Love Lives - 'Situationships' and the ambiguity surrounding queer relationships, with Naoise Dolan

Episode Date: February 26, 2021

This week, we're joined by bestselling novelist Naoise Dolan to discuss her debut book, Exciting Times.The duo talk about the two very different central relationships in Naoise's novel and how ambiguity characterises them both in very different ways. When does a push-pull dynamic between two people become toxic? And are we overusing that word when we describe romantic relationships?The pair also discuss why female novelists are almost always asked if their work is biographical, particularly when it covers sex and relationships.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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Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. Hello and welcome to Millennial Love, a podcast from The Independent on everything to do with love, sex, identity and more. This week, I was thrilled to talk to the novelist Nisha Dolan. talk to the novelist Nisha Dolan. Nisha's debut book, Exciting Times, is a Sunday Times bestseller and critically acclaimed novel about a young Irish woman navigating two very different relationships while teaching English in Hong Kong. I spoke to Nisha about the natural ambiguities that surround all relationships and how these are often heightened in queer relationships. We also spoke about why we shouldn't be so quick to describe a relationship as toxic and why female novelists who write about sex and dating are almost always asked if their work is about themselves. Enjoy the show.

Hi Nisha, how are you? Hi, I'm great, how are you? I'm good, thank you. So for those who haven't read your brilliant book Exciting Times, which is out in paperback now, could you explain a bit about what it's about, please? Yeah, so Exciting Times is the story of Ava, who's a young Irish woman who comes to Hong Kong and she gets entangled with two quite different people. with two quite different people the first one is a male banker named julian who's from the uk and the second is edith who's a local who's a lawyer and she finds herself i suppose trying to decide what she wants in love so there's conflict between the two but it's not the two lovers fighting over her it's her fighting over herself. That's a really interesting point that you made, actually, because I think that's one of the reasons why this is such a unique love story,

because we're so used to reading in popular culture about these kind of, when you have these like triangles of lovers, it tends to be these two people fighting over one person. But I think what you've done is really kind of recreate that inner conflict. And, you know these two characters Edith and Julian are so different and the two relationships that Ava has with each of them are completely polar opposite so let's start with the relationship between Julian and Ava I think there are so many ambiguities to that that are really relatable and reflective of the modern dating scene just in general. One of my favorite

ways that Ava describes it is she says it didn't have a name apart from hanging out, catching up or popping in for a chat, which was to be fair, the content of what we were doing. So it kind of starts where they they're sleeping together and then she kind of moves into his apartment and then he kind of partly funds her lifestyle, doesn't he he so what kind of how would you describe that kind of ambiguous relationship and what made you want to write about something like that to me although they don't show it perhaps as openly as they could they are both people who once they decided and committed to care about someone they feel the responsibility to do so. But that's not a responsibility that either of them wants or readily accepts.

And so they arrive at these partial arrangements that do some of the job of establishing a way of being together, but the terms of that relationship make it impossible to discuss or expand on or be open and so I didn't want it to be something empty or that was obviously something they should always leave because I think then we lose respect for them as characters we need to understand why they're there and also where they find it so difficult to dump the whole thing immediately I think yeah and you do really feel that you kind of because you are invested in it despite the fact that you can't really describe

what it is it's like it's like that term situationship which has like emerged in the last few years that is kind of a term to describe a non-term of that like we're seeing each other we're hanging out we're dating and we talk about this quite a lot on the podcast because I think a lot of the time that way that language is used to kind of absolve yourself of responsibility in a relationship with someone who you might not necessarily be ready to commit to so I think it can sometimes be not malicious but I think there's sometimes a a negative context to it but I think actually in the case of your two characters it seems like they're both kind of invested in the ambiguity of it because neither of them really wants to define what it is do you think that's because like deep down they know that this isn't actually

a good thing like there's no longevity in it I suppose I want to write them from a place of respect for my readers in how they encounter that but also respect for the way it emerges in the world I feel so strongly that when there are ways of being together like this that entangle and trap so many people and not necessarily in a negative way because often it's that there are benefits and harms and we don't weigh them up properly or we can't we don't want to when something can be complex enough to trap real complex human beings I think it is a worthy subject of fiction we don't have to always paper over these complexities in order to make like I don't think the fiction should just

completely imitate life purely for the sake of it because what's the point like just record yourself doing something but if something occurs enough in life to perplex us there then it can also perplex a novelist for a novel. I want to bring up one of the texts that Ava drafts to send to Julian but never actually ends up sending but I think really kind of encapsulates the inner kind of torment I guess in her head about trying to work out how she feels about him which again I think is so relatable she writes sometimes I love you and sometimes I think it would be best if the plane flew into your office and you were on the plane or in the building and I just think that kind of perfectly captures that way of like desperately wanting someone's attention but also

kind of being filled with self-loathing for wanting for like depending on someone else that much to kind of make you happy is that kind of what you were thinking behind that text and you know she obviously doesn't end up sending it yeah it was important to me to strike a balance between julian being someone we don't completely disdain ava for wanting but also someone who isn't a 100 conventional desirable person because if that were so then it would be less clear how much projection she's doing and how much he has seized on something to fill her void and if it weren't him it would be something else so i think that's where the self-loathing comes in some of it is legitimately that there are aspects of him that she does not respect but I think the greater part of it is that she knows what she's doing to herself and

it's tied inextricably to what she's doing with him and so she can't stay there without experiencing that self-loathing because she's aware that she's chosen a solution that isn't right how do you think the fact that he kind of partly funds her lifestyle impacts their relationship i think that's one of those things where someone has good intentions but has never meaningfully had to think about what it's like to be someone other than themselves or how their behaviors make people feel so I'm sure in Julian's head it's like I have this money that is not significant to me and so it is my business how I dispose of it and I will dispose of it in this way and so on but then on Ava's end obviously

it's a huge power dynamic and it's actually more of one because the money isn't a huge deal to Julian I think if he made it a huge deal it would be actually a lot less of one because then they would be on the same plane about the significance of the transaction but it's the fact that this governing force in her life is so small to him often that really sets them apart in a way that they can't communicate about because there's so much complex class identity bound up in that that makes it impossible to. Yeah, I think that's one of my favourite aspects of the novel is that like kind of, you write so brilliantly about the kind of class differences between these two characters and how, like you rightly said, it's something that Julian

isn't even aware of, which is the very definition of privilege, isn't it? Right. It's like, do you know when Nancy Mitford wrote about you and non-you language? Yeah, it's that, it's the idea that really posh people don't say lavatory they say toilet um like working class people and it's kind of the in-between like it it's aspiration that makes you overreach but then I think what I wanted to do to do with Julian's character as well was have it clear that in other contexts he is that person who tries too hard and says lavatory and that's not a side of him that's always readily accessible to Ava but like we know for example that he went on a bursary to private school and then to a university where among his peers would have been like the children of heads of state and stuff and now he's

at this bank where he's just a flunky and has to cut out to these clients and stuff so yeah I think I wanted that to be there and I suppose to show how class is never a binary that we always find ourselves on one side of either in terms rigidly of the socioeconomic lens of it you know especially everyone in the west is in some kind of power relationship with the global south and then obviously as well most of us have cross interactions where our role varies but like also just more generally I think power is so complicated and that's why I bristle a bit when people call it a toxic relationship because to me that's far too simplistic much more that if you see different lights on an object it will appear different and

negative things will sometimes come out and what varies from relationship to relationship is how negative it can be but I suppose I just don't feel like there's a line where relationships become toxic there are some that are unambiguously toxic but I could not tell you what the least toxic toxic relationship is and I would say to the not toxic side of that least toxic toxic relationship yeah that's so interesting you point that out because I would I would agree I think that also the term toxic relationship it's like one of those it's like words like the patriarchy like it's so overused in the media and in common parlance that the kind of meaning has been lost and I think then like you rightly said the problem with that is then you apply that term to so many relationships that actually don't really fit within that bracket and it's like well you know I guess to one degree a toxic relationship

is like that kind of push-pull dynamic where you're not you don't really know what's going on between you two and you're kind of sleeping together but not really having any kind of emotional connection but I think the relationship between Julie and Ava like you said it's it is it's more complicated than that because there is a part of you that sees that you know they're not like intentionally manipulating one another it's um and I think this really comes to the fore when you bring in Edith and you really have that brilliant comparison between these two relationships and you see that it's not a case of like Edith versus Julian it's just the relationship between Edith and Ava is a much more kind of mutual mutually respective and I don't know they're just much more suited to

one another on an intellectual level right the fact that the repartee isn't always a snappy between them it seems quite significant to me because I think Edith gives Ava that space to think and to not always have to have a snappy answer right at the off or to feel like she's lost if she doesn't and I think that ability to just chill out and hold things in consideration for a bit without then becoming, I suppose, overcautious in your opinions. That's something that people really lack, I think, especially in the age of online discourse where you need a ready-baked answer to absolutely everything. And that's why terms like patriarchy and toxic relationships become overused. You write really brilliantly in the book about the ambiguity that can come with dating as a queer woman how how did you kind of

manifest that between the relationship with Edith and Ava because I know there were like specific kind of strategies that you use that are really subtle but really kind of like drive that point home. I think they're both very conscious about their appearance in public space and the tugging need for recognition with the complete fear that they'll be recognised because it's heartbreaking when you really love someone and you see other relationships validated all around you and that's not happening for yours but at the same time if they were read as a queer couple they'd both be terrified because their experiences have taught them that that will often lead to harm so I think as well because it's happening to them together that's something that really hurts both of them because it's one thing on your own

fearing being out in context where you don't want to but when you're with someone else and you're thinking but does that mean I'm ashamed of them no of course it doesn't but then why do I not want people you know I think and that comes out in their body language a lot like when they touch and don't touch it's not something I think they're able to speak to each other about in those situations it's really just something we see with I suppose how their bodies exist side by side yeah absolutely and it's I think it's particularly interesting because there's already like a base level of ambiguity in any relationship regardless of sexuality or gender there is always that kind of level of trying to establish how you feel about one another

so that is obviously so exacerbated given the kind of social context of that the way you write about it in the book um there's a there's a moment in the book where Ava kind of spends hours looking through Edith's Instagram to find out clues about her sexuality when they first meet I think I wanted to ask you about this because Instagram has become such a powerful tool in the dating landscape in terms of, you know, sliding into someone's DMs. So why do you think, why do you think people do use Instagram in that way? does it to find out more about a person and how useful can that be when someone's Instagram profile is always going to be like such a kind of curated version of who they are? Yeah I suppose the thing is when you see someone's curations that does tell you something about them you know it tells you what they value but psychologically that's not what it does to us so we can approach someone's instagram with

the conscious mindset that we're simply finding out what that person thinks is important or what kind of life they think is good but the way parasocial relationships work is when you have this material on someone because we're humans we want to connect you start thinking that you actually know them and then that impression falls by the wayside so I think in theory it's really useful to just know what someone's into know what kind of people they want to be seen as being friends with and all that but I don't think we actually understand the information that way like in our bones we don't feel that we're looking at someone's stated values we feel like we're looking at them I know you've spoken about this before but how you when you write you sometimes change the genders of the characters that you're writing about which I think is a really I can imagine a really interesting just

like mental exercise when it comes to seeing if you're kind of endorsing any stereotypes or whatever talk to me a bit about why it is that you want to do that and and if you did that with exciting times um yeah I didn't do it with exciting times but I did make quite a lot of radical changes from job to job and I think a lot of that stuff comes from the same reasoning which is I think sometimes you need to just create yourself a big problem because then while you're solving the big problem a lot of little ones will just disappear or will slide into place so something like changing the gender of a character I suppose throws up what might have been unexamined about them or it can just make them more interesting if you have an assertive male character and then you make them a woman you suddenly have to wonder how are they able to continue getting away with being

so assertive do they have some other form of power or is it that I'll make them then less assertive in that environment but they have the same desires but they need to achieve them in a different way so it just makes them more complex but doing it the other way would also make them more complex I think anything that just makes you look at someone again more deeply and re-examine how it is that they exist will really help with character development. I sort of feel like it's something that everyone should do to like address their own gender bias don't you think because it's probably so much but then I suppose the problem is when I rewrite it my gender biases are still coming in in order to say it makes them

a woman so I just need to continue and these Russian dolls who very slowly become a human who hasn't been socialized like the rest of us. Where can I get help hiring people with disabilities? There are hundreds of thousands of Canadians with disabilities who are ready to work, and many local organizations are available to help you find qualified candidates and make your workplace more accessible and inclusive. Visit Canada.ca slash right here to connect with one near you today. A message from the Government of Canada.

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. Just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. I'm going to ask you about an interview that you did recently. You were talking about how, as a queer person, you've got such an uneven skill set where you're cognitively very good

at discussing relationships through supporting your straight friends, but your own experience is lagging because of not having your own queer relationships acknowledged kind of goes back to what you were saying before about Edith and Ava but then you also said how in terms of emotional stages queer people are often doing the shit that straight people did five years ago so talk to me a bit more about what you meant by that and and how that does kind of manifest in the book because I think it does a lot yeah I think straight people tend to think of the relationships they have in secondary school and so forth as just complete trial runs where they learn nothing but you're learning so much you're learning in a really basic way how to recognize that you like someone

and how to do something about it and when you miscommunicate disastrously you're learning how to not miscommunicate disastrously and moreover you're learning about a way of being in the world where relationships are on the cards like when you're repressing something I think you can't selectively repress that thing because in order to do so you would have to examine it more closely than you were comfortable with so you just end up repressing everything so in that way I think it really can stagnate emotional development and so the spillover is queer people in their 20s often do make a lot of mistakes and one thing I really like about the community is how understanding people are of those mistakes and where it's coming from I think there

is a sense that there's stuff to be figured out and like it makes me so happy to see people coming out younger and younger and I think it is changing positively but yeah there is still that gap and I think that gap does often come with an intense analytical understanding of how these things should work because in the absence of being able to just go out and just like openly physically do it all the time you're still thinking about it because you're a horny teenager right so you still have all your theories about how stuff works and then those theories can become very useful to people who've never had to think about it to the stage of theorizing I think yeah I think that's such an interesting thing to explore and it's it is again I think it's one of those things that just isn't really explored within depth in popular culture that much and I think that is you know it's sort of like a chicken and egg situation really isn't it

because that obviously has a big impact on those perceptions when we're young particularly. I think the thing is in popular culture queer people are usually the minority or even the only one in their friend circle which makes absolutely no sense to me and I think that's why discussions of just what it's like don't really come to the fore because it's all centered around straight ways of dating and then the queer person in such a tv show or whatever exert themselves by I suppose introducing their partner at some stage and we don't really have the kind of chats that queer majority or all queer friend circles would have yeah it's it's funny because I think it's like you like you said by having that like one queer person in a friendship group or having that singular queer character it becomes a sort of

box ticking exercise that paves the way for the straight relationship to take the central role and then it's like oh no but there are queer people in it too but it's like but is that how accurate is your depiction of that queerness if if it's kind of just subsidiary yeah and like I think the thing about representation is especially nowadays it's rarely that something is completely offensive in its own right it's just in terms of how it fits in with all the other representation so it's not even that I'd watch a show like that and go I hate that I feel maligned it's more like I would like to see shows where that is flipped so that we all get to be the protagonist. You know, the nature of, I suppose, human-centered drama, that there will always be a protagonist,

but it's just like we need to take turns, I guess. It's no secret that female novelists are often asked if what they've written is about their own life. And I know this is something that you have been asked. And actually, I don't know if it's something you've been asked directly. I think it's probably the kind of thing where a lot of people do what I'm doing and say, this is something that a lot of people say. You've written about your own life and you went to Hong Kong yourself.

And, you know, how do you feel about being asked that question? I do get it so directly sometimes. Like the amount of times someone's literally like, so you and Ava have so much in common. She's a woman. She's Irish. And I'm like, really? Are those huge have so much in common she's a woman she's Irish and I'm like really are those huge things to have in common with someone there are a lot of people in Ireland like I think a lot of that is the inability to see women and Irish people as categories of being that are as complex as other ones I think Ireland just is not a real place to a lot of people who aren't Irish and women are not real people to a lot of men that's that's such a yeah I think that's quite

a good way of looking at it um can you I know that you wrote a piece about this um in the Irish Times kind of explaining like the strangeness of people not only asking you if the work is is about your own life but then asking kind of feel about your own personal relationships outside of the book so can you tell me a bit about what it was that made you want to write that piece in the Irish Times and and what kind of things people were asking you and and why you think it is that people like interrogate want to know so much about women's own personal relationships yeah so I wrote the piece in that atmosphere of book publicity where those questions were just constantly coming and I was also getting a lot of requests to write about my life so

I just said why don't I write about why I don't want to write about my life and it turned out I had a lot of thoughts and that but yeah it's a few factors really I think a lot of it is that some experiences are regarded as neutral and others aren't and the less neutral the experience being depicted is it's like well why would they choose to make that decision and especially if it's I suppose a group who aren't seen as having artistic agency to the full extent it's like oh well maybe it wasn't a decision maybe it was just a helpless vomiting out because like the question why did you make your main character a woman or whatever is essentially asking why didn't you write about men but people would never think to ask it that way nonetheless when

you break down the meaning it is our culture's assumption that unless you're a really good reason you should be writing about certain people and then the only really good reason they can think of for you is oh well because it's you and so you wanted to do you instead when it's like no maybe a woman who isn't me is just as interesting to me as a man who isn't me perhaps even more so but like I think to be fair some of it as well is just that writing is quite a niche thing that most people don't do and the thing that's close to it that most people do do is writing about themselves you know like someone who's never attempted fiction will obviously constantly be composing texts and emails and

what have you and probably writing you know longer form things about their lives even if it's just a long text so it could also just be that that's the most accessible way they can think of for like why would someone write a book because wanting to explain yourself is maybe a more universal desire than wanting to make something up just like everyone but not everyone does art photography where they're specifically trying to create a mood but then I think the way it happens is gendered because women get it so much more yeah I was going to actually say that next I think how much of it do you think is just a general lack of understanding about the art of novel writing because like you said it is it is actually such

a niche thing to do and I think it's the kind of thing that people just assume maybe like oh well you just write about what you know because it's like there are these kind of universal sayings that we hear over and over again like oh you write what you know everyone has at least one book in them and it's like yeah maybe but actually writing fiction isn't just about like fictionalizing your own life um you know it might be for some people but it's certainly not like that for everyone and it's just women like um the u.s novelist brandon taylor wrote a novel about a gay black man and every piece about that brilliant like wolf-esque novel starts with like the similarities between Taylor and his protagonist are clear and it's like why are you doing that why are you trying to make it sound like he's taking some kind of easy choice

when it's actually a much harder choice to take something like the campus novel and center it around someone it's not usually centered around the easy thing is to take a campus novel and make the protagonist look like the traditional protagonists so I think it's just a frustrating lack of thought and I think just lack of appreciation of what goes into art and that's not you know make her sound like poor misunderstood cultural figures but it's yeah I guess like if you haven't done something it's not always readily apparent why other people do the thing you know I'd be no better at intuiting why someone wants to play sport or is good at playing sport. In the piece you mentioned a few other female writers you mentioned Kate Elizabeth Russell who wrote My Dark Vanessa and Kristen Rupinian, who wrote Cat Person.

Both of those writers were frequently and still are frequently asked if what they wrote was about them. And I think that is particularly interesting because My Dark Vanessa is about an abusive relationship. And Cat Person is about this kind of horrible sexual experience. and Cat Person is about this kind of horrible sexual experience. It seems to me like women who write about sex and relationships, such as yourself, as you do in Exciting Times, tend to get asked if their work is about them more frequently than writers who cover other subjects. Why do you think that is? I think it's a really interesting point. And I think some of it is because of the unfortunate culture that we have of taking having experienced something as the bar for having a broad, well-researched understanding of it. understanding of it when I don't think that's helpful and certainly foregrounding you know the interests of people who are affected by something is important but the best way to do that to my mind is not to only commission people who've been through it

interrogate them on whether they've been through this incredibly personal thing and treat all formats like direct personal essays about that thing like and I suppose that the other thing some of it is just a response to that explosion in the last few years of the expectation that if women want to write especially online you know if there's something that just a staff writer can cover then the staff writer will cover of the expectation that women want to write, especially online. You know, if there's something that just a staff writer can cover, then the staff writer will cover it. I think to get commissioned as a first-time freelancer, you need something that only you can do.

And that will be a personal experience. So I think that then kind of structures how we engage with art around that stuff in general yeah you know what are the personal experiences that grab people that the ones where you've seen is really having offered something up and that is often our relationship to trauma very detrimental I think yeah absolutely and I think yeah like you said you know the most kind of confessional type of writing is seen as writing about sex and relationships. And it seems like the kind of lines have been blurred between fiction and people like and society has so long fetishized women who write about sex and dating.

And I guess I'm thinking of like Carrie Bradshaw and Sex and the City and Bridget Jones. they've become so so much larger than the characters that I think the writers created that I think it kind of feeds into this wider interest of just having this real desire to read about other people's sex lives because very often it's the thing that you you will never know about you know someone else's relationship or sex life as intimately as you will unless you see it in a piece of fictional writing or a piece of non-fictional writing but it's like I think because of that there is this constant appetite because it's like maybe you're looking for validation for your own feelings and the own your own experiences and there are some conversations that you just can't have with your friends.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I think that's why we're reluctant to treat fiction as fiction, because when that's our relationship to it, you can feel like a bit of a sucker, you know, if you read a novel and it affects you so deeply, and then you're like, but that's just something that someone made up.

Someone just coolly sat there at their laptop and typed that out, and here's me feeling like it's real. But then that's also something that someone made up. Someone just coolly sat there at their laptop and typed that out. And here's me feeling like it's real. But then that's also the magic of fiction. Like it's the weirdest alchemy in the world that you can take a very limited set of keys and turn them into something that someone feels recognised by.

And that's not to disrespect personal writing. It it's a great genre it's just not one that I work in and I think we shouldn't feel shortchanged when something's fictional we should appreciate how cool it is that people can do that yeah absolutely finally 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've learned from their previous relationship experiences. So Nisha, what is your lesson in love? My lesson in love is you don't need to rely on one person for everything because that's how love is framed to us.

And I think it puts an unhelpful pressure on relationships in a way that doesn't reflect what's actually great about them, which is giving you the space to still be a person in other ways with other people. So one of the things that made me think about this in the last year was I saw a tweet that made me so angry. There was like, writers, if your partner does not read your work, dump them. And I'm like, what is wrong with you like if I dated an architect I would not necessarily be looking through all their plans discussing the height of the duct like that as long as someone takes an interest in things that are important to you enough that you feel a connection they don't need to be everything and you know you should still have other friends and

have other ways of being with people I think I actually think that probably is a really good way of describing a toxic relationship if you know you are just relying on your partner to be your everything and then you are living in on your partner to be your everything and then you are living in one another's pockets and then you kind of by doing that you know your friendships and your family relationships that stuff kind of all falls away because you don't see it as important as your romantic relationship but it's like you know you're right we are kind of sold this idea that your romantic relationships are the most important ones in your life. And it's absolute bollocks, because obviously, obviously, that's not healthy, because that's an unhealthy pressure to put on a relationship. But also it completely dismisses

all these other valuable and incredibly important relationships, like your friendships, and the relationships you have with your family members, all of which, you know, you can pick and choose and get different things from each person in your life right yeah like reading all my work is my editor's job like there's a reason that that's a full-time thing that she is paid to do and why should whatever course half a date just have to do that thing even if it's not necessarily what they're into like I think one would have to take oneself absurdly seriously to think that you can only date people who do the thing that you do or like are good at the things that you're good at it's much more interesting to cast your net a bit wider

yeah I completely agree that's it for today thank you so much for listening you can subscribe to us on apple podcasts acast or anywhere else do keep up to date with the show on Instagram. Just search Millennial Love. This Giving Tuesday, the Center for Addiction and Mental Health is on a mission to make better mental health care for all a reality. And we've made incredible strides forward, breaking down stigma, improving access to care, and pioneering research breakthroughs. But now is the time to aim even higher. Together, we can create a world where no one is left behind.

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