If I Speak - 53: Getting ‘the ick’

Episode Date: February 25, 2025

When did we all start ‘getting the ick’? And why does it mainly seem to be women who get it? Ash and Moya unpack the gender politics behind the ‘ick-course’. Plus: when is the right time to have the big money chat with your partner? Send us your dilemmas: [e-mail] Music by Matt Huxley.

Hello and welcome to If I Speak. It's another episode of what I hope is your favourite podcast. And with me today is... Ash Sarker, hopefully your second favourite podcast host, because Moja should be your number one. Don't blow smoke up my arse. I want us on equal pegs. I love blowing smoke. Let me blow the smoke. Okay, fine. I can be number three, you can be number two. And Ira Glass...

Why can't we just be equal? Where's the equality? Come on. See, you are a communist. How are you? I'm very well. How are you? I am all right. I am a little bit frazzled,

but the frazzle is good. The frazzle is a reflection of things that are going on. But yeah, I just feel quite nervous about the book coming out and being on a book tour. It's very difficult. I've heard, especially the debut, although all my author friends are like, it doesn't get easier because putting a book out

in the world is, and you know, it's been like, love me. Here's some vulnerability. And then you completely experience this idea of, oh, other people are gonna read this and gonna have opinions on it. And I want that so badly, but I also don't want that on any level. I guess like, I'm trying to narrativize it to myself

as you signed up for being stressed and now you're feeling the stress. This is just part of the deal rather than freaking myself out about feeling freaked out. Yeah. Do you have any questions for me? I do. I've got three of them.

Okay. So in the tradition of Condé Nast 73 questions, we are pushed for time. So we deducted 70 from that number. That means we have three. Question one, what is a technical skill that you wish you had? So it has to be a practical, technical, applied skill. It can't be like, oh, listening. Driving, I've said this so many times.

Oh, driving, I can't drive and I need to learn to drive. So I need to learn to drive so badly. Is there someone who will come to Glasgow and teach me how to drive? Because everyone, there's a huge waiting list here and I can't get off the waiting list. Can someone please teach me how to drive because everyone, there's a huge waiting list here and I can't get off the waiting list because someone please teach me how to drive. Okay, what's your practical skill? I wish I was more dexterous in general. That's not a technical skill. You've said. I wish that I could, I can chop and dice quickly

or I can chop and dice finely. I want it to be quick and fine. Quick and fine. Yeah, chopping is a fascinating one. I've accepted my chopping is as much as it will ever be. The key is a sharp knife. Oh, I have some really good knives now. Investing in sharp knives, that's very important. Yeah, great knives, got some good knives.

Anyway, question two. What's your bedtime routine? The real one, not the ideal one? Cleanse face, double cleanse. Not with oil. I'm not putting fucking cleansing oil on my face. I just use two different cleansers. Do my skincare.

Get into bed. If it's before 9 p.m., I'll watch something, occasionally read something. If it's after 9 p.m. I will go on TikTok until, or read something online, until, mostly TikTok, until my brain goes, stop procrastinating, sleep, and then I will switch off the light and go to sleep, and that's it. That's genuinely it.

And that's it. What's yours? Okay, I also double cleanse. I also double cleanse. I also double cleanse. So do my skincare bits. And then it depends if I'm with my partner or if we're apart for whatever reason. If I'm with my partner, we'll often, he gets very, very hyperactive around bedtime.

And he's like, now is the perfect time to annoy Ash. So he'll begin annoying me, but it's actually quite funny. Then we will read and then sleep. He often sort of like is like lights out, rolls over and sleeps first. And I'll read like a couple more pages to just like wind down my brain. But then if I am solo, totally different thing, it's get into bed, try and read to fall asleep, can't read to fall asleep, get distracted by a noise in the house, investigate the noise in the house, go back to bed,

see if the cat wants to come to bed, cat doesn't want to come to bed, get back in the bed again, watch some woodworking videos, maybe fall asleep for a bit, then wake up because on YouTube, they'll just play an advert for a scary movie in the middle of your woodworking video, and then you'll be like, oh, that's scary. Rinse and repeat.

You definitely, when he's away, you need like an emotional support pillow. Oh my God, I really do. It's why I wanna get a dog. It's why I wanna get a dog dog. It's why I want to get a dog but um How will Musa feel about that? Probably not good. I would love to see that. Final question and this may require a little bit of explanation. Cool. What for you is the ultimate cultural appropriation banger? Now we're in the post-work era. We could admit ultimate cultural appropriation banger. Now, we're in the post-work era, we could

admit that cultural appropriation produced some bangers. Jiho, a cultural appropriation banger. Anything involving Diplo, likely to be a cultural appropriation banger. What is your number one? Major Lazer did have some bangers. That first Major Lazer did have some bangers. Yeah, that first Major Lazer album. Not so much when they went into like lean-on bits, but when they did, watch out for this, that was a really good one. What's a full appropriation vibes? Gwen Stefani.

Gwen Stefani. Gwen Stefani and her Harajuku Girl era. Love angel music baby, hurry up and come and save me. Yeah, yeah, so when Harajuku, when she was doing that, I think because her entire aesthetic was Harajuku girls. Harajuku, like that would probably be one of my number ones. I'm trying to think of any others. I'm like, this is a culture appropriation banger. Imagine if it was a Shape of you by Ed Sheeran.

Okay, that's, that's my answer. Go on, Stephanie. That's a great answer. That's a great answer. Thank you so much. Shall I go on to my big theory? I want to hear this big theory. Okay. Lumbering up. Is ick culture just massive avoidance, dot, dot, dot, but for ladies? So the other day there was an article in the Telegraph, boo, about icks. Interesting. Oh, causing. So this article is basically saying that icks are causing

men's mental health to decline. I'm just going to read a little extract so you have the context. So here we go. Telling men they give you the ick is driving a hidden mental health crisis, experts have claimed. It is particularly used by young women to describe things they find unattractive in men. Across social media, users have shared their lists of things young men and teenagers do that give them the dreaded ick. Wearing skinny jeans, running for the bus, putting on a baby voice and doing doggy puzzle in a swimming pool are among the most commonly featured. One viral ick list included things such as drinking milk, applying lip balm, waiting for the green man

before crossing the road. Dan Summers, the founder of men's mental health charity, Man Up, said it was the kind of language that can cause men and young boys to really lose self-worth. And this article goes on to say that, you know, people use this as a joke, but the X are causing a rise of anxiety in young men.

What really struck me was the interesting bit of analysis from a therapist called Charlotte Melky at the end who says, The bigger problem we need to consider is why girls feel the need to belittle in order to feel a sense of security. Melky believes that culture is fueled by girls seeking its defense mechanism and protection from getting hurt by boys. Quote, these girls are feeling unsafe. When we feel safe and secure we don't feel the need to belittle other people. Physical violence is not available to girls, so they use words.

They use words that hurt, she said. Plus point, my friend and I, Kemi, shout out Kemi, were briefly discussing the ick the other day, which is obviously a very common phrase, not in our circle of teenagers, but in our circle of late 20s, early 30-somethings. And she was like, ick is also avoidance. It's just looking for an excuse to get out something immediately.

So I want to talk a bit about the ick, the rise of ick culture, ick course, and the connotations of the ick and what does it actually mean that this is now such a prominent way of talking about data? Thoughts, feelings? way of talking about data. Thoughts, feelings? There are so many thoughts and all of them incoherent. Oh, great. That's just what we want to hear.

Yeah. Why don't I start with, do you ever say that you get ex? No, but I think that I came along a little too late for ex. So I've been in a committed relationship for coming up to seven years now. And before that, people didn't talk about Ix. I'm not saying that people didn't end relationships for silly reasons, but it wasn't a cultural staple in the discourse. So, you know, the thing about being in a really committed relationship

where you live together and you spend a lot of time together is that there are a ton of icks because the other person is a fully fledged human being with weird little habits and annoying ways of doing things and that's because they're a real person. And I have probably a ton of icks to him. In fact, I know I've got a ton of icks to him. One of them is that he thinks that when I have a cold,

I blow my nose too much, which I think is unreasonable. No, that's really, my sister would love you. She hates it when I sniff. So I think that sniffing is an ick, but he thinks that I blow my nose too much. He's wrong. So I suppose icks in that context aren't a reason to leave or something that drives you away. It's just part of the paradox of a committed relationship,

which is that you, familiarity breeds contempt, right? And you were placed into such proximity and such familiarity that you're having to manage attraction, mystery, excitement, knowing too much, also that knowledge forming the basis of a really, really profound sense of connection and belonging.

I mean, that's the paradox of committed relationships. So yeah, I was too late for Ix in the dating sphere. I suppose what I would say about it is that I don't, I think that sometimes when we talk about women, there is a tendency to locate bad behaviors in experiences of patriarchal oppression. And I'm not saying it doesn't have any relationship to that, but I don't think it's always true. And I think, I think it's to make bad things come across as a bit more virtuous. I think that what XR is a response to what you've talked about a lot, Moira, which is the fact that dating has become such a low trust activity.

And so when we're talking about safety, we're not really talking about physical safety because the risks to women, unfortunately, haven't changed loads. Maybe in some ways have gotten, gotten better. We've got more legal rights to protect us against violence than we have before. But we're talking about psychological unsafety. We're talking about fear of rejection. We're talking about fear of being ghosted. We're talking about real precarity existing between people. And that does not just apply for women. Men are also having to deal with this context of low trust and high precarity. And I think that the ick becomes a form of cruelty because cruelty can make you feel more

powerful when you are reckoning with feelings of powerlessness. I think that it is an attempt to reverse the dynamic. You feel that men are in the position of power to discern and choose. And so you're flipping that back and you're saying, no, it is I who will discern and choose. And it's going to be on these little things to make you feel as precarious as I feel. So I don't... This thing about, oh, you know, women don't have recourse to physical violence, so we use words instead. I just, instinctively, I don't feel that that's quite right. And I think that that's an attempt to ignore or make more palatable some of the more toxic elements of how we are socialized

into femininity. I thought it was interesting, because I didn't read her saying that as a defense of the X at all. I read it just as an analysis of this idea, what kind of agreeing with what you're saying with that women don't feel safe. And that's not necessarily physical safety.

That's just like a safety where it's, this idea of safety as well has become so all encompassing. So I saw someone, someone who sets them up as like a prominent feminist online, instantly crossed them out. I'm joking, I'm joking. Just being like, ah, you know, men abuse women in all these ways and now you're saying

we can't talk about icks because it hurts their mental health. And I was like, that's just not ick culture. It's funny when you try and critique it a little bit because there will always be people who was like, that's just not ick culture. It's funny when you try and critique it a little bit, because there will always be people who are like, you're critiquing, talking about warning signs of abuse. And that's not what ick culture is. How's drinking milk a warning sign of abuse? Yeah, exactly. But it's because there's always someone who now has to take it to his most extreme structural thing to kind of defend the behavior as something that as he says virtuous or legitimate or that it has its roots in not just a defence mechanism but has you know this this this serious

foundation that should be listened to. But I didn't I didn't hear didn't read Melki's comments about why why these girls doing this is a form of safety as her being like, this is fine. That is interesting. They feel like they have to defend themselves against something in the modern dating world, which is exactly the point you're making. But it's a preemptive defence. What I thought about is it's interesting because we automatically are like, yeah, women do this, men don't talk about X. There are so many stupid things that I've heard men say have put them off a woman. What want to hear it. Oh, just like, what if people say it's just like, you know, the way that she talked or she was doing these things like that, you know, stupid stuff or, oh, she didn't know who the XYZ philosopher was, that kind of vibe, like stupid stuff, little stuff.

And I think men are equally as guilty of rejecting possible partners, whether they're women or not, based on just like very arbitrary things. Because in the modern dating market, all of this is a pride saving exercise. All of this is I will jump before you push me. And people jumping earlier and earlier. But they don't it's not referred to in terms of X. That's what's funny. It's like, why is it become categorized as an ick when it's a woman applying it to a man? But with any other sort of combination,

it's not an ick, it's something else. It's just like, oh, I just wasn't feeling it. I wasn't feeling this. Whereas we've now got this defined list of just the icks. And often the icks that I see expressed against men are things that sort of show men to be fallible human beings or just normal human beings. The only time where I'm like, I've got the ick explicitly was when a man rode my bike, and he looked so stupid doing it, because my bike's tiny. I was like, get off my bike, you child. But it was because he looked like a child.

That really icked me out. He felt very fallible and vulnerable in that moment. And it was his vulnerability that had icked me out and he felt very fallible and vulnerable in that moment and it was his vulnerability that had icked me out. His vulnerability and the fact he was seeking approval and trying to make me laugh by doing it and I just found it so repulsive that he was seeking my appreciation in that manner that I got icked out. And that says something about me and how I deal with men showing me their soft belly. Well let's get into it because I suppose like so many of these things which count as icks are, I suppose a failure to live up to masculine ideals. So drinking milk, well, that's for babies, that's for children.

It is a beverage invented to feed babies. Applying lip balm obviously is a sort of like feminized activity, waiting for the green man before crossing the road, which by the way for me, not an ick, I like it when men don't have death drive. Skinny jeans, feminized. Yeah, skinny jeans, feminized. But like waiting for the green man is like, oh, you're so, you're being cocked by the

green man. You're being emasculated by the green man. Um, so yeah, I, I think that these are all things which are saying, here is a masculine ideal that I want you to uphold. And then when you fall short of that, that masculine fantasy of what a men's, of what a man is supposed to be. My friend gets it out when men talk to her about their mental health,

or talk to her about issues in their life that are making them feel bad. She's like, ah, this makes me so uncomfortable. She's like, I realize I just don't like men being vulnerable with me. And then it's like, if that's your approach, and obviously I don't wanna become really unnuanced, right, like there are times where,

and it's not just men, it's anyone, trauma dumps early to shortcut a connection. Yeah, this isn't that, I'll tell you that, I'm sorry, this is like way too much. Yeah, and to sort of, you know, and so I don't throw the baby out with a bath water and say that like anytime someone's telling you about their business, it's always good. Of course, sometimes it's not. But if your attitude is that when someone shows you vulnerability and talks about problems in their life that you want to run away from them, like, good luck, you're never going to have any form of connection whatsoever, because that's that's how connection is formed between people. And I guess it's like, okay, I think I've got a big theory within your big theory.

Go on. And it's this, it is a very Ayn Rand way of looking at relationships. Because when you read Ayn Rand novels, you often have these couples who are, almost always heterosexual, who are so self-contained and self-possessing, and there's no need and there's no vulnerability. And you don't really understand where love or reciprocal obligation comes from. And when I read about icks, and I suppose one of the things which is interesting

here is that, well, men also reject people for arbitrary reasons, but ick culture is something which has been formed around the way women talk online. But the idealized model of a relationship, it's people who are never vulnerable with each other, who never really need each other, who never show you their belly, who are never cringy, who are never childlike, who are never woundable. It's a deeply neoliberal ideologically, right? Philosophically model of relationships. And I think that's why I find it so off putting. Yeah, I mean, every time we talk about things like this, I'm always like, Eva Lois. I do, I do think I hate making the proclamations of like, things are so much worse

than they were 20 years ago, because most of the time it's not technically true in like in living terms and standards yet. But when we come to like cultural things, like it's so much worse now. I'm like, no, you know, I'd rather be a woman now than 20 years ago, like for sure. But when it comes to dating, and the fear we have of being vulnerable with another person, and the fear of rejection that comes with interacting with another person and the fear of rejection that comes with interacting with another person. I think there is some sort of crisis going on,

some sort of massive avoidance that is making ever shorter loops of meeting someone, rejecting them, being completely despairing that we'll ever meet someone ever again, oh no, finding another fantasy, meeting that person, rejecting them, and it's happening on all sides. And I know so many people, myself included,

who are just like, oh, I'm never gonna meet someone, I'm never gonna meet someone. But then if you look at our own behaviors, they're cuckoo bananas. When it comes to like how, like the way I would take men or interact with men, there's just so many great men, so many great men, and then the ones who obviously don't want me, I'm way more like, maybe I should just give them a text. Like,

I've never double texted in my life what I'm talking about. But I'm like, mentally, I'd be interested even if I wouldn't show. I'd be mentally interested, but I wouldn't, I wouldn't show the interest to the person I've been on a date with who hadn't texted me back. But there's definitely like this cycle of fantasy, having the fantasy punctured by a real life person sitting in front of you, and then not wanting it anymore. And it's like I've removed myself from that, because I think it was just making me really, I was just not ready for any like to do a lot of mental work and I've got other things to focus on. But so many people I know

are trapped in that cycle, and they recognize it, but they can't get out of it. And then they're just stuck talking about X. And I think that there are structural reasons for this. I mean, we've talked about this a million times that dating apps haven't just changed dating on apps. It's transformed dating more generally. And I think that dating more and more has mimicked the patterns and emotional cycles of consumerism,

fantasy, desire, acquiring emptiness. And it goes again and it goes again, as well as the ways in which dating apps through their infrastructure, through the user experience, infrastructure through the user experience, it's like shopping for people. So I think that that has absolutely corroded any sense of emotional nourishment coming from these forms of connection, because it's so much like shopping. The point of the experience of shopping and consumerism is that it will never fulfill you. It will never complete you and you will have to buy more. I was talking about this with a friend at the weekend, which is less to do with Ix, but I think if we're broadening out from Ix to rejection, we're talking about ghosting. And she was talking about the experience of having been ghosted recently, she was like,

oh, you know, big, big 2025. People are still ghosting. And I was like, I don't get it. I don't get how people don't see even sending a, hey, I'm not feeling this, but wish you all the best in all your endeavors, kind of text. They don't see that as part of the responsibility of people who've always ghosted. Yeah, but I don't, I don't get it. I do not get it. And I don't get how people don't see it as a, as a responsibility they have. I mean, it was also, I think, hard to like, people have always ghosted, but it was much more difficult to ghost when you knew that your social life would bring you into proximity with this person again. Like, whereas I guess if,

you know, again, I always say this on the apps, which people aren't real to you on the apps. It's like Deliveroo, you're ordering a service and the service is dating. It's not the same as encountering a person in their full social context, because social context is what makes someone real. But I think that it's also, I think that we're such bad judges of what we want. And I think that icks are a sign of a sort of mass psychological sickness of people not knowing really what they want and hanging their sense of their own desires onto these completely arbitrary things, which are stupid and meaningless. And I think ghosting is also a sign

of people not always understanding what they want. Because when you say to someone, I don't wanna see you anymore, you're taking ownership for your decision. You're taking ownership for your decision and you're not just telling them, this is not what I want. You're telling yourself, this is not what I want. you're telling yourself, this is not what I want.

So yeah, I think that this is part of an overall crisis of like a lack of self-knowledge. And I don't think that that's just because we've all magically failed as individuals in the same way. I think it's because structurally, there are things which are interfering with our own sense of self-knowledge. Yeah, but the other thing is that everyone thinks

they have such great self-knowledge now. So this is an issue. Everyone's like, oh, I know myself so well. I know all of this, this and this. I've done this interrogation, blah, blah, blah. I actually think this last year and this year, I'm like, I don't know myself at all. When people tell me things about myself, I'm like,

is that me? Is that really me? Ooh. Yeah, but I talk to lots of people who have like this idea of themselves. And then it's not at all matching up with like behaviors or the the actual things that they're doing. And I know I'm the same. So it's like, but how do you deal when someone has such a I guess it also comes with ego as well has such a high

belief that they have self-knowledge. High belief is not the right phrasing. Has such committed, committed is also not the right phrasing. Is really fervent that they believe that they know who they are, that they have self-knowledge. They really fervently believe that they've got a lock on that. And as a result, they probably have quite a big ego. But actually, if you scratch underneath it,

they don't have a sense of self and they have very low self-esteem. And then they're out in the dating world. Like, what do you do with that? How do you deal with that? As a person, how do you undo that? I think it's really difficult because the thing that you need is trust and connection to be able to tell someone about themselves.

You can't do that when there isn't that trust or connection because it feels either like a... Well, it feels like a threat or an intrusion that you either have to laugh off, dismiss or fight back. Whereas I remember in the early stage or an earlier stage of my relationship with my partner, we'd gone on holiday together and he said that he was going to stay out in Morocco for a couple of weeks, three weeks, and he was going to do it by himself. And that's because his sense of self at the time was, I'm this independent, you know, young man out there in the world by myself.

I've got agency, rarararara. A few days later, he's like, I'm so lonely. This sucks. You're not here. What the fuck? And I was like, yeah, I knew this about you. I knew that you're actually a tender hearted little cutie pie who needs to feel loved and held by people around them, even if it isn't always me, even if it's his friends. And that like just being in the middle of nowhere by yourself for ages was going to suck. And he was like, well, middle of nowhere by yourself for ages was gonna suck. And he was like, well, why didn't you tell me?

And I was like, well, I tried, but you didn't believe me. Like you didn't believe me that I knew you better than you thought you knew yourself. And now obviously it's different. There's so much, you know, there's so much of that trust between us that we really rely on the other person as a mirror to the self, but you can't, there's no shortcut to that. So I think that the original sin here isn't people not having a good idea of who

they are because I think that's always the case. It's that there are so many impediments to building that trust and connection where you can have faith that someone is reflecting reality back to you. I also think that this is, you know, people always have had had wrong ideas about who they are, that's called being a human being. But we've got so many more demands on us nowadays to brand ourselves. Everything is an exercise in personal branding from social media to work to building a dating profile. All of these are acts of personal branding, which means that you've got an investment of building up an artificial, an artificial version of yourself, which

is legible to other people that you get to define and that is separate from yourself to some degree. It might represent authentically aspects of your personality, but it's never going to be the entire thing. Because how can it be? Yeah. The other flip side of this as well is like, what does it do to us if we are sitting here

listing out X about other people? Like, what does it do to your sense of how other people are surveilling you, perceiving you, and judging you? But I know from experience, you know, when I'm particularly in a mode of looking at things with a judgmental eye, it's usually because I'm in a bad place myself, and I get so much more paranoid about how people are judging me.

So if we're going around all the time pointing out icks, no wonder, no wonder that the sense of self is even more rocked, and no wonder that there is this perpetual fear you'll never be accepted or loved, because it's these tiny little details about other people that you, in a good relationship, a secure relationship, would maybe become endearing traits or just neutral facts about someone and instead become the biggest repulsive sin and then you will worry, but what about me?

Like, what about all my faults? No one's ever gonna accept them. I think that that's really true. And maybe something I would add to it is that, I'm talking about the straights, right? I'm talking about the heterosexuals because that's what I know. And I don't know how this plays out

in same sex relationships or if it does in the same way. But there's so much discourse amongst women of basically talking about men as though men are always talking about men as though men are always cruel and caring, idiotic, not to be trusted, predatory. And they're saying this as heterosexual women. And because people don't live in these hermetically sealed spaces, what algorithmically tailored feeds can do is make you feel like you're talking within a community, but of course you're not. Content is consumed by people who aren't its intended audience all the time. It creates a lack of psychological safety and feeling for men that they're going to be accepted and that they're going to be looked at through this highly hostile, highly suspicious

lens. It creates that feeling, which then makes people behave worse and confirms other people's biases around what men are like and around and around you go. A basic fact of human behavior is that nobody tends to be their best selves when they're feeling psychologically unsafe, when they're feeling judged, as you said, and when they're sort of put in this prisoner's dilemma, which is they've got to be the first person to behave badly because otherwise they'll be a victim of somebody else.

I think that's a perfect note to roll up on. Roll up? Wrap it up. Wrap, because we've got dilemmas we've got to do. We've got dilemmas. This is, I'm in big trouble. Our regular dilemmas segment. And if you're in big trouble,

big or small or medium size, please email us at ifispeak NavarroMedia.com. That is if I speak at NavarroMedia.com. Do you want to read this out? Yeah, this is a little one. I liked this one, so I just wanted to put it in. Hi, Ashmoor. I've been listening to If I Speak for a while now and always find you funny,

intelligent and thought provoking. But every now and then, again when I'm listening, I think, is this for me? Should I really be listening? When you call your listeners special ones, I never think you're talking to me. I feel like I'm a lurker rather than a special one. I'm your archetypal, pale, male and stale, white, middle-aged lefty, and a lot of what you talk about isn't directly relevant to me at all. I've left London slash city life far behind for a more rural lifestyle. I'm in a very long term relationship so all the dating chat is like hearing people talk about ancient history

to me. And when you talk about music, I ain't got a clue. So tell me, oh wise ones, should I carry on listening or should I go hang out with kids my own age? Special one, special one, stay. You're so special. You're so special. I'm not capable of being anyone else other than who I am, but that doesn't mean I only wanna speak to people or connect with people who are like me. And actually the idea that there's someone who leads a completely different kind of life from me, who's got completely different identity characteristics,

but feels some kind of kinship or connection or curiosity about what we're doing here is exactly what I want. That feels like such a mark of success to me. I love listening to podcasts for which I'm not the majority of the audience. I absolutely love it because it feels like a window into a different world for me. I listen to the two Johnnies. I listen to loads of podcasts where I'm not the intended audience

because we have our bubbles and it'd be nice to break out of them. The other thing I would say about this dilemma is I would love listeners to send in some mystery questions for our episodes or topics they want us to talk about. We might not talk about them, but it does just help occasionally if you and we can get guests in, etc. And it gives us a bit more of a steer of what would you like to hear as unpack more that we might not naturally come to ourselves. This is, there's an email address.

If I speak at navaramedia.com, don't just send your dilemmas there. Send your feedback, send your questions, send the topics you think we should cover. It's there to be chewed over. So we really appreciate you listening. You are a special one. You're a key special one, come on.

Yeah, also pale, male, staleale, white lefty, like my husband. That's my type. Ash will marry you, there you go. There you go. Shall we move on? Yeah, next dilemma. Okay. Dear Ashen Moya, longtime listener and big fan,

thanks for sharing your perspectives and big brains with us. You both do a great job of making me think more deeply without ever feeling condescended to. That's very nice to hear. I'm a 32 year old woman in a relationship with a 38 year old man. We've been together for a bit over two years, living together for six months. I work full time. When we started dating, he was finishing a PhD and then was working full time. But shortly after this, he lost his job unexpectedly and has been unemployed and looking for work for four months. This has been a big hit to his confidence

and sense of self. When we were both working we were earning pretty much the same salary so our money conversations before moving in together were based on income and equal contributions and not about savings or what money meant to us. I've since realized that this was a mistake. After my partner lost his job and depleted his savings, I offered to support him, and I'm now paying the full rent and supporting him financially while he looks for work.

I'd built up a small savings account over the past five years and had been aiming to save for a house deposit. We talked together about wanting to save for a house and also about trying for a baby in the next year or two. He always seemed quite relaxed about money, living frugally, but not seemingly stressed about it. I made some assumptions that he must have had some money put away somewhere despite doing the PhD

to be having these house and baby conversations with me. Recently we had an argument where I finally explicitly asked him, asked him, wow that is the North London origins just kicking in. Wow you asked me a question. I asked him how much money he has in the world, rude boy. And it turns out it's a small credit card debt and that's it. No savings, no assets. This shocked me as I thought it would have been something he would have shared with me when we were talking about wanting to have a baby.

It made me feel pretty dumb for having come this far in a relationship without having a big money chat. I'm clearly not dating him for his money, but I do want to know that he is a responsible adult if he's someone I want to have children with. The other part of this is that I know his family who live overseas has money and he will likely inherit a lot. I think this has guided his decision making over the past few years where he hasn't made very smart financial decisions. This is different to my situation where I'm unlikely to inherit anything and might need to financially support my parents in the future.

The whole thing has made me pretty mad. He recognises this and is embarrassed and committed to more open conversations about money and what it means to us. Even so, I'm still paying the full rent and while I'm lucky to be able to do this on my salary, I'm not adding to my savings and the job market isn't very good at the moment. We've been talking about marriage recently and both had various political and social objections to it,

but we talked about wanting to commit to each other. Now I'm realizing I've walked into a very marriage-like situation of supporting a partner through a difficult time, but without an upfront agreement about what we were committing to. So when and how do you talk about money in a relationship? What's a good way to do this? When is it appropriate for a partner

to support you financially? And when is it time to ask your cashed up dad for help? Thank you for your advice. Special one. Interesting dilemma. Do you wanna go first as someone in a marriage? Oh no, I think you should go first. I need to think a little bit of thinking.

Okay. See the questions the special one has asked, which is when do you talk about money in a relationship? What's a good way to do this? I don't think it's really what the special one is asking. I think the special one is like, what the fuck do I do now? What do I do?

Because you have different values when it comes to finances and different ways of approaching it. And you're like, oh, I always assumed my partner had money stashed somewhere. He does. It's just in living human beings who happen to live over abroad in his parents. He hasn't got savings. He's got the bank of mom and dad.

That's where the money is stashed. So it makes it more difficult to get it out, but he's living the life of a, of a man who has comes to money and has money because this very case or case or approach is only the kind of thing you can do when there is a safety net, in my opinion. The thing is, in terms of financially supporting him, I think you need to give a deadline for when you're going to cut this man off. You need to stop financially supporting him, I'm afraid to say. I'm sorry if that's harsh, but it's making you resent him so much and it's making you question the future of the relationship. If you still are invested and you still, and there is still, you know, you want

to give him time to change his approach to money, you say, I will pay this rent for the next three months. And after that, it's either asking your dad or finding employment or reconsider. But if you are going to go into a marriage and have a baby with him, you need to have a financial plan and you need to be very clear about that. And I don't think all is lost. You haven't had the marriage, you haven't had the baby. You could still set up a financial agreement with each other that works for you both. So it's kind of good this has happened, you finally asked him. I don't know when the perfect time to ask is. Some people are like at the very beginning before you even get into it but you have asked before any specific commitments have been

made further yes you might not feel that you have like much of a choice because you're now paying his rent but that just says to me that you want to stay in the relationship because otherwise the choice would be you're not you can pay this rent on your own otherwise choice we break up and he moves out right so you're like oh I want I don't want that to happen. Because, well, I presumed you don't want that to happen. Otherwise, you would just do that. Because you can afford the rent on your own. So you started the conversation, I actually think this is a positive if you want the relationship to continue. He's embarrassed, he's chastised. He wants to change. Okay, there's there's foundations there. You now have to be

very, very honest with each other about where he sees finances splitting. You need to give him a timeline for when he's being cut off from you and when he can go and instead suckle on the teeth of mommy and daddy, or maybe, you know, try and find a job. But that is difficult. I understand it's hard to find work. You can't just find jobs. They're not growing on trees, as they said, and it's always sunny in Philadelphia. But it has kickstarted a conversation. This is not the end of the relationship if you don't want it to be. I think that emotionally, this isn't about money. This is about responsibility and vulnerability.

Hmm. This is you saying, hang on, you want me to make myself more vulnerable to you, i.e. by having a baby, which is a hugely vulnerable time for a woman. You really need your partner to be on it and capable of taking on more responsibility. And that responsibility is in terms of domestic labor,

emotional support, emotional maturity, and finances as well. You're saying, hang on, you've invited me to lower my defenses and lock in for a life with you and lock in for a life where I am at a power disadvantage because you say you're a woman, it'll be you getting pregnant, taking the career here, et cetera, et cetera. And you are not in a position to step up to that, to fulfill those responsibilities. And I think that part of you feels betrayed. I think you feel betrayed by that because it feels like he was asking you to make yourself vulnerable in a way that he wasn't able to step up and provide that strength. So in a way, this is not about, it is about money.

It's also about responsibility and vulnerability. I also wonder if there's a part of this, which is, hang on, you have rich parents, so why am I being a parent to you? Why am I taking care of you? You want me to have a baby, but I'm being a parent to you by Why am I taking care of you? You want me to have a baby, but I'm being a parent to you by being this financial backstop. That should be your family. So I think that maybe some of that's in here as well. And I, yeah, I think that you feel betrayed by what you perceive

as him having not taken responsibility. What I would be interested to know is if he hadn't lost his job four months ago, would you feel betrayed if you had found out that he hadn't made savings but he was still working? So is this something which is made worse because even though you know that he lost his job unexpectedly, the way you make it sound was that it wasn't his fault and that you have empathy to how this has impacted his confidence and his sense of self. I wonder if there is a part of you which emotionally feels like he's failing

to uphold his end of the bargain in taking care of your home life and your life together and that you're feeling the emotional impact of that. This isn't me trying to undermine the financial strain this is putting on you and the way in which this pulls you away from some of the other responsibilities you have, for instance, you mentioned looking after your parents, it's me trying to say that this is also playing out as an emotional story, which really needs your attention. Like it really needs your attention and for you to be honest with yourself about it so you can be honest with him so that you can say,

actually, I feel betrayed. And some of your feelings may not be virtuous, some of them might be ugly and difficult, some might be unfair, and that might cut both ways. He might also have some ugly, difficult and unfair feelings. What I know for certain is that if you are looking to deepen your commitment with each other, you have to be able to express these feelings and work through them together. I have nothing to add that was very incisive. I don't understand men. I don't understand women. What's the point? I don't understand nothing.

And I don't have any savings. I have no savings and I never will. And that's why I'm also not entering a partnership. I can't even afford to look after myself, let alone look after another person. It's like this stuff is always emotional and difficult. And like, I've realized this all the time, Like this stuff is always emotional and difficult. And like, I've realized this all the time, which is like within my own household, me,

you know, my partner and our housemate, we can start by having a conversation about the cleaning or the finances. And then suddenly I feel really vulnerable and I'm like crying and I'm like, what is going on here? And I was like, oh, because this is, this is about to what extent do I feel I have agency? To what extent do I feel that there are reciprocal obligations? To what extent do I feel that I've taken on all this responsibility and are other people joining

me in it? I know really this goes back to my dad. Like, I mean, like every single fucking time is like, oh, yep. goes back to the old dadda. Yeah well my dad was a mayfly, I don't want to say parasite that's a bit harsh but latched himself onto women and stole lots I wouldn't say lots of money but definitely you know took a little bit of money with him when he left leaving them saddled with children so you know my fear of being. So, you know, my fear of being a burden, maybe, there's something, my fear of being a burden and never wanting to attach myself to a situation where I'm either responsible for someone else financially or they are responsible for me, kind of cuts both ways, doesn't it? Anyway, you gave some amazing advice then,

and advice that I will heed next time I'm in some sort of interpersonal conflict where I start getting really upset over the dishes. It's actually an emotional narrative going on. It's never just the dishes. Right, special ones of all stripes, all creeds, all colours. Let's say goodbye for now. Abiento. All credit ratings. All credit ratings.

See you next week. Bye. Bye. ratings all credit ratings see you next week bye