Love Lives - Writer Salma El-Wardany discusses the importence of female friendship

Episode Date: June 23, 2022

This week, we’re joined by writer and presenter Salma El-Wardany to discuss her debut novel, These Impossible Things. Salma chats with Olivia Petter about celebrating female friendship, writing Muslim women into popular culture, and why she’ll never post about her relationship status on social media. The two also discuss why we should include men in the conversation around misogynistic abuse, and dismantle the idea that “nice guys finish last”.Check out Millennial Love on all major podcast platforms and Independent TV, and keep up to date @Millennial_Love on Instagram and TikTok.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/millenniallove. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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This week I am thrilled to be joined by writer and broadcaster Salma El-Wadhani to talk about her new novel These Impossible Things, the celebration of female friendship in our culture and the representation of Muslim women in the media. Enjoy the show. Hello Salma, how are you? Hey very good. Thank you for having me. Thank you so much for coming on. I can't wait to chat to you about the book. Can you start us off by telling us what the novel is about and what made you want to write it? Yes. So it's a story about three women, Malik, Kees and Jenna. They've been friends since they were kids. They've done everything together.

They've gotten through life together, all the ups and the downs. And then one night there is a fracture between them and it sets them off spinning into three very different directions as they all go on very different journeys in different spaces geographically and emotionally. And it's very much what happens when the women in your life, the closest women in your life, what happens when they suddenly disappear and I wrote it for a number of reasons. Number one, I wanted to see a portrayal of female friendships that was as glorious and as beautiful and messy and brilliant as my own friendships that I had with the women in my life. And I don't know about you, but when I was growing up, it was still very much women are pitted against each other.

Everything's a bit catty. You're all out to get each other. And it was that narrative that was plugged at us from a really young age. It was, you know, this is what it is. And then growing up and getting older, I thought something's not quite right here because that's absolutely not how it is and my girlfriends have saved my life on so many occasions and they've been the ones to pick me up off the bathroom floor when I've been down there crying and heartbroken and they have made me a better woman and I couldn't have become the woman that I am today without them and then also as a Muslim woman growing up in the UK, I just never saw myself or my girlfriends ever. We just didn't exist outside the narrative of a damning headline that was never, ever positive. And I did my dissertation in literature.

I did my master's in literature and I did this thesis for a year. And I looked across what you would argue the Western Hemisphere, right? So literature in the UK, the US, Australia. And I searched for a year to find stories of Muslim women or just Muslims that were their everyday lives dealing with relationships or family or all the things that we all deal with. And they just didn't exist. All of the representations were pretty damning. And so I just thought, well, it's not theirs, I better write it. I do think now, you know, we are having these conversations more and more

about celebrating women and celebrating one another and lifting each other up. But I do still definitely experience that level of internalised misogyny, not just from other people, but also in myself. And, you know, I have to sometimes catch myself and do it. I guess, how do you think that we reconcile that? Because, you know, have to sometimes catch myself and do it. I guess how do you think that we reconcile that because you know like you said we do want to celebrate it but but that does still exist I suppose if you talking from your own point of view like if you recognize yourself pitting

yourself against another woman or a friend how do you grapple with that? I always describe it as hooks so I think the patriarchy is like having lots of hooks in you and one by one you have to pull them out and some people have pulled out more than others and some people less and we're all still pulling them out. I'm still pulling them out and that's what I find when you have those little thoughts they're just hooks and you have to stop and pull it out and go no that's not from me I wouldn't actually think that about another woman. It takes a lot of internalized you know um honesty on your part you have to be really bluntly radically honest with

yourself about why and it causes you to question yourself a lot yeah which is not easy and why people don't do it a lot of the time because you sometimes might have to question um the person that you are but i also think this idea of women being pitted against each other and this catty narrative that we have, which I still find really dominant, by the way, even though we're in this wave of sisterhood and Instagram has kind of commodified that wave of feminism, whatever wave we're in, 365 wave of feminists.

I find that it's still really, really strong. And this idea of catty women being being pitted against each other but I do think it's a self-fulfilling prophecy and I think it's a myth and I think it is perpetuated by men and the patriarchy and society because actually it's better to have us pitted against one another than have us collectively pitted against men because that that would be a problem right um so it makes complete sense that that narrative would be furthered and continued and so I just I always try not to buy into it too much um because then we can sit here and go well women are bitchy to each other and then we can see it

everywhere but actually maybe that's just a narrative that we've been told and we could change that quite easily but yeah I think it's it's the scarcity mindset, isn't it? Because it's about thinking like there's only room for one woman to be doing this specific thing. And you know, if this person is doing this, it doesn't mean that I'm successful. And I guess it's very obvious when you speak about it from a career point of view because of those terms

and it's all about hierarchy and stuff, but that also exists on a social level, I think. And we carry that very much to that to that to our social lives how do you think because like you said we are kind of progressing we are kind of moving away from it but it does still exist why do you think it is taking so long and why do you think it is such a slow process even though there are all of these voices now like such as yourself you know talking about this stuff and urging women to support one another I I always say, and I've said this for quite a few years, much to people's dismay, I think we're in a really dangerous period of time when it comes to feminism.

And I think we're in one of the most dangerous periods of times with gender equality because I think we're in a false economy of diversity. And so what we have is so many people talking about it. And we have memes about it. And we have slogans on t-shirts about it that you can buy. You can go in and buy a t-shirt that says feminist or sisterhood or whatever other catchy slogan that's part of this movement. And because of social media and Instagram, you have all of these feminist activists on there, which is amazing. I'm not knocking that. But you have so many people talking in a way that when I was growing up, that conversation wasn't happening.

It was happening predominantly in academic circles, but it wasn't happening on a popular mass level that we now get to have that conversation because of social media. And that's good. I'm not saying these are bad things. It's good that these conversations are happening. But nothing's happening because of the conversations. So you have all this talk without action, which just equals a depressing state of affairs, because now we're hyper aware of all the problems. We're hyper aware of all of the microaggressions towards women and how it affects our every daily life from going to get a, to having a walk in a park, to operating in the office, to being in education, whatever it might be.

We're so now hyper aware of it, but there's still no direct consequence or action. The legislation isn't changing in our country. Policies in the workforce aren't changing in our country. We all now know about the gender pay gap, and we know that it's gonna take 257 years to close it and yet there's no company that goes, do you know what, let's just pay all the women the same. We're just gonna blanket pay all the women the same as men in those positions. I don't care about how long

you've been here and we're just gonna pay them the same. So no one's actually doing anything. You know we had all this talk about the Me Too movement which was amazing and great that we're having those conversations. But what legislation happened in our government to make women safer in the workplace? I don't know of any. I don't know any of my employer at the time. They didn't put in any new policies to make women safer. So I find that we're in such a dangerous space because we all go, oh, this is an amazing time for women. But actually, structurally, it's not because things in the very fabric and the foundation of how our society is built hasn't changed so actually now i'm just depressed all the time

about it because now i'm just talking about it with all these people on instagram all of the time and we're just banging our head against a brick wall but i think that's why it's so insidious isn't it because like you said because we talk about all the time it makes you feel like it's solved and it's not right i had a friend a female, a female friend might I add, who said, look, I get that you're always talking about this stuff, right? This stuff. I don't know what that is. She's like, but personally, I genuinely don't think women are oppressed. We're not really friends anymore. Oh God. Because I was just like, I can't do...

Did you ask her to explain why um no i didn't because i just thought this is not a good use of my time if you are in the space where you genuinely think there is no oppression happening for you as a woman exist in that space you're going to come to me at some point in life and you're going to be like, ah, OK, this is not a place for my energy to be directed. But we are in a place where people think that people go, you've got so many rights. Someone said to me a couple of months ago, you've got the vote and you've got it all. So what more do you need?

So the celebration of women, which we know we are seeing more and more in and thinking of popular culture, I think popular culture always has a really um strong role to play when it comes in reshaping how we view certain things culturally and societally and you know shows like the bold type and shows like um Dolly Alderton's everything I know about love the adaptation from her memoir and it's really lovely and heartening to see those female friendships on screen but at the same time there is also a part of me that looks at that and thinks oh I don't quite have that romanticized version of of women around me where you know I can call them at any minute of the day and they'll just immediately be there for me and drop everything and vice versa for them because that's just not

how life works it's more complicated and things happen. Everyone has their own lives. You know, we don't live in a TV show where there's one main character and various. Everyone is around that character. Exactly. That's not how it works. And yet we all move through the world thinking we're our own main character. So how how do you deal with that? Do you think there is a risk of fetishizing those friendships? And do we need to be a little bit more realistic about how we talk about them?

I'm going to say no, I don't think we do. And what I will say is I have a real romanticised relationship with my girlfriends. And I was going, I went for dinner with a friend recently and on my way home I called a different friend and she said, what have you been doing tonight? And I said, oh, I was out for dinner with this friend. And she said, oh, you two really date each other. And I find it so lovely the way you act out your friendship, like you really date each other. And it was so true and it really resonated with me.

And I thought, oh, that is what we do. We do. And I do date my female friends. You know, we send each other little love letters in the post or I will randomly send flowers to girlfriends or we will really make an effort on the the days or the nights that we're going out with one another and send little love notes via whatsapp right just there is a constant love just a love fest that is happening between me and my girlfriends and if I called them and said something's happened I need you here they would all turn up at the door and vice versa I

would say sorry this has to drop I need to go or I would say I'm going to be there in five hours but I'm sending you this in the meantime I'm going to send you whatever you need my other friend is going to come through for you because she can help and I do have that but what I will say is that takes so much work to create and it takes effort and energy and time. And I have spent years building those friendships and I've spent years investing in them and turning up and being there and showing up for birthdays and weddings and engagements and babies and whatever it might be. So there has been a solid foundation that has been laid over years and years. But I've always been very intentional about my friendships. And I've always thought it this disastrous, crying shame that we put so much effort and energy into our romantic relationships and don't apply the

same to our platonic relationships. The efforts women put into when they are dating a man or when they are with that man or and you know it we talk about in popular culture all the time you know he will I don't know potentially brush his teeth before a date maybe whereas she has bought six new outfits gone for a wax had her hair done bought new bed sheets just in case he comes over that night she wants everything to be perfect clean the house just in case he comes over that night after the date, if it goes really well. You know, women put that effort in, and I always just thought it was a bit misdirected,

which is not, I'm not being dead inside. I'm not saying you shouldn't. You know, if there's someone that you love in your life, yeah, put that effort into that romantic relationship as well. But I've always thought that our friendships, specifically with our girlfriends, deserve the romanticization and the effort that we give men, if not more.

Yeah, I think you're right. It's about shifting our priorities. And I think we've spent so long being conditioned to, like you said, just put all of our attention into our romantic relationships. And we really, I think, like you said, the consequence of that is that we don't put in the amount of work that we need to in order to sustain a friendship.

And then, you know, we get to a point where maybe that friendship fades away and we're left thinking, why did that happen? It's because you didn't put enough legwork in. Right, and you're left picking up his boxer shorts off the floor and putting the kids to bed. And that is an awful situation yeah and I remember in one of my early relationships I had quite a few years ago I had the really stunning realization that even if I was with someone who was the love of my life and it was love of my life in that period or whatever and it was incredible and this man was amazing even if I had found that at the time I remember thinking oh I'm still going to need my girlfriends because I still cannot get everything I need from a man I just can't because a man hasn't moved through the

world the way I have as a woman and they don't understand the trauma that women have gone through and the fear and the tension and the and the misogyny and the sexism and that daily grind of being a woman which is so hard he will never understand that he might love me and I might love him I don't want to sit and talk to you that much about it because your experience is irrelevant in this conversation I am still going to need all of the women in my life no matter who I was ever with. And let's talk about your kind of intentions with the novel a bit more so you said earlier on that you know one of the main things you wanted to do was challenge these kind of

stereotypes of Muslim women in the media what kind of message did you want to send with the novel and what do you hope it says to Muslim women and and you know non-muslim women as well which i think is equally important isn't it yeah and it's funny because I didn't what I wanted to do primarily was not necessarily send out a big statement on faith or religion or being Muslim specifically. There's no way I want people to take this novel and go, this is what it means to be Muslim, because it's not. There's a thousand different ways to be Muslim for whoever is reading it. Right. And also that changes based on the country that you're in.

What I wanted to do was write a story about Muslim women in which the fact that they were Muslim wasn't the main event and it wasn't everything and they weren't the butt of a joke either but they just happened to be women like any other woman going through family troubles, relationship troubles, career ambitions, what do I do next, oh my god am I doing the right thing. I wanted to write us into popular culture in a way that we did not exist. Because when you see stories about Muslims in TV, film, whatever it is, you're either terrorist number one, right, and there's something foreign happening in the background which

signals to the audience that a bomb is about to explode. Or as time went on and we saw more representation in TV, it was generally always in comedy and it was always someone making a joke. So I don't know, two Muslim characters talking about going on holiday, but there's a joke that they're gonna have to get to the airport earlier because it takes longer to get through security because of checks and yada, yada, yada. I remember seeing this skit on the BBC and I can't remember who it was and these two

Muslim guys they get pulled into a detention room at the airport and they're the ones telling the new detention officer what he needs to do because they've been through it so many times so they know right and it's and it's all really funny um and I hated that as well I was like I'm sick of us being the butt of this terrorist joke or us being the terrorist. That's all there was. And yeah, sure, I've sat and joked about it with my girlfriends because that's our bruise to poke at and that's our lived experience. But we need to exist outside of these really awful, stifling stereotypes. We just have to be these normal characters who are falling in love, who are stressed about various things. We just happen to be these normal characters who are falling in love, who are stressed about various things, we just happen to be Muslim.

Have you had any responses from your followers who are Muslim women who have, you know, kind of expressed the gratitude for you for writing this story that just doesn't exist in our popular culture yet? Yeah, and it's been so lovely and humbling. And I had one one person message me and say everything to the ounce was exactly what I experienced and went through and I've never seen it anywhere. And it felt like I wasn't so alone suddenly and I wasn't such a weirdo in the corner because suddenly we were just there on the page and it was normal. And there's been various responses like that, which is honestly gorgeous and lovely because that's what I want

other people to feel I want them because we're all out there we're all just talking quietly by ourselves to one another being annoyed about the way things are um but then we don't it doesn't go past our own personal conversations or our own dms or whatever or however we're talking about it so it's lovely that it can hopefully and I'd be very humbled if people do resonate with it in that way. I think there's a lot of interesting conversations going on specifically within that space and in terms of sex and relationships as well, in terms of people talking about various cultural taboos and stigma and dismantling those. I know that's something you talk about a lot on your social media profiles, but you've said that you sometimes experience

some backlash from your family for that. How do how do you deal with that and is that something that you experience fairly a lot of even now after it's been a few of few years of running your profile the most backlash I got from any family member was from my Irish granny really and then it would be would think maybe like someone some Muslim in your family is outraged My Irish granny who was the most outraged by my entire life on social media livid about it live is she outraged about and The openness with which I talk about sex or put nude pictures on I mean she grew up in 40s islands Catholic woman right like it was a very different time.

But I always highlight this because I'm always eager to impress that it's not just Muslim families that are outraged by women being open and evocative and passionate and sexual. It's across the board. It's across every single single faith and it's across people who don't have a faith but have very traditional conservative ideals about what you're supposed to say in public and what you shouldn't. And my granny is of that ilk. I had one conversation with her one time and she said, I don't know why you always have to talk about sex all the time. I was talking about sex, Selma. And I was like, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And then I stopped. And my immediate reaction is to get very annoyed and defensive immediately. But I didn't. And I said to her, before you got married, would you not have liked if someone could have had a

conversation with you about sex? And she said, yes, I suppose I would have. I think sex is also a particularly taboo thing for women to be talking about online. It's always going to ruffle feathers because it particularly, you know, with the way that society views female sexuality, even a woman talking about masturbating is still something that is like, whoa, you should not be talking about that. It is outrageous. Whereas it's completely acceptable for a man to do 100 or just walk down the street with his hands in his pants which is by the way a totally socially accepted norm in our country i don't know why on that on that note do you do i know you've spoken about getting some you know really horrible misogynistic comments from men that follow you online how do you how do you deal with that do you just kind of ignore it and think well they're all idiots or do you block them do you ever engage with them never feed the trolls rule number one um but i will not allow things to go on

in the in the shadow of the dms so i screenshot it and then i put it on my stories and then i tag them and i just leave it there see this person tag them send me this and it's everything from videos of men masturbating that they send me to pictures of their genitalia that they send me to, I hope you get raped to, I hope you die. It's a real, real plethora of messages on the daily that they will send me. And I always just diligently screenshot it and put in my stories and tag them. And you wanted to tell me this, or you wanted to show me this picture of yourself the world is going to see it um and without fail men who follow me friends not friends will message me and go i can't believe that i'm just so shocked and i think why are you shocked yeah why are you so shocked that's why i always want to keep putting it out there as a reminder that women

are subjected to a level of abuse online on a daily basis and a reminder to the men as well that this is your gender that does this on a daily basis and just because you don't get it in your dms every day that does not mean that you should be shielded from it you will know this as much as i know yes and i get when when men send me pictures of their penis and i put it on my stories i've had i've had quite a few men message me and go I didn't need to see that oh sorry poor you and I'm like neither did I do you think I needed to see that while I was on my way to work and it like pops up on the tree my phone's big as well the person sitting next to me was giving me weird looks and I think okay I didn't need to see it either but if I'm going to

be subjected to it we will collectively be subjected to it so that we collectively have more anger than I will have on my own. Gemini. Anyone who knows me knows the Pixel has always been my favorite out of all the phones I've ever had. Now with Gemini built in, it's basically my personal AI assistant. Since I'm truly terrible at keeping up with emails, I use Gemini to give me summaries of my inbox, which is a lifesaver. And if I'm feeling stuck creatively, I just ask Gemini for help and bam, instant inspiration. You can learn more about Google Pixel 9 at store.google.com. 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. Now, you recently turned 34. Happy birthday. Thank you. And you did this post on Instagram that I've seen you do every year on your birthday, reflecting

on how you've got to where you are and how, you know, you put it really poignantly about how all of the pain and heartbreak you've experienced has led you to this very kind of positive state of mind, even though it's not necessarily where you thought you would be at this age. So can you tell us a little bit about how you're feeling about all of that now and and how you have got to that kind of positive mindset because I think it's a really difficult thing for women to to get to because we're taught to think okay if you're not married and with kids by the time you're 30 you're a societal failure yeah so basic that still exists I'm 28 and I already have my mom being

like to me so Libby when are you gonna like you know when you're gonna yeah literally it's just like oh my god shut up I'm not Bridget Jones why is this still a thing so tell me you are we are all Bridget Jones apparently that's it we are and this is exactly when we talk about you know this great wave of feminism that we're in so why am I still asked about my relationship status as the absolute factor of success in my life no matter what I did my granny would always go when you get married and I would be like granny I have done better things in my life that deserve more celebration than me finding a guy everyone does that let's celebrate these other things more when you get married we

still live in a society where the highest measure of success for a woman is marriage and i wrote about it just this morning actually and i said i have spent years years planning my dream wedding because that's what i was raised to believe and society said this is what is going to be a win for you this is going to be success for you when you walk down the aisle in a big white dress and everyone is there staring no matter who's at the end of the aisle I didn't think about that I didn't think about the guy and the type of man that I would like and what values I would like him to have I just thought about whether the dress was going to have a veil or not which is not to say that I don't believe in love and marriage and if people want to have children then so be it um but I spent so many years thinking that life was going to be a certain

way and that like when I was younger I was like I'm going to get married on my 20th birthday which is insanely young when I think about it I'm like you're you're a child what do you actually know um but when I think about all the years that i was pushed towards this wonder and you are we're like sheep being herded by the patriarchy into this really narrow pen that that ends at marriage because then no one cares about you once you're married right um you're married and you have kids and then you suddenly like disappear into this ether where you are no longer your own person but you provide for everyone else um and I spent so many years being pushed into that and years believing that and buying into it and being like yes I'm

gonna have it I'm gonna I'm gonna go for it um and then heartbreak after heartbreak or just as I got older and realized that I was happier alone and that all the heartbreaks weren't worth it. And I just got to this place where I had this final realization about what I wanted from my life and realized that it didn't involve a push chair and a child in it and this big old wedding and that, you know, I could be in love and it didn't have to have those things and those trappings with it. And when I made that decision and I thought that's not the road that I want to go down anymore, it was so beautiful and it was so freeing and so wildly opening. It was kind of this opening of my life that suddenly everything gets broader again and everything is pulled apart and suddenly there are more opportunities and possibilities than you could ever have imagined because if I don't have to get married immediately and stop procreating

and then be a slave to those children for the rest of my life imagine what else is possible no matter what's going on in my like my love life privately I'll never talk about it. They won't exist online ever. Because I know that if I was to, for example, let's say I put a picture on my Instagram now or my social media anywhere and said, I'm engaged or I just got married. The amount of people that would flock to that and love it and be so thrilled for me,

which fine, it's coming out of a good place, would irritate the life out of me. Because would sit there and think I did better things that you didn't care about in my career and now you think this is the culmination of my way you think this is the best thing that I've done and if you ask anyone who works in socials they will tell you that pictures of couple perform better than pictures of single women by themselves that's how this stuff manifests though and that's what I think is so important to point out. Because if you say something like, oh, people think marriage is the be all and end all for women.

They'll be like, oh, don't be so stupid. That's so archaic. It's like, no, that really is. Like, look at the engagement on Instagram about those engagement photos. You're right. It's totally the same thing. And it's just, you wouldn't,

you don't get that level of excitement and hype that you would for like something in your career. Yeah. When I say I'm releasing my debut novel, the same amount of people don't like it they're like my friend's sonogram picture or her proposal video that that happened not not even by half because we don't value it that's why and so no matter what happens you know um if when I get married it will not a whisper of it will be online because I won't add to that narrative. I will be the constant reminder that you are the greatest love of your life.

I want to ask you about a phrase that you spoke about in a recent post on Instagram. You kind of dismantled the phrase, you know, women dating a bad man and like stop dating bad men. I need to stop dating bad guys. I was really interested in your take on this. Why do you think that is a phrase that you know we should kind of be challenging a little bit um well the phrase exists because the men like to abdicate responsibility because again it's putting the onus and the responsibility on women okay so I date bad men so I better change myself and my habits so that I can find someone who is lovely and then I will deserve love. No, I'm sorry.

Most men are bad men, okay? And I'm not saying that in the sense that most men are these terrible abusers and rapists. No, that's a small portion of men. Your everyday guy, my brother, my dad, your friend, your male friends, your... The men that we know in our lives, the guy that serves us coffee every morning, that we smile to and we think is lovely the postman whatever most men have not done the work required to be uh existing in this world on the same level as the women they have not done the work required to dismantle the patriarchy in them to do the under the work to understand how widespread and systematic it is how it affects women they just haven't do the work to understand how widespread and systematic it is and how it affects women. They just haven't done the work. So actually, most men are bad men to me. It's also, think about all

of your married girlfriends and think about the men they are married to or the men that they have children with or in long-term relationships with. And they're what we call the good guys, right? You got a good guy after all the dating pitfalls and after all the hardness of your life, you found a good guy. There's some of them out there. That's a narrative that we have, right? But that good guy still doesn't do as much household labor as she does. He still doesn't do the school run every day. She does it. He still doesn't do all the laundry in the house. She does it. She still cooks every meal every night and still goes out to work and picks up the kids. I said to my sister-in-law, send me a list of everything you do around the house that my brother does not do.

Yeah. And my brother was raised by a feminist woman and he's a good guy. He's what we call a good guy. And he is. He's great. I love him to bits. He does not do the school run every day. He doesn't do the washing.

He doesn't do the laundry. Yeah, he might take the kids swimming on a saturday afternoon to give her a couple of hours but she fills up the bottles of shampoo so that they have shampoo she washes the towels and the trunks and then when they come home she will take them out of the wet trunks and she will hang them and dry it he doesn't do that and all of your girlfriend's husbands they don't that. So then talk to me about these good men. If I'm still doing 90% of the work at home and I go and do a nine to five job and I'm doing most of the emotional labour in this relationship and I'm looking after the kids more than you are because I'm the primary caregiver, but you're a good guy and you still come home after the same hours that I've worked

and go, what's for dinner? Don't tell me about your good men. We have to sadly come to an end. But before we do, 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 they have learned about their relationships. So, I mean, I feel like there are lots of things that we could say for this. But Salma, what would yours be today? The biggest thing I have learned through all of my relationships is that you will

lose yourself to a man quicker than you ever thought was possible oh that's scary that's chilling and it's terrible sorry this is meant to be cheery sorry that's good that's good continue and because the the way the world is structured and the way our society is structured it's designed for that to happen you are set up for a. You're set up to give everything and never hold back and give your all. Because if you want to be the best girlfriend and the best wife and the best mother and the best lover, you have to give everything. Not the man. You have to give everything. Because the men aren't set up to give.

They're set up to take. That's what the world has set them up to do. And so that is always front and centre of my mind. What am I giving? And am I giving too much? And at what point am I losing myself because I've given too much? And I have learned how devastating it is when you do give too much and the devastating consequences that there are.

And that's not to say that the responsibility is on you, like you need to stop giving. But what I do say is the world is designed for men to take in relationships. And so until we change all the men, which is, you know, a work in progress, you have to be so mindful of that. And you always have to be really cognizant of how much you are giving. And there does come a point where you have to say, Iizant of how much you are giving and there does come a point where you have to say I'm not giving this or I'm not doing that extra extra thing for the person or I'm going to take this afternoon and channel all that energy into me and my dreams and my goals and my ambitions instead of spending all day online trying to help him solve this

problem which on the surface and people have said this to me it sounds callous or like I'm being spiteful or me it's not you can show up for your partner and be loving and be brilliant and be caring and be the empathetic partner that they need you to be and you can still show up for yourself and you can still make sure that you are giving yourself everything that you need and if you need to schedule it schedule it this afternoon is just for me I'm going to love on myself in whatever the ways that I love to love on myself whatever makes me happy or this afternoon or this whole day is going to be solely dedicated to my dreams and furthering my ambitions not the people around me but my ambitions and my what am

I doing for me um and that's and it sounds counterintuitive, I suppose, because it's about relationships. But once you lose yourself in a relationship, you're not the person that that person met anyway. How do you think you recognize then when you are giving too much of yourself and you are, you know, you are when the balance is off? Do you think you have like a little voice in the back of your head that you just kind of ignore? Is it kind of always there? I think it's there. And I think you recognize it when you start to feel, well, pissed off all the time. When you find that you are annoyed and angry

and resentful, you know you've given too much. When you are getting to that stage, take yourself out of the equation. You know, we've fostered this idea of love and relationships, that it's only successful if you are constantly in each other's faces all of the time but every night together and you must have this wild passionate sex every single night and be like cheek to cheek every single day instead of being like actually I'm gonna go three days by myself I don't want to share a bed with you for three days I'm gonna be over here uh focusing on me and and just myself because actually then i can be a better person to you when i get my alone time um and we i think we've built this really unhealthy attitude and this unhealthy idea of what relationships are and it doesn't leave any room for a woman to have any space to

herself if you think about what we deem as a successful love um it's if the woman is there 24 7 giving giving giving um but when we say you know he's away with his friends or he's then we're like oh yeah he needs some time bless him i think that's a really great note to end on i mean thank you thank you so much it's been so lovely to chat to you salma that's it for today thank you so much for listening if you have enjoyed this episode of millennial love please do subscribe to us on Spotify, Acast, or wherever else that it is that you get your podcasts. You can also now watch us on independent TV, so do go head over there if you'd like to see the visual presentation of this podcast.

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