If I Speak - 32: What makes a house a home?

Episode Date: October 1, 2024

Inspired by Moya’s big move, Ash wonders what the necessary ingredients are to turn a house share into a home. Plus, advice for a listener whose friend is infatuated with her lecturer. Email your missed connections and dilemmas to [e-mail] Music by Matt Huxley. Help us build people-powered media: https://novara.media/support

goodbye brat summer hello fatal fall welcome to I Speak, the podcast for overthinkers, yappers and the generally neurotic. Speaking of which, how are you doing, Moya? Lol, thanks. Do you think I'm neurotic? Do you think I'm neurotic? Oh my god! Wow, I answered the question. I think we're both neurotic.

Answered the question with the ask in the first place. How am I doing doing i'm fine i am by the time this comes out i will be probably moved house maybe or i'll be about to move house currently knee deep in house removal things um which is actually very relevant to what we'll be getting on to but so i'm torn between both ordering for a house that i'm going to move into and sorting out shit in the house that i currently live in which meant yesterday i in classic adhd fashion at 7 p.m found myself doing the entirety of the bottom cupboard that we've been saying we're going to do for ages and doing a massive clear out and ended up in like a little cape and shrek ears

which was an enjoyable evening and then i've forgotten my friend was coming around to pick something up so i was going outside with some rubbish and answer the door and she happened to be standing outside she was like hey and i was like ah and i thought she was like oh i thought you know i was coming and i was like i'm no one in my phone I'm so sorry she's like why the fuck have you got Shrek ears on so that was uh that's what happens when you clear out I hear you've got some questions for me I do have some questions for you okay number one have you always been a Marie Kondo no I haven't always been a Marie Kondo like I you know as a teenager was like very very messy and had no idea how like how to keep a space nice and i think i'm still like i do my clear outs in like waves right so like it's all gonna happen on one day where i throw away like half of the things i own but by throw away i also

mean like give to charity and um but no messy messy teenager became civilized in my 20s and now i'm just like throw shit out i fucking hate holding on to like broken junk i hate it yeah i'm actually i'm also going through a similar process in that i used to be a terrible hoarder i'm weirdly through partners then i slowly stopped and now i'm like i'll do the same as you i'll have one day of like big clear out everything goes to different places whether that's the bin or the charity shop and i've got i've managed to get ruthless now although sometimes i will find shit and be like i need that in the future i need that wig but but like broken shit just goes i'm gonna need those shrek ears i am gonna need those shrek ears we had a dressing up box when i was little i've got to carry on that anyway next question seasonal what's your favorite part of autumn um crispy leaves but you can get this in summer now

thanks to climate change yeah but it's not the same as like um when they all get swept up into the piles outside people's houses um i was thinking this and my partner was just like you fucking nerd i was like I love September I love autumn it feels like it feels like the real new year because it's like the start of the academic year and I think of like pencil shavings and I think of apples and I think of glossy glossy conkers and I think of school shoes new school shoes I think of like wrapping your textbooks in like brown paper and did you wrap your textbooks in brown paper did you go to a fucking yeah you had to where what sort of victorian school did you go to you had to because

they gave you the textbooks and so like you wouldn't fucking wreck them did you also wrap your the slates that you wrote your chalk alphabet on and yes before holding my hand out to be caned i i love conkers but conkers now terrify me because they get earlier and earlier each year but i used to collect conkers not to do anything weird just because they were so shiny like a mad magpie so there'll be like big bags of rotting conkers in our porch mum would be like get these the fuck out of here because i'd have collected them all when they're shiny and just left them there as they dulled which says a lot of disgusting so all right i'm gonna i'm gonna tell you i'm gonna tell you like a very very quick story okay

um at primary school there was one song in assembly that got us all so lit that we were only allowed to sing it twice a year because it would like get all the kids so like it was like a rage against the machine gig and they played like killing in the name of so like you could only do it twice because like the kids would be unteachable ungovernable afterwards and a song called conquers and it went like some people think i'm conquers i just think I'm free I just think I'm free Okay nothing I can say can be that No song can say can be that But like

The chorus was like Conkers I'm collecting conkers I'm trying hard to find The biggest and the best Dun dun dun And we'd obviously like Sing the dun dun dun

But like By the final chorus We'd be like Conkers I'm collecting conkers Like we'd just be sing the din din din but like by the final chorus we'd be like like we'd just be like screwing it like i've never known like a kind of like um mass hysteria mass hysteria like dionysian like kind of excess like full loss of control as like you know being in like year four and like singing the conker song um and i think one of the verses was like under the chestnut tree it waits for me a sight so marvelous to behold to behold um and then like da da da da da da da da da da ah conker beautiful

and bold um the music teacher's just got steam coming off the piano by the end the music teacher's like Elton John like playing with his like playing with his feet

literally like it was so like I can't I cannot describe how how like lit we would get. So actually, baby, I'm going to reassess, my favourite part of Autumn is Conkers.

Conkers, yeah. Conkers! I think they've, I think they've really earned that. Okay, what was my last question? Last question was going to be, like, what was your go-to teen magazine? Just completely disconnected. Oh, I mean, I guess we read, like, a lot of, like like Sugar when we were like 11 and 12 and then afterwards it was like Cosmo Girl.

What about you? I think it was just Cosmo. It was just Cosmo because that was the 101. I don't remember Sugar. There wasn't any like Teen Vogue or anything. I think it was just Cosmo occasionally because that was the most interesting.

That was like teen like girl magazines but like I read, I got the NME quite a lot when I was in my teens and teens. You're so cool. By the time I was a teenager as well, I guess the internet had really cranked into gear. So I remember reading Rookie, the digital mag. Oh, yeah. A lot. When I was really getting into teen years.

What else did I read? Spark Notes had advice sections and things like that so i read that a lot really what else did i fucking read on online as a t that's the accounts of t magazine i guess occasionally it was mostly things like exo jane and gawker and jezebel which i remember explains a lot about why i am the way i am i remember exo jane had this like because i did like a little first person essays and i remember like a first person essays I am the way I am. I remember XO Jane had this like, cause I did like a little first person essays. And I remember like a first person essays,

which was like written by a thin white woman who was like, it happened to me. A plus size black woman came into my yoga class and I felt so awkward and sorry for her that I basically had a nervous breakdown. And I remember reading it. I was like, bitch, what the fuck was wrong with you?

I'm pretty sure that was written by Caroline Polachek's sister. But yeah, I remember that essay so well. well anyway let's go on to the middle section this week's intrusive thought was inspired by the fact moya that you are moving city you are moving house um and you are embarking once again on the process of creating a home out of the place where you live. And I'm just sort of interested in what defines a home rather than just a place where you're staying, right? What's the difference between a household and a house share? And what are the ingredients necessary to make you feel like you've got a place of respite, safety, comfort and nourishment when I guess for so many people that isn't what home is like at all. I've lived in some proper fucking shitholes where the fact that not all the

walls joined up at the corners was secondary only to the dynamics within the house which were just like uncomfortable and jarring and a big part of that was to do with being young right like in your 20s and your communication with other people isn't good and you're very bad at communicating reasonable expectations um but I think also I didn't understand what was needed to make, you know, two people, three people, four people, you know, sometimes five people feel like they had made a conscious choice to live together in a way that was like actively improving their lives and wasn't just like an arrangement to make London renting bearable. and wasn't just like an arrangement to make London renting bearable. So yeah, I guess my question for you, Moya, is what are you thinking in terms of how to turn the place where you're living next into a home? Is that a conscious process at all

or are you just going to feel your way through it? So conscious. I think it has to be conscious. I think that's also, you said, you know, when people feel, how can you separate between people feeling like they've just been forced to live together? Often people have been forced to live together. There's a, there's a key difference here, which is money as well. When you're in your twenties and you're, you know, and you can still be in this in your thirties, forties, but but I think for us when we're in our 20s particularly skint particularly skint um and prices are going up and uh there was somehow it's weird that I've lived in I've lived in all corners of London I've lived with all types of

different people I've lived in all types of different houses and I would say there's only one where there was like real friction, which I won't talk about because I don't think, I don't think it was a, it was a nice, it wasn't a nice dynamic for anyone. But it also, I don't think either of our faults,

I think it was just a case of like ending up living somewhere where we both had brought our own issues and they didn't compliment each other. But yeah, where we both brought our own issues and they didn't complement each other um but yeah but other places I've lived in like real hovels and they've still felt like a really lovely home because of the people I was living with and the atmosphere we created and so there's a couple of things but you're also a conscious decision I'll start there yeah it's an absolutely conscious decision to create a home with the person I'm moving in with. It's one of my oldest university friends, uh, who was so lucky happens to be wanting to like settle down in Glasgow for a bit. And has been living there on and off for like the last six months. And she's actually said to me explicitly, I want to create a home. I want to make like, I want to make this space for us that

feels homely. And so we've been identifying some of the elements. We're also moving into an unfurnished flat so we have to furnish it ourselves and that's been like a you know a real a process where you're just like what do you think of this piece what do you want like not just trying to impose your vision of a space on someone but really coming to a middle ground where it's like okay I love this sideboard I think that'd be really good there you love this table let's go with this table because we picked this bookcase for me so we're really like you know back and forth even in terms of the furniture but when she was talking about what it takes to make a home for her she was like lots of like communal cooking and I was like yep I'm on board with that I'd love to do that she was like you know oh she wants to do like yoga in the space because she practices yoga um she's talking about taking some classes together like have lots of people

over to be with us and those were those were all things where she she wasn't saying you have to do this xyz she was like this is what I would like here's my vision of what makes a home how do you align with that and luckily I'm quite aligned in like a lot of those things so but it's it's about presenting stuff to someone else and saying to them this is what my what a home idea looks like I'd love to try this with you how do you feel about it before you've even maybe created that space together because otherwise you're just sort of like bumbling along and you're not setting out any ideas of what you want it's the same with relationships which I think an episode that's recently gone out I was talking about like what do you want for a relationship if you don't think about it and actually identify key things that don't have to be like this completely i don't know you know iron

rule they have to look like uh ryan gosling but more like i want these traits i want these things do that with a home as well what do you want from a home space otherwise you will end up not voicing to the person that you're trying to create this space with what it is that you sort of expect as a base level you know in terms of cleanliness like how much like what's your what's your level of cleanliness what's theirs and what's the compromise in the middle like the house i live in now i think we've got a really we all agree we have a really special house and it's it's worked out really well and we all kind of got a bit thrown together, but we were friends of friends and I was the one selecting who moved in. So I picked on vibes who I thought would work.

And it's not that there hasn't been points of friction or whatever, but we have made the effort to actually work on those and iron those out. And I think we formed like really important friendships from this. Like I live with people who I don't want to lose for my life and I didn't know that well before and I think there's really special friendships that have been formed through that and it's been through also saying like you know adjusting to people like someone saying to me this is how like sometimes I need you know just to like block out the world and not have noise and all of this kind of stuff and not they're not saying in a way where they're like I expect you to do this.

They're saying, this is something, an adjustment that really helps me in my home space. And it's not all the time, but if you can respect that sometimes that's really good. And I go, and I can't, I don't want to react in like a way that's like defensive and like, well, you know what, this is my space. It's like, no, I can easily do that.

When you sit and think about it, you're like, oh, I can, you know, for this portion of the day, and it's not that rigid you know for this portion of the day and it's not that rigid but for this portion of the day I can when I see you doing this and I see you have your headphones and I'm not going to bother you I'm not going to fuck around like I don't need to do that that's what is the adjustments is the constant like doing this and not doing it from a place of like ego and this is my house and my space it's like this is a shared space how do we make it so we're respecting each other constantly i suppose one of the things that you've hit upon is that something which i think defines a household rather than a house

share is shared habits and so for some people those shared habits are to do with communal cooking all right that is like the most common one which is the idea that you're going to share these meals together um you know and that implies certain things one is that you don't have like a rigid distinction between your food and my food all right so you're not drawing all these really really tough boundaries of like what belongs to who what instead you're doing is you're saying well like here is a space of like sharing and a kind of like don't take the piss level of like negotiation but the idea is that it's not actually being um determined by these like hard and fast rules right so i think that

actually the communal cooking and communal eating it's got all of these other implications for like how you think about costs right and how you think about belonging and possession and there's the other bit which is of course convivial Shared meals means conviviality, social space, bonding, becoming closer. But the shared habits can also be different ones. So I live with my partner and our best friend who started out as his best friend and then through years and years and years, including years of living together, I have an independent friendship with. But also it's not really independent because we very much come as like a little dumbass trio like um and so the shared habits aren't always

shared between the three of us but like very often are so some of the shared habits for the two of them are like going for a run or going to the gym like that'll be something that they do without me like shared habits for me and they do without me like shared habits for me and the best friend and like we fucking love like double screening so like put something up on the projector and also scrolling phones and just being like whereas my partner is like guys can you just be like in the moment watching the thing we're all watching together we're like no we want to double screen that's what makes it fun um you know that the fact that like we've got shared interests matters but also i think that we all agree that like the communal spaces in the house like you know if someone's

like got their headphones in you let leave and be when they've got their headphones in but there is always an expectation that like there'll be conversation and like contact in those communal spaces you're not alone together like you know you're just not and I think that's something that we really wanted because we did previously live in a house share which included more people than just the three of us and I don't think that there was while there was like a lot of um affection there and there was like a lot of good that came from it there was just not that same sense of like we want to form a household and it means these things I think it was much more a feeling of like well we've all been thrown together through necessity and inevitably like friction and resentment emerged from that um in a way which like now looking back on I was like well maybe we should just shouldn't have lived together like it's not

that like I was a bad person you're a bad person or this person was awful it was just like weren't temperamentally meant to live together like we all just had like different desires and expectations and I think that like when you are thrown that close to someone everything they do will irritate you and unless you're like really simpatico like everything you do will irritate them and everything they do will irritate you and like just an example of it is like if you come downstairs in the morning you're in the kitchen you're making a tea or coffee that's like hey how did you sleep time whereas like for this person who I was living with that was very much like don't talk to me time and I would end up feeling a bit like disciplined

and they would end up feeling a bit like intruded upon and that we just couldn't we just couldn't square that circle because it wasn't a habit I could break like I'm physically incapable if someone enters a room I'm physically incapable of not being like oh hey how you doing yeah my house is very like they'll say like hey how you doing but we all know in the morning first thing let us all warm up so we'll just be like hey I was like hey we'll just say hi and then later when we're ready to natter you can feel it and we're like I'm going to be aware and like go on for ages so that's i really get what you mean when you're aligning your energies align in the way that you approach the world if you live with someone it's a good thing to entrant to both talk about it and also understand that you have similar ways of

moving about the world and similar cues and just because for example someone's quiet in the morning doesn't mean that they're mad at you it just means that they literally need some time to warm up um but then sometimes they will be mad at you right sometimes it will be like they've anticipated being mad at you because you won't fucking shut up and this is me being the person that won't shut up like you know like you can feel those energies and i think it's why didn't you shut up ash why wouldn't you just shut up i just i can't help it but they can't help being mad if they want that space so you are right it was maybe neither of the other but no no they weren't wrong and I wasn't wrong either it's just like we had completely different models in our head for what living in a shared space would mean question when

you lived in a house with a bad vibe can that ever be saved once the bad vibe is certain no no I do not think it can like sorry I was like no next question but like no I don't think it can or at least it hasn't in my experience uh one is that something which helps dissipate bad vibes is distance right you get a break from each other you are you know giving each other space. That is literally impossible if you live together. Two is that like, my experience is that by the time you articulate something, there's actually been so much resentment building up that like the dam breaks. So like either like you mean to say one thing and you say 10 things or you say one thing and they say 10 things. They're like, wow, what the fuck? And I'm like, what is he saying? Fuck me for? Like, I was just

asking, like, you know, oh, if the milk goes off, could you chuck it out? And like, now you're telling me this is why my dad left? Like, what the fuck? Like, you know, it was like, that didn't happen, by the way. That didn't happen. That's me being silly. But, you know, all these things would like come out. And I think that like, there have been like various attempts to make so you know like the idea of the house meeting it's like okay time for a house meeting it's like house meetings are like really good for like going through practical things so like you know occasionally we'll have a house meeting where it's like oh okay well like this thing is broken or like oh do we want to like build a bookshelf let's just have like a house meeting where we can like

get quotes for all the work that needs to be done and work out like how we're going to do it and when we're going to do it and like who's paying for what very very good house meetings to talk about anything with emotional content or like that shit is like hideous i mean like have you if you had an experience of like an emotional house meeting yeah loads with the With the situation I was talking about at the start, there were lots of different emotional house meetings. I managed to create like enough of a truce and understanding to like carry on the house for as long as we had to live in the house. But we brought a lot of our own baggage to the table.

And for some reason, this person and I just came out with each other. But I'd never had that before in a house situation and like I couldn't like understand it and why it was coming out and it was a really good lesson it was a really good lesson for me and I think made me much more conscious of other people's needs as well like I could have been like yeah it's all about mining it's blah blah but no like the thing you can take from lessons like that really harsh lessons is like how to actually account for someone else and like in my current house you know every time because we've formed a real friendship with people there and because with friendship sometimes there's friction and if there's been friction like one of my housemates and I have a couple of times

had things to talk about which haven't been related to the house I've been related to like friendship stuff and I have like a habit of at first being quite defensive but then I will immediately sort of be like okay actually what think about what you're doing and then be like no let's listen to what they're saying let's capitulate and it's each time it's like just I think made our understanding and bond stronger like I really really depend on her I've depended on her a lot emotionally there's lots of stuff and she's become like very important to me in loads of ways and I don't actually think some of the points of friction are that different to um in terms of baggage and stuff and bringing baggage to like the housemate had the experience

I would say was quite horrible for both of us with but this time it's like I'm from that I've actually learned to listen to what they're actually saying to me and what they're actually trying to bring to me and the thing and also because we have a friendship it's like there's different dynamic there and we built this friendship that sounds also so similar to like how you go from like one relationship to another relationship I'm talking about a romantic one where it's just like okay like actually the things that are being said on that different from something that's come up before but my ability to like hear you has really really changed and that does just come with like getting older and like you know making mistakes learning from them and then making brand new ones what i was going to say was what's interesting is i discovered from

that situation with the housemate where we we had lots of tension and you know exposed a couple of times was that you can live in the nicest house possible and it still might not be a home because it really does matter who you live with and you can live in the hovel like I lived in a Dalston hovel I would call it and I lived in a Camden hovel and those spaces because of the people i was with and because of the relationships we built became homes even though i would you can pay me to fucking go back to those crusty ass places now because now i've lived in like some nice houses and again that comes with making more money and being able to like afford a better standard of living which not everyone has but there was there was an ability to build a home with those people in a household and like it came from the relationships which are reciprocal and caring they were really caring um

and they became more than just the housemate relationship and even if do you leave when you lose touch with people like there's still a fondness there and so you still check in with them and they're still like people i will talk to every now and then we're not like close friends anymore but it was those those are really formative special relationships and they came from being thrown in a house together someone asked me the other day whether if i could i would choose to live on my own would you well this is my answer was in london where i have all these networks and like built over 11 years of like care and community and all the buzzwords but all these like very special relationships i maybe would maybe in a new city absolutely fucking not like

i'm moving in with an old friend i also have a thing about like don't live with like your best best mate i think that sometimes will end in disaster because too close and as soon as there's a fight over the washing up it's not fight over the washing up it can be everything if you're old if you're old enough and like mature enough it doesn't have to be but it can sometimes get nasty whereas living with like a friend you have this like long-standing really close intimate relationship with who but you haven't been like the same place for a long time there's that there's still enough for remove where you can keep those things in check I think anyway I don't know I've got all that but I I lived my best friend best friend in like second year of uni and actually I mean like we didn't fall out or anything like it was perfectly fine but we actually became much

more emotionally close when we no longer lived together yeah yeah there's something about it i think it was something about like just having that like bit of distance and that sort of um um conscientiousness about seeing each other so it wasn't just like oh we're encountering each other in the place where we live but now the situation i'm in is different like the fact that like we live with our best friends like you know we're so close it feels like a family actually you chose that best friend I think I wouldn't want to be thrown together with one of my I just also I think I would want to know how I lived with them before before we committed to like say what you did was just buy a house together and be like we are locking in we're locking in as a three because we work really

well as a three but what I was this is what i was saying about the having housemates i think five years ago or two years ago even i would have been like yeah of course i want to live on my own and since then i've realized that living on my own would not be good for me i think it is a much better for my need to actually push myself to be like emotionally available and not just care for other people because i martyr myself there's difference between caring and martyring and sometimes I martyr myself but letting other people also care for me and forcing myself to compromise with people and negotiate and take that step back and not just be like this dominant person all the time who gets things her way always always always but come up against people who say no hang on we need to talk about this we need to

negotiate this there was a situation recently where like i was trying to sort out the new tenant for my room um all on my own and my husband was like but i want to feed in on this like i was like yeah but you get to choose the ultimate person i'm like i was like i'm just trying to help i'm just trying to speed run it and they were like no because like the way that the process normally goes is like we would we would you know we'd all feed in together we'd all feed in together and we'd discuss it beforehand and do all this and I thought I was trying to be helpful just trying to like get them candidates and feed them people and like no you don't have to do that like this is a is that because you felt a bit guilty about leaving um I think I think it wasn't it wasn't guilt per se it

was more like I wanted to get it so sorted quickly because I don't like things not being fixed and sorted and I need to get a new personal contract all of this stuff up in the air so I just wanted to be as like least least amount of trouble possible and just get it done and I was like I'll do all this and do all this and then they were like no no no we need to there's the idea of being able to slow down these people just people come with different like experiences to you and different perspectives and that is such a good thing to, as a person,

not just for your growth, but theirs. And like living with other people, if you build relationships that are really caring, you really do get something special out of it. And you really do build something special. And that goes for like the good times and the bad. I don't know how I'd have got through this year without like,

particularly one of my housemates. He's just been been there's been such a special back and forth there all right before we move on to dilemmas what is the worst thing about you as a housemate and the best thing about you as a housemate worst thing i'll probably loads of stuff probably i'm awful in the mall i'm like when i go silent i don't want to talk that's probably a bad thing okay definitely that one also i don't i leave my drying up for ages i fucking hate taking my drying down like my dry washing it's just there for ages until the next washing load like i hate doing that so that's a bad thing um saying i'll sort

something out and then sometimes not doing it until I'm able to. Also, I won't lie, there was a pantry moth infestation and it came from my cupboard and that was a big nightmare for all of my housemates. Pantry moths, man.

We've got them at the moment. We've got them at the moment. Oh, I can talk about pantry moths. There was like a whole mass of eggs in my cupboard that I didn't realise. So I had to go in and just like raid, everything had to go, had just like raid everything had to go had to raid the like raid spray everywhere bleach everywhere like all of that it was vile they

were there for ages and just keep spraying them but they get they got into a closed mason jar they can get they get into closed things oh you've got to get rid of everything everything has to go because as soon as you see the netting of their like it's almost like it's fecal matter whatever so you see the netting or like little they they've got under the rims like they are everywhere you have to get rid of all that shit and it has to be sprayed daily until they go away that's my pantry moth that's so those are probably my worst traits my best traits i'm not gonna lie i do take on a lot of the organization like i had all the bills in my name i'm the one who will pick up new loo roll before we've run out of loo roll i'm the one who every week changes the towels and the

like bath mats and make sure everything's like clean my house looks really good for cleaning floors i don't like doing the floors i will you know i used to be the bin person they've all taken on more of the bins now but like i, I am the person who replaces everything. I'm the person who does all that. I'm not going to, I am that person. I am the direct debit girl. That is my job. What about you?

All right. Worst things about me. I don't leave my drying up on the drying rack for ages. It's that once it goes back into the laundry bag to go into my wardrobe that's where it will linger like for ages like and i don't i don't know why i don't know why um it's like there's like a mental block on it i mean the other is that like have an objectively ill-disciplined cat that thinks that he owns the house but that's not you that's just musa yeah that's not me that's that's him um but like also when the three of us all moved in together musa i think you know because he obviously knew knew

the housemate from before because like you know he's always in the house but now living together musa was like oh you are the runt of the litter and like really fucking like bullied him and so like trying to steal his food and stuff like looking him directly in the eye and like really fucking like bullied him and so it's like trying to steal his food and stuff while like looking him directly in the eye and like bat him in the face like it took a it took ages for musa to accept that like the housemate wasn't the runt of the litter and that musa wasn't like the boss of him because he was like okay the hierarchy goes mum dad me housemate like that was he's like that's the hierarchy so yeah that was probably that was probably quite bad oh i'm also i'm really disorganized in the fridge which means that like i don't respect the like there are different shelves for different things oh oh ash yeah i

don't respect that and ash but you don't you you're not separate as our house i think in the shelving we have separate shelves even though we don't we don't have're not separate as our house I think in the shelving we have separate shelves even though we don't oh no we don't have that but also like butter and shit they want different shelves for like

the jars go here and the disc goes there and the cheese goes there no don't worry about that don't worry about that I just fucking like shove everything in like when the shop comes

so those are the worst things about me I think the best things about me are that like I am always up for hanging out like just always up for like a shit talk and a giggle great cook and do lots of it and I'll always do my communal cleaning

oh that's okay you the communal cleaning is the most important thing communal cleaning is most important shall we shall we address a Yes, let's do a dilemma. This is I'm in Big Trouble, which is our regular dilemma segment. And if you are in big trouble and won't sue us if we give you bad advice, do email us at ifispeakatnavaramedia.com. That's ifispeakatnavaramedia.com. I think we've got time for one dilemma,

but this is a good one. Do you want to read it out or shall I? I think you should read it. My friend, 26, no, hello. Okay, hi to you too. I'm joking. What about the ass kissing? We want the ass kissing.

No, ass kissing, just a high. There probably was a high and I just didn't copy over. Anyway, my friend, 26 female, has a serious crush on a lecturer at uni, mid-40s, male. This has been going on for a few months. My friend has said she thinks her feelings for this guy are totally inappropriate, that

there's no chance of a relationship and she's trying to get over him. She said that he has never flirted with her or expressed interest in her. On the other hand, she chose him as her dissertation supervisor and dwells on all their interactions. Recently, she tried to arrange to meet him outside of uni and also decided to stay in our uni town after graduation. She is moving house to somewhere nearer than him and told me she thinks staying in the city will give a chance that a relationship could happen. As a bit of context, my friend is an international student and speaks English as a second language, so sometimes it can be hard to discuss matters of the heart. However, she has confided in me that she has low self-esteem. I don't think she needs to confide in

you for you to guess that. I never think she's good enough. She also experiences depression, which flared up badly recently around uni deadlines. At first, I thought it was just a crush, but now I think it's full-blown unrequited love. I feel like indulging in the crush reinforces her low self-esteem as it plays into the idea she isn't good enough. I've tried suggesting dating other people and she says she doesn't have time as she needs to focus on her work. I'm a bit worried about her and I think she's quite vulnerable but I am prone to veering and giving unwarranted advice. I'm trying to remember it's her life and she needs to work through it in her own way. However I recently heard a rumour that this lecturer is dating a former student.

Somebody was in our class and graduated a few weeks ago. It's only a rumour and I don't know the girl in question. I think this has upset my friend a lot, and she is still working on her dissertation with him as her supervisor. Do I tell my friend about the rumour, and how do I support her through this possible outbreak? Ash. Okay, so there is a really amazing essay by Amiya Srinivasan in The Right to Sex, which is basically about student-lecturer relationships. And what she

argues and i was like oh my god this is so bang on is that in so in therapy there's a concept called transference where the patient often feels like they're falling in love with or infatuated with the therapist and it's because all of these intense emotions kind of get like transposed onto this like figure of authority and like emotional intimacy and what amir sarinavasan argues is that transference happens within the context of the seminar room all the time because like you know there is something kind of erotic about like someone standing up and being like a font of knowledge and someone whose validation you're literally working for um and that when you're no longer in school the social context is a bit different like you can go for a drink with a lecturer like you know the christmas parties there'll be like alcohol around and stuff like it changes that context and so she says that like often what this is isn't

you know what you would call love though the feelings are very intense it's transference and then what she says is that you know the lecturer owes it to the student to never act on those feelings even if they're reciprocated or whatever because what you are doing when you reciprocate the sexual or romantic attention of a student is you're robbing them of their right to know that their work is actually good or not and you will instill in them a sense of self-doubt about how good their work actually is forever if you reciprocate it and i thought was so well argued and i think that that's relevant here like this seems like a classic case of transference um and i think you can be there for your friend and i think you can talk about that maybe you could recommend this essay um but you know you've said yourself special one that you are prone to interfering

so this idea that hearing a rumor means like oh do I tell my friend about the rumor no because that will just drive the drama and I wonder if you I wonder if you derive a bit of meaning from being the rescuer. And so like, here's this friend and she's vulnerable and she's got low self-esteem and she's infatuated with the lecturer and, oh, do I tell her? Do I not? How do I support her? I think you derive a bit of your identity from being the person who gets to rescue your friend. And the problem with being the rescuer is that it engulfs and overwhelms the person who you're rescuing they don't get to be a full person they don't get to make their own mistakes they don't get to learn things the hard way

and it is not a relationship of equals um so i think that the thing that you need to do this is the practical advice bit is is withdraw from this role of rescuer you can be a support you can hear someone out share your opinions but you do not have to be an active participant in this situation at all you know your your friend is not the first 26 year old to have a crush on a lecturer she won't be the last right she's gonna be fine i don't know what do you think uh i think i mean first of all this isn't love because love is a reciprocal practice this is a obsessive infatuation um that your friend has created to escape the reality of her life which she's not happy with on some level or the reality of herself

um again i agree with ash no you shouldn't tell her the rumor because it's an unverified rumor it's got nothing to do with either of you who this lecture is dating and in fact would just add to the drama of the situation if suddenly she's if you tell her that rumor it puts her as someone who has any stake or any right to know the private business of this lecturer she hasn't got a relationship with this lecture beyond a professional one. The lecturer has never done anything to show any romantic interest in her. It is weird if he's dating a student who just graduated a few weeks ago, but again, it's not the business. And if you pull her in, it makes her a third party to the relationship, which she is not. She is literally just a student. She is a student

who has an infatuation with her lecturer. So no, you shouldn't tell her the rumour at all. And it also pulls you in again as someone who's trying to like, instead of be honest about how you feel, you're trying to use this third party rumour as a way to hope it shocks her out of the infatuation. Because, oh no, you can't have him because he's got someone else. And there's this unverified rumour to prove it. That's not going to stop her if she's obsessively infatuated with him off the back of literally nothing but the need to create her own fantasy. I think you've got two choices. The first choice is the nice choice, which is when

she brings this up, say, I'm really sorry. I don't want to talk about this with you unless it's to, you know, discuss how you're feeling, but I don't want to indulge it with the idea of like you being like, I'm going to move this. I'm going to do this. You just have like, say, I have my own opinions on this and why you're doing this. And I don't agree with them. And I will support you in the practical matters of, you know, moving house or whatever, but I don't want to discuss this with you that much. Or you go for the actual truth option, which is when she brings this up to you, say, I have to be honest. I think this is an attempt to create a fantasy and I don't want to indulge it further I think this is to do with your low self-esteem and I'm happy to talk about that further and support you

with your low self-esteem but I need to be honest with you and I don't want to continue discussing this because I'm going to try and fix it or rescue you and that's not good for our friendship but the latter option can often offend people unfortunately because people don't like being told that they are doing something mental or they're being unhealed or whatever or they're they're acting out of a place of low self-esteem so I don't know what the thing is because it's really hard to watch your friend engage in behaviors where you're just like please don't fucking do this please god don't fucking do this it's so deluded it's it's hard watching your friend be delusional because you you project onto them being like if i was being this delusional i hope someone would save me and it's hard to be around people when they're being delusional but no one can save you no one can save you i think the most you can expect is look if i was

being this delusional i hope someone would say something but saying something is not the same as saving someone right because you have to accept that this person is a separate human being from you and you can't take over their actions and make them do the thing that you think is best for them and and it can come from a real place of love and like I and the reason why I'm saying this is because I know that I can be Captain Save-A-Ho like I know that I can want to like rescue my friends and like jump in and like oh if you just did this this and this like it would all be you know it'll be fine um you can't do that you can't do that you have to accept that they are their own person they will make their own mistakes and they've got their own path through life and it you know it might be very painful at times and you can advise and you can suggest and you can give an

honest opinion but that's not the same as control and and you have to learn to let go of that I suppose like one thing that I'd like to like say about this and I say this because I used to be a lecturer so I used to teach a master's in Amsterdam and I used to teach on some undergraduate courses here in the UK. I did not fancy any of my students whatsoever. And when I was doing the master's in Amsterdam, it wasn't because there was a big age gap where they were all younger than me. Lots of them were actually older than me. But how I felt about them was like I was like a mother duck and they were like my little ducklings like swimming behind me like I felt protective and I felt

responsible and it was completely unerotic to me and like I remember there was a couple of times where students like tried to push that boundary a bit and I really was just like I don't know where the fuck you think you are um and it confused me that there could be lecturers who didn't feel the same way, right? Who actually felt an erotic charge based on that inequality of power. Whereas for me, that inequality of power was unerotic, right? It did not make me feel sexy in any way. It made me feel responsible and maternal but i think that like you know sometimes often this is very gendered where men feel a different way and they see someone looking up to them and they find it very sexy there is nothing less sexy than an object of

your fantasy becoming a real person and i think maybe this is something to say to your friend which is that like well right now the reason why you're infatuated is because of the distance and because of the impossibility and that he gets to be kind of an ideal right he just he gets to be your teacher and he gets to fulfill this ideal but if you ever got down to it and like you know you'd see his like raggy toenail or his like you know little paunch or whatever or his like sexual insecurities and he was a real person like trust me it would not be sexy anymore and i and you know it's like at my own university where you know where i was an undergraduate there were lots of lots of male lecturers who went on that journey who went from being a kind of like erotic object of fantasy to becoming like a real man riddled with insecurities who's you know naked in front

of one of his students and suddenly not sexy anymore not sexy yeah i think i think the person is right though it sounds like their friend is quite vulnerable it sounds like this lecture as well this infatuation is giving them some direction in life like they've now chosen to stay on in the town post their uh masters or whatever it is they're doing in supposedly to stay near this this lecturer i think it sounds like to me and this is maybe a reach it sounds like the pressures of modern life and the need to make a decision at the age of 26 as well about where you're going with your life they're displacing all of that stress onto this infatuation and using it as a vehicle to direct

the rest of their life but god almighty you don't want to just stay in a town for someone who doesn't even knows you exist but doesn't doesn't have any feelings towards you beyond that of a lecturer i do think they sound vulnerable my advice is again don't interfere if they ask if they if they keep bringing up again given say do you want my honest opinion or do you want to vent about this? Because I don't have like a huge amount of capacity to hear this again because it's distressing for me. But I can try and support you the best way I can. But if you want my honest opinion, I'll tell you it.

And that's kind of where you'd at. But I think you do, if it's continual that you're hearing this and you constantly are going to try and fix them, you need to tell them, look, I can't hear loads of this because i'm going to try and fix it and that's not going to be good for us so let's talk about someone else you've got to make it boring as well these dramatic things you've got to make boring to the person who's yeah that's the thing

is that if you if you say about this rumor you're just injecting like drama drama oxygen into the fire it's just rumor Every time you haven't, there's so many things I hear about, like now maybe, when I was like 18, I would have immediately told my friend, or 19, or even like, yeah, up to like 24. And now it's like,

they don't need to know that. That's actually not going to be healthy for them to know, and I'm not going to tell them that's what being a good friend is. I think that sounds like a good place to end this voyage. We've sailed the ship into the rocks. Into the rocks. We had the sirens music and now we are dashed upon the rocks.

I was going to say the sirens. Oh, wait, wait. Last question. If the sirens were singing a song to get you off the boat what would the song be okay to get me off the boat the sirens are singing what do you hear all right but like is a siren song like a sexy song or is it a song that makes you want to um shake your shake your it's a song that's making you jump in the water and want to sing and go and join the sirens to like hang out what's the song

okay right to hang out uh probably freed from desire what about you any so this i think the i think the

premise is like any song that if you in the toilet queue what song would you immediately turn around have to go back to the dance floor and sing? Oh my God, there's so many.

Yeah, Freed From Desire would be one of them. What's one of mine? I think Church Girl by Beyonce is like one that I'm always like, if I hear that, that is my anthem. And it's not even my favorite song. It's not any of that. But it's like, this is a song that I need to be on the dance floor and being like, putting my hand up and being like, this is me.

You know, she ain she never hurt nobody she she's trying to do the best she can with her friends without a man that is my anthem so yeah that's a fire and stuff if they were singing that i'd be like swimming over and be like yes lady yeah like let's go as they as they slowly eat my bones i'd go down being like friends without a man anyway anyway this has been if i speak i've been more than a claim you've been dashed against the rocks goodbye that rhymes with ash bye you