If I Speak - 25: I hate the way that you walk, I hate the way that you talk

Episode Date: August 6, 2024

Prompted by Kendrick’s anthemic Drake diss, Ash claims we’re living through the summer of the hater. But what does it mean to hate so hard? Plus: a listener who feels rejected by her English in-laws. Email your missed connections and dilemmas to [e-mail] Got your tickets for the If I Speak live show yet? We’re […]

Hello special ones, it is another episode of If I Speak and if i sound excited it's because i'm faking it with me as always is my wonderful inimitable co-host moya mothian oh my god it's such a name you said which is no one ever does no one everyone's like mayor lothian but mothian is fine. You're just rushing the name. That's fine. Moya, Mothian. Laclain. Laclain. Laclain. It's like Isiotrop. It's like, ah, the French co-host we have brought in for this one episode only.

Moya, how are you doing? Oui, c'est bon, ça va? You're like, ah, that GCSE French is straining at the seams. Coming in clutch. En anglais, s'il vous plaît, how are you doing? En anglais, I'm doing really well. No, I'm not. What the fuck?

Ash, I don't know. I oscillate between in the moment doing really well and in the grand scheme of things, searching for meaning and purpose. But in this moment right now, I'm doing really well. So let's say I'm doing really well. It's been a good week. it's been an interesting week well that's not the only question that i have for you 73 questions must be answered only three will be aired are you are you ready i'm ready to be asked questions again because i spent a lot of my time traveling asking everyone

else questions and it turns out if you've got vague journalism training you're really good at asking other people questions and everyone else is really shit at asking you back and sometimes we want to talk about ourselves and we're not being asked ask a journalist a question today that's why we have to start podcasts that's why journalists start podcasts and like now about me um so question one which board game are you best at did you hear my unhappy noise there it sounded kind of sexual actually sorry and my unhappy noises and sexual noises there's a crossover depending on the part let's stick into that in another episode um i'm not good at any board games oh no articulate i'm fucking amazing articulate

and have you ever played articulate with a partner that you've been with for a while yes i have and it's quite frustrating but playing it with my best and oldest friend we do it every christmas we absolutely crush everyone else have you wait when your partner's on your when your husband's on your team do you not crush everyone else because me and my ex used to crush everyone to the point where it was almost like we shouldn't play the game i was carrying him i was definitely carrying him that was probably where we were most in sync when we were playing articulate because there were some things we were really similar on some very very major, which probably led to our breakup, but the articulate, no one could fucking touch us in articulate. We were, we just, we so good telepathic. Oh, it was great. Second question. What's your favorite summertime beverage?

It's difficult. This is more difficult than it should be. I mean, water's the practical one, isn't it? Water's practical. See, the thing is, Ash, I'm kind of a self-punishing monk in that things that are delicious and I love, I know, shocking, isn't it? Things that are delicious and I love, I have to have in moderation or rarely. So my favorite beverage. The one you find the most delicious. But I find loads of like a spicy margarita is delicious but I can't drink that all the time

I have that like once every two months at most and I like a Coke Zero but again if I drank that all the time and if okay I will often not choose a thing I find most delicious on the menu which is maybe a sad way to live but helps me preserve my sanity let's say a spicy margarita that's the delicious margarita and last question do you have any

recurring dreams i don't remember my dreams um which is a big failing of mine because i think i'd be able to process things probably better if i understood the way i was dreaming about them I'd be able to process things probably better if I understood the way I was dreaming about them. Some recurring sex dreams I have, but I'm not going to get into those. Can you give us some clues

about what's in it? What, the recurring sex dreams? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Some like tiny little glimpses of... No, it's not the same people. It's just like the same structures of the dream. It's just having a great time.

Weirdly, the sex dreams are ones I can kind of remember. I have nightmares sometimes, but very rarely. I don't remember any of my dreams really. No, there are recurring dreams I have, but I can't remember them now because when I have them, I'm like, oh yeah, that dream's happened again,

but I can't actually recall them because I don't write my dreams down. Maybe I'm not navel-gazing enough. I know, crazy. People are like, you're pretty navel-gazing. Maybe I'm not navel-gazing enough. But yeah,. People are like, you're pretty navel gazing. Maybe I'm not navel gazing enough. But yeah, I do, but I can't remember them as the boring answer. You're like, maybe it could be more about me, if anything.

What are your recurring dreams? Oh, I have recurring ones about my teeth falling out. I have recurring ones where there's something I have to look after and for whatever reason I can't look after it and I get very stressed. I've got a recurring guilt dream at the moment about a family member who I find like very very difficult to deal with the recurring dream is that he's like I've bumped into him somewhere and he's like why why don't you want to know me and I'm like because I find you very difficult as a person so that's a current recurring dream. Maybe I don't want to remember my dreams.

Maybe it's better to live in blissful, non-REM awareness, ignorance. I've got enough going on in the main world. Talking of going on in the main world, you've got a lot going on in the main world this week, judging by your middle segment that you're bringing to me. Come on, leave out my door like a cat dead bird it's it's kind of a hybrid this one of both a big theory and an intrusive thought so i don't know a theoretical thought a big intrusion big intrusion i like that i love big intrusion. Big intrusion. I like that. I love big intrusion. A big intrusion.

I've got bad boy piece of intrusion. So I just want to start off by saying it's not Brat Summer. It's not Brat Summer. It never has been. It is, in fact, the summer of the hater. And our king, our leader, all five foot four of him is none other than Kendrick Lamar. And just to catch people up in case you've been in a medically induced coma, you will have heard Not Like Us. You will know that hatred of Drake spurred K-Dot to make the best music he's recorded since Good Kid, Mad City.

I'm a very, very big Kendrick Lamar fan in general, and this exceeded all my expectations because Euphoria and Meet the Grahams, these were excellent diss tracks. Also an honorable mention, not a Kendrick Lamar song, to Metro Boomin's B.B.L. Drizzy. B.B.L. Drizzy. B.B.L. Drizzy. I've been banned from playing it in the house because just on repeat and I think that these are all excellent excellent diss tracks so you talk

about them in the same breath as the story of Added On which is of course the Pusha T track which forced Drake to acknowledge a hitherto secret child but not like us, it cleared. It just absolutely cleared. And it did something that I don't think

any diss track had ever done before. And I'm talking like even something like Ether. Ether hadn't done this because it powered a whole West Coast renaissance. It was like Kendrick Lamar had found a way to harness hatred as a source of renewable energy. It was like the rap equivalent of cold fusion. So it's totally ubiquitous. It's got this cultural dominance and it's still so rooted in Compton, in LA, in the West Coast. And I could

talk for ages about how it is that precise somewhere-ness of Kendrick Lamar, which meant that he could be Drake because he's kind of a nowhere guy. Even though he's from Toronto, he didn't cultivate or push or support a Toronto sound. He just went around imitating everyone else's accents. But anyway, that's the digression. We're speaking specifically on YouTube. Jamaican Drake. Jamaican Drake. Jamaican Drake. South London Drake.

Like we're this close to like KSR Drake. But like it was incredible. It's like there's this whole cultural moment. Everyone comes out and is like, yeah, I've hated this guy for ages. Like Metro Boomin and Future and like, you know, fucking A$AP Rocky and Rick Ross. Everyone's just like, yeah, I've really hated this guy for ages. And so me and my friends, because of that,

were joking about how it's the summer of the hater. And then because we started seeing it in one place, we were seeing it everywhere. So when Giorgio Chiellini brought out the trophy at the Euros finals, he was getting like booed by the England fans, but he was smiling, right? He was just like, yes,

I wear your hatred as a badge of honor. And then when Spain won and he presented the trophy to them, he was grinning. He was grinning. He has a hater spirit. It wasn't just enough to beat England in the 2021 Euro finals in a penalty shootout. He had to humiliate us once again, right? That is a hater spirit. out he had to humiliate us once again right that is a hater's spirit that is a hater's spirit and then something happened to me the other week where somebody who who I cannot stand it doesn't matter why I can't stand them we have to know is that they terrorized the community they came up to me on the street and they tried to say hi and be all friendly. And they should know that I'm not going to like them, right? It's not that like I've got a secret grudge or a secret hatred. Like they should just know not to talk to me.

And until this point, like every time I'd seen them around, I would avoid eye contact. I would duck into doorways because I didn't want to have a confrontation, right? I don't like confrontation. because I didn't want to have a confrontation right I don't like confrontation um but they came up to me and I let the spirit of the hater move through me so they're like oh hi and I'm like we're not mates don't talk to me and then I said why and then I went into Sainsbury's and I got my cherry tomatoes and I think people who don't know me or only know me from media stuff they probably think of me as somebody who like really, really loves confrontation, but I don't, like I hate it. And so for me to say to someone's face, I don't like you,

you offend my spirit, you disturb my peace, it's actually a very big deal. And I don't think that this has given me a taste for it, but it taught me something that there's a relationship between hating someone and also knowing where your boundaries are. Like these things kind of have a relationship to each other. And yeah, not everyone who hates is a hater. I wouldn't call myself a hater because I don't take real pleasure in it. You know, I'm not like Kialiniini I'm not at Kendrick levels of hatred productivity um but I'm more of a hater than some people like my husband just isn't a hater like he hates some people but his hate has got no vim and it's got no follow-through um and yeah like I wonder if the reason why I'm not like a true true hater is because I've been turned into a hate figure

myself I've become an object of fixation for other people so yeah moya how do you deal with feelings of hatred would you say that you actually hate anyone first of all i just want to say it is a brat summer just not for you uh and this goes to show about how cultural silos work because i've obviously heard not like us and i've i've had some tiktoks served to me showing the spread of not like us i have not yet encountered not like us in the wild because i'm moving in brat spaces whereas brat summer is everywhere for me everyone around me is doing brat summer so i think it i think that shows that we now the monoculture is truly dead um like even people talk about taylor swift being

the monoculture she is and she isn't because there's like you're not gonna see the permeant permeation of a taylor swift track everywhere the way you would i don't know 10 years ago the way like self-titled beyonce's album did every year years ago and you're talking about this west coast renaissance i don't know what this west coast renaissance is where's this west coast renaissance i'm not seeing it because i'm not in the same cultural silo as you this is true this is true i mean it is it is i think especially if you're into like sports if you're into rap like and the intersection of those things like not like us will just be fucking massive and like it hasn't had a massive rollout right it was like the track gets released kendrick

does the pop-out show like he releases a music video which like itself has got like all of these easter eggs signs and symbols and like you know little ciphers and totems um but like yeah the pop-out show was was absolutely massive it was it was like a huge huge moment if you're into rap i also think you can't say it's not brat summer when brat has permeated to the degree that the uh likely presidential nominee probably by the time this comes out presidential nominee for the democratic party is literally changing her header to brat coding um sorry it's obviously it's brat summer ash accepted brat summer um summer of the hater summer i i'm i'm not becoming a hater of brat summer because brat summer has been commodified by politics to a degree that's actually upsetting

like why are the liberal gays walking around with kamala brat t-shirts stop it stop it now stop it um see the summer of the hater came for you you thought it wasn't for you and now look girl i've been i've been summer for the hatering for majority of my life uh but yeah talking about talking about the hatering thing um do i hate anyone no i don't i don't think i do hate i do hate kirsten to be honest i do actually actually think, I do hate kissed armour to like my very core. And that's why I think hate is such a deep, deep rooted emotion. And often when we talk about hate, we talk about dislike. We talk about hate is a synonym for so many different emotions bundled up. You know how they bundled up subprime mortgages in the early 2000s to make those aa fake aaa bonds that they could then

sell as like these are these are fine i feel like hate is actually subprime emotions bundled up together and we're just presenting as hate when most of the time it's not hate hate is a mixture of resentment sometimes envy strong dislike some other factors but to elevate it to the level of hate like true hatred there's got to be some really fucking poisonous stuff in there and this is why kendrick's hatred for for drake actually frightens me a little bit how much he hates that man um because the the the emotion of hate there's a there's also a fear wrapped up in there sometimes as well. There's so many different ways of looking at hate. Sometimes being a hater is very pleasurable, the idea of being a cultural hater, you can be a cultural critic and then

hater is almost like the colloquial version of analysing something, taking it apart, explaining why you don't think that this thing is adding value or doesn't deserve the props it's getting. But hatred is something that powers things like genocide. Hatred is an emotion that is so irrational, not even irrational, there can be rationality, but often spins into irrationality and is so far gone it cannot be talked down it's a radicalizing emotion it's an emotion that is like a forest fire it burns through everything um and creates this barren ashen land and hatred like true hatred really scares me i do think i feel true hatred for keir starmer and that is because he has sold out in my eyes to a degree, all the values that he professed to once hold. And he's such a charismatic less, like a charisma void. He lacks everything that

I think you need to be a good and principled person or politician and yet persists anyway and is rewarded for it. And I feel such a strong hatred for him as the emblem of almost the sort of like faux liberal mediocre white man that sometimes it scares me how much i i i hate this man but for most people i don't feel that hatred for i don't know when i'm when i think about people that i jokingly say I hate or dislike, often there's a remove as well. Like someone on the internet, there's this TikTokker I just blocked because his voice annoys me so much. He always does like the most inane analysis of pop tracks. Or like John Karamakas, whose name I'm saying wrong, who does podcasts in the New York Times

and Alex Petridis, who does Guardian music does guardian music i was i hate these men because i just if if they make an analysis you can guarantee i will feel the opposite about it the way they talk about pop tracks i always feel the opposite i'm like i hate you i hate that you have this platform i hate that you're out here spreading wrong opinions all the time stop doing bond wrong that kind of vibe um but i don't really hate those men i just dislike them and don't agree with what they're saying and think that they're talking rubbish and that they don't understand a piece of culture. That's a subjective opinion. It's not like a real hatred. So how do I deal with feelings of hatred? I tell myself what they actually are. I tell myself that they're not really hatred, it's dislike. And I try to understand what it's coming from.

And when it comes to interpersonal relations, there's not people I hate there's the people that I dislike and I feel hurt by and I feel extreme rage towards often there's other stuff going on there and it's it's more of it's usually like I can be you know harmed or hurt in some way by someone but I don't think there's anyone I hate because I understand often my reaction is just like a response to them triggering me rather than like I've been so fucked over but it's difficult because I've had like a relatively easy life as things go so I understand that there's there's people out there who really hate someone who's done them wrong and who am I to say no I just think hatred real hatred real hatred is often leveled at people that we're at a remove at there There's one person who absolutely hates me,

who really hates me, and they used to be my biggest fan. And that's because the line between love and hate is so, so thin, and it curdles so quickly. And the idea of like worship as well is mixed up with all the same emotions that can so quickly turn to hate. So I don't think I worship anyone,

so I don't think the hate as well has has flipped me yet but i hate kiss dharma i mean i think that you're totally right about the idea that we're using this one word hate and so much as being like bonded up into it and actually they're different things because on the one hand there's hating right being a hater and hating which i think is different from the kind of hate that you're talking about where there's a kind of fixation and violence in it. Even if you don't enact a form of violence, you can feel the desire to do real harm like building within you. And then there's sort of hate when you're like, I fucking hate this person where you're like, I intensely dislike or like I feel repelled by or like i think that the role that you play in the world is really negative and so i think when i'm talking about the emotion of hate and drawing boundaries really i'm talking about that latter thing right which is like oh like i am repelled by you i want to put distance between me and you

like i think you are a bad thing in the world and i don't want people to be like you and I think that that is a really important emotion and I also think it's an important emotion to manage because that can turn into a kind of fixation and it can turn into a kind of like you know obsession and there's a kind of violence in it and track everything that's wrong in your life you know back to this person and of course like in some very rare cases there might be people who are actually like that but it's very very very rare like very very rare um and so i think that that's an important distinction i think when it comes back to like the kendrick and drake thing it's like you know you're like oh i found that scary i mean yeah like meet the grahams was a scary song like i saw someone on twitter on twitter saying that like,

it's the kind of music that the Joker would play when he's got Batman tied up and torturing him. Like it was a scary song. It's like, this came from the pit of like every, like here's everything I really think of you, that you pushed me and now I'm gonna tell you. And that's a frightening thing because there's a lack of inhibition to that, right? And it's an inhibition which governs our daily life so much we very rarely tell someone like here's every negative thing i've

ever thought about you and i'm going to tell you all at once like that's frightening um but there was also something interesting about the difference between hating and trolling there because drake was trolling right he was like sharing memes and like you know he'd like do a song but it was like a little bit like set up punchline whereas like kendrick i think it started out as a joke it was a reference to like the dmx meme where it's like you know i hate the way you walk i hate the way you talk i hate the way that you dress like that at first it was a joke then it's like no no i actually really hate you and you know it's like you woke up the boogeyman right like you woke up something that you weren't supposed to wake up you were trolling a dragon and now look i have to incinerate you um and i don't know there's something profoundly inspiring about that in its own way for me like i do

is it inspiring i think that look we all the problem is i think culturally we reward negative emotions that negative register we have we ruled the hater negativity or i'd hate being like negativity sounds so heavy but what i mean is hate and gets way more traction on social media than sort of like optimism or like this idea of like forgiveness and not appeasement, that's the wrong word, but healing. I mean, there's all this wellness language around healing and blah, blah, blah, but a lot of the people spouting it and start their stories, story time, this is how I healed from the most toxic relationship ever. And what they're really doing is telling a story about how terrible this other person was all the whole time. And they're like, but I'm so healed now. You know, like we really feed off hearing stories

of other people's downfall or the ways people have been done wrong. And I feel like hating plays into that. Like the reactions to the most innocuous statements can be met on social media by, this is like the way that you're actually disparaging someone else. And I would call this always a form of hating.

There's a form of hating in there. It's not hatred, it's the form of hating. And the fixation and the obsession on always trying to find the lead lining to every sentiment or a person, always trying to take the aggressive, I'm going to tear them down, I'm going to break them down. That to me is a very, it's just like, it's the war. We're in like a state of war at all times a state of war with people around us i don't i didn't find the kendrick beef like i know rap people loved it they're like this is the best beef ever this is amazing oh my god he's ruining him i don't like

drake like i like drake songs but i don't like drake and i feel no sympathy towards him and i think he's actually probably got some very scary skeletons in his closet um but i also didn't something unsettled me about the vim within the hatred and the way that people responded to it. There is something unsettling to me about the cultural clustering around these emotions and the way they're expressed and the way they've lionized this idea of like lighting up someone verbally uh the same way you know reading someone to filth reading someone to shit like just breaking someone down until there's nothing left um and the ease in which we do it all the time and like you know talking shit about someone on

a tiktok talking shit about someone on instagram story talking shit about someone in an article i've you know i've done all this stuff i a podcast. Of course I'm doing this on some level. Of course I talk shit. I got a podcast. Of course I talk shit, but there's, it's so easy to just gain traction by being a hater. And I just think it rots our souls always being able to, like I have, I have a tick now. I can always just see the downside in something. I was saying before the podcast, like I'm a real pessimist. I think I used to be an optimist and I feel like I'm a real pessimist, but i can always just see the downside in something i was saying before the podcast like i'm a real pessimist i think i used to be an optimist and i feel like a real pessimist but i can always see like the bit in a statement or like i see someone write someone like that's stupid i can do that or like that's stupid this is stupid that's why that's stupid that's why this too

like i'm the biggest hater i'm the biggest damn hater and let me say i'm the biggest hater like but that constant negativity i'm trying to pull myself out of it because it's something that's been baked into me by years of disease social media usage and the online register that we use where hating is the thing is the go-to like the go-to way we talk the go-to manner of speaking is the register it's the go-to register that we're that we're talking in and that rots the soul i'm sorry to say are you are you saying that we don't need no hate oration no we need some we don't need holoration we don't need hateration let's get it percolating i do want to percolate i want to percolate some more

but there's something about hatred and the it's about it's about being like this lone wolf you're on your own everyone else is gonna betray you tony is tony soprano not tony soprano it's the other one albertino the real man tony montana tony montana in the mansion on his own at the end of the movie where he's you know he's on his own and every he's like everyone's betraying he's all paranoid there's this paranoia at any moment someone could turn on you become your biggest hater and there's all this stuff that we see around like oh you know your friends that you think are you actually your friends like be aware of them they're your haters or like they're gonna bring you down there's a real paranoia at

play and it scares me i mean you know what i i i think you're right i want to like kind of park the kendrick thing for a moment because i think we just disagree on it right and like we just disagree on like the role of like hatred and like rap beefs in terms of like both pushing the art form forward and also like destroying it to the point where like people's lives have been lost like that's this horrible tightrope where like on one side it could be like corny as fuck and just like crap and the other is like people die and like there's the tightrope where you've got people making like really fucking incredible art from it um i think like parking that is like the negativity and the emotion of hatred i guess it's like i don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water because I know

that a way in which like I bond with people is also by like talking shit with them um and so I've got like a uh you know one of my oldest friends like we made friends at six four we live like a road away from each other we're like very very close it's like we talk just so much shit all the time but there's like a level of like affection and love in it and we'll both say this to each other we'll be like uh you're being a bit unfair here so it's not just like take the reins off and go and then like it sort of poisons absolutely everything but it kind of has this I guess I guess what it does that kind of bonding is that it brings you together by saying like aha we are capable of discerning good and bad and we express that through the shared activity of hating so i

think there's that and that's the that's the baby that i don't want to throw out with the bath water and i don't want to say that having a self-censored approach where you put everything through the filter of positivity first will bring you closer to people because i think fake is fake right and it it'll push people away so yeah like that kind of bonding i don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water but when it comes to the sort of relentless negativity and fixation and the first thing being you know to tear people down i completely agree with you and it's also something which i've experienced i've experienced it from uh randos online i've experienced it from people who knew me a little bit in real life and then take it to online and

then present this like horrible distorted like image of me and i've also experienced it from a kind of culture on the left where like I think we're sometimes very afraid of new ideas so we come up with all the reasons why this new idea is actually very bad and problematic and shouldn't be tried like we go looking for no's rather than yeses um and a quality which I admire in people and I'm trying to cultivate more myself is when you find the one yes in an ocean of no's like you find the reason to do something you find the reason to say yes um that's definitely like a quality i'm trying to like um cultivate because yeah i think like i i'm not paranoid about my friends and i'm not paranoid about the things that they think about me because they're fucking great and i love them but like i've certainly experienced things online

where like you are in the sort of like eye of Sauron gaze of someone else and you know the full glare of their hate oration is on you and you're like what the fuck this is crazy like there was someone who uh she doesn't do it um who for a period of time kind of like 2018 2019 was so fixated on me it was like anything I did like I remember once going on holiday and my phone got nicked so I tweeted for work purposes like oh phone got nicked gonna be out of out of contact until I get back. And then she was like, she's lied about the whole thing. How can she tweet if her phone got nicked? Why is she leaving the country anyway? There was like some Brexit thing going on. She's like, why did she leave the country in the middle of the crisis? And I was like, I'm not the prime minister. I could go on

holiday. And it was relentless. And I felt like, okay okay obviously you're not healthy right like this is not healthy for you but also by being in like the the spotlight of your hatred I was like this isn't healthy for me either because it's very strange knowing that someone's fixated on you in that way yeah it's the obsessiveness and I think also I do want to like make it clear i hate on people all the time like me and one of my very close friends uh other well when we went holiday with our other friend she was walking with us then we my friend had arrived with this other friend and i'd come from a different direction. And my friend was like to me, I actually forgot.

So, and so wasn't you. So I was just being the biggest bitch in the world talking about people. And she was just being a nice, something like, because we're weird together. We just hate, like we're just haters.

Um, so I don't want to pretend like I don't love to bond with people through shit and all of the stuff. It's just, I also do try and balance it out. I think it's important to, like you say, realize when you're going too far into the swamp. And the other thing that worries me about a lionization of hatred over like the more happy emotions, um, is that it does lead to very real world consequences. And you see this with, you know, look at knife crime, for example.

Knife crime used to be about like postcode lotteries. Now it is honestly mindless without rhyme or reason. Not that knife crime has ever been, not that, and when I say knife crime, I'm talking about the way that knife crime is discussed most often, which is like young people killing each other with large knives.

It's often presented. Serious youth violence. Yeah, serious youth violence. It's often presented as young black kids, actually like young white kids are doing at a massive rate as well um but it used to be that that would be based in a series and it makes sound like being like there was good serious violence no but i mean there was a rhyme and reason to the way it was happening now it can literally be someone's offended on snapchat and it's because of the pride and the ego involved and the way you have to respond there's this rush of anger and hatred and rage and access to something and you'll get people coming down

from fucking glasgow to london to stab someone up it makes there's no sense to that that it really scares me and it's it's a desensitization based on living your life online and with this register of constant ag this this toxic horrible mix of like um pride ego um the need to save face and this language this register of just aggression and hatred and you see like it does affect you it does poison you the way that people talk about minority groups or the cultural issues and the polarization the way that that feeds into real life i've talked about this before with like when we talked about aggression and anger but the ease with which people can insult you now it is based off an existence in an online world where it spills into an offline world those things are very real and very tangible and they feel like

hatred and it's because there's not enough time to humanize someone all you're getting is this online avatar and that that does i know it's nothing it's not really like kendrick lamar dissing drake but we're talking about the idea of hatred here and the position of hatred and that worries me it's not that there's not you know useful forms of hating as we've said culturally but the idea of hatred i think is so easily embraced in this day and age when everything is about saving face and then to be injured there's this rush of hatred i know because i felt it this rush of hatred when you get embarrassed i just want to lash out and hurt them too and the problem is we can we can do that now and that really concerns

me but again fixation obsession love and hatred they are married through their fixations and obsessions it's very like libidinal do you know what i mean like yeah it's so libidinal and like yeah that's definitely anecdotally like something i pick up from the people who are like obsessively like hating on me online and i've really focused on my body i'm like do you want to kill me or fuck me or both like what literally both like what is going on here it's always it's always both but i guess like coming i guess you know we've sort of like dealt with like hating right cultural hating like we're talking about hatred but to talk about i guess that feeling of like dislike repulsion i do not like you you you upset my spirit um like someone someone who i i i love

and admire very much my best friend nadia who i talk about in this podcast all the time she's one that lives in spain she's the best um she she was wronged by somebody she was wronged by somebody and then this person kept trying to like be friendly with her and nadia is not the kind of person who would go out of her way to upset anybody but she was sort of pushed to this point where she sort of said like you have offended me and the gravitas that she put like on that word right and she's got an Irish accent as well so it's like you have offended me like it was it felt biblical somehow and I think that you know seeing her experience that and then seeing that she sort of drew this line and it wasn't just like I think it's best for us if we don't it wasn't that it was

like you have offended me I dislike you I am repelled by you and and here is this clear bright line between us don't cross it you're not gonna like it and I think that that was the the spirit that moved through me when i was you know walking down the road by the sainsbury's and this other person came up to me and tried to be friendly i was saying no like you've offended my spirit have you ever told someone to their face i do not like you i'm trying to think because i think this is the first time i've ever done that i told i've told exes i hate them this is how first time I've ever done that. I told, I've told exes I hate them. This is how I know it's not a good emotion to share because I,

there was an ex who I, I screamed it twice at different occasions at them. And that's how I know how thin the line is and that why I hate, you know, this expression, I hate you. I think I said to my mum when I was younger, but obviously the classic teenage stuff, but yeah, when I was, was was really drunk really messed up just and I know that it it scarred

that ex for like the rest of their time and it was a real it was a really it was really one of the things I actually regret most in my life that I've done saying that because I wasn't saying I hate you I was saying I feel humiliated and embarrassed by the way you're talking to me and the way you're treating me but i'm also drunk as a skunk and i don't know how to express it in a way that and also you don't listen to me anyway like you don't listen to me and i don't know how else to get this across to you you will only listen when i give you like this raw pain but it was one of the most horrible things i've ever done to someone seeing someone you love scream at you i hate you do you know how how how awful that made them feel they it doesn't matter what they've done to me

there was no way that they could deserve that or that would ever get me what i wanted out of them and i know that sits with them to this day and sometimes i describe this ex as hating me because of the way they feel i've injured them in their life like they'll hate me even for talking about this they hate when i discuss anything about our relationship, but I'm sorry, it was a two way relationship and I'm gonna discuss some things. And often those things I discuss are things that put me in a bad light. So what more could you want? Um, me hating on myself, but because of the way they feel about me.

And when I've said that people have been like, they don't hate you. This is just X, Y, Z that that they feel injured by and they don't know how to deal with it and they're looking for xyz from you and I won't go into details for obvious reasons but it's control of a narrative basically and and because I'm someone who has the ability to share my narrative and they don't feel like they have the same platform they feel very out of control of that and that I think makes them feel difficult about it but I often have been like they hate me they don't hate me. They have all these other feelings towards me.

And they're often like pain, embarrassment, humiliation. But saying I hate you to that person, yeah, was one of the worst things I've ever done. And not in terms of like, I think it was just such a betrayal of everything we had together and the way we built. It didn't end our relationship. We carried on, but I will never forget

how much it hurt them um and how difficult is it to hear that so i i deal with interpersonal saying i hate you very definitely but telling someone you dislike them there was actually i didn't say i just like i know you know i'll say this for the dilemma i think this is a good dilemma story um but i don't think i've ever told anyone i dislike you because I don't need to people say that I wear my emotions I wear my emotions on my face so obviously it's very obvious when I'm I'm not really down to clown with someone um but who cares about my dislike I don't I'm I'm very stupid I'd my I'm very stupid and perulsive you can win win me over easily. Just do other stuff to me.

You can easily win me back over if you want to. You know what? Hearing you tell that story about, you know, when you said you hated an ex-partner, I've never said that I hated an ex-partner. And I think that's because I've never felt so deeply wronged by somebody that's elicited passion. I've been wronged by people. Don't get me wrong.

I have been utterly wronged and I've also done wrong. But I've not been in that situation where I'm like, let me just try and break through to you. Like I either feel like kind of like, oh, I'm in the shame fetal position or I like withdraw and build up my walls to like protect myself from like their coldness. And that's kind of how it goes. But do you want to hear a crazy story before we move on to the dilemmas?

I don't think I've, I don't know if I've ever spoken about this publicly, but it is like one of the wildest things that like ever happened to me. So this was like 2017 2017 i was seeing this guy we would not write for each other but i also did not cover myself in glory at all right like i wanted to be liked so much and he was just he was just sort of like i'm mad about you like you know it was not it was not a good situation and then when i sort of realized i was like in too deep and that like he wanted to like hold on to me with both hands and i was like no no no no i ended it and he found it very upsetting and that's completely i'm not saying that oh my god are you sure you haven't told the story i know the story this is i swear you've told this story

have you told on the podcast though i don't think i've told it on the podcast okay tell it tell it again and people can just tell us if they've heard it but i know there's still a story okay this is crazy yeah yeah um i'm pretty sure i didn't tell the story on the podcast yeah so like he was upset that was fine he like said to me like oh look you just you i i really i'm gonna want to like get in touch with you can you just like block me on everything and And I did, but I forgot one platform. And that was a platform where a couple months later, he like messaged me being like, oh, hey, can we chat? So yeah, sure, man.

He's like, I'm doing really well. Do you want to meet up and go for a drink? And I was like, it's really nice, but I don't think that's a good idea. And then he was like, you know, I was wondering why you are the way that you are, but like, I think it's because your dad left you. And I was like, what the fuck? why you are the way that you are but like because I think it's because your dad left you and I was like what the fuck anyway a few months after that it's a brand

new era right it is uh the 20th of April 2018 and I know this because that's it it's my uh me and my partner's anniversary from like when we first got together we're at this party together and you know we'd been like flirting and we were both trying to make sure we we're at this party together and you know we'd been like flirting and we were both trying to make sure we were both at the same place and it was like you know the night where something's gonna happen and like the ex turns up and i'm friendly i'm polite but i'm like nothing's gonna happen and when he sees me leaving with you know the guy who's now my husband he chases us out of the party he starts screaming at both of us he's like you fucking bitch you fucking ruined my life he says to him like have

fun stirring my porridge mate like just like horrible misogynist like and i remember him having to be like dragged away by other people and i remember feeling so embarrassed um but like being at the center of someone's hatred like that and it's exactly what you're saying that love to hate what he's saying is i feel humiliated and embarrassed what he's saying is you put me in a vulnerable position and then you just dipped and i feel really profoundly betrayed by that which also is like he has every right to feel you you know, he was saying, I feel rejected. I feel, you know, like you owed me more than you gave me like all of that, which if you utter those sentences out loud, you go, yeah, these are really, really legit things. Like I caused you this pain and that pain is real. But when you're

at the center of it being like expressed as hatred, like I remember just thinking like, when you're at the center of it being like expressed as hatred like i remember just thinking like oh like this is kind of the shit you get like this is how men kill women do you know what i mean like this is how they work themselves up into that state where like men kill women um and like the next day i sent him a message and i was just like if you ever come near me or anyone i know ever again i will call the police like i am not uh police abolitionist people like I will put you in jail jail like you know and since and since then we've never interacted but yeah it was like so scary and intense um and yeah so after all this happens and like me and you know at the at the time he was just some guy who I was interested in now he's my husband uh i was like uh i understand

if maybe you don't want to take me home anymore and he was like no no that's fine and then a few months later i was like why did you well for me if that much drama had kicked off i'd be like i'm out and he was like nah i wanted to see if i could survive this woman he was like yeah he was like i want to know what it is about you that could drive a man insane exactly it's just primal men shit where he's like yeah oh she's got someone that's gone so crazy about her he's literally yelling abuse in the street they're like she's a catch she's a catch whereas we we'd see that we'd be like fucking hell when you if that was like gender reversed and that was like a woman screaming after actually probably we would go home but we would be like i'm wary i'm wary something bad's gonna happen like

but no he's he's like that's great also it't your fault. It's like he could tell that. But I remembered where you told the story before. Oh, where? It was when we did the dating downstream with Annie Lord. Yes, it was. It was. I have spoken about this publicly before. I guess it's like I was always very reluctant to talk about it publicly.

And I still feel restrained about it because I'm like, well, you know maybe maybe this was the one time this guy did it maybe maybe it was a particularly low air but i don't want to say this defines him forever for everybody else but it definitely defines him forever for me yeah and i think the thing is like when i scream that on my ex that does define me in some ways to him and you know what fair fucks because you have to live with the consequences of what you scream at people when you're drunk and in the middle of a relationship that isn't going very well, but you can't articulate that and neither of you feel heard. You still have to deal with what you said and what you did. And what's interesting though is this is why I worry about hate and how we express it because me

screaming at my ex hurt my ex emotionally. didn't hurt him physically but men unfortunately when they dip into that pile of hatred they don't know how to like i'm processing what i said i'm processing why i said it and having to live with what i did and forgive myself because i can't look to him for redemption whereas i would say their exes who want me to redeem them and they hate me because i'm not going to give them that redemption because it's it's not like i forgive thee. Like, my word means shit to you, bro. If you realize that, you don't need my forgiveness because it's within you. You have to work through and forgive yourself properly rather than just feeling actually guilty about it and pretending it doesn't matter to you. But men, when they don't process their emotions of, like, hurt and embarrassment and the fact something didn't work out, they can turn to violence very quickly.

And the problem is they have the tools and mechanisms to enact that. Whereas women, of course, can turn to violence and hatred. But because of the way the patriarchy is set up, it's much less likely that our violence or our instinct to violence will result in the sort of like femicide or long-term, the homicides that we see enacted upon women. And that is simply, unfortunately, a fact about the world and the way that the dynamics work. But it doesn't mean that we can't hurt people i've got in that man's head and he thinks that i've ruined his life not just because of that but because i humiliated him and he cannot understand how to process that and how it was a two-way street you know what i think we should do this for a subsequent episodes that i do at some point want to talk about toxic femininity because i completely

agree with you in that like women's hatred it doesn't always it doesn't have the same connection to violence there are violent women physical violence physical violence right yeah yeah right you you're not operating within a world which is sort of like defined and disciplined by like female physical or sexual violence uh the same way that you are in terms of relating to like male physical and sexual violence but there are ways in which women deal with humiliation rejection very very badly and express that through invoking a kind of victimhood which demands that other people act on their behalf and i really want us to talk about that and and be very real with it. But before we can record a subsequent episode,

you know what we've got to do? We've got to do other people's problems. Also, if we do that episode, you know that you're just asking me to get mildly cancelled again. You know I got mildly cancelled for talking about that before, Ash. You know, you want me to go back into the flames.

You want me to jump back into the fire, feet first. You're like, I'm just done getting cooked. You want me to go back in? I'm just, I'm literally, I'm just done. Okay. Let's, let's move on to other people's problems. This is I'm in big trouble. This is our problem segment where people can send us their dilemmas, their issues, or sometimes just comments just comments questions concerns to if i speak at navarra media.com ash do you want to read the first or second one out you read the first one i am a poc woman i'm a person of color woman guys guys i'm sorry i'm gonna interrupt this dilemma just to say we need to sort out how we use poc i'm a woman of color that's that's how it works you're not a poc woman i'm a person of color womanc i'm a woman of color that's that's how it works you're not a

poc woman i'm a person of color woman no you're a woman of color come on everyone let's get our shit together if we're going to use abbreviations okay i'm back to the dilemma i am a poc woman my friends would describe me as generous kind down to earth and caring oh they would also describe me as a kind of un-british person, at least behaviourally, given I come from a loud, close-knit, personal space-blind, redacted global South Country family. My white British partner... You can redact that. I know where that is. If you're saying personal space-blind...

I was about to say, you've definitely cited this before. Is this Bengali? Is this Bengali? Not necessarily Bengali, but this is a desi woman okay it's a dusty woman yay okay uh my white british partner and i've been together for many years months ago we decided to get a civil partnership to allow me to apply for spouse civil partnership visa so as to allow us to easily be together in the uk given that at the time i had no other choice but to quickly get a very intense corporate job to sponsor my residence permit and I hadn't

received a secure offer yet so we decided to do it. This hasn't affected our relationship as we love and trust each other and have had many open discussions about what this bureaucratic change would mean for us and we do plan to give to live together in the UK for the foreseeable but not in a we are feel married way but in a we love each other and want to be together in the UK for the foreseeable, but not in a we-are-feel-married way, but in a we-love-each-other-and-want-to-be-together-for-a-way, this just, these documents don't mean anything. They solved an immigration obstacle. His family did not take it well. One parent, who already is not the warmest towards me,

communicated they felt worried about his decision to settle down at this age, given we are only 25 when we made the decision to get me the visa. Other family members questioned the decision as well and what it would imply. He explained why he was helping me which is good given it was definitely an unprecedented event in the entire lineage but the lingering suspicions I believe didn't dissipate fully. Although this happened many months ago I still have the feeling that I'm looked down upon slash not accepted because they see me as the caricatured exotic woman who manipulates their white boyfriend to get a visa granted i might be projecting my own fears allow you an immigrant with a white citizen in their head watching an immigrant style thing is i would love to be closer to his family

given the fact i don't have a lot of my own here in the uk but i feel like this visa situation has cast an awkward silent element in the room whenever i come visit. This is compounded by the fact I just have a very different way of being to them. I hug and kiss, speak in a loud inside voice, don't get the same references and jokes. I tone it down around them, but it makes me feel less confident when I perform like that. I have good immigrant accolades like having graduated with a first from Russell Group Uni and now have a very promising career in my field. I thought this would help but it doesn't seem to influence me getting in his family's good books. I fear how much more difficult the situation would be if I didn't have these achievements to show for myself. Part of me

wishes I didn't care that much about them liking me but i do increasingly question whether i will ever be welcome in the way i so deeply desire especially given that i don't think i blend into their brand of britishness at all um as well the marriage visa situation that has maybe put the nail in the coffin what are your thoughts on this should i give up wanting to be liked by his family how do i raise my desire to have a big family community here like the one i was raised with where we can be part of each other's lives in a nice way what can be done about the residential permanent elephant in the room we're reaching our anniversary soon and i hope this awkward dynamic can improve sooner rather than later thank you for reading all this i appreciate your advice in advance that was quite a big one actually ash do you want to go first but you always say it's me to go

first i know but on this one read it out yeah but you're you're okay the reason i want you to go first is for several reasons the reason i want to go for several reasons that's terrible construction sorry for mocking you earlier about women of color woman it's okay the reason i want to go first you are a desi woman right who's married married a white British man. Yes, you're born and bred British. Born and bred British. British. British. But you might understand a bit more.

I am a single woman who's not married to anyone, brown or otherwise. I just feel like you might have, and you also have a civil partnership. I feel like you might have more insight into this than I would. Okay. So I think you've got to split some of this stuff up because obviously you're experiencing it all at once and it is all one situation but there are different elements of it and i think that that

each one requires some attention the first is do they think that you've manipulated your white British partner into getting married the thing about marriage and what's so different about anything else is that it is an invitation for your family to have feelings about it because even if you're saying we've done this just so we can live in the same country it's not actually a married a marriage in the way that you're thinking about it that's so hard for other people to get their head around because they might be going well maybe you're just saying that one of you feels that way but the other one doesn't like it is a lifelong commitment it is a signal of your intention to be together forever and maybe maybe start a family like I think that it's very very difficult to get your family to think that marriage is just a means to an end because there's centuries and centuries and centuries of conditioning for it to mean

so much more and for it to involve the family and so i think that's what makes it really difficult because what the two of you are trying to say is like we really really love each other and we want to be a part of each other's lives and i want to be a part of your family and for you to like me, but also it's not a real marriage. Don't worry about it. Like those are very confusing signals to send to people. I think when it comes to this issue of like, I don't necessarily feel super accepted by them. I don't necessarily feel super accepted by them. And I don't know whether that's just because how I want to experience affection and love

is very, very different from how they give love. I mean, that's so, so tricky. I mean, I always felt really welcome as part of my partner's family, but it has grown. And I think they started off being quieter and more shy. And that coming across to me is more reserved because the norms of their family and what's considered important when you first meet someone, like for them, the norm and the value is sort of like, don't impose yourself on other

people don't be too loud don't be too demanding whereas for my mum it's like make as much noise as possible that's how the people know that you want them there like it's two very different ways of what you do when there are guests in the house and when there are new people new people around and I think that that's mellowed as time's gone on so I don't feel that the relative quietness of their house I'm not saying it's like a fucking morgue or anything like you know it's a loving affectionate household it's just the volume is quieter right like it's just a quiet house um I have become more comfortable with that and also have found it restorative in some ways and they also feel more comfortable especially that and also have found it restorative in some ways. And they also feel more comfortable since like meeting my mom and like the wedding where the

families come together. That's like allowed those differences to like, you know, become a bit blurry around the edges. And what that means for like your own expectations of like what kind of family you can have i think at the heart of this dilemma of really it's not about what the family want and expect from you it's actually about what you want and expect from them because i hang it all together you're saying like you know we we decided to get a civil partnership it's not affected our relationship you know we don't feel married but also you're saying i want to be a part of his family and i want to be accepted by them and i want to have a big family which operates on the same values and principles that my family back home did i think this is much more about your desires than it is about theirs what do you think boyer i think you should identify the power

broker in the family i think you should work them like a piece of wood i think you should it's always the matriarch find the matriarch work on the matriarch find the matriarch work on her everything else falling twice no that might work that might work um i think strategically that's smart strategic okay yeah you've given the correct advice but the the the mentally ill advice is identify the mate the actual matriarch who's not always the oldest woman i would say the matriarch of my family is probably my mom's younger sister and you win her favour uh through a careful campaign and you unlock that family um I think food is a massive love language and a great way to bring people together I think if you really are serious about wanting to create this family space and it might not work that's the

thing you have to accept it might not work uh you won't you might not get what you actually want from this because they might not be those people but if you want to try and build close relationships and you might have done this i don't know but you and your uh partner civil partnership should start throwing like big gatherings where you bring everyone together with a big buffet of food and you all eat and you do some karaoke and other stuff like that and they just get to like bring them out their shells it's a place of like warming people up you say you've been together for many years i find my family my family is i have a very large family and we love doing like big buffet parties where you just catch up with people um and lots of very awkward and bit neurodivergent

i'd say but like that's a good way to remind yourself of like the love between people rather than just this this awkward relationship you feel like you're going to one person's house bring them into your house bring them into a space or bring them into a park bring them to a neutral space uh take the matriarch out to the cinema and just spend a little bit of like one-on-one time working on them because then you might get rid of some of your fears and assumptions about the way they see you um but also that might not work at all and you might not get the family you want, but I think you do just miss your family back home as well. Is what I'm kind of getting from this. There's a gap there that's not

being filled. I think like when it comes to the like target the matriarch thing, the thing that I would say is like cook for other people and it's also a way of bringing your culture into it. Check their spice levels first, okay? I'm just saying like check their spice levels and if they go, oh, I can handle spice, like still reduce it by 40%, all right? Don't take white people at their word

when they say they can handle spice. I've made people cry before because I took them seriously when they said that. But like, it's a way of bringing your culture into it. And look, I think that the only thing that will change their concerns about the fact that you guys got married to them that means something you're saying it doesn't mean anything and they're worried because you know your partner's young you know you're 25 when you made this decision, that will ease off with time.

And I get it from their perspective. And I don't think it's necessarily racialized. It might be, but I don't think it's necessarily racialized because they're going, hang on, do you understand what marriage means? You think you can limit it to this little, little thing, but actually it's this massive thing. and i'm not saying that they're right but i'm saying that i can understand them having that perception because like i said marriage always by definition involves families just never met someone who hasn't been won over by an iteration of bread that is found in the global south paratha a roti like there is so much a stuffed paratha yeah suffer there is so much power at your fingertips that you can produce this food

oh god i would love it i would love i know i'd love a malaysian roti with condensed milk right now this is a complete tangent but that to me yeah i mean i i think i think that's i think that's good good advice i think just to reiterate you've got to think about what marriage means to you because you're saying doesn't mean anything but you're saying what kind of family you want to have so that does indicate that it is meaning something to you and it's that's fine for it to mean something to you it's actually good it means something to you because marriage is a big thing civil partnership or traditional marriage in a church that's like that's a huge commitment it's a huge commitment you're making to the people around you and sometimes to god but most of the people

around you sometimes to god um shall we shall we squeeze in another one yeah we promised people we would so let's squeeze in another one go on all right run that thing dear if i speak thanks for your work on the pod unpacking life's trickier interpersonal dilemmas. You're doing God's work. See, sometimes it does involve God. Yeah. I'm getting in touch to talk about my relationship

with a longtime friend, which I believe to be on the wane. Me and this person have been friends since school and now in our mid twenties, we live in different cities and are doing our own thing. Over the past few years, I've really drifted from this friend, but I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing. Our lives we live in different cities and are doing our own thing over the past few years i've really drifted from this friend but i don't necessarily think this is a bad thing our lives are moving in

different directions and i'm at peace with us growing apart also whenever we do meet up or hang out i always come away from our interactions feeling drained and exhausted this person is quite a negative person and often makes me feel bad about myself and talks about others in a way that makes me uncomfortable oh my god could this be referring to one of us more yeah i was literally thinking that i was like what if this is one of my friends um i don't think they're a particularly good friend nor do i enjoy being around them but i still care about them as we've been friends for a long time and have a lot of shared history however they keep reaching out to me to keep contact going i don't mind this but recently I just find it so draining and feel guilty as I know I'm not invested in the friendship. I feel they still consider me one of their closest friends when I don't feel the same.

I know they don't have a lot of friends back home and aren't happy in their current situation. I therefore feel guilty cutting off this friend or forcing a break in the friendship as I don't want to let them down or hurt them. As deep down, I do have love for them and don't want to let them down or hurt them as deep down I do have love for them and don't want to cause them pain. I don't want to be that person that thinks they've outgrown someone or cuts off a friendship easily as I really value my friendships and put a lot of time and energy into them when I find them fulfilling and loving. However, this situation has gone on too long. How can I distance myself from this friend? Can I distance myself from them

am i being an asshole should i try and reconnect with them any help greatly appreciated heart emoticon uh was it you who said to me when we care from a place of resentment that isn't care at all because someone said that to me recently and it was really really helpful advice because i realized i was caring for someone like pingu when you know that picture pingu when pingu's angry and he's all hunched up like this and he's going and now i do not want it yeah and he's he's like making his heart anyway it's me of pingu being angry and making a heart pick and he looks really furious and that is the pictorial uh realization iteration not iteration realization realization works of the feeling of caring for someone out of a place of resentment um do you still love this person i don't know do you have love for them i'm not sure

if you do have love for them you haven't really said anything nice about them everything you said comes from a place of guilt and the like the ghost of feelings you might have had once about this friendship now i'm really torn about what advice to give because i do think we treat people as too disposable i do think that we you know we have this language let's cut things off that aren't serving us anymore etc etc but also i had a friendship that made me into a person I didn't like. I say made me, that's not really taking accountability. I behaved in ways during this friendship that I didn't like. And when I would leave every encounter, I'd feel drained and tired and exhausted. And I would behave poorly to this person and alternate between trying to be really

nice to them and also just like, couldn't hack it and being like i can't listen to this anymore and i didn't like the way they talked to me or about me the way we communicated got on both our nerves we fought and they would all say we're fighting like siblings and i was like that's not a good thing i have a fragmented relationship with my sibling um we fight like siblings i don't like that i don't want to fight like siblings with my friends. I don't want to fight with the friends. I want to have, you know, adult communication if we ever have a disagreement with my friends and work things out in a fashion that feels healthy.

I don't want to have beefs with my friends. And they always joke that I kept trying to cut this friendship off over the many years that we were friends. And finally they did something that was just i hadn't seen them for months and our active active friendship because i feel like you know you have active friendships where you're seeing each other regularly and we'd gotten we'd slipped into only seeing each other very rarely and every now and then would be like let's hang out let's catch up and then i'd be reminded why i didn't want to do it for a long time and i saw them by chance

at a function and they said something to me after not seeing me for seven months that was so fucking annoying and so rude i was just like i don't hate you and i don't even dislike you i just know this friendship is is dead in the water what do they say do you want to actually know i'll tell you the story and they might even listen to this podcast and if i do i want them to know that i think they're a really wonderful person but the way that the things that they bring out of me and the way that their way of being in the world triggers me is all my problem. I just want to say that clearly. Like, it's about me.

It's not about you, really. It's about the differences we have and the way that I react to them. So and they're a protest irl who had told me they recognized me from someone i'd been like oh lol where'd you recognize me from thinking it was work and they'd been they'd said hinge and i was so embarrassed and laughing and being like oh my god that's hilarious my ego really got the better of me there and then this person had been like oh and i said oh you should text me because we had a really good chat i was like you should text me like they'd come back in the country for after

a long time away they'd never they'd had my number saved they told me from when i'd given it to them on hinge but they said oh i'll text you and about two months had passed and they hadn't texted me over six weeks i can't remember a amount of time had passed and i was like oh they haven't texted me but i hadn't expected them to it's just a funny story i was telling about seeing this person and how i'd reacted in like an egotistic way and then i'd been immediately humbled and this friend said to me they said when instead of the picking up the bits of the story that i was like this is why it's funny they were like stress about maybe they thought you look better on hinge and i was just like you fucking cunt you why the fuck would you like they hadn't seen me for honestly months and we weren't even having like a big they were listening to this conversation they just went maybe they

thought you look better on hinge and i was just like that is so rude so unnecessary any of my friends ever said that to me i would be i would just be like it's just rude it's just so and they'd said stuff like to me before that had been like rude and hurtful but i got it because i also when i am a bit messed up can say stuff that's rude and hurtful you know like i've i've done that in the past i get it i get it but i was so like who do you think you are we don't have that kind of relationship and it really spun me out as well i was like do i really look that different on hinge also the person did text me in the end so um but it was just a final straw and i was like the way that we think is okay and i said to them like i talked to the next day i was like look and i really wasn't like i wasn't like mad about it i was just like so this is such a it was so jarring to me i hadn't had someone respond to me like that in so

long it felt like year nine behavior you don't like me yeah exactly it's like year nine behavior um and i said to them the next day about like because we're meant to go for dinner i was like i just don't want to go for dinner i'm sorry and like it's it's not even a mean word i don't want to be a drama i just i don't feel comfortable going for dinner and they were like really snippy with me about it and saying that i was like massively reacting and they said they'd say it to anyone and i was like that's the point why would you say that to anyone like i don't like that you would do that that you would say that to anyone it feels really wrong to me that you'd feel comfortable saying that to anyone like i think my self-esteem is okay imagine saying that to someone who who doesn't even have like

the amount of self-esteem i have or isn't confident that they're quite an attractive person and they're out in this world. Why would you say that to anyone? And they just had an argument. Eventually they were like, I'm going to get on with my Sunday now. It was just the whole thing was tiring and draining. I was like, I've made the right decision. And I saw them recently at another function and we were really nice to each other because that's the relationship we have. I didn't feel any ill will towards me. You're not meant to be friends. We're not meant to be friends. We're just meant to be people who see each other,

have a nice time when we see each other casually and then separate again. And I caught up on their life and they're doing really well and I'm really happy for them. They're having a better life now I'm out of it. I'll tell you that for free. I don't think my presence in their life was good for them. I don't think it was good for me. And finally ending that act of friendship was a decision I don't regret at all. I'm sorry to say, and I don't think they give a fuck either that amount of their life. So that's my advice to you, listener, like all the things you're feeling, you're better getting out than hanging on. So I, I, I really, really relate to this dilemma because you know i've had i am such a wimp i am a big big big wimp and i think in hindsight there are people who are owed conversations about how i

really felt and i didn't i didn't have those conversations with them because i think one my feelings weren't super obvious to me like i'd buried them so far down in myself that like i couldn't recognize them uh story of my life um and also i think that because i didn't want to hurt people i then just created this like distance or this sort of like blank space which obviously really hurt them right just because you're not saying the thing doesn't mean you're not hurting someone so i think that there are people that i owed conversations to that i didn't have those conversations with I think that if this person is like really trying to see you and stay in contact you do have to say to them look I think that you're really great for all these reasons but like this friendship doesn't doesn't work for me in these ways and I don't want to change who you are and I want you to be like

your most authentic selfie self I don't want you to change for me at all I just think that like there are these ways in which we're not compatible and I think take the blame out of it so it's not about them being negative and it's not about them you know being this or that because like another way of looking is that maybe they're gossips maybe they're just fun little airhead gossips like like me and moya talking shit all the time um i think you can just say like it's a compatibility thing or like it's a dynamic between you thing and yeah take the blame out of it have that conversation and then it means that you can you can move on guilt-free but i i didn't do that and I didn't say what I really felt about ways in which like you know these particular friendships weren't working for me or ways in which like I did

build up resentment because of it and then when I was like you know what like I can't I can't do this anymore I just like dipped um and that was that was bad and selfish and cowardly of me and if I got the chance to do it again I'd probably do the same thing but now i know for certain what i should have done better yeah 100 you just i think you just need to put in your big person pants and send the message person well i don't know the gender put your big person pants on send the message because it'll make you feel better and it'll make them feel better in the long run because it's it's actual like closure about what's going on but as ash let's take the blame out of it because i imagine you're probably making them feel bad in turn in ways you don't even realize because people pick up on resentment like the the way i was to this friend that i was talking about

former friend i was talking about i definitely made them feel bad because they could feel my my resentment and as i said the way that i behaved made i didn't like the version of myself i was when i was with them and i wasn't i didn't give them the I behaved made I didn't like the version of myself I was when I was with them and I wasn't I didn't give them the support they needed I wasn't like I didn't understand them I didn't get them I wasn't a good friend and that's why I tried to remove myself quite a lot because I think I recognized that um but I just didn't do it the right way and then finally when it happened I finally was able to remove myself in a way which I think was good for all of us and they realized that it just was a compatibility issue and they seem a lot happier now I think the one

thing I'd say and like this is much more oriented towards the uh dilemma sender than it is to you which is don't wait for a pretext so don't just be like wow they're gonna say something fucks up to me at the function like don't wait that don't wait for that. Cause that's a horrible thing to do. Yeah. Yeah. Don't do that. Don't that was the, that was the mistake. Also I wasn't waiting. The thing was that we just did so far and then we were meant to be meeting up and then accidentally saw them. And then they said that and I was like, no, oh girl, that's not, that's not, that's not it. But this is it because this has been if i speak with me moyla mcclain and me ash sarka cowardly friend cowardly quick reminder come see us 15th september king's place

london podcast festival tickets on sale now live recording beep beep beep beep beep you can see us there but you can definitely listen to us next week bye goodbye they not like us they not like us they not like us they not like us they not like us