Woman's Hour - Breaking damaging relationship patterns, 50 years since the first women's liberation conference

Episode Date: January 30, 2020

Next month sees the fiftieth anniversary of the first Women’s Liberation conference at Ruskin College, Oxford. The event produced four key demands for equal pay, equal education and job opportunities, free contraception and abortion on demand, and 24-hour nurseries – and it is widely seen as a defining moment in the development of Second Wave Feminism. Jenni discusses its significance and legacy with the organiser of the 1970 meeting, Sally Alexander and with the historian Selina Todd.In parts of of Uganda, men are pressuring their wives into breastfeeding them before their babies. New research has explored why and how men are doing this, and how the practice may be coercive. We’re joined by a researcher on the project, Dr Rowena Merritt, and BBC reporter in Kampala, Patricia Oyella.And, how do we break damaging relationship patterns and what does research tell us about what makes relationships strong and healthy? Jenni is joined by Penny Mansfield, co-director of the relationships charity One Plus One and Simone Bose who works for Relate. Presenter: Jenni Murray Producer: Ruth Watts

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme. Peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast for Thursday the 29th of January. It's 50 years since the first Women's Liberation Conference was held in the UK. What did men and women make of the proposals that were put forward? What does one of the organisers recall of the event and what real impact did it have? And the series of women we've heard discussing their damaging relationships. We put some of their woes to specialists in relationship counselling and ask what makes a satisfying rather than a painful coupling. Now, it's generally assumed that the milk a woman produces in her breasts after childbirth is solely for the purpose of feeding her child.

It's been found that in parts of Uganda, men are pressuring their wives into breastfeeding them before they feed their babies, leading to worries that the women are finding it difficult to provide enough nutrition for their infants. Research into why this is happening has been carried out by the University of Kent and Kianbogo University in Kampala. Patricia Oyela is the BBC's reporter in Kampala and joins us from there. Dr Rowena Merritt is a research fellow at the Centre of Health Service Studies in Kent and joins us from there. Dr Rowena Merritt is a research fellow at the Centre of Health Service Studies in Kent and joins us from there. Rowena, what prompted you and Dr Peter Rukundo to begin to research this subject?

Good morning. It all came about, I was at a workshop in Kenya. I was totally unaware of the problem and one of the participants at the workshop was actually from Uganda and she mentioned to me that this was happening. I'll be honest at first I thought maybe something was lost in translation or I was being teased and then I went on the internet and I saw that the Minister of Health had actually talked about it in Parliament in 2018. And from what I could tell, nothing had actually happened since then. Patricia, how much is it discussed in Uganda? Well, this is a taboo subject, Jenny. You know, many people would not openly tell you that this is happening in their homes. But if you do probe further, then, you know,

you get to understand that this is not totally unique. There are people, there are families that actually can tell you that, yes, you know, a woman is having to breastfeed her man and, you know, men also will tell you that, yes, I actually do it. But in public, no one will actually admit it. So Rowena, given it's considered a taboo subject, how easy was it for you to find people who would discuss it with you? Strangely, very easily.

Within an hour of being out in the field, we had one person willing to talk to us. He then recruited another four people. So within half a day, we had five people talking to us about this issue. Were they all male, or did you get women talking to you as well? It was just one woman we managed to speak to. So when you asked the men why they were doing this what did they say? Well at first they gave answers that they felt were putting them in a good light so they would say well I was helping

my wife's milk come because she'd just come back from hospital and the milk hadn't come through yet or they would be saying oh my partner's breasts were very painful because she'd just come back from hospital and the milk hadn't come through yet. Or they would be saying, oh, my partner's breasts were very painful because she had too much milk supply. So implying that they were being helpful partners. It's only when we probed further the truth came out and they would talk about enjoying it, feeling like a prince, using it to be relaxed. They would talk about words such as obsession and

being addicted to it and the feeling that the breast was their property and that the baby was taking attention away from them. Patricia, what do you make of those kind of responses when, you know, the baby's health is the most important thing, why might Ugandan men think it's okay to see their wife's breasts as property and maybe deprive their baby? Well, I think it stems from all this belief of entitlement. You know, traditionally, for example, for example, men believed that they're entitled to their best. They own the women. And not only that,

this group, people who practice something like this, literally believe that men are firstborns in the homes, you know. And for some families, even now, you will not be surprised if you go, you know, during a family meal and the man has the best and most nutritious foods and the babies and mothers are left to eat just you know what is left. Rowena what did the woman who spoke to you tell you about it what did you say about how it actually

came about? It came about just as she got out of hospital that first evening when she was out of hospital. She was never consulted. The partner just did it to her. And when she did question it, he said that this is how I show you love and this is how you show me love. So very controlling type manipulative wording that was used. And how concerned were you about the nutrition of the babies? I mean to what extent are they being deprived because of this practice? The truth is we don't know yet at the moment and this is what we need to find out. From the people, the healthcare professionals we spoke to, they talked about stories where the babies had been coming in to the hospital with malnutrition with sickness and diarrhea and they were questioning well why is

this happening when you're exclusively breastfeeding and it would turn out that in some families the fathers were buying formula milk for the babies so they could take the breast milk so we don't know the extent of the impact yet on the baby's health, but we feel that there is something that needs to be explored further. Patricia, as Rowena said, it was the Minister of State for Health, Sarah Opendi, who spoke about this practice last year in Parliament. What sort of response did she get? Well, you know, people were surprised, people laughed. You know, it was just a feeling of disbelief. But a number of MPs did come up and say, look, this is actually happening.

And, you know, in the media itself, in terms of coverage, the media, you know, just took what her statement was in parliament, which is, you know, men, stop taking away the breast milk from your child, from your babies. Allow the babies to take the milk. And then talking to a few men who then, yes, admitted that, yes, we did. You know, we do practice this it makes us stronger it helps us to you know to be perhaps even more sexually potent and that was said by parliamentarians was it no in terms of in terms of the the the the the the

issue of sexual potency and and making stronger, the MPs did not go into that. I think there were all these nervous laughs around it because it was quite shocking and even surprising for many. And, you know, as Rowena mentioned, if you probe further, you then get to learn that, oh, you know, it's probably you who is living in a bubble. You know, it's actually being practiced in homes. What steps, Rowena, do you expect the minister to take now your research has been published? When I met with the Minister of Health last year, she expressed concern, you might say, that nobody from the international community had picked up on this, nobody were pushing it forward. So I think at the moment she feels quite alone and she needs the support of UN organisations, NGOs and her government to tackle this head on. At the moment, she says that it is a new practice. It's not part of the culture and traditions.

But her fear is that if it's left to linger, it will become part of the traditions and you'll have generation after generation doing this practice, which then makes it very difficult to stop. Dr Rowena Merritt and Patricia Oyela, thank you both very much indeed for joining us this morning. Now next month we'll see the 50th anniversary of the first Women's Liberation Conference to be held in the UK. It took place at Ruskin College, Oxford.

It was a gathering of a few hundred women. Some were academics, some trades unionists and a handful came from across the world. The first four demands of what came to be known as Women's Lib were formulated at the conference. They were equal pay now, equal education and job opportunities, free contraception and abortion on demand, and free 24-hour nurseries. The conference was seen as the defining moment in the development of second-wave feminism. But how did it all go down at a time when relations between men and women and the structure of the nuclear family were already beginning to be questioned? This myth that women are innately more capable of looking after their children than men.

It must be completely scotched before we go any farther. My husband, for a year, stayed at home and looked after my children, and I went out to work because I was so frustrated and neurotic, and he did it just as well as I could. But only after the year he said, please, I'd like to go back out to work. I haven't spoken to anybody for about a week. I only speak to you at weekends.

I'm completely isolated. You know, that was the only reason he wanted to go out to work. At one point, what struck me about all these ladies, they seem automatically to assume that the world outside is such a very much better place than the place in their homes. Certainly, a proportion of the time that is spent within the woman's home is an air of existence probably than an office, most offices. But in my particular case, I'm damn sure that when it comes to getting out and making the money, I can make a good deal more money.

And whatever anybody says, most things come back to finance in one shape or another sooner or later. So, if the man's going to be the breadwinner, he is perhaps more naturally suited by experience to be the leader of that household. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean that the woman is subservient, but I would say that she is perhaps the two I see. Men are just as capable of changing babies' nappies, putting them to bed and fulfilling totally the mother figure. I think mother figure can be father figure equally well,

and it doesn't matter which one looks after the kids. But as well as this, we don't want... We just don't want reversal in the role. We want the whole limit of the family to be broken. I think biologically, we happen to be the people who can produce babies. But beyond that, I don't think there's any other reason why the mother should have to be attached by the umbilical cord

for the rest of its life to its children. We don't want to reverse any roles. We're not interested in being equal to unfree men. We don't want roles to exist. And we don't want roles. I mean, even before I'd even heard of women's liberation or even thought about, you know, that I was going to fulfil any role at all, this sort of hit me between the eyes as being just completely and utterly humiliating.

Exactly, exactly. I think it also brings in the question of attitudes to husbands. You know, because if somebody drops in on me around the time husband's due back, they're quite shocked that I'm not panic-striven trying to get a meal ready, because this is my role, this is what I ought to be doing around five o'clock, is making a super-duper meal off Jimmy Young or somebody for my husband when I come back. And this is another angle on women's role in the family. Again, girls, all through their education, especially in secondary school, are programmed to think that the only honourable career is to be a wife.

However well we treat our children, and equally within our own little home, they're going to have the tar put on them as soon as they reach any other form of society, as soon as they go to a playgroup, as soon as they go to a school, they will be aware immediately of the difference of the sexes and the battle of the sexes. The thing that really annoys me about most women's lib people is that they provoke reactions in one. I mean, they set out trying to change the present role of men,

primarily, I think. I think they know where they're going, or they say they know where they're going, and they really want to change the men to fit in line with this. But the way they go about it, I just find it provokes me in all the ways in which they don't want me to behave. I mean, faced with a militant woman, I become militant. Then they say, there you are, you're behaving like a man again. I don't know,

I know a couple of extremely militant women at the moment and I just get infuriated by them. I mean, they want people to be cool and they're just not cool. Maybe they've got to be militant to start off with, to get the message across, but it makes it

very hard for people to go along with them. Women and men in the Radio 4 documentary Thicker Than Water produced in 1970 by a member of the Women's Hour team. But how did the conference come about? What was its impact in its time and what real effect has it had through the 20th and 21st centuries. Do note that the equal pay demand was for equal pay now, and it was 50 years ago. Selina Todd, Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford, joins us from there. Sally Alexander is Professor Emeritus of History at Goldsmiths College, University of London,

and was one of the organisers of the 1970 conference. Sally, how widespread were those kind of conversations about power relations within the family in 1970? That conversation was lovely, Jenny, because it was so hesitant and what came across from that conversation was the way in which women's liberation at that moment in the 1970s, early 1970s, late 1960s, was still finding its way towards a vocabulary, a critique of sexual the uncertainty about how to describe power relations within the family was very vivid and very real. How generally dismissive were men of these ideas? Well, the men, as far as I can remember, were not very interested at all in women's liberation. And it felt like when we gathered together for the first National Women's Liberation Conference at Ruskin College in Oxford, Ruskin was a trades union college,

and we met there for the first conference in the spring of 1970. It was a men's college, Ruskin. So it was, I mean, it was a trades union, socialist college for adult education. And the men were astonished, the male students, that 500 women would gather for a national conference to speak about women's issues inside their own building. But it was, women's liberation was met with bewilderment by men. It was met by hostility. And it was deeply provoking, as one of the men in the interview

said. It was also terrifying, I think, terrifying, because women's liberation, as you know, goes straight to the intimate heart of oneself, as well as looking outside the self and outside the family to questions of social justice. Selina, what struck you about those voices discussing the expectations married women face? And I wondered what your current students would make of what was said they'd be surprised in a lot of ways because for a couple of reasons but partly because I think there's a popular caricature now that second wave feminism that came out in part from the Ruskin conference was about so-called essentializing women, saying women are defined by their sex. And the conversation that we just heard, I think really eloquently,

conveyed one of the deep insights of second wave feminism, which was that women are certainly biologically different to men, and their discrimination springs from that. But those women were so interesting in saying that gender, as a set of roles and behavioursours is socially, culturally, politically constructed. And that's something that I think strikes students today as very surprising that we've been arguing that for such a long time. find very shocking still is the ambivalence that many of those women were just describing there towards having children and being mothers and wives. I think that's something that we've perhaps lost, that there's been in the last 20 years or so a kind of sense, perhaps as the welfare state's

broken down, that women should find their fulfilment, their power, certainly in the role as mother, if not in the role as housewife anymore. And it's still very shocking for young women today to hear those women very bravely describing the fact that parenthood is a mixed blessing. Sally, how did the idea for the conference emerge? The idea for the conference emerged from a history conference the year before. Ruskin College held history workshops,

and one or two women got together at this history workshop, which was a meeting of radical historians, and we thought, what a good idea to have a history of women's conference, a women's history conference. So several people, and there were people from Europe, from Canada, from North America, as well as from all over Britain. There were women there.

And we gathered together in a very small room. And Sheila Rowbottom, the wonderful historian, made an announcement in a very tentative, rather gentle voice. And it was greeted at the history workshop made an announcement in a very tentative, rather gentle voice. And it was greeted at the history workshop that there should be, she announced that she thought there should be a conference of women's history. And it was greeted with howls of laughter, which made us feel very, very embarrassed. And then we all met again. And people, women from all over Britain,

met in London a few times and probably elsewhere. But it was organized at Ruskin because that was a center and it was a college, it was a venue. But it was an ad hoc committee of women who organized it. We expected about 100 people to turn up, women and their children, and in fact about 500 or 600 people turned up, women, their children, and a few men who ran the creche. Yes, I know the creche was run by men. How willing were they to play that supportive role? Oh, I think, well, I can't speak for all of them, Jenny, but I think they were very supportive. I mean, the people who we had most difficulty with organizing it, myself and Ariel Abison, who was the other Ruskin student with me inside the college, were some of the men who were students at Ruskin, although they agreed in principle because they were good labor men and good trades unionists and good socialists. But they found it very difficult having the college overrun by women

and some of them gave up their rooms, their bedrooms or their little cubbyholes which were their sort of bedroom studies. And they were much more wary of what we were and who we were. I think the men running the creche were looking after their children and other people's children, and they were husbands and lovers and brothers. And were beginning to get it. They were beginning to get it. But we were only just beginning to get it, Jenny.

I know. Selina, one assumes it was mostly middle class women who took part but to what extent were the interests of working class women included in the discussions yeah they were they were there right at the start you know sally's just said um the venue of of ruskin was really it was really significant my mom was one of the few uh women students at ruskin in the late 1960s and and she remembers it as a place where these kinds of debates were already going on. You know, it was a college that attracted working class socialists from across the UK and internationally. And of course, further afield, the women's movement and feminist demands were already very associated with labour and trade unionist women in the UK.

There'd been a very long fight for decades for equal pay and for equal rights within the workplace, led by women trade unionists. And, of course, there was the huge event in the late 1960s of the Dagenham Ford workers' strike, which many women, including women from more middle-class backgrounds, said had inspired them to begin to think about their own position in society in the late 60s as women, not simply as middle class women, but as women. So those links were there and Sally can recall this, I'm sure,

but one of the really exciting things about the Ruskin Conference was the very successful attempt to bring together women from different parts of what was becoming the women's movement to speak to common causes and of course we see in those first four demands absolutely the priorities of working women there right at the start. The issues of domestic labour and male violence had been concerns I, of the 19th century feminists, Sally, but did seem rather to fall away. Why did you decide that they were absolutely crucial to the debate?

Well, I think male violence was always an issue. It was spoken of much more tentatively, and it emerged in the conference that weekend, the national conference, through issues like women in prison, women and mental health. And it happened, of course, that, as Selina has just said, I mean, the first women's Conference was women coming from all over.

There had been groups all over Britain forming in Coventry and Nottingham and London and so on, women's groups. But it was the first national Women's Conference. So we all met each other as strangers and began to talk tentatively and became friends and built a movement. But in the sort of interstices of the conference papers

and formal proceedings, if you like, issues like sexual violence began to be discussed. Male violence, actually, it was, you know, that was a huge issue. But it was very tentative, as I recall, at the time. Selina, how much were all the issues that were discussed at the conference at the forefront of what happened through the 70s, the things that were discussed, and the law that was made during the 70s,

whether it was pay, education, an opportunity, contracepteption, abortion and 24-hour nurseries. It was absolutely huge. I mean, we really need to recapture the significance of that conference and the movement around it and that came out of it. You know, we think about the Equal Pay Act, which came out in 1970. All of the energy that went into that conference helped to bring that about as well. 1974, the Consumer Credit Act, which made it illegal to refuse someone credit on the grounds of their sex. Sex Discrimination Act of 75. A year later, the Sexual Offences Amendment Act, for the first time, gave us a statutory definition of rape.

And also, the implementation of laws that were already there. So women had got the right to a legal abortion in 1967, but many women were finding it very difficult to find doctors who would allow them to have an abortion. So one of the great things that happened in the 70s was the campaign to make safe abortion actually accessible to women. The setting up of women's refuges and rape crisis centres, the assertion that women needed those kinds of single-sex provisions.

And also, you mentioned nursery care, Jenny. Between the 1930s and the 1970s, the proportion of mothers working in this country went up hugely, but provision of nursery care did not increase at all. In the 1970s, it increases so much. And by the end of that decade, for the first time, asserting the right and the need for children to have preschool childcare is really, for the first time, a legitimate political demand. and that is feminists achievement just one final point sally i know you're about to feature in a film about the miss world protest of 1970 not performing

yourself but played by kira knightley what do you think today's young women are going to make of what you did i don't know my granddaughters are bemused by what I did and I think quite proud of what the women's liberation movement did, not what I did. And the film hopefully will raise the consciousness of some young women to some of the issues that were around at the time. It was a very political moment and the legacy of some of those issues that women's liberation raised

is still there, particularly around sexual difference, male violence, around gender, of violence, actually, as your programs have just shown. But what's not there today, I think, is the streak of utopianism that was present, which gave us the energy to form the movement in the 70s. There's much less utopianism, which I think came from 68 today. But I think they'll get the sense that radical movements have to be democratic, visionary, revolutionary in a way, changing people's minds. you know revolutionary in a way changing people's minds professor sally alexander professor selena todd thank you both very much indeed for being with us this morning and we'd love to hear from

you on this subject if you were at the conference tweet us or send us an email and if you have memories of it um as indeed i do i was 20 20 at the time. I wasn't there, but I was 20 at the time and read about it. We'd love to hear from you and thank you both very much. Now, still to come in today's programme, the fourth episode of Jackie Kay's Trumpet. And then in last Friday's programme, you may have heard Lorna Cooper explaining what led her to make an effort to feed her family for £20 a week. I was spending too much money on a weekly shop. I had to stop work because I had injured my back and the finances didn't support spending £100 in the supermarket every week.

So I started looking at the food budget and brought it down a wee bit and then brought it down a bit more and then sort of really got into it and thought, you know, this is great this um is a challenge so the the hardest thing is is working it out it's writing the plan it's doing the shopping it's planning that does take time the actual cooking itself doesn't it's not you know i'm not asking you to stand in the kitchen all weekend batch cooking and what i say is when you make a lasagna make two put one in the freezer it doesn't take any more time to do that and you know and it's the same with cottage pie or making a curry you know just just double it up and then put half in the freezer and then that's

you get a meal for another night when you know things haven't gone right that day or you're running late or kids have got clubs and you don't have time to stand prepare something you just take it out the freezer and the oven if you can um buying bulk look at other suppliers not just your standard supermarket so farm shops markets um online suppliers um if you can't afford to buy in bulk then consider asking your sister your your mum, your aunt, your cousin, your friend from work or the other mums at the school gate. Go to the farm, buy a £56 bag of potatoes for £3.50 and divvy them up. Lorna Cooper on her attempts to feed her family for £20 a week and you can find her eight tips on how best to do it in an article on the Women's Hour website.

If you've been listening during the past couple of weeks you'll have heard four women discussing relationships which they can now look back on and see how unpleasant and often destructive they were. They spoke to many chows and in a moment we'll discuss why we might continue to form relations that do us harm and how best to get involved with men or women who will satisfy us and make us feel safe. Here's a reminder of what we heard from Nina, Jo, Sadie and Katie. I think a lot of the time I have been drawn massively to like people who are slightly broken or like lost lambs and it's because of how I'd grown up and I'd not really been in a very supportive house when I was little and

my parents weren't very well and that was all I knew that's your first understanding of of care and of love if it's bad if it's traumatic that kind of understanding stays with you throughout your whole life and you play out your understanding of love and care in all of your relationships as well. I met this person and I felt perhaps a bit suspicious about her because she very quickly came into my life she was very in love with me very very quickly and I felt like I was the one putting the brakes on so yeah I think there was a voice already saying oh I'm not sure quite controlling quite a lot of duplicity again you know choosing quite an unwell person to be in relationship with again excitement compelling and that feeling of being needed and and and also you know I take responsibility for

for choosing partners who were never going to necessarily provide stability that I needed you know there was an avoidance within me I believe so it wasn't all their fault you know we really got on and straight away I could tell there was something between us and we ended up sleeping together it was all the same stuff again basically of blowing hot and cold like we started sleeping together and then the next week we'd go out and he'd like snog a girl in front of me and by this point I felt so depressed because it was like I was stuck in this cycle and every time I'd go into the cycle it was worse and worse and it was like all the cracks in my mind of all these years of kind of self-loathing suddenly became like not a crack but like a hole. The thing is with all of these guys, it wasn't one event,

it was like a death by a thousand cuts, you know. So how can that kind of pain be best avoided and how can we recognise the possibility of a good, strong relationship? Simon Bowes is a counsellor who works with Relate. Penny Mansfield is one of the directors of One Plus One. Penny, listening to those women, what do you make of what they had to say? Well, I think they were being very obviously reflective. And many people don't have opportunities to reflect, which I think people who I don't know whether, you know, if you've

got a chance to actually talk to other people or to have some kind of therapeutic intervention you begin to see your behavior in a relationship and the behavior of the other person in a slightly different way but in the end that is what relationships are about they are an interaction between two people we seek out and we stay with people for all sorts of reasons some of which are quite hidden to us that become more apparent and sometimes because we genuinely feel that they're going to make things better for us and we're going to make better things for them. How common is it Simone to hear those kind of stories in counselling sessions? It's incredibly common. In fact, I feel like I'm hearing my clients as I hear them. You know, people come in and it's amazing how...

When I heard those ladies, they are people that have learnt about themselves. And before that, they probably didn't understand why they were functioning like that. They were wondering, why do I do these things? Why am I drawn to these types of people? And I think when you have a space to reflect and you understand your psychology and your internal working model

from your childhood and your upbringing and the patterns that you've seen all your life and experienced all your life, then you sort of understand what you're repeating in a sense. What do you find, find penny in your research about people making and staying in damaging relations how often does that happen um well i i think it's it's fair enough to say that if you have had quite a difficult childhood and experience, it will form your sense of what it is to be needed and to be loved. And therefore, you may find yourself attracted to people who your friends might think, why on earth is she interested in him or doesn't she see that? And I think that comes out beautifully in some of the sort of, well, lots of novels, but I think some of the more recent novels

that are coming out, which young people are reading, it's actually recognising that part of the relationships we form in our kind of young adult years are actually finding out about ourself in relationships. So they may not last and they are instructional if in a sense we can reflect on them and we can learn from them so it's not a case of well I've been out with four people and I ended up not having a relationship with any of them that's not a failure that is how you learn

about relationships. But why Simone do so many people seem to repeat the same pattern? It's because in some way it feels safe to them. Even though it's not good for them, it's familiar and it's what they know. And it may be what they feel they deserve or, you know, they may have self-esteem or self-worth issues or perhaps there could be shame in some ways. And that's what they feel like is right for them um and they can also be drawn to people who are also fulfilling a part of themselves i heard one of the ladies say that um you know to fill those holes that i have you're looking sometimes for somebody who can fulfill that part of yourself that doesn't feel um whole or you don't accept within yourself so how would you help someone telling you about some

of the things that we've heard for instance low self-esteem making you just put up with things what would you say um i would say uh ask yourself um how is this actually making you feel watch your emotions when you're with this person question how you think about things when you're with this person. And how's that affecting your life and your happiness? So to be more observant of yourself and then to question that and go, do I really want that? And what about attempts to fix the other person? I mean, how many times do you hear people say oh i can sort him out oh i

hear this all the time and it comes a lot from uh it tends to be when i when i'm when we explore it in their childhood they were the fixer in their relationship in their in their relationships in their family perhaps they were the person that made things better Perhaps they had a mother that had a very anxious attachment style and needed to talk to you a lot and be comforted by you a lot. So you feel your role in life is to be loved through fixing, comforting. And so when you repeat that in your adult life, because that's how you feel like that's how I'll be loved and appreciated. And if somebody says, oh, my friend said you know there were red flags there and i and i shouldn't

stay there but i couldn't see it what what do you say to that i'd say that if your friends are saying that to you just observe it and and have a think take a step back sometimes because you are stuck in a pattern that may not be good for you and when you have people noticing that people that care about you and know who you are and they may notice changes in you that you may not realize they may see things that you're not seeing how you're behaving are you acting hyper vigilant around that person are you walking on eggshells are you um altering the way that you are for that other person you is there something coercive going on there one of the women we heard from was in the same sex relationship

how often can the damaging patterns be the same as in a heterosexual relationship i think from what i've experienced with same-sex uh relationships it's quite similar i don't haven't actually noticed um too much of a difference in the patterns i think maybe the one thing i would say is sometimes uh the same sex relationships um their boundaries aren't as clear sometimes with uh you know they need to define them a little bit better and sometimes they might be a little bit more vulnerable um because they may not the ones that i've spoken to they haven't they haven't told their families so they feel that this relationship is their world and so they want to protect it even more i mean they may not

want to see things that um actually aren't good for them i think relationships are not easy i mean they can be very hard i think think, for most of us. What's known about which ones survive and which don't? Well, I think the point is, if you live with another person, there are always going to be problems. The problems you create, the problems they create, and you have to work that out. And there is a creativity to relationships. And if you look at interviews with people who've been in a relationship for a very long time you will find there were periods when they might thought shall I stay or shall I go is it good enough to stay bad enough to go and then times when they actually felt that they

were pleased that they'd stayed and what I think people can learn is really how to do things together. So, for example, there's an approach looking at how people who have, well, the research shows that their relationships are stronger because when they're under stress, they can actually share the experiences they have. They might be different, but they can actually talk to each other. And so it's termed a kind of sense of we stress, how they deal with it together. What tends to turn people away from each other is when they struggle with something on their own and then they don't share it.

And then the relationship becomes dissatisfying on both sides. We talk a lot about sex education, but not so much about relationship education. What should children be taught about this? Well, I think we've got a great opportunity with the new relationship sex education curriculum coming in is to be able to work with young people on their skills in relationships, their skills at being able to express themselves, to listen well to others,

to manage difficult situations, to manage conflict. I mean, particularly that, because actually conflict damages people, but actually well-managed conflict is part of living. And we know so much about that now. So what I'd like is actually to have a curriculum where young people can actually find out and understand the relationships they are having,

which may be friendships. They don't necessarily have to be sexual relationships, especially in primary school. But understand how I work in relation to others and actually read other people. I was talking to Penny Mansfield and Simone Bowes. We had lots of response from you on the question of how to break patterns in difficult relationships. And someone who didn't want us to use her name said, hearing all the relationship stories has rung so true in today's review of it and hearing the guests talk is like hearing the story of my childhood and relationships since. Everything being said, I was saying yes to. Thank you, Woman's Hour, as ever, for discussing such important

topics. And our discussion about the first Women's Liberation Conference at Rusking College, its 50th anniversary, Myra said in an email, listening to the programme today, aged 78, as if it were yesterday. What a dreadful, frightening and glorious time. I didn't attend the conference, but was struggling without words and language to understand my abusive situation. Very soon after the conference was set up, I set up a consciousness-raising group, a lifesaver for me and others of us. I fought my husband over his refusal to agree to a medical sterilisation. He had the right to my fertility, even though I had not a right to his. I found the language and confidence to challenge his divorce petition, where he laid down as one of my matrimonial crimes

that I was a member of Women's Liberation. Yes, really. On email, Jane said, I had my children in the 1980s. When our third child was born. My husband was very proud of the fact that he could count on one hand the number of nappies he had changed. We're fairly traditional and this didn't particularly worry me, but our daughters were horrified when they heard this as adults. And on the Ugandan men and breast milk, Helen Lewis on Twitter said, As a mother who breastfed both daughters, I can't believe there are men demanding mothers of their children feed them breast milk before their child. Shocked by this study and the reasons given. Breast is their property and the baby is taking it away from them. Now do join me tomorrow when I'll be talking to the palliative care doctor

who's written a book warning us not to underestimate the value of gentle acts of kindness, the power of touch and talking in a straightforward but compassionate way about dying to patients and relatives. That's tomorrow, two minutes past ten. Join me live if you can. Bye-bye. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts.

Anna Delvey was due to inherit $67 million. I'm so excited about what the future holds. She secured huge investments for a project in New York. She was very confident in her words. And yet, it was all a lie. She's a con artist.

Join journalist Vicky Baker as she delves into a real life scandal. We'll mix drama with documentary to tell the story of Anna Delvey's rise and fall. Fake Heiress a new six part podcast on BBC Sounds. I was watching this whole thing happen thinking it can't be

true. Download the free app to listen. I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake.

No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in.

Available now.