If I Speak - 33: What makes you embarrassed to be leftwing?

Episode Date: October 8, 2024

Moya and Ash turn the weapon on themselves with a Mystery Question about the lows of being on the left – haters and losers, pyrrhic victories, strategic balls-ups and the rest. Plus, a listener who���s falling out of love just as their partner needs support. Email your missed connections and dilemmas to [e-mail] Music by […]

Good morning! Special ones won't be able to see this but I'm recording with a totally new view for the first time because if i speak has officially gone multinational it's still multinational it's in the uk right is that is that accurate oh look technically no but i think that we're all broadly supportive of scottish independence so fuck it i don't i don't want to get into that yet i've just touched down anyway i'm moyle othie mclean reporting from glasgow and with me is ash sarka uh smp member ash what's your current view like without doxing yourself okay i probably can't say too much without doxing myself because there is actually

like a local landmark in front of me but i can't talk about that because then people will track me down and kill me but here's something which isn't much of a local landmark all right so between my garden and the landmark and like running along for all the houses is like a brick wall and that brick wall is known as the cat super highway because all of the neighborhood cats are just like walking up and down it all the time sometimes you get a fox which is very exciting but quite often um my cat moosa is walking along it he's sort of turned into like the top cat of the ends now i was gonna say where does moosa sit in the cat hierarchy of the local neighborhood right at the top actually he's been um it's actually kind of embarrassing so there's a long story which one day I'll tell

in its entirety which is I had a neighbor who had 30 cats and also mental health issues but he got like sectioned many of the cats got captured and rehomed but some of the cats are just like semi-feral you're never going to get them but that means that it's gone from like 30 cats next door to like maybe six and so Musa went from being like oh what the fuck I'm like at the bottom of the pecking order to like oh I can work with this so he's now just fucking like dominated all these other cats and there's another neighbor who like leaves out food for these strays and moosa will like bully them off the food so he gets first dibs and he actually scratched the neighbor to get his dinner and i felt so embarrassed

ash but do you feel a little bit proud that your cat is becoming top cat yeah absolutely absolutely a lot top boy top boy no sorry i just got this image of musa maneuvering his way to the top for a series of portrayals like backhanded deals and then just shout right violence i think he absolutely did that that's that's absolutely he's done that okay but i've given the neighbors permission to like turn the hose on him because i was like he's not gonna stop because you ask nicely house sorry i'm thinking that mood dang have you seen that mood dang sketch i have i'm not that into me dang but i got served a rare almost funny snl sketch with bowen yang pretending to be mood dang and the hose

gets turned on mood dang and it's like holes sometimes just physical comedy is great but that's that sketch really undermined itself because the whole point is this really annoyed me right the sketch was actually good it was really funny it was riffing off mudang speaking as if mudang was chapel roan so it was so funny it was so i thought it was really funny but then at the end, then Colin Jost, aka Scarlett Hansen's husband, feels the need to spell out being like, oh, this sounds a lot like Chapel Rowan.

It's like, now you've made it un-fucking-funny because you spelled out the joke. The point is people can tell what you're riffing off. There was, what was it, years ago, there's a very famous SNL sketch. And the whole, oh yeah, it's the, whatcha say, where they're all shooting each other and that's yeah and it's directly referencing the season finale of the oc season one i think

yeah season one um but they never say this is the oc it's funny on its own but then when you know it's referencing it's even funnier but they don't need to fucking spell it out what's referencing and the fact they had to be like this is about chaperone we fucking know and if you don't know it's still funny because mu dang on her own is funny getting the hose like oh we're not that stupid just don't you don't need to fucking spell it out and just annoyed me don't kill the joke they killed the joke anyway kill me with some questions i have got 73 questions minus 70 for you and as a special treat for both you and the special ones

there is a new quadrant oh my god new quadrant this new quadrant is inspired by an evening of karaoke with the rest of the Navarra media team and this was a song sung

by none other than our very own Pemba so this new quadrant inspired by Pemba's karaoke song where are you between bitch lover child mother well we've kind of done

one of these haven't we I know I know mummy tyrant child bitch lover child mother i'm a bitch mother i don't think you are a bitch mother okay all right okay tell me child obviously why am i a child i'm a mother i'm such a mother maybe not you okay maybe yeah yeah i would say i bitch mother. I don't think we're both bitch mothers. I think you're a lover mother. You're like the chief wife guy. You're a lover mother. You believe in the power of love.

You are a lover. You're a holy lover. I'm not particularly romantic. That doesn't matter. Romance is separate to lover. Like, romance is like the fantasy. Romance is a childish fantasy. Lover, to me, is a political position. What?

Yeah. I'm fucking bell hooks. So fucking a lot in the opening of this spot. That's why it's going to put us on 18 rating. I think you're a lover mother. I disagree. Look, I know this is kind of a repeat of like a quadrant we did before, but it just occurred to me that that song is a quadrant. And wanted to share that why do you think you're a bitch I don't

I don't think you're a bitch I think I'm a bitch I just don't think I'm a lover because I think a lover is like a lover like sidles up to you and is like very sensual I'm not that sensual a person I'm working on it with my therapist I'm not sure maybe you're a mother child oh my god I just don't I don't get bitch from you I'm a bitch like I'm a bitch it's I'm brusque I'm to the point I I'm just you know even when I'm trying to be loving then there is tough love all the time I'm a bitch like I'm a bitch I'm a lover um I don't get that from you okay i get more of a childish childlike desire to be like liked and you're really like there's a difference you're not a bitch in a good way to be like in a good way right to the core okay next question what is your tolerance for feeling

bored oh zero zero i need stimulation at all times just to give you an example of how low my tolerance for feeling bored is when I was packing maybe it it suddenly become the worst task I've ever done packing and unpacking the the most the worst task I've ever been given and it's because it's repetitive and boring I I had to, I told you about this. I had to rail all those romance films. And then when I was unpacking, the only thing that got me through unpacking was I locked into BBC Sounds. I had the Grenfell podcast on.

It sounds, it wasn't meant to be like an entertaining thing. I was like, time to learn. Really good podcast, actually, the Grenfell podcast on BBC Sounds. A rare example of like, it's really weird because i think the majority around grenfell has been average but the bbc podcast is really good um and outlines everything in a way that is very straightforward which i think is important with stories like that to really so you can get grips to it because there's so many layers of corruption but it

really lays out great podcast and then i went to um British Scandal and Wondery which allegedly is sort of cobbled together from a lot of other people's work but I have to say sadly it's presented entertaining fashion even if I detest one of the presenters and it's not Alice Levine um but it's the perfect thing to listen to because it's storytelling and I've been thinking a lot about storytelling I found the I found the presentation style of it too irritating. Yeah, it can be really irritating. But honestly, it's because it's based off the format of American history tellers, which was, I think, Lindsey Graham, not the senator who might be dead now,

I can't remember, but another Lindsey Graham who shares his name. And it was bought by Wondery, or either he made Wondery, and then Wondery was bought by Amazon. Either way, Wondery is a massive, massive podcast behemoth now. And they have all these different formats that they just repurpose for different places. And British Scandal basically takes stories that other people have done all the research on and then just turns them into a narrative form. But unfortunately, it's really good background noise when you are doing something like unpacking. good background noise when you are doing something like unpacking because it's like four very long episodes of you know charles and camilla or the rolling stones brian joe's dying and often they

won't come to like any new conclusion or there won't be any new evidence that's not the point the point is just to tell you the story in a narrative form with lots of embellishments about how these people could have been feeling etc etc and stories as my new boss says stories are more powerful than information so i i was sucked in but my tolerance for boredom is zero okay and a final question what is your favorite thing about glasgow so far oh difficult to say um maybe the food the food this is the thing i haven't had time to go and explore yet properly i the the architecture is gorgeous apart from the motor my least favorite is the motorway motorway is disgusting and i think planners of the 1960s and 50s who were coming up with this modernization that was based around cars should be exhumed and their bodies put in jail it is vile what they did to

birmingham glasgow is vile um so the motorway is disgusting but i love the food i think the food seems incredible my colleagues give me this list of like 212 places to go and every time i hit one it's just it's the exact intersection of food i like as well which is southeast asian and east asian and all different cuisines within that. I tend to just love those types of foods. And I've got this big list of Malaysian places that was kindly given to me by a mutual on Instagram that I'm really excited to hit. So yeah, the food has been slamming. But the buildings, when you're looking at the Victorian architecture, everything's just like sandstone and this other brick, which I don't know what type it is, but it's like that classic

grey. And it's just gorgeous. It's just motorway's disgusting so that's those are two big pluses death to the motorway all right well I suppose we're preparing for a mystery question ciao ding us if you're there oh oh we've got we've got the mystery question oh oh it's a good one oh it's a good one what if anything makes you embarrassed to be left wing no because if i say this i'm gonna get in so much trouble there's several things myself oh ash not the self-loathing do you want to elaborate on that she's always there the self-loathing where should we start what makes you embarrassed to be left-wing I think there's a there's a way into this question which is less about like what do I hate about

other people and is a bit more like what are the mistakes that I've made that make me feel really embarrassed now I mean I'm gonna do what I hate about other people but you do that mature one you do the mature one all right well like there have just been so many times where like I've called things wrong and it's almost always the case that I've called something wrong because I haven't had sufficient contact with people outside of like a relatively narrow bubble um and also when people say this to me from the outside I've been very defensive give us an example okay all right I can give you loads of examples. So me and my partner actually, we talk about this a lot.

You know, during those long, dark nights of the soul, we talk about what we'd have done differently during the Corbyn movement. And we talk about the time between 2017 and 2019. And that's when we were like riding high off of like, you know,

robbing Theresa May of her majority. But rather than looking with like a laser focus at like how do we win the next election what we focused on was making the possible manifesto for the next election as left-wing as possible so pushing really hard on the green new deal or like um abolishing private schools or like really like one of the things I was like fighting hard on was like immigration policy now none of those things came from any contact with the electorate and how they might make decisions and what was a priority for them it was all about what was a priority for us and kind of being a bit like high on our own supply um and so that 2019 conference was like you know all of these

like periodic victories to be to be honest and then like you know you get your ass kicked when it comes to the actual ballot box so that's one thing which makes me feel kind of embarrassed i think another thing which makes me feel embarrassed and this is something which like embarrasses me more about other people is that the left is obsessed with a betrayal narrative right and it comes from something real and it comes from real betrayals and it comes from real defeats but it's like everyone's waiting for the chance to say that like someone else is like a traitor or insufficiently left-wing or has taken a journey to the right and will take any little tiny thing um and like blow it up out of proportion it's like a dog whistle where there was no dog whistle

you're just hearing it yeah yeah um and i find that embarrassing do you think you've got out of your bubble no i just think i'm more aware that it exists how would you describe your bubble um i guess it's like geographic and socio-economic and also those things result in certain dispositions so like it's geographic in the sense of very very london-based but it's also socio-economic in the sense of like everyone went to uni and going to uni trains you in a certain way of like viewing the world and a certain way of viewing politics and i think that this is something which um i read about in the book that's coming out in february which is like a way of looking at the world as though it's a text and so i noticed this because i began to find it very very irritating which is um i remember

talking talking to someone and uh they were like don't use this language use that language and i was like what difference does it make it wasn't about like an identity group or anything it was about a way of framing an issue and i was like it doesn't make any difference uh and they were like yes but as angela davis tells us what is made can be unmade and i was like not through fucking language you're just using different words. Like that's no bearing on reality. But I was like, oh, being in an arts and humanity subject and being in a seminar room trains you to think that way. And you're applying that to politics.

And it takes you so far away from contact with people. So I think that like right now, I'm much more aware of the bubble than I used to be. And I think like phase three is getting out of it. But I guess like at the moment, the thing that I'm doing is exploring the contours of that bubble and thinking about what it's doing to our politics. And I guess I'm not feeling the need to be a strategist.

When you say our politics, obviously you're talking about a specific small group of leftists in london so i think that's another thing this question is like what makes you i think it's bigger than that i think it's bigger than that do you think so yeah because i'm also talking about like a a generational outlook of like university educated millennials and zoomers so it's not just about people who are politically active do you but we're talking about the left right and but who who you imagining as the left that you're talking about here because you're saying like you know this generation of zoomers

and millennials and it's like there's a generation of zoomers and millennials who may parrot left phrases but they're not necessarily left in their actual politics or the execution of it? Well, most people don't have super hard politics. Most people have contradictory sets of ideas. Most people aren't activists. But I consider that, you know, and this is, okay, this is going to give you a little window into my mind.

What Rupert Murdoch did was really understand a demographic of people and go, you are my people and I'm going to shape you and be shaped by you, right? And that's what News Corp is all about. And that is a way in which I think about politics. And it's a way in which I think about Navarra Media. And it's a way in which I think about like what there is to be won so i'm not just thinking about the left in terms of people who are super active although that's a part of this conversation um without a doubt i'm also thinking about that demographic of people who you know in in your words like parrot left-wing

things but like don't have a super hard sense of politics but what about you what embarrasses you about the left well this is the thing if we're talking about the left as a wider thing it's far too like wide and nebulous a definition if we're talking about everyone who just you know uh claims left-wing politics that's too wide for me to be embarrassed by that's too that's too big to be embarrassed by. If we're talking about the left, as in the very small group of left-wingers who I most prominently associate with or have contact with, often based in London, not always, usually done via online, loads of things loads of things make me fucking embarrassed um sometimes i'm like i don't even claim the fucking left anymore like i claim people who have left wing values and politics but the idea of the left with a capital l f e l e f t can't even spell

maybe they should kick me out f e t l f t that's what means to me you know i said it um yeah that that that group of very like that small insular group uh both in what's the word both the in person like the physical people often in london there were a lot of people that I met who would claim to be so left-wing and like be on the front lines of activism and be some of literally the worst people like enacting real left-wing values and principles especially those of compassion and empathy in their lives and the way they treated people was just like shit like some of the biggest haters and losers I have to say sorry sorry some of the biggest haters and losers. I have to say, sorry, sorry. Some of the biggest haters and losers, some of the stuff that people were doing. I think this last year has been so instructive for

me in terms of people who identify themselves really, really strongly with being on the left with a capital L and make that part of their personality. There seems to be a link, a correlation, a correlation, a positive correlation with the more you identify yourself on the left of the capital l for a lot of people and the worse you behave to other people and i think this is one of the things that disappoints me it's like you're one of the exceptions you really live by your principles and you've taught me so much about actually living by the principles you have and sticking to them. And that coming with empathy.

And the more I've known you, the more my respect for you has just grown. Whereas other people, it's just gone the opposite fucking way. And this is my podcast. I'm just, I'm giving the tea. I'm giving the tea. Sorry if I sound like I hate losing myself.

I'm just gonna say what I feel. There's people out there who just claim this position of moral purity and do things that are really just not nice and underhanded and sneaky. And there'll be, you know, the front lines of a protest and telling everyone else what they should be doing. And then in their personal lives,

they either have, they've committed these egregious displays of either disrespect or harm or, you know, not the sort of stuff where you're online, you're tapping out and you're being like, this person has harmed me by ignoring me, but just stuff where I'm like, this is just shit. Like the way you treat people is shit. And you claim to be a moral arbiter that judges everyone else, but you just treat people like shit from either low level stuff to really high level stuff. And yet you're still part of the left with a capital L who gets to hand out little scriptures to everyone else about how they should be behaving.

It really fucks me off. It makes me embarrassed because there's no correlation between words and actions. I'm like, how are these the movement leaders? How are these the people who've put themselves on the fucking front lines to say that we're the ones who are the left and we're telling you how to be the left? And it's like, you're less left wing than, I don't know, some, literally there's people I've met who I would say call themselves like Marxists and, you know, all of this kind of stuff. And they are less left wing to me in the way they enact their values in everyday life, which is most important and the ways they sell their politics to others than random people I've met who are kind of like, well, I don't really know where I sit,

but like, this is what I believe in, in terms of values. And that, and who turns to be very compassionate, very kind, and most of all, give that space for people to grow politically. But this is not true of the wider left, because there's lots of organisers I talk to. Like if you talk to people from, I don't know, Acorn, there's been organisers there I talked to

who talk about their strategy and they're like, yeah, you know, we're going to organise with someone who might be in UKIP, because the main thing is you organise for a goal and then you when you achieve that goal that's how you change the attitudes of those people so it's like someone they were telling me about a UKIP politician who had a housing problem so they helped organize around it and that person was like actually you know what kind of seeing your point of view and it's like through action and through compassion empathy sometimes you're going to have to organize with people who don't align with your politics but it's politically

uh functional to do that and there's a lot of people on the left who don't want to fucking do that they just want to sit there's i have a whole list actually i wrote a list of things i'm embarrassing purity politics loser mentality chip on shoulders sorry loser mentality took me out. Focus on the petty. And by that, I mean petty small things like, you know, sometimes linguistic stuff. And they can be very big. Yes, I know.

But we're talking lack of nuances. Next one. That applies. Delusional. Betrayal narrative is yours. I've put, what have I put there? So I think like four people. Ego.

And then I've just written dickheads. All those things make me embarrassed all those things make me fucking embarrassed but they're not i want to say one more thing they're not exclusive to the left i think they are part of any sort of political group you organize around but that to me the london left when i think of them i actually have a lot of resentment a lot of resentment that i probably need to go to therapy to work out. All right, here's a provocation. Go, provoke me. When you point a finger... Oh, it comes back on me.

...don't provoke me to anger, or else you will be in danger. I fucking love... I sing that every day. When you point a finger, there's three pointing back at you. Yeah, for sure. For sure.

But all these things are things that I think, over the last year, I've had to really try and work on. It's like this mentality of constantly losing and constantly being like, this person's fucked me up. Like, if you look at my internet history, I've very much been part of this, but this is the point. It's like, how do you, at a political, I don't know, a left-wing event that only really dedicated lefties come to, who are old enough to, they should be changing the outlook, and they will sit down next to you, and they will, let's say hypothetically,

talk obsessively to you for 20 minutes about maybe one or two people who might work for a prominent left-wing media organisation, everything they think should change in that. And'm like is this really the best use of your fucking time with your comrades is this really like is your obsessive focus on this really what's useful it just makes me it makes me sad because i feel like i was very of that ilk probably up until last year but i would say really my mindset started changing around 27 just like what mattered seemed so important so focused on the online sphere and then you start just being like getting out into the real world and talking to other people well you know what I shouldn't say real

world getting out to other spaces and talking to other people and just discovering how complex the world is and there's people who are way older than me who just don't seem to have made that and also hold people to such high fucking moral standards that they do not meet themselves and i hate that discrepancy well like i think i think that there's a lot to sort of go on here i mean when you're talking about like slag off people work for like said media organization let's just name the names right people come up to me and i really hate it when they do this they'll come up to me and they'll go oh well I like you but I can't stand Michael Walker and I can't stand Aaron Bastani they'll come up to me and they'll say this to me and I'll always say the same thing back which

is do you realize that there are other people who feel the opposite and who will say to Aaron and say to Michael I love what you do but I can't fucking stand Ash Sarkar and they always get a bit taken aback and they'll be like, well, well, they're wrong. And I was like, well, maybe they are, maybe they're not. But the fact is, is that it's a media organization which through these different personalities can speak to and appeal to different people. And the nature of that is that you're not going to always like how they do that. And one of the things that I feel really proud of with the organisation is that we will quite often

get emails and messages from people saying, I was going down like the Jordan Peterson pipeline until I found you, Aaron. No one messages me saying that because I cannot speak to those men, right? Like the entirety of who I am, how I i present myself how i talk is off-putting and irritating and alienating to them and this again comes down to like purity politics but also like everyone pays lip service to liking pluralism until it's time to actually be pluralistic and

there's like there's divergence there then suddenly it's like no by pluralism i meant everyone agreeing with me agreeing with me in a different font yeah agree with me in a different font like and and something which i i think a lot is just that like no this is actually what pluralism is is that you're not always going to like it you're not always going to like it and you have to decide what the priority is um and and i think that we're quite bad at doing that um but i think again like thinking about pointing the finger and the three pointing back at me is that i've made basically my whole career and it is a career like i occupy a very privileged position within the movement in

which i effectively get paid for being a part of it right that's a very privileged position but i've made my whole career off of conflict right and being quite effective within high conflict situations which are mediatized in some way is that conducive for a healthy left culture i mean i think it does something which is good which is contests the media space but if you're learning how to be left-wing from that no it's not good and there's a there's something which like is so simple but i think has really made a difference, which is the DSA, the Democratic Socialists of America, do this thing when they're talking about ideas and it takes the ego out of it, which is you go, I don't know if I think this, but, and you try out an idea.

And it just takes some of that ego out of it because it means you're not in it if someone's criticizing it and it also means that like other people can approach the idea and think about it and chew over it without it being like this thing of like and i think that the place for like putting that into practice for me has been like there's there's a group of people where we meet regularly for like really long meals like really really long meals either at my house or at someone's flat and we're called mr dips the armed wing inspired by of course hummus pavaya mr dips and the question that we we've been chewing over all together is like what's it mean to be a communist what would a communist strategy look like but it's actually so much more than that it's also like reflective

practice over your own assumptions and mistakes and thinking about why you made them and how you could avoid that in the future and it just i feel quite protective over the space because i'm almost like off you open it up to the rest of left culture like all that like judgment and like pointiness is going to come in and like like ruin this beautiful thing but i guess i feel now a responsibility to sort of take that way of talking and that way of engaging and taking it out into the world yeah but don't get don't don't like let everyone into mr dibbs do a separate thing that's more yeah no separate thing keep it keep it special it's it's so special but like i guess it's a way of you know i want to start being on like being in left-wing spaces and saying i don't know if i think this but

i don't i genuinely don't think that I'm embarrassed about being on the left in terms of the question I think I'm resentful about lots of the people I came into contact with in London who professed to be on the left and were active in left-wing spaces and I think that's a very important distinction I'm fucking proud to be on the left like I'm not the best leftist in the world I never will be I'm not great at theory I think a lot of my values are important and you know grounding but I'm never going to be like a theorist like you Ash my thing is like you are you like you you know what I mean you like you're a thinker you're a public thinker I'm not a public thinker and that's fucking fine you stop saying fucking need more verbs um adjectives but I'm not I'm not a public intellectual I'm not somebody who's you know

can do the ins and outs of the marks and all of that I'm very much I'm not a public intellectual. I'm not somebody who's, you know, can do the ins and outs of the marks and all of that. I'm very much kind of themes and emotions. And here's this, here's this other story and you do that too, but you can also do the theoretical side. And I think that's, it's clear, like why I've changed jobs as well. It's like, I'm trying to do something that's more about like reporting other people's stories than directly commenting on politics. Cause I don't think I'm actually qualified to do at the rate that I was supposed to. I want to go out and do some more in the field, sort of like talking to people, garnering space to read, all of that kind of stuff. But no, I'm not, I think, yeah, I'm not, despite my rant, I'm not embarrassed to be on

the left. I want to make that really clear. Being on the left is a great thing to be. on the left. I want to make that really clear. Being on the left is a great thing to be. And you meet so many amazing people. I specifically, as I said, have resentments against a group of people in London that I came into contact with because that's where I was coming into contact with left-wing organising. There's lots of amazing left-wing organisers in London, but also lots of really, really annoying people who find me just as annoying. But I think are not nice a lot of the time. And this is our podcast. I know people just want to hear some drama. So there's some drama for you. I think my opinion is just not good. But honestly, when I was thinking about what makes you be embarrassed about the left, I was like,

again, nothing makes me embarrassed about being on the left I could not handle and this is probably one of the reasons that I'm no longer front-facing on Navarra media and I'm not a staffer anymore I could not handle the waves of hatred and maybe hatred is the wrong word the waves of just the attacks just like constant attacks and I don't mean like oh no I was so attacked I was so abused i mean like just just constant low level your shit this is shit from everywhere on the political spectrum i can't handle that my skin is too thin like i i don't like that i don't like being told i'm shit just from a company i work for when you haven't engaged with me in my work i don't like being told shit when you have engaged, but I'm shit when you have engaged in my work. I don't like being told that I'm shit because I talk to certain people that because I disagree with you

on something. I hate that. I don't like being told that I didn't, you know, I don't like having these assumptions made about me. And it made me realize I'd done all that to people in the past and it was shit. So that's why it's one of the reasons i have stepped down from my position but also maybe really reflect like you said three fingers pointing back at you four how many fingers we have five four and a thumb if we point a finger three point back at you i mean building a movement shouldn't be all about conflict but contesting politics is about conflict like it just it just is and i i guess you know if if i was to leave people with a thought about how to deal with that sort of tension which is you want to build a movement which isn't based on conflict but you also want to contest politics and it is about

conflict is like think about what it has taken historically to like actually overturn the established order of things which is the fight you're gonna pick and history is full of examples of the left picking the wrong fights and like getting getting fucked up by it i always think about something which um president lyndon b johnson once said which is the first rule of politics, is learn how to count. I literally just proved I can't count. But it's just like, if you're constantly making a minority of yourself, and I'm not talking about this in terms of an identity way, but you don't think about a minority status as being something to overcome through contact with other people, but you make a think about a minority status as being something to overcome through contact with other people.

But you make a virtue of that minority status because it shows how pure you are. You're going to lose. You are going to lose. Although when the majority positions have been warped to be just shit, maybe you want to be a minority. Anyway, we could talk about this till the cows come home. And I'm sure we will. Shall we deal with some of people's problems? and I'm sure we will uh shall we deal with some of people's problems I love other people's problems what's what's the section called with other people's great

it has a great name if I'm no it's not that's not the name the name is I'm in big trouble just fucking like as a moving van was going up to Scotland just brain cells falling out of it they just sprinkled all the way up whatever motor it was it's honestly I'll tell you what it is I have never worked so hard in my life I'm just gonna be honest with you um sorry to Navarro who are just paying me loads of money um I've it's because it's a whole new skill set my my brain is having to stretch itself in ways it has not been stretched for years. Maybe even since my first proper job, university, my first proper job, because it is a brand new skillset. I'm doing something completely different in journalism and I'm having to, I'm having to employ a whole new part of my brain. Uh,

and I have the skills to do it, but it's just really difficult. And that's very exciting for a workaholic like me, but it means that my brain cells are all over the place, which is why I can't count anymore. And I don't know what the names of our segments are, but this is I'm in big trouble. And do you want to read out the first dilemma? I do want to read out the first dilemma,

but before I do, if you are in big trouble and we can't make the problem worse um email us at if i speak at navara media.com that is if i speak at navara media.com this is our dilemma i first want to say how much of a fan I am, loving the astronomical levels of Riz you both bring to Navarra and the pod. Sorry, I was swabbed by Riz and I'm actually, I've got, I've got none. Tested, came back negative. Listening to YouTube feels like I'm down the pub with some good mates. And in a way I'm writing this letter seeking advice from a couple of wise women who I don't know, but also feel like I do know. Okay, here's my dilemma. I have been torn about whether to stay in or leave a long-term relationship for the past year. What is making this decision extra difficult is that my partner is now grieving the loss of his father. For context,

my partner of six years is smart, kind, and caring. He is a great guy and my family and friends adore him. I've never felt this way about someone before, however, over the past 12 months, life has been extremely challenging for us both. For more context, we quit our jobs last summer to go travelling. During this time, we decided to move abroad to Canada. While we were settling down there, we received some devastating news that his dad was terminally ill and didn't have long left to live. We flew home immediately and were luckily able to spend as much quality time with him as we could before he sadly passed away just a few months ago. During this whole whirlwind I've been dealing with the niggling feeling that this relationship isn't right anymore. This feeling coming from within me is primarily due to me always being in the driving seat when it comes

to our relationship. I happily asked him out on our first date, told him I loved him first and planned our travels away etc. However I've been slowly becoming more unsatisfied in our sex life because 90% of the time it's me that instigates. This didn't seem to be an issue for me until the past year when I realised it was. I voiced to him in January that I was unhappy and felt somewhat rejected because of this. He listened and took what I said on board promising he would put more effort in. He also told me he needs to feel safe to feel sexual. I've been trying to take any pressure away to make him feel safer. However, my needs still aren't being met, but because of his grief, I've accepted this is how it will be for a bit. The second factor causing this feeling is due to

us not always seeing eye to eye on certain issues that have become increasingly more important to me and my progressive, more socialist-leaning value system. And by no means a saint, but I try to live my life with as much empathy and kindness as I can. He tends to see the world through a more realistic and at times very cynical lens. He's told me he doesn't feel the need to express solidarity with certain minorities or humanitarian causes that I have felt the need to. This is not a deal-breaker to me. I respect he's different to me. He's always been a critical thinker. But what does bug me is that when we have discussions, just us two, he always challenges my viewpoints and takes the opposing side.

But then when we're in a group of people, he'll agree with me. This frustrates me. Despite talking to my therapist and closest friends about this, it feels far too cruel to end things when he needs my love and support right now. I have a lot of shame around even thinking and feeling this way whilst he is grieving. A part of me is riddled with anxiety about settling down with him and another part of me feels like maybe if we do move in together and stabilise again we'll grow closer. We've been through the ringer and perhaps this is a testament to our love for one another. Perhaps there is some light and joy at the end of the tunnel if we both keep taking positive steps forward. Am I deluding a very confused woman yours anon ash you have had a loss of a father recently i'm trying to think of how to phrase this if someone broke up with you

three months after that do you think that is ethically okay I think that applying the language of ethics to relationships doesn't always work is what I think um because yeah I I lost my my stepdad who's basically my dad in March um but also this was years ago now so this must have been like 2015 I'd known for a while that this guy who was so so kind and so so lovely just a wonderful guy we'd been together for about two and a half years. I just knew that it wasn't the relationship for me. And that wasn't to do with anything he did. It was just, I needed to be an independent person. And right when I reached this decision, his dad had actually been diagnosed with cancer. And I felt like the worst person in the world

ending that relationship at that time um but I knew at that point that I couldn't be in love with him again like I loved him but I couldn't be in love with him again. Like I loved him, but I couldn't be in love with him again. And he actually, he actually took it really, really well. I mean, like I said,

he was just like the most kind and empathetic guy. And from what I hear about his life now, he's really happy and, you know, partner and a kid and a job that he loves and all of that stuff. But, you know, I've been on both sides of it. I've been on both sides of it. Like I've lost a parent and I've also broken up with someone whose parent was very, very ill. I think that. OK, so I guess my analysis and my advice are two different things does that make

sense you said it last time so it does make sense you know it yeah my analysis is that when you know that you can't be in a relationship anymore that you can't be in love with this person again you always have to take the risk that you're going to be the villain in their story and I think that that's kind of what all of this like churning around is about is like um I can't I can't match up my sense of self with doing something that many people will say was like cruel and unfeeling and callous but that's kind of the risk you always take when you end a relationship which is that other people looking at it might not think that your reason is ever good enough and that's that's a step you've got to take for yourself um and you always have to take that risk and so that's why i sort of say

the language of ethics doesn't really come into it ultimately like if you get to the point where you can't be in love with someone again um you're taking the risk of being the villain in their story and you kind of have to accept that um my advice might be maybe the two of you should try couples therapy because I can really understand that if you know his dad was diagnosed with a terminal illness in you know last summer January after that you're saying hey can you change these things and he's like yes I I want to really take this on board but ultimately like I can't do it like let me tell you when when you are in a state of like high alert and I still am in a state of high alert right even though the bad thing has happened your body is still primed for like what's the next thing

it's so hard to like drop down into like your sexuality and to and to allow yourself the vulnerability that is a precondition of sexual pleasure it's so so hard to do that is a precondition of sexual pleasure. It's so, so hard to do. And you can often feel that you're failing the other person in your inability to do it. And then sex becomes something you're doing for someone else rather than something which brings you pleasure and the thing goes on and on and on. So I wonder if couples therapy might be a thing to try. That's not me saying don't break up. It's me saying maybe that's a path to tread that could take you out of that particular problem. And that you need the support of a third party who can engage with both of you as a couple and engage with his grief and engage with like how trauma affects the body in order to sort of walk the path out of it but the caveat to that

is if you just know in your heart of hearts you can't be in love with him again maybe you should break up but i don't know what do you think i think this special one has made up their mind about what they want to do they're just asking for what time they should do it because and i say this because the letter the the reasons they give are things that are surmountable i i think if they really were still in love with them if that they if they had that there but at the end they say despite talking to my therapist and closest friends about this, it feels far too cruel to end things when he needs my love and support right now. That to me isn't like,

I don't know whether I should end it or not. That is very, I want to end this. I can't do it right now. And it's like, you've discussed this at length to your therapist and closest friends. I think you've come to a decision. There's sort of, the reasons that you're giving as well is, you know, like the second factor uh you're trying to come up with reasons that justify why you want

to end this and sometimes it's okay that's just not right anymore you out like you've grown apart but like the second the second factor one where you say um you know he sees things that are very like cynical doesn't have like cynical lens he He doesn't have as much empathy and kindness. Totally get that. Been there. We've talked about being in relationships with people who always hit you with the, this is the rational view kind of perspective.

But the bit where you're like, the thing that bugs me is he always challenges my viewpoints when we're alone. But when we're with other people, he backs me. That's. Some people would love that. Some people would love that. That's like, he's literally when he's with you with other people, he's like, we're with other people he backs me that's some people would love that some people would love that

that's like he's literally when he's with you with other people he's like we're a team we're a team i don't think you want to be the team anymore so every time he wants to team up with you you're like oh god fuck this shit you know like that's i think you just don't want to be in the team anymore um and the stuff that you were okay with before you know as you've been instigated all of that yeah it's unfair but the reason it's niggling so much is because without realizing you have grown away from you don't want to be in that partnership you don't want to be that team and i really think you are just asking for whether what you're asking for permission most of our dilemmas are asking for permission i've said this before most of our dilemmas are people asking for

permission you want permission to end this um i wouldn't be surprised if after you wrote this, you then ended it. Sometimes I do stuff where it's like, I will, you know, I'll prepare for something, prepare something, and then I'll realize, oh, I can just do it and I'll just pull the trigger and do it. But I think one thing I'll remind you of is something I've also said before. When you care for someone from a place of resentment, you care for someone from a place of resentment that is felt it is felt that there is something wrong it is felt that this this care is not given through like love and altruism is the wrong word but you know it's coming instead from a sense of like put upon duty and resentment you say he needs my love and support right now he needs love and support but if your love and support is coming with this resentment and is only going to as it goes on get thinner and thinner because you're trying to give it and you just don't have it left because you don't want

to be in the relationship and you don't want to be in that position um that will be felt and it won't it won't be care it will be another sort of thing that he can't he can't maybe he might be able to diagnose that something's not quite right but he will feel it on some level even the least perceptive of men can feel it on some level they just won't really be able to say what's going on um i mean couples therapy is a perfectly fine idea i think if you do that you probably could move in together and you probably could build this life together but i think you've made up your mind i the thing is with lots of relationships you can just carry on if you want to you could just carry on you could go to couples there you could resign yourself to certain things i don't think you want that i think you want to

leave this relationship and the last paragraph is really telling you know perhaps there's so many perhaps there's so many maybes and perhaps perhaps this is a testament to our love for one other perhaps there is light and joy at the end of this tunnel if we both keep so many, what's the word? It's like a indefinites or something like that. It's a certain type of clause. I can't remember what it is. But those, whereas when you're talking about the things that you don't want and the things that, and how you're done with it, it's very certain. I think, yeah, the perhaps to say it all, I think you should leave. I think you should leave with kindness, but I think yeah the perhaps to say it all I think you should leave I think you should leave with kindness uh but I think you should leave now and not draw it out for both of you that's my advice

yeah it's a sticky one still a sticky one I really do believe that a lot of relationships you could just settle down and resign yourself and you can mend them but I'm a leaver so I'm going to take the lead position whereas i think you're a you're a battler you're you're a let's point this out and that's that's really good as well but you have to not necessarily not necessarily i mean like i've always been a lever and now i'm married like i mean that's the thing is that like it i guess for me it's about that gut knowledge i think you know when you can't be in love with someone again, I think, I think they've got this gut knowledge.

I think from the way they phrased it, that knowledge is there. You're not saying at the end, having discussed this at length with both a professional and all my close friends and writing to you, you're not being like, I don't know. Like it could go either way.

You're like, I can't leave right now. That's telling. And I think, I think it's just now. That's telling. And I think, I think it's just that thing of like, if you do it, he probably will be surrounded by people telling him how selfish and horrible you are. But you kind of have to accept that.

Sometimes you have to be the villain. And in the words of Will Young, I think I better leave. Oh my God. Moira. No, but we got to leave right now. We've got to leave.

We've got to leave right now.'ve gotta leave we gotta leave right now this has been if i speak before i fall any deeper um it's a great song it's a great song i always see that karaoke as a slamming song anyway this has been if i speak i've been moyni mclean with 20 of brain cells next time there'll be at least 30. You've been? I've been Ash Sarkar. I only ever had 20% of brain cells, but it's all I need, baby.

All right. Bye. Bye.サブタイトル キミノミヤ