Love Lives - James McVey on body dysmorphia

Episode Date: October 9, 2020

Support Millennial Love with a donation today: https://supporter.acast.com/millennialloveToday Olivia is joined by musician James McVey to discuss his struggles with body dysmorphia and eating disorde...rs.The Vamps star opens up about his experiences, including having liposuction at 20-years-old, in an effort to encourage others to talk about their issues. Follow the show on Instagram at @millennial_loveSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/millenniallove. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Twas the season of chaos and all through the house not one person was stressing. Holla differently this year with DoorDash. Don't want to holla do the most? Holla don't. More festive, less frantic. Get deals for every occasion with DoorDash. Hello and welcome to Millennial Love, a podcast from The Independent on everything to do with love, sexuality, identity and more. This week, I'm very excited to be joined by musician James McVeigh. For those who don't know, James is in a band called The Vamps. He came on the programme to discuss body image
Starting point is 00:00:33 and how his relationship with his body has affected his relationship with his long-term girlfriend, Kirstie. It was really interesting to talk to James, least of all because this is a subject I feel like men seldom speak about publicly. I should add that we do touch on some dark subjects in this episode, such as eating disorders, so please do bear that in mind before you listen today. Also, keep an ear out at the end of the episode for some resources and organisations that can offer support to people experiencing some of the issues we discuss. Enjoy the show. Hi, James. Hello. How how you doing i'm good thank you not too bad dodging the rain today but uh i'm all right thanks it's disgusting weather today it's like really i mean it's so boring and british
Starting point is 00:01:18 to talk about the weather but honestly today it's vile i mean there's a proper storm so yeah absolutely our um our dog is um is terrified of of the rain and wind so today's like a combo so could we not have a garden so we have to walk her to go to the toilet and we have to carry her around the block put her down under like a bush she'll go for a wee then we pick her up again and take her home she just won't walk at all that is so i mean i don't blame her i don't want to walk in the weather that's so cute you have to carry her like a baby i know i know um so so let's start off by talking a bit about your new single better which i understand can be uh can be interpreted as being about relationships can you tell us a bit about that um yeah so i guess i guess lyrically um on the surface it's a song
Starting point is 00:02:03 that can be perceived you know like a normal relationship song, I guess. But a lot of what we're trying to do with our new album is talk about wider themes than just one-on-one relationships. The album's called Cherry Blossom, which I think invokes a sense of rebirth and a new chapter, which is really relevant for us in the band. We came up with this whole theme and this concept uh last year but bizarrely now with uh covid it's like it's kind of got a new meaning to us in in a way and i think the song better you know that the line is did things get better or do we get used to it i think it's like and also like we can do better than this i think it's it's also that notion of
Starting point is 00:02:45 maybe people were kind of blindly walking through life before coronavirus. I definitely lived probably more selfishly than, than I do now. And I think, you know, there's a real, if there's anything to take from, from the pandemic, admittedly not much, but if there is something, it's that sense of coming together as a community, like, you know, the fact that people have said WhatsApp groups on their streets or people have been shopping for oldie relatives like i've met so many more neighbors i didn't know i had in the past couple months so i think like we're trying to shout a little bit about that with with this music um and that sense of yeah we can do better than this we're sort of speaking about a time
Starting point is 00:03:21 yeah last year maybe where i think a lot of us got very used to just living especially in london where i am you get used to living within your parameters and sort of like tunnel vision of like right this is what i want to achieve and i'm going to do that and it's quite an insular uh sort of mindset and i think it's kind of been turned on its head a little bit we want to interact with people now we want to be outside in nature we want to help each other um and you know like us brits sort of quite often get get portrayed as people that uh that uh uh i guess like polite but not really in a meaningful way you know like we're scared to not say please and thank you like 10 times when we're given food in a restaurant or whatever but now it's almost like we act we actually want to so to be that stereotype as opposed to just being it you know to avoid awkwardness so I think yeah
Starting point is 00:04:09 it's been a real switch I felt in in my life and and the people around me and and I do think that we we try and cover some some of that feeling in the new album yeah yeah it's it's a real it's really interesting that you wrote it before all of this started happening as well. And I think just taking it to within the context of a relationship then, do you think it's about that idea of doing better and thinking outside of your kind of insular world? Is it about kind of not getting caught up in the things that don't matter, I guess? Because now we've all been given this wider sense of perspective. So it's like, is it about not succumbing to those petty arguments and just actually taking a step back and being like, no, we are above that?
Starting point is 00:04:54 Yeah, I think so. I think there's been a lot of re-evaluation in people's lives and there's been like a real alignment of priorities and also a real like soul searching i think within each of us i think you know i'm the sort of person that revolves heavily around being like supported and almost like propped up by people around me um you know touring with the band there's like a crew of i don't know 12 guys and we're always there to get it's like a security network that i have and i've been like that all my life with friends and relationships and now the band and, and my family and stuff. And I think, you know, there was a period in
Starting point is 00:05:29 coronavirus where we couldn't really have that support around, you know, yeah, you can be on the phone and FaceTime and zoom and whatever. But I think a lot of people really struggle from, from reducing that human to human contact. Um, and, and yeah, think that i think that this this album that that we are doing it's kind of saying that's really really important and almost like the essence of of what it means to be human is to have you know each other around you and to value and cherish that um in a way that perhaps we haven't done before yeah Yeah, absolutely. It's been such a shift. Now, I know that you were supposed to get married in November, weren't you?
Starting point is 00:06:10 To your long-term girlfriend. So what, I mean, obvious reasons why you decided to postpone, but I know that some people were thinking, fuck it, we'll just have, you know, the smaller ceremony with 30, now 15 people. So what made you guys decide to postpone it genuinely i know everyone says it but we i only want to get married once um and we're very lucky
Starting point is 00:06:34 in both of our lives that we have a few groups of of people uh you know friends from home and and then people are to do with the band and you know kirsty's done a she did a degree then a master's so she's got like two groups of friends there now she's working full-time so she's got another group and i just think we'd always regret not doing the proper the proper thing also um there's a few people like elderly relatives that are definitely in the vulnerable category and i think even if it was made legal tomorrow for, I think we'd still feel a little bit irresponsible getting 200 people in, in a, in a room, um, this side of Christmas. Uh, so I think, I think I'd, I'd hate for, I'd hate for us to get married with like an underlying feeling of like tension or, or nervousness. And I think, you know, hopefully we're going to get married next, next Halloween
Starting point is 00:07:21 now. Um, which is funny because I'm like the least like fun person like that i'm not the sort of person that would dress up and do all that but it's gonna be halloween um and i think hopefully by then coronavirus will be something that we remember but it's sort of like we're definitely through it so i don't really want to do something in the thick of it um and i think look there's there's a hell of a lot worse things happening than than me having to reschedule my wedding so i think for kirsty and and i we just sort of thought it's not it's not the be-all or end-all we'd rather do it properly when it's safe to do so yeah I completely agree and also you like you said you know you only want to get married once if you're going to do it you want to do it properly and you know forgetting
Starting point is 00:07:57 about the logistics of everything just the general mood right now it's not really like a celebratory mood you know it'll be it would be kind of hard I think to um to really embrace and engage in the joy of something like that when everything around you is falling apart absolutely so I think I think that's a wise idea um now let's get on to the subject of the episode so you're here to talk to us a bit about body image, which is so great because it's something that we've spoken about on the show before, but only with women. And I think it's, you know, just even from a wider point of view, body image and body confidence is often seen as a women's conversation. and it's very rare that we actually hear men talk about it and I think that you know exacerbates the problem for men who experience body dysmorphia like you did so can you explain I guess start us off by telling us when you first realized that this was something that you were struggling with it's a hard one for me to pinpoint because like it's something that definitely still affects me
Starting point is 00:09:02 now and like looking back sort of 10-15 years, it's really hard to, I mean, that's the thing with, with mental health, isn't it? I think it's not for me personally, it wasn't obvious steps. It wasn't like right on that day that happened. And then two weeks later that happened, it's like, it sort of chips away at me. And I think, and it's, it's scary because before you know it, you're so deep in something that it's not, it's not easy to climb out of. So I think the first time that I, well, background for listeners, I grew up as a slightly overweight child, not massively, but definitely not skinny like a lot of my friends, slightly overweight. But I was at that blissful age of like, I don't know, 10, where I didn't look at my body in that way back then. Before social media and stuff, I was at that like blissful age of like I don't know 10 where I didn't look at my body in
Starting point is 00:09:46 that way back then you know before social media and stuff it was just I was very happy just being like that and then I went from that to then being I grew up with and sort of went inwards at the same time and I think I started sort of secondary school and the guys around me that were popular, that seemed to be aspirational, were the rugby and football playing types. I was really into football, but I was more into singing songs about girls and growing my hair and piercing my nose and having flesh holes and stuff. I didn't really fit into a category. So I, so I felt slightly isolated anyway. Um, and then I, I sort of said to myself, it was the era of, uh, Hollister Abercrombie sort of like swept my, my sort of, uh, my County massively and Jack Wills and all that. And all the marketing was men looking in a certain way. And all the boys at my school that are popular would wear those clothes. So I was like, right, I'm going to go buy those clothes. I went into the stores and it was the
Starting point is 00:10:50 time when all of the billboards and stuff were like really ripped men on like a Malibu beach surfing. And I thought, right, I have to be that person then in order to not only be popular, but to perhaps find my place in life to to be accepted to to become a man i guess um so i i went quite quickly into ordering all of the the proteins the supplements um and going to the gym and stuff and i think it's really it's really difficult because my source of of information and and sort of like future plans with fitness was stuff I saw online. So I would Google like, I don't know, like military diet,
Starting point is 00:11:31 because there was this thing, or like it was the time when like 300, the film came out and there was like a Spartan diet and all that, all that shit. So my sources were, for me, I thought they were extremely credible sources. You know, they may well be for for performance athletes but for a 16 year old kid in dorset reading these extreme diets saying this is what you should do it was quite a shift and and i think it was noticeable to to my parents but i but i sort of uh persuaded myself that that was healthy And I think that's the real problem. We have the terms
Starting point is 00:12:06 around diets as being healthy or the best version of yourself and all that stuff. So I thought, yeah, that what I was doing was really, really good for me. So I guess, yeah, 16, 17, I realized that not only did I have to have the supplements on one hand, do the exercise, it also meant I had to cut everything else out because on, according to Google and, and Twitter and whatever, like carbs were the enemy. So I was like, okay, fine. Like I'm just not going to have carbs anymore. Um, so I went from being very normal, uh, in inverted commas, weight and size to having i think i had seven percent body fat uh just sort of at the start of the band and if you think like you know people that do the the
Starting point is 00:12:54 bodybuilding shows like the all that stuff they've got like five percent body fat or around that so so from that aspect i was pretty i thought in my head before I got to that point, I thought that would be, uh, that would be my final destination. But the problem is with, with the fitness industry, it's almost like bankers with money. You think you get to a certain point and you're like, oh shit, actually I want to do more. So even though I had like, I couldn't lose any more fat off my stomach at all. I was looking, I was like, oh, well, my arms, they could be bigger or my legs. And you just sort of like, I realized that every time I looked in a mirror, I was critiquing myself in various different ways. And it was almost like, yeah, one error would be okay.
Starting point is 00:13:37 But then, oh, what about that? And it's just like this regressive cycle where the first thing you think about in the morning was, what am I going to eat today? Can I get to a gym? I'm not happy about myself. And immediately having negative thoughts first thing in the morning is like a 17 year old guy. It just becomes a horrible thing where you constantly feel tense and a pressure. And it can be seen as like, I think it's easy for people to write it off as vanity, but it's not that in many ways it's, it's like self-destructive, um, how you feel, because I guess at the crux of it, you want to be liked and accepted and happy with yourself.
Starting point is 00:14:18 But what you're doing to your body is torturous in many ways, you know, starving myself, not eating bread for a year, having like two whole chicken a day. Like it's just bizarre things to do at that age. And, and the amount of dairy and artificial protein that I was putting into my body that I thought was, was healthy. It's really funny. Like the irony, I would, I'd go to a hotel when we were like touring and I'd be like, I need to have porridge oats with water so I could put the protein in that I brought from home. But if it would turn up like the porridge had been made with milk, I was like, oh, no, I can't have that. No, it's too fattening. But then the irony that I was then putting in whey protein powder in, that is made from milk.
Starting point is 00:15:00 And it's just stupid little things in my mind that I didn't realize were a problem. And it's just stupid little things in my mind that I didn't realize were a problem. So I think, yeah, age 16, 17 is when I first started realizing that I, I mean, in my mind, I was adopting a healthy lifestyle. But yeah, looking back, that's when it shifted for me, I think. Obviously, when you're 16, 17, that is prime. Like, I want to be dating. I want to be showing off to girls and, you know, whatever. How much of you wanting to change the way you looked, you think,
Starting point is 00:15:28 was linked to wanting to feel desirable, I suppose? I think at school it was very apparent because I wanted to look like other people. But I think it changed for me. When the vamp started. There was another shift because all of a sudden, it wasn't like I wanted to be accepted by a couple of people in my school. I was then quite instantly recognizable and famous to an extent within the first year of the vamps. So I knew that people liked me, but I think it changed in my head as being like something that I could control.
Starting point is 00:16:10 And I think I'd gone from living a relatively like chill, easy, normal life in Dorset to then be like on the road, busy from city to city. So my, the thing that I clung onto was like, right, I'm going to control everything that I put in my body and the fitness that I do, because that's the only thing that I can control. And I think it's all, it's all connected in a way. Um, so, so yeah, it was, it wasn't even when at my lowest point, it wasn't the fact to be accepted. I think it just became a weird thing where, yeah, I wanted to cling onto a sense of understanding and controlling my life. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts.
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Starting point is 00:17:35 Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com. Would you say looking back, would you recognize what you were going through as having an eating disorder or a disordered relationship with your body? Or would you give it a term or not really? I mean, a lot of press has said, you know like uh anorexia and stuff and i'm not i'm not sure but i know it's unhealthy because you know when i was at my skinniest point when i was how old was i i guess yeah like 19 uh you know so i started when i was yeah 15 16 but by the time i
Starting point is 00:18:18 was 19 i've been touring for for a couple years with the vamps, I was at that really, really low body weight thing. And I ended up having surgery actually, because I wasn't happy with, so I had like really, really skinny abs, defined arms, but like my chest, I had just like tissue and it wasn't fat at all. It was, it's just like breast breast tissue and no matter how much I starved myself or or went to the gym or whatever lifted weights it would never let go so I ended up yeah like having tissue removed and I you know I was like 20 year old guy on tour in Australia um and I was I had to wear this this like vest thing for like a month um so like so like my insides didn't seep out of the stitches
Starting point is 00:19:06 that i'd had and i was just like this is fucked up like i'm meant to be you know i mean i'm in one of the biggest bands in the world at that point we're touring um you know i i'd not i i met kirsty by that point so i was really really happy and i was just like this is like this is weird and like i've never really spoken about that no one knows about the whole surgery thing but like I think it's important now sort of eight years on to think like because I was watching videos of the vamps the other day like because we can't tour at the moment obviously I was on YouTube looking at like old touring videos that remember what it was like and um there's like videos of me like speaking to camera like acting
Starting point is 00:19:42 like I'm like the happiest person there and then I see I'm wearing this this like vest and I just like it's just such a bizarre time to look back on it's almost like it never happened um and I think yeah it's only really been the past couple of years that I've realized like that was a really really strange place for me um and yeah it still affects me a lot now but I think think luckily, I think being able to do things like this, communicate how I felt about that certain thing and acknowledging that it was a dangerous place to be, but understanding the route that it took me to get to that point, hopefully will help other people recognize when their tendencies turn into quite
Starting point is 00:20:27 dangerous habits yeah i mean i really admire you so much for talking about it thank you i think it really will help a lot of people and you know like you said it's it's so important to communicate these things particularly now when we live in this age of social media where everything is kind of curated and it's all like a highlights reel and it's rare that we see people actually saying no you know what in that photo or in that video where I look really happy and I look like I'm living the best life I'm in one of the most famous bands actually I was going through inner turmoil and it just goes to show that you know it's so easy to project this kind of image of perfection, when that is obviously so
Starting point is 00:21:06 rarely the case. I want to ask you a bit about social media. How do you think your relationship with Instagram and, you know, obviously, you have a lot of followers on that platform, how does that impact your relationship with your body? I think when I was a bit, well, actually, no no it's still relevant now because i think the dangerous thing of social media is whether i mean there's been some brilliant people that have come out to try and address this and and reduce it but the vast uh majority of accounts that i see on my explore page are the best versions of people that they're posting. You know, there's not many people that will actively go out and post a shit picture. And yes, there's been these like
Starting point is 00:21:48 trends of like what I actually look like and that's good. But like from a guy's perspective, there's not many men doing that. Like if I go down my, my explore page, it's just people in the gym looking massive or, or, um, people driving motorcycles and vests and they're like fucking massive. And it's like, that's the scary thing because if that's all people are seeing on social media, that's what they'll believe to be the norm. And especially when still a lot of those pictures are edited and modified. It's unsurprising that a 16-year-old me thought that those models in Hollister look like that all year round, and that's not them starving themselves. That is just what they look
Starting point is 00:22:32 like. So I think the role social media has in people developing disorders with food is really, really prevalent. But I think it is about trying to acknowledge that those pictures aren't the real, they're not the norm. And I do wonder whether some of these companies should be saying that, you know, or organizations and social media companies should maybe be letting people know that this isn't how people look all the time. I know there was something in the press a few weeks ago about saying when pictures have to be like, sorry, accounts have to say when they've like doctored images. I don't know whether that's the answer, but like, I think we have to just, especially from a man's perspective, we have to acknowledge that the people that we do see online, that is
Starting point is 00:23:22 not how they look all year round. And it's it's not achievable you literally kill yourself to look like that if you know if you if you do that all year round yeah you're right it's it's it's terrifying really um the lengths that people go to in order to sustain that it's just completely unsustainable um talk to me a bit about your relationship with kirsty then. At what point through your journey with all this did she come into your life? And at what point did you have a conversation with her about it or was it something that she kind of picked up on? which has been brilliant actually for me because I've kind of had that anchor throughout the whole of the vamps which you know we weren't very public in the early years for various different reasons but behind the scenes she's been like a rock and I think it was quite obvious to her like pretty soon on that I had like a bit of an issue with food with food. And it was the sort of thing where I would dictate absolutely everywhere that we'd eat or I wouldn't eat something or, you know, it would be like
Starting point is 00:24:30 Christmas and I, I'd still have chicken and vegetables with nothing else. Um, and I think it just kind of got to a point where, where Kirstie was like, look, we need to, we need to try and break this and address it. And there's always that early period when, you know, you've only been together a few months and it's, you know, you don't really feel comfortable enough to like, Hey, try and try and change. A massive part of someone's life. But I think just having her there to, to offer, you know, she, she kind of took time to, to listen and acknowledge how I was feeling.
Starting point is 00:25:01 And instead of being dismissive and saying like, that's stupid, I think she tried to help understand it. And it's a gradual, gradual process. And even still now, you know, eight years on from where, well, probably 10 years on from when my issue started, I still do have daily, daily battles with it. But it's just nice having someone there that I know that I can trust and rely on to let me know when I'm slipping into negative tendencies. Um, yeah, I think, I think it's been a bizarre sort of period of my life the past 10 years, like massive highs, massive lows, and having that sense of like consistency in a relationship sort of really, really helped me in my darkest times for sure and so when you are
Starting point is 00:25:45 experiencing those kind of lows uh again as you said you know today what what do you do so obviously i'm guessing you you have a conversation with kirsty and you know what what are your other kind of um sources of comfort and who do you look to for support i think in in the in the early days it i i know i know that there's been a positive change because in the early days lows would go on for for months um and and that was really really hard to come out of and i think now you know it's like it's like especially with with coronavirus not really knowing what what's going on and you, I think the music industry may, maybe potentially the biggest hit industry, music, music and theater. And it's like not knowing what's going to happen over the next
Starting point is 00:26:33 12 months of our life. Really, really, I mean, it affects everyone, but for people like me that are very, very up and down and, and get anxious and overthink things, you know, like I can, like yesterday I had just like a really shit day, but I think now what I'm able to do is say to Kirsty, I feel a bit rubbish today. And that's fine. And it's about knowing that you are going to have those days. But for me, I'm able to look at it almost from a third person perspective and say like, you're feeling really rubbish today, but you know tomorrow is is a new day and i think being able to vocalize that even to yourself speaking out loud to yourself or with
Starting point is 00:27:11 someone like kirsty or whatever or even speaking to the dog which sounds like i'm loony but like just physically speaking almost helps you acknowledge how you're feeling and and it's all it's like a therapy to me communicating how i feel because i think as soon as you say something i do a lot of work with um with an anti-bullying charity and i was bullied sort of growing up and for me as soon as i shared that i was being bullied with someone it was like a weight was like it's like a five kilogram weight was lifted off one of my shoulders and it's like yes you still have another five one there but at least it's sort of like you're sharing the burden a bit um so that's why now i'm able to deal with these low
Starting point is 00:27:48 spells a hell of a lot better than i used to i think like when you ask about who do i look to or whatever it's really really important that it's been amazing the past few years that there's been a lot of men that have come out and spoken about things um mental health i think mental health and you know and this this thing with like negative food, they are so hand in hand because that's what it is. And I think people that speak about that's really, really, really handy, but also like when we were saying before about maybe how societies become more willing to help each other, I feel that like that's relevant with this as well. I think there's, there's more ears open to these conversations now than in the past you know
Starting point is 00:28:25 if i said this sort of stuff 30 years ago i don't think i don't think we'd be having this conversation now because i think what we're chipping away at is that male stereotype and that that gender construct of of of a man having to be strong and bulletproof and and emotionless um i think all these things help further this conversation and uh and stem uh really dark thoughts for men and women totally it's this it's like you said it's this really like traditional idea of masculinity is like the alpha male being like this bastion of physical strength and you know like you said it's interesting you mentioned the abercrombie models like we're the same age i grew up with that as well and you know what that does is it conditions men to want to look like that but it also conditions straight women to want to be attracted to that and then
Starting point is 00:29:13 that that you know that creates all sorts of other issues as well because it's like that's not realistic yeah it's just it's so interesting to to listeners who might be you know male or female you might be experiencing some of the same feelings you went through with body dysmorphia and you know becoming a bit obsessive about their appearance what what advice would you give to them you know I mean I guess I guess a first port of call maybe would be uh delete instagram off your phone for a while doesn't help yeah i um after i did i went um i did i'm a celeb when i came out of that i was like the happiest i've i've well i thought i was the happiest i've been in a while and social media didn't mean anything to me and i've tried since then to only have Instagram and Twitter installed on my phone when I'm going
Starting point is 00:30:06 to post something. So I download it, which is crazy because I probably download it five times a day and then delete it again. But ideally, I wouldn't look at it first thing in the morning. I go on the news app instead of Instagram. I try and wake up, go downstairs. And then if I'm going to post something, I'll install it, post it it see like direct messages and then i'll delete it again and try i think that's the thing you have to try and have a separation i always think that like social media should enhance your life as opposed to life enhancing social media if you saw i mean so it's like i almost had to swap things around um instead of yeah instead of my life being planned around, right, what can I do to put that on Instagram? Like it's, you know, you shouldn't have to have
Starting point is 00:30:52 that. It's like waking up first thing, thinking about food. Like I think I was definitely getting to a point where I was waking up thinking about Instagram. It's like, what am I doing? So I'd say, yeah, try and try and detach yourself from social media as much as possible. So I'd say, yeah, try and detach yourself from social media as much as possible. But also seek credible, going back to food and fitness, seek credible advice because I presume that a lot of the accounts that people follow on Instagram aren't reputable sources. And I think it's education, isn't it? Education and communication.
Starting point is 00:31:22 That's how we'll tackle some of these issues. And now it's time for our Lessons in Love segment. So this is the part of the show where I ask every guest to share something that they have learned about themselves from their previous relationship experiences. So, James, what is your lesson in love for us today? I think my lesson in love is to truly embrace the person that you are. So instead of trying to shroud who you are in like, whether it's on the image that you portray on Instagram or wearing things that you don't feel comfortable in or doing whatever for me, definitely like the key to Kirstie and I's success as a couple, couple i guess would be that she gets the true version
Starting point is 00:32:05 of me as opposed to uh the guitarist in the vamps from 10 years ago yeah i guess you're coming at it from a from a slightly different experience for most people because you have this kind of public persona of who you are and and i suppose what your relationship is like as well but you know obviously no one knows what goes on within a relationship apart from the two people in that relationship and I guess that probably seems much more relevant for you than most people yeah yeah I do think there's there's also an element of like being proud of who you are I think a lot of people get scared to be to be seen as being like self-obsessed or like or arrogant but like I think you have to say right this is what I've achieved in my life and this is what makes me who I am. So I'm going to embrace that. And with me
Starting point is 00:32:50 and the vamps and Kirstie that they're, they're all hand in hand. Like I try my best to, to be, uh, you know, the same on stage as I'm off stage. And, and that, and that's relevant the other way around where like Kirstie is just as much part of my life when I'm in the vamps as when I'm not. And it's like, I try and include everything. I'm not like, yeah, James one day on TV then James the next day in his bedroom. It's like, I try to get that synergy. And that's really helped Kirstie and I
Starting point is 00:33:14 because it's just honest. She knows everything that's going on. And I think that's the key. It's truthfulness and honesty as well. That's it for today. Thank you so much for listening. If you were affected by any of the key is, you know, truthfulness and honesty as well. That's it for today. Thank you so much for listening. If you were affected by any of the issues we spoke about today, I'd like to direct you to BEAT, the UK's leading eating disorder charity.
Starting point is 00:33:33 To contact BEAT, you can call the charity's helpline on 0808 801 0677 or visit its website, beateatingdisorders.org.uk. For more information or support on body dysmorphia, you can also visit the Body Dysmorphic Disorder Foundation's website at bddfoundation.org. If you're a new listener to Millennial Love, you can subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Acast, or anywhere else. You can comment and leave us a rating too so that more people can find us.
Starting point is 00:34:03 And keep up to date with everything to do with the show on Instagram. Just search Millennial Love. See you soon. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not.
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