If I Speak - 36: Should being a girlboss earn me a break from cleaning?

Episode Date: October 29, 2024

Ash and Moya wonder why women still shoulder the burden of housework, even when they’re #leaningin to their careers. Plus, a listener who doesn’t know how to deal with his cheating ex-partner. Email your missed connections and dilemmas to [e-mail] Music by Matt Huxley.

Hello and welcome to an autumnal and drizzly episode of If I Speak. With me is my co-pilot, Moya Lothian-McLean. Moya, what's going on with you? Speak for yourself, where I am sitting, it's actually dry, can you believe it? Despite being in one of the UK's wettest cities. And it is a beautiful, crisp autumnal day. My view is sensational. I am just seeing leaves, yellow, another color orange uh yeah i've got

a great view from my window although i have realized a spot near me that i can see is one of the favored for local drug dealing i'm always watching transactions many transactions are happening support local entrepreneurs that's what i always say exactly rumor has it you've got questions for me i do have questions for you okay okay first question in an ideal world how many siblings would you have oh oh man no oh what a fucking question the most difficult question because i have an older sister who's a full blood sister i've got two stepbrothers um i'm very very close with uh one of them or pretty close i don't want him to listen to this and be like bitch we're not close but like i would say pretty close and i've got yeah two stepbrothers one of whom I'm close with um and I've got a younger half brother who's my biological dad's kid who I've met like twice and yeah very very complicated

feelings about that so I presently have three siblings really four technically and it's so complicated and weird I mean I don't think it's the number of siblings I think it's the relationship with the sibling and the capacity for that relationship to change so like lots of you know I've got a couple of friends who have got like one brother and they're like really really close with that brother weren't always but like they've cultivated an adult relationship which is really really close and that's the kind of relationship I would like to have with a sibling I don't know what about you ideal number of siblings it's hard I think three would have been good because it's me and my sister and i think one more might have been a good mediation between us um we're way too close in age we're like 18 months apart so the the i think there was always like

low-level competition in different ways um and i think a third sibling would have just maybe mellowed out mellowed out the dynamics a little bit more and third sibling would have just maybe mellowed out, mellowed out the dynamics a little bit more. And then someone would have always had someone to complain to. Would gender have been important? Like in your, in your imagination? No boys. Three girls.

No boys. Boys not allowed. No boys. I want three girls. Three girls. I think that would have been a great little mix, but we got two. I think if I've been an only child, I be if you think i'm annoying now the insufferableness if i had been

an only child and all my mom's hopes and dreams had been poured just into me and i was told i don't think she should have told me like i'm a special source all the time and also my rest of my family were really good at being like you're just a person like who the fuck do you think you are uh vibes but I would have been terrible and definitely definitely if I'd have been an only child I think she'd have sent me to private school oh my god whereas luckily because because there were two of us and she became an unexpected single mum it was state school free free meals baby there wasn't there wasn't any extra funds but on my own I think on my own she'd have been able to handle the child care um I think she would have sent me to private school I think I would be a very very different person and I'd probably be making more

money but I'd be really insufferable more insufferable my one of my closest friends is an only child and when we were friends when we were teenagers and I was just like my god like you've got all this stuff like you know he was the friend with the car right he had a blue Fiat Punto the legendary Fiat Punto um but now his parents are getting a bit older I think that you know being an only child then itself is a source of anxiety because it's like what kind of responsibilities am I going to have for my parents and also my own experience of watching them get older like I don't have someone to share that with so he got the punto but at what cost at what cost um what what other questions do you have okay next question do you believe in invisible string theory oh so this is the thing about like

there are these ties that have connected you to a person or people yep and so it was like always meant to be somehow yeah um i think that what i intellectually believe and what I feel are two different things. What I intellectually believe is that you, you retrospectively have the sense of like fate or meant to be right. And, and it's a reflection of how much you love someone that you kind of want to have loved them forever, even when you didn't know them, right. You, you, you love them so much. It's like, we were always in love even before we met, right? And it's this sort of like totalizing experience. But like, while I know that intellectually,

it's like, well, I feel that there was like an invisible string between me and my partner. And for my best friend and her husband, definitely an invisible string because they met, right? Two Irish people met in Barcelonaona except then it turns out that he's her cousin's best friend and they met as children they met as toddlers oh that's not that unusual i'm so sorry ireland is such a small place no but to me like in a foreign country in a

foreign city no i've got a story okay i once had a dalliance with an irish man shock horror such a lovely guy uh and i can't remember all this happened because it was so long ago but then i went to a festival with an irish guy that i'd moved into it must have been after i went to a festival an irish guy that I'd lived with over summer, not in a romantic way. I told you we were like best friends, so nice. Went to a festival with him, all his pals. And later it turned out, it must've met the Irish guy afterwards

because I was living in the new house by that point. So I met this Irish guy afterwards and it turned out that he had been in the same festival with a separate group that I'd never met and they'd been referencing him. And I recognised the nickname they used to reference him because it was slightly unsavory afterwards. I'm not going to say it. I'm not going to say it,

but it was of the time. And that he'd been, he knew all those guys, even though he came from a completely different place from Ireland. And they'd been talking about him at best when I hadn't realized. That's like, it's just because Ireland is small. It's nothing to do with the invisible string. Like it's just because it's a small country.

Well, I don't know. I think it was invisible string. I think it was invisible string. I'm just so invested in my friend's love story. It's an invisible string. Well, yeah, that's because you want them to have loved each other retrospectively all their lives. That's the same. It's the same thing.

We love these people so much. We're like, you are destined to be together. I feel like that about Pete and Ariana Grande. And then look what happened to them. Okay. Last question. What is the wankiest book you use to impress people? Oh, the one I've just written. There's nothing wankier than that no there's definitely conversation you drop in somewhere where you're like oh yeah i just i loved it when i was reading this doiste esky i loved i loved it and growing i think all these themes you englishly i know there was a wanky book that you were using to impress people it might not just it just might not be doiste esky or whatever the fuck his name was okay not a book and and it is i don't say

this to impress people i say it because it's like weirdly um very important to me in various ways othello tell me why you use othello to impress people okay uh okay like multiple things like one is i just i i love it so, so much. And it's historically so interesting. And like what it reveals about like early modern race formation, like incredible. The fact that the enemy is the Ottoman Turk, but like, you know, when that enemy doesn't materialize, the racial hierarchy of Venice like turns against itself and like pulls itself apart it's like oh fascinating to I've loved the way Iago like was either Coleridge or Elliot I can't remember described Iago as being motiveless malignancy right like why he fucking hates this dude defies explanation

and the way you know some of those like iago lines like put money in thy purse you know if a friend of mine's like oh i've got to do this thing but i don't know whether i should i'll be like put money in my purse and then finally the the character who i i really identify with is cassio who is othello's like lieutenant and then he's the one who Iago turns Othello against by suggesting that he's been having an affair with Desdemona because like he knows he can't drink and I think that this is actually quite like an early and sensitive portrait of like alcoholism and someone who knows he can't just have one um and then he's manipulated into having one and then he has many and he disgraces himself and I can't remember the

exact wording of the line but it's something like I have lost that immortal part of myself reputation reputation reputation and that very much is how I feel sometimes about like this reputation that I have to preserve and like feeling that it's at risk and if it you know if someone did something to like um bring it down you know I was talking I was talking to um my partner about like a sense of embarrassment about something and I was like I've lost that immortal part of myself reputation reputation reputation and he was like can you just speak normally but I don't think that's wanky I don't think that's wanky I'm just moved by the power of Shakespeare you gave me the perfect

answer you gave me the answer i wanted you you educated people but also definitely definitely will be considered wanky but in a very useful way and i know some people i know people out there will be taking the reputation line if i hear someone say it i know they're a special one okay let's let's talk about reputation let's talk about some dynamics gendered and otherwise tell me you have got an intrusive thought hit me i do have an intrusive thought so now this is me playing i guess like um russian roulette with my reputation that's what this podcast is it's like spin the wheel of the revolver like put the gun of self revelation to your head we find all the bullets already we've we've done that already they've gone now it's just empty pull the trigger it's like ash the brains are on the wall it's done

like already it's over all right so here's my intrusive thought and it's a genuine one that i've been wrestling with and thinking about in various ways and it's quite simple it's a genuine one that I've been wrestling with and thinking about in various ways and it's quite simple it's a simple question and it's am I toxic about money so as special ones will know I live with two people I live with my partner and our best friend and the three of us have a really really good relationship and basically that's because we're in alignment about how we like to live. And we've talked about that before, but I just want to drill down into like the financial element of that, because that is the source of, of, you know, my question of myself. So that alignment in how we live, a lot of that is financial. Like we're in agreement about how

finances and our arrangement around finances allows us to live in the way we is financial. Like we're in agreement about how finances and our arrangement around finances allows us to live in the way we want to. So we split groceries and bills equally, we cook communally, and we're not precious about what belongs to who. But we don't split everything equally. We pay into the mortgage at different levels, but that paying of the mortgage at different levels is reflected in having a different share of the house. And things like repairs or getting work done, that's mostly me paying. But again, that will be reflected in the share of the house. So it's not really unequal. It's more like you take the hit on cashflow now, but ultimately you get it back in terms of what you own of the asset.

And when it comes to all that stuff, I do have good feelings about it. I don't have a problem with it. That's all good. The bit where I'm wondering whether I'm a bit toxic, it's really a question of how integrated are our finances really? Because we're in this middle space between considering finances separate and considering them shared and there's a whole load of emotions which come with that um out of the three of us I'm the highest earner um and what I sometimes feel resentful about is that I do feel responsible for us as a household and I feel like I'm the financial backstop for all of us in case of an emergency or something um so like if the roof were to cave in tomorrow I know that that would be up to me to pay for it because I'd be the only one who can but that also then means that I'm

thinking about putting aside money for contingencies that I'm not always sure that everyone else is thinking about and on top of that feeling of like financial responsibility I do I do feel um that domestic labor disproportionately falls on me as well um and that's kind of impossible to prove like I wish that there was something like a pedometer for like chores and so then we could be like this is how many steps I've done or like how many wipes I've done or how many dishes I've done and you could just be like it's objective because this is just rooted in feelings and these feelings just to say might be wrong um and I do think that's gendered like I do think it's gendered that for me like cleaning and like taking care of the house

is like a number one priority and for the guys that maybe it's a bit more like if I've got time but to be fair to both of them I work from home quite a lot so arguably it's easier for me to do bits around the house or to keep track of what needs doing but and this is coming back to the toxic bit if I'm being honest there's a part of me that feels as if my financial role in the house should earn me the right to do less domestic labor and not more right I think because I'm more financially responsible I should get to do less domestic labor and maybe that's toxic because I deep down feel that money should buy me this extra social thing. I think there's like a broader thing about freedom and responsibility. And just to say, like, I'm not

playing the world's smallest violin because having enough money to pay for the cost of living and a bit to put aside every month is just like the biggest weight off of your shoulders. I know what it's like not to have it. I know what it's like to have it it. And I know what it's like to have it. And it is better to have it. But yeah, I guess, like I said, I feel responsible for the people I live with, even though that's not coming from them. They're not saying you have to be responsible for us. But I do feel responsible to make sure that I keep us in the black. And I think that does create a kind of resentment where I feel locked into responsibility and they get a bit more freedom to put their personal fulfillment first, whatever that is. So the big dog, big daddy Karl Marx said, from each according to his ability, to each according

to his needs. And so when I think about what my actual deep down feelings are about money, I feel like I'm failing in my principles as a communist because I have the ability to be responsible in this way. They don't, they have different needs. So shouldn't I be upholding that principle? And unsurprisingly, this is really and profoundly entwined with an emotional story about money, about men, about trust, about vulnerability. My mom got completely fucked financially in the divorce with my dad. And he didn't pay child support on top of that. So she had to be responsible for literally everything. And we were precariously housed for a while and it was downstream from that financial precarity

and being like fucked over by the divorce and so obviously like when you are forming a family of your own which is what's happening here that's what this household is it makes it brings back the family of origin right emotionally like it just comes up and emotions are wrapped up with how i think about money and yeah i think i feel a bit vulnerable because my life is so enmeshed with men these two men who are really important to me in different ways and to come back to the question am i toxic for feeling deep down that earning more money should give me more power within my household and if it is toxic how do i change that uh i don't think it's toxic because you're not enacting that i think toxicity is only when we enact some a belief that goes against our

principles so well maybe that's not the right definition toxicity but in this specific situation so what this clearly is is a fight between your political principles and the state of society's like reality because if you lived in a household that adhered to the general fiscal rules that seemed to guide

okay Rachel Reeves I know I was like okay these made up fiscal rules exactly they're all fucking made up that seemed to guide I guess British society a lot of the western world then you would be living in a place where

having more money should give you more power in theory although that is mitigated as you say by gender and ethnicity um so you could be living in a household where you earn 10 times more than your partner, but it might still be that somehow he's ending up with, uh, the sort of lion's share of control over the finances. It's an interesting thing to see, but if we took them at like the basic level, earning more money, we're told gives you more control and more autonomy over the way things are done. And more of a say in say like the household the ability to say to your partner and your housemate no you have to do all the hoovering because i'm paying more of this that's not what you're doing what you're doing is you've set up a living situation that

accords with your all your political principles you've come to this agreement we talked about this idea of building a household you've built this household based on founding principles that agree with your politics it's not toxic to have so much osmosis from the outside world that you're like when you're hoovering you're like fucking hell it'd be great to do less of this be really good if i did less of this it's not toxic to think that there's often times in you know dynamics i've had where i'm like god it would be i i you know i have all the bills on my on my like i pay all the bills for my accounts on my phone like i'm not not responsible solely but in a house it's like i do all this i've taken on this responsibility it'd be great to take on less this responsibility but it's an issue of control do you

think you have would you trust other people to do that sometimes the answer is no sometimes the answer is yes we We talked about standards, particularly living standards in the early episode. If the boys are coming home and they don't have the same level of clean standards that you do, and I don't mean like they're messy pigs, but they just don't maybe hoover as much as you, then unfortunately there's that gap you talked about.

You have to fill that gap, which is I'm gonna hoover. You're not here. I have five minutes. I'm gonna hoover. much as you then unfortunately there's that gap you talked about you have to fill that gap which is i'm gonna hoover you're not here i have five minutes i'm gonna hoover and when you're doing that you're like wouldn't it be great if uh you come you like we talked about this wouldn't it be great if these people hoovered more and your mind fills in the gaps with this fantasy of like how could i make that possible and for you the only sort of i guess legitimate explanation of how you could get everyone else to do the household chores you want them to do at a higher level than you is, I make more money. That's the raison d'etre or like, that's the reasoning I can use. For someone else, it might be, well, like, for example, me, I'd be like, well, I do all this bit of housework

and I pay all the bills. So not pay all the bills. I administer all the bills. So it'd be great if someone cleaned the floors more. We all come up with our own reasons for why we shouldn't have to do shit that we have to do. That's not toxic. That's normal. What's toxic is when you start backing that, believing it and enforcing it,

using say financial power as a dominating stick. I think that's, and there's other stuff with you as well. Like there's other stuff with you that's not really aggressive. What I's and there's other stuff with you as well like there's other stuff with you that's not really aggressive what i mean is there's other factors like you mentioned that are gonna affect the way you relate to money you obviously brought up the relationship you had with money from your family experiences and as a woman there's like this real gendered element to this idea that money is meant to be autonomy. Money is meant to be freedom. You are a woman of color who has experienced

socioeconomic disadvantage, especially in your formative early years. When you get older and you have money and you have security, it is very hard to trust and believe that letting other people have even a share of the benefits of that is not gonna fuck you over in some way because we see it happen again and again and again like the idea that i would have a joint

account with a man a man i don't even leave the same house with a man like if i enter a long-term relationship i want the exact setup that my mom and my sort of stepdad did which is lived in different houses tim burton style because the likelihood is we probably will end up separating at some point and the uk doesn't have prenups and where's all my money so that's actually that's changed um that changed i think in 2014 possibly um so relatively recently so now prenups are recognized as um evidence of an intention to form a legal relationship so they are taken into account during separations you think i didn't look into that before getting married did you get a prenup no we haven't we haven't it's like one maybe this is stupid but

like we we have a joint account which is the account where um we put in the same amount of money each month for mortgage and for bills um but other than that it's like my pay comes into my separate account so it would be it would be difficult to argue that our finances were shared from that basis. The second thing is that there are different kinds of ownership of a house. So there's joint tenants and tenants in common. A joint tenant is where automatically if I popped my clogs tomorrow,

my share of the house would go equally to my partner and a best friend um and you you own equal amounts in the house tenants in common is where you own unequal amounts of the house and you have to have a separate um a separate agreement if you wanted to go to the tenants in common now because my partner will now be my next of kin because we're married it would automatically go to him so it kind of feels like we don't need one um also I've got I've got confidence in my ability to out litigate him I will tie up every single lawyer in London in conflicts of interest don't think for a minute I won't play dirty I've watched enough legal dramas to do it I yeah I don't I don't think I would get a prenup but I also wouldn't share my finances to a degree that I

would need a prenup to be honest probably like I don't earn enough to warrant a prenup like my my potential partner would likely earn more and be the one asking for the prenup but still I think the way that you're doing it which is you pay pay into the joint account for the shared cost, but you have separate finances is the most sensible way. You don't need a prenup in that case. But coming back to this question, am I toxic about money? ideology that permeates everything we do and the way we move about the world makes us our knee jerk reactions to what money means and represents and how we should handle it is really poisonous it makes us more uh not so much the word it's not defensive we have a constant scarcity mindset this idea that other people want some of what we have the idea that hoarding is the key to

power and domination and often it is the problem so i would argue you're actually very what's the what's the antinonym of toxic benign benign i would argue you have the most like benign or positive positive attitude to money you might have the thoughts of the capitalist thoughts are feeding in but the way you're actually handling and acting your financial practices within this household is completely at odds with what we're taught to do so you're the opposite of toxic ash you're not you're not giving into this whereas toxicity would be to actually enact it i don't know i don't know i mean i think like the arrangement between the three of us could actually be way more egalitarian

if we wanted it to be like if we could say it doesn't matter how much money you put in we have equal shares of the house like we could we could if we wanted to like we don't do that so i don't think that we are like as egalitarian as we could be um i think the second thing is that like for me that like there is something about money and gender here which is like really um I guess like febrile or like that's the nerve that's exposed and it's like well you know I thought that you know because like growing up like my mum was very didactic about certain things right and it's because like one she experienced like huge vulnerability from having been a single mom and her financial position after the divorce. But also secondly, she was a social worker

for like most of her career. So like she was constantly dealing with like family breakdown. And in particular, women who were victims of abuse could be physical abuse, sexual abuse, financial abuse, coercive control. And so she tried to teach us certain lessons about how to make decisions, which to just draw the distinction, this isn't about victim blaming someone who is a victim of abuse, but it was sort of like, here are the things I want you to think so you're not and how you can identify threat. So she'd say things in like very, very didactic ways. She'd be like, a man never gets to hit you twice. And that was a way of being like, he's not going to change after the first time you leave because she'd seen so many women locked in cycles

of abuse so that's how she taught that lesson um and another one and it was like something that she said and also her her best friend who you know was very vulnerable in relationships with men in every way but this one it was like money equals autonomy and power right you don't share that with a man right you don't you don't get locked in with that like it's got to be it's got to be yours you have to have like a source of income which he is not able to fuck with in any way because the consequences of that can be so dire and so you know obviously i'm nowhere near that position and like you know the finances are relatively independent but there is this feeling of like okay well if if financially I'm

so stable and I know I'm all right why do I feel so vulnerable money was supposed to be the thing which stopped me feeling vulnerable in relation to men but here I am feeling vulnerable and also here I am feeling like I'm in a gendered role because disproportionately I feel like I'm doing more of the cleaning and I'm more responsible for like house stuff and it sometimes feels like have I got the worst of both worlds like am I like a 1950s breadwinner without a 1950s housewife like what the fuck this is this touches on something very interesting which is recently the ft did a big study of men and women uh those the only two categories they covered unfortunately they did not cover other gender categories but it's the ft so let's just accept they did that yeah just be

grateful they covered women at all don't lie i know you fucking love the ft every leftist loves the ft i love it i love it so they did they did this study in september where they were and it was john burns murdoch of course the video he did this was hilarious because he sort of sounded like he's blaming women for this but hilarious but basically there's this study found that in a lot of western countries and in the uk women are out educating men they're out employing and out earning men and they're also out caretaking which means as they put it in the ft it was the question of who is doing most of the legwork raising children who is focused on getting a good education and okay but who is out working to bring

home a good income and the answer to all those questions is women so it's what you described there which is we're not just the housewives now we're also the fucking breadwinners so we have to do everything and the way that this but the way this study also and it's great that we're you know we have we've made huge leaps in being able to like out educate out perform i would argue that our actual power that we wield has not yet caught up maybe we don't want it to catch up in the same way like you don't just want to tip from patriarchy to matriarchy because it's all about dominance those two systems all about domination um but the the at least give me a taste of the matriarchy before i decide whether or not i like it you're getting a taste now this is a patriarchal matriarchy,

which is where we do all the work and all the money. No, it's not. No, it's not. Because I can't come home from the office and be like, what's for dinner, honey? Well, this was a fascinating bit about this study because it said that men, young men particularly, are adrift because they are no longer,

like they're slipping behind employment they're slipping behind in education but they also aren't taking up the caretaking duties so they have no fucking purpose and are just getting more bitter and like reactionary which we've seen in sort of the support for parties like reform or in the general just swing towards the manosphere and that was that was very interesting to me but I was thinking again about the you know that we do in some ways it is like the worst of all worlds because until there is like a proper feminist revolution

our power levels will never bring equality it will always be like this weird case by case tip scales how does it work out and if the men are not taking up more caretaking duties you do just get this complete imbalance where women are doing everything, having to try and juggle it,

resenting that they're having to do everything. And then men are like, there's no role for me in this modern world. Get back to tradwifery. Like we need to go back. And that's, you are seeing that play out. The question used to be like, can a woman have it all?

And the answer is, well, maybe not, but a woman can do it all. We can do, that's a great way to put it. We can have it all and the answer is well maybe not but a woman can do it all we can do that's a great way to put it we can do it all but emotionally then and on our interpersonal relations it's not equality it's just an imbalance and we don't want that either like there's this this report came out at the same time as another report in the guardian which said that there's been a huge upswing in women who've decided to remain celibate and like 60% of people who said that they'd refrained from dating over the last two years they studied were all young women those things are not a fucking coincidence there is a growing

consensus among the women I know that they that I think Sean Fay talked about this in the earlier episode we did that we have this expectation of what men are supposed to provide in our lives or what a partner is supposed to find in our lives and often if you're a woman dating men but i also say it play on other partnerships then there's this emotional expectation that's not met and then you're just like well i earn enough and i do all these things so why why do i need i want a partner i want a partner but i'm not finding someone who can meet the things I actually need. I mean, I think this is an interesting thing, which is something can be gendered

and it not be within a heterosexual, cisgender couple either, right? Because like these ideas of gender and these ideas of like the demarcation of the roles, you know, earner and carer, so on and so forth, like that plays out. Because I remember watching an episode of couples therapy and it was a lesbian relationship. And one of the women was trans and they were, um, I think maybe they were pursuing IVF to have a baby as well. And

it was this whole conversation about like, well, if I'm out at work, like, why should we split the chores 50-50? And like, you know, the person who was the gestating parent being like, do you understand like the literal labor that's involved in like the demands it makes of my body? And like threaded through that was this sort of question of like, what should money be able to buy you? Or what should providing be able to buy you? And I providing be able to buy you and I think that like this is why I kind of wonder like because there is an element of like if not toxicity certainly like resentment right and if you think of resentment as sort of poison that builds like maybe it's not toxic in the sense of like I'm being immoral but there's a toxicity which is like these thoughts and these feelings generate a kind of poison that I don't I don't like because when I was talking to

a friend of mine about this you know I was having a big old poison that I don't I don't like because when I was talking to a friend of mine about this you know I was having a big old vent and I was just like I'm always doing fucking laundry like always fucking laundry or like you know would it fucking kill this person to better better but you know I was really really going for it and I was like and on top of that I'm fucking earning out I'm bringing home the bacon and bear bear bear bear and my friend was like why don't you just get a cleaner and i was like oh like one is that this is like the story of liberal feminism which is like women enters workplace and then outsources domestic labor to a working class woman often an immigrant working class woman right and there's something about that

which like doesn't sit right with me like i believe in paying clean as well right it's important work and i believe in paying clean as well but in terms of thank you sarah dighton you know what i mean it's like i believe in paying them well but like do you remember when that was a whole thing on twister oh my god it was like should should you it was like should your cleaner come during the pandemic like cleaner feminism yeah cleaner feminism but I was just like for me something just doesn't quite sit right which is like in order to negotiate this thing within my own relationships I'm like well instead of doing that I'm just gonna like outsource it to this like working-class woman of color like doesn't sit right and then the second thing is I

was like but am I having to pay for the cleaner as well like like why why is it that there's every other option other than like man does more and like again like to to be fair to to the people who I live with because you know it's gonna get back to them and I think it's really important to like not to misrepresent them which is that housemate in particular like when he you know when he cleans very very good at cleaning and he is around a bit more and we'll do it and partner like definitely like has gotten better because I have said like this thing really stresses me out it really upsets me and not only has he gotten better he's like changing his working arrangements like next year to like be more in the house and do more house stuff so

like we are moving in a direction of like better, but like there was, there's certainly been this thing of me going like, well, why isn't money buying me the power within these dynamics to change the bits of gendered relations that I don't like. Because gender is more powerful than a patriarchy and ensuring that you will get the lion's share in. I've been, I've noticed this more in households as well. Like that you will get the lion's share in i've been i've noticed this more in households as well like that are made up of uh random you know housemates like in in my last house there was a discussion about getting a cleaner at some point because someone didn't clean as much as other people and all i will say is it was very gendered and i don't mean that in

a mean way it was just a fact and the question wasn't as you gendered. And I don't mean that in a mean way. It was just a fact. And the question wasn't, as you say, why doesn't, why don't they? I won't say their gender, but we can guess from what I've just said. Why don't they just clean more? We never really asked that. We were like, we just accepted they wouldn't. So we started talking about getting a cleaner.

And I see this more in like these households of just young middle-class people. I don't know if it's as prevalent in Glasgow yet, but in London, lots of people are like, we should just get a cleaner. And it's and it's as you say not just outsourcing the labor it's outsourcing the issue of actually discussing this actually trying to confront this head-on it's not wanting to do the work of talking about this because it's difficult and would mean and it's almost impolite to bring up the fact that there's an uneven gender relation here

for some reason and that's why we haven't got a revolution i'm joking that's not why but it's part of it like we we don't want to talk about these things head on because it feels aggressive and there's so much laden in them there's yeah it's it's just an ongoing thing i know we have to go and do some dilemmas in a minute but it is really fascinating how that's bleeding into these thrown together households as well where there are gender disparities i mean i think maybe the last thing i'd say is that like something i've learned very recently is that anger is better than resentment right because like i think you know i can't remember if there's something you said which is resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die like it's just you said that uh no it wasn't me it definitely wasn't me definitely

wasn't me um oh it was Esther Perel Esther Perel there you go I said resentment caring for a place of resentment that's my line um but like yeah it is like drinking poison expecting someone else to die and whereas actually sometimes the thing you need to do is express the anger which like I think particularly women can find really difficult and like you, one of the things that like it did take was for me to just say, I'm really angry about this because like, you know, you're telling me how busy you are and you're telling me like, you know, that you're out at work

and then you want to see your friends and you want to like, you know, do the stuff that you find like emotionally nourishing, emotionally and socially nourishing. Do you think that I find it emotionally and like socially nourishing to scrub the toilet? Because I don't like, like I feel about it the same way you do. So like, you know, why is it that your sense of like, oh, but like after work, I want to do this. It's like, well, after work, I want to do those things too. Except I'm like up to my

elbows and toilet water. But things are moving in a better direction. I just, I wanted to, to lance the boil of my money and cleaning related resentment. That's all you can do at the end of the day, which is try and address it in a way that actually feels aligned to maybe more radical possibilities than are put forward by the most predominant accepted way of things. That's how we get the gender revolution should we do some dilemmas um how one what is the section called and two how do people submit to it i'm in big trouble and if you're in big trouble you need to write into if i speak at navarra media.com that is if i speak at navarra media.com shall i do some

narrating i love it when you do the narrating i was always the narrator in school plays i bet you were too yeah absolutely brown child who could read well 100 narrator they loved it they really they did not know what they were doing when they set us up to be narrators like that was on a path straight ahead i always want to be the narrator more than Mary. Like fuck Mary. She had no lines. I said everything. That was great. Okay. I'm in big trouble dilemma. Hi, Maureen Ash. I just wanted to say, start by saying I've always struggled to get into podcasts, but If I Speak has been a game changer and always seems to cover things that are on my mind or in my orbit in a

super engaging and fun way. So thank you. The live show was also a blast. Oh, I can't wait to do another live show. Maybe a little Christmas one as a treat. Onto my dilemma. So for context, a few years ago, I went through quite an ugly breakup with my long-term girlfriend of about six years. Without going into too much much detail she cheated on me which we tried to recover from from a year and then followed that up by getting me to quit my job and buy tickets for a long joint trip only to break up with me a few weeks after oh a few weeks after she started the trip early leaving me with admittedly a fantastic solo trip that she does not get any credit for and a couple of years of real financial stress that

i've just about bounced back from i met my ex-girlfriend at university and our friendship group from that time is a wonderful group of people who we are unfortunately mutually close to as such though i prefer not to have to see her again i have been around her at various events festivals and parties over the last few over the past few years because i wanted to see my other friends though the raw feelings have faded the resentment remains i'm not sure how best to come to terms with having this person in my life for the foreseeable future i have plenty of other good friends from other groups who i can see separately but i don't want to sacrifice seeing my university friends or miss out on their group plans just to avoid her. Though the trip fiasco is common knowledge to that group, the cheating is not

because I didn't want a witch hunt and at the time I also wanted to attempt to salvage the relationship, something I don't regret but will not try again if I find myself in the same situation in future. It's also humiliating, obviously, so you wouldn't necessarily want to discuss a lot i feel as though due to the time has passed my friends in that group prefer to have everyone just to get along which i can understand especially with their half knowledge of what occurred but this means i find need to find a way to resolve this individually my narration skills are poor today but that's because this this dilemma was pasted in as a haiku so i'm having to put the lines together okay guys i was i was a narrator i'm skilled the cherry blossom wilt yes the cherry blossom sheets it's not actually my fault okay i

still have my narration skills i don't know anyone personally who's been in a comparable situation so i can't seem to quite get the advice i need. I was hoping that you might both have some insight in the situation and how best to manage it. For added info, I'm male and in my late 20s. Thanks for reading and hope you have some thoughts. Always wanted to write to an agony aunt because it's literally my favourite thing to read. Luckily, I have an ex-boyfriend who hates me

and can't stand to be around me so I can definitely, definitely advise. But I didn't cheat just so just so you know i was very faithful even though no one would have blamed me um i would have blamed me i was her in love i i guess i guess i'm sort of wondering like what the question is here like is the question do you tell your friends that she cheated like is that the question that's at the heart of it or is it like how how do you cope with or deal with like having to see her around like I I'm not saying any of this in like a in a glib way because I do think that while I don't think that cheating on somebody is is a a capital crime right like I don't think

that when people do things which are hurtful to other people within the context of a relationship but you know it's not abuses or something that like everyone should like pile in and create a witch hunt while I think it's important to like kind of you know just like not not fully pressed down on the accelerator of like judgment and shaming I think that from the perspective of the person who has been cheated on those are traumatic revelations like people experience that as a form of trauma I think that is like quite common for people to feel like highly, highly like on edge, unable to focus, um, trust in their own perceptions is like really hard to rebuild. Um, they feel humiliated. They feel like their dignity has been taken from them. Like,

I do think that those revelations can be for people really, really traumatic. And so I think that that's a really important context for understanding maybe where you are special one, which is, you know, it was a few years ago, but it takes a really long time to get to a point where you go, well, how can I recover my own sense of dignity? Like, I think that word humiliation was really important. The humiliation of not just being cheated on and not just being, you know, taken for a ride with this whole like you know big trip that went really really wrong but also the humiliation of you having tried to stick it out and repair um and so I think that when you go well this is my context which is actually I'm now finally getting to the

point where I'm trying to recover my own dignity it then brings the it casts a light on maybe maybe what the dilemma is where you're thinking do I tell my friends or not I think that if really if you're looking at yourself and you're being honest and you're saying well I want to tell my friends because this feels like a huge part of myself and my story that I'm withholding from them then I think you should do that I think you should also understand if they feel very awkward about it and don't know how to deal with it because time has passed and like you know they're still they're still friends with your former partner but if and I wonder if this might be the case what you're dealing with is you want to try and recover your own sense of dignity. And there's part of you that's tempted or kind of chewing over having the power to tank her reputation in some way amongst the shared

group of friends. I think if that's what's going on, then the thing that you need to really like sit with and look at is, are there any other ways in which you can recover your dignity? Are there any other ways in which you can heal from the humiliation? Because I think by doing that, that's not actually going to bring you the kind of resolution that you need. But I don't know. What do you think? I think exactly the same as you,

which is, I think this letter writer, I think the special one, very much wishes that the ex was completely out of his life so he could move on at least his understanding of what moving on is which is outside out of mind can heal and one of the ways he wants to achieve that is by seeing her punished and excommunicated from the friendship group by telling them what she has done in its entirety. And I think also it must be very difficult when you're at these festivals, et cetera, et cetera, to see this

person who has caused so much hurt and pain to you. And that also you blame for some of the stresses in your life. And, you know, I think she definitely shares responsibility for getting you to, you know, go on that trip and quit your job um there's there's definitely there's definitely blame there the problem is i think you were giving her too much power by saying that she's like redirected your life in that way because she also had an amazing trip you made something out of it you dealt with the circumstances all of that but it must be really hard to see this person around having fun going on with their life unpunished in your mind that's probably the darkest part of you that is sitting around being like she just fucking got on with her

life and got to do this to me and now she gets to keep all these friends the thing is even if you tell your friends and i think you should in some ways and i'll get onto that i think what i was i agree with ash i think you should tell some of your friends but they will not respond by excommunicating her that's not the reaction you're going to get she's not going to be punished and she shouldn't be um because she is almost her life now and how she is now whether she gets punished or not for this crime is absolutely irrelevant to your healing it is not going to do anything to make you a more healed whole whole, healthier person. If you give into these instincts and you managed, even if you managed to get a witch hunt against her, that would honestly rot you.

It would, as we talked about, resentment will poison you. Resentment will poison you. Being able to enact that resentment in a destructive way on someone else will also poison you. You'll be sinking to the level of the crime that you think she's committed against you if you manage to somehow get a witch hunt going, but won't the reason i think you should talk to some of your friends about this is i don't think you've managed to process this yet properly on your own and why would you it's a huge fucking thing you need to be able to talk to friends about this you might have other friends you've spoken to about this and its impact on you but i think you should talk it through with some people with people that you're close to if some of your best

friends are in this group i don't think you should be going out broadcasting it to the whole of the university group but if there are people that you trust and you have that back and forth with within this university group i really think you should talk to them about it but you have to wait and see where it's coming from and how you discuss that and it can't be predicated on terms of like she did this to me and this is how I feel about her, et cetera, et cetera. It has to be on, how are you feeling? What support do you actually need with this? How did it, how did it impact you? And how are you, you know, what do you need to process these emotions? That's where it needs to come from. And I talked about this ex who really fucking hates me and has built this resentment in their mind for reasons that everyone around

us agrees are mad because he did not process the end of the relationship. He did not process what happened, which was totally, it was a totally normal bog standard breakup, but it became a character in his mind. And I can't go into all the shit that he's done, but it is crazy shit since.

It's just got like, we should not be entangled the way we are with this distance from the relationship in his mind and hopefully that will change because other things have happened but there's just like an unwillingness to move on when you don't process and a need to see someone else punished and that is coming from inside of you and you have to look at where that like what is this feeding we talked about humiliation i just need to stress you might feel humiliated you have not been humiliated the only person who has been who's humiliated themselves is your ex-partner for the behaving in that way in the first place like that's the only place that

humiliation is but you have to sort of like separate it out you have to move this away and be like this does not reflect on me what they did to me or how you feel what they did to you doesn't reflect on you it's got nothing to do with you as a person it's got no reflection on you as a human being it is something they chose to do it affected you but it was not because of you and you have not been humiliated by these actions you feel humiliated you've not been humiliated other people will not look at you as if this is an embarrassing humiliating thing to do but you have to work through those emotions we talk a lot about this idea

of like taking the high road in society. And sadly, it's always fucking true. If you continue to take the high road and continue to behave with like empathy, maturity, you don't have to forgive this person per se, but you have to process it and realize that it is separate from you and seeing them at festivals,

what they're doing at festivals, their existence, their happiness now, whatever. It doesn't matter what they are doing with their life it doesn't matter you have no insight into their being now you can only focus on yourself and your own healing the last thing that i'd add is think about what kind of story you tell about yourself so not about what story you tell about her but what story deep down you tell about yourself do you deep down go oh I tried I tried to stick with it for another year and that was stupid of me right like do you like deep down is that what you feel about yourself um because if so like you are just driving all these knives into yourself of like I am undeserving I have something to be ashamed for. I have been humiliated. I've lost my dignity.

I lost my quality of discernment. Like all of these things, just driving knives into yourself. And maybe if you just go, well, actually I tried something that didn't work out because ultimately I'm quite a loving person. I'm a loving person and I didn't want to throw someone away. And, you know, maybe the call I would make is different next time but that's not because I'm a different person next time I'm still a loving person who doesn't want to throw people away and just like reframe some of this stuff like I'm saying this because like this is like you know this is something which I'm like struggling with and wrestling with at the moment which is bad things happen to you not because you're a bad person or you deserved it and shame comes it like it's like the bad thing opens a breach in a dam and then

shame is the thing which just comes flooding in even when you externalize and you go this person did this thing like actually shame is so so powerful um and i think that sometimes you just need to tell yourself a different story a different story about who you are and why you made the decisions that you made um but we have got to wrap up here we do can i just say one last thing which is yeah real dignity real dignity is what i'm getting from your letter which is that you have the ability to accept circumstances with kindness and empathy and even though you're talking about this resentment that you have, you've not enacted it yet. And I think you have, you know,

real dignity is healing and being able to hold someone at a distance and realize that you don't have to meet an eye for an eye and that tooth for a tooth make the whole world go blind. I think that's real dignity, in my opinion. I think you have it in spades, just so you know. And that's the tooth.

What's the name of the show this has been if i speak and we have indeed been speaking who have you been speaking as i've been speaking as ash sarka who've you been speaking as i've been moya lothian mclean should we see you next week goodbye bye Goodbye. Bye.