If I Speak - 28: What the hell is a gut feeling, anyway?

Episode Date: August 27, 2024

Moya is on the brink of change – but can she trust her gut on the biggest decision of her adult life? Plus, advice for a listener confused about their lifelong lack of sex. You’ve only got a few weeks to grab your ticket for our live show at the London Podcast Festival on 15th September, […]

Warning, you are now entering the cool zone hello this is this is if i speak and i'm moya lathie mclean uh but i can't pilot this thing alone so with me is ash sarkar ash what are your headlines this week i mean look my headline after hearing that we're entering the cool zone is that you talk so much shit oh my god like i wish this was a cool podcast i wish i was capable of being cool i actually think that there is a a through line of dorkiness which runs through this podcast i don't think it's the cool zone i think it's the you know try hard over thinkers uh speak for yourself do you not think i'm very i'm very cool i wear lots of rings i wear silly outfits sorry i'm on i think i think i'm cool i'm like yeah i know what the kids are

talking about i'm comfortable in myself i'm cool ash i can't believe you think i'm a try hard i've got riz for days i don't know if i actually do have any riz um i am a massive dork but i do think accepting your dorkiness and living that as a truth makes you far cooler. We've even discussed this and authenticity about coolness. We have. We have. We have.

I just, I just, I, I, I'm resistant to the idea that this is the cool zone. I would say that this is a, I don't know. I think it's about like as cool as that cool launch pad area of the science museum. You know, like you have fun while you're there what if i told you i had no idea what you're talking about this really is the storyline of the dorkiness that you speak of you've never been okay it's the bit where like all the kids go to like do hands-on building shit but it's also very fun for adults and the good thing about going as an adult is that it's quite easy to push children out the way because

they're small um oh no don't make me laugh it hurts we'll get on to why it hurts later but it hurts to laugh i'm being punished on so many levels oh the pain the pain of laughter anyway you've got questions for me i think this is the ice zone now to answer questions this is the ice zone because these are icebreaker questions these are ice breaking questions so we you ready okay go freezing zone okay question one if you had to eat one for the rest of your life which would you pick rice or potatoes potatoes potatoes 100 actually no this is i i'm famous in my family for loving potatoes and actually among my friends there's a long-running joke about me and the words collect potato. I did discuss getting potato a potato tatted on me but we were worried it would look like a turd. So I might just

get the word potato but there is I have an affinity with potatoes. So it would be potatoes even though rice obviously I think is probably maybe more delicious and more versatile. But then again potatoes chips. What it i was about to say boulangerie but that's a french bakery uh this is the one with the b and then there's like the fondant potatoes and the baked potato uh obviously like fries which are different to chips crisps there's so many things you can do where do you stand on a hasselback potato oh they're so fancy any potato is good i love making a Hasselback they're actually very easy to make any potato with a tiny even if you just boil the most boring new potato and you

put a tiny bit of flour shake it around get out the butter get out the salt get out the garlic and rosemary you have created a gourmet meal god I love potatoes so potatoes even though rice probably is the better uh carbohydrate i was thinking about it in the shower i think i've got to come down on rice but that's just like you know bengali right ultimately it's got to be rice okay do you have a favorite view so a place where you like to go to look out over some kind of scene in front of you i think i've mentioned this before but saint paul's cathedral is like my favorite view in london for sure the view from or the view the view from the very top of saint paul's cathedral um and i'm sure i've mentioned this before you can climb to the very top of saint

paul's cathedral and into the into the tiny little uh i can't remember the name of this thing what's it called it's like a cylinder cylindrical balcony it's a balcony uh and that's incredible that's incredible i always cry when i'm out there just old by the world what are the views do i love i love the view in my childhood home from the top of the common where i live and i love looking out and just thinking wow this is the place that shaped me um surrounded by seeing all the fields and you can see all the way to the Brecon Beacons. I remember once walking through the woods with my mum as like quite a small kid, I don't know, maybe I was 12. And through the central wood that's there, you can look through and she would

say, oh, through there are the Black Mountains. And I always just thought if you walk through the woods, you could get to the Black Mountains. I had in my head and I still do, even though I know that's not what she meant at all. She meant when you go through the woods, you could get to the Black Mountains. I had in my head and I still do, even though I know that's not what she meant at all. She meant when you go through, you can see the view to the Black Mountains. But it felt like this magical portal all the way through to the Black Mountains in Wales. Yeah, so that view is very special to me. Oh, that's really nice. I think maybe my favourite view in London is just like the standard Hampstead Heath one. And the reason why is because it's got so many memories, right?

I've been going there since I was like a kid, since, you know, hanging out there as a teenager. But one of my favorite like walks up to a view is when you're in Bologna, because it's like a colonnaded city, because that's one way that they created more building space. You've got these pillars, which kind of like create an overhang on the street. So you've got these pillars, which kind of like create an overhang on the street. And then there's like this long, long colonnade uphill walk, which is like sort of a mini pilgrimage. So you've got all these like little shrines of saints on the way up. And then obviously you've got a church on the top because it's Italy.

You've got a hill, a church, we'll go on it. And then you can look out over the city. Very, very nice. I think everything is romantic. And finally, everything is romantic. But finally, which of these is more important to you being free or being in control wow this is a real moya check your fucking problems question um because to me being in control is being free i'm a control freak i have a real issue with control as have many of my exes which is an interesting clash of personality um

sorry i don't know if you can hear there's like a dog howling outside the window there was a real like oh that was the bat signal going up they They were like, oh, she's asked, she's asked the red button question. Get out of there now. Um, being, see being free also is like a, it's such a subjective thing. Cause what does it mean to be free? Does it mean you have like economic freedom? Does it mean you have political freedom? Any of us really free, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The anarchists are like, well, no, you're not. The libertarians also, no, you're not free. Um, but but being in control again and we've been told that having like control and autonomy is is the key to freedom but i i i'm getting better with this but i do really freak out if i don't have control over the situation or have a path to

having control over a situation so i'd have to say that being in control is probably the one I'd pick what about you do you see a difference between the two um so I think the reason why I see a difference is because me and my partner occupy two different poles of it like he really values feelings of being unencumbered and wants to feel that he can move agentically through the world according to his will and his capacity. It's also really funny because he's way more determinist than me like philosophically but what he needs to feel about himself is like completely different whereas I'm like feet on the ground everything I love close to me and within grabbing range like I really need feelings of like security and control and I also recognize that it's an illusion so one way in which I preserve an illusory

sense of control is by knowing about things so if there's something like horrible and stressful going on like you know for family members having a medical emergency i'm gonna be like i've read as many academic papers as i could find on this thing right because it's an illusion of control right and substituting control for knowledge in that situation so i'm very much on the side of control he's very much on the side of freedom but the irony is is that i believe people have much more agency than he does because you know we're all contradictory beings so interesting but just thinking about this I mean again it's like my idea of freedom is being unencumbered by other people but that's me just having complete control over a situation because then I don't have to factor in the you know the uncertainty of other people so it it comes back to control again like the avoidance that i have when i'm even approaching i don't know like a man sending a text saying i

like you um like ah get away from me this is you're blocking me and you're you're income what's it encompassing encompassing no encumbering cumbering enc No, encumbering? Cumbering? Encumbering. What is the word? Encumbering on my freedoms. Get the fuck away from me. But again, that's just like... Encroaching?

Encroaching. See, my brain is not switched on today for reasons that we'll get onto. But yeah, I think that's... But why don't we get onto it? Let's get onto it. Let's get onto it because you've got an intrusive fucking thought a literal intrusive thought ash

it's um it's plaguing me okay so by now dedicated special ones or people who just spend too much time on social media uh will know that i've got a huge life change coming up um i'm off to glasgow to take up a new role with mill media uh don't worry because thanks to the magic of technology i'll still be on if i speak isn't going anywhere how could we abandon if i speak we literally couldn't um i'm just abandoning my full-time paycheck with Navara. I know, abandoning the pension, sick days, holiday pay. It's actually a very good deal for us. It's a hugely good deal. Very, very good deal. We struck an amazing deal, which is,

I said, you can pay me a lot less and still get the best bits of me. And we said, go for it. Yeah, be free. And you'll still see me elsewhere on navarra as well i have no doubt but this move is probably the biggest thing i've done since i was 18 and i moved to london um with a hilarious little paddington suitcase as well when i moved to london the story that my old housemate used to tell was like you just turned up with this one battered

brown suitcase and i was like who is this waifu stray um which was because my family were at a funeral that day it wasn't that they didn't love me and didn't want to move me down but i thought it was so romantic to go down on the very first day everyone was moving in with one battered brown suitcase and then the next day they turn up you know with the car full of my stuff and quilts and like swallowing me with love etc but I loved coming in just with like my Paddington bear suitcase anyway so I've got nothing to declare but my genius but you know I'm uprooting 11 years of world building 11 years of making friends contacts knowing the city or at least zones one to three, inside out. And just as I feel

completely comfortable, which for me kind of, I think equals stagnant, as people might have picked up on previous episodes, just as I feel completely comfortable, just as I have like a complete, you know, I do this, I have these connections, I know these people, I go here, I know the best, like the places that I like best and the people I like best in the city. I have these connections. I know these people. I go here. I know the places that I like best and the people I like best in this city. I'm like, fuck that. Let's go. Let's move. Let's tear it up and start again. And I know this is the right decision. I know this is the right decision. Everything fell into place so much, but it doesn't matter because this week and right now as we're recording, I am suffering from anxiety like i

have not had in years and that has manifested in the form of a hugely tight anxious chest so i can't when i laugh it hurts when i bend over it hurts when i lie down it hurts i've been doing so much fucking meditation to try and loosen it up i need to you know go to the gym later to try and like work this out i'm even going to take your yoga suggestion because I'm in physical pain from the low level anxiety I'm experiencing. But like I said, I know this move is the right one for me. I'm really excited.

I was talking about like two years wanting to move cities, wanting to do something new. And it doesn't mean I won't be back. I don't have any fears about not coming back to either London or somewhere else. I don't have any fears about not seeing my friends. Everything in Glasgow has fallen into place. You know, I've got a flat, I've got friends there, I've got the job, I've got contacts. Obviously there's the fear of

needing to work my little butt off when I arrive, but the removal span is booked. My landlord is fine with me moving. the normal anxiety-inducing stumbling blocks like how will i afford furniture have been completely disappertated by a stream of good luck and fortune that have fallen on me and all of this has got me thinking about gut feelings so i rely on my gut a lot my gut is telling me it's the right thing to go to glasgow my gut is how i decide whether i want to leave dates my gut is how I decide when I want to stay at parties, who I want to talk to. Like, I feel like I've honed my gut after a long time of not listening to it. But I always feel really guilty advising people to trust their gut because what if your

gut is wrong, right? I feel like there's a big onus in recent years put on your gut. And I'm, is wrong right i feel like there's a big onus in recent years put in your gut and i'm as i say guilty of this as well what if your gut tells you to send 20 texts in a row to someone because you think that they're ghosting you what if your gut is most comfortable in unhealthy situations and relationships because that's what you've grown up with and are familiar how would you keep trusting your gut when you have other bodily responses like the anxiety that i'm feeling now um which is a response to big changes like what power do gut feelings have in the world where so many of us actually disconnected from what from what is good for us uh and instead encouraged to go for what feels comfortable like how do should I trust my gut?

Okay, like, I'm going to take this into stages to begin with. And the first is like about your big move specifically. And the second is about gut feelings, which I think is a little bit separate. Because really what you're talking about is how can it be a good decision that's right for me if it's putting my body in pain the fact is is that any big life decision results in some form of anxiety and trepidation right and it's a question of degrees and and the reason why i'm saying that is because even the like happiest decisions of my life whether it was a decision to do a book or the decision to get married or decisions where I knew that it was morally the right thing to do but there was an element of peril um so I sued a journalist who racially abused me once and when when I made the decision to do it and I like

spoke to the solicitor and came off the phone I started having these like crazy heart palpitations and like you know breathing was going nuts and it was a really distressing feeling but that didn't mean that the decision was wrong and my gut was telling me it was the right thing to do other aspects of my body were kicking in because there are stakes involved and I think any time there are stakes involved you will have an adrenaline response, you will have a cortisol response, those hormones which respond to crisis, change, uncertainty will be flooding your whole system. And that doesn't mean that you have to spend your whole life avoiding uncertainty, right? Because the flip side of avoiding uncertainty for people can be stagnation can be depression can be a feeling of being trapped can be a feeling of lacking in

purpose or a sense of agency so I think that there are there are costs with everything um and I think just because you're you're feeling this really, it doesn't mean it's the wrong thing at all. I think actually, like, it's completely natural. It's a completely natural way to feel. I am not a city mover, as people can probably tell. Because I'm like, I was born in North London and I grew up in North London and I went to uni in North London. And now I'm living in North London and I will have to be dead before I leave North London and I grew up in North London and I went to uni in North London and now I'm living in North London and I will have to be dead before I leave North London willingly like you know very very North London and and part of that I think what not part of it a huge amount of that is feeling

like there is this network around me which only really gets bigger right the more I stay in this place like the more this network gets bigger but I I've got quite, quite a lot of friends who've made different choices. So one of my best friends moved to New York, another best friend moved to Barcelona. Um, and I really see how that's right for them, but there was no sign from the heavens. There was no voice from the heavens there was no voice from the burning bush which told them hey you're doing the right thing they just had to go on well i've thought it through it feels right enough to do and let's give it a go now in both of their cases it was totally the right thing to do um in the case of of um one of my siblings he moved to aberdeen for a bit I don't really know why he did it and he was like fucking miserable in Aberdeen and then he ended up like he ended up

doing like a kind of like you know control zed like undo and that was also fine do you know what I mean like the trying and it not working out the way in which he envisaged it and like going back to the thing he was doing before was also fine and I think that's maybe a way of managing some of the anxiety which is yes the stakes are high in the sense it's a big change but there's nothing that's irreversible here London will still be here or wherever else you might want to go afterwards will still be here if it doesn't work out but it probably will work out because you know the stars are aligning in terms of lots of things that you want in terms of your career in terms of an experience

of like you know greater financial freedom all of that was leading you outside of london anyway so i'm just i've got a lot of faith in your decision thank you thank you this is the thing though like i i think everything you're saying there is so right about whatever you do there will be an adrenaline response my friend was telling me yesterday that when she bought her house uh you know a thing she'd wanted to do for so long but she had a full-blown panic attack around it even though because she said she couldn't envision how her like her life being different from everything she'd ever known up until that point um but she was like you have

to push through because on the other side there is life and i'm yeah i'm so excited about this but i do i do want to also talk about these these the onus we put on gut feelings because i i cite them all the time as legitimate um i don't know legitimate source or legitimate evidence of me making a correct decision but the more i think about it's like i'm a like many people um i'm a pretty messed up person like let me tell you one thing about myself fun fact about myself i'm fucked i'm quite fucked i'm fucked in the head many people are also fucked and the gut feeling like you know my gut feelings around say relationships and men the more the more i'm single the longer i'm single the more i realize how and i know we throw attachment theory

around all the time and i just casually say i'm avoidant but the more i realize oh i'm pretty fucked when it comes to uh the that I relate to people, like a potential romantic relationship with, I'm very, very scared of that connection. It feels like a trap and I will chew my own arm off to escape from the nicest man in the world if he's showing too much interest. And it's like, what's the gut feeling there? And I have other friends as well, who their responses is to certain like even in friendship situations their response is because of their experiences their gut tells them to get out of something it sends up warning signals but the gut is not necessarily correct the gut is uh you know responding to trying to keep them in a place where they feel familiar and comfortable

and that's not necessarily a healthy space but i think as individualism, we put so much like onus on, well, if it's right for you, if your gut's telling you this, just keep yourself comfortable. And it's like, is comfort the same as healthy? So I think that there's a bit of a category error being made here, Moya. And the category error is this,

which is not every impulse is the same as something that your gut is telling you so the example that you gave you know it it a bit earlier about you know well what if your gut's telling you to send 20 messages because you think that someone's ghosting you the gut feeling is someone's ghosting you the impulse which might be driven by anxiety which might be driven by insecurity which might be driven by like a lack of emotional regulation is sending 20 texts so there are two separate things going on here right one is the perception which i say is the thing which originates from the gut feeling and then there are all these impulses about how you deal with them which i think are are often um you know

misguided or or self-destructive or or counterproductive in terms of what it's going to eventually achieve because i am a big believer in in the old gut um and i think that what really we mean by gut feelings are the perceptions that we're processing too quick to apply language to right so it's a level of brain and nervous system where it's just processing things really really quickly because we're always taking in information from sight sound smell everything and it's producing a feeling which is just moving faster than language and one one area where i think people feel it quite a lot is feelings of danger right so when you go this doesn't feel right something feels really odd and then you'll be like oh i left the gas on or like oh no that guy was

trying to nick my phone or something and it's because you're processing those inputs really, really quickly. I think another one is falling in love, right? Because I've often known very, very quickly, as in like, you know, really the first time of like hooking up where I'm like, ah, this is a love thing is what it is. Like, you know, what my body is feeling is that this is where it's going. That doesn't mean that the relationship will end well or will go well but like i just know that it's love right i've processed something very very quickly maybe there's like pheromones responding i don't know but like it's happening um and i think that there's like a a bit of a scientific basis to some of this stuff, because what modern research is suggesting is that, you know, the gut and the digestive system has a huge number of nerve endings, massive number of nerve endings. and depression had an impact on your gut so I feel really anxious therefore I'm having stomach cramps

or IBS or whatever else it might be there are there's research suggesting that it also might be the other way around so there is something going wrong in your gut and then you're having these emotional responses of anxiety and depression or whatever because of feelings which are originating in your digestive system um and as someone who's like you know it was really it was really annoying but also like really funny because it was just like so typically me which is um right before I handed in my master's dissertation and right before I handed in the manuscript for the book that I've just done I spent a whole night throwing up like it was just like stomach cramps and vomiting and I was like

why this is so irritating like I need to be able to sleep well I need to be like well fed and well rested so I can like crack out this like final day of work but like my body was like would you prefer throwing up instead because i really think that we should throw up um yeah so i really believe that these things are connected but i also that speed of processing perceptions and how that manifests in a feeling i really really trust what that feeling is i don't necessarily trust what my brain overlays on top in terms of like and here's what you should do about it but in terms of going this is what the situation is I trust my gut every time but do you think everyone should trust their gut because I'm thinking of examples where for example

like I think of examples where for example wow uh maybe I should stop trusting my gut and start working on my brain. But I'm thinking of examples like when there's racist perceptions of say a young black boy and it's led to their deaths, George Zimmerman, that kind of thing. I know that's an extreme thing to say, but these are gut feelings, these are gut perceptions on how safe am I, but they're not really coming from your gut, they're also coming from these processes that are influenced by socialization, that are influenced by the way that certain people are portrayed in society. And it's based on a gut feeling of, I'm not safe. I've walked home before and occasionally been like, I'm not safe,

but it's not been rooted in reality. It'll be based on a perception of uh something i've been reading recently and it feeds into subconscious so i i like to trust my gut all the time but i'm saying that like we can't say that these instant perceptions that happen too quickly for us to really understand what's going on we just know we feel a certain way or feel a certain twinge and then have the impulse to respond but are they really devoid from external input external you know measures i mean probably not right probably not i guess i would say not every feeling is a gut feeling um and maybe what i mean by gut feeling is when I have a gut feeling, I'm like, oh, it just is this thing, isn't it?

Like it just is that way. There's very little anxiety in it. Like there's very little anxiety and there's an awful lot of certainty. I'm like, oh, gut feeling is this. And it's funny we're having this conversation because this is like one of the most like frequent disagreements me and my husband have because you know instantaneously

i'll be like oh yeah but you know what's going on with this person it's this isn't this and he's like you don't know that you've got no evidence to suggest that and i'm like i have a gut feeling about it and he's like you can't jump to conclusions I'm like what's not jumping to conclusions if I'm right how often are you in those situations very often very often and look I know that sounds like I'm like really hyping myself up and like you know pride pride goeth before a fall and you know I'm aware of that but there have been so many times where like me and him have been like essentially disagreeing that he's like something is unknowable and i'm like no i know it because my gut told me and then my gut was right um i want to and i just feel quite oh there's just so i mean it's probably

things i can't even say on this podcast but a lot of the time we'll we will have to do with like perceptions of other people what's going on with them um i don't know i this is the thing though i trust my gut and i have faith in committing to decisions that i've made with intention but i also see my friends and i know that their gut feelings are often nuts and i'm wondering if it's just arrogance on my part, thinking that my gut is right about a lot of stuff and that I've honed it and all this thing. And it's, am I deluding myself? Because, you know, some of my friends have gut feelings where I'm like, I wouldn't say this to them,

but I'm like, you're bonkers. That's not a gut feeling. That's a panic response. Your gut is nuts. That's a panic response. That's a this and that. But am I any different am i really you know having feelings that are somehow superior have i really honed my god have i really practiced or is the

difference that i'm just because i'm sure of my gut feelings i commit to the decisions that i make the decisions that i make lol uh commit to the decisions i make and see them through so is it more a case of you make things work for you and that's like confirmation bias that your gut is your gut is some sort of like special instrument that you've worked on well I may I think also think it's maybe different ways in which people practice cognition so um I am not very good at laying out a reasoned argument. I'm great at laying out a narrative argument, like it's my entire job,

but like a reasoned argument, you know, with sort of like pulling together like inductive reasoning. I'm actually really, really bad at that. My partner is brilliant at it, like really, really good. It is a nightmare if we're having a disagreement or an argument because he'll sort of set it out like a like a like a like a casey yeah right like a top silk laying it out for the court and then he'll be like and just tell me where i'm wrong and i'm like motherfucker

you're not wrong but this doesn't feel right like there is something there is something missing in all of your like expertise which is like this thing doesn't feel right and that's often the level that I'm coming from and you know just because you argue something really well and just because like all of your chains of logic are sound that doesn't actually mean you're right and i think that there is something about that like belly mind perception of what's going on which is valuable um i wouldn't say that just because mine comes from the belly mind that i'm always right either but that it's a really people are so quick to dismiss it as a as a form of valuable knowledge which like can be shared um because it's not being articulated in the same way i just i do just strongly feel and maybe this comes from being a

journalist and seeing how often our colleagues do this not just within navarra but our colleagues in the industry is that you can talk yourself into believing any old shit like words don't always have a relationship to reality and just because you can use them well doesn't mean that you're saying something which is true or right um and i think that may be my emphasis on like the belly mind and the gut mind and my trust in my own gut because the other part of it is that whenever something has gone horrendously wrong for me it's because i've ignored a gut feeling and i've employed my brain to denigrate and dismiss and to marginalize feelings which are emerging in my belly i have two questions based on this one is do you think

there's a gendered element here where you you know, I feel like I've been, because when you're talking about your husband, I remember my last relationship, one of the worst dynamics was that my ex-partner was always using this idea of rationality to out-argue me and the KC approach. And I would just be like unable to do what you said, like the inductive reasoning. but I'd be like,

no, you're wrong, I can feel you're wrong. And sometimes it would border on, you know, a dynamic that I would call very, very unhealthy and almost made me lose my grip on reality. But I also think they weren't living really in a reality, either they were just very good at reasoning as if they were and rationalizing as if they were. So they said sounded rational blah blah blah and i sounded insane but then afterwards i talked to people they'd be like no they're being they're

being bonkers like they're they're they're creating this reality that doesn't exist this is not how people perceive you this is not how xyz is and but my emotional intuition and my gut feelings were very much dismissed and i had nothing to fall back on. And it felt like such a failing that I couldn't, I hadn't honed the skill of like rational reasoning. Here's the evidence, here's the blah, blah, blah. And I was just like, but I feel this, I feel this. Because feelings aren't facts. That's another important thing.

And that's what I think about all the time. Like feelings aren't facts. So I can't just like say, well, I feel it, so it's true. Because if someone else says that, then even if it's presented's presented rationality then I have to push back on it so that's something I'm thinking about a lot but also yes is it gendered as well but also what has been your biggest example of ignoring a gut feeling and it going tits up oh my god um all right so I mean the first thing about like it being gendered is that i think that is a strong component of it and this is something which my mom thinks like

you cannot tell my mom that this isn't like actual scientific fact she thinks that what women's intuition is is either an evolutionary development or like it's just like very very strongly socialized one where you know because cisgender women you know on average like tend to be like less physically strong and able to like overpower um what's threatening in their environment that we've developed a sort of early warning system of intuition and depending on what day you talk to her sometimes she says it's evolutionary and sometimes she says it's socialized depending on how she's feeling that particular day um biological essentialism or social essentialism which day yeah she's like like i don't have to be consistent on this like fuck you like i don't i'm not a pundit for a

living uh you can you know pocahontas said you you can't step in the same river twice i i i retain the right to change my mind um but like i i think that there's something in that i think there's something in the way in which like women have been trained to just have this like huge net of social perceptions which they're taking in all the time um and that you're sort of trained to do that very very quickly and so that emerges in a set of like feelings and a sense of like oh i'm getting this kind of vibe from someone you know it'll often be like i'll be like i'm just getting this vibe from someone and like you know my husband will be like what have they done to suggest that like you know they're thinking this thing or like this is how

they really feel about you and I was like well it's not what they've done or said I'm getting I'm getting this vibe um and an example this this is actually an example uh way before me and my husband ever got together but I was getting a vibe that our colleague Aaron Bastani was keeping a secret right so this was years and years and years ago I was like I feel likeani was keeping a secret right so this was years and years and years ago I was like I feel like you're keeping a secret and immediately the answer came to me I was like secret girlfriend and it's this person and it was it was a real secret girlfriend and it was that person now his wife and part of the reason why I wanted to keep it secret was because he was like I just don't want everyone fucking like commenting on it because like the left is like a panopticon like when it comes to relationships um but it was like an

immediate thing and it was just from being at a party and aaron being slightly later than he said he was gonna be and i was like secret girlfriend and it's this person and i was right and i was right that's that's a great example of you being right that's a oh it also feels so good when you clock something as well ah when i clock things i'm like oh yeah they yeah incredible the feeling of what is confirmed inspector cluso eat your heart she was he was ignore that nancy drew that's murder she wrote murder she was angela lansbury but I can't remember the name of Angela Lansbury oh what a high when you're when you've been proved to be right about something that you knew deep down you just knew oh you need a we need gold medals for that forget the olympics it's it's

it's such it's such a good feeling whereas I know like you know had me and my husband be together at the time he'd be like you are just talking shit like he was like you you just want that to be true you just want that to be true so there's gossip i was like no but i was i was detecting a real a real change in the force like i really really was so i think you're right about gender um i can't remember the other thing i wanted to know is when is when you've ignored your gut and it's gone wrong oh i mean it's actually just like sad stuff like it's actually just like sad stuff in which i've like ended up getting like physically hurt and stuff because i i wanted something to be like an exciting experience or an experience which was like you know i was like oh but you know

experience which was like you know i was like oh but you know your sort of like threat detector is like it's set like way too sensitively and like actually like you know people aren't aren't out to like do you harm turns out they were and it's not that you know um like yes i probably have like more of an air on the side of caution like as a as a disposition but there were real times of being like not right but you're still here because you want it to be different your brain wants it to be different but your belly is telling you like get the fuck out um and also just times in in relationships where like uh they're i mean this isn't to do with with my husband who's a very very clear communicator when it came to like the falling in love where like uh there i mean this isn't to do with with my husband who's a very very clear communicator when it came to like the falling in love part like very very clear he was just like i want to be in love do you want to be in love okay yes let's be in love now like very

very straightforward but like an ex where there was such a misalignment between like his behavior and his words like and it wasn't like a straight up misalignment of like you're telling me one thing and like you're doing another it's like well you're telling me a whole load of things and like your behavior is doing a whole load of other things and what my gut was telling me is like this person doesn't really like you or respect you or want one commitment with you yes and my gut was telling me that um but what he was saying with his mouth was like no we're going there we're going there just give me time just give me time like you know i ignored my gut and then he dumped my ass like and i felt so annoyed at myself i felt so annoyed for like having um wanted something more than listening to myself and i guess that's what what i'm coming back to

i'm not saying that like every impulse you have is a good one everything that you feel immediately is going to be right but that gut feeling of like this is the situation especially when it's one that like you can't make shut up right where it is a sort of thought that is coming back again and again again like this is what's really going on isn't it i think it's just i think it's very often true you know what is an example of you really really feeling something in your gut that you knew to be true? I'll give you a juicy one. I've got a little juicy one. To be fair, this isn't so much as gut.

I was in a relationship and I just knew, I knew there was going to be an end to it at some point for several reasons. But here was a gut thing. I just, I don't even know if it's a gut actually this is this is just a juicy story about trust your gut um and we were on a plane back from a holiday and it had been a very fraught holiday and i thought we should probably break up we nearly broke up but we didn't but i thought we should probably broke up and i was saying yeah i said i woke up one day i said do you even love me

i was like yeah of course i love you blah blah but we were just having a horrible time uh that was actually a good holiday in some senses because i went off and remembered that i was an independent person who could go and do a load of things by herself and it was the start of a journey of remembering that i i am self-sufficient and i can find joy even in the you know most trying of emotional times anyway on the plane back after we decided to carry on I had a gut feeling about his phone um and I've never done this before and I've never done this since and it wasn't it wasn't he wasn't cheating on me or anything like that I've got no idea if he did although I did have a gut feeling

about a previous boyfriend who I think did cheat on me But I never bothered asking because it feels irrelevant like I don't need to know But I went on his phone and the pass and I saw a note that had the initial M and I just For some reason I just knew it came to me what his passcode would be for this Which was different to his phone and I unlocked it and it was just all this stuff about like i think we should break up like i i you know so i think something you know maybe we're better as friends blah blah blah blah and i closed it and never said anything to him about it but i thought about it for the next two years that we were together we were together for like two more years what the fuck are we doing actually no it might be one year it might be

another one year um and he didn't he didn't break up with me in the end it was it was sort of me instigating the discussion he'd say it was mutual but i instigated the discussion but he was trying to push me away for ages like i could i knew it i could feel it and but he would say he wanted to be together but everything he was doing was the opposite of that like every time he found a fault with me every time we'd reconciled everything he everything about his language his body language his speech was just like you do not like me and you don't want to be here but you just cannot leave for whatever reason um but that note i just knew that note would be there and i don't know why and i knew that note would give me maybe more clarity Even if I didn't want to heed it than anything he was saying and I found it went straight to it opened it

I couldn't remember the passcode ever again. It stayed there and I know he updated it, but I never remembered the passcode it was like I need to see that one time and just Wait until I was able to act on it. You know what's interesting about that? Yeah What's interesting about that is that i think that's also an example of him ignoring his gut and trying to overlay what he wants to happen which is like staying together and fixing the relationship which in his mind is like all to do with you but like in his belly mind it's like this isn't right like like you know i'm we're not we're not happy together this isn't right for me this isn't going to lead me towards happiness and it's like your guts detecting his gut but

what's going on at the level of like you know conscious like conversation and like you know trying to trying to will something into existence is completely different and so i suppose like you know we're social creatures. Like I know that's like such a cliche, but like we are. Like our survival as human beings is dependent on one another. We've got no other real evolutionary advantages, like no claws, no fur, like teeth aren't sharp enough

to like, you know, rend flesh really. Not even that, not good enough. Compare you to a Bengal tiger, right? I'm sorry. The Bengal tiger has an advantage. Your jaw strength probably isn't enough to crack through a cranium of anything tasty. We have one evolutionary advantage and that's sociality. And that's our ability to read the behavior of other human beings and i think that we're so good at it we're so so good at it like our brains are fucking massive and so much of it is operating at a level that we're not conscious of and i think that that's what what the the belly mind is i just think it's all of that information i mean the other interesting thing about about you know humans having cultivated self-awareness is that

it also means we cultivated self-deception so we take in all that information but there are things that we want to be true and so we really really really try and make it happen um and therein therein lies the fuck cruise uh sorry i'm just i'm thinking through all the the gut feelings and now how on earth do we give advice because it's all based on my gut feelings how do we advise our special ones okay shall we do some advice for our special ones let's do some advice all right well this is time for i'm in big trouble which is our regular dilemmas segment if you are in big trouble and you won't sue us if you give if we give you bad advice um that's critical all right do not be litigious and ask us to advise you um please email us at if i speak at navarra media.com that's if i speak at navarra media.com so let's go on to i'm in big trouble hey ashen moya i'm a big fan of you

both and navarra media in general thanks for all the awesome work you do it's very kind uh i have a dilemma and would love your advice i feel super embarrassed so I'm emailing from an anonymous email account so the issue is I'm a heterosexual British Asian 35 year old woman and I've only slept with one person back in my early 20s when I was in a short-term relationship since then I haven't been in a relationship I think the reason for that is a mixture of being shy afraid to be vulnerable having high standards and expectations liking people when i'm abroad and also not meeting people that i liked enough or if i liked them they didn't like me i've been on dating apps for many years but last year i ditched them because i find them too superficial

and commodifying and i've actually met way more interesting and cool people in real life and i'm very much happier without the apps as a side note i would say i'm probably an eight out of ten without sounding too arrogant first can we just say like, give up the numbers, give up the numbers, right? I was about to say. I hate this shit. Yeah, I was about to say that. I hate this shit. That means that she's a 10 out of 10.

If she's saying she's an eight and she's scared of being arrogant, that means she's a 10. You're a 10 baby. Yeah, I'm a low self-esteem eight, which means I'm a real life 10. So in terms of my dating life, my usual pattern on the app was to go on first dates and only very rarely go on second dates i haven't been on more than five dates with anyone and last year i realized that physical attraction can grow once you get to know the person more quite self-reflective and curious about my insecurities and issues i feel i've become less judgmental about myself and others and more open to getting to know people before I write them off. But my terribly embarrassing

lack of sexual experience makes me feel like a social weirdo and maybe preventing me from opening up to new potential partners. Part of me just wants to sleep with the next guy I feel slightly attracted to, to get it over and done with and get more experience. And the other part of me feels like it's okay to honor myself slash my body and get to know the person until I feel safe and emotionally connected to them to actually feel like I want to sleep with them i'd love to hear any advice you may have thank you smiley face i've got so many conflicting thoughts about this because there's almost two different paths you could take it down the question is do you want to fuck or do you want a relationship because it doesn't sound to me it's hard because it doesn't sound to me like you want

to fuck but then if you started having regular sex you might want to just fuck more but i'm always i'm always quite a big proponent of don't rush yourself and wait until you find that emotional connection that you that makes you aroused with someone you know like it's so difficult because we're so subjective and it really is a season thing like some years i'm all about the one night stands and just having a good time and then some years i'm very much like i'm gonna i'm not sleeping with anyone until i have that emotional connection and to be fair it's hard because like when i'm away and i have sex with people who and i say when i say away i

mean like out of the country when i'm on holiday and i have sex with you know people i've met and there's a short time frame usually i'm having sex with them within a few hours of meeting them and guess what it's always amazing um and but yeah but then in UK, I'm much more likely to not want to have sex with someone until I've got to know them. Because I guess there's, I don't know, there's something there's something there with time, space, etc. And then usually the sex is amazing. I think I've only had, like, there's only one person I'm thinking of, I had what I would call unsatisfying sex after knowing them for a while. But it's really difficult. It sounds to me like you want a partner and you do want to, you know, wait and honour your body and get to know them.

The problem is you might not meet anyone that you want to get to know because the dating pool, you say is like you you have these high standards you're looking for someone particular is it is it even high standards or is it just like dating right now is feels really weird and difficult i'm it's crazy we live in a city of like if you live in london i don't know where you live actually but in london it's like eight million people have i not found a single person that i want to date for more than a month in a city of eight million people what the fuck is going on there what is happening to the dating market um I don't I really don't know you in I think a year ago I'd have been like just wait and you know in wait until you feel emotionally connected to them and like you want to sleep with them I think you should honor that but you sound yourself so conflicted about what you want and you don't seem to know which path is,

is the one that you're more, and even your letter, it's just like oscillating back and forth between these things. I think the main thing I would say is don't feel embarrassed about either one. You could have sex, you could be, you could have a body count as the kids like to call it, that is as big as Mount Everest and still find yourself having awkward bad sex with the next person you you have in like you have a sexual experience with the the experience you have doesn't equal good sex good sex is about feeling comfortable with the person you're having sex with even if that's someone you've just met or if that's someone you've known for like a while but good sex always comes from when there is some sort of like form of communication uh a mutual understanding and in the moment at least

some form of respect the only bad sex i've had is when i felt like the person is doesn't respect me and also i could just be any flesh bag that they are having sex with i could be any receptacle and that they haven't actually wanted to like touch my body as a thing and they just want to they just want to penetrate that's bad sex whereas you can you can be inexperienced as you put it and still have good sex how can you say touch my body without singing mariah that's my main my main point is the inexperience is almost moot the inexperience is moot do not feel embarrassed about what you're calling inexperienced because when you are having sex with someone and it feels right and you feel comfortable and connected, that will not matter. So I think the first thing that I would say to our special one here is that you feel so much shame. You feel so much shame that you invented another email account to email

us from when like, we were never going to know who you are. you gotta deal with that feeling that sexually you feel so ashamed of yourself like where did you internalize these messages from was it society was it specific people in your life like where are you getting this message that like there is something sexually shameful about you and your desires and so often when we think about sexual shaming we think about it in terms of well i'm being shamed for having you know voracious sexual appetites but there's also a shame of going like oh i'm not i'm not having as much sex as everyone else and like i don't want to do that and like does that mean that i'm broken in some way like the true answer there is that like patriarchy means there's no correct amount of sex to have

like if you're a woman you're always going to lose there's it's always simultaneously too much and too little there is no goldilocks zone doesn't exist um and i think that you you you have to you have to find a way to delete shame from your sexual incentives because having sex because you feel ashamed of yourself is like a terrible reason to do it right that doesn't mean that the only reason to have sex is that you want a relationship or you want to meet someone that like you know you feel really seen by um you know it might be that like you are after something which is more like a a masturbatory experience where someone else is present right you might want that but the fact, is from how you're putting this letter together, it's really unclear, right? The thing which is like leaping out on me is this

idea that you want to have sex just so that when you are dating, you don't feel that you're at a sort of like disadvantage or you come across as inexperienced. And that's not a good reason to do it. I totally agree with Moya. I think you've got to work out what it is that you want. And I think that there are ways to go about doing that, which aren't just like do more of the same. Maybe, and this is going to sound completely wild coming from a prude like me, maybe you should go to a sex party or a meetup for people that want to do that kind of thing. And you can just work out if you want to do it. of thing and you can just work out if you want to do it just be in the space work out if you want to do it because that is a space where people are all there for the same thing right and there's a real separation of

relationships and having sex and you can go and just see how comfortable you feel i mean like you know if you're an low self-esteem 8 out of 10 which which means a real life 10, like you're going to do great. And maybe you just go and see how you feel. And if you go and you go, actually, there is nothing for me here, then I think you kind of have an answer, which is you do want to wait until you meet someone who you feel really emotionally connected to and wants the same things as you. And that's fine. And that's completely legitimate. Or maybe you go, this is a space where i can explore these things without all these other expectations of what someone else has to be like um but either way shame has to be deleted from it i don't know they they just remind me so much of me at 17 when i was trying to decide did I want to honour all of the sexual education I'd had and wait or did I just want to get it over with and the sensible emotionally

intelligent advice is honour your body wait but what I actually did was go and fuck and you know what I was like great done that removed a lot of the anxiety for me and then I didn't then I didn't have sex again until I really felt like I was ready to but because I ticked it off I was like cool that's done don't need to worry about until I actually feel ready to do this again so sometimes there is the advice we should give you and then sometimes we have not taken that ourselves and it has resulted in a reduction in the stress we feel around it so you take from that take from that anecdote what you will is all i'll say go to a sex party go to just see how you feel just see how you feel about

it oh and the other thing i was going to say is you because because if you're you're dating someone and the normal you know rhythms of if you're dating someone over a longer period you know you're going on five dates and you build up that intimacy of first of all like you know you're kissing and then you're making out and slowly but sure you get to know each other's bodies i think with the sort of fast massive the massive turnaround turnover we have in dating the writing people off quickly the disposability you're not gonna get that in the same way and that's that's a whole gap that's missing in in the build up to a sexual experience and it's really hard and when i have had that happen uh you know previously when i was starting relationships or when i was just dating someone for like two months very rare but it was great

it was really good and it made it so much better when we did finally have sex and i was i was still worried and anxious but i was less stressed but it is always anxiety inducing having sex with a new person especially if you're sober doing it if you're fucked you might be a little more like loose and have inhibitions but if you are sober when you're having sex with someone the payoff is better but the anxiety in leading up to the fact is probably more pressing and that's all I'll say. Anyway, this has been If I Speak. This has been If I Speak.

I've been Ash Sarkar. Who've you been? I've been Moya Lothian-McLean, TM, patented, etc, etc. We will be back next week. Bye. Bye. Thank you.