Single Ladies In Your Area - Meet Single Ladies In Your Area (aka Amy and Harriet)

Episode Date: October 4, 2024

Meet Amy and Harriet - they’re recently single, in their 30s and are about to enter the dating scene, but the landscape has changed.Want to share your dating tips or horror stories, or have a question for the experts? Email in at [e-mail] Single Ladies In Your Area on Instagram @singleladiespod and Twitter @singleladiespodRecorded and edited by Aniya Das for Plosive.Photos by Matt Crockett and Linda Blacker.Design by Welcome Studio. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, I'm Amy Gledhill. And I'm Harriet Kemsley. We're both single and in our thirties. And we've found ourselves back on the dating scene. And the landscape has changed. Everyone has settled down. But we're back out there. And we're desperately trying to figure out what the hell we should be doing.

So we're going to speak to experts, chat about dates we've been on, if we manage to get any, and share your tips and horror stories. So we all feel less alone we might even get our exes on yeah we'll see about that this is single ladies in your area oh hi amy i'm so excited to be here with you hi harry i'm excited to be here with you i'm nervous though well there's a lot to be nervous about there's a lot to be nervous about

harry because we're going to spill it all. We're going to open ourselves up. Yeah, we're going to share in order to help other people who are in our predicament. Yeah. Is that a way to look at it? Stage of life. A stage of life, a new opportunity.

Yeah. Yeah, let's not frame it negatively. No. This could be the start of something wonderful. Is that from Casablanca? Yeah, I'm just quoting Casablanca. No, it's just a coincidence. I just sound like a film from the 30s.

I don't know. But yeah, basically, we wanted to do a podcast because we have both found ourselves staring down the barrel of death, but single. Single and in our 30s. Not no no no no no no there's more life to be lived there's retirement to look forward to we've got to find somebody for retirement we need someone to hunker down with yes we've got to find someone for the for the sickness that's imminent but also you know be just like cool trendy fresh women living our best lives thriving yeah exactly and we're just looking for for somebody to join the ride

um if anyone's listening um this could be the first and last episode so let us know if uh you want to get on board with either of us um and then we can just we can just stop doing the pod i guess immediately yeah that's it immediately but we want to go on we want to go on a ride with our listeners yes because we realize that actually we've lived a lot of life we've done a lot of things we've seen a lot of willies let's be honest with ourselves but now i'm at a stage of being more nervous and more scared than I've ever been before. Like there's something different now emerging from a long term relationship at this age. It's all changed. And I'm frightened.

Yeah, I completely agree. I am a divorced lady. I tried to say that really sophisticatedly. I'm a divorced lady. I said it sophisticatedly. I tried to say that really sophisticatedly. You said stiff-isticatedly. I said, yeah, yeah, yeah. Very stiff-isticated. I was really trying to paint myself as a stiff-isticated divorce lady

and it's really gone downhill very quickly. But yeah, I got a divorce. It just came through a few months ago and I thought I was going to be married. But I really did think it was going to be forever. divorce um it just came through a few months ago and I thought I was gonna be married but um but I really did think it was gonna be forever and so now suddenly the landscape has changed so much there's like I never did dating apps I never did any of that stuff and now that's how you meet people yeah but how long were you married for um I was married for seven years six if you don't count the divorce um that was being processing for the last year.

And then, yeah, we were together for like just over 10 years. That's such a huge chunk, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, Amy. It's really taken up my good years. That's a big chunk of that life of yours. But you have a beautiful daughter to show for it.

I have a beautiful daughter. And so, yeah, it's also, I guess, dating with a daughter because she's given me something I never knew about before called self-esteem. She's told me before I'd just be like, oh God, I just want someone to like me. And if they liked me, I was like, that's great. Let's go.

Let's make that work. Let's not think about it too much. Let's get married. And now I'm like I really like she I see everyone kind of through her eyes I guess and I need to give her a good example of somebody and I can't just settle for everybody it's kind of exhausting I don't know if that has given you self-esteem I think it's given you standards oh okay that's what I didn't have before yeah absolutely yeah you have to look back at some of my exes yeah i had absolutely no standards yeah but i don't know i don't know

if it's given you personally self-esteem because i feel like you're saying like i see it through her like you're not you're not going do you know what now i'm a mother i really respect myself and my time my body no no you're kind of like I don't want them to fog it up for her. I'm still kind of fine to be fucked with. I still have no self-esteem, but my two-year-old has absolutely loads. So we've really got to bring somebody that's going to be good enough for her because her standards are high, let me tell you. Do you ever think, maybe this is too weird, I'm not a mother, so maybe this is mad, but do you ever think when you're too weird i'm not a mother so maybe this is mad but do you ever

think when you're looking for potential dates and things do you think about what you'd want your like the sort of person you'd want your daughter to end up with and you ever like that's exactly it yeah i think i think that and i think that's one of the reasons why we ended the marriage was like oh this this she can't grow up and think this is good because then she's just gonna end up doing this again and then it's just going to continue forever. It's like someone has to stop this. Stop the cycle.

Please, let's stop the cycle. As we stop the cycle, and I absolutely can't just start another cycle. Yeah. Because we could just be going from cycle to cycle. I'm in a spinning class right now. We've got to stop. I'm dizzy.

Yeah. We've got to stop. So, yeah, I think that's kind of it. How long were you with your partner for? Well, before that, I just want to say it's amazing that you have stopped the cycle. And I think for someone to come out of a marriage or a relationship after 10 years when they've got a kid together, I think it's so brave and I think you've done a great thing. Oh, I really appreciate that.

No shade on, I mean, a bit of shade, but no shade on you. No shade on anyone that's still with her. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, I think it's like, because you, I think you get stuck in something that even if it's bad and you know it's bad, you're kind of like, it's familiar and it's comfy. And maybe I could do better.

Maybe I could have a nicer life. But also, maybe I couldn't because I've got no self-esteem because I've been in this horrible thing. That's it. And it's so hard to know, like, when you should leave. Like, I was literally Googling, like, what is love? What is a relationship? When should you leave a marriage?

What is marriage? And all the response was like, marriage is terrible. It's awful. You just accept that. You get on with it. And I was like surely I don't know I feel like it should be good and I think it is particularly bad when you when you at the beginning of having a child like it can really bring people together but also there's a

lot of pressure suddenly but I think this was just something that had been going on for a long time we were quite codependent and then we were just in this we'll call it the cycle which was not healthy or good for her and so I had to separate myself from it but yeah it's it's really hard to know when to leave and it feels very scary when especially when everyone around you is settled down and they're in relationships and then suddenly you're like oh hey guys and they're like oh we're actually just really happy being on the sofa you know with our partner and suddenly you're the only single one at things and come on 30 year old women you want to go clubbing tonight no no don't it sounds awful we are so glad we left that behind

at 21 we haven't done that for 15 16 years just because you've gone through a breakup it doesn't mean we want to do that yeah maybe we'll take it shifts. Like one of you will come with you one month, the other will come with the other one, but we're not going to enjoy it. We'll literally be there and be like, what about, why don't you go and talk to them? Go and talk to them, then we can get home a bit early, maybe. Roses are red, violets are blue.

We've matched on and up. What you up to? So I'm in a WhatsApp group with you. Called? It was called F fingered by pancake day but then there's a few in the group maybe there's like nine now and only only one did manage to get fingered by pancake day so then we had to change it to was it fingered by father's day yes yes but uh so me and and Harriet are both comedians and we're in a WhatsApp group of other, all female, but all comedians.

And we tried to do like events and stuff to try and cheer each other on. And the last event we went to was a cowboy themed rodeo night. It's hard to think of the words to describe it, I will say. Yeah, a cowboy-themed rodeo night. We thought that's where we're going to find the love of our lives. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But it was like a club. I didn't expect the club element of it as much. It was packed. Loud. There's a DJ on some decks on a balcony and he's got a cowboy hat on and he's absolutely throwing some shapes and i went lit in fact i think i missed you yeah i had to i had to go to a show so i just popped in tried to find a cowboy and then had to go had to go work yeah there were no cowboys there was just a lot of sort of

looked like men who worked in accounting. Yes, wearing a check shirt. Wearing a check shirt, doing some sort of cultural appropriation and falling off a rodeo. And you're like, okay. But with the other women that were there, three of them didn't take their coats off.

I don't think anyone was drinking. We booked a table. Didn't feel safe to leave them anywhere. Specifically so we could sit down. And it was like, oh, I don't think this is the way we're going to find them. That's not the way. We went to one before you joined the group. And we went to one before Christmas, which was a tech party.

And then we were like, oh, let's go find a man in tech. You know, that felt like something you do yeah and so we went to this um this party and then nobody had any luck and we just ended up being the only ones on the dance floor like dancing in a way that i would say repelled me nobody approached like humping across the dance floor and we did we did have a lovely time but it really nobody um yeah nobody wanted to um to approach too scary i think and unhinged maybe i think the humping probably yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah just wanted to show them what they can get i can imagine going across the dance floor like you know when a dog's got worms and it's got its

legs up and it's dragging his bum across the floor you're like come on man why are you not approaching anyone want to worm me oh so that's not the way we're gonna we're gonna find them no no it turns out in real life it's very hard to meet people because i thought i don't know you're still kind of in your head in a relationship you think you might leave you're like oh but maybe you know I'll be walking down the street and then somebody would be like hey pretty lady but then if you turn around like you are like oh no that person's like unwell maybe they also really need a shower yeah um and they're gonna steal my phone um hey there pretty lady give me a phone oh god no I was hoping to say phone number but he stopped he stopped he stopped too soon um and so um and so yeah it seems like apps are the way I

guess and but you've neither of us had done that before no they came in just after I was in my relationship I so my last relationship was like four years, but then right before that was in a relationship for four years and right before that actually was in a relationship for four years. Oh, it seems like there might be a pattern here. I'm not sure what the... How about that? You just like to get through an Olympics season.

Well, the Euros have rolled back round. Time to bin this one off. Puts on her England shirt and she gets back out there. Do you know, my first crush was Michael Owen. Maybe every four years I'm like, this is the year I get Michael Owen. But I think he's sort of like a boring Tory now, maybe. When I was eight, I really liked Alan Shearer. When you were eight 8 how old was he

about 45 I think he's always been about 45 he's always been about 45 he's always been about 45 but just thought

he seemed like such a nice man well maybe this maybe this is what we're going for yes time to find our Alan Shearer

and Michael Owens our photo boys. Yes. So did you find it scary leaving the relationship? Yeah, of course. And you never really know if you're making the right decision. That's the scary thing because you do think, well, what if I'm thinking the grass is greener?

There are ways. I think if you listen to your body, your body is trying to tell you something maybe and yeah you you have to just kind of really because I just couldn't work it out I just didn't know what was right and I was like we're married you have to work it you have to it's hard and it's difficult but then you have to really kind of learn to get in tune with your body to work out what the answer is I think I think our brains are so much smarter than we are and I think our brains are so much smarter than we are. And I think our gut and our brain together must be like, this fucking idiot.

Like, what more can we do? Like, we don't know how to give you more skills. Listen to us. Like, I realised before we even went on a break or anything, I had moved out and got my own flat on my own. But we're still sort of like, I think it's going pretty well. Like, I don't think there's any problems. And it's like, I really like being here on my own.

Yeah. Oh, I get it, Braylon. I get this tricky little game you've been playing. But I was in such a privileged position that I could do that because I mean like a few years before there's no way I could do it and probably in a few years time I wouldn't be able to do it but what I did was just weigh up if it was like better to be on my own and I think it was I think for both of us I think it was like let's just I think being on

your and look this podcast may be about dating but it's also about how you are single and how you like can fill your life in a positive way that way it's about coming out of a relationship and and what the landscape is and I think it's about just making life not about the relationship maybe like I think I I definitely the beginning of the relationship, made my whole life the relationship. But if you're in a relationship, and particularly these days, sharing a mortgage, sharing the rent, God, I mean, how do you even leave relationships

when you're financially codependent? Because you have to be. That's it. And I think that, that like I'm very lucky now that I was able to do it and that it's all we've managed to work it out like I think I did many things in my 20s well I moved into um what essentially I think we could call a squat um legally and um just just looking at it uh basically you could call it a squat um but it meant that I could leave my um

my day job and I could start doing stand-up full-time because it was like it was like 200 pounds a month like it was crazy it was crazy in London because the standard of living was so low I was just like wading through men's piss every morning my bare feet it was just it was really bleak and I blocked out a lot of that time mentally I think because it was just so unpleasant but I was like oh this is what you have to do. And then actually it's like, actually, no, maybe it's better if you don't do that and you stay in the day job a little bit more

and you have the self-respect and you have a living space. This is where self-esteem comes right back into it. Yes, yes, yes, yes. We're really learning as we go. Amy, we've got gotta get out there i remember like before i met my ex i just really wanted to go on holiday with a boy and like it just felt it felt like all these things and even getting married it just felt like oh that's something you have to do and then and then you're like a person that somebody likes

and like that's a sign that like you're somebody that someone wants and that means that you're worth something and now like I can just go on holiday on my own you know like and that's amazing that's great that's great and I could have then but I just felt like I needed the validation I guess yeah of course I remember like this this is so weird but I remember probably for seeing my parents doing it and my mum doing this with my dad, I remember really, really wanting to do a boys' washing. Oh, poor young Amy. I really wanted that. And I would take great pleasure in like,

I've washed your clothes and I've dried them. Like, what? I wanted to do that so much like I felt like that that meant I was like an adult yeah and it's obviously just like copying my mum doing that for my dad and all my brother like seeing my mum doing laundry and it's like right so if you're an adult you do laundry and I felt like it made us really close because I was washing his underpants he trusted me like how low is myself I seem to like thank you kind sir for trusting me with your skinny underpants I am honored it is a privilege my liege I think as well you think you're doing these things they're going to be so grateful yeah but they get so they get so used they don't even

they don't like I think so many of them just it doesn't even register you think you're doing this stuff and they're going to be like wow this is

this woman is just excellent but they're like yeah of course that's just what she does of course she does she loves it oh she does that

she loves it great I'll never never think about that as being a chore ever again that's just that's her hobby, I guess.

I have football, I have my own interests. And I guess her interest is making my boxes clean. Scraping the shit out of the back of my undies. We've all got hobbies. Yes, I remember really wanting to do that. And I remember when I was very young when I was like I must have been like 21 22 and this was in the north so it is a bit different but I got a mortgage with a boy because the house was probably about 15 grand and his mum put down

the deposit but we we had this mortgage and it was was just outside of Leeds in a really rough area. But I was like so like overwhelmed that this house was ours. And so every day I went mad cleaning. Like it was my pride and joy. I don't feel like this now. It was my pride and joy to clean this shitty house you know and i'd i my favorite bit was shake and vac which i don't think anyone's used since the 1960s no i'm just thinking of the crisps you know the ones where you shake the um the salt and shake that and i'm doing

something different yeah it's not that dissimilar shake and vac is like this horrific perfumed sort of salt that you put on your carpet and you vacuum it in it and it smells nice and I was doing this and obviously he couldn't care like he couldn't care less and then I freaked out when I when I was yeah like about a year in being like oh god I've got this mortgage I'm with this boy lovely boy but I was just like well my life's over and I haven't done anything yet I haven't traveled I haven't like I haven't done anything so I sort of panicked and we broke up and then when I went back to visit the house oh my god it was it was a squat there was like kid you not there were snakes losing house what honestly that's not a squat that's a

zoo it was a zoo he turned it into a zoo there were snakes because i i said can i stay there one night and he said yeah and he gave me the keys and he said i won't be back and i i went in i didn't know there were snakes and because i knew the place and i knew where the spare room was i went up in the dark the place smelled so bad as well. And it was grim. And this is the place I'd like, I used to, I've never polished in 15 years, but at the time I was polishing.

And I went up into the spare room and like just went to sleep in the dark. And then the next day he was like, did the snakes bother you? And I was like, the what? And he's like, well, they're sort of about and they're usually in the spare room. So if anything has brushed past my leg. He didn't give you a heads up that there were loose snakes

you were cleaning the whole place and he couldn't even bring himself to be like oh just a text by the way amy there are snakes there are snakes now but there was like several men living there all in different one in the living room the living room was no longer living room it was a bedroom for a man there was just men everywhere and every all the furniture was broken and there were snakes and i bet his level of happiness was the same it's like they look around and they're like he wouldn't have noticed anything had changed he'd be like this is exactly how it was when you left it. There were snakes before, weren't there?

Were there not snakes here before? Why don't you say? I would have loved snakes. I thought we always had snakes. But do you think it's like a trap? It's like we think that that's what love is and that's what women aim towards. And so you think that's what you want.

And then actually what you want is just like peace and space and peace is a big one isn't it not working for somebody else like you're kind of conditioned and taught that that's what you should do yeah oh peace oh let's just take a second to think about peace isn't peace great I'm so peaceful right now I'm'm peaceful too. It's so nice. There's absolutely no snakes in my house. There's very little snakes in mine. We can't guarantee there's none. We can't guarantee there's none.

But we are looking to get back on the dating game. Yeah. Whilst being content and holding ourselves. Yeah. We are looking to see what's out there. We're going to set you up an app. Yes. I'm going to get on Hinge.

I'm going to do it. Get ready, boys. Lock up your elderly relatives. Because I'm on the prowl. But I can't do it on my own. So with your help, we're going to find some advice online and we're going to set up my very first dating profile and I'm excited about it Harriet I am very nervous um but maybe there's listeners out there who are thinking well I'm scared too and I want to do it and yeah it's

really scary but I think it's nice to do it in like a group and that's what's been really nice about our group um finger by pancake day um it's nice to do it in like a group and that's what's been really nice about our group um finger by fan by pancake day um it's nice to do it like together because you feel so alone with it and then it's just like it's just you in this pool with all these boys or you know like I mean this is particularly like for straight people but like it is um worse I think um if you're just in a pool with boys so I think it's nice to do it together and um so every week we're going to share something that we are scared of when it comes to dating to try and figure it all out and just to try and feel less alone yes oh my god and if and if people have already got dating profiles and they're not sure if they're very effective maybe next episode we'll have some tips for them too yes that's what

we're going to do we're going to speak to experts um and we're going to we're just going to kind of cover the whole thing like we're just i mean i feel like um no offense but we're just two absolute morons um so we're really going to get into the basic information for people that do want to find love like we're not in a rush like we're not we're not desperate anybody uh stop love. Like, we're not in a rush. Like, we're not desperate, anybody. Stop saying we're desperate. Stop saying we're so desperate. We're not desperate. But we want to find, like, our soulmates, I guess.

And, like, it might take a decade. It might take 20 years. But you just want to have the information. So you go in, you know. I thought one was going to be a lesson at birth. It might take a decade. It might take, I thought, she's going to say week. She's going to say month lesson of birth. It might take a decade. It might take, I thought she's going to say week. She's going to say month.

Might take two decades. All right. Okay. Okay. Ideally, ideally, it would just take a few weeks and you'll get on that app

and it'll be, it'll be over. First match, done. Thank God. End the podcast. But if that doesn't happen, i think we've got quite a journey to go we've got a journey to go on and i think yeah you just you just want to learn

everything and just make it not so lonely and so painful and so just like i don't know what i'm doing in this new landscape so we're going to talk about first dates we're going to learn how to flirt we're going to talk about ghosting and like age difference we're gonna look into love spells yeah because if we can't get them the natural way we're gonna try and uh the supernatural way i'm really excited i'm really excited too it's so nice to have a buddy in this um yeah i'm excited in this desolate landscape hello me again

Amy Gledhill but this time I'm with not Harriet Kemsley whoa WT fuck what's going on

I'm with bloody Ian Smith off a Northern News podcast yes a podcast that's not about the news. Don't worry, single ladies. No, it's not about the news.

It's not about being single. No. It's about the North and all of our stories are about couples. That is not the truth, Ian. No, not technically true. It's weird stuff. It's funny stuff that's going on up north that we're reporting back on. Things like...

Pure evil blackbird named Derek terrorising Yorkshire village and attacking children. Woman in tears after spotting spitting image of dead dog in bath mat. And we've got special guests. We're talking about people like Phil Wang, Jessica Knappett, Ed Gamble and Ross Noble, who joined us in the studio. Woo-hoo! Yeah!

So that's Northern News starting next Thursday the 1st of May and then every Thursday after that Join us!