Love Lives - #38 Anxiety and mental wellness in relationships with Matt Haig

Episode Date: June 15, 2018

Every aspect of life feels more fast-paced than ever today, and one of the areas in which this is most apparent is, of course, dating and relationships. This week on Millennial Love we’re joined by the brilliant author of ‘Reasons to Stay Alive’ and ‘Notes on a Nervous Planet’ Matt Haig to talk about how the state of the world today has affected our love lives. We’re more connected than ever, so why do so many of us also feel so alone? Matt also talks candidly about his own experiences with mental illness and how his relationship with his wife Andrea helped him get through some very difficult times, leading him to where he is today. Follow us on Instagram to stay up-to-date! https://www.instagram.com/millennial_love/Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/millenniallove. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Hello and welcome to Millennial Love, the Independent Lifestyle Desk's weekly podcast on love, dating and relationships. Hosted by me, Rachel Hosey, Assistant Lifestyle Desk's weekly podcast on love, dating and relationships, hosted by me, Rachel Hosey, assistant lifestyle editor, and me, Olivia Petter, lifestyle writer. Dating today is a world away from what it was even just 10 years ago. With dating apps, millennials are finding it harder to meet people than ever before. And even when we do,

who's to say we won't then be ghosted or zombied? So that's why we decided to launch Millennial Love as two long-time singletons in their 20s talking candidly about all of the things everyone is doing but not always willing to admit. This week we are so happy to be joined by one of my favourite authors, the wonderful Matt Haig, who you probably know from his best-selling book Reasons to Stay Alive and some of his wonderful fiction books, most recently How to Stop Time, and his newest

book which is out in a few weeks which is called Notes on a Nervous Planet. Hello Matt, thank you for joining us. Hello guys, hi. Welcome. Lydia, Rachel. Could you start off for some of the listeners who might not be familiar with your books talking about a bit of the background behind Reasons to Stay Alive and because it's quite similar in terms of format to Notes on a N planet and what prompted you to write the new book

okay well reasons to stay alive that was probably you know at the time it was definitely the most personal thing i've ever written i'd written like 10 books before that but that was all fiction and um reasons to stay alive was the only book I've ever written that I was asked to write. It wasn't by a publisher, but a friend who experienced depression themselves had read a blog. I'd put out there called Reasons to Stay Alive. And they said, oh, you should write that book. And I didn't know. I hovered and I didn't know if my publishers would want it.

I didn't know if I wanted to write it. I didn't know if I wanted to write it. I didn't know if I was interesting enough. I didn't know, not being a celebrity celebrity person, I didn't know if my experience was unique enough or wild enough. But then I was convinced by other people that that was kind of the point, that it was a relatable thing that, you know, a quarter of us go through something similar. And that feeling of being alone and isolated is lessened by hearing other stories. So, yeah, it was my story of when I was 24, living, partying, working in Ibiza,

not knowing where my life was going, about to head back to London. One morning, it wasn't any sort of wild, crazy, sex, drugs, rock and roll kind of thing. I'd been for a run that day, but I had a panic attack. The panic attack didn't end. I had no idea what was going on. You think of a panic attack as like a 10-minute experience and you walk it off.

This didn't, you know, I was in, I know it's not a clinical term, but it was full nervous breakdown. And I was trapped in depression, anxiety, I was suicidal. I was at this crisis point in my life. And I eventually got better, but it was a very long process of going down different avenues and cul-de-sacs

and working out, you know, I was given the wrong pills and various things, and the reason to stay alive is me talking about that, is talking directly about my recovery, you know, I'm not in a perfect state of mental health, but how I got away from the suicidal part of my life and what I would tell my 24 year old self now and notes on a nervous planet is a follow-up but you know I'd written

loads of books after reasons to stay alive which were like the opposite of it I wrote a kid's book about father Christmas I wrote about a novel about a 439 year old and various other bits and pieces and I didn't think I was ever going to write like a reason to stay alive too and notes on a nervous planet definitely isn't but it's looking at mental health the way we look at um physical health really is looking at it with with the context of um lifestyle and how we live our lives so everything from sleep work technology social media how these things in this fast fast changing society we live in impact our minds it's it's so interesting because even though you don't really touch

on relationships in the book that much you don't really touch on dating um because you're obviously married um so that's not something that you're in lucky you um but I, I found that so many of the little observations that you make throughout the book apply to the anxieties that Rachel and I talk about all the time on the show that spurn from dating app culture and the way that things are moving so much quicker. So we expect faster responses from the people that we might be speaking to. You know, we have dating apps where you're swiping from one person to the next,

everyone's sort of disposable. We therefore treat each other a little bit worse than we might have done um well i suppose it's an extension of and probably the more brutal end of social media culture anyway where we're constantly in this comparison game and we're like on this sort of stock market of ourselves out there and it's very hard to kind of insulate our emotional self from that and i suppose it's even more judgy when you're literally you know dismissing people or accepting people just with your finger like yeah it's actually such a bizarre concept i'm sure 15 years ago you tried to explain this whole concept of dating apps where you are putting yourself forward to be judged um like someone like look at you look at you it's it's so bizarre and it's become so normal oh so much to get into so much to get into um before we do however um

Livy what has been going on in your life um what's been going on I've been looking at because it was the Sex and the City 20th anniversary last week are you familiar matt have you watched it yeah absolutely okay good um so i did a piece um about what the show would look like today and what some of the core relationships would be like so just sort of like silly observations like one of the characters called charlotte she um gets divorced from her first husband. I like Charlotte. I like Charlotte too. I like Charlotte.

Everyone likes Charlotte. She was my fave. Everyone wants to be Charlotte, don't they? Yeah. Well, I secretly still want to be Carrie. She has a better wardrobe. But anyway, Charlotte stays married to, oh no, she gets divorced from Trey.

We should all be Mirandas. Yes. We should all be Mirandas. She's the best. She's the unsung hero of the show. But anyway, oh god, sorry, I'm getting so confused between them all. Charlotte leaves her husband, but

still, he gives her his Park Avenue apartment to live in for free. How delightful. So I said, that would never happen today because there's no way that in the current climate that someone would just give away an apartment like that. So she would have still been married to him and been quite unhappy in that relationship. So I've been mainly

making up fantasy Sex and the City plot lines. Fantastic! Mind you, I think even at the time that was probably a little bit unrealistic. Maybe a little. I was about to mention.

Would never happen. What about you rach i wrote an article about which i actually mentioned this i think episodes and episodes and episodes ago about how i had got back in touch with guys who'd ghosted me so guys who i dated or i'd been going to date and we'd move from a dating app onto whatsapp can i be an embarrassing caveman and say what's ghosting sure ghosting is when you are talking to someone or maybe you're dating them you might still be in the early stages of messaging you might have been dating for months and then they just cease to reply they stop oh yeah yeah it's an awful awful practice some people argue that this has been happening forever and people just would stop calling and but i think it's got a lot worse thanks to the advent of dating apps messaging etc etc um it's incredibly common now which is a shame

and so i decided to maybe sometimes months down the, message the guys who'd ghosted me and sort of ask why they did it. And the article, on the whole, got very positive responses. A lot of people were saying, wow, this is brilliant, which is so nice. And a lot of people were saying, older people who didn't know what it was or hadn't experienced it were saying, I'm sorry that this is what it's like now and then of course i got some people who just went get a life so that was charming people are so kind it's like i think it's that lack of like three-dimensional human contact yeah it makes us and like i i think we're all guilty of it to a degree that thing like we're not really dealing with human beings. Totally.

You know, but they're not fully human beings until they're in front of us in a room. You'd be surprised, though, how much people ghost even after meeting up. After actually meeting. Which I think is bad. Yeah, it's bad. But yeah, it's probably like when you start seeing human beings

in like a marketplace. It's almost like a sort of consumer culture version of human relationships yeah and you don't even really you know the profiles that you do see on these apps they're not necessarily an authentic reflection of what that person would be in the flesh at all far from it people need manners i think absolutely i think if we take away one thing from this podcast i mean we've actually got a lot still to get into there's probably a lot to take away but that's point number one Come on millennial men, have manners

Not just men though, some women do it too That's true Speaking of men let's do bio of the week So this is one that you're either going to get or not If you're familiar with to get or not.

If you're familiar with a certain TV show. Yeah. Which we've already mentioned, actually. Well, don't give the game away. All right. So this is from a man called Andy, and his bio reads, L is for life, and what is life without love? O is for, oh, wow. V is for oh wow.

V is for this very surprising turn of events. E is for how extremely normal I find it. That was like a dramatic reading. I was contemplating doing it in an American accent.

But I decided not to. For anyone who didn't pick that up that is um a rather notable little monologue that ross says in friends in the episode of the one where ross is fine which is where he goes on this double date with rachel and joey and charlie's also there and um i just think if you're a friends fan you can't not sort of laugh if you read that um so i think very good bio from andy i agree i really like it i would like to now if we go deep dive into the main topic of today's podcast which is sort of going to be about mental well-being in relationships in light of some of the points that matt touches on in his book so there were, basically the way that it's structured,

you might be able to explain this better than I am, but there's sort of like mini chapters, some of which are a couple of lines, some of which are a few pages. Very easily digestible, if you will. Yes. Yeah, I really like short chapters. That's my thing.

I think it's a mental health thing, actually. And also, it fools people into thinking they like your book more than they do because they think oh this is really i'm really and you know when you're like reading a book or reading something and you have to sort of like dog ear the page because you're halfway through the chapter you feel like oh i don't know if i'm into this book because i'd left i i don't give people the option of that because it's like a paragraph and also white space i like white like my house is like totally just all painted white and i think it's a mental health thing and you if you if you see lots of nice white space it's quite an

instagrammy thing i suppose isn't it where you just have this sort of pretty text but i kind of like it but yeah anyway so some of the little chapters that i think inadvertently actually touch on all of the dating app culture things that we spoke about earlier is the idea of being more connected than ever before in the term in the sense that you know we have so many dating apps at our disposal and you know extending beyond that so many channels of communication with which to speak to the people that we may or may not match with on these dating apps and yet you know reports of loneliness are higher than ever people are we've got a minister for loneliness yeah and that's the weird thing rates of loneliness are rising in line with our connectivity we're connected we've got more inverted commas friends than ever before and

yet we're lonelier and like we we you know you're hearing the news about this sort of elderly and how they're alone because they're on their own and has but what's what's you sort of can understand that kind of loneliness but what's interesting is when millennials and even younger than millennials like teenagers are reporting massive you know school kids are reporting massive high levels of loneliness. And you think, how are you lonely? You've got like 200 people on Instagram. You're surrounded by people at school.

But loneliness isn't, you can be the loneliest person in the world in the midst of 10,000 people, can't you? Totally. Loneliness isn't about physical access to people in a room. It's about internal stuff and how you connect and i think that's the way with a lot of actual mental health issues that people might face is that often you can't see it at all like what's it what's the thing you've been researching recently living smiling depression yeah yeah well just about obviously obviously mental health is more in the public

consciousness than it ever has been and that's a brilliant thing but clearly when we look at last week with kate spade and anthony borden there are still these great public high profile figures that aren't speaking openly about their battles that they may or may not have not had with mental health obviously we don't know that information but in light of in light of their really tragic deaths by suicide it's it's something that really has been ringing on i think a lot of people's minds and it's the idea where you obviously you can just hide it you can just hide that you're going through all of these internal struggles but from everyone yes yeah. Yeah. No, totally. I mean, that's one of the problems with not all mental illnesses, but most can be invisible,

you know, unless you articulate them. And this is what really annoys me when people like certain parts of the media or certain public individuals or high profile people on Twitter or whoever it is, talk about how we go on about mental illness or it's a celebrity fashion or it's a fad or a trend and it's like

still 99 of mental illness you're not serious seeing and you're not hearing and the act of externalizing and talking about whoever it is whether you know like recently like um the rock who's the definition he's the archetypal macho celebrity you know was opening up about his depression and that's so incredibly healthy because a it normalizes it and when you're real i was ill when i was 24 it was pre-social media uh it was like like 1999 2000 and i felt like the weirdest person in the universe because i didn't know any of anybody who had it so i think i think there is a comfort i'm you know social media is bad for all kinds of things mental health but one thing that is good for is making you realize there are other people who have an echo of your mind or who feel things that you feel and that there's a

comfort and a therapy just in knowing that just in knowing that people are you're not the only person i felt like i it sounds weirdly sort of strangely arrogant or weird to say but i felt like i was the only person who'd felt this or i was like feeling worse than anyone i felt because i didn't know anyone i i was aware of the terms depression and anxiety but i i none of among my sort of mainly male group of friends no one i knew had been open about it since then i know people that i did go to school with who were feeling those things but would have never talked about it i think i think it's it's only very recently that that started to change i think even when i was at school people wouldn't have talked about it with their friends really teenagers didn't i don't think so no i don't think so either

but i think what's really because i know that you know you said that you didn't you didn't necessarily have many people to speak to at the time that you knew were going through that but when i was reading reasons to stay alive i think the the support that you well i had andrea yeah exactly that's what i was going to say so how did that how did the support from that relationship help you through it and how well i think it was my you know i think i i i think i was sort of lucky basically were you already with her when we'd been together like we were together from 19 oh wow she was she always resented the fact that i had a full year at university and she had like three weeks at university was practically a fresher and then along you know then it was saddled with me and so yeah but you can't help when you meet someone but um

yeah so at 24 if you've been in a relationship since 19 that's like long term you know i i felt almost as close to her then as i do now you know we've been it felt like infinity very formative time of your life exactly so we'd kind of grown up together in all sorts of different ways and um yeah but having said that she didn't know anything about depression or anxiety. She didn't know anything about mental illness. Really, but I think simply having someone who would listen, feeling like she wasn't about to run off at the first sign of trouble and you know, feeling like I could just externalize something and be comfortable with that like more comfortable even than with my parents I could just talk to her because I you know to be honest I hadn't been like outwardly mentally ill before that but I hadn't been like the easiest going person I mean literally we'd probably known each other about six weeks and I was crying in front of her about my mum or something I like some troubled thing I was a bit I was a bit like I was continually surprised that she stayed with me but she did and um yeah I think

I feel like I you know I'm infinitely grateful I hope in a parallel universe where I hadn't met Andrea I'd have still found reasons I like to believe and one of the things and reasons still is is you kind of have to make the reasons with the stuff that you've got around you but i i am very grateful that i had those reasons and you know not just under i had supportive parents as well but we could go and live you know because we had no money we were masses of debt um but you know going back to live at home and all of that but yeah having andrea who could work out but at the same time as well i suppose the only bad thing about that was i was feeling constantly guilty which added weight to it because even though andrea wasn't outwardly moaning at me about it i could tell it was wearing her down

understandably and she was the one who was having to sort everything out you know we weren't where we are now in life we had all kinds of financial stuff going on and um we had she couldn't stay she was back living with her future in-laws and so it wasn't the ideal situation and then she was dealing with me at the same time and she was um sorting all out so i will forever be grateful for certainly those three months which were really hard when we're living with my parents i was ill and she was shielding me from the world and friends who were wanting to go out and i couldn't i wasn't then like i am now where i could comfortably talk about it because i didn't even understand it i couldn't articulate it to anyone andrew was the first person who told me to write down what i was feeling that's interesting and it was nothing

like what's written in reasons to stay alive it was just like the lyrics to the sort of like worst heavy metal song or something it was just like my head is on fire and I'm you know I'm in hell and this you know it's unreadable horrible stuff but it externalized that pain you know just the act of writing like the act of talking could be therapy do you think she felt any sort of i don't know not responsibility but do you think you were probably were you worried about her having to shoulder this as an extra burden yeah no i totally felt that i felt like i was you know i felt like um i felt kind of like she'd had like she would have every right to not stay with me. I didn't, because obviously a symptom of depression is low self-esteem anyway.

Yeah. So I wasn't feeling like, I was hating myself anyway. And it was very hard to, yeah, it was very hard for her, I think, to understand what I was feeling. And it was very hard for her i think to understand what i was feeling and it was very hard for her just that you know it was affecting her if you're that close to somebody and they're going through something that emotional and mental it kind of leaks out it's contagious so it was affecting her mental health it was not she wasn't having a breakdown like i was but she was getting depressed with it and like it it was hard for her and I obviously there was no one there for her she couldn't talk about that openly with her parents because or even her friends because her friends would have said oh

you've just got to sort of leave him but have all said different messages that wouldn't have been necessary helpful in that situation so it was it was very hard she was very alone it's very difficult i do think that that is something that is really an improvement now is that i just the fact that people talk about it more and so if you have a boyfriend or a girlfriend who is struggling with mental health you you would probably feel that you could then talk to your friends and talk to your family about that and help each other and get each other through because obviously for it's it is difficult for the person who's supporting the other person who's going through something and then you know I think then there's also if you're the the boyfriend or

the girlfriend in the situation sometimes you almost feel like there's so much pressure to be like a rock and be really solid and you can you know you don't want to ever show weakness or you know if you're struggling with anything yourself um and so i think it's important for that person to be able to talk about it as well and i think that must have been really hard for you guys at the time yeah it's really hard and there's certain things like she couldn't shield me from like like for instance her brother got married during this period so we had to go to london for a wedding and it's like literally among the it should have been a happy day and it was for most people but it was literally

my worst day of my life because i had we were living in the northeast at this point with her parents we were sort of there for a week and we went down on the train and it was just like i had to be up at six in the morning and i didn't realize those things about how important sleep was or anything like that and i was just in those things about how important sleep was or anything like that and i was just in this total despair but having to look happy because it's someone else's wedding you can just go there and so yeah just agony but just having those moments just with andrea on our own and just talking continually talking talking talking helps i think you know that's for me the most important thing in a long term relationship, someone who you can just be your weird self with to someone and you're trying to attract someone

but what's really valuable in those long-term relationships is is almost the opposite of that where you're literally vetting your worst bits yeah it's getting it's getting to it's getting beneath the surface and getting to the authenticity and i think that's harder to do now than ever before because you know like like you speak about in the book everyone's everyone's presenting the version of themselves that they want the world to see and you know it's very you know you can even convince yourself that that construction is who you really are yeah so true yeah because everyone has a personal brand and then you feel like you have to do things that fit in with your brand well maybe only i feel like that i totally feel like that well i feel like you have to do things that fit in with your brand or maybe only i feel like that i totally feel like that well i feel like that even when i'm talking about mental health sometimes weirdly because that's become my sort of thing i miss the depression so i think oh god yeah so

here's my daily dose of despair for you i really like what you're saying about the weird self thing though because i actually you know i've got like really close friends and everything but they're the only people who i let my true weird self out around are my immediate immediate family so like that you know obviously ultimately i want to find someone i can be my weird self with but god my weird self's really weird you're quite you're quite weird around me i've seen your weird stuff you haven't seen anything yet I think there's always a weirder weirder weirder self that no one sees

yeah true but just levels of weird layers of weird it's like an onion yeah absolutely and I liked a bit in your book

when you said don't try and be cool or impress the cool people like that was really like yeah don't you know maybe don't let your

full weirdness out straight away but i was so bad at that i think possibly because we were living in a beef at the time we were surrounded by like the cool people but um yeah i was so insecure you know because even though i wasn't well i wasn't outwardly like knowing i was mentally ill before that but like when i was 23 and stuff and looking for jobs in london i was like a nervous wreck i was trying to get a job in the advertising industry so i'd go right like soho square or something and i'd end up with an interview at sarchie or something and i'd stand outside not being able to dare enter the building after i got an interview and they'd seen the stuff and everything and i just had i so i think

the crisis point that came with me was just like, it needed to happen. It was inevitably going to happen. There needed to be some slap around the face where I sort of discovered who I am. Because it's utterly, utterly horrible, obviously. And I wouldn't wish it on anyone. But when you absolutely hit rock bottom, I think the important thing about rock bottom is the rock bit. And you kind of like find something solid that is you. Like centuries ago we'd have called a soul, but you know, it's yourself.

That's you that can't be broken. And that's the sort of thing that you kind of hold on to for your life that doesn't change. And then what was the rock bottom for you? And then how did you start coming upwards? I mean, rock bottom for me was literally I was going to throw myself off a literal cliff in ibiza and um it was simply because i i i felt like i didn't you know it sounds so weird when you were suicidal to say i didn't want to die but i thought i suppose the only way to describe it the best way which people describe it is if you're trapped in a burning building you don't want to jump out of the best way which people describe it is if you're trapped in a burning building.

You don't want to jump out of a window, but if the other option is for fire. And like, I was on flames. I was just like in this sort of, my mind was like collapsing in on itself. And it's the hardest thing to explain because it's not a physical pain, but it's kind of worse than that

because it's you. You're the thing that is the pain and it's just like you can't escape a bad back you can sort of sit down you can take tablets for it you can move around but when it's yourself you there's no escaping yourself you can take tablets which sort of lower the volume of it but you eventually have to sort it out and i had to sort of go through um go through that but yeah rock bottom was that rock bottom was not even dreading even having to make the journey to the airport home um andrea being there you know it was great having andrea as we've just said but at that point i felt like i didn't have anyone

um because even though andrea was there it felt like she was on another planet because i was like miles away from everybody and um i was being prescribed diazepam which was just um spacing me out even further and i just um felt there was no literally no way out and i even resented i resented being in a relationship i resented having parents i resented anything because i just thought it'd be easier just to disappear off the face of the earth that was rock bottom and um it if there was no um you know I I was phobic about getting help because I'd had a bad experience on pills so I was my own worst enemy I had to go a very long hard way um free recovery I was lucky as I said to have Andrea but it was it was three years of sort of slowly, incrementally, getting better, then dropping back again, getting better,

panic attacks, swinging into depression, swinging into panic attacks, you know, bits of OCD, the whole sort of smog sport of crap. Do you think without the support and, like, the stability of your relationship with Andrea, things would have been harder? I think so. Yeah yeah i think so it's impossible to say because you don't know you don't know i don't know for instance if there was some um like point you know if i if if if there would have been something in me that forced me to sort

of like looking like since i've had kids for instance and i have anxiety there's something where i can take myself out of myself easier because i've got a responsibility it you know maybe maybe i was always going to feel that level of bad and having andrea you know made me more useless in a way because i couldn't you know i had someone who could sort of do stuff i don't know i have no idea but um yeah i definitely think having a routine and having a home and having a base that was her was um was what I needed I think it's important that we kind of touch on this the power that the stability of that love that you can get from a relationship can actually give you because we're so we're often so negative about dating on this podcast but but

the way that you write about love in in all senses of it you know I think in reasons to stay alive you talk about it like it like it's like it's magic almost there's one line when you say how to stop time kiss is that it yeah and I love that line I've got soppier with age I think I know but I'm soppy as well I love it so much i'm so soppy i just i think i think like i think i think there's not enough romance in the world generally i mean in the broadest sense not just in romantic love just in sort of like you know feeling and stuff and we're in kind of a harsh era i think of society i think there's lots of glorious things about life but there's also we can be a bit cruel and cutting to each other and a lot of our humor even when we've got a good

cause to fight for we're often a bit you know we're treated like it's a war and we're an army and all this and i think like i don't know my experience in a very weird weird way my experience being ill my experience with andrea um and going through the suicidal stuff and everything it made me more optimistic about things and people and relationships and health even because like the one thing about depression the depression gives you the very worst case scenario everything i was convinced andrea was going to leave me i was convinced she should leave me i was convinced i was going to be dead by the age of 25 i was convinced all kinds of negative things which didn't actually end up happening.

So it's really corny and boring to say it, but, you know, the cliche that time heals is a cliche for a reason. You know, you have to sometimes go through the time to disprove those things in your head and realize that not everything is going to fall apart. And, you know, some bad things will definitely happen in your life but good things will happen too and you sometimes need to have those moments of darkness to appreciate the bright light as well absolutely i guess it's just it's so hard to

when you're in the grips of something to remember that and stay optimistic and it's optimism such a funny one um I think, you know, I am without a doubt an optimistic person, but things grind you down, don't they? Like, you know, if we take dating as an example. Yeah, absolutely. Subconsciously they grind you down. Like, you talk a lot about consumerism in the book

and I think, you know, we're kind of encouraged to view being single as a problem that needs solving oh society very much sends that message because something you write you say you know happiness isn't good for the economy i think being single isn't good for the economy like look at all of the different dating platforms dating apps concierge matchmaking services all of these things it's like trying to fix you well i think it's more about turning being single into a problem that needs fixing like everything is sort of about creating we're all encouraged like even when you're like a married person like i am you're encouraged to

always want what you haven't got i mean that that's the culture we're in because if we we've based most of us most of us are privileged enough to have running water. We've got shelter. We've got food. We've got the basics of human survival. But if we were just happy with that, we wouldn't spend any money. We wouldn't need things. So now, famously, even going to a beach.

We've got to be ready for a beach. famously even going to a beach you know we've got to be ready for a beach because you know i don't think neolithic stone age cave people thought oh i i can't go to that beach because i haven't got a six-pack i i can't you know i can't take my top off and it's like we're just encouraged to be this level of perfection because we're entering the kind of not to get too weird about it but we're entering kind of the age of robots you you know, sex robots and everything else that's about to happen in the next 20 years. And we've got to learn to value being human and our rubbishy human selves

and our imperfect human selves and stop wanting to be these sort of hairless, perfect androids and embrace our sort of sweaty, human selves absolutely see our last week's episode on the problematic body situation on love island oh my god yeah case in point can i ask how quickly how old are your children they are um my daughter has just turned nine and my son is 10 so they're obviously too young to date now but when they do start, what kind of advice do you think you'll give to them? My son swears he's had a girlfriend,

but I think... But it was about when he was six, and I don't think she knew at the time. He's not hanging around. I'm sorry, Daisy. I've got news for you. You had a boyfriend. That's so cute.

But no, advice, I don't know's it it's hard you kind of fear you become that sort of old person who fears for the future because you know you you you're aware when you reach like my scary age of 42 you're aware of how much things have changed and like there was a famous quote like by douglas adams that anything that happens before 35 becomes the sort of normal order of things everything that happens after like 35 is like what is this scary nonsense that's happening around me and you've got to resist that but yeah i i do i do i do yeah because you you when you have children, you love them so much and you care for them so much in such a complete way. That's beyond most kind of relationship love.

It's just this total love. And you're very scared to hand them over. You know, are you really going to love them like I love them? You know what I mean? That complete love. And it's hard. But we're thinking of moving to a country with arranged marriages and sorting it out.

That sounds like a very good solution. Ten years, I might do the same for myself. Yeah, I was about to say, we'll do that as well. Arrange me. No, not quite at that drastic point yet. I think that's, I don't know. I think it's just we have to just stay looking after ourselves stay hopeful and i think seeing love is a type of like love

in the book we like greeks famously had seven different words for love and only one of them related to the what we call romantic relationship love i think love has just an attitude to life as an attitude to our friends as an attitude to ourselves as an attitude to everything and then if we want to get sort of like quite buddhist and zen about it that love will sort of come back to us in all kinds of ways not beyond just relationship love just in sort of like the karmic cosmic order of things i totally agree i very much believe happy things happen to happy people and you get back from the world what you put out yeah absolutely yeah and it's about being kind to yourself and you know true we have gone a bit nice and zen i really like it i feel like i think this

is a very nice um arch of this podcast though because i think we started off you know perhaps in the grips of something a bit darker and now we've come to a nice light hopefully speaking of light i suppose what what advice would you give to someone who might be struggling with a mental health condition whether it's anxiety whether it's having panic attacks or whether they're in the grips of depression what advice would you give to them if i guess it doesn't really matter if they're in a relationship or not, just in terms of managing that in relation to people. Yeah, well, I mean, if you're in a relationship, I suppose,

if you're in a good relationship where you can talk to someone, then obviously I'm a great believer that talking helps. If you've got someone, it doesn't have to be your partner in that sense, but if you've got a close friend or whoever it is whoever's that close person then i'm a great believer in talking i think the main thing i try and tell people you know the thing i'd have wanted to hear when i was 24 um that no one

could have told me is that things change you know it's kind of like a weather system our minds are even if you've got if you're diagnosed with depression forever you're not at the same permanent flat state of depression often when you hear of these people who've like taken my life because of illness or whatever you know that that was a moment and that was a moment i could have been in but there would have been other moments beyond that point in time where they wouldn't have been in that state of mind and it's just to remember that um you know life changes you you know i i give the corny metaphor about like the dark cloud like if depression is the dark cloud then you're the actual sky you're the thing containing the depression there's going to be a day when you might be like a british weather system which is quite cloudy but there's going to

be some sunny days in your sort of British mind. Love that metaphor. Yeah, that's nice. I think that's a nice way to think about lots of things. Definitely. Lovely. I think we've all learned a lot today. Sadly, we're out of time.

Right, we're going to meditate now. Everybody lie down on a yoga mat. No, but sadly, we are out of time. But if you have enjoyed this episode and the podcast mat. No, but sadly, we are out of time. But if you have enjoyed this episode and the podcast as a whole, please, please, please subscribe to Millennial Love. Give us a rating, a nice review. It honestly touches our hearts so much.

Every time we get a nice message from you guys, we always screenshot them and send them to each other and go, oh my God, look what this person said. Each one of them makes us super happy and it helps other people discover the podcast yeah we love getting your messages we also love hearing your dating disasters and dilemmas which will return in next week's episode uh so please keep sending them to us you can dm us on instagram at millennial underscore love or you can email us at millennial.love at independent.co.uk all your stories will be kept anonymous you can also tweet us if you like

so many ways to communicate with us Rachel underscore Hosey is Rachel's username I am Olivia Petter one no that was a really stupid

thing to say we'll let you off and then it's been a long day if you're not really into email Twitter or Instagram there's always Facebook

and you can find us there at facebook.com forward slash groups forward slash It's been a long day. And then if you're not really into email, Twitter or Instagram, there's always Facebook. And you can find us there at facebook.com forward slash groups forward slash millennial dot love. Matt, where can people find you? Well, even though I talk about how stressful Twitter and Instagram are, I am on those things quite a lot. I think Olivia, we're in Twitter contact. Yeah, we're, yeah. We've got the Twitter thing. I'm Matt Hague one. Yeah, sorry, I'd leave you're in Twitter contact yeah we're yeah we got the Twitter thing

I'm Matt Haig one yeah sorry I'd leave you out Twitter stuff I'm recently getting into Instagram which is slightly

I know it's bad for a lot of people's mental health but I find it a little bit healthier for me than Twitter so I'm getting more into Instagram

Matt Zed Haig I am on there I think what's the Zed stand for well when I was eight I was annoyed that my sister had a middle name and I didn't have a middle name. And her name was Phoebe, which pre-Friends was quite an exotic name to have. And my name was Matt and there were like five Matthews in my class.

And so I wanted the most exotic name I had. And my granddad had this massive family tree. And some distant great, great, great, great, great relative was called Z zaribable so my name is matthew zaribable haig but it's not official but i still go with it i love that to be honest just like phoebe and friends princess consuela banana absolutely and so many uh friends references which i have really enjoyed And your book is out when? It's out on my birthday, July the 3rd, that kind of week.

How delightful. What a nice birthday activity. Thank you so much for joining us. It's been fantastic. And have a lovely week, everyone. Bye-bye. See you next week. Twas the season of chaos and all through the house not one person was stressing

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