Speaker 1: Life Uncut acknowledges the traditional custodians of country whose lands
Speaker 1: were never seated. We pay our respects to their elders
Speaker 1: past and present.
Speaker 2: Always was, always will be Aboriginal Land. This episode was
Speaker 2: recorded on Drug Wallamata Land.
Speaker 3: Hey guys, and welcome back to another episode of Life
Speaker 3: on card I am produce a key Shart. I hope
Speaker 3: you've all had such an unreal Christmas. You've been able
Speaker 3: to spend some really special time with the people that
Speaker 3: you love the most, and hopefully all things across, you've
Speaker 3: gotten some time to reach out to those batteries and
Speaker 3: have a bit of a relax. I know it's not
Speaker 3: possible for a lot of people at this time of.
Speaker 4: The year because it's seemingly the busiest time of the
Speaker 4: year for everybody, but today's episode is my favorite of
Speaker 4: the year. I absolutely love doing the Rearing your Views
Speaker 4: because it gives us the opportunity to go back and
Speaker 4: listen to some of the best moments from the year.
Speaker 3: And for this one, Laura britt and I sat down
Speaker 3: and we looked at every episode that we've created for
Speaker 3: this year.
Speaker 5: And to be honest, it was just for me.
Speaker 3: I really I genuinely looked at the list and I
Speaker 3: was like, Wow, how do we pull this up? Like
Speaker 3: it was a real pinch me moment of how did
Speaker 3: some of this come about? Like, Yeah, I truly cannot
Speaker 3: believe some of the incredible people that we have been
Speaker 3: able to share some moments with this year on the podcast.
Speaker 3: So there's gonna be a lot of laughs, there's gonna
Speaker 3: be some more insightful moments, perhaps some valuable lessons.
Speaker 5: There's a couple of us gun cuts peppered into this
Speaker 5: Rear in your View. And if you've looked at the
Speaker 5: episode title and you're.
Speaker 3: Like, that's a weird thing to call the last episode
Speaker 3: of the year, what's that about? Lacks a bit of context.
Speaker 3: I'll give you the context. It was back in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty one.
Speaker 5: I think it was.
Speaker 3: Britt I'm not one hundred percent sure actually, but one
Speaker 3: of the girls went to say year in Review, and
Speaker 3: what accidentally came out was rear in your View. So
Speaker 3: we had a bit of a laugh about it, and
Speaker 3: we're rolling with it, and that is now forever on
Speaker 3: what our last episode of the year where we highlight
Speaker 3: the year will be called.
Speaker 5: I really really hope you enjoy one.
Speaker 3: I'm looking at the list of people that we have
Speaker 3: included some of the guests from this year's best moments,
Speaker 3: or some of what we deem to be some of
Speaker 3: our favorite moments.
Speaker 5: Seems to be a.
Speaker 3: Bit of a British and Irish theme for a lot
Speaker 3: of the guests. There's going to be quite a lot
Speaker 3: of British accents in this rearing of view.
Speaker 5: That wasn't deliberate.
Speaker 3: It's just the way that things have worked out, and
Speaker 3: I think some of the conversations that we had this
Speaker 3: year have I don't know how you feel about it,
Speaker 3: but for me, I definitely have felt like I have
Speaker 3: learned so much about myself from the wonderful people that
Speaker 3: have joined the podcast, and I hope you feel similarly
Speaker 3: for each of these little segments of the episodes, if
Speaker 3: you really enjoy it, or perhaps you missed it throughout
Speaker 3: the year where you just missed the week or you
Speaker 3: missed the conversation. In the show notes of the episode.
Speaker 5: I will link every single one of.
Speaker 3: The whole episodes for you to go back and listen
Speaker 3: through if you would like. So, if you scroll down
Speaker 3: into the show notes, each of the segments will be
Speaker 3: hopefully quite clearly labeled and you can tap on that
Speaker 3: and have a listen.
Speaker 5: Throughout the summer period.
Speaker 3: Our first guests for the year in review, Sorry the
Speaker 3: Rearing of You of twenty twenty three is the phenomenal
Speaker 3: Matthew Hussey. Now, Matthew would have to be I would
Speaker 3: say he would be the number one dating coach in
Speaker 3: the world. He's definitely what I would consider to be
Speaker 3: the number one dating coach in the world. And I
Speaker 3: think it's because his advice has always been very relatable
Speaker 3: and it's been quite insightful, but not in a like
Speaker 3: super introspective or you have to really get deep with someone.
Speaker 3: It's been very actionable advice is what I think has
Speaker 3: come out of Matthew Hussey. And this particular moment when
Speaker 3: he joined Britain Laura, I thought was a moment where
Speaker 3: I could see the inner workings of his brain. Like
Speaker 3: you've realized with some of your advice falls a bit short.
Speaker 6: I'm always obsessed about the nuance of things, like when
Speaker 6: is that true? When is it not true? For example,
Speaker 6: when someone says, watch you know this is good advice.
Speaker 6: Right when you're dating someone, watch what they do, not
Speaker 6: what they say. That's good advice that will save you
Speaker 6: from a lot of bad situations in life. If someone
Speaker 6: keeps telling you they love you, I care so much
Speaker 6: about you. I always want the best for you. But
Speaker 6: everything they do is damaging to you, and they're inconsistent,
Speaker 6: and they treat you poorly, and they disrespect you, and
Speaker 6: they cheat on you, they lie, well, their words really
Speaker 6: cease to matter at that point. Their behavior is telling
Speaker 6: you everything you need to know about the person. But
Speaker 6: what would happen with me is I because I've worked
Speaker 6: with so many people now over fifteen years, I would
Speaker 6: always hear something that would stop me in my tracks
Speaker 6: and make me go, oh, hang on, I feel like
Speaker 6: I need to go back to the drawing board on this.
Speaker 6: And an example for that piece of advice, which is
Speaker 6: good advice, is when someone would say to me, but Matt,
Speaker 6: I'm with this person and they literally treat me like
Speaker 6: I'm their girlfriend. They take me to meet their family,
Speaker 6: like we've gone on these amazing trips together. He's big
Speaker 6: these gestures, and he spends all this time with me,
Speaker 6: We speak for hours on the phone, and yet he
Speaker 6: tells me he just doesn't know if he wants a relationship.
Speaker 2: And so many people have experienced that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So if you apply watch what they do, not
Speaker 6: what they say to that scenario, you're going to get
Speaker 6: yourself in a lot of trouble because what they're doing
Speaker 6: is showing you all the right things through their behavior,
Speaker 6: but what they're telling you is that they don't want
Speaker 6: a relationship. Well, that to me is nuance. You add
Speaker 6: a layer of complexity there where you say, oh, well, actually,
Speaker 6: what appears to be true empirically is that you should
Speaker 6: follow the rule of watch what they do, not what
Speaker 6: they say, unless what they say to you is inconvenient
Speaker 6: for them to say and wouldn't help them in any way. So,
Speaker 6: if I'm a guy and I want to continue to
Speaker 6: have this intimacy and this connection and regular sex and
Speaker 6: all of the things that come from doing that with
Speaker 6: a person, I don't want to tell you I don't
Speaker 6: want a relationship because it might hurt what I'm getting.
Speaker 6: You might decide, Oh, if that's true, then I'm out.
Speaker 6: So I'm risking the things that I'm enjoying by admitting this.
Speaker 6: And if you imagine, for a guy like that, he
Speaker 6: feels like he has to say it, or he should
Speaker 6: say it, or he wants to to keep your arm's length,
Speaker 6: but it doesn't help his cause. And if something doesn't
Speaker 6: help someone's cause, but they say it anyway, you can
Speaker 6: believe that thing. Then it's almost like the rule inverts,
Speaker 6: because now it's like the small print at the end
Speaker 6: of a pharmaceutical ad. A pharmaceutical ad is this whole
Speaker 6: commercial where the whole time they're like showing people bouncing
Speaker 6: in a field who you know, were struggling with back problems,
Speaker 6: but now they're having a great time, and look how
Speaker 6: great their relationship is, and look how great life is.
Speaker 6: And it's changed their life taking this backpill or whatever
Speaker 6: it is. And then at the end of the commercial,
Speaker 6: very very quickly, it races through the fact that this
Speaker 6: pill is going to make you suicidal. You might vomit,
Speaker 6: you might have diarrhea, you might it might ruin your
Speaker 6: light like it.
Speaker 5: Might die, but you could be run around in a field.
Speaker 6: And here's the thing. Those are the things that they
Speaker 6: have to say. They wouldn't say it if they had
Speaker 6: a choice, but they have to say those things. So
Speaker 6: you don't necessarily know if any of the nonsense marketing
Speaker 6: was true, but you know the other things are true
Speaker 6: because they wouldn't say them unless they had to. So
Speaker 6: when someone's telling you something that doesn't help them to
Speaker 6: tell you, that's usually the part that's true, even if
Speaker 6: their actions are giving you lots of hope.
Speaker 3: Next hap in our Year in Review is arguably the
Speaker 3: funniest person I have ever gotten to meet. And I
Speaker 3: don't say that dramatically, truly, when we met Joanne McNally,
Speaker 3: she's the Irish comedian that also has the pot my
Speaker 3: therapist ghosted me the day that we met her, she
Speaker 3: came into the studio, we recorded the episode with her,
Speaker 3: and then later that night we went to her comedy
Speaker 3: show at the Nmore Theater in Sydney. And when I
Speaker 3: got home and for the entire next day, the lower
Speaker 3: parts of my jaw felt like they had gone to
Speaker 3: the gym for a workout, like I had doms from
Speaker 3: laughing so hard at Joanne. You know those people you
Speaker 3: think they're so hilarious, It must be just that funny
Speaker 3: when they're in character or they're doing their comedy bit.
Speaker 3: Joan's not like that. She is truly the funniest person
Speaker 3: I've ever spoken to. It just in her regular conversation.
Speaker 3: She's just a laugh and a half and I particularly
Speaker 3: loved this story that she told them the podcast.
Speaker 7: The podcast I Do, I do a podcast with Vog Williams,
Speaker 7: and Vogue is like femininity personified, like just very together.
Speaker 7: Everything's like color coordinator, who she fails, her echoes well,
Speaker 7: her hates keeper.
Speaker 8: Doors shit like that.
Speaker 5: She's perfect.
Speaker 7: She is perfection and she looks like Sandy Crawford and
Speaker 7: she's three kids and not a single stitch, very proud
Speaker 7: of that, and like when we get drunk together, she's
Speaker 7: I'm like, I can't watch your birth videos again, Vogue,
Speaker 7: And she was showing me the birth videos and the
Speaker 7: child just like slips out like share like it's coming
Speaker 7: out through the ground, like you know when somebody comes
Speaker 7: out through the ground of.
Speaker 8: A theot they made fully clothed, teething.
Speaker 7: And everything like yeah, yeah, yeah, the guccy track suits
Speaker 7: and stuff. But so that was kind of the basis
Speaker 7: of the podcast because I was the opposite of that.
Speaker 7: But anyway, Vogue, like what we were saying earlier, like
Speaker 7: trying to get content for the pod, Vogue was like,
Speaker 7: come in, come in, because she was having some postnatal
Speaker 7: She wasn't actually having a post natal issue, but she
Speaker 7: was doing some Vogue would collab with fucking hand grenades,
Speaker 7: like she's big for the collabs. So she was like,
Speaker 7: I'm going, I'm doing a collab with a kegel chair.
Speaker 7: And I was like, what, She's like a kegel chair
Speaker 7: and I thought it was some like ring light thing,
Speaker 7: but it's not.
Speaker 8: It's fair.
Speaker 7: You know, if you've got kids, how's your pelvic floor?
Speaker 7: Oh look, it's not as good as it used to be.
Speaker 7: Box jumps particularly bad. But you're doing box jumps means
Speaker 7: you're at a sloor anymore for that reason.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've used to keep chair, have you, Yeah,
Speaker 5: just for fun.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I watched your try. I'd say if you turned
Speaker 8: it on right, you get great crack out of it.
Speaker 5: It is supposed to also help with your orgasms.
Speaker 7: Well no, I didn't came on the chair, thank god,
Speaker 7: it would be reading embrassing. But anyway, so folks like,
Speaker 7: come in, I'm doing this club with this kegel chair,
Speaker 7: and it just kind of bauses your vagina back after
Speaker 7: you've had a kid by the ski because you're pelvic
Speaker 7: floor kind of collapses or whatever. And I didn't even know.
Speaker 7: I don't, like, I'm not aware. I have no kids
Speaker 7: and I went in a first seat. I shaved, waxed
Speaker 7: and was came in like with alopecia from the eyebris
Speaker 7: down because I assumed that we were getting bussed like
Speaker 7: internally folks get comment sit on the bage chair because
Speaker 7: it'll be good for the podcast. And I was like,
Speaker 7: I think you sounding it like a pogo ste I
Speaker 7: thought it would be like a cattle prod and put
Speaker 7: it in like bosi back.
Speaker 5: So this is what I did.
Speaker 2: We went to Bali and I had that done internally
Speaker 2: in Bali. That's a holiday. I went to a day spot.
Speaker 2: I kind of enjoyed it, but anyway, I imagine you're getting.
Speaker 8: Your lobby a gently massage by electrical brad. What's not
Speaker 8: to like?
Speaker 5: It was relaxing.
Speaker 8: I can't.
Speaker 7: I'm I have a very I don't know what you say,
Speaker 7: low level or high level of erotticism, like I I
Speaker 7: can't even getting a head massage in the in the
Speaker 7: hair draskers embarrasses me. Do you know when they go
Speaker 7: real slow and you're like this is this you get
Speaker 7: turned on? No, it just makes me really embarrassed. I'm like,
Speaker 7: how do you not think this is erratic? I going
Speaker 7: to the Headdres said to get that hit. It's so barsya,
Speaker 7: some fourteen year old girl massage in her head.
Speaker 5: You're like, oh my god, keep going with you chip.
Speaker 8: So anyway, I.
Speaker 7: Go in and as like I say, I waxed everything
Speaker 7: I was prepared to have.
Speaker 8: I thought ID be in a gown.
Speaker 7: But anyway, go in and Vogue sitting there head to
Speaker 7: toe and white on this chair. She looks like Mariah Carey,
Speaker 7: like there's like a wind machine in the back of
Speaker 7: her hair and she's just sitting there going and I
Speaker 7: was like, oh, you're fully clothed. So it was totally
Speaker 7: different to what I thought it was. It was just
Speaker 7: sitting like a chair like this, but it's a huge
Speaker 7: olkin like buzzas anyway, folks like, well, I'm getting buzzed.
Speaker 7: You do the pelvic floor test. So I sat Maria
Speaker 7: was that she's a post nital physiotherapist. She's like sitting
Speaker 7: the thing so that in the thing and so it gauges.
Speaker 7: You're a pelvic floor like a heartbeat, so like you
Speaker 7: clench and it like goes.
Speaker 8: Up and down.
Speaker 7: And so I was on the sea thing she was
Speaker 7: like and clenched, and so I was clenching and she's like,
Speaker 7: I said clenched and I was like, yeah, clenching and
Speaker 7: she you could see her like the flat lined, completely
Speaker 7: flat lined, no response at all. So then she was
Speaker 7: like seeing what the thing clugged in. She was like,
Speaker 7: oh wow, you have no public work. And she said
Speaker 7: to me, when did you give birth? When did you
Speaker 7: give birth? Allow, I've never given birth, I said, my
Speaker 7: vagina is very much at the taking phase. She hasn't
Speaker 7: pushed anything out, and she's like you, So then I
Speaker 7: am now patient in a post natal physios herapist clinic,
Speaker 7: and Vogue bounced out fact after three kids she never
Speaker 7: went back and they were like, there's an issue here.
Speaker 7: Turns out I'm misaligned and my pelvis is on the
Speaker 7: ground or my usual as up in my eyeballs, I
Speaker 7: don't know. Anyway, then I had I had to have
Speaker 7: a post natal physio herapist. I never had a child.
Speaker 5: This is the original story.
Speaker 7: Is going to say it because I used to whip
Speaker 7: myself when I laughed as a child. But I think
Speaker 7: it's all connected. Yes, absolutely, yeah, But if you're having
Speaker 7: some sort of like uterus prolapse, you don't even know.
Speaker 8: You're like, what is that ball. I do not even
Speaker 8: have a I never lapsed.
Speaker 1: How do how does that translate in the bedroom? Like
Speaker 1: sex wives, do you have those moments where they're like
Speaker 1: I'm coming.
Speaker 5: You're like, what it's in now?
Speaker 8: Just the wall still bring god?
Speaker 1: Well, I don't know she flatlined on the key, or
Speaker 1: it would be more that they'd be like, is it
Speaker 1: it not me?
Speaker 8: I'd be like I can feel that. Yeah, that's good.
Speaker 8: They're like, I don't know.
Speaker 7: Yes, they want to put those, you know, in a
Speaker 7: bowling alley when you're ship of bowling. They put those
Speaker 7: inflatable things on the sides. They were like, to have
Speaker 7: any of them for your insights because I can't feel
Speaker 7: the pane here. It's not about size, it's about grip.
Speaker 7: So anyway, so now I have to do key. And
Speaker 7: then I spoke about it before because obviously I just
Speaker 7: kind of thought was funny.
Speaker 8: And then these women were mastering going so brave. I
Speaker 8: was like, shit, I just thought it was a funny story.
Speaker 8: Didn't realize like a peal.
Speaker 2: Of becaushes, there's nothing more patronizing there when people tell
Speaker 2: you how brave a just for like showing up, in
Speaker 2: for being you showing up in the world existing and
Speaker 2: people like you're so brave that you're so brave.
Speaker 8: You're like, I'm just wearing a fucking bikini. The beach
Speaker 8: bag fringe is brave. You know.
Speaker 5: When you turn out with no makeup on. That's what
Speaker 5: gets me.
Speaker 1: When you decide to go I'm gonna make up free,
Speaker 1: I'm feeling myself and people like so brave pray for you,
Speaker 1: and you're like, oh.
Speaker 8: Like okanack, it just kind of doesn't mean outing anymore.
Speaker 3: Oh. Joanne just has me laughing so much that I
Speaker 3: feel like I would have abs if I listened to
Speaker 3: her for hours a day. But she also mentioned in
Speaker 3: there that she hosts the podcast with Vogue Williams. Now Vogue,
Speaker 3: I'm really sorry but Vague didn't make the rear in
Speaker 3: Your View for twenty twenty three, but I did love
Speaker 3: that episode with her. I will link it in the
Speaker 3: show notes because we're also lucky enough to have Vogue
Speaker 3: on the podcast this year, and that was truly another laugh.
Speaker 3: We kind of got to know the inner workings of
Speaker 3: their friendship, how they started the podcast, and how Vogue
Speaker 3: goes about working with her husband, Spencer, who you might
Speaker 3: know from Maiden Chelsea. Coming up next in the rear
Speaker 3: in your View, I keep from going to say a
Speaker 3: year in review. Let's just use them interchangeably for the
Speaker 3: rest of this episode is Sarah Wilson.
Speaker 5: Sarah Wilson is.
Speaker 3: Originally known for different things. She was a journalist, she
Speaker 3: also did a lot of TV stuff in Australia, and
Speaker 3: she's really known for her eye quit sugar movement. Growing up,
Speaker 3: I thought that the eye quit sugar thing was a
Speaker 3: kind of along the lines of like a diet book.
Speaker 3: I thought it was really about weight loss. But it
Speaker 3: was in this conversation that we had with Sarah that
Speaker 3: I learned that she actually got into the reducing sugar
Speaker 3: intake movement because she has Hashimoto's disease, which is an
Speaker 3: autoimmune condition, and so the sugar in her diet was
Speaker 3: quite inflammatory for her body. And that's kind of how
Speaker 3: it all came about. And Sarah was just such an
Speaker 3: interesting person to speak to. There were so many different
Speaker 3: parts that we could have pulled from this episode to
Speaker 3: be the highlight couple of minutes. You know, Sarah is
Speaker 3: the type of person who worked out how much money
Speaker 3: she would need for the rest of her life, kind
Speaker 3: of stored it away and gave every other bit of
Speaker 3: her wealth to charity, which is just phenomenal. She travels
Speaker 3: the world, She's got like two suitcases of belonging. She's
Speaker 3: just a really interesting person. Lives quite a p noumadic
Speaker 3: style of life. But in this part of the chat,
Speaker 3: we were talking to Sarah about why she dates younger
Speaker 3: men or what she kind of sees the value in
Speaker 3: younger men and why.
Speaker 5: I've read something.
Speaker 1: About you in the Sidney Morning Herald and it was
Speaker 1: very intriguing to me. Now, it's intriguing because my partner's
Speaker 1: five years younger than me. My ex is seven years
Speaker 1: younger than me. I date down, Yeah, no, I'm sorry. Typically, yeah,
Speaker 1: I date down in age range. I don't know if
Speaker 1: it was always intentional, that just sort of fulfilled that way.
Speaker 1: But you have said that you sort of lean towards
Speaker 1: dating down, which is funny because they're the people that
Speaker 1: don't show up as well. The men are probably not
Speaker 1: emotionally mature enough, yet they're the men you seem to
Speaker 1: be leaning to. Why is that is that because you
Speaker 1: have trouble finding somebody that is willing to meet you
Speaker 1: on your level, that is your age.
Speaker 9: Well, what I would say is, in fact, men my
Speaker 9: age are worse than the younger ones. They're actually more scared.
Speaker 9: So they've picked up the behaviors of the younger generation
Speaker 9: from the dating app and we've all done it right.
Speaker 9: Women are doing it as well. It's also it's the
Speaker 9: vibe and the technology actually enables it. But I find
Speaker 9: that men my age are even more confused, more scared
Speaker 9: than men in their thirties. My father has a good
Speaker 9: theory on this. He reckons that you know, when guys
Speaker 9: have got testosterone in their system right, gives them this
Speaker 9: bravado and you know, over the years it also starts
Speaker 9: to dial down and they lose their mojo. And also
Speaker 9: older men have had more knockbacks, they don't have as
Speaker 9: much confidence, whereas the young guys they've just got that
Speaker 9: sort of that rawness you know, where they'll give it
Speaker 9: a go. The other thing, I mean, I'm really going
Speaker 9: into the weeds here. The other thing is is that
Speaker 9: I think younger guys who are not wanting to commit,
Speaker 9: they're faced with a generation of women who are getting
Speaker 9: married younger. Like my generation, we didn't get married. My
Speaker 9: friends did not get married. You know, I'm sort of
Speaker 9: a child. I was in my early twenties in the
Speaker 9: early nineties, and that was full austerity. There wasn't a
Speaker 9: lot of money, there was a recession. It was all
Speaker 9: about feminism. It was the grunge period. We didn't wear makeup,
Speaker 9: we wore secondhand clothes, we didn't wear bras, we wore
Speaker 9: flat shoes.
Speaker 8: It was all that kind of thing. Right.
Speaker 9: What that's sort of done is created a certain sort
Speaker 9: of mindset. What's happening now I find is with the
Speaker 9: younger guys.
Speaker 5: The younger guys they had.
Speaker 9: Mothers like me. Right, I date guys who have mothers
Speaker 9: the same age as now, and literally so they've been
Speaker 9: brought up by feminists and feminist teachers, and then they
Speaker 9: get to their sort of late twenties in early thirties,
Speaker 9: and the women are a different type of women. They're
Speaker 9: wanting to get married, like you know, that's actually been
Speaker 9: shown statistically.
Speaker 5: They're getting married.
Speaker 9: And you know, we've had a period of incredible opulence
Speaker 9: in Australia in the West, right, And so that creates
Speaker 9: a very different dynamic with women. Women's rights and body
Speaker 9: shape and role in society shifts with the economics of
Speaker 9: the time.
Speaker 5: And you'll see over.
Speaker 9: Here in Europe where they're actually going through the beginnings
Speaker 9: of a recession. You know, the cost of living crisis
Speaker 9: is really affecting. And fashion has changed women addressing differently,
Speaker 9: and that's happened throughout histor If you think of the
Speaker 9: flapper era in the nineteen twenties and thirties, War and
Speaker 9: the Depression, women's bodies were straight up and down, women
Speaker 9: were in the workforce, You had the Suffragette movement, women
Speaker 9: got the vote, Women are out there getting all these
Speaker 9: kinds of rights anyway, So there's a bit of a
Speaker 9: background there. So yeah, I find that men who are
Speaker 9: not wanting to get married, they're wanting to focus on
Speaker 9: their career. They're quite creative and ambitious and all that
Speaker 9: kind of thing. They're going, well, who do I date?
Speaker 9: Older women fit the bill because we're not going to
Speaker 9: demand anything of them. We're literally going to be in
Speaker 9: the present, having a great time, not wanting to ring
Speaker 9: on our finger, and not wanting to get pregnant anytime soon.
Speaker 9: So I think I actually find more engagement, genuine engagement,
Speaker 9: like old school engagement where they're actually interested in me
Speaker 9: as a person. Among the younger men which is great,
Speaker 9: you know when they turn.
Speaker 5: That's exactly right, Sarah.
Speaker 3: Something you wrote about in one of your recent newsletters
Speaker 3: kind of to do with this topic. It was titled
Speaker 3: I'm a spinster, I spin well, And in that piece
Speaker 3: you wrote it something that really intrigued me, and you
Speaker 3: basically said that the term spinster and I guess we
Speaker 3: could use cougar, like there are all of these terms
Speaker 3: for women who date younger men and who are open
Speaker 3: about their dating life and that it's exciting and that
Speaker 3: they're passionate lovers and things like that. It's not equivalent
Speaker 3: to the term bachelor. You know, we seem to kind
Speaker 3: of have this view of the way that we use
Speaker 3: the word spinster that is negatively geared.
Speaker 5: Have you experienced that.
Speaker 8: Yes, and no.
Speaker 9: I think it's more that women take that on ourselves.
Speaker 8: We perceive it.
Speaker 9: And I've got a real mindset that I've had for
Speaker 9: a very long time where the.
Speaker 5: Mind goes, the energy flows.
Speaker 9: So if you focus on that for yourself, that's what
Speaker 9: you'll get back from everyone. You'll get that perception back.
Speaker 9: So in many ways I've operated almost oblivious to the
Speaker 9: fact that I'm meant to get marriedorried and I'm meant
Speaker 9: to be doing all of these things, and I've just
Speaker 9: got on with things and every now and then I go,
Speaker 9: oh god, yeah, that's right. I missed that memo.
Speaker 10: You know.
Speaker 9: So the spinster thing is interesting, though, isn't it, Because
Speaker 9: this term started out along I think it was in
Speaker 9: the sixteen hundreds to describe women who were really good
Speaker 9: at spinning, and because they could spin, it meant that
Speaker 9: they actually had a skill set that was valuable and
Speaker 9: they had their own income.
Speaker 5: What do you mean by spinning? Is that like a
Speaker 5: material thing.
Speaker 8: Spinning wool thread? Wait?
Speaker 5: Talking a long time ago.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just pictured people who were really good on
Speaker 3: the dance floor, like sitting around and I was like, okay,
Speaker 3: he's just young enough, Sarah.
Speaker 9: So see that jumper you're wearing back in the older way.
Speaker 9: So yeah, see women who could spin thread, right, whether
Speaker 9: it was silk.
Speaker 11: Cool wool, it was a spinning wheel.
Speaker 9: Anyone who was really good at spinning, it meant you
Speaker 9: had your own income, right, You were financially independent, so
Speaker 9: you could come into a dynamic, you know, with something
Speaker 9: to offer, and that was seen as a really good thing.
Speaker 9: So these women that went often had careers, so to
Speaker 9: speak sygnemata spinning wheel. We're seen as a desirable entity.
Speaker 9: So you were considered a spinster. Unfortunately, now obviously that's
Speaker 9: taken on a derogative connotation. But yeah, I think the
Speaker 9: world is shifting. We are in an incredible time of
Speaker 9: flux for all kinds of things, including gender roles, including
Speaker 9: like look what AI is doing to I mean, I'm
Speaker 9: sure many of your listeners think about this, like we're
Speaker 9: hearing about it. How's it going to affect all of
Speaker 9: our jobs? Everything's up for grabs, and so we are
Speaker 9: in a great dynamic time to redefine all of these
Speaker 9: things for ourselves. And in fact, I like the idea
Speaker 9: of slippy, Like while everyone's been distracted by all of
Speaker 9: these rules and ideas and fears, I basically just kind
Speaker 9: of put on my backpack and piss on off to
Speaker 9: Paris or whatever and get on.
Speaker 8: With my own thing, you know.
Speaker 9: Like it's a really good time to not be stuck
Speaker 9: in those roles, these stereotypes and constricted laneways.
Speaker 3: Now, this next part of our rear in your view
Speaker 3: is from a conversation that Laura and Britt had with
Speaker 3: Hugh Van Kyleenberg. Now hu Van Kyleenberg is the man
Speaker 3: from the Resilience Project. He also is one of the
Speaker 3: co hosts of The Imperfect podcast, and a part of
Speaker 3: their podcast is that they have these things called vulnerability cards,
Speaker 3: and the cards you used to inspire somewhat deep conversation,
Speaker 3: you know, parts where we share about ourselves that perhaps
Speaker 3: we haven't shared before. And this particular question that he
Speaker 3: posed to Laura, I think it really struck a chord
Speaker 3: with so many people because I think it's something that
Speaker 3: so many of us can relate to, almost not in
Speaker 3: a good way. It's something that we feel deep within ourselves,
Speaker 3: but perhaps we weren't brave enough to say it out loud.
Speaker 12: Okay, here's one for you, Laura. Ch I. This is
Speaker 12: again there's a full on question to answer, So I
Speaker 12: hope you don't mind. Even what are you ashamed of?
Speaker 12: It's a light one to finish.
Speaker 2: I had to look through some of these questions, so
Speaker 2: I had to look through some of the options. So
Speaker 2: I've had time to kind of process this and think
Speaker 2: about what I would say and really feel that shame. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and really sit in my shame. No, Look, this will
Speaker 2: probably make me cry, but there's something that I so
Speaker 2: my grandfather passed away.
Speaker 5: You are you can't ready about your grand I honestly.
Speaker 2: Can't really struggle with it. Yeah, So a couple of
Speaker 2: years ago, my papa passed away. And my papa was
Speaker 2: very much my father figure all throughout my life, and
Speaker 2: he and my grandma had been married for you know,
Speaker 2: sixty something years. And my nana has very bad dementia.
Speaker 2: She was put into a home shortly afterwards. And I think,
Speaker 2: like for me, we'd go down and see them. They
Speaker 2: live in Woollongong. We'd see them all the time. We
Speaker 2: were really in contact and really a part of their life.
Speaker 2: That as my NaN's dementia has gotten worse and worse
Speaker 2: and I've had kids and COVID happened, I found that
Speaker 2: I'd go down and see her less and less. And
Speaker 2: I think for a really long time, I said of
Speaker 2: said to myself, she has dementia. She doesn't remember me
Speaker 2: coming anyway, she doesn't remember when I visited. And I
Speaker 2: was watching You Can't Ask That, that show that's on
Speaker 2: Tvaby and they did an amazing episode on dementia, and
Speaker 2: there was one thing that one of the women. They
Speaker 2: interviewed all these people at different stages of dementia, and
Speaker 2: she said, you know, it doesn't matter how advanced it is,
Speaker 2: you still have these moments of clarity. You still have
Speaker 2: these moments where you might remember your old life or
Speaker 2: you might remember. And I for me, it was this
Speaker 2: real moment where I was like, wow, you know, I
Speaker 2: think sometimes with the elderly, we can kind of go oh,
Speaker 2: they don't remember, or like it's easier, it's out of sight,
Speaker 2: out of mind.
Speaker 5: I'm too busy.
Speaker 2: And it's not that I don't see my nan as much,
Speaker 2: like it's not they don't see her at all. I
Speaker 2: just don't see her anywhere near as much. And then
Speaker 2: I think like, wow, I've just wasted three years where
Speaker 2: I needed to put in more effort and that I
Speaker 2: feel really.
Speaker 12: As shaped of Yeah, but how beautiful that you've had
Speaker 12: that realization now before.
Speaker 13: It's too late.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's not too late, that totally and now.
Speaker 2: And that was a huge toning point for me. I
Speaker 2: call her all the time, I take the girls down
Speaker 2: as much as I can, and she doesn't remember. But
Speaker 2: the thing that I've realized is that my girls, you know,
Speaker 2: Marley now gets to see her great grandma. She knows
Speaker 2: who her great Grandma is and that's really special, beautiful.
Speaker 12: Yeah, thank you for sharing that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I really really loved that part. From that episode,
Speaker 3: I felt like, I don't know about you, but I
Speaker 3: definitely had the reminder to spend more time with the
Speaker 3: people who are truly, truly important in my life coming
Speaker 3: up next in our rear in your view. It is
Speaker 3: no secret to say that this is my favorite person.
Speaker 3: This is my celebrity crush. It is also the person
Speaker 3: that I was like at the start of the year.
Speaker 3: If we could manage to get him on the podcast,
Speaker 3: life goal would be ticked off. It is Stephen Bartlett
Speaker 3: from the Diary of a CEO. He's also a prolific businessman.
Speaker 5: He's so young to have.
Speaker 3: This much knowledge and also this much wealth, like he's
Speaker 3: done really really well for himself. And the reason that
Speaker 3: I love Stephen Bartlett so deeply is because I feel
Speaker 3: like I have learnt so much from his podcast and
Speaker 3: from what he has to say. Find him a very
Speaker 3: insightful person. And so when we reached out to basically
Speaker 3: to Stephen's team, I would say, because there's a lot
Speaker 3: of them, I wasn't expecting a yes in reply. I
Speaker 3: was actually not really expecting the reply whatsoever. So when
Speaker 3: it came back that Stephen was really keen to join
Speaker 3: us on the podcast, I was beyond surprised, and not
Speaker 3: just because he's such a huge person in the podcasting world.
Speaker 3: It's also because he doesn't really do very many podcasts.
Speaker 5: He doesn't.
Speaker 3: I mean, he obviously has his own podcast where he
Speaker 3: interviews people, but he doesn't go on very many podcasts
Speaker 3: at all. So this was like a double surprise and
Speaker 3: I was so thrilled. We ended up recording this podcast
Speaker 3: at I think it was like eleven PM at night.
Speaker 3: It might have even been later, but frankly, it would
Speaker 3: not have mattered at what time of the night I
Speaker 3: would have gotten up to chat to Stephen Bartlett, and
Speaker 3: he was even better in person than what I could
Speaker 3: have imagined. In your book you wrote, and I'm quoting
Speaker 3: this in business, sports, and academia, and individual's personal philosophies
Speaker 3: are the single biggest predictors of how they behave now
Speaker 3: and in the future. If you know someone's philosophy or beliefs,
Speaker 3: so you can accurately forecast how they'll behave in any situation.
Speaker 3: From this, I'm really interested in what some of your
Speaker 3: philosophies are and like how in the business world you
Speaker 3: have created values that have led to consistent behavior within yourself.
Speaker 13: I mean, I've got so many important personal philosophies. I
Speaker 13: would say that the most important one, as I believe
Speaker 13: it now, is to sweat the small stuff. I genuinely believe, like,
Speaker 13: if people think the podcast that we've done is big
Speaker 13: this month, I think we'll do about thirty five million downloads.
Speaker 13: Not perform a good podcast host. And I said this
Speaker 13: on LinkedIn the other day, it's not because we have
Speaker 13: the most talented team in the world. Because when Jack joined,
Speaker 13: he was the first employee. He'd never done this before.
Speaker 13: He was a freelance felance of that recorded stuff. But
Speaker 13: he wasn't it never made a show before. The thing
Speaker 13: is and the thing where I go, that's our big
Speaker 13: philosophical advantage of everybody. And this is the same in
Speaker 13: my businesses or anything that I get involved in, is
Speaker 13: we absolutely care more about the small stuff than everybody else.
Speaker 13: And that's an interesting right, So, like, that's an interesting
Speaker 13: thing because you go, like the table I'm sad at
Speaker 13: narrow is the table I record the podcast act underneath
Speaker 13: this table which you can't see. There's a track pad,
Speaker 13: an Apple track pad glued to the underside of the table.
Speaker 13: And when I'm doing the podcast, if the guess there
Speaker 13: is something interesting, I just click it. You can't even
Speaker 13: see my hands. I click it with my fingerpun using
Speaker 13: AI to my team, and that becomes one of the
Speaker 13: titles and thumbnails. We take ninety of those titles and
Speaker 13: thumbs nails, so ninety clicks that I did under the table.
Speaker 13: We run them as ads on Facebook before the episode
Speaker 13: comes out for seven days to find out which title
Speaker 13: and topic is the most important to lead. I could
Speaker 13: tell you a million things we do. They are tiny things,
Speaker 13: small small things, the temperature of the room, knowing that
Speaker 13: when Israel Ada Sana got here, the song double Up
Speaker 13: by Nipsey Hustle is the song that makes him emotional
Speaker 13: and makes him open up. I could tell you a
Speaker 13: million of these tiny things that we do, and it's
Speaker 13: all of these little things that have added up but
Speaker 13: no one sees. So people look in and when they
Speaker 13: do their sort of dissection of dire of a Sea,
Speaker 13: and I watch these on TikTok, They're like, he's a
Speaker 13: good host. The trailers are great. I'm like, no, no, no,
Speaker 13: no, no no. It's all the stuff you can't see. And
Speaker 13: that's and I can see it in the graph. I
Speaker 13: can see the graph is changing because of these small tweaks.
Speaker 13: So my personal philosophy asn't related to success is I'm
Speaker 13: absolutely obsessed with the smallest things. The thing with the
Speaker 13: small stuff is things that are easy to do, like
Speaker 13: saving one pounds of brushing your teeth, are also therefore
Speaker 13: easy not to do. So most people don't do them.
Speaker 13: They don't think they're important. I think they're really important.
Speaker 13: And it's not just that. The other thing about doing
Speaker 13: the small stuff is it's easier to find one hundred
Speaker 13: tiny things than it is to find one big thing.
Speaker 13: Like I can't reinvent the will with podcasting. I'm not
Speaker 13: going to find a new YouTube or Spotify, am I.
Speaker 13: I can find that it's very easy for a team
Speaker 13: and for me to find one hundred small things, and
Speaker 13: that equals one hundred percent gain. It actually is more
Speaker 13: when things compound. It's much more than one hundred percent
Speaker 13: if you're thinking about compounding returns. And also the science
Speaker 13: has shown and I've sat here with Sir David Brailsford,
Speaker 13: who became the head of the English cycling team. He
Speaker 13: went into that team when they were down and out
Speaker 13: and winning nothing, and he turned it around to make
Speaker 13: them the most successful team in the world. And he
Speaker 13: had the same philosophy. He went and found out, can
Speaker 13: I make the water bottles a little bit bigger? Can
Speaker 13: I make the pillows in the hotels a little bit softer?
Speaker 13: And it wasn't just the accumulation of many, many one
Speaker 13: percent gains. He said to me, The most important thing
Speaker 13: from a psychological perspective, when you find small gains or
Speaker 13: any gains, is it makes your team feel like you're moving,
Speaker 13: like you have a sense of progress. And he goes,
Speaker 13: when I went into that English cycling team, we found
Speaker 13: all of these small little ways to improve, and suddenly
Speaker 13: this depressed team quote unquote, we felt like we were
Speaker 13: going somewhere. So from a psychological perspective, you see our
Speaker 13: team here when we find a one percent game, the
Speaker 13: phrase one percent is the most popular phrase used in
Speaker 13: our team. We have a head of experimentation, full time job,
Speaker 13: a full time data scientist on the podcast again full
Speaker 13: time job we've got from like you, and we have
Speaker 13: a channel in our called the one percent Chat where
Speaker 13: we're all looking for one percent games and we find
Speaker 13: what it's like a celebration, you know. And just to
Speaker 13: conclude their Harvard Business Review, when it interviewed people in
Speaker 13: work and asked them when their most enjoyable day in
Speaker 13: work was, then they looked at those days, and people
Speaker 13: had pointed at days when they had a sense of progress.
Speaker 13: So from a psychological perspective, it made people motivated. From
Speaker 13: a business perspective, it adds up to change the game.
Speaker 13: And I think all those small things equal a really
Speaker 13: really big thing. That's my big personal philosophy, and that
Speaker 13: for anyone that's like just starting in a podcast, it
Speaker 13: is the best news I could possibly give you. Because
Speaker 13: you don't need to make some amazing higher We didn't.
Speaker 13: You don't need to be super famous. I remember my
Speaker 13: manager walking in one day and said he had anxiety
Speaker 13: because no one wanted to come on the podcast and
Speaker 13: we needed to put it out this week. And I'm going,
Speaker 13: have you got any friends you can call? Steve? So
Speaker 13: I called this guy called Dad, who was a mate
Speaker 13: of mine. That is episode like seven, No one was
Speaker 13: interested When you have seven thousand subscribers on YouTube, like,
Speaker 13: no one's interested in it? Wanted to come on, but
Speaker 13: the thing and if you thok the last ninety days,
Speaker 13: we've had a million more subscribers in the last ninety days.
Speaker 13: So the laws of compounding say, goes really slow, and
Speaker 13: asked did and then it went like the Burj Khalifa,
Speaker 13: And honestly the thing went at which means it's accessible
Speaker 13: to everybody. Is look at what you're doing every day
Speaker 13: and find a way to make it one percent better.
Speaker 13: Isn't that easy to do? One percent?
Speaker 3: Coming up necked and avery're in your view is the
Speaker 3: thing that divided us more than anything. It is the
Speaker 3: biggest controversy that Life on Card has ever faced. It
Speaker 3: caused more arguments than we've ever had, and I still
Speaker 3: don't think that we're in agreeance. We still have very,
Speaker 3: very different and heated opinions about the shrine.
Speaker 1: I never hang anything in my house. I got some
Speaker 1: art recently and I loved it. I moved my house around,
Speaker 1: I moved to my furniture around, and now there are
Speaker 1: these big walls that were like really barren. So I
Speaker 1: was like, I need to hang some art on there.
Speaker 1: And so I got all romantic and I.
Speaker 5: Produced the She's laughing because she.
Speaker 1: Knows on line, ordered three frames of photos to be
Speaker 1: delivered to my house because I'm too lazy and don't
Speaker 1: have time to go do it. Of Ben and I
Speaker 1: when we did that really funny on the spare of
Speaker 1: the moment professional photo shoot at the Louver in Paris.
Speaker 1: If you don't know that story, guys, we were at
Speaker 1: the Louver in Paris and this Rando photographer asked to
Speaker 1: come and shoot us.
Speaker 5: We thought it was a scam. We said yes for
Speaker 5: a laugh, and we ended up getting these really beautiful
Speaker 5: photos from it. So I ordered three of them and
Speaker 5: printed them out decent.
Speaker 1: Size, and I put all three of them on this
Speaker 1: one wall in my laundroom, really next to each other.
Speaker 1: I thought it was really good, and I was so
Speaker 1: proud of the fact that I did it on my own.
Speaker 1: I hung it, I measured it. I was just really
Speaker 1: feeling myself. The pictures are great, and I'm in love.
Speaker 1: This is going into my suck is. I thought it
Speaker 1: was really nice. I've never been in love and put
Speaker 1: a picture up of me and my partner in my
Speaker 1: existence first time. All my friends do it, everyone else
Speaker 1: does it anyway?
Speaker 2: Do I do that?
Speaker 5: Do people put off?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 5: I go in to my friend's.
Speaker 1: House and there's like giant nude photoshoots of them. Anyway, really, yeah,
Speaker 1: so produce Akisha and my other friend Kim. Yes I'm
Speaker 1: naming shaming you, Kim. They both they both come into
Speaker 1: my house and just start tearing strips off me for
Speaker 1: the fact that I put photos up of myself and
Speaker 1: my partner in the lound room. First of all, they
Speaker 1: were like, okay, it other looks like someone's died. Someone's died,
Speaker 1: and this is a shrine or it looks like a
Speaker 1: wedding shoot. And apparently you're not allowed to put photos
Speaker 1: up of yourself and your partner unless you're married. Now,
Speaker 1: I disagree people.
Speaker 8: I think that is bullshit.
Speaker 5: I'm calling bullshit. Why do I have to be married
Speaker 5: to put photos up of me and my lover?
Speaker 2: I don't think it's that Like, I mean, I have
Speaker 2: a couple of little photos of Matt and Eyed. We
Speaker 2: got this like little pack and there was a few
Speaker 2: photos of us and like a.
Speaker 5: Once you put on the wall.
Speaker 2: They're like hard picture frames that you put on like
Speaker 2: a little side table.
Speaker 5: So there's a couple of those of Matt nite.
Speaker 2: I think it's more the fact because your lounge room
Speaker 2: is the first room you walk into when you enter
Speaker 2: your house.
Speaker 5: I don't have a west wing, in an east wing.
Speaker 5: I've got a tiny apartment totally.
Speaker 2: You walk in and there's a loud So maybe it
Speaker 2: looks like a shrine because it's three big photos together.
Speaker 2: But can I just in your defense, because your partner
Speaker 2: and you're doing long distance, you don't see them every day,
Speaker 2: so it's nice to have like a daily shrine to
Speaker 2: sit and look at.
Speaker 1: Also, I sort of did it because he's coming here
Speaker 1: in two weeks to visit, and I want him to
Speaker 1: be like, oh cute, like I mean something to her,
Speaker 1: she's done something, or you think.
Speaker 5: He's gonna see it and be like, babe, why have
Speaker 5: you got a shrine?
Speaker 1: Because because I showed him and he thought it was
Speaker 1: really cute. And at the end of the day, fuck you,
Speaker 1: produce a key and Kim, I will shrine the shit.
Speaker 12: Out of Mirus.
Speaker 1: So are you trying to say, because so I've got
Speaker 1: these three photos right and nothing else on.
Speaker 5: The wall very defensive?
Speaker 1: Are your extremely Are you trying to say you and
Speaker 1: the audience? Are you trying to say that if I
Speaker 1: had a few different photos surrounding it. It would be okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: whack some photos of Delilah up there.
Speaker 5: I would personally Julilah. I had some photos a sherry,
Speaker 5: mix it up a little.
Speaker 14: Why does that change the fact.
Speaker 5: Why?
Speaker 8: It just makes it a little less weird.
Speaker 5: And I don't know why. I don't know it's weird.
Speaker 5: I don't know the psychology behind it.
Speaker 3: Okay, it's the general feelings within.
Speaker 5: My body, deep internalized trauma. Here, I'm thinking in security.
Speaker 3: Why don't you have photos of me on your wall?
Speaker 1: I see you more than anyone in my entire life exactly.
Speaker 5: That's why I think I would make the wall.
Speaker 1: I don't need you plaster on my wall because I
Speaker 1: see you every day.
Speaker 5: If I'm not seeing you, I'm speaking to you.
Speaker 1: If I'm not speaking, we're dming simultaneously at the same
Speaker 1: time as we're dexting.
Speaker 5: Ben, I see you like a couple of times a year,
Speaker 5: and he is my love. Look, I have a key
Speaker 5: to your house. I think I'm just print.
Speaker 3: Some photos of myself and your friends and put them
Speaker 3: on the wall, just to eaven it out.
Speaker 2: Wall.
Speaker 5: Okay, Well, the pole said that it was okay.
Speaker 1: More people had said that it's fine, but I mean,
Speaker 1: if you want to update the pole, Kisha and do
Speaker 1: sub poles until you've got the result you want, which
Speaker 1: is that it's creepy, you do that.
Speaker 3: Like selective bias or something like that, going until I
Speaker 3: get the results.
Speaker 5: I wi confirmation bias.
Speaker 1: I actually got a few dms personally and they were
Speaker 1: all positive.
Speaker 5: They're all like stuff.
Speaker 1: Everyone hels, Brittany, you do you you put his bigger
Speaker 1: picture up of your Ben want?
Speaker 5: I was like, yes, Queen, that's fu se me else
Speaker 5: because I know they're.
Speaker 3: Really messaging me this because you also have photos of
Speaker 3: you and your partner on your wall.
Speaker 5: It does look a semi shriny, but it's candles and
Speaker 5: flowers underneath. You know what Ben's coming, guys, He's coming
Speaker 5: in only two weeks now. I'm very excited. But I
Speaker 5: will see what.
Speaker 1: He thinks when he gets here, and if he thinks
Speaker 1: it's weird, I'll add a couple of photos.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 1: I think the number one question to start with, and
Speaker 1: it's a question on everyone's lips is the shrine the shrine?
Speaker 5: You saw it?
Speaker 1: Finally in real life? Is it as bad as everyone?
Speaker 1: Laura produced a Keisha, don't punder me in there. I
Speaker 1: had not seen the shrine. I was only being told
Speaker 1: secondhand about the shrine. I also saw it for the
Speaker 1: first time when Ben saw it.
Speaker 15: To be fair, it is a little bit weird because
Speaker 15: a shrine is meant to feel dead people, and I
Speaker 15: know it's.
Speaker 5: Not a shrine. They've told me it's a shrine. I
Speaker 5: don't think it's a shrine. Okay, guys, don't fight.
Speaker 15: I don't like I'm meant to be meant to be
Speaker 15: a display of our love, which is fine, which is great.
Speaker 15: It's cute, but it's kind of like arranged like a
Speaker 15: deceased or something.
Speaker 5: It's like candles around on the floor. There's a few,
Speaker 5: a few.
Speaker 15: It's like roses, white roses and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: All about it is three photos. That's it in my
Speaker 1: whole house.
Speaker 15: I think we need to add some more photos to
Speaker 15: kind of take the shininess out.
Speaker 2: Of it, as in photos not of you, photos of
Speaker 2: other things, like with me being on the wall.
Speaker 5: But that makes it more shriny.
Speaker 15: No, I think it's just it's just a Paris photo shoot.
Speaker 15: I think we have some lovely pictures together. I think
Speaker 15: we need to add some more so it's a little
Speaker 15: bit of diversity.
Speaker 5: Okay, right now, it's more like a homage to Paris, although.
Speaker 2: Then I do want to kind of very romantic for me,
Speaker 2: by the way, Yeah, you did a really great job.
Speaker 2: You guys both are like models. But I do I
Speaker 2: think that if Britt was to add more photos to
Speaker 2: the wall from different parts of yours, it's that makes
Speaker 2: it real shrining. Right now, it's just like a nice tribute,
Speaker 2: but we're we're heading really deep into shrine territory.
Speaker 5: I just want to make a tribute to my love.
Speaker 5: This is a tribute showed out to Ben.
Speaker 3: And an update on the shrine. Britt still has it
Speaker 3: hanging up in her Lund room. It's still there, very proudly.
Speaker 3: Way too high, it's too small. It still looks really awkward.
Speaker 3: But she's proud of it, and I'm kind of proud
Speaker 3: of her for sticking to her guns. I'm actually somewhat impressed,
Speaker 3: and I respect the fact she hasn't taken it down
Speaker 3: because of the public backlash that she faced from these photos.
Speaker 3: Coming up next in Our Rearing of You is the
Speaker 3: phenomenal Elizabeth Day. Now. Elizabeth Day is an author. She's
Speaker 3: also a podcaster, she has a podcast It's all about
Speaker 3: failure and what you can learn from failures in your
Speaker 3: life and over the course of life. I'm cut. Laura
Speaker 3: and britt have had many, many, many conversations about infertility.
Speaker 3: They've had a lot of conversations about being child free
Speaker 3: by choice and that journey to motherhood being more complex
Speaker 3: than what I think a lot of us expected it
Speaker 3: to be. But Elizabeth Day was I think the first
Speaker 3: person that we've ever spoken to who has come to
Speaker 3: peace with the fact that they were child free, but
Speaker 3: not by choice. Elizabeth went through a really tumultuous fertility journey.
Speaker 3: She had suffered many miscarriages, and this moment was where
Speaker 3: Elizabeth articulated where else she has found purpose in her
Speaker 3: life because she expected that she kind of wouldn't have
Speaker 3: that amount of purpose for anything other than being a mother.
Speaker 2: I can only imagine that that must be a very
Speaker 2: difficult process to go through the acceptance phase of that.
Speaker 2: What was those years of your life like or how
Speaker 2: did that When did you come to the decision that
Speaker 2: you were like, it's not going to happen for me. Yeah,
Speaker 2: very recently, and also to that at the beginning of
Speaker 2: this year, I'm now, as you know, married to a
Speaker 2: wander person, and we found out that I was pregnant naturally,
Speaker 2: completely out of the blue, just after my forty first birthday,
Speaker 2: and very sadly, that pregnancy ended in miscarriage. And then
Speaker 2: I got pregnant again and that one ended in miscarriage.
Speaker 2: And throughout it all, I was also undergoing various interventions,
Speaker 2: surgical interventions and like trying new treatments, and we decided
Speaker 2: to have a sort of cutting edge fertility treatment at
Speaker 2: the beginning of this year, and I'd put a lot
Speaker 2: of hope into that, and it was one of those
Speaker 2: situations where it felt like the universe was sending you
Speaker 2: signs saying it was all going to work. It was
Speaker 2: so weird, and it didn't, and that was also one
Speaker 2: of the lowest points. But this time I had someone
Speaker 2: by my side and it felt like we were sharing
Speaker 2: it and walking through our pain together, and that was
Speaker 2: actually part of my realization. I feel so lucky to
Speaker 2: have the relationship and the love that I have with
Speaker 2: my partner, and many people don't have that, and many
Speaker 2: people who don't have that will experience a quality of
Speaker 2: love with their children that is incredibly special. But I
Speaker 2: realized that so many people don't experience that kind of
Speaker 2: love and I already have that and that could be enough.
Speaker 11: And I'm now at peace and have let go of
Speaker 11: the trying to have a baby. And I never thought
Speaker 11: I would be at this point. And it has taken
Speaker 11: me many months. Actually, I had dinner with a friend
Speaker 11: last night. She's like, it's taken you nine months, and
Speaker 11: I was like, oh, that's so true, because this whole
Speaker 11: thing happened in January. And yes, I constantly felt like
Speaker 11: a failure. And I actually think a lot of the
Speaker 11: medical language seems designed to make women, specifically women, feel
Speaker 11: like failures. And obviously, I know on one level it's
Speaker 11: not my failure, but it felt like my body wasn't
Speaker 11: doing what so many other women could do and what
Speaker 11: so much of historical society affected me to do. And
Speaker 11: all the time that I was going through all of
Speaker 11: these various procedures, I was told, overwhelmingly by male consultants
Speaker 11: that I was failing to respond to the drugs. I'm
Speaker 11: sure you heard that.
Speaker 1: It's unsuccessful, that just the technology, Yeah, exactly, like my
Speaker 1: friend was told she had an incompetent cervix.
Speaker 11: Another person I know was told she had an inhospitable womb.
Speaker 11: But this is all language that is just accepted. It
Speaker 11: is quite it's used quite frequently. And one of the
Speaker 11: things that I have been passionate about in terms of
Speaker 11: having these sort of conversations is attacking that language because
Speaker 11: I internalized it so much for so long that it
Speaker 11: was really difficult to separate my feeling about myself and
Speaker 11: the baby I was trying to create, and so it
Speaker 11: felt really sad a lot of the time. And having
Speaker 11: conversations about it and writing about it made me feel
Speaker 11: better because that loneliness that we've discovered. The antidote to
Speaker 11: that was understanding that other people had these stories too,
Speaker 11: and for a long time, particularly women, but also men,
Speaker 11: felt a misplaced sense of stigma about fertility issues and
Speaker 11: didn't feel able to share. And I'm so glad that
Speaker 11: those conversations are opening up because I feel less alone
Speaker 11: as a result, and I feel more validated, and now
Speaker 11: I really understand being on the other side of it.
Speaker 11: My life has tremendous purpose, even if being a biological
Speaker 11: mother isn't going to be part of it. Not only
Speaker 11: are there other ways that we can parent, and I
Speaker 11: don't necessarily just mean having other children in my life.
Speaker 11: I mean in the way that we podcast or the
Speaker 11: way that we create that in some sort of way
Speaker 11: is an act of mothering or parenting or sharing or connecting.
Speaker 11: And I just want anyone who is listening to this
Speaker 11: who might be in the grip of a fertility journey
Speaker 11: right now and might not be able to see light
Speaker 11: on the other side. I never thought I would feel
Speaker 11: as at peace as I know I do. And I
Speaker 11: promise you that it is possible and that you will
Speaker 11: know when the time is right for you.
Speaker 3: I truly, truly loved that episode. Elizabeth spoke about all
Speaker 3: things to do with failure. She also spoke about this
Speaker 3: thing called fertility privilege that caused quite an uproar around
Speaker 3: the world. Really, there were many, many, many articles written
Speaker 3: about it, and when I first heard the words, I
Speaker 3: was a bit like fertility privilege, like that, it's an
Speaker 3: interesting termed phrase. But in that episode she explained what
Speaker 3: she meant by it, and I thought it was a
Speaker 3: very very insightful position to have on something and something
Speaker 3: that I feel better that I'm aware of for anyone
Speaker 3: around me who may be struggling with their fertility. Coming
Speaker 3: up next, in our Year in Review is one of
Speaker 3: the deepest and most weird rabbit holes that Laura has
Speaker 3: ever embarked upon. I don't know where this one came from,
Speaker 3: if I'm honest, but I remember sitting in the studio
Speaker 3: and I had actual tears of laughter rolling down my face.
Speaker 5: Because it was just it was so random.
Speaker 2: I went down a rabbit hole, a rabbit hole that
Speaker 2: satisfied me in ways I never thought it would. And
Speaker 2: now I know something I never thought I would know.
Speaker 2: But I really encourage everyone to go and google it.
Speaker 2: What was said rabbit hole? Have you ever googled what
Speaker 2: a pigeon's nest looks like?
Speaker 5: A pigeon? Actually?
Speaker 1: Yeah, every second Saturday I google that, Laura, Why would
Speaker 1: I have googled what a pigeon's nest is?
Speaker 9: No?
Speaker 2: Okay, everybody in a car, wherever you are listening, and
Speaker 2: maybe you're on a bus, maybe' on in a taxi,
Speaker 2: who knows, maybe you're walking hot go walk, Just stop
Speaker 2: and just google pigeon nest.
Speaker 5: Because pigeons are particularly poor at.
Speaker 2: Building nests, and the level of effort that they put
Speaker 2: into taking care of their home and raising their little
Speaker 2: egg child is truly hilarious.
Speaker 1: I thought you were going to tell me something other
Speaker 1: than that. I thought pigeon nest was like a euphinism
Speaker 1: for something naughty or sexy, or I thought you were
Speaker 1: gonna like think you were googling an innocent pigeoness, but
Speaker 1: then pow, it's something else.
Speaker 5: But no, it's actually just a nest.
Speaker 2: It's a real nest. Can I just show you. I
Speaker 2: need to show you some examples of what a pigeon
Speaker 2: nest looks like. They'll just lay an egg anywhere. They'll
Speaker 2: go and get one single fucking stick and lay it
Speaker 2: next to their egg, and they'll be like, job done.
Speaker 5: Look at this shit. It's so funny.
Speaker 2: If you are feeling like you're having if you've ever
Speaker 2: felt bad at your job, if you've ever questioned or
Speaker 2: had like imposter syndrome, I thought, maybe I'm not equipped
Speaker 2: for this google pigeon nest and it will make you.
Speaker 5: Look at that one. The pigeon put a stick in an.
Speaker 8: Egg on a bed.
Speaker 5: Look at this pigeon. It laid an egg under a car.
Speaker 8: It's so funny.
Speaker 5: I can't see it. Can you see the egg under
Speaker 5: a wheel?
Speaker 1: I mean that's dangerous, My Grandma Rest in peace.
Speaker 5: She's no longer with us.
Speaker 1: My grandma spent her whole life racing pigeons. She's a
Speaker 1: pigeon racer. So I grew up with pigeons in a
Speaker 1: pigeon cage. I would be the pigeon lady. I'd walk
Speaker 1: into her pigeon and cage and you'd have to close it,
Speaker 1: and they were like, I'm not exaggerating. There were fifty
Speaker 1: pigeons in living together in this huge, huge pigeon cage.
Speaker 1: I shouldn't say that was an avery. And you'd walk
Speaker 1: in and I'd be that pigeon lady. I feel like
Speaker 1: I was, you knowing pet Detective Jim Carrey in that
Speaker 1: scene where he walks into his.
Speaker 2: They're called homing pigeons. I used to have a home
Speaker 2: in pigeon when I was a kid. This is all
Speaker 2: getting weird now.
Speaker 14: Wait sorry, racing pigeons and she would literally, I guess
Speaker 14: they're homing pigeons on roy though, like you would send
Speaker 14: them out and they'd have to go and do a
Speaker 14: job and then they'd have to come back, and it
Speaker 14: was a race and.
Speaker 1: It was hectic. I thought it was the coolest thing,
Speaker 1: but they all laid eggs like that, So I didn't
Speaker 1: know if that was an actual nest or if that
Speaker 1: was just a racing pigeon avery nest, because.
Speaker 5: The pigeons are so fast to get the job done.
Speaker 5: Leave the eggs anyway. Anyway, just go and do it.
Speaker 5: It's so good.
Speaker 2: It's so enjoyable to sometimes get down like a hole
Speaker 2: in the internet and you're like, oh, here we are here,
Speaker 2: we are looking at pictures of pigeon eggs, and it
Speaker 2: was really satisfying.
Speaker 5: I'm just wondering how many listeners we just lost that
Speaker 5: and you too, like hung home.
Speaker 2: I think if anything, if anything, people are going to
Speaker 2: be like, wow, I didn't know that, and I'm glad
Speaker 2: I do.
Speaker 5: There you go. That'll be the thing that you'll bring
Speaker 5: to the party on Saturday night.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 5: I don't think no, no, I don't think it will be.
Speaker 5: But I may or may.
Speaker 1: Not google it tonight when I'm on the lounge and
Speaker 1: I'm relaxed, I might go down the rabbit hole.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're gonna put photos on our social media, So
Speaker 2: if you can't be bothered, just go and have a
Speaker 2: look there.
Speaker 1: What actually brought you to the point where you wanted
Speaker 1: to know what pigeons nests look like.
Speaker 5: Things have been tough in life lately.
Speaker 2: But now, honestly, I don't know what happened. I read
Speaker 2: somewhere that pigeons were particularly bad at making nests. I
Speaker 2: read that and I was like, well, I wonder how bad?
Speaker 2: And then I found myself googling it and fuck it was.
Speaker 2: It was a really enjoyable little ride there.
Speaker 5: Okay, oh, the pigeons.
Speaker 3: When someone think of the pigeons, now, I know that
Speaker 3: what I'm going to say next is going to ruffle
Speaker 3: some feathers, but I still don't like them.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry.
Speaker 8: If you're a.
Speaker 3: Pigeon enthusiast, or if you have a lot of deep
Speaker 3: love for pigeons, I still consider them to be the
Speaker 3: rats of the sky. They're in the way everywhere, They're just.
Speaker 5: They're just annoying. Anyway, we need to.
Speaker 3: Stop talking about pigeons, So I wonder if the pigeons
Speaker 3: will continue into twenty twenty four. Coming up next to
Speaker 3: our year in review is the wonderful Trinny woodle Now.
Speaker 3: Triny is the powerhouse behind Trinny London, the makeup and
Speaker 3: the skincare brand that is her business, and she also
Speaker 3: might be known because I think it was around about
Speaker 3: two decades ago she had a television show in the
Speaker 3: UK where she was known for styling people and doing
Speaker 3: these makeovers. And now she does a lot of that
Speaker 3: work on social media, so you might see her doing
Speaker 3: outfits or doing different fashion based things on social media.
Speaker 3: She's an author, she is also a podcaster, and she
Speaker 3: is one of the women that I think really bucks
Speaker 3: the trend of this thing that we see amongst so
Speaker 3: much of our media. And I was actually a little
Speaker 3: bit shocked by her response to this, because I realized
Speaker 3: while the girls were having this conversation with her that
Speaker 3: she was actually.
Speaker 2: A little bit offended the mention at the beginning, the
Speaker 2: currency of the aging woman, the reason why we were
Speaker 2: speaking about this. There's been a lot of articles that
Speaker 2: have come out in Australia over the past year, and
Speaker 2: I think that it's come more into conversation, this recognition
Speaker 2: that as women get older, they seem to be less valuable.
Speaker 2: And I say that in terms of media, in terms
Speaker 2: of career opportunities, there's an invisibility that can happen. How
Speaker 2: have you experienced this in terms of well, what do
Speaker 2: you see because your career has only gotten more powerful,
Speaker 2: more amazing, and you have shined brighter as the years
Speaker 2: have progressed. But I would say that that doesn't seem
Speaker 2: to be the general take for most women or how
Speaker 2: they feel about themselves as they've aged.
Speaker 10: This is challenging because I've for the last thirty years
Speaker 10: work for myself all right, and I think when you
Speaker 10: work in a career for somebody else it can be
Speaker 10: more challenging. But there is also that sense of a
Speaker 10: glass ceiling, or you just imagine there is no ceiling.
Speaker 10: So through my life, I have never seen a fucking ceiling, okay,
Speaker 10: And I think it's not so much that sense of defeatism.
Speaker 10: It's not. But there's a lot of people who are
Speaker 10: in a situation where sealing to put on top of
Speaker 10: them and they have to really break through. And there
Speaker 10: are many champions out there on equal pay, on women's
Speaker 10: rights in the workplace, But there's also something about making
Speaker 10: your world less possible or making your world limitless. And
Speaker 10: for me, I've definitely had times when I felt it's
Speaker 10: not going to happen and sort of do vetherapy, but
Speaker 10: I've felt a disappointment in myself. I've never felt it's
Speaker 10: an outside force. I felt I haven't lived up to
Speaker 10: my potential, so I put the onus on me more
Speaker 10: than on the outside world. And I don't know. Everyone
Speaker 10: is different and everyone have a different circum situation. But
Speaker 10: I think that this is my best decade yet. I
Speaker 10: feel that emphatically. I mean I feel I know myself,
Speaker 10: I have self belief, I have self worth, I know
Speaker 10: who I am, I know what my faults are. Most
Speaker 10: of the time, I learn new ones every day. I
Speaker 10: think I have a gross mindset, not a fixed mindset,
Speaker 10: on fifty percent of my life. I think that what
Speaker 10: I found offensive is the word the aging woman. I
Speaker 10: found that really offensive because I feel ageless. You know, people,
Speaker 10: in every interview that I've had in Sydney, sitting down,
Speaker 10: there is that question, how does it feel that you're
Speaker 10: going to turn sixty next year? Every single interfere, like
Speaker 10: in the last when I was in New York too,
Speaker 10: and I'm like, I literally feel, what do I want
Speaker 10: to do for a birthday? That's literally all I feel.
Speaker 10: I feel no sense of I've never put an attachment
Speaker 10: to my ability with age ever.
Speaker 2: But that's the thing, right, all those questions, it all
Speaker 2: comes from the social structures around us that tells us
Speaker 2: that we're supposed to care. I mean, even at thirty seven,
Speaker 2: there's things that tell you that you're supposed to care.
Speaker 2: You have kids, you're supposed to care. I remember when
Speaker 2: I first had my children and I had this innate
Speaker 2: fear that my career was over, that I would not
Speaker 2: be able to continue in the same way that I had.
Speaker 2: And it's because, I mean, there are so many pioneering
Speaker 2: women who have shown that there.
Speaker 5: Are different parts.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, I think you still hit
Speaker 2: these milestones and you're up against what society tells you
Speaker 2: is capable. And I appreciate your perspective on whether you
Speaker 2: put the limitations on yourself or whether you can see
Speaker 2: that as limitless. But I think that that is a
Speaker 2: really amazing mindset that not everyone has. Hence why the
Speaker 2: questions come.
Speaker 13: Yeah.
Speaker 10: Another thing I love, and it's also ironic when it's
Speaker 10: written by female journalists, is that there's a look at her,
Speaker 10: how can she have a beauty brand? She does botox,
Speaker 10: all right, which is what I'll get, And I'll go, Yeah,
Speaker 10: I fucking do botox. I've done since I was thirty five.
Speaker 10: I didn't realize and it was, you know, stopping lines.
Speaker 10: It was because I did, Telly, and I have a
Speaker 10: very moving forehead and it's stopped my forehead moving and
Speaker 10: I was so relieved. But it's then meant I didn't
Speaker 10: get lines at my forehead. But I think that there
Speaker 10: are also other women who say, you know, in a way,
Speaker 10: they're sort of saying, why do you fight? Why didn't
Speaker 10: you age gracefully? And I fucking challenge that. And the
Speaker 10: reason I challenge it is I want to wake up.
Speaker 10: I want to look in the mirror and either I'll
Speaker 10: feel that already or I'll do something to make myself
Speaker 10: feel that where I have the energy to do anything
Speaker 10: I want to do today. All right. So I got
Speaker 10: up this morning. We had a long day. We started
Speaker 10: at five thirty, we ended at ten o'clock at night.
Speaker 10: I got to bed eleven. It was a long day
Speaker 10: for a twenty year old and for a six year old,
Speaker 10: all right. And then I got up this morning and
Speaker 10: I thought, do I go and work out at five
Speaker 10: thirty six? Do I really do that? But I thought,
Speaker 10: I want to look after my body, so looks after me.
Speaker 10: I want to feel full of energy. I want to
Speaker 10: come today and do the podcast and give you my
Speaker 10: best and I want to breathe every day. So that
Speaker 10: whole sense of that it's a vanity matrix, It isn't
Speaker 10: a vanity matrix. It's that we want to feel empowered
Speaker 10: and fantastic about who we are as people, and whatever
Speaker 10: it takes, whatever it takes, we have to stop judging,
Speaker 10: and we have to of women judging each other of
Speaker 10: you know, it can only be this past, like why
Speaker 10: don't you let your hair go green? Actually because I
Speaker 10: don't like my gray hair, because it will look like
Speaker 10: the end of a foxtail.
Speaker 3: I just absolutely loved getting to meet Triny Woodle. She's
Speaker 3: one of those people that she'll walk into a room
Speaker 3: and command attention, but not in an arrogant way, not
Speaker 3: in a like, not in a way that makes you
Speaker 3: think she's wanting the attention. She's just one of those
Speaker 3: people that walks into a room and you feel that
Speaker 3: there's the presence of someone there. I don't know if
Speaker 3: I'm explaining that properly, but she has that aura about her.
Speaker 3: She came into the studio with an entourage of like
Speaker 3: eight people, and they were all great. It was so
Speaker 3: nice to hang out with her and her team and
Speaker 3: learn from her. And Trinny spoke on this episode about
Speaker 3: something that she doesn't talk about very publicly. She has
Speaker 3: mentioned it before, but she doesn't talk about it much,
Speaker 3: and I think she must have felt quite comfortable with
Speaker 3: Laura and Britt to discuss this. Treating battled with a
Speaker 3: drug addiction when she was in her twenties, and the
Speaker 3: also of her life shifted hugely because of her ability
Speaker 3: to become sober, and that was a particularly interesting part
Speaker 3: of the episode. If you want to go back and
Speaker 3: listen through to it, I really really highly recommend it.
Speaker 3: Coming up next in our rear in your view is
Speaker 3: something that we speak about. I guess the topic we
Speaker 3: talk about a lot on Life on Cut. It's got
Speaker 3: to do with this either milestone anxiety or milestone disappointment.
Speaker 5: It's the idea.
Speaker 3: That you might not be at a certain part of
Speaker 3: your life as what you expected to be, or maybe
Speaker 3: you are there and it doesn't feel how you thought
Speaker 3: it was going to feel. We talk about it a
Speaker 3: lot at times, like what we're experiencing right now, you
Speaker 3: know that, like kind of Christmas New Year periods, they're
Speaker 3: these self evaluation times. And I think we also do
Speaker 3: it a lot on birthdays, and I kind of wish
Speaker 3: that I had had the vocabulary to talk about it,
Speaker 3: because now listening back to this, I think it was
Speaker 3: the moment that Laura and I realized what the words
Speaker 3: were for what I was experiencing, and it was a
Speaker 3: little bit of one of those figure out moments for me.
Speaker 2: And last year, although like birthdays can be such amazing, exciting,
Speaker 2: beautiful celebrations of like making another year around the sun,
Speaker 2: you spoke about something kind of like a milestone. Disappointment
Speaker 2: is what you coined it at this idea that during
Speaker 2: birthdays it's a period for you where you are not
Speaker 2: as happy or you're not as excited, and it kind
Speaker 2: of brings up the things that you don't have in
Speaker 2: life more so the celebration of the things that you do.
Speaker 5: How do you feel about it on this big three
Speaker 5: to zero?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this is my thirtiest, So this is a
Speaker 3: particular milestone. And I think since we had that conversation,
Speaker 3: I really sat and thought about it a bit, and
Speaker 3: I got a lot of messages from beautiful people that
Speaker 3: listen to the podcast being like, I feel exactly the same.
Speaker 3: This is so normal, and we spoke about how when
Speaker 3: your birthday rolls around, it it's kind of like that
Speaker 3: reminder of you're another year older, similar to New Year's,
Speaker 3: you know, like what have you done in this last year?
Speaker 3: What have you accomplished? What have you achieved? And then
Speaker 3: the flip side of it is what are you missing
Speaker 3: from your life that you really want? And so last
Speaker 3: year I really spoke about the fact that I had
Speaker 3: and I do think that I've had some unusually negative
Speaker 3: things happen on my birthday, like I've been made redundant,
Speaker 3: I've lost family members, like I've had some kind of actual,
Speaker 3: very life shitty things happen. But it just didn't ever
Speaker 3: seem to live up to the expectation. I would see
Speaker 3: other people in my life that were like, it's birthday
Speaker 3: week and they were so excited, and I felt almost
Speaker 3: the polar opposite. I actually had this immense sense of
Speaker 3: anxiety of like, oh God, everyone's gonna be giving me
Speaker 3: all of this attention, and I just feel as though
Speaker 3: I maybe am not measuring it, Like I just had
Speaker 3: this weird internal guttural like awkwardness about it.
Speaker 2: Did you feel as though that amplified year on you like,
Speaker 2: as you get older that that feeling became more because
Speaker 2: it's almost like, and I know when we talk about
Speaker 2: the things that you don't have in life, whether it's
Speaker 2: that you haven't got the career, or you don't have
Speaker 2: the relationship, or your life just hasn't met them mind milestones,
Speaker 2: the arbitrary milestones that we set for ourselves. Did you
Speaker 2: find that with each passing year that feeling got worse
Speaker 2: or was it just kind of this overarching birthdays fucking
Speaker 2: suck feeling.
Speaker 3: I think it did. I think it wasn't linear, like
Speaker 3: it wasn't like each year.
Speaker 5: It got worse and worse and worse.
Speaker 3: But I think the massive part of it was that,
Speaker 3: you know, I grew up in the kind of environment
Speaker 3: where if someone had said to me, oh, you'd be
Speaker 3: getting to thirty, you wouldn't be married, you wouldn't have
Speaker 3: had a family, which is what I thought I would have,
Speaker 3: you know, as a teenager, you're like, oh, that's what
Speaker 3: I expect to have in my future. And I think
Speaker 3: it just became a little bit more like, well, the
Speaker 3: years are going by, like plan A was here and
Speaker 3: my life was leaps and miles away.
Speaker 5: Ye right now, Yeah, but I.
Speaker 3: Also acknowledge that Plan F has been the fucking best,
Speaker 3: you know, and so I guess it was just this
Speaker 3: weighing up of like what I expected my life would
Speaker 3: be like at a certain time and what actually was
Speaker 3: like at a certain time.
Speaker 2: We had an interesting conversation the car on the ride
Speaker 2: over here, and you said that this birthday has felt
Speaker 2: significantly different though, that you felt like you've gone into
Speaker 2: your thirty of feeling happier. But also I think you
Speaker 2: recognize like the cliche of why you feel happier this year.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I hate to admit because I don't think it's
Speaker 3: very self empowerment. I don't think it's very feminist to
Speaker 3: be like, yeah, this birthday felt really different because I
Speaker 3: woke up with someone that I really care about. My
Speaker 3: lovely boyfriend made me feel so special over the weekend.
Speaker 3: We went for a beautiful dinner last night, he spoiled
Speaker 3: me with gifts, and then like he stayed over at
Speaker 3: my house last night. I wonder if I would have
Speaker 3: felt the same about turning thirty had he not been
Speaker 3: a part of my life, and had he not made
Speaker 3: me feel so special, Because I think it really goes
Speaker 3: back to the fact that like I weigh up what
Speaker 3: I do and don't have on birthdays, and like I
Speaker 3: think if I had been turning thirty and still single,
Speaker 3: I maybe would have been like the years ago, no
Speaker 3: urinete f decade now and like you haven't found someone.
Speaker 3: And so I feel as though a lot of people
Speaker 3: that would have done that would have felt really lonely
Speaker 3: and like they weren't living up to what they wanted
Speaker 3: out of their life.
Speaker 5: Cause you to make me cry, I know, I don't
Speaker 5: know why I'm getting emotional.
Speaker 16: I think it's because I kind of feel a bit
Speaker 16: guilty for being like, you know, you should love yourself
Speaker 16: enough and you should be proud enough of what you've
Speaker 16: done that you don't need a boyfriend to feel good
Speaker 16: about yourself.
Speaker 3: But the truth is, it really does make me feel
Speaker 3: better about myself.
Speaker 5: So like maybe that's a bit of a fault, but
Speaker 5: the truth, it's not a fault. Like and I don't know.
Speaker 2: I mean, we talk about relationships all the time. It's
Speaker 2: this double edged sword. Right on one hand, we want
Speaker 2: to talk about being single in a way of if
Speaker 2: you can reach a place where you feel empowered by
Speaker 2: being single and you feel independent and like you have
Speaker 2: control over the life you live and control over your
Speaker 2: own happiness, all those things. You know, being single is
Speaker 2: way better than being in a relationship that it's an
Speaker 2: unhappy or unhealthy relationship.
Speaker 5: But just going back to something.
Speaker 2: That you said, this idea that it's like almost anti feminist,
Speaker 2: is okay to acknowledge the fact that some people feel
Speaker 2: lonely and they are looking to be in relationships and
Speaker 2: it's something that they fundamentally want in their life. Because
Speaker 2: you know, when we talk about relationships all the time,
Speaker 2: we often preach and Britain I have both done this,
Speaker 2: like we preach that you know, you have to get
Speaker 2: to a place where you're okay with being single, where
Speaker 2: you know it's great to be independent, it's great to
Speaker 2: know and to value all the things that you bring
Speaker 2: before being in a relationship yourself. But I do think
Speaker 2: that socially we put so much importance on relationships. We
Speaker 2: have placed relationships as a almost like an indicator of success.
Speaker 2: There is what success have you had in your work life?
Speaker 2: And there is what success have you had in your
Speaker 2: personal life? And hugely that personal life is romantic relationships.
Speaker 2: And I think secondary to that is our friendships. And
Speaker 2: I wish that dynamic would change, But I think birthdays
Speaker 2: and New Years particularly are these real milestone moments that
Speaker 2: can make people feel incredibly lonely when they don't have
Speaker 2: the thing that they want. And I want to reiterate
Speaker 2: the conversation we had on last year's episode. It's so
Speaker 2: okay if you do feel lonely in those moments, and
Speaker 2: you're not a failure for wanting to have something that
Speaker 2: you don't have. And I guess it's just this nice
Speaker 2: reminder that life is not static. Just because you're you're
Speaker 2: not where you thought you would be this year doesn't
Speaker 2: mean that you won't be there next year. And just
Speaker 2: riding that wave now the reason that this was one
Speaker 2: of my favorite parts of the year, And it could
Speaker 2: be a little bit selfish to be saying that, but
Speaker 2: it's actually because I learned so much from what Laura
Speaker 2: had to say in that moment I had been feeling.
Speaker 3: I think it's guilt. I think i'd felt bad for
Speaker 3: the fact that I had wanted a loving relationship so
Speaker 3: deeply in my life, and that I wasn't able to
Speaker 3: kind of articulate the fact that I felt a little
Speaker 3: bit ashamed for desiring that so much, you know, because
Speaker 3: I think we speak so much about being self assured,
Speaker 3: independent women, and I felt like that went against the grain.
Speaker 3: But from what Laura said in that moment, it actually
Speaker 3: made me realize that it's absolutely okay to deeply desire
Speaker 3: love in your life and to not want to be
Speaker 3: by yourself and to have that romantic connection.
Speaker 5: It's okay to crave that.
Speaker 3: Maybe this is something that you felt in your life,
Speaker 3: and perhaps you're single right now when you're really really
Speaker 3: desiring that deep love, and I don't want you to
Speaker 3: feel bad for that. I don't want you to feel
Speaker 3: as though you're incomplete for wanting that in your life.
Speaker 3: Coming up next in our rearing of you is I
Speaker 3: would go to say the wildest ask gun cut we
Speaker 3: have ever received. My heart still goes out to this person.
Speaker 3: I think about you all the time. We would absolutely
Speaker 3: love an aftermath, but this is the ask gun cut
Speaker 3: about the threesome that ended in a pregnancy.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm an absolute loss. My fiance and I have
Speaker 1: been together for six years. We have an amazing relationship,
Speaker 1: and shortly after we got engaged, we decided to make
Speaker 1: our secret fantasy a reality. After deciding that I didn't
Speaker 1: want to die wondering. I asked my fiance if he
Speaker 1: would be willing to have a threesome one of the
Speaker 1: experience for us both before we get married. We're both
Speaker 1: quite open and trusting with each other and wanted to
Speaker 1: experience just this one thing one time. We both agreed
Speaker 1: to doing this, and I ended up asking a friend
Speaker 1: of mine if she would be willing. We all agreed,
Speaker 1: and after a lot of great communication, we worked out
Speaker 1: what we were okay with and how it would all
Speaker 1: go down slash who would go down here. I felt
Speaker 1: comfortable and secure about doing this with a friend that
Speaker 1: I had asked because we're not super close, but we
Speaker 1: have known each other for a long time.
Speaker 5: I didn't really want to do this with a friend
Speaker 5: that would be around a lot. I didn't want them
Speaker 5: to be super close to me.
Speaker 1: She was very respectful about boundaries and made sure I
Speaker 1: was happy with everything. When it came to do and
Speaker 1: the deed, my fiance and I were both super stoked
Speaker 1: we did this, and we said we felt closer than ever.
Speaker 8: Now.
Speaker 1: There's a lot in this, so I'm going to fast
Speaker 1: forward basically the next little while.
Speaker 5: We didn't talk to.
Speaker 1: That girl We messaged her twice just to keep contact,
Speaker 1: but she's not a close friend. Last week she called
Speaker 1: and dropped an absolute bomb shell on us. She called
Speaker 1: me when I was at work and told me that
Speaker 1: she was pregnant. I don't even have word craig bragante,
Speaker 1: and that my fiance is a father. I called my
Speaker 1: fiance straight away. He said, oh my god, I actually
Speaker 1: think the condom did break, but I was too drunk
Speaker 1: to remember or to even think about talking about it.
Speaker 1: She's decided to keep the baby. Holy shit, I know,
Speaker 1: she said. I feel really blindsided. I have no idea
Speaker 1: what to do. How do I even process this. My
Speaker 1: fiance and I do want kids together one day, but
Speaker 1: the idea of him having a baby with another woman
Speaker 1: makes me feel sick. He's so upset and confused about
Speaker 1: what to do or how to feel. How do we
Speaker 1: explain this to friends and family? How do we know
Speaker 1: if this can even work? I feel so overwhelmed. I
Speaker 1: don't know if I can stay in this relationship and
Speaker 1: move over it. But there's nothing wrong with our relationship
Speaker 1: except this.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, let's attack it from the top down. You
Speaker 2: can't do anything if she wants to keep this baby.
Speaker 2: That is absolutely one hundred percent her decision, and unfortunately,
Speaker 2: it means that if you want to stay in a
Speaker 2: relationship with your husband, your fiance, that this baby and
Speaker 2: it's mum, your friend, is going to be in your
Speaker 2: life forever, forever, and that's going to be something that
Speaker 2: you're going to have to make like you're gonna have
Speaker 2: to go to some therapy and you're going to have
Speaker 2: to come to terms with if it's something that you
Speaker 2: are able to do.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 2: I think realistically, I'm trying to put myself in your position,
Speaker 2: which is just I can't even I cannot even imagine
Speaker 2: what it is that you're going through. But I guess
Speaker 2: what I would try and compartmentalize is that this was
Speaker 2: a decision that you guys both made together mutually as
Speaker 2: a couple, that you wanted to do, and you didn't
Speaker 2: have any regrets after doing it. Obviously, you don't want
Speaker 2: to have a baby. That's not something that was on
Speaker 2: the cards or it wasn't a plan. But I don't
Speaker 2: think it has to come at the sacrifice of your
Speaker 2: relationship because he didn't go out and cheat on you.
Speaker 2: You mutually had this experience together and now the byproduct
Speaker 2: of that is that he's going to be the father
Speaker 2: or the DNA contributor to a baby. I think together
Speaker 2: the two of you have to make the decisions around
Speaker 2: one obviously if you're going to stay together, but to
Speaker 2: what sort of father, What sort of contribution does he
Speaker 2: want to make into that child's life. And that can
Speaker 2: be being a proactive dad, that can be not anything
Speaker 2: if he doesn't want to be. I'm not saying that
Speaker 2: that is the great option or that is the most
Speaker 2: moral option, but that is also an option. He can
Speaker 2: financially contribute to the child's life, but he doesn't have
Speaker 2: to be a proactive part of the child's life. And
Speaker 2: how do you explain it to friends and family?
Speaker 5: You tell him, I think you have to tell the truth.
Speaker 2: I think you be honest. I think you genuinely be honest.
Speaker 2: And I think the reason why you genuinely be honest,
Speaker 2: especially with people in your closest knit circle, is because
Speaker 2: the assumption is going to be that he cheated on you,
Speaker 2: And if you love your partner and you want to
Speaker 2: protect your I think you carry a bit of that
Speaker 2: weight together because he didn't betray you. Fucking hell wow.
Speaker 2: I mean, but I don't want to skim over this.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I would be able to survive
Speaker 2: this in my relationship.
Speaker 1: No, and this is the thing that I think I
Speaker 1: want to the angle I want to go down.
Speaker 5: I we need to cover it all. But I have
Speaker 5: thought about this for the last couple of days. I
Speaker 5: spoke to Beat about it.
Speaker 1: I've been really trying to get my head around what
Speaker 1: I would do in this situation. And I guess it's
Speaker 1: one of those things you don't know unless you're in it.
Speaker 1: I mean, she ends it with I don't know if
Speaker 1: I can accept this situation. Unfortunately, if you can't accept it,
Speaker 1: Whilst that's not fair, you don't have another option. You
Speaker 1: can't stay in a relationship if you're not going to
Speaker 1: accept it, because it is forever. I'm also making an
Speaker 1: assumption here that your partner is got and you if
Speaker 1: you stay in the relationship, because you will become a
Speaker 1: step mum. But your partner, I assuming he's going to
Speaker 1: do the right thing because you know it was a
Speaker 1: situation you.
Speaker 5: All willingly went into and it is a friend.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine a man in that situation being like, no,
Speaker 1: you're on your own making that as some that he's
Speaker 1: going to be involved in some capacity financially and physically.
Speaker 2: Do you think though, that that is the wrong thing.
Speaker 2: I always find this an interesting debate because I don't
Speaker 2: think this might caught me into a bit of hot
Speaker 2: water in may. I do think that you financially need
Speaker 2: to contribute, so if you have unprotected sex with someone. Firstly,
Speaker 2: I mean, it's terrible that the condom broke and he
Speaker 2: did not have a conversation with her.
Speaker 5: He didn't think about her, he was too drunk.
Speaker 2: Like that's a whole that is a really massive issue
Speaker 2: that we can't just skim over. Like morally, this is
Speaker 2: a situation he created by his irresponsibility, and he had
Speaker 2: sex in a way that she therefore did not consent to.
Speaker 2: And now she's pregnant, and this poor woman is having
Speaker 2: a baby that she didn't necessarily want to have, but
Speaker 2: is keeping it and that's you know, like that's her
Speaker 2: decision to do so. But I guess when it comes
Speaker 2: to the expectation that he has or that people have
Speaker 2: on him to be a proactive part in this child's life,
Speaker 2: I think financially and legally he has to be. But
Speaker 2: I don't think that a man has to be a
Speaker 2: father figure in a child's life that he didn't also
Speaker 2: agree to wanting to have.
Speaker 5: Does that make sense? Yeah, I mean I disagree.
Speaker 2: I think it's unfair, but I don't think that there's
Speaker 2: an expectation to toplay that part.
Speaker 1: I think it's a responsibility that you need to take
Speaker 1: in some capacity.
Speaker 5: Of course, you don't have to.
Speaker 1: If I was that child and I grew up knowing
Speaker 1: that my dad was my mum's friend literally down the
Speaker 1: road and he didn't fucking care about me. He threw
Speaker 1: me some money, sometimes it's going to have an impact.
Speaker 1: So I think it kind of sound to him it's
Speaker 1: a moral obligation. Obligation is probably the wrong word. It's
Speaker 1: a moral responsibility. You are not obligated if you don't
Speaker 1: want to. No human in the world obviously is. But
Speaker 1: I think it shows a lot if he isn't involved
Speaker 1: in his child's life. I don't think that in this
Speaker 1: situation money is enough personally.
Speaker 5: Especially when it was his fault. Yeah, and we don't
Speaker 5: say fault right, Well.
Speaker 2: It was he's caught, the condom broke and he was
Speaker 2: too drunk to actually acknowledge it or talk about it.
Speaker 1: That's his fault coming back to you because this is
Speaker 1: about you.
Speaker 5: I feel so sorry for you. But if you think
Speaker 5: that there is a way you can get through this,
Speaker 5: which I think you should.
Speaker 1: Probably try, if he's the love of your life and
Speaker 1: you are going to have kids one day together, if
Speaker 1: you really think.
Speaker 5: You can move through it, then you need to all
Speaker 5: talk together.
Speaker 1: You need to sit down with this friend, go through
Speaker 1: what's going to look like, what are the expectations, Are
Speaker 1: there boundaries? Then you need to have a conversation with
Speaker 1: your partner what do you want in this in terms
Speaker 1: of being a father? What do you want from me?
Speaker 1: Do you still want to have your own kids with
Speaker 1: me in that situation? There are so many.
Speaker 5: Aspects of this that you need to nut out the
Speaker 5: holy fuck.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, look, think I agree with you on some
Speaker 2: parts and I disagree with you on others. I definitely
Speaker 2: think the three of you need to sit down and
Speaker 2: have a very open conversation around expectations, around how you
Speaker 2: feel this is going to play out.
Speaker 5: I think you and your heartner need time to grieve.
Speaker 2: You need time to grieve this idea of the family
Speaker 2: unit that you were going to have. That's not to
Speaker 2: say that your family unit still won't exist. And it
Speaker 2: doesn't mean yes he will either. You know, your friend
Speaker 2: has his baby and he wants to be a part
Speaker 2: of it. There will be co parenting. That doesn't mean
Speaker 2: that that really relationship becomes his nucleart family or relationship.
Speaker 2: He will still go on to have a family with you.
Speaker 2: It just means that he will co parent and your
Speaker 2: kids will have a half brother or sister, which is
Speaker 2: going to be a weird thing to overcome. But you
Speaker 2: know what, in time, even weird situations become less weird,
Speaker 2: like they become normal. You guys will grow past it.
Speaker 2: Time really does. And it's the dumbest and lamest saying,
Speaker 2: but it is true. Time heals all, and in time
Speaker 2: you can get over so many things that you think
Speaker 2: you're not able to get over.
Speaker 5: But I think in.
Speaker 2: This instance, I would be really having conversations around expectations
Speaker 2: because you never know, your friend may not have the
Speaker 2: expectation that she wants him to be a proactive part
Speaker 2: of this child's life. She may want him to be
Speaker 2: a proactive part. She may want him to be, you know,
Speaker 2: a dad who contributes financially. Like I think having those
Speaker 2: conversations he might want to be proactive, like you just
Speaker 2: don't know what everybody is feeling, what everybody is thinking,
Speaker 2: and what the expectation is to show up to being
Speaker 2: a parent in this situation. And I think the choice
Speaker 2: to have the baby is entirely her choice, but how
Speaker 2: that baby is parented is not entirely her choice. And
Speaker 2: so that's something that the three of you can come
Speaker 2: to a decision on together. But I do think it
Speaker 2: is something you could work through. But you're going to
Speaker 2: have to be super open minded, and you're going to
Speaker 2: have to really communicate with the people around you who
Speaker 2: you love and respect and who are important to you,
Speaker 2: because ultimately you have to protect your partner as well
Speaker 2: as yourself and your relationship. And it's going to be
Speaker 2: the weird, big elephant in the room. But also, like,
Speaker 2: fuck it, you had a threesome. It's not like you didn't,
Speaker 2: no one cheated, no one did anything wrong. You had
Speaker 2: a consensual threesome. And I can only imagine how challenging
Speaker 2: this period of life is.
Speaker 5: But I genuinely think you can get through this.
Speaker 2: If this is the person that you've been with for
Speaker 2: six years, you know, I just think you can.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you can work through it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's the most important thing as well
Speaker 1: that I agree with is when it comes out, you
Speaker 1: do need to tell the truth because otherwise it paints
Speaker 1: well two people in a really bad life, is the
Speaker 1: Cheaterah and her as a friend that also, you know,
Speaker 1: quote unquote fucked your partner.
Speaker 2: So yeah, but also when I say you have to
Speaker 2: tell the truth, you don't owe anyone anything. You don't
Speaker 2: have to over explain it, you don't have to just
Speaker 2: it you had a threesome, Like, you didn't break any laws,
Speaker 2: You did whatever the fuck you wanted to.
Speaker 5: You're three consenting adults.
Speaker 2: Yes, your parents might find it a bit challenging to understand.
Speaker 2: But you know what, like at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: people around you will come round to these sorts of
Speaker 2: things and I think, yeah, it's reopen as at all. No,
Speaker 2: but some people will and there will be like some
Speaker 2: guilt and shame attached to it, which they shouldn't be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally, I'm just saying I think that part isn't
Speaker 1: no brainer for me, is the truth telling, because otherwise
Speaker 1: two people are painted as totally as really bad people
Speaker 1: that weren't. So unfortunately, it's a pill that you might
Speaker 1: have to swallow for a hot second. But in this
Speaker 1: day and age, I mean, everyone's talking about this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff now. It will hit different now to what
Speaker 1: it would have twenty years ago. It is an unbelievable situation.
Speaker 1: I think this is possibly the most challenging ask on
Speaker 1: Cup we've ever had. But I really do want to
Speaker 1: reiterate that the big thing here, and I think the
Speaker 1: part of the responsibility falls on the fact that your
Speaker 1: partner his condom broke and he did not communicate that.
Speaker 1: It is such a like I don't even have words
Speaker 1: for how much of a betrayal that is. And the
Speaker 1: fact that he didn't he was too drunk, it didn't
Speaker 1: occur to him that he should have had that communication
Speaker 1: means that all of those discussions that you guys had
Speaker 1: pre having that threesome, all of the conversations around your boundaries,
Speaker 1: around the way in which you were going to engage
Speaker 1: the respect for each other, all of that went out
Speaker 1: the window. And that really changes the basis of which
Speaker 1: the boundaries were set in terms of what was going
Speaker 1: to be okay and not okay in this threesome. I
Speaker 1: would love you to write in what happens and that
Speaker 1: might not be something you want to do, but this
Speaker 1: as an aftermath, I would love to know if you
Speaker 1: can get to a point where you're okay with it
Speaker 1: and you stay in the relationship and you guys move.
Speaker 5: Forward, or if you think you can't yeh oh oh,
Speaker 5: my god.
Speaker 2: The aftermath of this, and I think like the very
Speaker 2: last thing is go and have some therapy together, like
Speaker 2: you and your couple, the three of you, to talk
Speaker 2: through the complexities of this situation. I think, like, don't
Speaker 2: underestimate the importance of that process. And lastly, take it
Speaker 2: day by day because this is such a big and
Speaker 2: overwhelming decision that you need to make, and it feels
Speaker 2: so huge. But like I said, time kind of heals things.
Speaker 2: And as you take one step and then one day
Speaker 2: and you start working through what this looks like over
Speaker 2: the next nine months or however long she has that
Speaker 2: she's pregnant, it may seem like it is not so
Speaker 2: insurmountable when you start to break it down into smaller days.
Speaker 2: It's not to say that it's not going to be hard,
Speaker 2: but like it may feel more manageable.
Speaker 5: Yeah, far up now, Like.
Speaker 3: I just I still to this day, I listen back
Speaker 3: through that, and I'm like, I do not know what
Speaker 3: I would do. I have so much sympathy for the
Speaker 3: person experiencing that. But coming up next in our year
Speaker 3: in review, it is the last segment for us to
Speaker 3: get through. And the reason we included this in this
Speaker 3: year's highlights is because we would get I mean, probably
Speaker 3: about one hundred ask Gunclock questions to the podcast every week,
Speaker 3: and this this particular question seems to come in in
Speaker 3: different variations, but like very similar kind.
Speaker 5: Of feeling behind the question.
Speaker 3: It's about being single and feeling as though everyone around
Speaker 3: you is getting into a relationship, everyone around you is
Speaker 3: progressing into those different chapters of life, and you feel
Speaker 3: as though you're a little bit left behind. What I
Speaker 3: loved about this was what brit had to say about
Speaker 3: finding love a little bit later than what maybe you
Speaker 3: expected to and how different that love can look.
Speaker 1: I'm starting to feel really down about my lack of
Speaker 1: love life. I feel like all my friends are getting
Speaker 1: engaged or married and I'm the only one that's left single.
Speaker 1: I'm nearly thirty, and I've come out of a toxic
Speaker 1: relationship three years ago where my partner was having an affair.
Speaker 1: He moved on straight away. I've been on dating apps
Speaker 1: and I'm not sure if it's my city or what's
Speaker 1: going on, but I'm telling you it's the bottom of
Speaker 1: the barrel, and I don't want to waste my time
Speaker 1: with any of these people so far. I want to
Speaker 1: find someone with similar values or a similar lifestyle that
Speaker 1: align with mine. I'm very independent and I am fine alone,
Speaker 1: but I have reached a stage where I want someone
Speaker 1: to share my life with. I honestly feel like I'm
Speaker 1: going to have to wait for people to start getting
Speaker 1: divorced at this rate, or I'm going to have to
Speaker 1: literally move cities just to find someone. I'm starting to
Speaker 1: avoid going out or catching up with friends is it
Speaker 1: always feels like I'm the only one that's alone and
Speaker 1: not with a partner. When I do go, I end
Speaker 1: up feeling really sad and alone. I've been throwing myself
Speaker 1: into work too much, so I don't have time to
Speaker 1: feel sad because it's really starting to affect my confidence,
Speaker 1: and he's making me feel like there's something inherently wrong
Speaker 1: with me.
Speaker 5: I want kids.
Speaker 1: Someday, and I don't want to wait too late. I
Speaker 1: know there are options to do it solo, but I
Speaker 1: was raised by a solo parent, and I.
Speaker 5: Don't want that to be my life.
Speaker 2: I feel like this is so like you've gone into
Speaker 2: a spiral, Like there's so many parts of this that
Speaker 2: you're not just focusing on the you know, wanting to
Speaker 2: date and like meeting someone new, and you know that
Speaker 2: sort of initial stages. You're so far down the track
Speaker 2: of where you're future is going to be that there's
Speaker 2: too many things loaded into what dating means for you,
Speaker 2: and so like you're probably never going to be able
Speaker 2: to And I hate when people like just enjoy the
Speaker 2: dating phase, which is so easy to say when you're
Speaker 2: in a relationship and you have kids and you're in
Speaker 2: the place where the person who is wanting that is
Speaker 2: trying to get to you know, it's so easy to
Speaker 2: give advice from on top of the hill. But at
Speaker 2: the same time, I do also think that if you're
Speaker 2: so focused on everything that's in the future, then it
Speaker 2: makes what you have to do in the day to
Speaker 2: day seem so heavy and so shit and so unenjoyable.
Speaker 2: And the reality is is that dating is a numbers game.
Speaker 2: Dating is something that you know, the more dates you
Speaker 2: go on, the more people that you meet. The more
Speaker 2: that you trudge through the shit of life and weighe
Speaker 2: through the people who are unsuitable, the more likely it
Speaker 2: is that you're able to find someone who is someone
Speaker 2: who will be a great match for you. But it
Speaker 2: does come down to you. And I think it's great
Speaker 2: that you say, you know, you don't want to waste
Speaker 2: your time on these people.
Speaker 5: That's a great thing. You still have to go on
Speaker 5: the date. You still have to.
Speaker 2: Try and meet people, because if you think that everybody
Speaker 2: is the same and you're not going to put yourself
Speaker 2: out there now because you can't be bothered, or because
Speaker 2: you think it's a waste of time, you're not going
Speaker 2: to meet anyone by doing that approach or by having
Speaker 2: that approach.
Speaker 5: I feel like I literally could have written this question.
Speaker 1: Every single thing you wrote down, besides the solo parent
Speaker 1: like being in a single parent family. I feel like
Speaker 1: I have said, or I've written, or I have felt
Speaker 1: at some point in my life the only person that's single.
Speaker 1: The fact that you feel like thirty years old, the
Speaker 1: fact that you want kids but you don't know if
Speaker 1: it's going to happen, You're sick of dating, you're fine alone,
Speaker 1: but you want to share your life with someone.
Speaker 5: You're not alone in that feeling.
Speaker 1: In fact, I'm going to say most people feel that
Speaker 1: at some point in their life. And just remember a
Speaker 1: lot of people can still feel alone in a relationship
Speaker 1: as well. This is what I said to produce Akisha.
Speaker 1: Actually not long ago, so produce a Kisha went through this.
Speaker 1: Keisha had just turned thirty, so exactly the same age.
Speaker 1: And we know that she's with toblerone now and she's
Speaker 1: in this great relationship, but that hasn't been that long.
Speaker 5: I guess seven months, I think.
Speaker 1: But we had this conversation just before she met Tobleron
Speaker 1: and she said exactly the same thing. She said, I
Speaker 1: just feel like I'm so sick of dating and I
Speaker 1: feel like at age thirty, I should have had my
Speaker 1: life together and I want to be in that relationship
Speaker 1: and I don't want to meet these people anymore.
Speaker 5: And I've had enough and everyone's shit like, and she.
Speaker 1: Got into this really low point and I said to her,
Speaker 1: I said, just think of my life as you know it.
Speaker 1: I went on the Bachelor at age thirty to give
Speaker 1: Kisha and to give you guys context, like thinking how
Speaker 1: long ago that was. And I was your this girl's
Speaker 1: age right now, She's like, I'm nearly thirty. I feel
Speaker 1: like life's over. My life changed dramatically at age thirty,
Speaker 1: and it took a completely different turn. I feel like
Speaker 1: I've met the love of my life now. And I
Speaker 1: met him when I was in this exact position. I
Speaker 1: did not want to date anymore. I was so sick
Speaker 1: of meeting people and telling my story. I was so
Speaker 1: sick of going out. And I met him at thirty
Speaker 1: five years old. So think of how much time you've got.
Speaker 1: People put a lot of weight on a number on
Speaker 1: the age of thirty, like society expects us to have
Speaker 1: done all these things by thirty, by forty, so almost
Speaker 1: like we rounded up to these decades.
Speaker 5: You don't have to have done anything.
Speaker 1: And I know you want to feel like you're sharing
Speaker 1: with life with someone, but I think it's more important
Speaker 1: to share it with the right person and to wait.
Speaker 5: But exactly what you said, Laura, it's.
Speaker 1: Not, unfortunately, gonna walk in your door and fall on
Speaker 1: your lap.
Speaker 5: Like it's not just going to I mean, maybe it does.
Speaker 5: You might be one in a million.
Speaker 1: Maybe somehow, like some sort of sitcom orm com, it
Speaker 1: happens but chances are you're going to have to keep
Speaker 1: putting in the effort. You definitely don't need to waste
Speaker 1: your time with somebody, but you need to waste enough
Speaker 1: time to know whether you're going to waste your time
Speaker 1: or not in the future.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And also, I mean this whole idea of you
Speaker 2: wrote here, I honestly feel like I'm gonna have to
Speaker 2: wait for people to start getting divorced. Fair there is
Speaker 2: definitely a second wave that comes, but total that's not
Speaker 2: coming yet. Just you know, in terms of age and
Speaker 2: where you're at, you don't have to wait for people
Speaker 2: to start getting divorced if you're only twenty nine. And
Speaker 2: I know that that, Like we said, it doesn't have
Speaker 2: to be an age thing. And I don't want anyone
Speaker 2: to think that we're like, oh, you're so young, because
Speaker 2: that's an infuriating thing to be told when you want
Speaker 2: to be in a relationship and you want to settle
Speaker 2: down and all those things. Same time, waiting and having
Speaker 2: in your head that potentially the next wave of men
Speaker 2: is where you're gonna find the person for you is
Speaker 2: definitely not goit. But the other part was you said,
Speaker 2: I'm starting to avoid going out or catching up with friends,
Speaker 2: as it always feels like I'm the only one alone
Speaker 2: and not with a partner. That's so shit, and I
Speaker 2: hate that you're doing that to yourself. I hate that
Speaker 2: you are avoiding your friendship circles because seeing other people
Speaker 2: in relationships is a reminder to you that you're not
Speaker 2: in one, and therefore you are isolating yourself even more.
Speaker 2: I really think, like, don't do that. And the reason
Speaker 2: why I say this is because all that's going to
Speaker 2: do is compound and impact you. And you think that
Speaker 2: you're avoiding the fact that you don't have to see
Speaker 2: your friends in a relationship. You know it's not bringing
Speaker 2: this up for you, but all you're doing is closing
Speaker 2: your circle off. You're making your friendship group smaller, You're
Speaker 2: making your connections smaller, which also in turn makes it
Speaker 2: harder for you to meet people because often it's through
Speaker 2: our friends and through our friends connections where we can
Speaker 2: actually meet someone. You know, you might go to a party,
Speaker 2: or you might go to an event, or you might
Speaker 2: go out for lunch or something and your friend's friend
Speaker 2: might bring someone and that could be how you meet.
Speaker 2: But also in saying that, it is also okay to
Speaker 2: organize things with your girlfriends and not have their partners there.
Speaker 2: If there's moments where you feel like you need to
Speaker 2: just have your friends around you and not have it
Speaker 2: kind of in your face that everyone's in a relationship
Speaker 2: except for you, then organize things that are just with
Speaker 2: your closest friends that aren't with their partners as well.
Speaker 2: And I think that that's totally acceptable. But don't remove
Speaker 2: yourself from your friendship groups because you think that it's
Speaker 2: this reminder that you're alone. And I really think with
Speaker 2: this question, there were so many parts. Like I said
Speaker 2: at the beginning, there were so many bits that have
Speaker 2: made you feel hurt, and I think you have to
Speaker 2: break it down. You have to break it down to
Speaker 2: the dating. Then you have to break it down to like,
Speaker 2: you know, hanging out with your friends. And then you
Speaker 2: have to try and not think about this idea of like, well,
Speaker 2: maybe I'll be a solo parent in the future, because
Speaker 2: that's not going to happen, Like that's not something that
Speaker 2: you have to be thinking about now. And all that's
Speaker 2: doing is compounding and creating more anxiety and more fear
Speaker 2: around where it is right now for you, and that
Speaker 2: is that you're in the dating game, and sometimes it
Speaker 2: can be fucking rough.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The few other things that I want to break down
Speaker 1: in this question as well, because there are so many
Speaker 1: parts to it. One is something that I have noticed
Speaker 1: is it does move faster the older you get, so
Speaker 1: like when you meet the right person, the same time
Speaker 1: frames don't apply. And that's with all of my friends,
Speaker 1: everyone in my life, it's been exactly the same, right
Speaker 1: all of my friends.
Speaker 5: I've got family members that have met people later in life.
Speaker 1: It happens quickly because you're more sure of who you are,
Speaker 1: where you are in life and what you want. And
Speaker 1: generally speaking, the person you've met is probably the samesh
Speaker 1: age and the same part of life, and they're the
Speaker 1: same they know what they want as well, So things
Speaker 1: definitely happen quicker. So I don't want you to think that, like, oh,
Speaker 1: what if I don't meet someone till thirty four, then
Speaker 1: we have to do three or four years of dating.
Speaker 5: Then we have to You don't know, it could happen
Speaker 5: in a year.
Speaker 1: You could be so obsessed with your partner and fell
Speaker 1: pregnant and get married and get engaged in the love
Speaker 1: of your life.
Speaker 5: You don't know the other part.
Speaker 1: Is you said, maybe I need to move cities, and
Speaker 1: this one I think a lot of people automatically put
Speaker 1: their guard up and say, oh my god, it's so drastic,
Speaker 1: like you don't have to do that. But what I
Speaker 1: want to say is that is actually a thing, and
Speaker 1: that is actually an option. Depending on where you live. Now,
Speaker 1: you're not going to consider this, or maybe you will.
Speaker 1: But if you have no family and no friends anywhere
Speaker 1: else in the world, like if your world is located
Speaker 1: to the city or in you're probably not going to
Speaker 1: want to move anywhere because you're going to feel just
Speaker 1: as alone. Maybe you're that person that does thrive in
Speaker 1: an environment where they meet new people and they have
Speaker 1: no connections. But moving cities to find people is a
Speaker 1: real thing, and it's a thing people have to do,
Speaker 1: especially if you're from a really small place. If you
Speaker 1: spent all your life there, if it's where you grew up,
Speaker 1: chances are you do know everyone and you don't want
Speaker 1: to have a relationship with any of those people. There
Speaker 1: are definitely certain cities that people go to to settle down,
Speaker 1: Like people move to these cities when it's time to
Speaker 1: have kids and have their married life.
Speaker 5: That is all accurate.
Speaker 1: I don't know where you are from, but if you
Speaker 1: that chances are really really slim that new people are
Speaker 1: constantly coming into your town and you're not going to
Speaker 1: meet anyone, it could be something that you actually consider.
Speaker 5: I'm very pro that.
Speaker 1: I don't know how you feel about that, Laura, but
Speaker 1: you've got to make sure you're going to be moving
Speaker 1: somewhere that you are comfortable with and you're not giving
Speaker 1: up your entire life just for the reason of finding
Speaker 1: a partner. It still has to have more around it,
Speaker 1: like opportunities for jobs, excitement. Maybe you do have family
Speaker 1: and friends there something new.
Speaker 5: But I'm not against that.
Speaker 2: I'm not against it, but I mean it's hard to
Speaker 2: kind of make that judgment call without knowing where you're from, because,
Speaker 2: like I would say that people feel the same as you.
Speaker 5: Feel regardless of where they are.
Speaker 2: There are people who are in Sydney who feel like this,
Speaker 2: there are people who are in Melbourne that feel like this.
Speaker 2: There's people who are in far North Queensland who feel
Speaker 2: like this. Like I do think that it doesn't necessarily
Speaker 2: just change dependent on the area that you're in, and
Speaker 2: you might have just as little luck dating being in
Speaker 2: a major city or wherever wherever it is that you
Speaker 2: end up. So I think it's hard to kind of
Speaker 2: make that assessment without actually knowing where you're based and
Speaker 2: how regional and tiny the population of this town is.
Speaker 2: Which if you are in a totally rural area and
Speaker 2: you live out on a farm and you barely ever
Speaker 2: meet anyone, then yeah, absolutely that is relevant. But I
Speaker 2: think it's the exasperation with dating that so many of
Speaker 2: us can feel regardless of where you're at, and feeling
Speaker 2: like that there.
Speaker 5: Are no good people and that no one aligns with you.
Speaker 2: And it's easy to feel like that after you've been
Speaker 2: on ten dud dates or twenty dud dates or whatever
Speaker 2: the number is.
Speaker 5: Sometimes it's less than that. Sometimes it's five dud dates in.
Speaker 2: A row, where, like you know, you're like, fuck, who
Speaker 2: are these people and where are they coming from? But
Speaker 2: I really do think it's a numbers game, and it's
Speaker 2: a numbers game, but it's also a numbers game in
Speaker 2: a way where you're not getting attached to a person
Speaker 2: before you go on a date with them, so when
Speaker 2: they do turn out to be someone who's not someone
Speaker 2: who's aligned with you, it doesn't feel as much as
Speaker 2: a big deal because you haven't worked it up into
Speaker 2: your mind as to who this person could or should be.
Speaker 2: You're just like, Okay, I know that they're not right
Speaker 2: for me, and then you start the dating process again.
Speaker 2: I really want to acknowledge the fact, and I know
Speaker 2: we kind of already said it, but it's so easy
Speaker 2: to say this, and I think give yourself a little
Speaker 2: bit of grace and a little bit of kindness, because
Speaker 2: everybody who is dating, who wants to be in a relationship,
Speaker 2: who has been single for a longer period of time,
Speaker 2: feels like this. You are not alone in feeling like this,
Speaker 2: but the fact that your friends are in relationships probably
Speaker 2: amplifies those feelings of loneliness. It's a shit place to
Speaker 2: be and when you want something that you don't have yet,
Speaker 2: but it is truly a matter of time.
Speaker 3: Well, my friends, that is it for the twenty twenty
Speaker 3: three rear in your view. I hope you had such
Speaker 3: a good time going through those segments with me. I
Speaker 3: absolutely love putting this episode together because I get to
Speaker 3: go back and kind of relive the best bits. As
Speaker 3: I said at the start, the links for every single
Speaker 3: one of these episodes will be in the show notes
Speaker 3: if you want to go back and listen through to.
Speaker 5: The whole thing.
Speaker 3: Oh, I've just realized, actually this is not our last
Speaker 3: episode of the year. We have got a bonus accidentally
Speaker 3: unfiltered of your holiday So like Christmas, New Year's themed
Speaker 3: accidentally unfiltered embarrassing stories, it's an absolute.
Speaker 5: Laugh and a half. It'll be coming out.
Speaker 3: I wish I could give you the exact day, but
Speaker 3: we are no less chaotic than what we were in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty two, so it will be in the next
Speaker 3: couple of days for you, and then over the course
Speaker 3: of the summer, we are going to be dropping some
Speaker 3: of the wonderful conversations that we had with our incredible
Speaker 3: guests at the live shows that we did in October,
Speaker 3: so that will be brand new content, never heard it before,
Speaker 3: and it will be dropping into your podcast libraries and
Speaker 3: we will be back.
Speaker 5: I think it's the week of January twenty two.
Speaker 3: I'm not one hundred percent short, but we will be
Speaker 3: posting it all over our socials, so you can follow
Speaker 3: us along on Instagram at Lifehung Up Podcast, same thing
Speaker 3: for TikTok. We also have the Life Uncut discussion group,
Speaker 3: which is where all the chit chat goes down. So
Speaker 3: if you have a dilemma that you want people's opinions on,
Speaker 3: if you want some recommendations, if you just want to
Speaker 3: have a bit of event, we'll ask a question about
Speaker 3: dating or your relationship or whatever it might be. If
Speaker 3: you want a group of friends, join the Facebook group.
Speaker 5: And I think that's it. I think that's the admin.
Speaker 5: Because Delilah has just walked into the room.
Speaker 3: She's wanting some pets. So I'll go and spend the
Speaker 3: rest of my Christmas New Year break hanging out with.
Speaker 5: Her, going for some swims.
Speaker 3: I hope you're able to have a really, really wonderful
Speaker 3: New Year's and we'll catch you back in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 3: You know the drill, Tell you mum, tell your dad,
Speaker 3: tell your dog, take your friends, and share the love
Speaker 3: because we love love