Sex Talks With Emma-Louise Boynton - Conversation On Love with author Natasha Lunn - "The mystical version of love I had on a pedal stool in my head stopped me from actually finding it...."

Episode Date: July 18, 2024

We're on a podcast break this week so we're reposting one of our fave old episodes featuring author, Natasha Lunn, discussing her bestselling book 'Conversations on Love'. We hope you enjoy this as much as we did. Our usual Thursday podcasting schedule will resume next week and the final Sex Talks Live podcast recording of the summer will take place on July 30th at The London Edition. You can purchase tickets here.

Hello and welcome to the Sex Talks podcast with me, your host, Emma Louise Boynton. Sex Talks exists to engender more honest, open and vulnerable discussions around typically taboo topics, like sex and relationships, gender inequality, and the role technology is playing and changing the way we date, love and fuck. Our relationship to sex tells us so much about who we are and how we show up in the world, which is why I think it's a topic we ought to talk about with a little more nuance and a lot more curiosity. So each week, I'm joined by a new guest whose expertise on the topic I'd really like to mind, and do well just that. From writers, authors and therapists to actors, musicians and founders,

we'll hear from a glorious array of humans about the stuff that gets the heart of what it means to be human. If you want to join the conversation outside of the podcast, sign up to my newsletter via the link in the show notes. welcome everybody thank you so much for coming to for coming yeah for coming i can't speak today uh i flew back from italy last night and spent a week in a haunted house which has utterly fried my soul i probably need to go through a whole like cleansing thing because the poltergeist might have had some adverse impact on my on my soul so bear with me if you see any weird glitches. No, it's the poltergeist hangover, okay? But really, thank you so much. This is a really

special version of sex talk. So if anyone who's come pre- who has come to a sex talk before? Woo! I love the woo! Gentleman over here, thank you. Okay, brilliant. I love to have some return customers. So usually we're in the basement and it feels it's quite like vibey, strobeying, kind of like club night. But tonight feels intimate and gorgeous and obviously they gave us a penthouse suite, which feels quite nice. And it feels very appropriate, I think, to be discussing Natasha Lund's book, Conversations on Love, which is one of my favorite books.

So as soon as Natasha came in, I was like, this book has changed my whole perception on love. And for anyone who can see, basically every, it kind of, when you bend over every page, it slightly defeats the point of depending it over. So when I was writing my notes, I was like, Emily, where do we begin on this? which I think was reflecting the questions.

But it really has, I've read this book a couple of times now, and I think I am someone who can be quite cynical about love and will definitely go into it and have felt, I think, through being a bit broken-hearted, have become quite like, you know, fuck romantic love. It's all about friendship love, you know, whatever, whatever. And I think, Natasha, you've thawed my heart. I'm very happy to hear this.

So thank you. So just by way of a brief introduction, I think I was inundated with messages from people saying how much Natasha's book had also affected them. so I feel like you don't need any introduction, but I'll do it anyway. Natasha is the Featured Editor at Red Magazine and is the creator of the popular and acclaimed email newsletter, Conversations on Love,

which she obviously turned into this fabulous book. Natasha, is there going to be a follow-up with all the other? No pressure, but I got, not right now. I'll say that, not right now. Well, I'm eagerly waiting. Very busy. Yeah, yeah, you're busy. Get that done, and then can we do another one to further thaw my heart?

You'll be one of the first to know. Excellent. I can't wait. Brilliant. So what I want to come to structure this interview. So what we'll do is we'll kind of discuss very briefly kind of why you wrote it and kind of what your interest and love, where that stems from. Again, help me thought, help me thought. Maybe this thawing of the heart will also help shed the poltergeist spirit. So, you know, we'll be killed two birds with one stone. And then we'll really go through, Natasha's book is structured in kind of asking three fundamental

questions around love. How do we find love? How do we sustain love? And how do we mourn the love? How do we get over the loss of love. Survive losing that. Survive. Survive. So we'll go, the interview time, we'll go through those three questions and we'll really explore.

I think what I really want to get to is how the kind of cultural ideas around these different topics trip us up and then what Natasha has learned through interviewing such an array of amazing people and what we can all learn from what Natasha's learnt. Sweet that.

No pressure. All the biggest questions. All the biggest questions about life, love and everything in between. I said this before, I did think reading it, it's as much a book about how to live as it is about how to love. And I think that's what really struck me. So before I go into another like fan girl moment,

let's take a step back, Emma, Natasha. Tell me, why have you started writing about love? Why is this a topic that you care about and have spent so many hours pouring over? Well, first of all, I was going to say, if anyone wants a seat and they don't want to stand, there is a spare chair at the front here, if anyone's feet get tired.

So I kind of went from being obsessed with love to being like you very cynical about love and sort of like yo-yoing between the two but thought that I was somebody who was just had thought about it intensely from a very young age and sort of like everything I read was about it and all my conversations were about it and I felt like all those years and hours that I pulled into it

I must know a little about it. And I was so, surprised to find actually despite all these hours and nights obsessing over it i didn't really know much about what i thought love really was what i was obsessing over was basically some guy i was obsessed with who didn't like me back that was that was that was that was that was that was that was love as a category if you like divided of my conversations up that was all i was you know embarrassing just all i would think about was finding somebody to love me i never would think about what it might mean to give love or could that be interesting and rewarding and could I I guess like move beyond my own ego

it was all very like egotistical fear I'm never going to find someone to love me I'm going to be on my that means I'm going to be on my own forever and miserable so then I kind of just started to realize I guess probably like late 20s early 30s that I just didn't really have a definition of love that was useful or realistic and then when I did fall in romantic love I was like oh my God I've got this even more wrong than I ever thought not just what romantic love was you know I was always like that will be the sort of

some kind of end point rather than a beginning but also I think we talk about like well I certainly have been like well because I haven't met a boyfriend I need to focus on all these other forms of love and that's really important so I'm less lonely along the way and that was the sort of story I told myself. But I was like, oh my God, this is just as important, like when you're in a romantic relationship,

having, prioritising all these different forms of love. And it just sort of opened up my way of seeing it and just basically how I got it, like, dramatically wrong for so long. So I was like, actually, I need to, you know, if I am somebody who really cares about the stuff, I need to learn more. I need to kind of understand why did I get it so wrong? Why, where did all, like, the fear come from?

why did I just you know I felt like with my career I could sort of try at it with my health I could like go to the gym or and with love like I would do this thing with my friend where very in January we do like this called like circle of life so I draw this like diagram I have all this different aspects of my life and I'd be like what is kind of going what went wrong last year what do I want to do more of and it was just really fun in all the other sections when I get to love I was like oh there's not much I can do it's just a disaster again and I would just always feel like I Like, why is every other area something that I can kind of try and put effort into? But love feels like this thing that just I'm waiting for it to happen and it never does. Just speaking to literally everything I think about so often. And that's why I've got this kind of slightly hardened heart. I'm just like, I don't like not being good at things. And I seem to be very good at dating. I pick terribly.

But we are going to go into that in section number one. So I'm going to put a little pin in that. We've wet your appetite. And just before we go on to delving into the fundamental questions around love that you have addressed so brilliantly, why do you think it is so important that we study love and that we learn about it? Because I think you mentioned this at the beginning of the book,

that even though love and relationships are so pinnacle to so many of our lives, it's so central to everyone's life, whether romantic love, familial love, friendship love, cousin love, every type of love, we don't, yet we don't get equipped with the tools necessarily growing up to actually be able to, I mean, like you said, you said you didn't really fundamentally understand what love was and what you were looking for. So tell me, why do you think it is something that we should study more closely and really seek to understand in a more kind of maybe holistic deeper way? Well, again, this has changed because I think if you'd asked me that maybe four years ago, I would have said, what I thought even coming into this writing, this newsletter. I was like, my aim is that I can learn everything so I can be like a great friend and a great daughter and a great partner and I will learn all these lessons and I'll never, you know, mess up and I'll be brilliant at it. And now I'm just like, well, no, not possible.

You know, I make all the mistakes that I've written about again and again. I'm just more aware that I'm making them. So I don't think that it's not that I think we should study love so we can kind of learn all the therapies so that we can, you know, always be happy on our own. when we are and just move through it in this easy way. I think maybe studies the wrong word that I used, but I think it's more understanding that it just

takes effort. And that was when I was talking about the diagrams. For me, it was like, well, obviously if you want to get fit you would try and exercise. And obviously if you want to succeed in your career, you would sort of, I don't know, write a plan and have a review and think about what you're doing. But to me, it was so embarrassing to try a love. And I had friends who sort of like ended up with their university sweetheart. I don't know, it just seems so easy for everybody else. And I was like, why do I have to

like flog myself? Why do I have to go on a dating app and try and come up with something witty? Why can't it just happen to me? That's so I felt like I was like this out of date product on the supermarket shelf that I was trying to like convince people to buy. And and I just, that was the, that was the narrative I had. It's embarrassing to try at this because if you were or if you were you know a good catch you wouldn't have to try and now I'm just like isn't it mad like there's nothing good in my life that I have now that hasn't been really tricky to get or not tricky hasn't taken like a lot of effort yeah and now I'm like isn't so I think for me it's about reframing the effort it takes and and the kind of just like

where it should be in your list of like prioritising things you try at and you've segues us so nicely into section number one. Anyone who has come sex before knows I love having a very clear structure. So I'm like, right, segue point number one, section number one. It's the only way I can like organize my otherwise utterly chaotic brain. So thank you for segueing us so nicely into section number one. How do we find love? So you've just spoken there about something that I think about often. And I think it's Candice Carty Williams who interviewed in the book speaks about the kind of almost the kind of humiliating component to searching for love. And it's something that I've definitely thought about a lot recently,

and I think hearing you say that, I've said to Ellsworth, who's my best friend to I live with, who always gets a shout out. I'm like, right, I'm no longer doing any dates where I sit across from a person and have a drink. It's a waste of my time. I'm not learning, I'm not growing,

and ultimately it's not going to work out anyway, so fuck that. They can come down a wakeboarding lesson with me, or it's not happening. Or like, they can come to you. so I've just become this like really and I'm like because I can't I can't be I can't and it's not be seen publicly it's like internally I'm the idea of being of saying I want to find love when you're not finding it when it when it's not something you can control feels at its essence

humiliating because as you articulate in the book and I've heard you say multiple interviews it feels like it's something that you're almost like advertising that you are failing that you're not good enough that you are the outdated product on the supermarket shelf that i think is so rooted in such a myriad of misconceptions around love that get pumped out through popular culture what do you think that so let's so let's come go into this what do you think that is kind of rooted in how do we how do we try and overcome that i think um by the way if you can get someone to go wake morning with honestly try me i'm going to try this week so i will report back this poor guy was like do you want to go for a drink or a coffee and I'm like nope I was

like I might have a weightboarding lesson that night yeah and I I felt exactly I mean it is it is kind of crazy that we that the way we try to find a relationship is to have three hours with somebody where you kind of like reel off these talking points or maybe tell a few familiar stories that you think try and give us someone a picture who you are like the whole thing is hideous um and i think what is really unhelpful certainly like when you're talking about the narratives about um love that i had it's kind of i'll try and say two things it's like with everything and love it's such a contradiction but for me it was like the two problems were like that it was it should be really easy and it's also a lot of work so like

two different things but i'll explain what i mean is that i definitely had this um you know i remember going with a friend who she was meeting someone an online date and there was two guys and I came along as like the friend and I met his friend and I remember saying to my we went we went to the loo and I said I'm going to marry that man and he I think he had just I just probably had one conversation with him but it was that instant like before sunrise you know if you see those that idea that I would just be sitting on a train and it would happen and it would hit and it would just be so instant and easy and that was what it was based on that kind of of connection, gut instinct, just feeling. So that was like one issue I had. But then the other

one was that this tumultuous love was so something I was so obsessed with. And there were meant to be obstacles. And it was like this kind of twilight-esque, Wuthering Heights sort of, there's so much difficulty and that's what makes it. So you're a vampire. I'm not. Oh, how are we going to overcome this? But I'm so hooked to something in that that's like so addictive to me. like that kind of I mean as soon as someone like dumps me that's when I'm like you're a vampire I'm a human I must win I must win the vampire yeah when as soon as there's obstacles in the way it that's because it's the idea of like I kind of think that sounds back there's like want of control it's a kind of like you want to win it's something that feels really intangible and unwinnable and and that's the other contradiction I was saying to you before the effort thing and and how that is humiliating and that is really vulnerable. But then there's also an element to it where like, you're not in control, you can put in all the effort

and then it might not still happen. So you have to kind of hold that in your head too, I think, because it's like I definitely like had this period. I think like I write about in the book where I was turning 30, at the time I was like, oh, you know, I just had it in my head that I wanted to have a boyfriend by the time I turned 30, you know, I don't know where this came from,

but I was having this big part I just want someone to like take and so as it grew closer I was like well I'm signing up to online dating I've got this new like really positive attitude to it all so of course it's going to happen because I'm really relaxed and I've got loads of other stuff going on and I'm approaching this really healthy way and of course it didn't happen so I was like well I've done this sort of like desperate obsessed romantic but now I've also done the like positive healthy bit yes I was like but it still didn't work and and I would think then oh there's something wrong you know with me and I think that it's um Heather Havreleski who gave like one of the best pieces of advice on this I think in the book where she said a lot of this stuff is like not draping an extra story of

shame over whatever you find so like yeah so with dating for me it would be like well not kind of layering on to the fact that I just haven't met somebody which is just a thing that's happened a bit of bad luck or that people I've met didn't work out with not then layering onto that story of like that means I am X or and the same with trying for a baby it's like the story of shame like if I would if that wasn't working and it was something about my body like I'm somehow bad at womanhood or this kind of like weird made up like false story that we can kind of layer over something that makes it more painful that's I'd so great that I always think of that I feel this is just like a line that we see on the internet now ain't that deep and I'm like it ain't that deep

But it ain't, every time I get too, like, but why did it mean, what did I do wrong? I'm like, Emma, it ain't that deep. Literally to myself. It's so easy to do that. And I think, so you begin the book by interviewing one of my favorite philosophers who I quote, ad nauseum, Alan de Botton, who is constantly bashing

the overhang of the romantic era and how much that has really kind of poised, maybe poison to a su strong word, but how that has shaped our religion. relationship to love and romance so he's his first book for anyone that hasn't read it is brilliant essays on love is that right um is really kind of trying to disassemble um the uh the disassemble kind of the hangover romantic of the idea all the kind of romantic idealization that we can fall into really easily and kind of take that apart and I think why love in that book is how

he shows ultimately like the ordinariness of love and the kind of the fluctuation of love and it's just two people meeting liking each other a lot having great sex and then being like actually I don't like you so much not having good sex and the ending and I've read that after so many breakups because I find it so reassuring because it is that counter to this like romantic idealization he made a couple of really great points in the interview that you did with him that kind of continued that kind of school of thought and sought to to highlight and and and to show the kind of ridiculousness are some of the things that we've kind of just touched on there.

They're kind of like the love at first sight, the feeling that like you need to have the instant connection, the spark, all these sorts of things. What did you really take away from that interview? I think, you know, when I also love that book, and for anyone who hasn't read it, like the couple, they meet on a plane, don't they? Do you know how many times I've found in a plane

and been like. Yeah. But he kind of lists out the, odds of that happening like in numbers and he said breaks it down and yeah really and and I am so unlikely to happen on the tube I have followed someone on the tube to try and be like yeah but then again it has happened I'm always amazed yeah but I think the problem is thinking that it could be yeah but I think the problem is thinking that the love or the romance is going to be from the meeting and I mean I think Because when I met my partner now, I didn't have that at all, like in any way.

There was no kind of rush instant first love at first sight thing. It was like I even read an email I'd sent to my boss and I was like, well, yeah, I kind of met this guy and he's a teacher. Not really sure where it's going, but it's kind of good to know that there's like nice guys on dating apps, I guess. Like it was so sort of, you know, it just wasn't like that at all. And almost like every relationship had been like that for me. So I didn't, I guess where that's, where that kind of like hangover is not helpful to us, is it kind of terrifies me now. Like, I could have missed that because I didn't recognize it as, like obviously it wasn't love at that point.

Like I said, it's like crazy to think that you would go for a drink for a few hours and know whether or not you could love somebody or could build love with somebody. But where it kind of gets serious, I think, and is there. for me that that kind of like mystical romantic idea almost like got in the way of me giving love a chance because what I assumed it would be was something that I needed to know then and actually I think was more helpful my my friend gave me really good advice she said if you don't know it's a no just just go on another day because it's crazy that you think that you can make that call from like a few hours and actually the way I think about it's like

now, oh, I would hate to think somebody would make a call on who I was as a person from like a train journey or a plane ride. And, you know, I always felt that pressure of like, okay, I want to communicate a bit about like my values or a bit about like my political belief. Oh, you know, I was so desperate to sort of prove who I was as a person on those things that sometimes then comes across like awfully. And so, yeah, I think that that stuff he was talking about just emphasise that for me that, yeah, it's. like really fun stories, all of those romantic things. And I think we can enjoy that, you know,

I still love those stories and I still love those films. But you just have to be a little bit careful that that doesn't get in the way of you noticing like real love when it comes. I think that's such a brilliant point. And it's like it almost feels it can be underwhelming. And actually that can be this, for me, the only times I've ever had like love

and like actually deep chemistry is when it's been utterly, utterly, utterly, underwhelming at first and I've almost like instantaneously had the ick and been like absolutely not and then suddenly I find myself like a few weeks later being like absolutely yes and then a few months later I'm like they broke my heart what the fuck I wasn't even interested but I think but you're right it kind of almost like sets us up to fail if we're constantly looking I think we inherit this I mean it's it's you know across popular culture it's in films it's the idea of like you know my mom has always said she saw my dad across the the room and it was love at first sight and I was like no mom you thought he was fit then you met and you were like oh he's not that bad and I was like I still think you had questionable judgment in some points I love my dad but I'm like but like you know but these narratives are really you know are so intoxicating you want that you want that an initial immediate spark and I'm I can't see it in my too extensive no Dr. Talas yes I was like fuck Emma you put this in

um Dr Talis speaks really beautifully like romantic mysticism is that right in the book This is, this was actually the one of the things I've learned where I'm like, oh God, if I'd had that earlier, then I would have like saved myself a lot of heart take. But the thing. So listen carefully. This is, this is gold dust. Me and my friends, when we were talking, we're like, this is, this is it for us because we are so bad at this. But so what, and actually, I think when I was interviewing him, I told him about my, I'm going to marry this man within, you know, a minute of speaking to him. And he said, when I said to my friend, I was like, I just feel it in my bones. We'd always say that, like, feel it. Like, I feel. it my bones. It's almost beyond my understanding. And he said to me, often the reason we do that, we put it down to like chemistry or gut feeling is basically because you have no evidence. It's not like I spent a week with this person. They were really kind to me and they were so funny and they were great with my friends and my family and like this has given me the evidence that they're a great person and we should be together. You haven't got anything. So you basically just hang it on some

like mystical feeling and then the fact it kind of like feeds itself because the fact that you haven't got any evidence makes it more intense because then you create it as this gut thing so it's actually just like one false inference feeding another and it gets like more and more intense but if you kind of so now when my friend had been on a date you know and she's like I've got this feeling in my bones whatever what's the evidence what's the kind of you know like with the man that I met who I was going to matter. Do you know anything about him? Like what, what actually is inspiring that feeling? Oh, it's just something in me. No, doesn't, there's nothing really in you. It's just you making it up because you don't have any, anything. So that, that was a real change of

me. It's the, I can see like, yeah, true, though, isn't it? I know. It's my sister, like, how he does, have you seen me do that? Like, it's just so amazing. But why? I don't know. And you know what, it's not, and it's not just one of the, so the relationship I write about, well, relationship is a loose term for it, but my sort of like, yeah, my sort of first love, if you can call it that, when I was 13 and kind of first became infatuated with this boy and then it went on for basically 17 years

on and off, by the end of that, what's scary is, I still had nothing, like it was all still in absences it was like we were never quite together but we missed paths and then we'd sort of have a snatched night here and there but when I again yeah and but even those there was nothing we never really actually had a conversation even that's what's crazy when I was speaking when I when I was thinking about the Frank Talis quote I was like even then like it's amazing how long you can feed off this sort of mysticism because you get it allows you the space to fill in the gaps with your own fantasy and in the lack of evidence you actually allow you can kind of build whatever

narrative and you become the best storyteller of your own fantasy and yeah and then you live in that and it doesn't end so well um speaking of which i think part of the problem which i think island the bottom alludes to but actually quite a few of your interviews interviewees alludes to um part the problem with the way that we see the way we kind of romanticize romantic love and popular culture we put it on this pedestal is I think we almost put on too much of an onus on love to fill this kind of void to be this everything for us and in a way that's just putting too much pressure on dating and on kind of someone else to come in and I think that narrative like a man will or a person will one day come and save me and I think actually that can be a really a dangerous one it's taken me until I've just turned 30 recently similarly to you I thought I was like I'm gonna get someone gorgeous gonna be fabulous I turn single 30 in this I turned 30 single and this I turned 30 single and This is the genuine, I'm just saying to Sophie, someone here. This is the first time in my life after being dumped earlier this year where I really stood back and been like, okay,

you have to look at what you're, what's going wrong and kind of what you're doing when you go into these relationships. And it's very much because I was looking for someone else to be the panacea to my worldly woes, to be the, just someone just snigger in the corner. It's very serious that I was looking for people to be the panacea to my worldly woes. Okay, no laughing.

But I really was looking for other people to kind of to give me the answers to show me how to live and lead the life that I wanted. And then when I got dumped in December from someone who I really thought was going to show me how to do all the adventures to learn to wakeboard all the shit. Yeah, now we know the connection. And I got done and I was like, you have to do this on your own. You have to find that like you have to find a way of filling all these gaps that you perceive as gaps that only someone else can fill. and oh my God, the last six months have been fabulous. Did I mention I'm learning to waitboard, and I'm really good, and I'm doing it alone, and I go by myself, the Docklands, near the DLR station,

and I put my helmet on, and I get up there, and I wakeboard. But, so talk to us then, let's move away from my wakeboarding and my kind of epiphany. But talk to us then about, I think this really comes down to a sentiment that you come across, you touch on a lot in the book, is really the importance of self-understanding over, and you just say it's over self-love, but really understanding what our needs are and what our kind of perception of our own gaps are so that we're really looking to do that kind of healing

before we're looking to someone else to kind of fill it in for us. Can you talk to us a little bit about that? Yeah, and do you know, the self-understanding self-love thing was a big, another, like, big epiphany for me because I think, like, you do read a lot of those, like, you've got to love yourself

before you find some blah, blah, blah. And I just feel like that is another stick to like beat yourself with because I was like well I'm never going to find anyone because I don't love myself every instant and and actually it's kind of crazy because in the same way we'll get onto with like sustaining love like with friends or with a partner or with your parents you don't expect to feel in love with them all the time like of course your mom drives you crazy and then you adore her and your partner sent you know you hate them and then you love them and your friends irritate you when you go a holiday and then you have some space from then

you're desperate to see them again so why should it? be with ourselves that we're expected to reach this state of like I'm always like my self-esteem is really high and I'm so confident I love myself like I think it's okay to be like oh I regret acting like a dick that night and to then try and pick yourself up the next day so I think that was for me like this idea that okay I don't need to love myself that's not like a prerequisite for having loving relationships but I think it's interesting you said before when you were like, we expect too much from love to kind of fill the gaps. I think where I've got to now is that love, as in the word in a broader sense, of like

different people and, you know, when I started this project, I was like, well, I've got like friendship love, family love, like parental love, a romantic love. And then the more I spoke, then there's sort of like love in purposeful work and like meaning. I don't mean like loving your career, but I mean finding something. you do that gives your life meaning and like connection and that can be a form of love and actually finding love with strangers, you know, in those like moments where you have like an interaction of kindness and it feels like such a deep connection even though you don't even know each other. So I think before that I was very much like, I need to be happy on my own

outside of a relationship. I need to kind of be independent and just strong and not really needing other people and then where I got to was like no I think like love can fill the gaps just many different forms but I don't think you need to be this like super person who doesn't need anyone like it can be really lonely if you want a relationship and you don't have one or you want a close group of friends and you don't you've moved to a new area and you don't know people and that was where I changed working on this so I don't have to be happy alone I just need to recognize there's like lots of different ways to find love and it's okay to kind of need that rather than being like I can just be going on holiday on my own every week and be happy

it's like no actually I would love to take a friend or I would love to go with my parents. Solar romantic is really fun though I'm now obsessed as going a holiday alone and now when people come with me I'm like well we could do what you want to do or we could do it I want to do go off on my own I've spoiled myself too much in my own company And maybe, but I think you need both. Totally. And for me, I got into that kind of rut of like, I have to be content on my own.

Or more like if I wasn't, if I was kind of, you know, feeling just lonely for my friends. And I was just on a weekend. I was like, you know, kind of buck up. Why are you being lonely? And now I'd just be like, it's okay to feel a bit lonely. And I guess you just need to, for me, it's just like rethinking what the word love means.

Absolutely depending on like a romantic relationship. to fix all your issues is never going to end well waiting for someone to come and save you and be the person that kind of shows you how to live the dream life but I think there's a difference between that and saying I really want love in my life I really want people in my life I'm you know somebody who yeah wants some alone time but also wants to feel loved in lots of different ways I did love Alan de Botton in that first interview he said it's all about how we frame things didn't he he was like with regards to how we perceive like how we experience lonely nurse versus solitude. Was that right? Yeah, he said, he was basically saying, because I was kind of saying, oh, I would feel very, like, lonely on a bank holiday when everyone was suddenly busy, and then I'd just be like, well, I've got no plan, so I'd have to, like, frenetically plan loads of things. And he was like, if you're, you know, on a Monday night, if you're just happy watching TV and, like, having a great time reading a book, it's not like the actual being alone that's the problem. It's like the story you're telling that somehow being alone on a Friday night,

is a bigger deal than being alone on a Monday night. It's the same thing. You're just, again, it's like what I was saying before of layering that story of shame or, like, the extra story you're putting on it. Like, I'm alone on my Friday night, so I must be, I must have no friends, or I must. Yeah, I'm going to die.

A kind of spintster being eaten by Alsatian, Bridget Jones Diary. Yeah, where's life, and I'm like, aggressively texting everyone. Also, to make plans oftentimes I'm going to Friday that I'm like, I don't want to do this. So I'll be up personally who's like, ask everyone what they're doing. I'm like, I just want to stay on my own,

so I won't turn up and then piss everyone off. Whereas on a Monday, you'd be like, I'm really glad I stayed, didn't I turn that thing down because I can like, you know, look after myself and have that. So I love, in that answer, I think just, on you, you alluded to the importance of, I think, of expanding our notion of love in a really broad, multifarious way.

And I think that's what I really took from the book. And I think you speak about this a lot. And I really, I really had to like sit with it, But just how in our search for romantic love, insofar as we prioritize romantic love, oftentimes above lots of other types of love, we can miss the importance and the beauty of the love that sits right before us.

And throughout the book, a lot of the, a few of the different interviewees mentioned sibling love. I know you mentioned your relationship with your brother. And Pornabelle, the journalist, mentioned her relationship with her sister. And I think, I can't remember if I've seen the, Oh, I think it was heroes. Siblings, maybe the only people will ever know

who truly qualify as life partners because we've known them from the start. It really made me sit back and think about my relationship to my sister, who sat here, so, like, you can blush. But how, I kind of, I've took her love for granted for so long, but the fact that I get to guarantee, like, people will come in my life and they will go, but she will, I will get to love her forever.

And please, God, I won't piss you off enough so you don't love me anymore. But, and she's seen me through all the different stages, and, like, loves me at every different one of those stages. And I kind of had, like, reading, but I really had to stand back and be, like, that's something that I've taken for granted. And not everyone gets.

And not everyone gets. And I'm really privileged. So maybe I don't have a partner in the romantic sense right now, but I have this incredible, eternal, burning love that I get to be the most annoying person in the world, ask so much and be like, hey, this text I just sent, you mind just analyzing it and just reading line 5

to see whether it, like, over-emphasizes this. And she'll be like, yeah, yeah, sure. of course no judgment and that's really special and I think that that having and I think it does it's almost like I think someone else in the book says it's like love really is a practice as opposed to something we take for granted and I think it's like in order to expand our notion of love we really have to see love as a practice and have to work on it in a way does that and especially I I I love the sibling relationship and I it when I was looking at this it's funny how we um put different forms of love kind of give them a hierarchy and like for instance with motherhood. I think, you know, you can people, obviously it's not like this at all, but people can say like, oh, you'll never experience this type of love until you have a kid. But for me, the intensity of sibling love is very similar actually to parental love because it's like, I guess I was there from like the beginning of my baby's life and you see, like I was there, my brother's younger from the beginning of his life. And I feel so like kind of, kind of, people talk about like physical connection of like you know when the baby's inside but I feel like so physically connected my brother of like we're part of the same I just feel it's so my love for him is so intense and like deep in a way that is almost not a choice like romantic love is different you choose it you but it's so like he will make me laugh more than anyone else and there's a way that he knows me better than my husband better than anybody and it's just this like deep special relationship we don't talk you know so many articles about motherhood and you know you know so many articles about motherhood and you know know how intense it is and how I didn't know there's hardly anything about that talk about sibling love in the same way so I think you're right but with those relationships particularly like family I think they're the easiest ones to take for granted because they have always

been there and they just keep showing up even you're like I'm a dick I can be so I save my worst tendencies for my poor family and then they keep coming back but but and they don't have to they don't have you know I've spoken to lots of people who are strange from their siblings and have really difficult relationships. So watch out, because she might have had enough phone. Never estranged me. I love you so much. So, and interestingly with siblings,

the taking it for granted is not just like, you know, it's different. You don't have to, with friendship, because you haven't got maybe like the fact that you'll always be going home for Christmas. It's a lot more freedom in it, but you have to like force the consistency a lot. Where I think with your siblings,

you can be a bit freer because you sort of know that you're tied there and it's not like the relationship's going to just disappear overnight. Well, I've done a double whammy. I forced my best friend to spend Christmas Eve with my family. Oh, I've lived elsewhere. Every Christmas Eve with my family. But you know, killing two birds of the ones, don't. But it's scary with friendship, like you could have a bad couple of years and then it might go, whereas with siblings, you have got that safe. But I think the challenge there is like you, you can kind of fall into like assuming you know who they are based on like the younger version of them.

And like for me, I've had to like, you know, my brother's younger than me. He's always kind of like my young brother. But like he's married now, he's like partner and they're like adults. And, you know, I can't like baby him or I, you know, I had to like readjust how I see him as like a partner to her. And, you know, when we were younger, we had certain like patterns and I'm like, well, actually, you're not interested in that anymore and you're different and I have to like make an effort to kind of make an effort to know who he is now. whereas because if you feel like your siblings just always putting you back in that box of like you were the shy one when you were younger

it can feel I don't know like it's quite easy to like not become as close so I think yeah is a practice but yeah I love this I love the sibling relationship we love it too do we not nod and smile as you've been taught by me

um okay just to round up this section and we've we've touched this but I just want to kind of explicitly touch it one more time for my own benefit and hopefully for someone else is here um i think that we've spoken about how it's okay to be like searching for love and to recognize that it can feel humiliating but actually it's something that you can you know you you can nurture lots of different types of love and still say i want to find romantic love but how do you think that i think in order to search for romantic love you have to allow yourself to be really vulnerable and to be

be open to other people in a vulnerable way, which can be really hard when you're dating on dating apps, when you're single, when you kind of have, you kind of develop this skin, this like thick skin. Anyone else here developed the thick skin of dating? Of being like you don't, you kind of have to have your guard up and you want to maintain that like, my life is really good. If I don't find someone, I will be okay. I've got all these other types of love. How do you think, what's the kind of collected wisdom of people you've spoken to led you to believe is the key to balancing that joy in your life as it is currently and as you can create it alone alongside the vulnerability one needs to be able to be open to romantic love I ask this question a lot I'm trying to think

of like the best one I think one of the best ones again it was Heather Havrilaski ask polly and she said because I think like you I was always trying to be like okay what's the best approach here like how can I kind of get into a mindset there's going to be what's the game plan what's a stretch and how am I winning yeah I'll just do that and she said actually it's more about really tuning into how you're honestly feeling that moment and like just tackling it differently each time so she said like at some points you will have to say to yourself and like my friend used to say to me I know you're going to meet someone like it's just not even a question she said I know you're worried about it I'm not it's just done like it'll be fine and there was some points that I

just needed to believe that like it's absolutely going to happen. There is just no room for like doubt. I'm so hopeful. I'm going to like hope as hard as I just be so positive that it was going to happen that I could kind of take some fear out of it. And then there were the other times where you had to be like, okay, well, if it doesn't happen, like what's the best version of my life going to look like? And when you kind of like fast forward to that, I was like, well, I have like amazing friends and I could maybe like do this in my work and I could I don't know what my life like what's the best version of your life that would look like without the thing that you want I always think I'd be really rich yeah I was like you think I'm so filthy rich I buy so many cars I'm like who on

earth gave me this narrative but I love it yeah well why is the relationship going to take all your money from you it's not but I just imagine me single and rich yeah but what I think like some point and it was kind of the same with like trying to conceive it's like sometimes it's helpful to be like I will absolutely get pregnant and sometimes it's really helpful to be like well maybe I won't and there are lots of different ways to live this life like if I don't have a kid what would we want to do how would we want to live and I think it's that rather than trying to find this like strategy that's going to always make you happy it's recognizing that you sort of need to like I think she calls it like just adjust the picture and and and sometimes like fast forwarding like and I do this all the time

to like the worst case scenario then you're like it's not. not so bad and it's like there are just lots of other ways to see it there's a great quote i've just i love this way she is it shelley hetty my pronounce sheila shella shea hetty um you make your life meaningful by applying meaning to it it's not just inevitably meaningful as a result of the choices you've made and i think you noted as a reflection on this the romantic relations um of my romantic relationships or family i wanted would not make my life meaningful only i could and i love that because it really captures that idea like you write the story um and also that you can be in a relationship and have a happy or unhappy life you can have a kid and have a happy or unhappy life like

i think that i just got into that thing of thinking if i get x it will make me happy and now i just understand like no both sides will be good and bad have you actually just this morning i was listening you did an interview on the alonement podcast with francesca spectre i believe and i think one of you mentioned how I think one of you had done a survey or something about when people felt like most lonely or something. Anyway, something came up where people said, I feel the loneliest when I'm lying in bed for my partner with my back to my partner wishing they'd turn around and hug me. Oh, that was what I wrote. That was what you wrote. And I thought, God, that really, because I think sometimes when you don't have the person in the bed, you think, oh, if I had the person in the bed, I'd feel so together. And actually, the aloneness that you can

feel when you're in bed with somebody and you're not touching you're not communicating that i always thought that that kind of golf of silence that can sit beneath between you can be the most lonely experience and you know what when i wrote that was so weird because lots of people sort of highlight that and because my friend and i were talking about when you're like when a relationship's you know sort of already ending and you kind of know they don't really love you and you're just sort of clinging onto it and you're in bed and you're just like i just want them to turn around like i'll just keep my back there and then maybe they'll turn around anyway and i felt so lonely in those moments but it's just so many other people have been like I have that's the exactly how I felt and it's just I don't know it's the other the other part of it is like Alan says like what we need to do is just have more different love stories and more different stories about love because when you read those other versions then you're like well I'm not that alone in this because other people are feeling that too and I think you know with them again like advice on um not like the vulnerability and not feeling so lonely in that is I again like felt like

like it was sort of like a game of musical chairs like everyone was like getting into a relationship and I had to do it by this point or it was kind of the you know there'd be nobody left or it would be the end and now I'm at the stage where I'm seeing like my parents friends widowed and and then creating like really interesting new lives and with still with like a lot of time left and you realize that all of this is changing all the time and you can feel like in a moment that everyone is in a relationship and you're not if you want one but like there'll be a period you know I always say to my friends or we'll all be in the old people's home again like everyone you know together and like living in some sort of commune will end up and that will be like

another great chapter well else with them I'm going to create the communes so if anyone wants in we are going to be creating it and you are welcome to join um okay great we are going to move I can honestly talk about this um this section of the book for so long but we have to move on but I did actually want us to end on this section on um one I think quote you had here that was reflecting on your interview with lem sissy this spell correct has put it to lean sissy which i know is not correct um we are all connected by we're all connected by desire to love and be loved when we see the world in this way i think it makes us feel less alone we realize that our private shame is universal that our worst heartbreaks have been felt and survived before and that as

lean as lem has said our experiences are bridges not ravines however painful they may be oh just that hits I was like and again it's like some kind of it you know even for me it was like such a big deal when I was young of being like how was I seeing somebody for sort of like two years and didn't even like ask if it was a relationship or not like that was just like such my biggest shame something even when I see my parents friends they were like well was this your boyfriend I was like oh kind of not really like it was just this huge deal yeah like and and and it's like shush and if we don't mention it then we won't like acknowledge the fact this is a huge thing and and how like embarrassing like my lack of self-esteem meant that I just didn't say to this person more what's

actually going you know that I just felt so embarrassed about that and then when I was writing that section of the book like just so many other people saying like this is exactly you know I had this of like sending someone sending a message saying, are you out at three in the morning and then like not calling me for three weeks and me trying to like collect the crumbs of their affection? Oh yeah, I love to you right. It's like, are you out?

Yes, and you're like, oh, yeah, I remember that. Right, we're going to move on. So how do we sustain love? Very difficult. So let's begin by dismantling, as I love to do, the Disney depiction of love is kind of the happy ending. So I think often the way that we see, way that love is depicted in film and these Disney things,

is that love is the end. You find the partner, you fall in love, and that's it. The story is all wrapped up. And that really is so counter to what we've discussed and that love is something that we have to practice, that we have to work on, that we have to put effort into. What does this depiction of become happy ever after love get so wrong,

and how does it trip us up then when it comes to actually being in a relationship? Do you know what? People always talk about this in a negative way of like, No, just in terms of like, you know, love is really hard and your relationship will change and it won't be this like glossy beginning year, but whatever. And I have come to think the complete opposite in that I did used to think like you fell in love

and actually that was amazing but like there were other great stuff later on that you have this deep friendship and you have this history built together but like the falling in love was done and that's kind of okay because you get other stuff. But now I think I fall in love with my partner like in a more sort of deep romantic new way all the time like almost every other year it's like a new falling and I you know I had kind of read about love and like okay well you'll settle for like companionship later down the line and and that will be wonderful too but now I'm like I think it's bullshit I think that the intensity of like the intensity of like the intensity of like the intensity of falling in love with someone who has like so for my husband who's seen me like cut open and

bleeding and held me crying and see me vomiting and like all these like layers and layers to our relationship falling in love with him in a new way now is so exciting and so um new all the time what precipitates those little moments where you find yourself kind of falling again because I had that the next partner where I felt like I was really falling continually what kind of things make you fall in those moments I think it's just seeing new sides of them come out or like new sides of yourself that you didn't know and there's like a lot of stuff in this section about the mystery and long-term love and how it's kind of this myth that like you can ever really get to know someone

because you know you're both changing all the time and there's like new like even with myself sometimes I'll react in a certain way to something I said oh I didn't know I felt like that about something And so it often for me has been, you know, I would say like moments of grief when you kind of weather that together feels like a somehow like new layer of intimacy that you get to. And for me, like on the other side of that, I just feel like so deeply connected in this new way. That's a kind of falling. You know, I would say now like seeing my husband like become a parent. I'm like, oh, there's all this new stuff and you coming out. Like that's been a fool. I'm like, oh, you're, you're like the person I knew,

but you're also someone new to, you know, this person I knew, but someone new to. And then sometimes it's just, like, tiny little moments where you're both, like, acting, like, so stupid. And you're like, well, we've been through all these serious things, but we can still just, like, be completely ridiculous. You write this brilliant scene in the book of where, I think, and I just, I could so much myself do it,

where you're in your kitchen, you're cooking onions, and you'll cry as well with the onions, and your husband, and your partner comes in and gives you goggles. Skiegel, yeah, snorkel, yeah, and he's like, put a teaspoon in your mouth. I was like, you kind of cutting these, I just loved that, I think you just go back here, you just kind of fall about laughing, and I'm really picturing you with a teaspoon and the goggles and it just being this really beautiful kind of demonstration of love. And I think, because we talk about like the work of love and it's so hard, but I think actually

like the hard thing is just noticing and noticing those moments. because I was writing the book it made me much better at loving because in a way I'm like trying to collect these moments for the book but now it's like I've got those moments like there's another moment I wrote on the beach when a holiday and there's like my partner's in the sea and then I was like wave and then he just like waved it was just so stupid like that would have been like lost to memory but I was just and I think that we just need to get better at like collecting those little moments of love that sort of sustain us later on or when things are different. I just think it's so it's so easy when you're in a tough patch or like arguing to

just forget all the good stuff and it's like all the time I this is why I feel like memory is so important in love and I mean the kind of like answer that I have given in previous interviews is like one thing we do is like have this good things jar so like all throughout the year will put down like something about like the ski goggles or you know just nice little things that moments that you shared and put them in and don't tell the other person then on new year's day we'll get out and read them to each other and then like stick them in a book so remember them but i feel like a fraud because the good thing jar is completely empty at the moment because it's so busy there's nothing in it but um after night go home put something the good thing sure come on but

that's just a stupid gimmick but i think like this whole section really is about like with friendships as well it's like you just it's so easy to just like gloss through it all and I feel like all this stuff is like slipping past us all the time and and like I write about again with my mom you know just like some thing with even the other day she's like calling me and talking about the neighbors and blah blah blah and I'm just like trying to like get to the tube and I'm like yeah okay mom but I just know there's a time when I'll be like closing my eyes and being like what was that thing about your friend at Pilates farting or something you know and I'll just be like craving her voice and but that's like that's the biggest thing with love is that we just like all

the time just letting this stuff slip until it's only lost or it's only like you know um I was reading Eva Weism wrote this great column over the weekend and something had happened in her life and she said like I wish we could go back to like the bickering and the biscuit eating of yesterday and that's it you're in the sort of bickering and biscuit eating until some like something tragic happens or you might lose someone and then you're like I love them so deeply so this whole section for me is asking like can we get to that feeling of like knowing how deeply we love our friends and our families and our partners without having to wait for the tragedy or the loss god I think that's so true I and I think actually love a good segue but that that leads so perfectly actually on to a story

that I think has really stuck kind of front of mind with me which is Abby Morgan, the director, so I know she did a news letter recently with you. And I think you write in the book about how do we, how do we sustain love when the plan changes? As you say, when we don't, when things don't go as we thought they would, how the narrative does shift. And she is a prime example of someone for whom the narrative has totally shift. The plan has completely changed. Would you mind telling us a little bit about her story and what you learned from that? So first of all, I'll say I think it's also hard to sustain no stuff when the plan doesn't change like almost I think that's harder in some respects because that's when it's like that's when it's just

either the analogy I use in the book is like when you're really close up to a painting like you can't see it like I almost feel like that with my relationships yeah it's what you just said actually it in those moments of strife that actually we do relish and hold on to the things we have but it's just unfortunate that sometimes we have to have to. wait at that moment to then really be like, oh my God, but this was amazing and I loved this. And that's like, again, I was like embarrassed to write this because I was like, well, I've just spent the first half of the book moaning about how I wanted a partner. And then the second part, I've got this partner. I'm now moaning about how I want a baby. But the reason I did that is to

show like it's not just romantic love that we can obsess over. It's kind of what you don't have because I had spent my whole life wanting this romantic relationship. And then when I had it, when I kind of, after miscarrying and I felt like, you know, I wasn't so sort of desperate before them. After that, I became this thing I was consumed with and sort of overlooking this overlooking romance, which is like the thing that we, I had spent, you know, the decade before overlooking everything else for. So I think it's like very easy for absence or loss or tragedy to sort of, it kind of jolt us into that like more intense feeling. But it's very hard when you're just sort of like going about your day

and someone's left the dishes in the sink to like not just be pissed off at them and remember you love them. And the Abby Morgan thing. So her husband had had or wasn't husband at the time. She's since married, had a brain injury and didn't remember her. And so she had to kind of ask

what is love without that shared past? Like what does our relationship mean when you don't remember it? And actually she, because, A lot of the stuff I wrote about is like love is that past that you'll build love is the life. So again, it was like another. Yeah.

It's the shared language you have. Exactly. So it was really interesting one for me. So I was like, well, yeah, what is it? And again, it came back to like that giving and that, um, she described it as like a hum. Like it was this sort of like constant hum between them and it, it still existed.

It was still there even without the memory because she had made that commitment. and that she was just still like giving that to him and trying to see him again and again which is kind of what love is isn't it it's like just keeping trying to see people and they're showing up for anyone that hasn't read into Abby's story it's a really really beautiful

and she written a book hasn't she? Yeah, it's a memoir. A memoir about because I think she had cancer just before she had this unful during during I mean talk about being kind of is it hit by two buses what's the analogy hit by many buses at once had terrible time being.

basically, but speaks about it really beautifully and really kind of philosophically, I think, as you almost kind of have to. And she's a director who directed the suffragette film, I think, so. And the hour. She wrote the out. Yeah, she's absolutely brilliant. So definitely look into her story. It really does kind of, wow, it's an incredible one. And just a final, let's just address sex before we move on. Um, yeah. And then I'm just conscious, does everyone, what do you think? Do you want a quick break before we go into the final section of this and then we'll do a quick Q&A or are you happy to just keep on going through I'm always conscious of people wanting to move around just shout out keep on going on

okay fabulous good you're stuck in as me suddenly gets to midnight you're like I think we do need a break there is a bathroom just there for anyone who does need it um so we talked about the need to be practicing love and the different ways in which love changes and evolves in the context of a relationship um and I think we've talked about romantic relationship but also I think it's just as important to note that all the kind of the effort and the the purposefulness that you have seen is I think equally applied to other relationships we've touched on throughout this evening and I think actually really liked quite a few of your interviewees spoke the importance of the romance with friends and like the little acts of like I think as Candice Carty Williams

talked about wooing her friends so she'd be very active in how she woos them and whether it's like buying someone a gift or sending someone a book in the post for for no reason I really liked that And I think you have to remind yourself that those things are really beautiful and important to do. And also, they had like this birthday itinerary they made for each other, which I thought was really nice. Yes, I love that. So I think so it was with one of her friends who didn't have a partner, I've recently broken up. And so the other friend would then be like, right, birthday comes around. I know that the partner would previously have been the one to make the plans,

would make this very extensive birthday itinerary. And they kind of like did it for one another, which I thought was a really, yeah, a beautiful act of love and kindness. But let's talk about sex. so in the book you explore how sex changes in the context of a long-term relationship particularly when you're put under the particular pressure of trying for a baby when suddenly the context is like sex the purpose of sex changes i suppose in quite a big way from being fabulous fucking for the fun of it to we want to have a baby and obviously the kind of sadness that can surround that when it doesn't kind of work in the

way you want it to at that time and i think it's something you write about so poignantly and powerfully. Did your experience as you were trying for a baby and when you you wrote about miscarriage as well having a huge impact on your relationship sex, did that experience change your relationship to sex, your partner and kind of in what ways? I think, do you know, it's not just those things, but like if I take like since we met, so maybe it's like six, seven years now, um, it's just so interesting. how sex has ebbed and flowed in so many ways that it has made me so relaxed about the fact

that it can kind of go through patches like when we were trying to conceive and it was literally like, you leave for work at 6am, we've got to get up and do this. Like before you go, this is just awful. 5 a.m. shift. Just like, there's so,

I couldn't think of anything else I'd least rather do right now. And just like, so functional. But the way I wrote about it is, also like there was a new kind of industry and like we just find it so funny we'd be like how you know this is literally like stick in like let's try make it happen just but we were just there was like an intimacy and in that we'd be like we both want this and it's kind of really painful to be like sex has gone from like it's playful thing to be like it can give us like

everything we want or it can be this every month a thing that like doesn't and then it's like this kind of doorway to like another life or another disappointment. That's so much pressure to load on to this this physical thing, but we found a way to like laugh through that. And that was like another form of intimacy in a way. But even before that, I think I went through a period, must be my early 30s where like my sex drive was just dropped a bit. And I was almost convinced that I was in early menopause, like or something. I just, I was just like, why is it gone from this to this? And then through the conceit, we're having loads of sex and then but it's like not good but then the other thing that came with that is actually there was sometimes when like really can't be bothered to have sex where then I would go on and I mean I'm just I'll just talk very openly because that was but then I then I would go on and have like amazing orgasm be like have this like but I was like well I didn't even want to have it so that was interesting to me it's like the the kind of she's having well yeah

but but it could be could be both things and it wasn't actually a reflection of our relationship. It was like sometimes you'd have to start doing it before like you even realized that you wanted it. And then obviously then I had a baby and then I'm just like, won't go into too much detail, but just completely broken here, couldn't really have sex, very painful third degree tears, you know,

not like conducive to a good sex life. And then now I'm in this, well before I got pregnant, then I had a period of like, intensely amazing sex. So I think I've just come out of it. I felt like if you're really in love and you're connected, you'll have a great sex life. And now I am just much more relaxed

about the fact that, God, it's just changing all the time. And that doesn't necessarily, it's not really a reflection of like how connected we are. But what I will say, and I interviewed a couples therapist about the other day I was asking her kind of similar questions. And she was talking about like arguments that couples should have.

And she said, weirdly, sex is the one argument that couples don't have because it can feel so loaded to sort of say, I don't, I'm not happy with the amount of sex we're having. I want more or I don't feel like it's that good at the moment. You know, it's loaded with so many insecurities. And I would say the thing that we did is we just always talked about it. Like even if we weren't having sex, we're like, oh God, do you remember we had like really? We're going through a patch. We're not having much sex, are we? And like, oh, no, I kind of missed that too. But like, I'm sure it will come back. it didn't become this you know even like post birth when it was like really bad we would sort of laugh about it or like just always talk about it god i really oh god i really admire that firstly but as you're speaking i recently interviewed i've interviewed billy quinlan he runs fairly the sexual wellness app quite a few times for sex talks and i interviewed her just in the day at wilderness and she talks really beautifully about sex and our sexuality being this living breathing thing this part of ourselves that is always there, even when we're not having sex. And I think, just as you describe that,

it really made me think of that because I guess what you're describing is how our relationship to sex is really fundamentally our relationship with ourselves, and it is ever-changing, and it is always evolving. And in the same way that we have to practice love, I think we have to, like, put in the practice for our sex. And I think I, you know, I've talked, sex talks, kind of was born from my kind of journey with sex and sexuality.

And I said at the festival, and I really have been ruminating on it, since that what doing so what sorting out my kind of sexual issues is given to me so I had sex therapy having had like very bad relationship to sex for years couldn't orgasm just felt like a non-sexual person sex wasn't something that I was interested in I kind of felt like scared of it I just didn't feel like my body worked when it came to sex and what kind of working through those issues I didn't even like really realize at cognitive level kind of how deep rooted they were what that's given me longer term is a feeling of being a sexual being.

So even when I'm not having sex, and right now I'm going through a dry period, I have chronic thrush, and no one is entering me right now, no one is even touching me. But it hasn't taken away that I still feel sexual. I feel like a sexual being. I feel ownership over my sexuality

in a way that I could not have, like the majority of my 20s, probably most of my life, I couldn't have imagined of being like this. So when you describe how, yeah, that kind of the ebbs and flows, and the kind of the changing nature of it, as if it is this kind of a live thing

that really resonates with me in a way that I guess I would never have expected. And you're kind of saying the same thing as the couples therapist when she said really when it gets bad for a couple is when they don't talk about it and then it can vanish from the picture entirely because it's become such a kind of absence

and it's the same with yourself if you kind of like not a tall want to go there. Totally. And it's kind of like I just don't address it. It feels abnormal. it feels like an indication of something that's like broken with me when actually say you know what it's always going to be changing it so it's amorphous thing that is continually ups and downs but you address that and you hold it and you kind of give that space then it no longer is the shameful thing and and also i do

think and i had to kind of really catch myself about this because um i do think like actually it was daniel jones the modern love editor who i was saying how i interviewed before who said this to me So that's modern love, you know, the New York Times. Yeah. He said he thinks that sometimes we can put emotional intimacy on the pedestal above, like, physical intimacy, especially now when we're, like, doing more online without meeting and blah, blah, blah. And I think for me, like, it's definitely someone who, like,

loves talking about relationships and thing, you know, I would be like, we need to emotionally connect and I would sort of, like, put sex as a sort of like, yeah, it's something that's important, but, like, I don't know, I just didn't put it on the same pedestal as like conversation connection. And then Mira Jacob, one of this authors I interviewed, said to me, like, she said, like, sex is the dream life of a marriage in that sometimes with her partner, things would show up in sex before they were even aware of them themselves

or before they'd even had the chance to talk about them. And actually, like, sex is just another way of having a conversation with somebody. And I think that that is so true. And now I've seen sex in that way. I start to just value it just as much as kind of emotional community. And that won't always be the case, but I think it's important to, yeah, not relegate it. Totally. And I think that I'm about to say too much information.

And I was like, too much information, not a thing. But I often think that my, like, when I'm masturbating, my, I can tell. So I'm, you know, you always have kind of a low level layer of stress. We live in London, busy lives. you're constantly kind of rattled in some capacity. But I'll know when I'm really rattled in a way I haven't really realized when I can feel like my orgasm become really like, just kind of like, you know, like the air comes out of a balloon

and I feel really disconnected from my body. And sometimes I won't be kind of consciously aware of how kind of disconnected I've become. I'm kind of just, you know, busy and life is normal. But then I'll masturbate and I'll be like, oh wow, you're really out of sync. You're really kind of disconnect in some way. And then some, you know, for whatever reason, and I'll kind of do some think about what that is

and try and kind of work on that. And then a few weeks later, I'll masturbate and I'll be like, oh my God, that orgasm. And I'm like, something's, and I often think I think of my body as like a connect, what's a connect, like a connect board thing. Circuit board, that's it. And sometimes I think when I have those like air out of the balloon orgasms,

it's like the circuit's been broken and there's just something a little bit out of kilter. And then when it's been reconnected, weirdly though, I did masturbate in the haunted house in Italy and it was like, I felt like I was being watched by like a million and one ghost. And all these spiritual presence. And maybe I'm into boyerism and hadn't realized it.

Because I was, I was like, this is the best orgasm I ever had. So maybe I just need to have someone, some kind of other earthly spirit watching when I, when I masturbate. But it's a good clue. It is, it is exactly. And I just, I have to ask you this before we run to the final section. Yeah. What is your, your kind of, you interviewed Emily Nogoski, who is the author of Come as You are, brilliant author. sure everyone has seen her book read it if you haven't look at it she's fabulous what was your

primary takeaway from your interview with emily because i can't not ask you so she's a sex um uh therapist sexologist um and it's just wise beyond about sex one key takeaway okay i would say um thinking again about um being so like intensely attracted to people who are maybe like not that kind to you she she just spoke a lot about how um sometimes in some cases the sex with somebody is so great because we don't feel secure in the attachment and so we're trying to like get them closer so we're like lusting after them and we want the sex because it's like we don't feel safe and that sort of like uncertainty anxious feeling you can really confuse with lust and i that really made sense to me as in like Well, there's a kind of like amazing good sex like I've had with relationships. Like I'm in now where it's because we really feel connected and I feel really safe to like experiment

and just be very open and just, I don't know, it feels like adventurous and fun. But there's the like also good sex I've had with people who like the relationship was terrible. I didn't know where I could stand. And I never, I'd be like, well, but why was it so, why was I always wanted to have sex and why was it so great? And that really made sense to me that,

well, actually sometimes that might be why a relationship goes through periods where you're not like that intersex because you actually feel like pretty secure in the attachment to that person. And so you're not like desperately trying to like get them back to you. And she, I think it was like a friend or a sister. And she used the example of like they've been

a relationship for ages and ages. But whenever he was like a music teacher or so had to go away for months. And they're kind of like sexual intensity would like really go up a gear in that period because the attachment was sort of threatened because they're away. And so when they came back,

it got really intense again and I think that understanding that would have been so useful to me like just not confusing anxiety and uncertainty with lust basically oh god yeah I mean I'm not going to go into the into the lustful sex I had earlier this year that was pure like purely lost oh my god she doesn't want to know I since the whole family the overshare in our family I'm like but mum he wanked on me and it made me feel really not that comfortable my mom's like oh darling mom oh poor mom but you know what the funny thing

there's one particular person it wasn't it wasn't the wank on me that made her it was his TikTok that really put her off and she was like she was like actually he's such a show off on TikTok he's cooked his goose because he's such a show off on TikTok and I was like well what about the wanking on me well yes that's bad too

anyway great great tips on romance from our family so if you ever need to love some of some pets Final section of your books How can we survive losing love And oh my God This section has had me in tears I was actually reading

A little bits at the end On the plane last night My way back from the haunted holiday And kind of tearing up as I read And I thought what everyone around me thinks I'm already bananas I had so many bags And just compounded it

But I want us to begin on something We touched it very briefly before When you're right And it's something I've been thinking about a lot Of like what How we grieve different types of relationships and what we feel kind of permitted how we feel our grief is sorry how do we feel like permitted to grieve what kind of relationships give us the permit the endings of

give us permission to grieve in certain kind of ways the reason I wanted to explore this topic is I think sometimes short relationships so a couple months or a couple weeks even can the ending can feel can really hurt can sting and and have a kind of profound long-term ramification that feels disproportionate to the longevity of that actual relationship. And I have a relationships like that where I felt the grief has been so huge, but I don't feel legitimate in that grief,

and I don't know how to verbalize it, and I feel embarrassed about it. And I think, I feel embarrassed about talking to my friends about it because they're like, you've seen stuff like two, three months. It's not like a, it's not like the end of a 10-year relationship. How do you think that we, what do you think can make the grief of something that that was short, seemingly kind of insignificant to others, so painful. And how do you think, how do we mourn the loss of this kind of future that I guess we never

really pad? Well, the reason I was saying, speaking about before, because this is something that I was like, when I was kind of thinking about writing personal stories in the book, I was like, I'm a bit embarrassed about going on for another hundred pages about how I was desperate for a relationship or how like, you know, I miscarried. like 11 weeks like I was like women have lost children like can I really be honest about how gutting that was for me without being people being like it's not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of like fertility issues or you know all this way that I was sort of holding these

things up to me that felt really painful and being like well they don't measure up to this bigger loss so am I even allowed you know do I have to pretend that it was actually like I got over that in a few months or whatever and then I was like well no actually this is kind of of what this whole project is about of like taking the way you feel about love and the loss of love seriously as as individually it is felt to you and you know I like you like have been devastated when a three and a half month relationship ended and then I had like two and a half year one that I was like kind of over the next week um so it just it doesn't I don't feel like there is a time scale hierarchy what you can put on love and you know things there are like like some people for whom ending of a relationship of like any level is such a traumatic thing because it's related to like their history of things ending and stuff they went through in their childhood

that you would never understand. So I know like I was saying to you, I wrote about the moment in a cafe where like I would sit down and like see somebody who I'd think, okay, I think we could have a relationship and then like build this up in my head and then the girlfriend were walking. obviously that's not like a devastating grief but that kind of moment I would feel like

really sad in those moments where I've like built up my expectation about something and got let down and I think that we I'm quite passionate about the thing we like need to take each other's like little what kind of other people might perceive as little losses seriously rain right exactly that's exciting but the drama so I know this feels really cozy and like right tomorrow slumber party and talking about that no I love I love you you you you You characterize, and I think it was actually in the context of talking about miscarriage specifically, and you describe it as more in the loss of a future

that you didn't have. And there come three parts to the sadness, the loss itself, the loneliness and experiencing, and then the shame, the feeling that you should have moved on. I think that's, as you've just said, I think that's what really resonated, because I think it is that shame that it's like, you shouldn't still be hung up on things

that are comparatively small in the grand scheme of the horrors that people in the world experience but oh my god this is so exciting it is so exciting and also i think it's like in a way those losses are more intense because of the loneliness because i think like all of all the people i spoke to about grief the thing that came up again and again is like they were like you feel cut off from the world and you feel like everyone else is living in this normal world and then you're in like your grief world and like no one can reach you there and so you know with things that are not like recognized to say you know a lot of conversation about miscarriage has moved on now but like

especially a few years ago you know I didn't really even know you know I'm sure that I have been like really insensitive to people who who it felt they were in the midst of that deeply and just not even really understanding why or how that is a deeply felt grief so I think it's um it's not just that not comparing these things but it's understanding like the fact that you do feel lonely in that, like, intensifies the grief so much. And if you could kind of find people who recognized it, like, actually, that could alleviate some of the... Lessened some of the loneliness.

I mean, just really, Matt, lessened my loneliness and some of the, like, grief I certainly feel on shorter relationships that haven't worked out that still feel like a little shard of glass in my heart and really hard to move on from. And the loss of the imagined future. It's the loss of the imagined future. That is really hard.

You build the imagine future. You've got the home, you've got the joy, wake boarding sessions you've booked in you've got all these like these mutual activities that you do together the cadence of the year planned down suddenly it's ripped from you and it's so devastating and you but I think if someone recognizes that it can change the whole thing because I almost wanted to like go around and tell everyone and be like that this is this wasn't just like a short thing for me it was like a thing I had seen and if somebody could have just have seen that then I

think it would have helped so I yeah that's why I just saying I hate one people I felt seen in this I did feel seen so thanks Natasha and then long-term relationships how then do you grieve the future how do we grieve the future that we thought we already had when the person you think you're going to spend your whole life with leaves you and when the life that you've been busy building together comes undone I think there is a way of like allowing yourself to grieve that but being um it's what what is the shila hetty quote as well of like for me it was recognizing that yes like i guess i was thinking about it specifically on on the holiday i was writing about when i was there thinking like my version of the loss of mad

teacher was like oh we would have been here with the baby and i remember watching this couple play with their baby in the pool and just like oh feeling that of like we're not we don't have that like we're not here with our child and they are and just feeling like this holiday would have been something different. And then kind of as the holiday was like unfolding, we just had like so many silly fun times and there was a moment where we were just like lying a bed a bit drunk and he was and I was like felt like his heart like beating on my back

and I was just and I just felt so like, like I was saying like we kind of almost fell in love again deeper like through that period and being like, okay it's not the it's not the holiday with the kid but it's like extraordinary in all these different ways so I think you grieve that future by like allowing yourself to like look at the couple with you know whatever and feel sad but also being like here is what I have and there are just so many different ways to live this life

and here is one of them and here is what I'm gonna do with it I think and Sarah Pola Pabola Habela Habela she had a great quote I think also I really liked and I think it's it's a sort of like benefit of hindsight type of wisdom that I do think is is still true she says I hadn't understood how lucky you can be when somebody leaves you it's a sign of youthful arrogance that we think we know what's right for us the older I get the more I realize the things I wanted were not necessarily the things that would have given me

what I needed at the time and I think although at the moment of heartbreak or loss and in any capacity it's really hard to be able to see that at some point in the future you do end up pretty much always looking back and me like thank a fuck it would never have been good yeah i i do feel i mean i'm sure there are there are like situations you can say that's not true but i can definitely say like i'm just so thankful for how many times i got dumped oh my god if i had my way my first real like what i felt was heartbreak was i was infatuated with a boy in a band who took heroin and i just think like imagine my life what it would have looked like Like, he was clean, though, and I do love cleanliness, but other than that, the environment

he was in was like, was not clean from the heroin. No, was not clean from heroin. I think he got off eventually, but like, yeah. It wouldn't have been, but I was, he was my dream. I loved the guy in heroin. But he didn't love me back and thank God he did not. How do we heal and not harden is what I want to round up on? Because I think one of, you write in the book, one of the worst parts of heartbreak is waking up each day.

and having to remember. And I think in the face of ending, in the face of any sort of loss, we can feel as a result, it's easy to want to kind of give up. And a huge factor of that, I think that's really contributed to me in many of my ways

and being kind of cynical and romance, is that it hurts, the end of romance hurts so much. And it feels easier to button up and to grow that thicker skin and to harden and to say, I didn't need that anyway, and I don't need it going forwards.

And I think Bell Hooks actually talks about, like, kind of cynicism being born from bitterness of portrayal. And I was like, God, Bell, you're looking deep into my soul. So how do you mourn that loss in such a way that doesn't leave you feeling hardened and ultimately kind of bitter as a result? I think it's about sharing your vulnerability and that with like whoever you can again and again because I think like there were definitely periods where even with friends I wouldn't almost want to share that and it's like for me I know like I'm going through a period in life where I'm getting to that hardening point when I just stop like sharing my vulnerability and just find because that's like and then it's so hard to like retain intimacy and stay close to people and I think you just

have to like force yourself to almost I don't know I just I always say like the worst thing I'm feeling to people I think maybe it's like from years of dating when I was like did hold back and I was never really honest I never now I'm like here's ever like I just have to like lay it out on the table because I feel like that is how you sustain love and how you stay close to what you want as much as like to other people and so I think it's about like revisiting your like the truth of your vulnerability like if it is cynicism what is like beneath that again it's like almost like detective work is like if I'm feeling this kind of like hardening up you know I even feel it now sometimes in my partner if we're going through something and I'll find myself I'll just say like I think

I'm like holding back on this because I'm actually feeling like so scared about this so I think it's like just always trying to like dig, dig beneath your first emotion to figure out what it is and then like finding a way to share it with somebody. I think that's so true underneath the many layers. We are going to wrap up. We have, sorry, I've gone slightly over, but it's just, I mean, we could stay here till midnight and I'd still have 10 million questions left to ask you. Actually, there was one quote I did want to bring up that I think is both poignant and sadly true. Is it that you, I think you wrote one point, you lose the love, I think it was one actually you, you lose the love. I think it's lose the love and then you're left with the grief, one was the price of the other.

And I thought that's really was a kind of poignant way that kind of grief and love arc of two sides, the same coin. Because at one point, the joys of love are always going to be bookended with the grief that comes in some way, whether it's through death at some point or the ending. And it's kind of, I don't know if it's possible to be really okay with that or to like really comprehend what that means until it happens. But I think it's important to just remember it and to acknowledge it. and actually when I set out to write the book I think I was talking about finding love and sustaining love and I hadn't really thought about losing love

but it was really like interviewing people and seeing like how deeply those two things are intertwined and actually not just bookended I think I saw I thought it was like love and then grief but then it was like love grief but they're like the love kind of exists beyond that and actually even there's a way that kind of of course we don't have to be okay with it

but there's a way that like holding that loss in your mind can help you to love better. And I, you know what I was saying before about like taking people for granted when they're close. I now I think through just doing this project and into people in writing do have a sort of more immediate sense of loss. And the author Anne Patrick described it as like we're all going around with our like friends and our parents and our lovers or whatever.

And it's like we're walking on this glass corridor and and bridge, sorry. And every now and again we look down. And it is like that. It's like you're loving all these people. And then every now and again, you might remember, like, it's not gonna, they're not gonna be here forever. Like we're not, and that is so hard to get your head around. But I think it's also what has helped me be better at loving

in the way that I'm like, let some of the shit go. Like some of the crap, it's like, I don't need to be so irritated about it. I can be irritated, but then I'll let it go quicker. Because I'm like, I don't wanna waste any time with these people just feeling resentment about shit that does not matter. when I know that I'll be like

longing for them when they're not here and so I was like never want to think about loss because I'm such a kind of like romantic and now I just sort of I try not to like think about it too much but I almost like hold it somewhere in my mind in a way that it helps me to yeah just love people

in a way that I know what matters oh I love that like everyone be like I love we have like I love one of a collective son. Yeah, me, me, me. Right, we are going to wrap up there. One final question.

What is one thing that you wish you'd known about love sooner? Posing your own question that you pose to everybody in the book. Yeah, I always answer a different way all the time because it depends on how I'm feeling this week. But I think, like, I try and, like, all the answers feed into this one thing, which is that I, and it comes up a lot, which is, like, Miles, of like wanting to do things by certain ages. And you know, the love story that I wanted,

because my parents met when they were like 15 and they were this like childhood sweet-art couple, I wanted to like stay with my love that I met a 13, you know, maybe get married, like in my 20s, have a kid by 30. I just had this like love story that I had written in my head. And I never would have put in like two decades

of basically terrible dates, like getting done, Getting dumped outside McDonald's in the rain, like having a fight with my dad on, like, his dad's funeral, like, pissing myself in front of my husband as my stitches were coming. I just, all this stuff miscarrying, like all this stuff I would never would have put in. And then now I stand here at this point and be like,

this love story is so much more, I mean, this sounds cheesy, but I'll just say, it's so much more beautiful than all the kind of, like, perfect meeting things by the milestone that I could have written. And I was like, I've got a great imagination. I've got great fantasies. I wrote this great love story.

And I was like, I'm so glad that I didn't write this. I'm so glad that I didn't meet the milestones. And so I try and carry that forward now. And I'm like, I want my mom to live long enough to do this. And I'm just like, it's meaningful because of the hard bits too. And when you can kind of like loosen your grip on the control of that a little, it just ends up more beautiful I think God what a note to end I feel that was

I'm honestly Natasha what an utter joy it was so wonderful going to read your book but to get to then deep dive into it with you has been such a privilege so thank you so much and thank you just for writing it as I said I really get annoyed by being like I feel so seen in this because I think we don't need to be seen in everything but I did feel seen and it was it was god-down glory so thank you so much a huge round of applause thank you so much thank you thank you thank you so much for listening to today's sex talks podcast with me

your host emma louise boington if you'd like to attend a live recording of the podcast check out the event bright link in the show notes as we have lots of exciting live events coming up you can also date with everything coming up at sex talks, plus get my sporadic musings, be the sex talk substack. I've also popped that link into the show notes. And over on Instagram, where I'm at Emma Louise Boynton. And finally, if you enjoyed the show, please don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe on whatever platform you're listening to this on, as apparently it helps others to find us. Have a glorious day.