of the bullshit, cool is basically about buying the right stuff, being seen in the right places and not being caught in the wrong places or buying the wrong stuff. It's also about timing. It's about treading very fine line between uniqueness and assimilation. So you're not supposed to look like ASOS threw up on you. But at the same time, if you're not at least recognizably part of a cultural zeitgeist, you're not cool. You're just someone who's wearing random shit and the idea that you buy and wear and consume the items before they become culturally dominant before they hit that moment of mass production and when they do you move on that's the timing element of cool right you've got to get it just right and it is about how you are positioned in relation to

what other people are doing as well it's full of inherent contradictions i think so everyone will say well authenticity is cool people being authentically themselves that's very cool but at the same time all of the sort of visual and cultural signifiers like clothes or like music, like other kinds of consumer habits, they take a kind of study. You have to be familiar with it. You kind of have to be immersed in it. And I was thinking about the differences between authenticity and cool with regards to people I know um and so all the people who I like the most and people who that I want to spend time around um they are to varying degrees like very idiosyncratic so one of my best mates is so into air traffic control simulators like he

spends a lot of time on air traffic control simulators that's very authentic and it's idiosyncratic but that's not what makes him cool so what makes him cool is like he's very good at dressing and the way in which he dresses isn't idiosyncratic in comparison to like his love of air traffic control um and the thing that everyone's going to say is like oh no you're you're actually describing the opposite of cool because you're talking about people who are trying to be something the idea of being cool is that it's effortless um you know anxiety driven shopping it's the opposite of cool yes that is that's true um but it's also like how the idea of being effortlessly skinny props up a whole system of disordered eating and like wellness scams right it's a basically impossible ideal,

but you think other people are capable of it. You're the only one who's failing badly. And so cool isn't actually effortless. It's the appearance of effortlessness, which in Renaissance Italy, they called sprezzatura. And look, the reason why I'm saying all of this is because at the moment, I really am trying to re-evaluate my own relationship to consumerism. Because I do buy the majority of my clothes secondhand, but I still use browsing stuff. And imagine myself having something, owning something, being somewhere. I use that as a way of self-soothing. And I think it's because it's the idea that this item or this thing or this place or this consumable is going to make me better. It's going to make me more attractive, more socially valuable. It's going to make me appear more discerning. And that's the very core

of consumerism, that the commodity makes the person. you're not just buying an item you're buying a lifestyle you're buying an idea of yourself so what do you think cool is about consumerism and even though very cool people would resist that idea it's fucking true that's i've noticed i make lots of noises i was listening back to one of the podcasts recently and I just was going like a bop it the whole time you're like squeeze it, twist it I do

and I don't agree with you I do think the specific conception of cool you're talking about which seems to be related to aesthetic and presentation and fashion I think that is very much related to consumerism i think what's it also depends what sphere of cool you have in your mind when you're talking about cool um like are we talking about certain influencers are we talking about certain figures and people um i think cool like anything has been

commodified to sell stuff to people obviously that's why there's so many girlies walking around with um those massive you know what they call they're like they're big hair bands and they look like doilies on the back of their head or why everyone wears like low-rise jeans or certain skirts and everyone's got a white maxi skirt on in camberwell at this point in time and you know i've i've succumbed to this like i wear uh so many rings that i never used to wear and um ear cuffs and all kinds of trinkets and bits and pieces that are not even cool but just allow me to blend in with the crowd of people where i live whereas if i went somewhere

else and was in a different context i would actually stand out maybe not in a good way because it's not the predominant sort of like fashion trend or fashion uh language that is spoken in a different place um so it's not i disagree with you i think cool is in a specific place or it's the certain iterations of cool are just about consumerism and just like this idea of selling to us because of course if you like sexuality is also can be that like the idea of sex as we're sold it online is all to make you buy stuff or do things to yourself or your body is the product um scope at capitalism which i've mentioned before like the visual commodification of sex and sexual culture

um and capitalism will find anything anything gobbled up wellness speak uh therapy world like all of it can be turned into something for consumer purposes what i guess what i'm interested is like what kind of gave rise to this are you talking just about fashion cool is that what you're looking at when you when you speak about this no i don't think i am talking about fashion cool though fashion cool does take up a big part of it because that's often how we say oh well that person is cool it's because they look quite cool right and then especially if their behavior is nonchalant and conveys an effortlessness so not only do they look really good but they seem not to have tried to do it we're like ah that's

cool um but what's given rise to it is to be honest it's to do with like my own uh friendship group which is north london you know creative industries but also kind of political it's a distinct subculture which I couldn't put a name to but the habits and the brands and the aesthetic for me is just like very very recognizable and I know that you know personally some of the people who I've got in my mind's eye about it because I was talking to one of them who's very very cool um and he was saying to me like oh you know I can now buy the clothes that I wanted to as a kid and I can now do it and I was like oh yeah but does this not like come back to the idea that cool which you're telling me is just about people being themselves is so tied to what you buy and this is someone who is very very cool and i think was a bit resistant to the idea because not one of us

would want to say well we're consumer driven or materialistic or that we've been got by capitalism to this extent as hell i'm a consumer little pig you're like don draper he got me he got me good he sold me a lifestyle and I bought it. You know, they really wouldn't want to think of themselves in that way. But the habits and affectations. I have lots of thoughts. First of all, though, the person you're talking about, are you talking about someone who loves jackets and is a DJ? I didn't know that they love

jackets but they they're definitely a dj um shout out he's such a loyal listener to this podcast and mentions it to me all the time uh we love you thank you for listening uh you are very cool mr anonymous incredibly cool incredibly cool and incredibly nonchalant well this is okay this is what i want to get onto because i think beyond consumerism this idea of cool that you're describing you've said several times this idea of nonchalance i think cool if you look at the origins of the word cool right it means temperate means neither hot nor cold and cool has it came in the 50s and 60s to represent this sort of like intangible quality of style but what it has actually morphed into representing is a detachment to me a nonchalance an aloofness uh a degree you

said of effortlessness but it's an effortlessness that comes from like almost being above the fray um and the people that we see as cool the it Girls, you know, Charlie just did a video 360. When you're in the mirror, do you like what I see? Like it's Julia, it's Charlie, it's like Gabrielle, all these like mononormous names. But these are all It Girls. And the qualities that people have tried to describe about people who become cool so many times is there is a feeling, even though it isn't real and obviously the mechanics behind the production of cool very much whirring, always in action.

It's a large scale production. But whoever you consider cool, I think you're looking at them and you're getting this perception of nonchalance, of detachment and an air of mystery. There's an aloofness. You can't quite work them out. You haven't quite got the key to them yet. And so all you're seeing is the external and i think we just project onto them that this person is cool because it's

like yeah okay if you look at influencers yeah you're like looking at style whatever but there's something that sets apart like a fashion influencer who really cares about their fashion and you wouldn't consider cool but you consider like fashionable from someone you consider cool which is different altogether. And I do think it is a projection of like they are almost free from the human emotions and like trials and tribulations or they deal with them in a different way than you do. And, you know, if they had a situation that you were in, I don't know, they would deal with it in a very like cool calm nonchalant detached manner and there's almost like i'm there's a there's a coding there of masculinity as well because to be masculine has been coded as detachment it's like you look at the cool girl she doesn't care she doesn't give a fuck uh she doesn't give a fuck and she

can just kind of melt that famous cool girl monologue you know about being able to like meld yourself into whatever the man thought and how much work it takes but cool is detached to me um and i think there is in the present day when you you know feeling emotions and feeling vulnerability and letting yourself feel all the kind of like pain of a modern life but also we're struggling with like a lack of connection across the board all these different pressures on us and to feel our emotions has become this very like down in the mud thing uh and it's like i'm doing all this healing work but there's always something new it never gets better and this we have this projected idea of cool onto people where it's like how can they just swan through life but when you get to know those people you'll realize no they are just

a human like me with flesh and blood they shit they breathe they eat they feel stuff and then they become less cool to you every person i know who has been cool in the manner you're describing is now real to me and what's nice is they go from cool to lovable and that to me is much more important yes i think that there definitely is that that movement like i don't think that's anyone is really cool because i think that if they were like movement. Like, I don't think that anyone is really cool because I think that if they were like that, no matter how close you got to them, you'd be like, oh, that's called avoidant.

Yes, yes. You'd be like, oh, that's something else. And I think you're right to think about it in relation to detachment. But the reason why I'm talking about the items so much is because they're items which um signify various things so let me give you a concrete example the russell athletic hoodie that cool people have been wearing what is that little thing they got it's got a swoopy neckline maybe this is maybe this is so

cool that uh you haven't even come across it yet in south london you're on a fucking time delay down there we're like patient zero for something that's cool it's it's definitely cool i've seen it done and i was like oh well this is something which looks cool because the branding is tiny there's just like a little uh flappy label that says r on it um they don't really make them anymore so it is a vintage thing but they're also very expensive and hard to come by and I realized that it'd become cool because I was looking to to get one for my partner because he'd seen someone else that we know who's very cool and he was like could, could I have the same hoodie

for my birthday or something? And I was like, yeah, yeah, no worry. And I was like, what the fuck, 65 quid, are you fucking mad? And it's because in this sort of like micro climate of like our age group, our social class status, our geographic location, that has become a cool thing now i think that what's changed about the idea of cool is that culture pop culture has become a lot less centralized

right it's a lot it's a it's a lot more diffuse and there are these sort of like i said like micro climates of pop culture there are micro influences and i know this because like you know some of my best friends are micro influences but they kind of have right like and it's the way in which social media turns us all into brand ambassadors for ourselves right it's suddenly can become like part of your career and part of like the thing that you do even if you never really intended it to um but these these things you know I'm not saying it's all the same and it's certainly very diffuse but ultimately it comes back to like you buy this item it conveys these things and then when everyone else is doing it it's not going to be cool anymore and you've

got to move on to the next one see i think there's a difference in i want to talk about the the set of consumptive habits in a second as well but i think there is a difference in i want to talk about the the set of consumptive habits in a second as well but i think there is a difference what you're describing there which is the the enduring idea of cool as a thing someone has and briefly participating in the performance of a cool item which is just a trend and it can be cool for a second but then it's just a trend you know which is why uh once everyone's got it it's no longer it's no longer on trend so i do think that even if we describe it as cool as a lazy shorthand it's not cool it's just a trend that people like briefly like it's it's if i got something that everyone

else has i wouldn't see that as cool i'd just be like i'm blending with the herd there's a difference thing that's about mass participation rather than like being cool and i do think this is thing i'm talking about timing i'm talking about timing this is emerged in the microclimate it's still cool you can notice it you can copy it it's going to become not cool maybe even by the time this podcast is out i don't it will not be i don't think i don't think it's quite cool though i think it's something else it's something like it looks good but it's not even cool it's it's something else altogether and it's just like an it looks good, but it's not even cool. It's something else altogether. It's just like an appealing item where people are like, I like the look of that. And we might use cool to describe it, but I do think there's separate ideas about

cool. But I also think that in the void of other ways of connection, consumptive habits of what people look to, to try and like ascertain whether someone's on their wavelength and you know that might that used to maybe be in terms you know the way that you send a message about yourself is through saying like what restaurants you go to what music you listen to what brands you wear it's crazy being on dating apps and people seeing like lists of things people like and they're just things like girls that wear dickies and you know listen to stephen stevens i've said that wrong um and oh that's my sad girl music i didn't realize that was cool it's not no it's not cool it's not cool this is what i'm trying

to say this is like people being prescriptive about a certain archetype so it's crazy because when i very very briefly forayed into advertising before i started journalism i just did like an internship the way that it was an internship for like a summer before i got my first i love getting more of like the lawyer law it's not law it's not even lawless this is just a this was an anecdote this is a footnote but the one thing i remember from that is that people were sorted we talk about things like gen z etc and it's kind of bollocks gen z doesn't really exist in the way that we like to lump them together in a homogenous group and the way advertisers sort people is well this agency which is a really big one into tribes and it was based on consumptive behavior obviously and what's funny is i now see people mirror that

on their own in their individual lives when they're sourcing people into tribes based on consumptive behavior. And that's like what you buy, where you go, what you do and how you use that to try and ascertain compatibility, whether friendship wise or otherwise with people, like other people. And in the dating world, it's really funny to see, it's like, oh, things it's like we could have absolutely nothing like in common but we think that our consumptive habits expresses a shared world view even if it doesn't have anything to do really with our values it's just like you know there's other people out there who i used to love kanye west and my thing is that he changed his name to yay before he stopped taking his meds and went full-on like mad anti-semitic and all this other stuff so you

actually can still listen to Kanye West just don't listen to Ye just a side note but I used to love Kanye West and it's like there's so many people so many people love Kanye West and that doesn't mean I share all the values with those people that doesn't mean we get on that doesn't mean we have like the same outlook on life or that we would be compatible in a friendship or romantic way but we use our consumptive habits to try and gauge something about these people rather than just getting to know them. And I think that's because there's more of this disposability culture we talked about. So you're looking for more shorthands.

And we live in a major city where consumption is like at a, like a real peak, you know, in London. It's like, we always say, me and my friends said the word for London to describe London. And the word that beats at the heart of London is like more, more now. It's like more now more more and it's just like constant

consumption advertising your consumption to others so i do think we have a skewed perspective on this but i don't necessarily think those things are cool i think they're slightly apart whereas you look at the the sort of person that you described about like you know our loyal listener why he's cool is to us is different that's that's more to do with his nonchalance and his apparent attachment rather than like yeah i love his jackets but that's not what makes him cool to me that might be part of a schema schema it's part of a schema but you've yeah you've described lots of fashion influencers it's nonchalance plus jacket that's the thing that's the thing is that there are plenty of nonchalant people who don't really give a fuck who don't wear cool jackets

um and they all work in stem they are they are tapped out of the world that you exist in and the kind of um cultural habits and spaces that you occupy and you don't think that they're cool and also they're probably not like conceived as as cool so it's it's it's nonchalance and detachment plus something else and that something else is very much to do with leisure recreation fashion and habits which are you know acquisitive in in their nature um and i think that and this is why i'm trying to draw a distinction between um cool and idiosyncratic right because i really i really love how loads of my friends are like really into warhammer like all of like my male friends are like warhammer dudes or not all but like a significant portion of them like warhammer like all of like my male friends are like warhammer dudes or not all but like a significant portion of them like warhammer dudes and like they often talk about it as if it's

like a dirty secret right as if like you know because it's not perceived as as cool and it's coded as being like very lonely and like maybe i think it's going to reach a cultural tipping point where it's a shared experience amongst a sort of like you know professional creative middle class person that like warhammer or dungeons and dragons or gloomhaven if you're a real one and will kind of like tip over and like become you know become cool and then a trend and then like filter out again um but like at the moment it's at the level of like an idiosyncrasy and it's an idiosyncrasy which makes them very much themselves and it makes me like

really like love to be around them um but like it's certainly not not cool even if people carry it with um you know even if they can be like detached or confident in other ways so when i'm saying this about like it's about consumption this isn't me saying oh that makes you a worse person it's me saying that like well all of the things which i look at and think of as aspirational and which move me which move me to be like well what if i what if i looked more like you or what if i behaved more like you so often i come to like well the key that I have to put in the lock in turn is buy something and that is the thing which I'm trying to crack into right which is the way in which consumerism comes in various guises and and uh sort of obscures

itself by making you feel like well it's so unique to you and your setting that it's got nothing to do with the over with the overarching structure of capitalism and so it's not me trying to like shame anyone or be like well you're actually less cool because it involves buying things it's me going this whole idea of cool is a construct to make us want to buy things to think that the key that you put in the lock in turn is buy this item do you know what's really weird in recent months every time i'm like you know the key that puts in the lock to try and unlock more cool for me i'm like i need to read a book that's what's changed for me it's gone from buy something to read a fucking book you you know that's good what do you read what are you reading okay the book i'm

reading right now is is it not it's on my desk it's called somewhere it's somewhere around here it's called liberated texts and i actually have a funny story about why i'm reading this book i find it um it's called liberated texts and i'm reading this book because the editor who curated this book and one of the contributors basically called me stupid on Twitter. And they really don't like Navarro Media. And, you know, saying like I tweeted something in a very casual, stupid manner. So maybe they're fair enough calling me stupid. But I got quite like misinterpreted. And the editor of this book was like, you sound so uninformed and ignorant.

Are you not bothered about this? And one of the contributors was like, who is this person? She thinks she's leading the fucking revolution. She's like, wears a spider's blanket or something. Because I deactivated my Twitter after some stuff went down. I was just like, this is really distracting for me. And I don't think it's useful for my work or whatever and i was like you know what these these guys are to the to like the left of me i would say and this book is a collection of reviews of um you know

books works whatever that about lots of like anti-imperial stuff that usually out of print that you can't find anymore so it's lots of reviews of of texts on things like um the korean war like uh you know vietnam things like that like the iraq war lots of really interesting stuff there's loads about palestine and these guys are like the left of me um even in the reviews there's often like takes i like slight i disagree with you know the stuff that's really like north korea is actually a great place and we've all really we've all like demonized and they're actually having a good time i'm like i'm not sure that's quite like where i sit but i bought this book because i thought rather than just like you know pass off these people who think i'm a moron and say like well they're

fucking idiots they don't know anything they're coming at me i was like well i could i have a chance to like learn something here i could actually read something that but not only disagrees me i could i could like grow from this and i found it really useful because it's instead of like just reading a centrist book or a right wing book where it's quite easy and lazy for me to disagree with the way things are presented i have to really think about how i my opinions are actually formed and what i really feel about this issue and in some places i'm like i don't know enough and in some place i'm like i actually know enough to form an opinion here and it either agrees with what you're saying or this bit i disagree um so yeah it's been a really good exercise oh i do have it it's right here i have liberated text right on my desk here it is

so thank you to the authors for thinking i'm stupid i'm sure you won't change your minds that i'm stupid but it did lead me on to reading a very interesting book wow reading's so cool it is cool and the stories about why we do it is cool um and every time I read a book when you've got a library card well every time I read a book I just feel better because I'm filling a hole in myself by myself and maybe that's individualistic I don't know but it's better than being on vinted all the time anyway shall we help some people out oh let us go to i'm in big trouble which is our dilemma segment uh moya what do you when you read out the first one yeah let's do it okay hi my wise intelligent and beautiful ladies i i love it when we've we've

established enough to get some ass kissing one of my favorite things about the receipts podcast shout out to the receipts podcast as always you've got given the dues the the ass kissing in the start of the letters is just fantastic um but don't feel like you have to ask us as we are we're your peers um i would really appreciate your outlook and advice on a messy situation sorry it's a bit long. I've been casually seeing this guy for about a year on and off. I no longer want to do casual situations in general, so I plan to communicate this with him.

Should I just tell him I'm done with casual stuff or should I open up about my feelings for him too? Here's the background. We've been on and off for a year, mostly meeting up for casual stuff. He usually initiates meetings because deep down, I know our meetings are means to the end and i don't want to initiate i just enjoy whatever happens when he does lol recently he entered into a new career which required him to focus so we didn't meet or talk for about eight months side note i got into another relationship during this time but

it ended i kind of forgot about him and buried all the feelings and thoughts i have towards him recently he messaged me again. I was reluctant, but he was persistent. And eventually we met up for food to catch up and nothing sexual happened. He was just trying to reestablish the setup with physical contact, i.e. holding my hand. When he wants to meet, I find his messages are pretty lazy, usually just asking if I want to hang out on the same day. I finally told him he should plan things better, not slot me into his plans at the end of the day.

To this, he agreed, said I was right and corrected his behaviour. We met again and ended up sleeping together for the first time in eight months. Side note, he cuddles me as aftercare, which I think slightly confuses me more. God, we're down bad. But he is just being nice and means nothing more by it. As we met up and slept together again, I confirmed I don't want casual stuff anymore. I'm not even sure if I want a relationship with him specifically I'm attracted to him and could potentially see us being a good pair I feel he hasn't really shown any interest or initiative in creating the environment for a relationship to blossom from our current setup and I don't think he will

now for example we would meet and he wouldn't message me for three plus days after so do I just set the boundary or do I give him context about how i feel about him it may seem pretty simple but i have a fear of being vulnerable especially to men and specifically to a man who just doesn't seem to be that bothered i can genuinely be unbothered too from a confused little girlie in her mid-20s ash girl stand up stand up um i say this with all the love in the world because also i have been you right like i have been in this situation where really you're thinking about oh like what do i do with him it's actually all about what you do with yourself and how you relate to your own feelings when you know you're in a situation that isn't going to give about what you do with yourself and how you relate to your own feelings

when you know you're in a situation that isn't going to give you what you want and you're scared of losing the little thing that you do have on the basis of something which is really uncertain which is you're going to get what you want somewhere else and that is I think the most natural fear in the world when it comes to dating, sex and relationships, this feeling of, am I going to get what I want if I choose to pursue it? Now, there's only really one piece of advice for this, which is, I think that if you were to just set the boundary without telling him why you're setting the boundary, You're just going to come back in another eight months or whatever else it is when he's persistent and you think, okay, well, I'm

actually unbothered now. It's just going to be a layer of self-delusion, which will then allow you to stay trapped within this dynamic. The thing that you've got to do is set the boundary and tell him why, because the thing that you want, you're keeping in the shadows. You're hiding it from him. And it's a way of making the actual desire and the yearning take up less space. And what you're teaching yourself

is that what you want doesn't matter. That's what you do when you do that. You're not actually looking at it as a legitimate desire. You're teaching yourself to be ashamed of it. You're teaching yourself that it's something that's shameful. So the way you get over that is you break it off and you're very real about why you go, look, I actually have real feelings for you. I want a real relationship with you and you're not going to give me one. And that's why I'm ending things right the temptation will be oh I don't think this is good for either one of us or like you know oh we're not in the same place

or blah blah blah no put your vulnerability out there but it's not you're not begging right you're saying this is why I'm doing it and this is why I'm pulling back and it's honest and it's real and it shows you're taking yourself seriously so that's what I mean by girl stand up it's not about being like a really harsh bad bitch it's about being real with yourself about what you feel and being real with him about what you feel because that's the only way in which you're going to um take your desires more seriously and and again it's like i say this because i've been through it and in changing how i articulated my wants and desires to men and saying i'm doing this and this is why it then allowed me when me and my partner first met each other we were so direct with each

other we were so like this is what i want this is what i want and then like two idiots were skipping off into the sunset it is a good practice which will get you into a good place for when the thing that you want does eventually come along i basically have nothing to add to that because i think it was such comprehensive good advice um what would i say as well uh rejection isn't shameful uh and the more that you get rejected sadly the more that you will learn that you will survive and it's actually not really about you at all you've been you've let yourself be really passive in this situation because then it you can confuse that with him wanting you in the way that he want

that you want him to want you um you know by letting him initiate stuff by saying by saying oh i'm not i'm not you know initiating this meeting i'm not doing x and y i'm not pushing this forward you can trick yourself into thinking you're unbothered no you like him and that's okay we've all liked people who aren't feeding us in all the ways we all like caring for us in all the ways that we want them to in fact you know uncertainty and unavailability often make us like people more because they're just out of reach we physically have them but emotionally we don't and that's crack that's like crack it's like oh you you're not treating me like i'm enough for you you're not valuing me oh give me more of that give me more of the like the the push and pull um i think

do everything asha said uh and if you have to be up front you have to like say how you're really thinking um because otherwise if you miscommunicate then you will go away with the narrative of the situation that just doesn't represent how you behaved in it and you continue to miscommunicate with people and that's not a good precedent to set once you start communicating directly oh my god gives you so much self-confidence and the other thing to expect though is don't think he will come back to you with the same level of communication do not expect that just because you've communicated openly or honestly that this man will be on the same level or that he won't say something like i don't know oh like just like like the message or just or just reply and something like, I don't know, oh, like, just like, like the message,

or just reply and be like, oh, I'll reply to this properly soon. It's like, no, he won't. You can't expect that. Like, you're doing this for you. You're doing this because you want to communicate with him actually how you're feeling. And you can still be disappointed and sad

when he doesn't meet that expectation. But what did someone say to me really recently? Expectations are just resentments waiting to be realized which sounds really gloomy but i thought it was so gloomy it sounds gloomy but i don't think it is i think it's i think expectations are different from standards i think expectations are like they're very sort of like selfish and put themselves you can only meet people as they are but that doesn't mean you have to put up with it like you communicate with him you give him a chance but do not expect that he is going to meet you where you are because he hasn't yet he hasn't at any point um and you know

there will probably be some resentment about him not meeting you where you are and you just have to work through that you have to be like this is not about me this is about this guy but i've done what i can i set my standard and yeah it's disappointing that he doesn't like me the way i like him or that he doesn't, he hasn't got the ability to connect with me on the level I want to connect with him. But that's okay. Life is long.

You're in your mid twenties and there's so much fruit out there to disappoint you. Sorry, sorry. Let me know what I'm missing. There's so many, there's so, I'll tell you this heart to heart, heart to heart, girlie. My life is fucking amazing and it only gets it only gets more amazing the more i stand up for myself and communicate and

that doesn't mean i'm not disappointed by men and that doesn't mean i'm not disappointed by people in my life or that doesn't mean that i don't disappoint people in turn but it means i can now start to communicate really how i feel and i used to be just like you so scared of vulnerability and i still am in lots of ways but i'm learning every time i take the plunge and i send a message where i'm like no i'm just gonna say exactly how i feel after after having thought about it after having like being like okay is this rational is this like you know am i am i projecting on someone am i saying something that i think is like fair and decent to say without demanding you know lots from them that's unfair to demand and every time i do that i just feel a bit better because i i leave the situation with no regrets or i i'm navigating the situation with

no regrets and i can really live up to how i'm actually feeling and communicating rather than as ash said living in the shadow land where i'm saying one thing but i really mean another and i think that's that's also a thing on like respect we always are asking for like respect respect doesn't actually mean what what you think it means when someone says i just wanted to be treated with respect which i've done loads what they're actually saying is like a bunch of things like i've said i want to be treated with respect i've meant i want him to love me i've been treated i want to be treated with respect and i've meant i wanted him not to go and kiss that other girl i want to be treated by respect oh i wanted my friend to like invite me to this thing that's there's really every time you say this is a good exercise every time you think to yourself i just want to be treated by

respect with respect to someone think what am i actually saying because there's usually a specific desire underneath that and it's quite interesting to unpack that what was the thing that you said about resentments and expectations i think it was the resentment to expect expectations of resentments waiting to be realized or something like that oh my god i think that's really i think that's really um grim i thought it was grim but i'm gonna believe i thought it was grim but let me let me find what my friend said when i asked it reminds me of something that um uh savieli tartakawa said who's a chess grandmaster the blunders are all there on the board waiting to be made okay here it is uh what was it it was um so yeah so it's basically expectation is a little demand so you're encouraged to downgrade them to preferences

if they're reasonable because they basically instead of expectations you should have preferences because if people don't follow our script for expectations it creates resentments uh and you basically have a right to accept disrespect and set a boundary but you can't control whether someone respects you can communicate the preference to them directly but after that you kind of have to accept them as they are or decide that this is not a interpersonal relationship i can continue engaging with i thought that was kind of useful i think it's really useful i actually really want to do this next dilemma yeah let's do it i really really really want to do it let's do it um do you want to read it yeah

of course we can do it ash anything for you i'll do anything um dear if i speak last year my mum married a wonderful big hearted man i really love him personally but we disagree on politics and he is a tory and a landlord i grew up in a left-wing modest and happy household in south wales a few years ago we tragically lost my dad to suicide and in the intervening years me and mum have been distraught i tried to hold her up where i could and this took a toll on me. This new man has helped her to live again in a meaningful, joyful and free way. She no longer cries whenever I have to say goodbye. However, the material reality of her ascending a class category sometimes leads me to feel resentful and angry. I should also say they're very generous and often treat me to meals and such how do i navigate my new happiness personal affinity material complicity and political disagreements ash um the reason why i wanted to

address this one is that um as listeners of the podcast may know um i recently lost um a parent my stepdad and reading this dilemma it's not about the politics at all it's not about the politics it's not about the fact he's a Tory it's not about the fact that he's a landlord it's not about the fact that your mom's material conditions are different it is entirely about the grief and it's rare that I would say that normally I'd say oh well you know everything's a bit political but this one it is just screaming grief to me. And that's also not a bad thing. I think that this isn't so much about who this man is and what he stands for. It's much more about your relationship with your mom and your family life now that your dad is no longer in it. And you can feel ambivalent about things. You know,

I was talking to another friend of mine who lost her dad when we were in first year of uni and one of the things that she said is that actually there's a certain sadness that comes with not being so sad anymore because it's just a sign that you're further away from that person and not only are they not here you're getting further and further away from the time where they were and at the beginning it feels so fresh and so raw, and that's horrible. But there's a sort of proximity to the person that you lost when you're in that moment. And then life continues. It feels less sharp. And then there's a sadness that comes with that. And yeah, it's about what it's like now that your mum's life looks different from what it was like when your dad was around, about how different her life is now from when you were both in the shock of the grief, what it means for you to let someone into your mum's life when you'd been the person who was holding her up and all that closeness and letting go of some degree of control and control it doesn't necessarily mean that you're domineering it can be very very protective so in this period of time

you had to be so protective for you know of your mom she's now married to someone else and it's letting someone else in and you're going in your head but this doesn't fit the image in my head of who you are and who our family is and what makes you happy and you're having to to let go of that um you know anyone who knows me would know that I'm not particularly easy on Tories or landlords but this is this is one situation where I think go easy on him and don't be hard on yourself but just really look at um what you're feeling and don't try and overlay the politics onto it to try and take the contradictory emotions out of it or make it more simple but yeah what do you think i don't really want to add anything because i haven't lost anyone in a major way since my absent father

and that sort of grief affects you differently i think than uh this direct grief i suppose the only things i would you know say in addition is i think you know you i think you're bang on um there's also maybe some resentment at the fact that your mother is moving on and you might not be in the same place or that you know she's giving at least the facade of moving on and being able to be happy and you might not have the same uh situation going on um in your life i don't know i don't know uh all i will say on disagreeing with parents is that my sort of stepdad and i really disagree on politics and he loves to try and like wind me up about stuff and it makes me sad because we talk a lot on the left about you know convince

your family first and that works in some places and that doesn't work on others um and sometimes I'm just like just fucking leave it I just fucking leave it like you will catch far more flies with the honey than you will just shouting at someone about something they've done. People don't learn that way. And that's true whether they are your new stepdad who's a landlord or whether that's someone that you're door knocking and trying to convince to vote for a party. By preaching at them, you will not sway them to your cause. for a party by preaching at them you will not sway them to your cause uh the way that you sway people to your cause is showing up for them uh and showing the material benefits of practicing a politics that you believe in uh that has like left-wing values in my opinion but right now i think honestly just fucking leave it with this guy in terms of politics, like Ash says, and focus on unpacking the feelings that she has outlined and what might be under the root of the resentment and the anger.

Because it does feel like the other stuff is window dressing. And then if it's still there, once you've looked at all the grief, then we can start talking about his property portfolio and whether I could maybe get a piece of it. But there's one way to make this morally justifiable. Let's redistribute to me. Let's redistribute to me. I'm running on a platform of redistribution to moi. No, but thank you for sending this in. And grief works in very difficult, thorny ways

and knots itself into your brain in places that you might not even be aware it's got to. And you might not be aware how you're expressing it, but it sounds like you and your mum have survived a very, very difficult period. And I hope that you are also allowing yourself to like thrive amid the pain the way that she seems to be. And enjoy those meals out. Also like your mum being in a relationship with someone after you've lost your dad is really hard.

your dad is really hard and even if there's nothing about him which is bad or nothing about him which is abrasive it's always hard I've never known a single friend to find that easy you know their parent um finding love again even when the other person's been like you know totally perfect in every way that takes time um don't you know don't be angry that it doesn't feel simple right now because it's not it's not a simple thing just take time just eat your delicious free meal out and then go home and journal a lot about it no no um it is going to be hard and great advice thank you and i think also advice that fits for so many circumstances eat your delicious free meal oh i'd love a delicious free meal nuts and berries for the next few days sadly all right let's wrap this up so we can unroll it again for another week who've you been i've been ash soccer who have you been i've been mo Ash Sarkar. Who have you been?

I've been Moyla Othie-McLean. And this collectively, this collective project has been If I Speak. See you next week.