Sex Talks With Emma-Louise Boynton - Rethinking Romance with Amy Key, author and poet and Poppy Jay, co-host of Brown Girls Do It Too

Episode Date: November 28, 2024

On this week’s episode of the podcast we wanted to talk about love, specifically how we move away from our societal obsession with romantic love and instead cultivate a more expansive, inclusive notion of love. One that releases us from the pressure to find “the one” and instead encourages us to find the romance in our platonic relationships. According to Pew Research, one in four people will now remain single for their adult lives; the number of people getting married has fallen significantly (in the US have decreased by 60% since the 1970s and 90% of the world's population now live in countries with falling marriage rates). Meanwhile, birthrates are falling globally and have actually halved since 1963. Yet, despite these changes in the extent to which coupledom, marriage and the traditional family structure are changing, culturally we are still seemingly fixated on romantic love as the pinnacle form of love. For women in particular, there remains so much pressure to find a husband and hence become a wife and a mother, as though our societal worth is pegged solely upon those two things.  And then there’s the so-called ‘single tax’, aka the aka the additional finances single people shoulder by virtue of not having a partner. But this wasn’t a depressing conversation about the perils of being single. Quite the opposite. Instead it felt to us like a much needed, deeply galvanising discussion about all the ways in which we can find great romance in our lives outside of the prism of marriage and the traditional family structure. It was a reminder to all of us that there is so much to be celebrated in designing your life on your own terms and not waiting for someone to come along in order to create the life you truly want.  Joining Emma-Louise on the podcast was writer, poet and author of Arrangements in Blue, a book exploring a life lived in the absence of love, and Poppy Jay, the Bafta award-winning director and co-host of the Brown Girls Do It Too a BBC Sounds podcast. Book tickets to the next live recording of the Sex Talks podcast here. And subscribe to the Sex Talks Substack here.

Hello and welcome to the live version of the Sex Talks podcast with me, your host, Emma Louise Boynton. Sex Talks exists to engender more open, honest and vulnerable discussions around typically taboo topics, like sex and relationships, gender inequality, and the role technology is playing in changing the way we date, love and fuck. Our relationship for sex tells us so much about who we are and who we are and how we show up in the world, which is why I think it's a topic we ought to be talking about with a little more nuance and a lot more curiosity. So each week, I'm joined by new guest whose expertise on the topic I'd really like to mine, 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 attend a live recording of the podcast, click on the Eventbrite link in the show note. On this week's episode of the podcast, I want to talk about love, specifically how we move away from our societal obsession with romantic love and instead cultivate a more expansive, inclusive notion of love, one that releases us from the pressure to find the one, and instead encourages us to find the romance in our platonic relationships as well. I said at the beginning of this conversation, which was recorded live at Zoha House, that we're witnessing some big social shifts regarding the extent to which relationships, specifically romantic partnerships, are the

organising principles of our society. According to Pew Research, one in four people will now remain single for their whole adult lives. The number of people getting married has fallen significantly. In the US, it's actually decreased by 60% since the 1970s, and 90% of the world's population now live in countries with falling marriage rates. And of course, I'm sure you've all seen the headlines recently. Birth rates are falling globally. They've actually halved since 1963, which is pretty wild as a start. Yet, despite these changes in the extent to which coupledom, marriage and the traditional family structure are changing, culture. Cultures Culturally, we're still fixated on romantic love as the pinnacle of all types of love.

For women in particular, there remains so much pressure to bind a husband and hence become a wife and a mother, as though our societal worth is pegged solely upon these two things. And while we didn't touch on it in too much detail during this conversation, it's worth noting that being single still carries with it a pretty hefty financial burden. I'm sure you've all heard of the so-called single tax, a.k. the additional financial burden that single people shoulder by virtue of not having a partner. And that's because of things like missing out on discounted rail tickets, not having anyone

to split rent or bills with, the fact that hotel rooms always cater to two and there is no discount for being a one. But this wasn't a depressing conversation about the perils of being single, nor the financial burden associated with being single. Quite the opposite. Instead, it felt to me like a deeply heartwarming and galvanizing discussion about all the ways in which we can find great romance in our lives outside of the prism of marriage and the traditional family structure. It was a reminder to me that there is so much to be celebrated in designing your life on your own terms and not waiting for someone to come along in order to create the life you truly want. Joining me in this discussion with the incredible poet and author

Amy Key, whose debut book of nonfiction, Arrangements in Blue, set out to explore a life lived in the absence of romantic love, something she assumed growing up she would have. If you haven't read her book yet, I would very much encourage you to do so. It is so beautifully and poetically written. I was also joined by Puffy Jay, who has been on the podcast before and who I love a lot. She's a BAFTA award-winning director and the co-host of the brilliant podcast, brown girls do it too. A BBC Sounds podcast that is about sex, dating, love and even rimming. They are doing some incredible work busting the taboo around sex within South Asian culture. A lot of South Asian women still can't talk openly about their sex life, but Poppy and Rubina are

determined to change that, beginning with their own experiences. Once again, if you haven't listened to their podcast, I highly recommend that you do. I hope you find this conversation as enjoyable and as deeply loving as I did, please do let me know. And of course, there'll be some resources in the show notes if you want to sign up to the newsletter or attend a future live recording of the podcast. Enjoy the show. Amy, to get us started, arranging some blue is, kind of you used Joni Mitchell's blue album as the anchor to the book in a really beautiful kind of poetic way you are a poet so i need to stop saying poetic poetic poetic but it's so true um the chat to titles reflect lines from the album songs

and term joanie and her lyrics are very much kind of woven throughout the book could you describe your relationship to this album specifically and how that relationship has evolved and that evolution really fed in to the thinking behind the book yeah sure um so i i kind of i first live listened to Joni Mitchell's album Blue when I was 14 years old. I was all like waiting for my life to start. I was waiting to start my periods. I was waiting to fall in love. And she kind of, I guess provided me with this template of what a romantic life would be like. And it was just full of drama and highs and lows and pain and joy. And I just wanted it all. Like I felt like I devoured that album

and she was like this kind of kind of presiding spirit that I was going to follow into my adult life. And I always thought like she's got these really, really big love songs that people, you know, over the world are really attached to

and when you're watching like a Netflix drama, you know, some guy will get up and sing River or a case of you when everyone cries and that's how we know that they're really in love with each other because they sing Joni Mitchell to each other. And I always thought that I would one day be, you know, like staring into someone's eyes and be telling them that they were like this case of you that I could, you know, drink them till, you know, the bitter end and never feel too drunk. But it just didn't happen. And so it was really confronting for me.

I was like the kind of life that I thought that I was going to have never materialized. really, which isn't to say that a romantic life didn't materialise or kind of romantic relationships and sexual relationships didn't materialise, but this idea of like finding the one didn't happen. I can't remember the end of your question, so you might have to... Well, so I was going to say that when that's a perfectly set up, starts the answer. I was curious, in the book, you talk about how your relationship to the album evolved over time. and it was one that she kind of gave you the template for love and then really the template for longing.

And I was just curious to how that evolutional relationship to the album then also kind of structured the book and kind of the ideas in the book. Yeah, sure. So because I've been obsessed with Joni and this particular album for a really long time, I decided that I was going to write an essay about Joni's relationship to my poetic practice, I guess. And I pitched it to grant her and they were like, yeah, lovely, can you go away and write that?

And then I tried to go away and write that. But during that time, one of my closest friends died. And he wasn't a romantic partner, but he was a big love. And I think the experience of grieving a big love, but it not resembling romantic love, was something that psychically messed with my head quite profoundly and when I sent the first draft of this essay which was ostensibly supposed to be about Joni and Poetics the editor was like Amy should we talk about this essay because what I think this essay is about is your grief about romantic love not being in your life and the the kind of difficulty that you have in reconciling it and the shame that you're carrying

and the way in which your friend's death has forced you to kind of face up to this, the way you're carrying it and the way it's stopping you living. That's so fascinating. Thank you for showing that with us. I think you describe the grief throughout the book. It's interwoven in such a beautiful and moving way. What do you think it was specifically about your friend's death that prompted that kind of visceral confrontation?

I think it was a couple of things. one, because we had this real romantic dynamic to our relationship, which I never really had language for. And also when he died, I didn't have the status of like a familial mourner or like the partner mourner. And I thought that was really strange. And I remember like consulting my work leave policy and it's saying, you can have five days off if it's like a partner or a first relation and I was like but I feel like I'm dying you know like I'm I'm grieving really profoundly and yet I'm supposed to kind of conform to the way in which society dolls out which relationships are important and which ones aren't but the other thing was that he was ill for a very long time

and one of the things that he said to me like really deep in his illness is romantic he said love hasn't happened for you has it love's never happened for you how's it. And I felt this kind of wave of, yeah, it just cut me right the way through because it was true. It was what he said was true and it felt cruel and cold. But it was true. So no matter how I felt about whether it was okay for him to say that or not, it was actually helpful because it gave me the opportunity to think about what I wanted and what was going on. Why did he say that. Was it intended to be cruel? He could be cruel. Yeah, he could definitely be cruel, but I don't think, I don't think that's where it was coming from. He was just a statement

of fact. So, and just one question before we go to you properly, I just want to ask Amy, you dedicate the book at the very beginning to anyone who needs a love story of being alone, which I think given what you just said, I actually had even thought about kind of leave policies and work being reinforces of this notion of, you know, putting romantic relationships on a pedestal. It's just so deeply ingrained within our cultural fabric, it kind of wherever you turn. B.S. you dedicate the book to anyone who needs a love story of being alone. And I just wondered in a world so obsessed with romantic love, were there any kind of solo love stories that had inspired you in that writing or were you really writing the book that you

needed and hadn't perhaps had access to you prior to this? I think it was probably a little bit of both. One of the books that really influenced me was Vivian Gornick's book, The Odd Woman in the City, which is a memoir about living in New York, about friendship and about feeling like romantic love is kind of not something she's been able to access, but something that she's been obsessed with her whole life so that was a that was a kind of that was the kind of thing I thought oh my god I need more of I need more of this and I wanted to make a contribution I guess to the literatures around that but I'm sure there was there were so many it's just I haven't I didn't encounter them you know in time um Poppy I'm going to turn to you uh you launched brown girls do it to back in 2019 seems ages ago now that's you've been pre-cove is a different time. Pre-COVID. It was the world before this one. Congratulations. And you're now on episode 84.

I didn't realize that. Thank you. That's a lot of episodes. You go, girl. And you said at the podcast, in a bid, I think at the time, to kind of challenge the taboos surrounding sex and dating specifically within South Asian culture. Growing up, did you have anything like the podcast you now host as a resource for helping you navigate sex and dating? Absolutely. fucking not. I had aunties who were terribly missing forming

and dangerous, really, let's be honest. Don't have sex, don't have sex. You will die in hell. Don't do it. Don't do it. And I often, often we get so we adapted the podcast, we took it to Soho, we're taking it to Fringe next year and we have these amazing conversations with predominantly brown women, South Asian women

who come up to us after the show and they say, where were you before where were you when I was 16? And I was like, where the fuck was I when I was 16? Like we didn't have anyone. And It's just, especially in the South Asian community, things are changing, but we're still incredibly conservative, very traditional. It's not something that we talk about. My parents don't even know that I do the podcast. I do it in open secret. They still don't know. They

don't know. No, I know. Thank God. Thank God they don't speak English. Jesus Christ, can you imagine? They don't know. They don't know. And thank God, because if they did, I would be disowned. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not. a joke it would be what do they think they just know you do I mean they don't know they just think I have a job and you know I live you know it's fine but well I'm also a director right so so that's where that podcasting does not pay the bill so that's what they think I do but beyond that they have no absolutely no idea but obviously the podcast is not for them thank God not for their ears but we just didn't have anyone or anything the closest thing we had and it wasn't

close at all I don't know if anyone knows this seminal 90s show goodness gracious me it was huge they did not talk about sex obviously but it was just it was funny it was comedy it was a release it was us uh represented on our screens but nothing to do with relationships or love or romance so and you said in the interview recently that when you initially started doing the podcast you felt kind of you'd focused your career previously on kind of more politics current affairs type issues and it felt perhaps a bit lowbrow talking about sex and you described it as low brow and trashy. I took personal offence of that, immediately popping.

Well, Rubina, Relieman on my partner in crime, she's the funnier one. She says we are low brow trash masquerading as highbrow conversation. And so that's what really she coined that. But sorry, what was your question? My question after that was, five years on how has your view of the topic of sex and relationships and all the issues that you address the podcast, how has that changed? Well, first and foremost, my attitude and Rabina's attitude to sex has changed. Because when we started the podcast, we're doing it for lulls, we thought six girls in Bradford would hear it.

And that would be the end of that, right? And we ourselves are hang-ups of being Asian, not being accountants and being a complete disappointment to our parents. We were like, sex, God, what kind of slags talk about sex? Lo and behold, we are now talking about sex. And actually, what the podcast has done in terms of having conversations, even with my friends, I don't know if this is the same for you guys but we now talk about it in a way that I never, even my best friends

I'm talking tier ones, I didn't talk about that stuff so we, our own attitude towards sex has completely changed and actually because we've now normalised it and we talk about all manner of shit on that podcast Jesus, don't listen to the anal episode it's horrific. Listen to the anal episode.

Is that when you discuss rimming? Yeah, yeah, yeah, after a curry, have fun. It's disgusting but it's, you know, and it's, and we can. go so far beyond the line. That's the thing. We'd go so far. And again, to quote Rubina because she's brilliant. And for us,

it's about taking it so far because we never could. So the next generation can find a slightly more acceptable calibration point because we were never allowed to talk about those things. Those aunties that were, I'm not saying hashtag all aunties, but you know, the

ones that were repressed, oppressed, couldn't really speak freely. It's for them and they might not see it now, but the idea is we just want to blow the doors open, go so far, and then there'll be a rebalance later. What is the value do you think of having more open conversations around sex? You know, I talk about this all the time. Like, we're not, shame is such a massive currency,

not just in the South Asian community, I think, in general. We just are a bit more Ron Silt-in with our shame. You can literally see the shackles around our feet. So I think it's normalizing it, making women feel like it's totally okay. Making other men and, you know, brown men feel like it's okay to talk about it. And it's just not making South Asian women feel othered in any way. And it's, you know, sex is completely normal.

And it's so funny in my career. I've been, you know, I'm a serious journalist. I just did a documentary about, I say serious. I mean, I have a serious journalist. I don't know why I'm doing this. I just did a documentary about Gen Zeders who are anti-abortion. I've worked on current affairs. I've done documentaries on.

ISIS, and that never took off in my career. It was me talking about sex and fanny farts. That's what put me in the bat. And clearly, sex cells, we're obsessed with it. We watch it, the pornification of the world. And yet it's the one thing that we don't talk about. And yet everyone's fucking, look at India. It's a billion of them.

Slash us. I'm technically not Indian, but I'm brown, so it's the same thing in it. And that's why we talk about sex, everybody. Love that. Thank you. That's a great introduction to the podcast as well. Now everyone's going to go home and jump straight to the Rimming podcast episode. So we can all get some hot tips on Rimming Post Curry.

I can't wait. So let's talk about the romantic ideology, which is what we're here to talk about this evening. Growing up, I'd be curious to know from both of you what your idea of romance and love was. What did you expect from love? And I'm talking kind of on the younger kind of teenage years, really in your kind of girlhood. this adolescence. Amy, I want to turn to you first, as you mentioned earlier, how Joni Mitchell played a really big role in the way you saw love and you envisaged kind of looking into someone's eyes with the river in the background, which I think totally romantic.

But what did you flesh that picture out for us? What did you anticipate from love and from romance? I think I just anticipated like total derangement, if I'm completely honest. And a lot of my like romantic ideas were just received. you know it was just watching TV and reading books and I just thought that romantic love was like huge passion like common sense obliterating derangement and and that was a problem because like as I you know encountered I mean I took a lot of derangement to lots of romantic situations but there could have been possibly there could have been really good satisfying. romantic situations that didn't have that quality, but because I didn't feel deranged, I was not interested in them. So, yeah, I think this kind of incredible high intensity, like, limerence rather than than love was the thing that I thought I was going to get needed. And, yeah, limerence, is that the obsessive kind of love? I see this all time social media.

Yeah. It's kind of, it's just when, I think it's just when you totally lose your shit in all perspective. I totally had that. And I matched with the guy. And I liked, he said, let's talk about limerence. And I'm like, I've never heard a guy talk about that. And I've definitely had it with the guy. So I liked it. And then my, my go-to chat, my opening chat upline was about, let's talk about limerent. So I was like, who are you obsessed with then? Well, be me. Give it five minutes. And then he changed, he changed the prompt because he was like, I attract too many crazies. Is that a white then? That's such a good. So, dude. Well, I mean, I was a site. But yeah. That's so funny.

I love the idea of that being once drawing people in. He literally changed it during the chat. I was like, all right. Talked about this enough now. But that's a good at a guy having something like a zodiac thing of like, what's your star sign? What time you were born? And then all the women jumping in and being like, oh my gosh. This, you know, our star sights will be matched.

Maybe just me. No, I'm a Gemini. I'm also a champion. Are you? Yeah, I think that's where the derangement comes from. I think it's inherent in us to be just deranged. I'll just just go a little bit deeper on that because you write about this in the book. You describe actually at one point really beautifully going through an abortion with your boyfriend at university.

and the grieving bit was inherent to that process. But you talk in that about how you... Was it? Yeah, the crisis that you had shared between you felt like something quite kind of seismic and significant because it was painful and love was supposed to be painful. So it kind of chined with your idea of what love was meant to be like. And that really stuck with me because I think it...

highlights one of the problems we have with our kind of romantic ideology as it's kind of imbued in us culturally that love is seen as something to be fought for on this battlefield. It's tough. You kind of weather the storms, you know, you survive through the pain and in the end it's worth it. You win the person and all, you know, is all as good. And I think with that, it can really shape our behaviour because we think when it's painful, when it's anxiety-inducing, when it makes us feel deranged, that's how it's supposed to be. Where do you think that kind of cultural messaging comes from and how did it, I guess, well, where did it come from for you?

Oh gosh. I mean, what do I think about this? There's something for me about when I was growing up, so I grew up in like the 80s and 90s, and the idea of like sexual and romantic jealousy was accepted and was seen as like the currency on which romance would be traded. So I'm thinking about growing up listening to songs about how terribly a man was going to treat his girl or, you know, whatever. Sorry, this is so heteronormative.

So that's rubbish, but that's my experience. But like how kind of cruel you could be to somebody and that would be evidence of your love. And those things, I think I really took those things to heart. like having a partner who was jealous and I thought was a sign that someone loved me and all of this stuff is really fucked up and wasn't challenged in the culture at all when I was growing up.

So that's definitely one of the things. And then, you know, having, getting pregnant like in my first term at university with this boy that I'd known two months and having an abortion, I was like, this is like, one of the biggest things that has ever happened in my life and we're going through this together. So now we are, now we are tethered together forever and it's got to mean something.

Otherwise, you know, I want a reward for the pain that I'm going through. That's, that's the way I thought of it. Rather than, God, that was unlucky and this idiot I shouldn't worry about and, you know what I mean? But I, but I, but I, but he was a, he was a nice boy, really but like I I think it was just like the lack of life experience and the lack of I don't know like different ways to think about stuff like having an abortion is not a catastrophe right even when I had one in 1997 you know it was a pretty normal thing to do commonplace I could access it really easily I could tell my mum about it I was really lucky I could get it for free on the NHS you know but um other than

that i i just thought this is this is something that um has a romantic quality to it and and i should therefore pay attention to it which is also a deranged thing well i mean i think it's deranged i mean i think there's the way you describe that though i think it's so resonant this idea that we grow up associating love and romance with kind of tragedy and with pain and there's a kind of romanticising of those quite hard, potentially quite traumatic instances because they feed into that notion that it is this, you know, like Romeo and Juliet-esque. And I can understand at that age particularly how that becomes quite like an enthralling concept. I'm just curious in that. Did your then-partner have a similar sense of what happened? No. No. No. I think

he was just like, oh, I can't handle this, you know? So he retreated, whereas I feel like I just got like more entrenched. And that's the reaction that we had to the stress of the situation. For me, I needed for it to make it, I needed to get meaning from it. And that meaning I thought was going to be through like a deepening of the romantic connection. For him, he needed to detach from it because he was overwhelmed and he was a young man and he didn't know what he was doing. Yeah, so I can feel a lot kinder about it now. Thank you so much for sharing that.

I really appreciate that. Poppy, can you tell us a little bit about your relationship or idea, actually, of love growing up? So we will talk about, so I know you were, you had an arranged marriage. Forced marriage. Forced marriage in your late teens. But prior to that, so we'll touch on that momentarily, what was your idea of love? What were you anticipating? when it came to romantic love.

Everything that you see in cool intentions, she's all that, mean girls, clueless. Every film that I grew up watching was what I thought romance was. Everything that Amy just said, everything. Common sense obliterating, personally, really struck a chord with me. And everything that my mum and my community program into you. Like, I am going to be 14 next year. I don't want kids.

I don't even want to get married, probably. And I am in every way an antitherto. to how my mother has raised me, right? So this idea of having a husband. You can't have a partner in my, my parents are strict Muslims. You have to have a husband, a kid. So, and then I grew up in quite a conservative household. I had to wear a head scarf. My parents were really strict. And then there is no, what you were saying earlier. Like, there's no variety of thought. So you are so, you have, your worldview is so tiny and so limited. I wasn't even allowed out. Like I was a really stripped upbringing.

And then you consume all this trash. I say trash chick flicks that I love and adore. But you grew up on a concoction of that. And then you have no boyfriends. You don't really understand how the world works. You have a very limited one-note homogenous view of what romance is. And then I think like most women, you kind of carry that with you. And it's only now in my late 30s.

I love being single. I love the freedom it gives me. I don't feel. I don't hold value I know a lot of my female friends do but to me

getting married and having kids doesn't make me a human you know doesn't add value I mean if I asked my mum mom I could win the noble prize or I could have married and give you three grandchildren

she'd obviously go for the latter but I've it's taken a long while for me to come to terms with that but I was hosting an event for a dating app and I was really surprised

at the number of female journalists. I mean, it was all just female journalists. Sorry, I'm not sorry, let me read. No men at this event. And I was, I don't know why that confused me. I was like, where are the guys? They want to be in relationships, or certainly later in their 20s and 30s. So why aren't they in this conversation? So I think a lot of us have a very warped view of romance and in the hierarchy of all types of romances, it's at the top. But I think for me, I've, value my my platonic friendships now and then how you described your friends so beautifully like it's a platonic friendship but it was the biggest romance in your life in a minute but you weren't obviously

there was no sexual and I have I have so many more of those and I value those above guys who will you know frankly come and go I mean look at divorce rates and I've got mates on the second divorces they're opening up their marriage it's getting stale it's getting boring and also sorry I'm not I'm rabbiting on but this for our generation this is our data this is the digital dating industrial revolution right? Things are completely blowing up in our faces and in a way that for our parents' generation and our grandparents' generation

I mean my mum and dad hate each other but they're together but I think if my mum was me now she'd tell my dad to fuck off you know so it's a different time. Wow it is a different time. There's so many points that you picked up on there that I really

wanted to delve into so I'm mentally trying to pick which one we go into first I think first I'd like to touch touch on. You described there how it was kind of ingrained in you from a young age that there was an inevitability to getting married. There was inevitability to having kids. It wasn't really a choice. It was a kind of default setting. And for you, early on, it kind of was because then you had a forced marriage at 17, which is... I'm 19 at 19, sorry, at 19, which is such a young age to be propelled into that kind of sphere of adulthood and kind of against your

will. Can you, you described actually on the podcast a little while ago that the process of going into that marriage, which then broke down and you were divorced by, I think, believe it was 25, is that correct? It completely kind of busted up your idea, your kind of Disney Asian idea of marriage that had been so deeply inculcated you for your whole life. Can you tell us a little bit about that and what that marriage, then, you know, and divorce, I guess, left you feeling with regards to the promise of romance.

I think in that first year from like 25 to 26, honestly, I was destitute. Like, my self-esteem was on the floor. I lost my virginity to this guy. I didn't have any boyfriends before him. So I was like, no one's going to want me. I'm broken. Also, I was broken goods in my community. Like, no one, you know, your damaged goods.

And I genuinely confidence everything. Like, I was like, who is going to love me again? And also this idea of romance and kids completely shattered. And actually, it's time and on, and I met my ex-partner at the time who was amazing, and friends and my world just opened up, I realized that divorce was the best thing that's ever happened to me. Because if I was still with him, I'd be three kids deep driving Mercedes working for Tower Hamlets Council. And all my sisters would be married unhappily, probably. So I always joke, I was the Malala of the family.

I took a bullet for them. Metaphorically speaking. But honestly, it's the best thing that happened because it is destroyed every notion, especially in my family, in my community, where you're a good girl, you're an obedient girl, you get married and you do this, and you live within laws, and you shut the fuck up,

and you don't raise your voice, and you know, you keep your husband happy. And again, things are changing with Gen Z, but it completely shook my foundation. I basically, it was an earthquake, and I rebuilt my foundations. I had Mabin Azhar, who's brilliant on Big Boy Energy, and he said something that was really emotional.

I mean, he's come out. He's a brilliant broadcaster. And he said something to me. He's like, you and I, we wrote this narrative. We came out of whatever fucking life we were going to have to write this, and we made it for us. And I literally got emotional when he was telling me, and he's right.

But I appreciate it's not easy for everyone. And it comes with consequences. And it's only now, you know, I had my mum and dad around, I was telling Amy, for the first. time in my flat, like, on Saturday. And it was just a really big moment because for so long I've been living this double life. I mean, don't get me wrong, I had to have all the fucking sex stories. I had to hide the wine. I had the wine glasses. It was very annoying. But, you know, it's a step in the right direction. So slowly there is change, but it just takes forever sometimes

with Asians. And can I just ask, it sounds like the kind of transformation that you've had on a personal level from the poppy that existed in I guess the teenage years in which you've been programmed for this very specific type of life that you're going to live and you've written before that you were quite you know the good the good girl you really abided by your family's dick tats and it just seems the pop that's sitting in front of us now running a podcast about sex it's obviously a world away was it going through that marriage and I guess being confronted with the fact that it wasn't what it was promised and this, you know, this situation wasn't everything

it had been set up to be. Was it that that was the kind of catalyst to you beginning this journey to where you are now? Totally, because it shattered everything and I realise I can't live for my parents anymore. Like in Bengali we have this saying, Manu Shekita Chihuiba, which means what will people say? And as long as everything is, you know,

you do whatever you want behind closed doors, but you save face, so you act a certain way, you behave a certain way and I realize I can't keep I'm doing everything for my parents and it's now ended in divorce it's shattered every illusion I had about romance about love

and I can't keep living for them anymore so I've got to do things on my own terms which means having a sex podcast, lol but I've taken it so far I'm like look if I'm going to do this I'm going to do it with my chest you know what I mean I'm going to fuck sharp

so that's what I'm doing and had you gone into it thinking that it would be what you'd anticipated when it come to absolutely no as in the podcast I did it for fun No, not the podcast, the marriage was like, well, I saw my mum and dad argue and hate each other. And this sounds really, it's toxic. I saw lots of toxic relationships around me, a lot of arranged marriages, slash force marriages, a lot of people in unhappy marriages.

And I genuinely thought, me and my ex-husband, we would fight like cat and dog. And I thought that was normal. I thought that's what you did in relationships because I saw my mum and dad do it. So I was like, and I genuinely, I went into that marriage at 19, 20. I was like, I'm going to make this work. I'm going to make this work. And I was on the implant, and I was supposed to change the implant in February. And this is when we separated. And I thought I was pregnant. And I was like, all right, well, I've got to make it work. I've got to go back to him. Shit. Fortunately, I wasn't pregnant. But it's the idea of like, I've got a kid now. And then you kind of, maybe it will save the marriage. You know, maybe. But I, yeah, I just, he, I'm so well sure of him. Thank God. well thank God and here we are now with the fabulous podcast about sex which is the world needed Amy I guess we're reflecting there on Poppy what sounds like such an incredible transition in that or the catalyst to what has been a kind of long I mean we overuse the word journey these days

but it does feel like a kind of the beginning of what's ended up being a really incredible journey for you personally and recalibrating your relationship and thinking around love and what you want in your life and Amy I'm curious to turn to you now and to refer to reflect on this idea of transition, which is a really notable one actually throughout your book. But just to go back into that period in your 20s, you wrote that you were kind of 22, I believe, when you had been in, when you'd last been in a long-term relationship at the time of writing the book. And he wrote at one point, I thought so tenderly and resonantly, it wants to escape like a secret that's too big. I want to love to put you in a sentence, to put a yore in my blood, but I have somehow failed.

This is the secret I gave up my project of romance, and now decades have passed. I don't know how to find my way back to the road. It's the most exquisitely written book. How did your relationship to love and to romance change in the years following that long-term relationship, as you grappled with living a life that you hadn't envisaged in that kind of romanticised youth? I mean, I've got to be honest, I think I just became very bitter. I spent like a lot of my 20s just developing attachments to really unavailable people, putting myself in situations which might have been kind of sexually exciting,

but they were also quite damaging for me and always kind of holding out for this promise of it's going to come like if you just if you just like bear your heart to the world for enough years it's going to happen and also had to just hear a lot of that from people hear people's theories about why I was single and why I hadn't met someone

and surprise surprise it was always something to do with me you know, you're to this, you're to that. And I internalised it all. And I think what happened was I just became really, really ashamed, incredibly insecure. And then so when I did encounter kind of romantic situations, if somebody was incredibly nice and interested in me, I ran a mile. And if they were cold, distant, duplicitous, I ran towards them with like the velocity of somebody who can run a lot faster than me.

and an expert runner what do they call that an athlete that's what they're called they're called an athlete I like expert runner better I think an expert runner an expert runner professional runner um yeah so so and then and then basically I just got too scared and afraid because I felt like I had I I yeah I think I had like one last period of um romantically involved with an unavailable person who was also cruel and lost my head so profoundly after that I was like I am fucking done with this I I don't care I'm going to retreat um from romance I'm going to focus on my friends I'm going to focus on poetry I'm going to adopt to cats and I am going to just live a really nice safe life and um that's what I did and I think that was definitely the right choice.

But what happened, I think, over like the years before I wrote the book and before I kind of had the epiphany that I was really, I was holding love so far at arm's length that I'd literally sort of built my entire house on top of an absence that was causing me pain. Oh, God. I can't remember where I was going with this. I'm so sorry. This is why I shouldn't do live events.

You're so good. Amy, how can you say that? You're speaking in poetry and I love it. But I have to know what you're going to say because I was really hanging on the edge of any word. You were saying because you built your house on the absence of love. You realised that you got to this point. Yeah, so basically when you build your life on top of an absence

on top of something you're not acknowledging and it causes you pain, it's going to come down and it came down really fucking hard. And I guess what I realized is that, I told myself that I couldn't acknowledge that it was causing me pain. I tried to deny that it was causing me pain still. I tried to tell myself that I didn't need or want love, romantic love specifically. And as a result, I was downgrading and devaluing all of the other ways in which love and romance can be present in a life. And to be honest, like writing my book was an act of like affirming and appreciating all.

of those ways in which love can be present in a life and like correct, you know, like doing some really corrective action on my idea that, the, that I was still harboring that romantic love was like the top of the tree, the god tier love. And it is not. And it is really unhelpful the way society like colludes to make it that way. And it isn't just our culture. It's our, it's our laws and it's our kind of structures and social um i don't know what the word is so i'm going to i'm going to tail off now but um yeah there we go no but i think that's so that's so brilliantly put and i think that idea of you know of building a life on the absence of something and i'm curious i guess that absence how much should that come from you versus being

externally imposed so you say when the you describe in the book how you felt this shame around being single and as though this was something that had kind of set you apart from friends that you kind of, you know, elude to it feeling like you kind of fallen behind or there was something wrong with you because other friends were partnering up and somehow you weren't and there was an inherent shame to that. And I was curious in reading that whether that was a shame that you felt came from you and this kind of the fact that you weren't necessarily living in alignment with what you'd anticipated versus how much of that was imposed from other people and their comments, their thoughts, their projections.

Yeah. I mean, I think there's definitely a sense of, I write about this in the book. Like, I would just be asking myself all the time, what is wrong with me? What is wrong with me? Like, why isn't this happening for me? Like, am I, am I really unattractive? Am I an idiot? Am I not very interesting? Am I, you know, a crazy bitch or whatever? And, um, I, I'm, I, I think to a certain degree, like, we all have those moments of, like, self-doubt and insecurity. But I think I was, I'd internalise that there must be something wrong because I literally just couldn't understand it. I just couldn't understand why it wasn't happening for me. And I think I'd sometimes find myself in situations like I go and spend every Christmas with my sister and my niece and nephew and my sisters.

husband and sometimes my mom's there you know like it's just our little family unit and my niece and nephew would always say to me um well uncle daniel might not be coming for Christmas because he might be with his girlfriend but you always come don't you amy because you have no one and i remember and i was like technically true technically true like don't cry don't cry because I don't know, they just sort of like identified something about me that I was like trying to keep on the down low somehow. Like, yeah, no other invites for Christmas for me. Oh, and Amy, literally every Christmas is me, my sister and her boyfriend and my mom, my dad,

and me just being like so attention seeing me like, dad, look what I can do, like a regressing back to like me. Honestly, it's got to the point where I'm doing hands stands against the wall to be like, look guys look good i've been practicing and they're all like oh my god you're 32 grow up so i really i feel that christmases i just like a point myself as like the entertainer and i'm like it is what it is and i think the other thing is the way people react when they find out you've been single for a long time they're like i'm just like i'm just sort of holding emma louisa's wrist here like in a kind of sad

where you're like oh i hope you find someone and like people even people who've read my book even come up to me and they're like don't give up i'm like have you read my book oh my god the point oh i actually tm i had someone asked him out on a date recently i was it was quite a few months but he was like i feel like whenever you're going to date with the finance guy just no offense if anyone's going on here not all the same but they do tend to interview as though they're about to invest in your company, if you are a company. So it's like, what's the five-year plan? So how often do you date? You don't seem like

someone who'd have a lot of time for dating. Where do you fit it in? Yeah, how many people do you see in a week? And how's that gone? When was your last relationship? Oh, right. That was quite a few years ago. Why do you think you haven't had a relationship since? I genuinely, kid you not. It was only months ago. And I was like, what the? You just got divorce.

Leave me alone. Your divorce papers are fresh. Let's not interrogate me. So yes, I definitely understand that all too well. And I think part of the problem is that we have this kind of culturally this idea that being single is ostensibly sitting in a waiting room as we kind of wait in this limbo for the big next act. Your life will begin when you find that lover, when you find that romantic partner, then the kind of real next phase will begin.

And I think that's what then creates this feeling. feeling of that absence, which I think, and I think obviously, you know, you described that also, you know, are an insecurities play a part of that. But I do think the kind of cultural messaging around romance and relationships is that when is it going to happen? It's the expectation that until it happens, you're kind of unfulfilled. Poppy, you talked a little bit earlier about how you've really shifted your perspective on relationships and what you want from love and dating. And I know that after your divorce, you then went into. a 10-year relationship. That's a long as time. Basically another marriage. Oh, basically another marriage. But actually longer, so it was much longer. And now you are dating and having sex in a fun and casual way as what I understand

from the podcast in the way that you talk about it. Tell us about the cognitive shift that has undergirded that transition in how you approach love, romance, dating. So I have not watched this film But you know that film The Reverse case of Benjamin Button Do you remember that? Oh yeah

So I'm doing the inverse of that So I'm basically Being the 24 year old I never got to be And I am fucking 24 year olds My friends call me Leonardo DiCaprio And I'm really

Really proud of that Sometimes I meet guys I'm like oh my god You're too old for me Stop And then they are too old for me In fact But it's easier

So when they meet me they are quite stumped because they're like it's not what I expect because they say most women they date and this is something that we haven't really talked about

because of maybe the biological clock this idea that I need to and I went through this in my 20s I was like got to settle got to get a house

got to get a flat got to get you know got to have babies and so when I date these guys they're like it's

a it's fun to date you because you're a gilf which I will take on happily and they want what is a gilf grandmother I'd like to find I know. It's hilarious. But I don't look at a day older, like 32 on a good day. So it's fine. But, you know, I want a story. They want a story. So we're doing it for the lulls, right? They're not doing it for love or romance. And I certainly don't want to fucking see them again after tonight. So it's a symbiotic relationship and it works. But I want, but now I've got to put a shift in. I have to actually be good in sex, right? Because I want them to know that older women can fuck good. So now I'm like really fucking going for it, right? But limbering up before.

I mean, literally, but it's, sorry, there is a point to this. The point that I was making is how much of this is true, and I don't know about you guys, but this event, I keep going back to this event, this dating app thing that I hosted, ultimately, whether we like it or not, and I have this with my female friends of all ages, not all women when they're dating just want to have fun and follics, right? Most of the women of a certain age are dating because they want to find someone. And so that, and so when I speak to guys, they're like, Yeah, guys in their 20s.

And Asim Chowdhri, Chabadi G and Big Boy Energy said this. Like, guys in their 20s, I'm not being funny. Like, they want to have fun and it's casual. Guys in their 30s and older, maybe they do want something more. So that kind of, what you want and your aims and objectives when you're a man and a woman, I think is different. Again, sweeping generalization. But they tend to be true. When I speak to my girlfriends in their 20s, not all of them again, but they are, you know,

they are looking for something a bit more meaningful. They aren't just looking for fun and frolics. And you, I guess, you mentioned there, the biological clock as being something that we are constantly reminded of, left, right, and centre. This idea that your fertility is always about to drop off a cliff. And I'm always thinking a lot of people are making a lot of money at women's insecurity around their fertility.

But that is a conversation for another day. You speak very openly on the podcast about being child-free and not wanting to have children and potentially not wanting to get married again. What was that decision kind of making process for you? Was there a decision making process and you coming to that point? Yeah, it was basically a 10-year decision-making process because I was like, God, like a lot of women, do I want kids, do I not want kids?

And I was with my ex-partner who was amazing, brilliant, we parted ways, it was mutual. And I met him for a brunch yesterday, still in my life. We have a very healthy friendship now. And also there aren't that many black or Asian women that donate eggs. So I donated my eggs and I got to freeze them for free because I'm an Asian and I love a deal. Also, never say never, right? Like, I don't want kids, but if I meet...

But it was a deal. But if I meet someone and I mean, I highly doubt anyone's going to change my mind. But it took years and I was with my ex-partner and he was confused and he didn't know and I was toying with the idea. And you spend your, like, from 30 to 35, you just spend ages agonizing over your career.

or your kid or whether you want to be a mum. All of my friends are having kids at 40, but this doctor, this fertility doctor, fucker, who's like biology doesn't lie, you know, you've got to, you know, it's like women are having kids at a later age, but they really should be having them younger. It's like, whatever. But so you just toy with the idea

and my friends who are in their 40s, because I was saying to them, I have a zero fucks given attitude to dating. They're like, it just gets better when you're in your 40s because, you know, whether you're perimenopausal or not, the kid stuff just goes out the window. So it's less, but it takes years. You don't, I didn't just wake up and realize I don't, I don't want to have kids.

It's taken from really 30 to 39 to be like, yeah, I'm done. I don't want to have children. And do you feel any sense of letting something go or kind of any sort of grief in that at all? Or does it feel like actually it's a decision of you designing a future that you, on your own terms, that you want counterposed to what perhaps was expected of you? I am really happy with my decision and the older I get the more it feels like the right decision I guess regret is not the right word

but I think what I'll miss is the one love I will never get to experience and I think for me personally this is the love that is the deepest and supersedes any other kind of love is the love a mum, a mother or a parent has for their child I'll never experience that I'll never know what it feels to experience that But I'm very happy in lots of other ways.

So I don't need it, but I can acknowledge and say I'm never going to have that. I want then to kind of, as we begin to draw the conversation to a close, go back to this idea of transitions, which I realized like I've started earlier, Amy, and then didn't actually develop, which was an oversight of mine. But you talk in the book about transitions and how we live in a society that often marks these very significant milestones, particularly when it comes to women, as always being around babies, marriage, proposals. I mean, my Instagram feed, I don't know you too, but my Instagram feed right now is just absolutely filled with the sonograms and the engagement rings.

It's like, you're at that age. You're at, oh, my God, everyone. And if someone asks me to go for a walk, I know it's to be like, pregnant, and I'm like, and I'm like, and I would come back from like a one-light stand, like, bedraggled. A bit like, well, maybe I am too. It's terrible joke. Terrible joke. Terrible, terrible joke. But so we often have these kind of key critical life milestones.

The ones that we really celebrate are so often pegged to romance and the expectations around that. And I interviewed Laura Bates, who runs the everyday sexism campaign the other day. And she said, she made the point during our interview, she said, no matter how far we've come with feminism, I mean, we have a long way to go, but no matter how far we've come, we still, fundamentally peg women's worth to their marital status and whether they have children, it's still so deeply ingrained into our cultural psyche. So to try and shift focus away from that, because I think that is a damaging way of measuring success no matter who we are and where we are in our lives, I'd really be interested to know from both of you the milestones that

you have or are celebrating in your own lives that are separate to this kind of romantic ideology. It's a great question. Thanks, Amy. Now I was to buy myself some time. I was hoping she'd go to you while I was like scrambling around. Do you want to tell me it's a great question? We can go back. So is this what I'm...

So what of the life milestones that you were deciding to celebrate and to note that aren't pegged to the romantic trajectory? I guess I'm going to reframe it to like what I'm proud of, I guess, or where I am in my life, that I defied everything that my mum and dad and my community said, do like everything and I and I said the other day to a friend of mine something else that we don't talk about in society we don't really talk about death as much and I said if I died now I would die happy I mean the only thing I'd be a bit sad about really sad about is my relationship with my parents is very complicated and I'd like to kind of get you know my mom said started saying I love you

the other day which is you know milestone but other than my relationship and my fraught relationship with my parents I could look at my my relationship with my friends my work you know all the kind of metrics that we measure our life on, I'd be like, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm good, you know, and I think I go back to 15 year old poppy in a little, that little dweeb in a headscarf, and I say to her, you're going to be okay. And the things that you're going to do in life will, will blow your mind because you should have, and I have this sliding doors moment all the time. In a multiverse somewhere else, there is a poppy that's married with three kids driving that Mercedes, unhappily married. And I honestly, sometimes think about that poppy,

and I'm like, you're not living that life. And the fact that you're here, now doing what you're doing is exactly where you needed to be. So that to me is, for me, is the kind of my milestone. It's so interesting because I was just thinking about how I really wanted to have like a romantic partner and live in a Victorian terrace house and have a bay window. And then I'm like, would I want now 20 years on to be with that same partner going on holidays where we don't talk to each other, you know, sort of getting annoyed because we're sharing a bed then actually it would be much nicer. Maybe if we were not sharing a bed,

maybe we're not even having sex, maybe I want to fuck someone else, and we can't talk about it. You're doing an extension as well on top. You're doing an extension and it's so stressful. So stressful. It's bleeding you dry. Someone's having it a fit.

Yeah, and you know, got real problems with the neighbours. And then I'm like, oh, thank God. You know, like part of me is like, thank God. This is, you know, there's really, there's good stuff. But I think, like, what Poppy said there about, reflecting on not doing the things that everyone expected her to do is so important because the things that we celebrate, the milestones we should recognise,

need to be personally significant and meaningful. We shouldn't just accept what is determined by others to be meaningful and significant. So if the thing that actually you're really proud of feels so, so small, but you're really proud of it, then celebrate that. Don't feel shame about that thing. You know, like I made a massive, massive, like, to do of having my poetry collection published. Like, I was like, I want you to book a hotel. I'm sending out invites.

You need a new outfit. I want a fucking cake. I am going to, you know, like I really, I was very explicit about that. You know, like I was like, there will be Prosecco on arrival because I am putting on a preseco reception for my guests. and I just wanted that moment of really showboating like I'd seen every fucker else do a million times and yeah, anyway, I'll stop.

No, I love that. I think my best friend and I say that about our birthdays now we're like, we're going to throw a fucking party because this... Well, next time I'm going to be 40 and I'm going to throw it. It's going to be a wedding. A wedding, yes. I'd literally like...

Winning to myself, obviously. Mini weddings to self. Oh, do them quite... And actually the joy is you can then do it every year. So it's kind of a wedding a year. for yourself. Fab, get on the, you know, the better gifts. And I think, Amy, that's actually that's what really comes across so much in the book is the places in your life, while you're reconciling with not having had this ideal of romance that you grew up, I guess, somewhat wedded

to, you nonetheless really go through this period of discovery of all the romantic elements that are already in your life. And I think that's what really struck me reading the book. And what I think about a lot is I don't think whatever you choose, whatever happens with your life, whether you do get married and have a family, whether you don't get married, whether you have long-term partnerships, whatever your life looks like from a romantic perspective, fine, as long as you're happy, that's great. But what grieves me or what I kind of, I feel sad about is when we fail to observe all the romance and all the intimacy that exists in our life when there isn't romantic, a romantic partner. Because I think it's so easy to take for granted the romance of our

friendships, the intimacy of our friendship. I mean, you have this beautiful scene in the book when you describe swimming in the sea with a close friend. And you feel at that point, you say, I know what it's like to feel loved. I feel so, I know that our connectedness is everlasting. And I just think sometimes our fixation on the romantic ideology blinds us to those moments of romance. Just to wrap up then before we go into our Q&A section, where do you find kind of intimacy and kind of romance in your life currently, whether that be with friends, with kind of celebrations that you do, whatever it looks like?

Okay, I'll just say something really flippant, which is in the back of an Uber with Magic FM on and like a pal that I vaguely live near and we're coming home from a night out and we're singing, I don't know, like bridge over trouble water or something and they just reach out and they just hold my mind. hand that to me you know that makes me

leave the taxi like with a little sort of bounce you know as though I've just you know kissed a crush or something I just love that I love that so beautiful Poppy that

but you know Buster Rimes is in the is playing instead but you know when you've got friends who they finish your sentences they know your thoughts they know your thoughts They are a bad influence

They're a good influence You have no shame In telling them the most disgusting secrets And you can bitch and rant And they won't judge you Or maybe they will a little bit But I'm judging me so it's fine Like those

That level of intimacy that you get from friendship And from being friends for so long And you have to earn that You know That doesn't just come overnight That takes time And so much love and patience and you go through so much together.

That's the kind of intimacy I think that I really love. And I think when you begin to actively appreciate the romance in your friendships and put in the effort that you put in on dates, it's so transformative. Like now I have like active like dates with my good friends. I dress up. I put on gorgeous makeup. We go somewhere fun.

And the romance is, it's beautiful. It's as exciting. Actually, I say something more exciting. own date, because a date you never know which word's going to go. Exactly. Exactly. It's flicking the coin. It's guaranteed fun with your mate. With your friend, you know there is, and when I think you really lean into the romance of it, it's such, kind of you have such beautiful, cherish moments.

My friends and I used to say to each other, there were points, you know, granted the pandemic. We were all kind of struggling then. But where we'd be sitting next to each other in our gorgeous, amazing flat that was exactly the flat I envisaged I wanted to be in in my, you know, late 20s, early 30s, seeing next to my best friend just rapidly scrolling the apps trying to find someone to spend time with who's a lesser quality person than the person sitting next to me and I did find a lot of them and tried it out

and then we and then you know else she's here we'd always end up saying to each other after the end of some troublesome dates at the end of the day it's always just us and we're quite happy about that and it was quite joyful so on that note a huge round of applause my wonderful guess. Thank you so much for listening to today's Sex Talks podcast with me, your host, Emma Louise Boynton. If you'd like to attend a live recording of the podcast, check out the eventbrate link in the show notes,

as we have lots of exciting live events coming up. In the meantime, don't forget to submit whatever out-dient question you'd like us to tackle on a future podcast episode via the Sextalks website. That's sextalks.co.com. And finally, if you enjoyed the show, I hope you did. 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 wonderful day.