If I Speak - 27: I’m in big trouble! Your dilemmas answered

Episode Date: August 19, 2024

Ash and Moya dedicate a whole show to answering your dilemmas! Featuring a woman questioning her age-gap relationship, an infuriating parent who won’t budge on politics, a ghosted lover plotting her revenge, a loner who wants to start socialising, and a low-earner who resents her rich friends. You’ve only got a few weeks to grab […]

Hello, hello, hello and welcome to a very special episode of If I Speak. It's mid-August, or it will be by the time you're listening to this, and Christmas has come early. But before I tell you why, I'm joined by my co-host and the very bestest of red-nosed reindeer, Moya Lothian-McLean. How's it going? It just feels so blasphemous to talk about Christmas. i know where your metaphor is going and where where you're driving us to but i'm lodging an objection at invoking christmas in august well like some parts of the world have hot christmases right like the whole of the southern hemisphere yeah but not britain yet maybe in a couple of years when we finish really heating up the planet but right now just also christmas and christmas and august it's not even that hot it's like 20 degrees and overcast oh god

i can't talk about summer if i talk about summer too much i'll cry oh we used to be a country all right well no need to cry look what they took from us no need to cry no need to cry because it's not all about your problems moya today is all about other people's problems that's right what is in my sleigh my festive sack is a whole bunch of audience dilemmas we're doing an i'm in big trouble bonanza we had a little bit of a backlog with the dilemmas we didn't want people to feel neglected so that's all we're doing today uh we think they're fun um if you've got a problem that we couldn't possibly make any worse email us at if i speak at novara media.com that's if i speak at novara media.com but first and foremost rumor has it moya has some questions for me i thought i'd

theme the first one yeah i thought i thought i'd keep it with the whole theme of the show. So, number one, what is the worst advice you've ever received? Oh, my God. What's the worst advice I've ever received? ever received um i was once talking to a friend about feeling very angry about my absentee father and he was like we could just go burn down his house and i was like ha ha ha very funny and he was like no but seriously though so i guess that wasn't that great as advice goes i didn't take it wow that is really bad advice actually every time I'm upset at someone, he's like, burn down their house.

Like every single person who's ever upset me, he's like, burn down their house. Not to overanalyze. Does this person give good advice normally or is that just the summation of his advice? No, he can. He's a very empathetic person and will like hear you out and talk through the feelings.

But when it's like, like well what should we do he's like arson there's a block there between being able to hear and then being able to advise on the next steps so maybe he's a receptacle for talking through things with but less of someone who can actually deal with a sort of solution for it maybe so so yeah he's he's he's the sort of um most reliable bad advice giver I know. Yeah, that's because his advice is the same. He doesn't actually know how to give solutions based advice, which is unlike many men. So you know what, you've got the gender trend there. Question two, fight or flight?

Neither. Freeze. Yeah, I would do this too. They say it's fight or flight, but no. Sometimes it's freeze a lot of the time freeze and not exactly panic but freeze and shut down like a hedgehog it's so it's uh fight flight freeze and befriend um but the freeze is like an evolved strategy that mammals have because it's a way to like play dead so whatever's threatening you loses interest. And also animals may have evolved it to give themselves less painful deaths. That's pretty interesting.

So when they feel like, you know, the teeth of the saber-toothed tiger in their neck freeze up and you don't feel things. And befriend is a strategy that's evolved from girls' schools in the 1950s. Just make friends and it'll be it's like the woman the girl putting my head down the toilet and telling me i'm trash being like befriend her and then suddenly you're ruling the school that's a that's a real modern adaptation okay number three i was thinking

about the fact we don't give people flowers while they're still around to smell them. So who is a peer that you really admire and you haven't told them? Oh, you know what? I like to think that I tell people when I admire them. Who do I admire right now? I mean, I did actually also uh tell her this but uh our colleague rivka brown has been fucking smashing it at the moment and i'm just always so excited to read her pieces um so yeah she deserves some flowers i think you deserve some

flowers you are just like a fucking like ideas like generator workhorse i always think that like my i've been talking i've been talking about you to people and i'm like the thing about moya that you've got to understand is that she's a bullet you've got to like build the gun around her and just bam she'll go but like if you don't build the gun like it'll just it'll explode but like build the gun and just like deadly deadly you do tell me though like a less violent metaphor you tell me nice things all the time so i love that you told me that and it wasn't meant to be an exercise in fishing for compliments but you tell me a lot i think maybe you just tell people so there's there's maybe not someone you haven't told that you admire them but rivka is

killing the game right now smashing it on a roll smashing it who do you want to give some flowers to someone that you haven't given flowers to who do I want to give flowers to that I don't tell? I mean, I've said this on podcasts before, and also I don't think he's a peer, but I think Aditya Chakraborty is one of the finest journalists and minds working in modern media. But I don't think I've directly told him that. I think he's amazing and prescient.

But maybe you're prescient if you just take time and do work that looks at the clues so he wrote a piece last year about how asylum hotels the patterns that he was seeing in the the sort of monstering of them would explode all over the country if we didn't watch out and quelle surprise uh and he just he's done all this he just he just knows to look in the gaps and he's also an economist which helps you add up patterns and i just think he's such an empathetic journalist it's like that's the gold standard for me so but i don't think i've said him let's say that to him so i'll just say it here again not to him

keep going he's a phenomenal journalist a phenomenal phenomenal journalist we're a very big fan but it's time for us to advise others oh i'm stretching it's the i'm in big trouble bonanza like honestly limber up twist the spine take some deep breaths we're going in in dear moya and ash i'm a mid-20s bi cisgender woman i recently ended a long-term relationship with a cis man seven years older than me we broke up about a year ago it continued on and off for a while but long story short this spring i recently decided i'm very happy to be just single. I then recently met this guy who's in his early 40s nearly 20 years older than me through work when he was in a more senior position. We no longer work together but are in the same field of work slash community of people. We've been seeing each other casually which has been really nice and a low pressure post relationship. I don't think either of us have seen anything serious with each other long term but I do enjoy his company, find him intelligent and he treats me with respect.

That being said I can't help but notice all the significant factors and differences between our careers and friends around us that highlight the age gap and become especially heightened when around each of our respective friend groups. His friends are actually some of my colleagues, tutors, mentors, which can be a bit awkward. Somehow I've always ended up dating older people, except for my only former female partner, where we were the same age. I don't really know why this is. Part of it is probably due to familial, gendered and circumstantial responsibility that I feel I took on at a young age for various reasons. The other part of it may be I'm just one of the youngest of my friend group but I never thought much about it when dating someone who may be a bit older than me in the past because I felt like they're in a similar stage of life, career and often friendships that felt more equal. I can't think why this person would want to be with me

if he sees these differences too and is this actually an unequal power dynamic or am I just over analysing it? There's also an extra sort of bit of information they give next. Simultaneously, this may not be related, but I'm finding as I've been growing in my career I've been encountering a lot of straight men who definitely take advantage of the fact I'm a younger female figure in the room, acting inappropriately by associating my physical appearance to my identity which has led me to question my abilities and can be quite exhausting as someone who's experienced a history of sexual trauma he of course is not that person and doesn't make me feel that way by any means but it can be hard to dislocate all these experiences happening

at once lots of love sorry for the rant and thank you for making my tuesday morning something to look forward to the question they've posed as the dilemma is why this person would want to be with me if he sees these differences too and is this an unequal power dynamic or am i just over analyzing it do you want to go first or should i oh i mean i've been thinking about this one a bit because i think this is our first age gap discourse yeah wait we have some sort of like for so long child will you like confetti cannons we need a confetti cannon noise and some sort of age gap discourse age gap let's go i mean for me there are the specifics of this situation and then

there are more generalizable things right let's maybe start with the specifics of the situation because I always think how someone writes in is so so revealing so it's like well I don't see anything wrong about this but like maybe there's something wrong with it and actually being around older people I do feel objectified in these ways and it's sort of triggering for me and there's something wrong with that. But of course, like he's not that guy and it's different. Like, you know, I feel that there is something that sits uncomfortably within you about this relationship. And there's something there for you to explore about why is it older men in particular because i know that you're suggesting that it could be you know due to like familial responsibility that you took on but why is it men why is it older men like i you know you've raised the idea of sexual trauma there is it

you know do you find yourself being drawn both to someone who could look like the perpetrator but also at the same time could offer protection like is there something there about like a compulsion to repeat um is there something about wanting to escape a sense of your own youth and vulnerability by surrounding yourself with older people um because i kind of feel that if it was the case that you were like hey like i'm seeing this much older guy other people don't seem to get it but it feels really good for me how could i explain it to them that would be one thing that would be indicating to me that like you do just feel fine about it and it's much more about how how others around you are perceiving it but the way in which you've

written this there's so much rumination and so much discomfort and so much of a sense of like how people are looking at you being young not how people are looking at your relationship as you know having this this um you know significant age gap that tells me that there is some element of of discomfort within yourself um as for the generalizable thing i understand being drawn to older people particularly when you're in your early 20s and late teens because particularly as as women it's like you look around you and you see guys your own age like you know if you're if you're dating guys and you don't feel understood by them you don't feel like they've got the the things that you want you've got an idea of like what what romance is like what what connection is which is you know not within the emotional range of

of people your own age very often and so you look to older guys i think that's really really understandable for me the bit where i'm like uh-oh spaghettios is when you're looking at it from the perspective of the older person because you know you're talking here about an age gap of 20 years like obviously an age gap of 20 years for me would be like a 12 year old but like even if it was 10 years or 12 years right I'm 32 like they're 20 we don't share a social world do you know what i mean like like like we don't like our our our life places are really really different and in particular if like all my friends are the same age as me and all my friends are like in a similar life place like this 20 year old cannot be my equal in the relationship they cannot have the same agency in the relationship

or the same ability to define what it is according to what their needs are you know and especially if they're they're entering my world of like you know friends who are all in their like you know late 20s to to late 30s it's like they're always going to be at that bit of a disadvantage and so for me it's like my priority and what I what I want is a relationship of equals right and so that that means not dating someone significantly younger than me um you know my husband is one month younger than me so I guess that makes me the cougar in that uh relationship a whole month and four days um but yeah for me it's very much about how can you be on a par with each other in defining what the relationship is and I just I just don't see how that's possible in this circumstance I think that there are there are some cases where a couple make that happen

um you know so I'm not writing all of it off I think that you know there'll be really specific circumstances personality traits situations where they can make that happen um I just I'm I don't feel like that's the case in this one but yeah Mya what do you think where do you stand on the old age gap very difficult for me because uh i recently have reversed my positions on not dating younger men i used to be very sort of like oh what's the point? You know, like, if they're this bad at my age, imagine what younger men are going to be like. And I think there's a gendered thing to this. And then, you know what? I met a younger man,

and he was ten times nicer and interesting and actually quite open and curious to the world in a way that my age mates were not uh however i did say that there would be no future because he was younger than me to such degree i was like you need to go and live your life first but i had a very enjoyable time with him and it sort of made me think well maybe i would date you know three even four pushing at years younger depending on the person like have think about consider like a more serious relationship with them 20 years however is a lot it's a lot it's a lot and there's a there's a big difference between you know the person that i i don't get too many details there

but it was more than like four years and i think that for me was a cut off maybe. Maybe if I was much older and he was much older, then it would again be different because it's a different stage of life. But this person says what? They say that they're in, yeah, they're mid-twenties and they're dating someone who must be in their mid-forties. That's very, very different. Like you've said. What I'm also interested in here is what you kind of touched on a bit is like the narratives we attach to age.

And it sounds like this letter writer is maybe doing a similar thing to me, which is we're trying to assess who will hurt us the least. And whether that's because there's an obstacle in the way of the relationship, which means, you know, this letter writer is saying it's not going to be serious. We don't think it's going to be serious why are you writing as a dilemma then about how your lives interact and whether there's any way of like any compatibility what that's a contradictory message there so either this is beyond this man and you just in general want to interrogate these patterns or you are assessing without realizing for the potential of there being something more long-lasting more serious and you're discomforted by your findings which is you've unconsciously concluded there's actually

no chance because our lives don't align in the right way but you don't you don't want to admit that you don't make sense of that so you're asking us whether this is just about unequal power dynamics i don't even think it's about unequal power dynamics i think that you're just not compatible in the in the way that you want because of where you are in life there's power dynamics in there but i think comes down to the fact you're you're not equal in those senses um but we we think who will hurt us the least and when i was thinking of this younger guy i was like he was so nice to me and i felt like he wouldn't hurt me in the way that my age mates would because they're so jaded i always make this joke about men my age which is um and older which is they've seen too much

they haven't learned from it but they've seen it and it's it's made them so bitter and jaded whereas the young ones they're kind of the same in lots of ways but they're just like they have a bit more hope I've got a question for you if one of your male friends was dating someone significantly younger by which i'm talking about age gaps of of 10 years or more right how would you feel about it i'd side it but i would bitch about in private be like what's going on there and then in public with with that male friend i'd probably be like well we'll accept it um because it's unless someone comes to me and says there's a specific problem here or like you know unless the girlfriend would come to me and ask for some sort of advice and i would sense that something was wrong i wouldn't i wouldn't think it's my

business to get directly involved but i would just be like that just shows his immaturity the thing is like when i was when i was 17 how graphic do i get do it i lost my virginity someone 10 years older and i look back and i'm like you disgusting rat like not about me but about the guy like what the fuck were you doing i remember exactly i also remembered something disgusting this man said which was like oh i was like i'm a virgin by the way and he was no i said i need to tell you something he was like what and i i he said you're not 15 are you i was like no i'm a virgin he would have done it anyway he wouldn't have given a fuck yeah he wouldn't give a fuck i remember being those situations too like as a

teenager i remember like how much you know youth was fetishized and I'm not saying that you know that dynamic you know between the ages of like 15 and 17 that's then the same as like you know when you're like 21 and he's like you know whatever like I'm not you know I'm not like ah like like it's all pedophilia one way or another like i'm not saying that but it's just like that man's had a whole adult life before you were born do you know what i mean like before you were born yeah i'm still really torn on this because again mid-20s and 40s inherently i'm not like there's anything really wrong with it it depends how the thing is she's discomforted by this but she's not like he's she's like why does he want to be with me you're creeped out by the fact he wants to be with you even though you want to be with him but you're still disgusted by his attraction to you on some level and that's what's interesting

to me like you don't you find it weird you find him weird you find the whole situation weird i just think a relationship based on that inherently has somewhere where you find your partner weird for being attracted to you is not going to work whether casual or not um but i also you know that we talk about harms and all this and it's like i think it's i think it is fucking weird when it's like what do you have in common but sometimes you do get these connections across generations where you have things in common and it might be a connection where the power dynamic isn't that inherent but you do say his friends are like your mentors and teachers that is a new element as well it's just again i think until there is some sort of like mass

feminist emotional revolution men of all ages are going to repeat similar pattern or straight men particularly but they tend to repeat similar patterns because they don't have this fucking language of what they actually want in life what makes them satisfied they don't have this and i'm not again it's not all men but i'm just saying broadly will to change stuff you know bell hooks there's not this expression and understanding of why they might do things or why they might be attracted to younger women or why they might want someone who they see as more pliable or more innocent etc in their lives um so but so i don't know it's just like i see men of all ages doing the same shit and women of all ages do the same shit as well but with men because we live in a patriarchal society there is a different resonance

to when they do the same shit or when they repeat these patterns and but i've noticed more women who are like i'm gonna date 10 years younger i've got friends who are like i'm only dating men who are like eight years younger than me now why is that why are we so disappointed with our own age mates i think that's something to examine however what i would say about to this person is you said it's not serious you need to be honest with yourself whether you think that or not and you also need to be honest with yourself whether you're creeped out by this man because i think you are even if he doesn't deserve it i think you're still creeped out that's very good advice shall we move on to the next yes regalas dear ash

and moya i recently had a very heated argument with my father over the current genocide taking place in gaza He argued that what is happening is not a genocide and that Israel is effectively the good guy in the war. It was basically like hearing the most obvious pro-Israel talking points that are often on the news. We ended up shouting at each other and it became personal. I ended up leaving and haven't spoken to him since. Part of me wonders if his stance is informed by some insecurity about his relative lack of education. He never went to university, I did etc and is simply looking for a topic that will make me angry and where he could feel intellectually superior. The alternative

is that he actually believes some of the racist atrocity denying nonsense that he was coming out with. He wants to repair the relationship after the argument but my impulse is to tell him that if he doesn't recognise what is happening as a genocide then we have nothing to say to each other. This all falls in line with an unforgiving attitude I seem to be taking in my personal life at the moment which is perhaps informed by some mistreatment or perceived mistreatment at the hands of others. I don't want to forgive people who support what is happening. I don't want to talk to them. I consider them to be not very nice people. I'm so angry that sometimes I feel like I could die. I don't know what to do with all of this anger. Politics in the UK makes me angry.

Labour makes me angry. The Tories make me angry. Starving kids make me angry. And it's all about me, you know? That anger is like some selfish reflex to make it all about myself even this email is full of self-pity but i don't know what you say i'm to anyone when i can't even talk to my own father what do i do do i forgive him do i move on how do i stop feeling so angry at everyone it really hurts forgive yourself first um forgive yourself first is what i say you you're furious that you feel so angry you feel like it's a it's a failing on your part to feel this angry and that you're being you're not of use that's a really telling phrase this idea that you're not of use what use am i up to anyone that's a that's like a huge it's a huge self-loathing thing to think about yourself that you failed because you're so passionate about something that it

makes you upset and that when you talk to someone you love and they disagree on something that you have a very strong principles about that makes you so upset you don't want to talk to them about it anymore you don't want to talk to them about it anymore, and you don't want to talk to them full stop. I think that's a perfectly understandable emotional response. And this idea that you have to be of use, that you have to be the disciple going out and spreading the message, we can get onto that, but you need to be nicer to yourself about the way you're feeling. You need to be nicer to yourself,

because we're left on our own to deal with a lot of these emotions um and frustrations and the anger that is very natural when you see the state of the world and if you you know occupy a left-wing position will be your natural response so you have to be nice to yourself first before you can be nice to anyone else i think is an initial starting point. Yeah, you sound very isolated, actually. Like you sound like there is this anger and it's driving you away from people. There's a generalized unforgiving attitude. I think Moya is completely right.

You have to forgive yourself. But I also think you need to put yourself in community with other people. And you can do that politically around Palestine. You know, there are organizations actively working on this at the moment, whether it's as part of the, you know, boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, or, you know or pressuring their own workplaces or coordinating other kinds of community responses. I think that could be a really good thing for you because also one of the things that happens when you participate in political organizing like that,

you realize that you have to be able to forgive and accept some of the mess of other people in order for those organizations to function. So you all broadly agree, but if you go in there with a very skeptical attitude towards forgiveness and constantly wanting to protect yourself against others, the whole thing falls apart. So I think that that can be like a useful space to begin begin I think that there are the things that you're saying about your relationship with your dad and you know parents and children it's complicated and there are all these ways in which parents want to want to feel that they're still your parent they've still got the

power and they can still teach you a thing or two about the world and they feel angry when when they think they can you know no longer do that sometimes and similarly you know you feel the sense of like but if i'm to love you that means I have to bring you in line with the things which I feel to be most morally imperative. And of course, recognizing the genocide as a genocide is morally imperative. I'm not saying let that go and forgive your father, but perhaps view it as more than one conversation. People never shift after one conversation or one argument it takes time takes patience takes multiple conversations it takes them thinking about things on their own reflecting on things that you've said sometimes it it involves you

listening as they talk through a thought process which might end up in a very different place from where they started but that will involve you dropping some barriers and and i think maybe being a bit less scared of people hurting you because that seems to be so so prominent in this email to also say this is not an excuse but the generation that i imagine your father is which is just one or two above us there is you know there's different messaging this around what israel is um i imagine he'll be exposed he has been exposed to a lot of oh it's both sides oh you know it's just all that trouble over there. Blah, blah, blah.

The way that people talk about it for a long time in the mainstream media, etc. Sometimes what I like, I have a similar issue in that I have a beloved father figure who loves to argue with me. I don't want to argue. He loves to bring up politics and wants to yell at me about it. You know, like there's something in there about how he expresses repressed emotions and it's through disagreeing with me on politics and trying to tell me what's what and all of that. And I just say, I don't want to talk about this. I don't want to talk about this. And recently he was saying to me, oh, you know, I voted for someone and you won't like it. And I was like, who?

I was also like, I honestly didn't really care. I was like, it doesn't matter. Like the vote's done now. And I just want to know. And I was like, was it reform? He was like, no. And I said, was it the Tories? He was like, no.

I said, was it Labour? I was like really confused because I'm like, why would I be that bothered? He said, no. And I said, the Greens. And he went, yes. And I was like like why would i be that bothered i said no i said the greens and he went yes and i was like why would i not why would i go you vote for the greens and he was like because you're a labor person and i realized just like in his head it's so mixed up my political beliefs he has this caricature idea of like where i sit and like what particular tribe i'm in how fixed it is um and people we have these confused understandings of each other's political positions and they're based off like a few fights or

arguments and especially with parental relationships where you actually probably have a lot more common ground than you think but sometimes when you're in an angry situation the best thing to do is just like de-escalate it look i tell you i don't want to talk about this like this um and then think about other ways like ash said you might be able to get through i had a situation with a relative who for a while seemed to be heading in a direction that was getting a bit transphobic it was worrying me they were reading the times they were uh you know starting to say stuff about women's spaces all of this kind of thing and i was like they said they didn't understand you know they them pronouns i was like oh no and my response at first was to sort of like yell at them

and that didn't work that was that was no use that was no use and then i sent them a couple of books and i just said you know this is this is worrying a bit worrying to me and i i tried to reach them a bit more on a level but i'd also backed away at the convo i just sent them books and i oh this is really good and i talked about no it sounds cheesy but i was like i was talking about my friends who were like i'm just trying to be not being like my friend is amazing just being like talking about my friends being like oh they've just done this cool thing or like i went for lunch with them and showing them that i'm in like total community with people and these people are human beings not just being like this person has done this amazing thing and they deserve to be singled out as an exceptional person just literally showing them my life and how i exist alongside people who happen to be a member of the community

that they were being a bit skeptical of um and then they also you know started getting more involved with like actual feminist organizing where it was intersectional and all these things came together and they don't have a time subscription anymore and they don't say transphobic shit anymore and they're very like women's spaces need to be inclusive like we need to protect all women that kind of stuff like on board and what it took was a little pushing at it from all sides and just like keeping them in community with me and treating them with sort of like love and respect rather than preaching at them people hate being preached at it's the immediate reaction but people hate it absolutely so what i would what i would say is like i would maybe send your dad just a letter being like oh it really upsets me when he has discussions but i understand

and like we can talk about this but this is my view and i understand you're one but i'd love it if maybe you like read this book and then said you know send it with a book i would suggest doppelganger by nomi klein because it's not a preachy book it's an amazing book and it goes into stuff like israel and palestine but knits it all with other things that might be tied to it and really does it in a way where i feel like if you're reading that there's a good chance of it just like shaking up your views of it even if you are someone who's part of like the diagonalist coalitions that she talks about because of the way that she writes but that's the kind of thing you know if you're in the car with him you've got a podcast on oh that podcast happens to be i don't

know navarro media downstream something like that you know it's osmosis and little bits and little sending stuff but not preaching and i'm sorry because it's annoying and it's lots of people hear this and be like no no, we need to like, cut these people off and do this. And you know what? I understand that view. It's just not one I subscribe to

and you are entitled to it and you can practice it. It's just not the advice I'm giving. And this is my and Ash's podcast. So, this is what you'll hear here. I actually, I actually think that like,

you know, it's one thing to withdraw from people because you go, I am not able to do this. I'm not able to do this. This person, it's too stressful for me. I can't do it. I think that is perfectly legitimate. And also at various times in your life, you're always going to have to do that at some point. That's part of the human experience but don't make a virtue out of it right it is not a virtuous political position to throw people away because then how do you think that they're going to be persuaded ever that requires contact with other people and so if what you want to do is keep making your your pool of persuadable smaller great fine do that that's not how movements

win should we move on yep ready for this one oh my god yeah you've got to read it out this is my favorite one i'm gonna read i'm not gonna say anything about i'm not gonna add any description before this but this is a big dilemma i love it hello both i'm a huge fan of the show and as a young woman trying to make my way in the world you both really inspire me. I think it was from one of you that I originally heard on social media about the novel Evenings and Weekends by O'Sheen McKenna. Earlier this year, I devoured the book, and as much as it's cliche to say, it really made me fall in love again with literature and with life in general. I loved it so much, I've done something I never did before and went to an event to hear the author speak, and he signed my copy of the book.

I'm not generally a materialist person, but it really meant a lot to me and is one of my most treasured possessions. A month later, I met a lovely man from Hinge. This is a bit long, but I'll tell you all this for context. I've grown quite jaded with dating apps, but with him, it was different straight away. We had an instant connection, he seemed really interested and engaged. It was different straight away. We had an instant connection. He seemed really interested and engaged.

However, after the first date, I told him I prefer to be friends because I wasn't sure if I was attracted to him. But after hanging out with him a couple of times in friendly, low-pressure environments, I realised I am attracted to him. I was probably holding something back because of my lone long-standing fear of intimacy, terror of my own sexually, deep repulsion towards men. Can we just normalise having to hang around someone for a bit to see if you actually fancy them that's it's not a pathology it's normal that's meeting someone on a first date and kissing them i can tell you as someone who dates sober is fucking weird and only happens very occasionally the

reason we think it's normal to just be able to like fuck someone or have like kiss them on a first date which is fine i'm just saying it's because of booze most of the time you're lubricated up and your inhibitions are down great fucking someone's fine on first date but it is totally normal to hang out with someone several times and then see if you actually fancy them it it's not about even attraction growing it's just i remember when i met i will get back to this dilemma but i remember when i met my ex and on the first day i was so interested in him and so like this person is so beautiful i love everything about their voice everything like they're so funny we're having a great time and i still thought i don't

know if i fancy him because and obviously I was so engaged and so interested and there was the attraction brewing, but I still didn't know. And it's like then on the second date and the third dates, I was like, wow, no, no, you fancy this person so much. But it took a while and we took a while to build up physical intimacy. And you know what?

It made it even better. I'm not saying don't fuck on the first date, but sometimes when you build an emotional connection, it can just be a little bit better when you actually do because you feel comfortable and safe with them i'm just saying i completely agree but get on with this dilemma because it's so fucking good it's so good sorry dilemma um right because of my own fear of intimacy proportion towards men blah blah so respectfully told him how i felt we went on a couple more dates and i kind of fell for him on the last date we went on a couple more dates and I kind of fell for him.

On the last date we went on, I lent him my signed copy of Evenings and Weekends as he mentioned he wanted to read it and I thought it would be a sweet gesture. However, as most men do, he spontaneously lost interest and instead of being direct about his feelings, he pied me off for a bit until I confronted him over text. He said he'd rather be friends. I said I'd rather not be friends, but respectfully asked if he could post my book back. I said this for two reasons. A, he'd kind of acted like a bit of a dick. B, I thought it would be too emotionally messy for me to be friends with someone I have feelings for.

However, he didn't return my book. I was so angry I channeled my rage into music and wrote a song titled bisexual men are still men it may be the best thing i've ever written i think a title change may be but like i realized that after that if i want to produce good work i need to have a little emotional jeopardy in my life and therefore be beneficial for my art to keep this man in my life if not my mental health girl i'm gonna carry on i messaged him again recently to ask my book back and he responded that he'd had a manic episode not the only one and apologized profusely

for my feelings hurting my feelings offering to drop the book off in person the next day i told him that was okay i'd be out but he could drop it through my letterbox weeks passed and i have heard nothing from him at first i thought this man was just a bit of a mess but on deeper analysis some close friends suggested he may be engaged in some kind of power play with me perhaps he felt rejected by me and is using the book as some way to slight me this may seem extreme but i came up with this scheme to fake my own death so i could get the book back just gonna repeat that i came up with this scheme to fake my own death so i could get the book back he follows my best friend on instagram so she was going to post on her private story that i died and he'd probably message to ask what happened

she then asked him to bring the book back because it's a treasured family item he would then turn up to probably turn up to deliver it back and i'd jump out and be like you got pranked just making a note at this point we'd be able to resume our friendship on a more equal footing with the understanding that i'd we'd both done slightly fucked up things to each other however my friend was reluctant to participate in this scheme as she was worried it was unethical i understand it may be a bit traumatic for him but he doesn't know me that well and it's not like he believed i was dead forever i just think it would be funny and hopefully lay the foundation for artistically productive and sexually tense friendship i would love to hear

your thoughts as i massively respect your opinions so So if either of you gave the okay, I'd probably go ahead and proceed with the prank. Is this a prank? Are we being pranked? That's what I want to know. Is faking your own death ethical in this sign of circumstance? If not, how do I get my book back?

I really don't want to lose it. It has my name signed in it and it's very special to me. Seems very perverse for someone to want to keep it. How do I win the power struggle with this man so I finally write my debut album leave my boring corporate job thank you for making it this far ash where do we where do we even start okay first and foremost thank you very much for this dilemma because i've been thinking about it ever since it got emailed to us.

And it's one of the funniest things I've ever read in my life. So thank you for that. That's important to say. Second thing to say, and I say this with a great deal of affection and love. This is absolutely not an insult. It's a statement of fact offered with love. You and everyone you know is completely bonkers you are mad as a wasp sandwich my friend completely off your rocker i'm kind of into it like i'm kind of into it like there's a level of

like overthinking and and confected drama which i i sort of respect i think it probably makes you know life and the social world more exciting for other people because they they get to talk about your your crazy whims and your schemes but like I just need you to know babe like you're completely completely nuts um one is he engaged in a power play I mean probably not he probably just said he'd bring it back and then forgot about it. Like, you know, he seems a bit scatty, right? Just seems like he's a scatty person. Why are your friends being like, you know, maybe he feels a bit rejected by you. I mean, just like other people have lives, other people have lives, but you know what, like you and your friends are really like committed to this kind of like protagonist

syndrome and and and that's funny and and clearly it's doing something for you all and it's like a kind of social glue so you know I'm not judging that the thing about writing a song called bisexual men are still men I mean this happened to my housemate which is like a girl who he'd like been hooking up with wrote a song about him and like performed it in front of him um and i remember being like that's my idea of a nightmare he was into it he thought it was a great song but i was just like people on the left women on the left need to be stop need to stop writing so many songs about men right like this wet leg business has gone too far like just it's nay um but yeah like dilemma writer you are a a classic overthinker i don't even say a classic overthinker i think you're like the you know the juggernaut of of overthinkers um i think you love

exciting narratives and and you found an opportunity to to weave another one it just seems that you love a dramatic story and you're trying to turn your life into a big dramatic story and and maybe one of the disappointing things for you might be you realize that people aren't thinking about you as much as you want them to because like what if you fake your own death and he doesn't message your friend what if he's just like oh that's sad she died that's kind of crazy doesn't dm her and so you've got no opportunity to like jump out and be like you got pranked because then it's not a prank if there's no reveal that's just someone thinking you're dead like forever

um but also i kind of want to see where it goes but you should probably check if faking your own death is illegal like is that a form of fraud it is if you get life insurance but i don't think it is if otherwise you need to talk to john darwin the canoe guy um i've got lots of thoughts go for it letter writer you're bored uh you're bored with your life you're bored with your corporate life and you think that you don't really trust in your talent to write unless you have some sort of stimulus uh and you say that you're jaded with men you're both jaded and still have so much hope that when someone rejects you it cuts you right to the core and the reason this hurt you so much is because you were starting to invest in it in a way where you were trying to

show him the soft your soft belly by giving him a book that was very special to you you were it's not just a book is it i've got a friend who's just done this it's not just a fucking book when you're giving them a book it's not only here's a bit of me read it to understand me and understand why i like this and if you're reading this as an investment it's also sort of a promise of a tangible we're going to meet up at some point i'm going to get that book back you never got that not only did he pie you off he pied you off and kept your book it's a rejection that just feels so humiliating and embarrassing even though it's not i want to stress it's not this is a very normal thing to happen because people are careless with everyone else's emotions and then you get guilty when you haven't actually, you know, you know that you've let someone down a bit and you

have material proof of letting them down, which is why he's put off giving this book back for so long because he doesn't want to look directly at it really. So it's better just to ignore it. But the more he does that, the more furious you are because it's a it's a complete rejection of you and it's a dismissal it's a dismissal of you as a person it's a dismissal of you being an interesting person and that is an insecurity of yours that's why you're making up this revenge fantasy this is what it is it's a revenge fantasy to prove that you are of interest and to prove that you do interesting things as well to prove that he still has an investment in you somehow but also to yourself that you have interesting things as well to prove that he still has an investment in you somehow but also to yourself that you have an exciting life and there's all these exciting things going

on and you know what you have an exciting life even if you do just work a corporate fucking job and like you don't do this revenge fantasy and someone did pie you off after several dates all of these things say nothing about you nothing about you personally you have a rich interior life clearly and you need to believe in that a bit more and yourself and the title bisexual men is still men is a shit title i'm really sorry so change that but the song is probably quite good but you don't need him to write the song you don't need him you did it because you had you might have had like something you felt passionate about but what you need to do is re-re-channel where you find your passions

and where you find, I don't know, the things that you think are worthy of stimulus. Because I'll tell you now, men are really boring. They're so boring and dating is quite boring. And I feel like maybe you were looking at that as a site of interest and for a brief moment, then someone came along and provided that. But you're never going to find that sustained, interesting stuff in other people in a romantic context if you're dating gonna find that like sustained interesting stuff in other people

in a romantic context if you're dating as a heterosexual woman not right now i'm really sorry it's not happening um yeah those are my main points you just you felt so rejected and so bad you've come up with an entire fantasy to prove that to this person that you're still important and that you still matter and nothing is going to satisfy that you could come and cry at your funeral and you could watch him and it still won't be satisfying because he still doesn't want to date you and that again says nothing about you nothing about you it doesn't mean that you're not interested doesn't mean that you're not vibrant men have bad taste sorry men have bad taste and they get bored quickly may i may i interject with a i'm in big trouble of my own May I interject with a, I'm in big trouble of my own?

Yes. Right, because it is book related. It is book related. My husband is a vandal and a barbarian when it comes to books. Like truly a caveman. Every time he reads one of my books, the spine gets cracked. He's putting it page side down on the bathroom

floor so it gets all wet. He once dropped one of my books into the sea after I specifically asked him to look after it when he took it on holiday. And then I gave him a really big lecture about it. I gave him a really big lecture about it. gave him a really big lecture about it and he was like can I borrow your copy of evenings and weekends and I was like yes but you have to you can't destroy it I want it returned back to me in like a nice condition and then he was sitting there reading it on the sofa one night and then I saw he'd just written in the margins next to one of the bits lol so it wasn't even like an annotation which was like really insightful or something it was just him going oh i find this bit funny so moya what do i do how do

i stop my husband untrained golden retriever that he is destroying all my books what's he said when you've talked to him about it he looks sheepish but i can tell he's not that sorry i think you just if it really bothers you just need to say hey redacted name um i love you so much but this does really bother me and please don't do it to my books anymore i'll buy you some of your own you can do it to your own books but i would i would love it if you don't and usually that tone works and i would say to this letter writer as well you should try one more time and just say honestly to this guy hey this book actually means a lot to me and i don't want to make you feel even more guilty but i would really like it back and if we could just sort out a place for me to just

get it quickly that would be fantastic even if you have to drop it to my friend and if he doesn't do that we personally will sort you out a new signed copy for machine and that's my pledge we will do that but you know i think this guy i think he listens to the podcast he's a bisexual man who's reading evenings and weekends all right no we don't he's not reading it he's not reading it she lent it to him he's possessing it he's just possessing it this happens all the time this is also why lending people books is a real letdown i know i will say the guilt thing because i have a book in my possession that i also books weirdly harbinger of when you're about to get dumped or end something so someone lent me a book and the next and i just and i ended the situation which

sometimes i slightly regret because they were amazing and maybe i made a mistake but let's not talk about that um i ended the situation and i still have the book and i i think i i think i offered to give it them back but they said hang on to it for a while and now i just have this book which i would never open even though it's a really amazing book because i feel too guilty to open it about what happened he's not open that book and i know other people like i remember this guy who borrowed a book from me not one that i'm not fussed about he just was like this looks interesting can i borrow it next time i saw him he dumped me like the book is the heart but the book especially if you're somebody's like the avoidant it's getting too deep they've lent me this book ah panic panic he's not open that book and that's his loss it's a great book but you should ask for it back i i think that this guy

is just like he's sitting on it like he's trying to incubate an egg he goes home and he just like sits on top of the book for a bit brings it up to body heat and then he he thinks about how he's not giving it back to you but if he is listening to this podcast which statistically statistically i feel like he might be just give the fucking book back otherwise you're gonna be roped into some kind of fake death stunt all right you don't need those kind of problems just she's looking for closure she's looking for closure that you're not gonna get from this man because he's he's flaky and he pired you off and we can never truly understand why someone rejects us and sometimes

even if they said to you oh it's because your hair was bad this one time. Would that make you feel better? No, no, it's not going to. You have to accept sometimes these things are not related to us and they're about the person. I've rejected so many amazing people. And you know what? It's because I'm a dumb, dumb avoidant. I'm a dumb, dumb. He doesn't sort that shit out.

And I don't want to be in a relationship down at my core. That's why it's not nothing to do with them. Should we do another one? Yeah, another one. You want another one yeah another one you want another one okay let's go i'm in big trouble i've spent the last eight years in social isolation and i now need to reverse it in just one month aside from my girlfriend and a twice yearly visit to my distant friend i've not socialized since i left high school eight years ago i'm not sure why i didn't make friends at university if it it's relevant, I'm teetotal.

However, getting fired slash wanting to do a do-over of my 20s has made me enroll on a master's. Oh, by the way, congratulations. Let's just say that, up top. Has made me enroll on a master's and I don't want to fuck up making friends again. However, my years of solitude mean I won't know how to be social or at least act normal.

Do you have any tips for this green alien on trying to blend in? Or if the stars align, maybe even befriending the inhabitants of a human planet? P.S. It was not technically a dilemma, but others got away with it. So I thought it'd be cheeky. They gave a bit more detail about their situation. For uni, everyone seemed to form their groups in the first week and it seemed hard to break into these after that. For work, I've only worked fully remote since university and most people were only focused on the job. Even before these past eight years,

almost always people have made friends with me rather than the other way around, so I'm not really sure how the magic happens. My old course, computer science, my uni halls, my career were all very lad culture, think abrasiveness and sexist jokes, not simply beer and football, which is polar opposite to me. I'm not quiet, just a bit of a softie. I met my wonderful girlfriend at high school when we were both 16. We were both part of the same friendship group or girls apart from me. The reason I decided to change was I over time realised connection and friendship was something I was missing so deeply that I'd put in any amount of work in, no matter how big, to at least try to reverse it. And I would have to proactively reverse the situation. I didn't mention it in my first email to keep it short and you didn't ask, but if it's

relevant, my sole friend has diagnosed ASD and has said he thinks I'm also ASD, which I've heard some people say can be relevant to social skills. Anonymous. I think it's so relevant that your friend thinks potentially have asd that is going to change the way you interact with people and also how you form bonds i've got friends and family who are definitely asd um and lots of people think they're shy and they often you know can have interactions that some of us would think alike. And it's not that the world is not set up just to, like, take ASD people in and, like, be empathetic to them a lot of the time because it's their people like, oh, they're rude or they're this or that.

It's things I've heard and I'm like, actually, no, they just sometimes just don't get the same cues. This is not every ASD person. Everyone has a different, you know, reaction. Reaction? That's not the right word. Scrap that child before I get cancelled. This is not everyone person everyone has a different you know reaction reaction that's not the right word scrap that child before i get cancelled this is not everyone with asd it's everyone you know it manifests differently um but just a lot of people around me i've seen that pattern um how do you make friends how to be proactive especially if you potentially uh asd i would say what are your interests same old advice what are your interests join some clubs

join some things where you literally share interests with people because you'll find people on your same wavelength all my friends have adhd why because i joined an adhd club no because birds of a feather flock together and if you go to places where people have similar interests to you and you're there because you enjoy the same things you're gonna it's a quick fire shortcut to community it's a shortcut to having something to talk about especially if you're trying to warm up and remember like what are the rules the general rules of socializing the general rules of having contact with other people and you don't have to necessarily follow them especially if you're in spaces where other people you know might be of a similar mindset to you and might be people to just know they will get you as well

like i don't know there's stuff that i'm really passionate about like uh pop culture and it's like it's a secret language when someone understands what i'm saying when i'm talking about the benefit divorce and like getting into the weeds of it and it's immediately there's a community there there's like a you know if there's a podcast you really enjoy go to like the live recordings that podcast and try and chat to people find these places where those shortcuts already set up before you have to just sit in a pub and like try and entrance people by talking about yourself for an hour is what I would say that's a good way to ease you in I mean the first thing is that you're starting a master's.

There are a whole bunch of people who are being thrown together in a totally new context who'll be wanting to make friends. So I understand that there's gonna be this like huge sense of trepidation because you feel so out of the loop and you feel so out of practice and this feels very new for you.

But you're entering into a situation where it's going to be very new for everyone else as well. Also, because it's a master's, it's not likely that everyone's going to be living in halls. So that sort of like real intense clubbiness from being an undergrad, I don't think that that's necessarily going to be the case for you starting a master's I completely agree with Moya which is join clubs join clubs which speak to like some of your interests whatever they may be and I think that like sometimes we have an idea that like that has to involve like being really sporty or already being really good at the thing um but like one of the things that like I want to do precisely because I'm not

very good at the thing is uh join a chess club because I want to I really really want to join a chess club um because like what I want to get better into it's like I want to I want to find people who are also interested in this thing you know it's like a new way of branching out and finding finding community um i think that like there are just some like shortcuts so like i i sometimes feel really really socially anxious and one of the reasons why i feel socially anxious is because i feel i don't have room to be socially anxious and that everyone wants a really good experience from me so i have perfected the art of what I call social jujitsu, which is like every question asked to me, I just turn it back around

and ask it as a question to them. And as long as you do that with a decent amount of eye contact and just smile, people won't realize that like, you're actually like fucking cacking it inside. You will create some instant connections and it's all going to be fine so just remember eye contact smile verbal jujitsu reverse the question join some clubs you're going to be fine and it's really really good that you're

starting a master's well done do you think we've got time for one tiny teensy wecy dilemma yeah which one do we want to do do we do let's do the last one cool my question is nothing new but i'm starting to experience it for the first time so now you have to hear about it too oh i love it i love when people say stuff like that i say that all the time how do you handle when your friends start to become richer than you for context i'm in my mid to late 20s working in the media industry with the correspondingly low salary and bad career prospects i knew all this going in and i chose this career because it corresponded with my politic politics morals and i thought it would be interesting i have friends with similar politics who chose more boring but far more lucrative careers think

consultants accountants so on i felt smug in my early 20s when we were all in similar salaries sharing the same shit moldy flats and stealing pint glasses when my job was far more cool. But now they've shot ahead and I can see our lifestyles beginning to diverge. They're going on nicer, more frequent holidays, buying better quality clothes and have begun dropping hints they might gulp think about buying a house soon. Taking general wealth and class out of the picture, because we're all from similar middle class backgrounds, how do you deal with the feeling of being left behind behind when i'll start having to say no to joining them on their bougie travels midweek dinners and so on i've since totally abandoned the neoliberal lie that you should love what you do should i just have been a fucking accountant or do i need to get new poorer friends

you're very funny yeah really funny i mean look look i'm gonna say it and i'll probably i'm not gonna be as as um sort of padded with empathy as normal just because we're a bit pushed for time but what this is about is the like declining prospects for middle class kids is what it's about so it's like i embarked on a middle class career but it has not delivered middle class finances like what do i do um and this is a story which which is being mimicked across across the the workforce and like across across the world um i think that ultimately you have to both fight like hell against the conditions that you're in but also accept that some things are a product of your choices. Like, you know, you chose to go into media. You probably didn't do that for money.

And... They said they didn't. Well, you said you didn't, but maybe you did. Maybe you did. Maybe deep down... No, they said they knew all it going in, correspondingly low salary and bad career prospects.

Yeah. Knew all this going in. But you chose this career because it corresponded with your politics and your morals and you thought it would be interesting well there you go there you go i think it actually points to something the thing that we always are like i knew all this going in but i didn't think it would happen to me that's that's basically what we always think we're like i know this going in but i thought so we changed down the line no we make the mistake of always

thinking we're the exception to the rule that we see happening to everyone else and then we realize oh wait i am actually you know subject to the same force as everyone else and it's a bit shit and i don't like it um yeah do you have any actual practical advice here not really because it's like this is about how do you feel in relation to your friends that made different choices from you it's not what should you do with your life which would be a whole different thing and we could talk about that and we could talk about you know um do you really want to sacrifice something which you derive identity from simply for something that you derive money from like what are the kinds of pressures on you etc etc like but really this is about how do you relate

to your friends who made different choices from you? Ultimately, you love them and you relate to them the same way you always have. And that might be difficult. You might have to work hard at it. You might feel envy and resentment at times. I think there's actually quite natural components of friendship as well. But you made some choices

for what you wanted in your life. And that's okay. Yeah, my practical advice is basically you either need to find a media you need to find sorry this is going to be so cutthroat i'm so sorry find a media job where you can also do freelancing that will get you a little bit extra money on the side um or you need to find a job where you have more satisfaction i think if you had one of those two things you would feel better because when you have real job satisfaction then you kind of can put up with another shit it's when you're feeling a bit like stagnant or you're feeling like it's not delivering in the same way or you don't love it as much

that's when everything else starts to bite you know or you find somewhere where you have like a side hustle maybe not even a media i do stuff on the side that's nothing to do with journalism that just has a little bit of extra pocket money. That helps. That helps with when I want to go on my big trips. But also talk to your friends. Be honest about how you're feeling and say maybe we could go do a bougie holiday. But in somewhere like, I don't know, Bosnia, because the cost is much lower. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry if anyone's offended by me being really cutthroat about that and being like, go somewhere cheaper. But that still is cool and bougie. Because it's so like classic, like Western tourists loves to go and travel in Central Europe,

where it's much cheaper, but you don't have to go to the fucking Maldives. And your friends can do that a later date if they want. But just say, can we go on a group haul? I've got friends who say that. Can we go on a group haul to this place? Because it is cheaper and I can afford it and we can all meet in the middle. You know what? That sounds like very wise advice uh the wisest advice is i think we should wrap up here yes ash as always you are the wisest al among us i've been moyle mcclain you've been ash sarka the wisest amongst you that will now be my sign off forever more

this has been if i speak bye goodbye