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.
Speaker 1: Hey guys, and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut.
Speaker 2: I'm Brittany and I'm Laura.
Speaker 1: And on today's episode, we're gonna be unpacking the brand
Speaker 1: new documentary on Disney Plus Pretty Baby. Now. Pretty Baby
Speaker 1: is a documentary about Brookshield's life, but not just her life.
Speaker 1: It's about the hyper sexualization she experienced as a child
Speaker 1: actor and a child model and it's truly mind blowing.
Speaker 2: It really is. And I thought when I first watched
Speaker 2: this doco, I was like, this would never fly today.
Speaker 2: But the thing that we're talking about in this episode
Speaker 2: is how prevalent sexualization of miners still is in pop culture.
Speaker 2: We're also talking to doctor Ali Walker.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: Doctor Ali Walker is a human connection and scientists. She
Speaker 2: is the author of Click and Clash. We talked to
Speaker 2: doctor Ali about compatibility in relationships, not just romantic relationships
Speaker 2: but all relationships, and why is it that we click
Speaker 2: with some people so deeply and so quickly, and why
Speaker 2: we can feel as though we clash with others without
Speaker 2: really understanding why.
Speaker 1: But before we speak to Ali, we're going to unpack
Speaker 1: all your confessions. So let's get into it.
Speaker 2: It's that weird time of year now where the hot
Speaker 2: Cross buns are going to leave our shopping centers. What's next? Oh,
Speaker 2: I know it's next. It's Halloween.
Speaker 1: What's next? Christmas is next, Laura? Then we all die,
Speaker 1: We all die.
Speaker 2: Grim.
Speaker 1: I feel like life's going really fast.
Speaker 2: It's Halloween, That's what's going to happen, although I'm going
Speaker 2: to hold onto it for dear life for a little
Speaker 2: bit longer. Okay, a couple of.
Speaker 1: Things I want to say here. I saw Maddie Jay's
Speaker 1: story about the Hot Cross bun chocolate hot Cross bun
Speaker 1: for sure, not fruit hot chocolate Hot Cross buns.
Speaker 2: So if you don't know what BRIT's talking about, Matt
Speaker 2: made the world's dumbest skit, probably the dumbest piece of
Speaker 2: content he's ever made today about when you go to
Speaker 2: the shopping center and you buy hot Cross buns, but
Speaker 2: you accidentally buy the wrong kind. We had a moment
Speaker 2: over the weekend where we'd stopped up because even though
Speaker 2: we're adults, we have no idea. What days the shopping
Speaker 2: centers are closed and the grocery stores are closed over Easter.
Speaker 2: So we were like, fuck fan for yourselves. It's four
Speaker 2: days everything shut and it's.
Speaker 1: Like the whole COVID toilet paper gate again, where you like,
Speaker 1: I better get all the hot Cross buns just in
Speaker 1: case the shop's closed and I can't come back and
Speaker 1: get them.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Thursday last week, we stop part. We were like,
Speaker 2: the shops are closed for a week. We stopped part
Speaker 2: all the top paper, we stopp pad all the Hot
Speaker 2: Cross buns. And then we got home and realized we
Speaker 2: bought chocolate ones and it was truly devastating because it's
Speaker 2: just not our gems, not ever.
Speaker 1: Personally, I don't mind the chocolate hot Cross one thirty
Speaker 1: seconds in the microwave done. If there's no chocolate, I
Speaker 1: will have a raisin one. But that says a backup
Speaker 1: to the chocolate.
Speaker 2: What sort of animal is microwaving? They're Hot Cross buns.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's the bomb. And you know what Sherry, my sister,
Speaker 1: used to do. Now she's a nutritionist, but she'll tell
Speaker 1: you this anyway. She used to go one step extra
Speaker 1: and put a chocolate egg in the hot Cross bun
Speaker 1: and then put it in the microwave so that.
Speaker 2: It extra melts through the hot cross.
Speaker 1: Bun and then should eat a double chocolate hot crossbun?
Speaker 2: Was this since becoming a nutritionist or prior to Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, fine, No, she's a great nutritionist in terms of
Speaker 1: like balance.
Speaker 2: Live your best life. Easter is so different when you
Speaker 2: have two little children. Easter is all about Easter egg hunts.
Speaker 2: We did so many goddamn Easter egg hunts. My children
Speaker 2: think the Easter bunny comes for like five days straight.
Speaker 2: It's Monday, and the kids walk up this morning and
Speaker 2: they were like, did the Easter bunny come last night?
Speaker 2: Walk down into the garden and started looking under things,
Speaker 2: and then we're pissed at the Easter bunny that he
Speaker 2: didn't leave more eggs.
Speaker 1: I mean, very selfish of this money. But doesn't the
Speaker 1: Easter money just come one day?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 2: But I feel like things have morphed over time because
Speaker 2: back when we were kids, the Easter bunny came one
Speaker 2: day and you did one Easter egg hunt. But now
Speaker 2: it's like you go and do an Easter egg hunt
Speaker 2: at your friend's house or at your NaN's house or
Speaker 2: at your mom's house. There's so many Easter egg hunts,
Speaker 2: and that was my entire weekend. But on top of that,
Speaker 2: I don't know if you guys remember a couple of
Speaker 2: weeks ago, I was telling you this is we share
Speaker 2: way too much with you, But you know what, You're
Speaker 2: in the inner sanctum, So I'll keep on telling you.
Speaker 2: I'm going to have a colonoscopy. And that is happening.
Speaker 1: Breaking news.
Speaker 2: Yeah, hello, everybody, I'm having a colonoscopy. After interviewing Kelly
Speaker 2: the other week, I really took it seriously and I
Speaker 2: was like, this needs to get fast tracked totally. I'm
Speaker 2: having it tomorrow, which if you've ever had a colonoscopy before,
Speaker 2: you would know, and if you haven't, i'll explain it
Speaker 2: to you. You have to be on a white diet
Speaker 2: for forty eight hours prior to the colonoscopy, and then
Speaker 2: you've got to do this thing. It's I think it's
Speaker 2: called like Peco prep or something where basically you just
Speaker 2: shot yourself for an entire day. Yes, accurate. So I
Speaker 2: didn't really think about it when I booked this in,
Speaker 2: and they take so long to book in with a
Speaker 2: specialist appointment. I booked it in for the day after Easter,
Speaker 2: so I have only been eating white food for the
Speaker 2: last two days. Everyone's been having chocolate, Everyone's been eating
Speaker 2: like beautiful roast dinners and having this gorgeous family time.
Speaker 2: And I sat there last night and ate bone broth
Speaker 2: rice and a piece of white fish, and I felt
Speaker 2: really sorry for myself.
Speaker 1: You know who'd be proud, Gwyneth Paltrow. She'd be proud
Speaker 1: that bone broth for didn't for.
Speaker 2: The collagen and some air.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, it's very unfortunate timing to have to
Speaker 1: do picko prep literally over the East weekend.
Speaker 2: You have to drink like three cups of laxatives and
Speaker 2: then never leave your house. That's pretty much where I'm
Speaker 2: at now. You are still in Scotland at the moment
Speaker 2: when it's just the two of you. Did you do Easter?
Speaker 2: Did you have any sort of like special moment where
Speaker 2: you bought each other in Easter egg?
Speaker 1: I did not do that. I forgot hand on heart. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm going to say this right now. I've actually had
Speaker 1: a fit to drink over the weekend, so I've got
Speaker 1: a bit of a rusty throat. But something has happened
Speaker 1: to me that has never happened really before. But I
Speaker 1: am wildly obsessed with Ben.
Speaker 2: What do you mean that has never happened before. No,
Speaker 2: you have definitely been obsessed. I'm very glad that you're
Speaker 2: obsessed with Ben. It's cute, it's adorable. I'm all for it. Yay,
Speaker 2: bring in don Flag. But I think you forget that
Speaker 2: you have been wildly obsessed with men in the past.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, The thing I'm gonna say is it's not
Speaker 1: the obsessed part. I'm wildly obsessed right now, but what
Speaker 1: it's done to me is the new part. I for
Speaker 1: the first time ever. I hate to label it, but
Speaker 1: I'm needy, Like I'm really needy, and I'm not used
Speaker 1: to that. Well, I've created this thing, and I think
Speaker 1: he hates it when I say I made a rule
Speaker 1: in the you know how you make rules in your
Speaker 1: own relationship, but like not like you can't cheat. My
Speaker 1: rule is like when I say magnet, we have to
Speaker 1: go together like a magnet, he has to give me
Speaker 1: a cuddle. I have to, like you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like when magnet it's so stiff anyway I say magnet,
Speaker 1: But now I just walk around and say magnet all
Speaker 1: the time, and I'm stuck to him like rash and
Speaker 1: I've never experienced before. I am needy.
Speaker 2: I'm needy.
Speaker 1: It's fucked. It's so fucked, and I need to get
Speaker 1: out of it. But I also don't know if it's
Speaker 1: because I know I'm on a time limit, Like I
Speaker 1: know I'm only on two weeks at a time, so
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm trying to get it all in
Speaker 1: it and you know, get all my time, But I
Speaker 1: don't know what's happening. You probably know because you've done
Speaker 1: this for twenty five years.
Speaker 2: I've not been in a relationship for twenty five years.
Speaker 2: We've in a relation for six years now, which is
Speaker 2: truly not that long considering how many children we've pumped out. No,
Speaker 2: but you know, when you're in that very first stage
Speaker 2: as of a relationship where you start to do the
Speaker 2: little weird, quirky things that like make your relationship unique,
Speaker 2: but also to other people they're just weird. Oh tidd So,
Speaker 2: like whenever Matt was angry, I used to hug him
Speaker 2: and squeeze him tight, and I'd be like squeezing all
Speaker 2: the grumpies out, squish them all out. That would have
Speaker 2: made him so much more mad, so pathetic, and it
Speaker 2: makes everybody listening to this feel like I'm so embarrassed
Speaker 2: for you. But these are the things that we all
Speaker 2: do when we're in your relationship, sho.
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone's embarrassed. I think everyone has this
Speaker 1: one of these stupid little things and you don't even
Speaker 1: know how it happens, Like, you don't even know how
Speaker 1: it comes up.
Speaker 2: If you're somebody who has like a completely weird that
Speaker 2: no one else would understand quirk that you do with
Speaker 2: your partner, send them in. I reckon, We're going to
Speaker 2: get thousands. I want to hear it, and we can
Speaker 2: all use them to annoy our now long term partners.
Speaker 2: Something that I saw over the weekend I watched this
Speaker 2: documentary on Disney. It is called Pretty Baby, and it's
Speaker 2: all about Brookshields and her guess like her autobiography and
Speaker 2: the life that she lived when she was ridiculously uber
Speaker 2: famous when she was very very young. Britt I got
Speaker 2: you to watch it because I was in disbelief, And
Speaker 2: if you haven't seen it yet, this is absolutely my
Speaker 2: recommendation for this week, go and watch Pretty Baby on Disney.
Speaker 2: Plast not sponsored, just fucking eye opening, Like I was hooked.
Speaker 1: For those people before we get into this conversation, because
Speaker 1: it's a fucking crazy conversation and it's for those that
Speaker 1: don't know who Brookshields is, maybe our younger audience. Brooks Shields,
Speaker 1: she's fifty seven now, but she since the age of
Speaker 1: like two years old, has been in the media, so
Speaker 1: her entire life. But for us growing up, she was
Speaker 1: the epitome of fame. She was fame. She was an
Speaker 1: amazing model, she was an amazing actress, she was a
Speaker 1: child actress. She married the world number one tennis champion
Speaker 1: Andre Agacy, Like from age like fifteen to twenty five,
Speaker 1: she was Hollywood. So just so you understand, in case
Speaker 1: you don't know who Brookshields is, that was her. Well,
Speaker 1: I feel like a lot of people would remember them
Speaker 1: that she did Blue Lagoon. Even if you don't know
Speaker 1: who Brookshields is, you might have heard of Blue Lagoon. Well, see,
Speaker 1: I didn't watch it. I never watched Blue Lagoon.
Speaker 2: It was so fucking iconic, Like I remember watching it
Speaker 2: when I was about fifteen years old. So if you
Speaker 2: haven't seen it, it's this real sounds cliche, but like
Speaker 2: coming of age movie where she hits puberty and she
Speaker 2: discovers how like sexual desire, and she starts to get
Speaker 2: those tingly feelings and wants to have sex with the boy. Now, weirdly,
Speaker 2: that boy actually is her cousin and they live on
Speaker 2: a deserted island. But I remember watching it as like
Speaker 2: a fifteen year old girl and being just entranced by one.
Speaker 2: She was so beautiful and stunning and perfect. But just
Speaker 2: the fact that she was navigating what sexuality was on
Speaker 2: screen in front of us. There was nothing else that
Speaker 2: existed like it.
Speaker 1: You were just a horny teenager at home with your
Speaker 1: friends watching.
Speaker 2: Yes, I was a horny teenager who was like, that's
Speaker 2: what I'm feeling, Not that I want to have sex
Speaker 2: with my cousin, because that's weird. I also have Okay,
Speaker 2: I also have Fanny Flatters. But the thing is watching
Speaker 2: her back now as like an adult and understanding her
Speaker 2: story and her background. It's so interesting to look at
Speaker 2: that movie with a very, very different lens. She was
Speaker 2: only fifteen at the time of filming it. The boy
Speaker 2: who played the role of her cousin was nineteen years old,
Speaker 2: so she'd never had sex. She was underage, she was
Speaker 2: being hyper sexualized in this role and being held up
Speaker 2: as like a sex icon and sex symbol when she
Speaker 2: was still a child and she was still trying to
Speaker 2: understand what all that meant for herself. It completely changed
Speaker 2: the way that media treated her. So she would sit
Speaker 2: and go to interview, say like the equivalent of like
Speaker 2: a Saturday Night Live, for example, and the male interviewers
Speaker 2: would say, well, it's going to be hard for me
Speaker 2: to see you as a child after this. When she
Speaker 2: was literally a child, it was disgusting. But she was
Speaker 2: also i mean just touched on what you said, brit
Speaker 2: in terms of her like immense stardom. She was like
Speaker 2: the face and body of a huge Calvin Kleian campaign
Speaker 2: which was like an overtly sexual campaign. Also when she
Speaker 2: was underage, it was like she became the sex symbol
Speaker 2: of that era, but the whole time she wasn't even
Speaker 2: eighteen years old.
Speaker 1: Well that's what this documentary is. The underlying feature here
Speaker 1: is the whole premise, The whole purpose has created is
Speaker 1: to shine a light on the over sexualization of children
Speaker 1: in Hollywood, the sexualization of her and the pushing and
Speaker 1: the control from her mum who was an alcoholic into fame.
Speaker 1: Now as an adult, you look back at what we
Speaker 1: used to watch, like the Blue Lagoon. You fucking loved it.
Speaker 1: You were fifteen, you didn't understand what it was. We
Speaker 1: look back now after listening to what she went through
Speaker 1: to make those movies for our entertainment, and it makes
Speaker 1: me feel physically ill.
Speaker 2: There's actually this great quote that I read when I
Speaker 2: was reading up on this, and it was this sexualization
Speaker 2: is so embedded in our media that many times we
Speaker 2: may not even recognize it when it comes out in
Speaker 2: front of us. Something like a pageant where young girls
Speaker 2: addressed in suggestive costume can start to impress that sexuality.
Speaker 2: You don't have to look far into the media to
Speaker 2: discover rampant over sexualization of young people. And I guess
Speaker 2: the big thing is with this, Britt is I would
Speaker 2: never at that age, and also, I mean it was
Speaker 2: a fluw reflection of my age have watched Blue Lagoon
Speaker 2: and seen it as being problematic, and seen it as
Speaker 2: being something that the adults around Brooke, who was only
Speaker 2: fifteen at the time, had dictated. And I guess forced
Speaker 2: her into not forced, because I know obviously she agreed
Speaker 2: to but when you are a child yourself and you're
Speaker 2: not understanding the complex concepts that you're performing, they're the
Speaker 2: ones that are supposed to protect you, but they're the
Speaker 2: ones that are actually guiding you into being even more sexualized.
Speaker 2: And I think when I was watching this with Matt,
Speaker 2: I was like, Oh my god, this would never happen today.
Speaker 2: We were talking about it and I was like, this
Speaker 2: doesn't exist today. And then the more that we got
Speaker 2: talking about it, the more that I think we realized.
Speaker 2: The over sexualization of teenagers across say film, click, across TikTok,
Speaker 2: across social media. It still exists. It just doesn't exist
Speaker 2: as overtly and in the exact same way. Now. There
Speaker 2: was one other thing that happened in this documentary when
Speaker 2: Brooke was talking about how she got into the industry
Speaker 2: basically and when the sexualization started. She was eleven years
Speaker 2: old in her very first movie, and she played a
Speaker 2: child prostitute. So basically she was the child of a
Speaker 2: prostitute who lived in the early nineteen hundreds. It's based
Speaker 2: on a true story actually, but she was only eleven
Speaker 2: years old when she was playing the role of this character,
Speaker 2: and her virginity was being sold to a older man.
Speaker 2: Some of the stuff that Brooke was having to say,
Speaker 2: as like her scripted lines, it's truly disgusting, like talking
Speaker 2: about the heat coming out of her dress at eleven
Speaker 2: years old, she wouldn't have even understood what she was saying.
Speaker 2: And on top of that, she had her very first kiss.
Speaker 2: When I say, her very first kiss on screen and
Speaker 2: also in real life, because the girl was eleven with
Speaker 2: a twenty nine year old man. I cannot believe that
Speaker 2: nobody in that room stood there and went, this is
Speaker 2: not appropriate for a child. But that happened, and that
Speaker 2: went to air, and it was a huge movie across
Speaker 2: the States and across Europe.
Speaker 1: Well, that movie is pretty much what flung her into
Speaker 1: the spotlight more so than she already was because she
Speaker 1: was sort of people knew who she was, but that
Speaker 1: was a movie that really put her on the grid,
Speaker 1: put her on people's radar. It's disgusting to watch, like
Speaker 1: we just said, it wouldn't happen now, Like Euphoria is
Speaker 1: a really good example, we're seeing teenagers doing sex, drugs,
Speaker 1: doing sex, doing the sex. They're doing the sex, they're
Speaker 1: doing the drugs, but they're twenty twenty one up to
Speaker 1: twenty five. They're twenty five year old's playing those characters.
Speaker 1: They're not going out and grabbing a thirteen year old
Speaker 1: or a fourteen year old and putting them on. It's
Speaker 1: not the done thing anymore.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, it's also still permeated all throughout our upbringings.
Speaker 2: Like think about our childhoods and like the icons that
Speaker 2: we looked up to and emulated when we were in
Speaker 2: our teens. I remember Britney Spears, and I mean fucking
Speaker 2: everyone remembers Britney Spears. But think about that film clip,
Speaker 2: Hit Me Baby one more time. She's dressed in a
Speaker 2: school uniform. She's in a school, she's at the school chorls,
Speaker 2: she's at the school. She's wearing a tiny little skirt,
Speaker 2: she's wearing a tiny little blouse buttoned down. And I
Speaker 2: understand that she's obviously trying to or the people who
Speaker 2: created that concept are obviously trying to appeal to people
Speaker 2: her age, but they're selling people her age, which was
Speaker 2: you and me at that time. Sex. They were selling
Speaker 2: us this sexualized version of a teenager, and we fucking
Speaker 2: lapped it up, and none of us thought that was
Speaker 2: weird at the time, it.
Speaker 1: Was everywhere, But you don't think it. You sucked into
Speaker 1: it because sex cells.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think you don't think it because it
Speaker 2: truly is everywhere. And when I was looking into this
Speaker 2: and the more examples of it that I thought in
Speaker 2: terms of like what's been happening in recent times, so
Speaker 2: many of us would know, like Billie Eilish, for example,
Speaker 2: and how she wears like the baggy oversized clothes. Now
Speaker 2: Billie Eilish is twenty one, I think now, but she's
Speaker 2: always worn baggy, oversized clothes and has made a real
Speaker 2: statement that it's because she doesn't want to be sexualized.
Speaker 2: She wants people to focus on the music, not on
Speaker 2: how she looks. In twenty nineteen, there was a photo
Speaker 2: that circulated of her. She was wearing a krop top.
Speaker 2: It was taken it like a meet and greet backstage,
Speaker 2: and not only was it circulated, it went viral. There
Speaker 2: were so many news articles around what Billie Eilish looked
Speaker 2: like when she was wearing a crop top and how
Speaker 2: sexy she was. But she was underage at the time,
Speaker 2: and it's like, at what point has it ever been
Speaker 2: appropriate to talk about sixteen year olds or fifteen year
Speaker 2: olds in this way. But yet it still happens all
Speaker 2: the time. Kids are so exposed to it from so
Speaker 2: young in so many different ways that even just the
Speaker 2: other day, I put on music and Maley was dancing
Speaker 2: in front of the TV. She's three and a half,
Speaker 2: and the little hip thrust and the way in which
Speaker 2: she was dancing, well, you're like, where did you see that?
Speaker 2: And they have like they've absorbed it from somewhere, whether
Speaker 2: it's been from watching something on social media or seeing
Speaker 2: something on YouTube, but they just absorb it and then
Speaker 2: it becomes normal.
Speaker 1: But there are kids all in the world on YouTube
Speaker 1: and TikTok and Instagram where their accounts are being run
Speaker 1: by their parents, but they're making absolute bank off promoting
Speaker 1: their children. And now we talked about it recently. Is
Speaker 1: it unboxing a toy that's okay? Is that okay? Is
Speaker 1: it that they're making their children do beauty pagets and
Speaker 1: dancing and that's how they're making me their money? I
Speaker 1: don't know, But there are kids out there with a
Speaker 1: ridiculous amount of followers. Who the fuck are these followers? Like?
Speaker 1: Are these older men? Are these predators? Who's following these accounts.
Speaker 2: We spoke about this the other week when France is
Speaker 2: changing the laws around social media and having children, I
Speaker 2: guess like making an income from social media. And it
Speaker 2: kind of was a real penny drop moment watching this
Speaker 2: documentary because I was like, this is the stuff we're
Speaker 2: going to be talking about in ten years, but about
Speaker 2: social media young children who have YouTube channels and tiktoks
Speaker 2: and they're making a huge amount of money, but there
Speaker 2: isn't a lot of safety and I guess legislation around
Speaker 2: it yet. And at the time I kind of thought,
Speaker 2: maybe what France is doing is going a bit hard.
Speaker 2: But I guess after watching Brookshields doco and having a
Speaker 2: better understanding about not only how children are being sexualized
Speaker 2: throughout popular culture, but also how some parents aren't doing
Speaker 2: their job in protecting children. Like the big part of
Speaker 2: this doco was that her mum was her manager, and
Speaker 2: her mom thought that it was a good idea and
Speaker 2: you know, was using her as a way of making
Speaker 2: an income and was pushing her into these sexualized roles
Speaker 2: because they were making a hell of a lot of
Speaker 2: money when she was fifteen. Made me think that it's
Speaker 2: absolutely still happening in certain ways across social media, across TikTok,
Speaker 2: across Instagram, and without it being as heavily regulated, people
Speaker 2: can get away with it. And I feel like in ten, fifteen,
Speaker 2: twenty years time, when this generation of children who have
Speaker 2: grown up on social media are older and are able
Speaker 2: to tell their stories, that's when we're going to fully
Speaker 2: understand the total impact of what that is having on
Speaker 2: young kids.
Speaker 1: We both can't recommend it enough. If you've got any time,
Speaker 1: obviously watch it two parts, two and bid hours, and
Speaker 1: I think you from the moment it starts, all right, well,
Speaker 1: let's move on to what we usually do. Was an
Speaker 1: accidentally unfiltered but we had some absolutely cracker confessionals coming
Speaker 1: this week. I was like wedding my pants laughing. So
Speaker 1: we're going to We're gonna rattle off some confessions.
Speaker 2: Can I just say that these are wildly inappropriate, and like,
Speaker 2: I love that you feel that this is a safe
Speaker 2: space and you can share the most inappropriate things that
Speaker 2: you've done. This does not absolve you of your sins,
Speaker 2: though you guys are all cooked and we're here for it.
Speaker 2: Oh no, but.
Speaker 1: Keep them coming in and we don't condone these. I'm
Speaker 1: going to start this from the start. We don't condone these,
Speaker 1: but it's also some of them are cooked, but some
Speaker 1: of them are innocent and funny too. I'll start you
Speaker 1: off with an innocent one. I made a coffee for
Speaker 1: my friend at work, but I accidentally used the off
Speaker 1: milk when I got to making my own coffee, so
Speaker 1: I switched the coffees and gave her the off one.
Speaker 2: Wouldn't you just throw it out? Start again? Coffees don't
Speaker 2: take that long.
Speaker 1: Just order one for four dollars. Don't give someone food poisoning.
Speaker 2: Well, this just makes me think you should never ever
Speaker 2: leave anything around a coworker. I spat to a coworker's
Speaker 2: water bottle because she pissed me off.
Speaker 1: That is fucking rank. You cannot do that. Also Covid
Speaker 1: Ha Shay Covid. My boyfriend has never made me orgasm
Speaker 1: four years in and I don't know how to tell him.
Speaker 1: You can't tell him now you don't.
Speaker 2: I mean, if that was an ask on cart, what
Speaker 2: would we say, You can't tell him that you can't
Speaker 2: orgasm after four years of faking it? You're fuck no
Speaker 2: if we would say you have to.
Speaker 1: But also fuck you shot yourself in the foot.
Speaker 2: Four year years. That's a really long lie. That's the
Speaker 2: long game.
Speaker 1: Okay, one Dame big w I put a five dollar
Speaker 1: sticker on a fifty dollar dress, so I bought it.
Speaker 2: For five dollars. That's stealing, that's theft. I don't know
Speaker 2: the difference between skirting or just plain wing during sex.
Speaker 2: I think I just WII.
Speaker 1: Squirting is a bit of whe and a bit of squirt,
Speaker 1: So like, maybe you're just doing both, or maybe you're not,
Speaker 1: maybe just pissy and you're not actually squirted at all.
Speaker 2: I've got the worst one. I've been with my husband
Speaker 2: for nineteen years, but I still love my ex. Oh,
Speaker 2: you don't really love your X. You don't. I'm gonna
Speaker 2: tell you this. I hope you're listening to this. You
Speaker 2: do not love your ex. You have created a fantasy
Speaker 2: obsession about your ex that's not real because he is
Speaker 2: not that person nineteen years later, and you have built
Speaker 2: it up in your mind to be something that it's
Speaker 2: absolutely not. You do not love your ex.
Speaker 1: Also, you're bored, Like, yes, you're bored. You've been with
Speaker 1: yourusband for nineteen years. He's probably amazing, but you're bored.
Speaker 1: You've had the same thing, day in and day out
Speaker 1: for nineteen years.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, and your ex is probably toxic.
Speaker 1: As far to stay away, all right, I'm attracted to
Speaker 1: a priest at my Catholic church.
Speaker 2: Lol.
Speaker 1: Can't do that. Do not follow through on that.
Speaker 2: I've been using my mother in law's credit card or
Speaker 2: my Uber accounts for the past year. She will know.
Speaker 2: She knows, she just hasn't told you.
Speaker 1: Of course she will know. Oh my god. Okay, this
Speaker 1: one is the worst one. I've been having an affair
Speaker 1: with my good friend's husband for one point five years.
Speaker 2: Is wild.
Speaker 1: I just can't stop.
Speaker 2: You go on to hell this one. I don't know
Speaker 2: who's in wrong here. A one night stand once made
Speaker 2: me squat in his backyard like a dog to we
Speaker 2: because he didn't want his parents to know that I
Speaker 2: was there, and their bedroom was next to the toilet. Oh,
Speaker 2: let the girl take a piss. I can't believe I
Speaker 2: actually did it.
Speaker 3: I could she let Oh my god, the things you
Speaker 3: did back then because you didn't want to pipe up, like, yes,
Speaker 3: You've got to go take a dump outside after I've
Speaker 3: had sex with you because I don't want my parents
Speaker 3: to know I just had sex with you.
Speaker 1: And you're like, yes, okay, I'll just go dump behind
Speaker 1: the tree in your backyard.
Speaker 2: Sometimes in life we're so worried about offending or doing
Speaker 2: something wrong by the other person, and this is one
Speaker 2: of those moments where you say, do you know what,
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna go and piss in the toilet and
Speaker 2: you can deal with your parents. That's what this is.
Speaker 2: Don't be so nice everyone.
Speaker 1: When I grocery shop from companies that are big, like Coals,
Speaker 1: I steal one item to counteract inflation. I love what
Speaker 1: she takes, that's all left. But I love that she
Speaker 1: takes out her own hands and she's like, well, we're
Speaker 1: not being paid more and inflation's going up, so I'm
Speaker 1: gonna steal from Coles.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe Coles is the enemy. Do you always gonna say,
Speaker 2: is Cole's the enemy or wool Worst. I don't know.
Speaker 2: But now that they've got the self serve checkout thing
Speaker 2: and they've got less employees, I feel like they're part
Speaker 2: of the problem.
Speaker 1: Don't steal, guys, don't Yeah, don't steal.
Speaker 2: All right, let's get into the chat with doctor Ali Walker.
Speaker 2: But if you guys have any more accidentally unfiltereds confessionals
Speaker 2: just random stories, maybe it's an act of kindness. Whatever
Speaker 2: you've got that you want to share with us, slide
Speaker 2: on into the DMS because we absolutely love hearing it.
Speaker 2: And these confessionals were very messed up this week, so enjoy.
Speaker 2: Today we are speaking with doctor Ali Walker, who is
Speaker 2: a human connection scientist and mediator with a PhD in
Speaker 2: group dynamics. She's also the author of the brand new
Speaker 2: book Click and Clash. Why do we naturally click with
Speaker 2: some people and feel as though we clash with others?
Speaker 2: Why do we feel like we radiate on the same
Speaker 2: frequency as some and then can feel completely alien to others?
Speaker 2: And what is it that we can do to bridge
Speaker 2: that gap when we feel world's apart. We've all asked
Speaker 2: the question before in our romantic relationships whether we are
Speaker 2: compatible with someone, but we haven't really unpacked the ins
Speaker 2: and outs of compatibility before on the podcast and what
Speaker 2: it really means to be compatible with someone. Today, Dr
Speaker 2: Ali Walker is here to talk us through while we
Speaker 2: click or clash with different people, and it's not just
Speaker 2: our romantic relationships. This is applicable to every relationship in
Speaker 2: your life, to your friendships, to your workplace, relationships with
Speaker 2: your colleagues, every single one. Dotor Ali, welcome to life
Speaker 2: on card.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for coming in today. And you
Speaker 1: came in physically into the chaos. You have entered the
Speaker 1: lines den, so thank you.
Speaker 4: Exciting.
Speaker 2: Oh Ali, you've literally seen the chaos.
Speaker 1: First, we have a bit of a chaotic morning, Paul.
Speaker 2: Allie's been here for twenty five minutes whilst we've been
Speaker 2: trying to set the studio up.
Speaker 1: I know, and we haven't even got the poor thing
Speaker 1: of coffee yet, but it's on the way. We kick
Speaker 1: start every episode with accidently unfiltered You're almost embarrassing story,
Speaker 1: and I can see you're a little bit petrified. Do
Speaker 1: you have one?
Speaker 4: So I do?
Speaker 5: I think everyone has one anyway, So I'll get right
Speaker 5: into it. It was back in high school. I was a
Speaker 5: singer at high school. I love singing, and at my
Speaker 5: school we did a music festival and it's almost like
Speaker 5: an athletics carnival for music.
Speaker 1: Are we in primary school or high school?
Speaker 4: High?
Speaker 1: High school?
Speaker 5: Okay, except it's drawn out over a term or a
Speaker 5: term in a bit.
Speaker 4: So I was in the final year of school and.
Speaker 5: You have all these tryouts and heats, and the people
Speaker 5: who get to the final and win that final go
Speaker 5: to the town hall Sydney and perform.
Speaker 1: I shouldn't laughed, but it's so far I'm getting real
Speaker 1: and bringing on vine.
Speaker 4: And thank goodness.
Speaker 5: It wasn't at the town hall, but it was in
Speaker 5: the final of the senior vocals and it was my
Speaker 5: final chants to sing and maybe make it to the
Speaker 5: town hall.
Speaker 4: All right.
Speaker 5: So I performed singing a lot of times before, and
Speaker 5: I'd had singing lessons and this was my time, and
Speaker 5: I was singing. I think it was dream, a little
Speaker 5: dream of me.
Speaker 1: Oh big, that's a big one to take on.
Speaker 5: There's a moment where it goes stars mating, but I
Speaker 5: linger on, okay, so you can tell it.
Speaker 4: I Oh god, I'd hover anyway.
Speaker 5: So at the first high bit, I had what I
Speaker 5: can only describe as a testing pot.
Speaker 1: I knew.
Speaker 4: It did never happen to me before, It has never
Speaker 4: happened to me. Sin. It just cracked. And there was
Speaker 4: there was.
Speaker 5: A girl, a friend of mine, in the audience, and
Speaker 5: she was sitting there and she's smiling along and she
Speaker 5: went like that when she she actually startled when I
Speaker 5: did that.
Speaker 4: When I made you.
Speaker 1: Never made it to town hall, did your she would
Speaker 1: be shocked.
Speaker 4: I did not win seeing your vocal. I was mortified
Speaker 4: because I'd practiced so much, and honestly it was just
Speaker 4: a freak moment and.
Speaker 1: Did everyone laugh. But also you've got to remember that
Speaker 1: when you're a teenager or a kid, everything is intensified,
Speaker 1: like everything is ten times. If you went into a
Speaker 1: public speaking event now and you stumbled a word or
Speaker 1: you've always cracked, you wouldn't be putting in the trauma
Speaker 1: box under the bed for the rest of your life.
Speaker 5: You'd be like, I'm all right, I can deal with it.
Speaker 5: You'd probably laugh at the time and get everybody else
Speaker 5: to laugh with me. I'd probably say how weird was
Speaker 5: that that I just did that? And I would then
Speaker 5: move on with my life.
Speaker 2: Let's get into it.
Speaker 5: Came here for shift archetypes out of the teenager to
Speaker 5: the adult.
Speaker 2: Not only into the adult into being a criminal lawyer
Speaker 2: for the DPP Like that rule took a turn, didn't it.
Speaker 1: The testing pot really did one on.
Speaker 2: It before and then were going back to your career
Speaker 2: outside of university. What was it that made you want
Speaker 2: to get into criminal defense law, and I guess what
Speaker 2: was then the pivot from that into wanting to do
Speaker 2: a PhD in human connection.
Speaker 4: That was a real plot twist.
Speaker 5: So I when I finished high school, I was never
Speaker 5: interested in science or maths or anything like that. I
Speaker 5: was always humanities and English and history and legal studies,
Speaker 5: and so it was just almost a natural next step.
Speaker 5: I always thought I wanted to be a lawyer, without
Speaker 5: knowing much about the day to day practice of it.
Speaker 5: And as I got through the law degree, I did
Speaker 5: a bit of corporate and I didn't want to do property.
Speaker 5: And I loved people. I love the emotion I love.
Speaker 5: And then I got to the end and I thought, well,
Speaker 5: I realized there's.
Speaker 4: Only people law for me. It's criminal or family.
Speaker 5: And so I applied for this job at the Director
Speaker 5: of Public Prosecution. So it was actually a prosecutor, not
Speaker 5: a defense law which may have changed things if I
Speaker 5: was defense level.
Speaker 4: So I started off. And so two.
Speaker 5: Thousand and seven, two thousand and six, two thousand and seven,
Speaker 5: culture and leadership weren't really cared about or thought about them.
Speaker 5: No one thought about well being at work or psychosocial
Speaker 5: hazards at work. It was just you turn up for
Speaker 5: a job, you got the job, and here you go.
Speaker 5: And so I ended up having some I guess, intense
Speaker 5: reactions to the work I was doing.
Speaker 4: Being young and female. This is relevant. Being young and female.
Speaker 5: Was put on all the sexual assault and child sexual
Speaker 5: assault cases, and it was relevant because all of the
Speaker 5: victims were young and female. They didn't want to retraumatize anyone.
Speaker 5: And it was so interesting because no one thought about
Speaker 5: traumatizing anyone in the work space, of course, because the
Speaker 5: more important person in that scenario is the victim. And
Speaker 5: so they just said, oh, she's young, and FEMA will
Speaker 5: put you on it.
Speaker 4: We'll put you on it.
Speaker 5: And I remember one day going into the office manager's
Speaker 5: office and she was the one who allocated she did
Speaker 5: I don't know if she did it, but she had
Speaker 5: something to do with allocating the cases. And I remember
Speaker 5: on a Monday morning, much like this morning, going in
Speaker 5: and saying, can you please put me on an aggravated
Speaker 5: robbery or a drugs case, any assault, anything, And I thought,
Speaker 5: that's a strange Monday morning at work when you're pleading
Speaker 5: for different sorts of cases. So I guess that was
Speaker 5: the first indication that there was something happening in me,
Speaker 5: and I started having symptoms in my body, not anything extreme,
Speaker 5: but just that i'd never had before that I couldn't explain.
Speaker 4: I'd go to the doctor and have all my blood
Speaker 4: test take No, nothing's wrong with you.
Speaker 5: But I was just responding to this work in a
Speaker 5: way that wasn't great. And I also looked at the
Speaker 5: people who were more experienced, the crown prosecutors, the people
Speaker 5: who if I stayed in that role and I went well,
Speaker 5: I would become and I thought, I don't know if
Speaker 5: I want to do that. It's a very harrowing workplace
Speaker 5: to be in the process. The criminal process is quite,
Speaker 5: as you can imagine, quite intense. So I was absorbing
Speaker 5: all the emotions of everyone around me. I didn't have
Speaker 5: any training or supervision. Clinical supervision we know with psychologists
Speaker 5: and doctors they are trained to deal with complex trauma.
Speaker 5: In criminal law, you're dealing with complex trauma and no,
Speaker 5: there is no training none. It's actually quite amazing.
Speaker 2: Do you think it's something that people intuitively then lean
Speaker 2: into or it's like you learn to cope with it,
Speaker 2: or do you think it's a certain type of personality
Speaker 2: that is better suited to that job, and you look
Speaker 2: at it now and go, that was not my personality
Speaker 2: type that could function in that workplace.
Speaker 5: It's so interesting you asked that, because this is a
Speaker 5: really live question for me.
Speaker 4: I think it's a bit of all of what you said.
Speaker 5: I think some people who go into that role have
Speaker 5: a particular type of personality which ended up and I'm
Speaker 5: not trying to segue here, but that ended up being
Speaker 5: the basis for this book, click or Clash. My reaction
Speaker 5: was overly intense, because I've worked out I am intense connector.
Speaker 4: Some people aren't as intense.
Speaker 5: They're mid intensity or low intensity, so their reaction to
Speaker 5: the court room is very, very different. I'd have people
Speaker 5: in the courtroom next to me, a police officer and
Speaker 5: someone I remember there was an offender screaming, screaming at everyone,
Speaker 5: I'm going to do this to you and I'm going
Speaker 5: to get you, and I'm stiff and petrified, and this
Speaker 5: police officer leans into me, sitting next to me, and
Speaker 5: he says, I think he's talking to you and starts laughing.
Speaker 4: Just because he was able to just sort of laugh
Speaker 4: it off.
Speaker 5: And that was his low intensity reaction to a high
Speaker 5: intensity situation. So I remember one day calling my then
Speaker 5: boyfriend now husband, and he's a chef, and I said
Speaker 5: to him, I was almost in tears because I'd just
Speaker 5: come out of this victim meeting and we'd been hearing
Speaker 5: her story, and I said, I'm just I don't know
Speaker 5: if this is I'm okay in this job and if
Speaker 5: this is right for me, and I'm really upset and
Speaker 5: I just heard this horrible story and this is all
Speaker 5: this job is this horrible story. And I remember saying
Speaker 5: at the end, what are you doing? And he said,
Speaker 5: peeling potatoes? And I didn't want to peel potatoes, but
Speaker 5: I wanted to feel like that about my job. I
Speaker 5: want to just feel really arm's length, you know. I
Speaker 5: like what I do. But I'm not crying every day totally.
Speaker 5: I'd be sitting in meetings and passing tissues to the
Speaker 5: person telling their story and saying to my willing myself
Speaker 5: not to cry, not to cry.
Speaker 1: So I don't know.
Speaker 4: It's huge question.
Speaker 5: I don't know if it's a personality type, if someone
Speaker 5: is more resilient because they may have been exposed to
Speaker 5: that sort of trauma in the past, they may have
Speaker 5: had a family member who worked in that setting. They
Speaker 5: may have had a family member whose police officer. They
Speaker 5: may have grown up just hearing about those stories and
Speaker 5: being conditioned to that. It's I think there's a lot
Speaker 5: of complex factors anyway. So your original question was how
Speaker 5: did you end up going from that to PhD? So
Speaker 5: I ended up talking to my mum about it. It
Speaker 5: was a gradual process of thinking. It was almost like
Speaker 5: putting your hand in the fire in slow motion. That's
Speaker 5: how that job felt, and then going as your hand
Speaker 5: is in the fire and feeling the burn. And I
Speaker 5: remember saying to my mum, I don't know what to do.
Speaker 5: I've studied for so long.
Speaker 4: Years, six years, You're on the conveyor belt. How did
Speaker 4: you get off?
Speaker 5: And I felt shame because I almost felt like a failure.
Speaker 5: You've studied for so long, you idiot, and now and
Speaker 5: it almost felt like going off this well worn path,
Speaker 5: this conveyor belt, through uncharted path with a machete. That's
Speaker 5: how it felt to leave that job. And I had
Speaker 5: no idea what I was doing, And all I knew
Speaker 5: was that I was fascinated by human behavior. I wanted
Speaker 5: to change the system because I looked at that system,
Speaker 5: and I thought, this is just retraumatizing every single person
Speaker 5: involved in this system, and this needs to change. It
Speaker 5: can't be a punishment system. It needs to be a
Speaker 5: therapeutic system. And people who commit crimes, they're not okay
Speaker 5: in the beginning. So there was all of this I
Speaker 5: knew I wanted to go back and understand more. So
Speaker 5: I went back and I ended up doing a PhD
Speaker 5: in group dynamics. So all of those experiences, the love
Speaker 5: of human behavior, the fascination for complex emotion and trauma,
Speaker 5: and the experience in the courtroom led me to then
Speaker 5: go back and do that PhD. And I also studied
Speaker 5: coaching and became a qualified coach at the time, Because
Speaker 5: you know, do I go back and study psychology and
Speaker 5: stuff all over again. That felt like an insurmountable task
Speaker 5: to start back at the beginning, But I kind of
Speaker 5: tried to gather all of these experiences into a bucket
Speaker 5: and make sense.
Speaker 2: Of them for someone who has studied and has spent
Speaker 2: such a long time putting together not only stutting how
Speaker 2: humans interact with each other, but also putting together a
Speaker 2: kind of chart system for how we can categorize ourselves.
Speaker 2: Do you think we in general as people are quite
Speaker 2: bad at understanding how humans connect and understanding how other
Speaker 2: people show up in the.
Speaker 5: World, absolutely, myself included. And I think it's because we
Speaker 5: are not formally taught to understand people. We're not given
Speaker 5: any education in it. It's all supposedly intuitive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like you can learn maths and everyone gets
Speaker 2: the same information there. But hey, even though you're going
Speaker 2: to have to have multiple relationships with so many people,
Speaker 2: go figure that shit out for yourself and suck it
Speaker 2: up plenty of time.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, like trigonometry, who even needs to do that.
Speaker 2: I do also think we're being taught a lot at
Speaker 2: the moment, and this comes in the form of Instagram
Speaker 2: own quotes. It comes in the form of the self
Speaker 2: help of like you be unapologetically you, and sometimes being unapologetically.
Speaker 4: You is rude.
Speaker 2: Not that it's rude, but it doesn't open up to
Speaker 2: understanding how other people show up in the world and
Speaker 2: to maybe leaning into a way that makes them feel comfortable.
Speaker 2: I'd love to understand from you a little bit in
Speaker 2: terms of the research that you've done and the model
Speaker 2: that you've put together. Can you speak us sort through
Speaker 2: I know you have so many different types of how
Speaker 2: people connect, but just a bit of an overview and
Speaker 2: also what is high frequency low frequency? These terminology that
Speaker 2: you use in your model.
Speaker 5: So I ended up identifying two elements, two key elements
Speaker 5: of our relationships and how we connect with other people.
Speaker 5: And those two key elements are frequency or how much
Speaker 5: is the first and intensity or what type, So they're
Speaker 5: the two parts.
Speaker 4: Frequency and intensity. Now, frequency is really easy.
Speaker 5: People would be familiar with the ideas of introversion and extroversion.
Speaker 4: It's correlated to that.
Speaker 5: So if you're an extroverted person, you're going to be
Speaker 5: a high frequency connector, if you're an introverted person, you're
Speaker 5: going to be a low frequency connector. Now some people
Speaker 5: are what I call mid frequency connectors are right in
Speaker 5: the middle, and you are an ambivert, which means that
Speaker 5: you're dictated by social context. So you might kind of
Speaker 5: feel like life's a bit of a pinball machine where
Speaker 5: you go from being born to being overwhelmed. So you've
Speaker 5: got high, mid and low frequency. If you're really low frequency,
Speaker 5: you're probably happy to live on your own. You prefer
Speaker 5: the company of animals maybe to the company of people.
Speaker 5: It's about where you feel most like yourself and most
Speaker 5: at home. So high frequency people who feel most like
Speaker 5: themselves in the company of other people. And it can
Speaker 5: be certain types of people, not just anyone. But that's frequency.
Speaker 5: So is that you get that that's pretty obvious.
Speaker 4: To most people.
Speaker 5: Intensity is new, So this is a new element that
Speaker 5: I identified in researching group dynamics. Intensity is about what
Speaker 5: type of human connection you prefer to experience with other
Speaker 5: people and how you bond with others. And this is
Speaker 5: the real key here because we talk a lot about
Speaker 5: extroverts and introverts, but we don't talk a lot about well,
Speaker 5: when you are together with people, how do you like
Speaker 5: that to feel and how do you like that to be.
Speaker 5: So high intensity people primarily connect through talking and through
Speaker 5: emotional sharing conversations and animated ideas, and they feel a
Speaker 5: lot and so when they're around other people, they engage
Speaker 5: in what I call affective empathy. Affective empathy is I
Speaker 5: feel your feelings. I'm experiencing how you're feeling. And that's
Speaker 5: a high intensity connector. Low intensity connectors are people who
Speaker 5: want to be around other people but where there's no
Speaker 5: pressure to talk. So let's go for a kayak or
Speaker 5: let's go surfing, Let's go for a bike ride, Let's
Speaker 5: go to a movie, let's go see a show, let's
Speaker 5: play cards. But there's no pressure on that high intensity interaction.
Speaker 5: Now some people might be listening and thinking, hold on.
Speaker 5: It depends on the day. I might like both, and
Speaker 5: they are mid intensity connectors. In tensity connectors have great range,
Speaker 5: and they can probably do dinner on a movie. You know,
Speaker 5: when I was younger, I'm such high intensity connector that
Speaker 5: when I'd be asked out on a date to go
Speaker 5: to a movie, I'd.
Speaker 4: Be thinking, we don't even know each other yet. Why
Speaker 4: do you want to go to a movie.
Speaker 2: And then we can't talk and get to know each other.
Speaker 5: Yeah, a movie's for when you really, really really know
Speaker 5: someone already. Of course I would say yes because I
Speaker 5: wanted to go out with them, But I never understood why.
Speaker 4: I thought that was an odd choice.
Speaker 5: And I think it's because people are like, because it's
Speaker 5: low intensity, there's no pressure. The pressure is off on
Speaker 5: the connection if you're in a low intensity scenario. So
Speaker 5: I think of intensity as being a little bit like curtains.
Speaker 5: And you probably didn't think I was going to say that,
Speaker 5: But if you think of high intensity connection as being
Speaker 5: like a sheer curtain, so a lot comes through and
Speaker 5: a lot you can see through that curtain. The hard
Speaker 5: is on their sleeve and share a lot and low
Speaker 5: intensity connection. The further you're going down on the continue
Speaker 5: and getting towards blockout curtains where they take a long
Speaker 5: time to open up, a long time to trust.
Speaker 1: Do you think that over time we can change our
Speaker 1: frequency and our intensity, because listening to you say that,
Speaker 1: I've always thought that I was high, like tornado, hurricane, hi,
Speaker 1: high high, But everything you just said, I'm like, I'm
Speaker 1: actually quite low low, low, low, which is unusual because
Speaker 1: we talk for a living and we're we're always here,
Speaker 1: you know, when we're on, we're on. But I think
Speaker 1: I used to be a hurricane. So do you think
Speaker 1: it's normal for people to change through the seasons.
Speaker 4: Absolutely?
Speaker 5: And I think of this as so there's a difference
Speaker 5: between a life indicator and a type indicator. Now, a
Speaker 5: type indicator is something that will stay with you for
Speaker 5: the rest of your days, so this is who you
Speaker 5: are now. A life indicator reflects where you are in
Speaker 5: your life at that point.
Speaker 4: So this absolutely can change.
Speaker 5: And my research has shown that particularly as we age,
Speaker 5: our frequency declines, and I think everyone can relate to that.
Speaker 5: Compare how much you wanted to go out when you're
Speaker 5: a child or a teenager to how often you go
Speaker 5: out now, or how your energy just declines. You just
Speaker 5: think I am drained by different things, and I put
Speaker 5: my energy into different things.
Speaker 1: So when my friends like organize a dinner and they're like,
Speaker 1: let's meet at eight o'clock, I'm like, PM, you want
Speaker 1: to meet at eight pm? Like, to me, that's so late.
Speaker 1: I want to have already gone out for dinner and
Speaker 1: be home by eight pm. But that happened to me yesterday. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I'm like, what do you mean eight pm? Surely
Speaker 1: they've got that's all they've got, the only booking. Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't think I can make it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm organizing something with my That's what I mean though,
Speaker 5: this Friday night and they're saying, how about seven thirty?
Speaker 4: And I realized seven thirty, Wow.
Speaker 5: Okay, okay, right seven, I've got Saturday sport with the
Speaker 5: kids in Then.
Speaker 4: You just shift over your life.
Speaker 5: And I think that's why I like this, because you
Speaker 5: could take this at a different point in your life
Speaker 5: and get But we don't change as much as we
Speaker 5: think we.
Speaker 1: Do, right.
Speaker 4: I'd also love to this is going to sound creepy.
Speaker 5: I'd love to profile you when you think you're low
Speaker 5: compared to other people.
Speaker 4: You couldn't do.
Speaker 5: This job unless you had capacity for high frequency and
Speaker 5: high intensity.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have the capacity, but the capacity is small.
Speaker 4: And also because you do the work that you do.
Speaker 5: I would say that what we tend to do if
Speaker 5: you think about it, almost like connection credits. So if
Speaker 5: you're doing a podcast like this, that's going to take
Speaker 5: a lot. Let's say we've got one hundred credits a day,
Speaker 5: and doing a podcast like this is going to take
Speaker 5: up a lot of your credits because you have to
Speaker 5: be on and like really going for that discrete period
Speaker 5: of time. You're then going to have less when you leave,
Speaker 5: and you're going to have to compensate after doing a
Speaker 5: podcast like this. And I think the same because of
Speaker 5: the work that I do. It's very high intense burst,
Speaker 5: high intensity bursts of energy, and so then the rest
Speaker 5: of the day might be Even my sisters said to
Speaker 5: me recently in social events, now you know, at family things,
Speaker 5: I used to give speeches all the time.
Speaker 4: Okay, I get up and go, sure, I'll speak.
Speaker 5: And now that one asked you, alli, will my sister
Speaker 5: didn't say to me recently, she said you are more
Speaker 5: withdrawn now. Withdrawn's a strong word, but you are quieter
Speaker 5: now at social events because of what you do for
Speaker 5: a job.
Speaker 2: In terms of identifying, So if you're I mean, I
Speaker 2: think most of us can kind of listen to that
Speaker 2: and have an understanding of who we are. But is
Speaker 2: there a clear example if you're going to meet someone,
Speaker 2: is there an easy identifier that might make you go
Speaker 2: you are low intensity, you are high intensity.
Speaker 5: So there's some really easy ways to read someone else's
Speaker 5: behavior and understand what kind of connector they are. And
Speaker 5: if you can read their connection type, you can then
Speaker 5: know what belonging looks like for them, and then you
Speaker 5: can offer it to them. And if belonging is our
Speaker 5: greatest psychological need, and you can offer it to someone
Speaker 5: your base, it's almost the equivalent of walking up to
Speaker 5: someone and saying, here, I have a piece of chocolate cake.
Speaker 4: It's just going to make them happy.
Speaker 5: So if you want to make people happy, here's the
Speaker 5: first way to do it, which is to offer them belonging.
Speaker 5: So to read someone's connection type. Frequency is really easy. Now,
Speaker 5: because I know you were talking, I could ask you,
Speaker 5: if you are designing a perfect weekend for yourself, no
Speaker 5: geographical or financial limit, would you want to be around
Speaker 5: other people for more than fifty percent of the time?
Speaker 1: God?
Speaker 4: No, half the time?
Speaker 2: Does it depend on the people though, because I think.
Speaker 4: You choose, you choose.
Speaker 1: Ah, Yeah, I would go away with a partner, but
Speaker 1: I wouldn't want to be around anyone else. Yeah, more
Speaker 1: than fifty percent of it?
Speaker 5: No, the partner is included because some people will say
Speaker 5: alone more than fifty percent of the time.
Speaker 1: I'd probably say fifty percent.
Speaker 4: So you'd want to be around him fifty percent of
Speaker 4: the time.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, So then you're a mid frequency connector fifty
Speaker 5: to seventy because he listens once. I I asked this
Speaker 5: in a workshop and a guy who puts up with
Speaker 5: hand he goes, do I have to be with my family?
Speaker 5: So mostly you can't go up to a stranger and
Speaker 5: say so, if you're designing a perfect weekend, would you
Speaker 5: want to be alone for.
Speaker 4: More than time? Was that it's going to sound weird.
Speaker 5: So what you're looking for for frequency is how often
Speaker 5: someone talks and how fast they talk. So if somebody
Speaker 5: meets you for the first time and they just straight
Speaker 5: in there and they're chatting no matter what they're talking about,
Speaker 5: you can think yourself and I can do this really quickly. Now,
Speaker 5: high middle, low frequency. Oh do you want me to
Speaker 5: do low frequency?
Speaker 2: Yeah, give us an example of it.
Speaker 5: Look like it'll sound like I'm sedated. But okay, So
Speaker 5: here here's me doing low frequency. So there's there's more
Speaker 5: pauses in speech. When someone's low frequency. You would feel
Speaker 5: like they are really thinking about what they're saying.
Speaker 4: I can't do it for long, it just feels too uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, very considered.
Speaker 5: Yes, And someone's energy, they're not focusing too much on
Speaker 5: the conversation because their habitat is when they're on their own.
Speaker 5: So for them, the conversation is a lot of energy.
Speaker 5: Somebody's who's high frequencies are like, it's really it's loud
Speaker 5: and so it's fast, it's it's almost it's exciting to
Speaker 5: be talking to them, and not to say like everyone's variable, right,
Speaker 5: and it's all relative, and it depends on who you're with.
Speaker 5: There's very contextual, but we do have these comfort zones
Speaker 5: of connections. That's a first one that's frequency, So you're
Speaker 5: looking at how fast someone speaks and how much they
Speaker 5: speak to work out frequency. Intensity is interesting and this
Speaker 5: took me a long time to identify. And this comes
Speaker 5: from our body language. You can read someone's intensity through
Speaker 5: the level of their hand gestures as they're talking in
Speaker 5: a comfortable.
Speaker 4: I thought that was just conversation.
Speaker 1: Greek and Italian background, Lawrence, we were all like this.
Speaker 4: So some people will say that that it's cultural.
Speaker 5: But people who are high frequency, if you imagine that,
Speaker 5: the middle of intensity is almost like the middle of
Speaker 5: our body, so it's our waist. If your hands are
Speaker 5: above your waist, a lot of the time when you're
Speaker 5: in animated conversation, you're a high intensity connector, so you're
Speaker 5: communicating to other people that you like to connect through talking.
Speaker 5: Now if someone's mid intensity, so above the waist body
Speaker 5: language is what we call the truth zone of body language.
Speaker 5: So between the waist and the shoulders, if our hands
Speaker 5: are here, this is the truth zone. Above the shoulders
Speaker 5: is the passion zone. So there's a lot of cold
Speaker 5: that are communicating below the waist. They're lying no, no, no.
Speaker 1: So someone's like I was at home alone, I swear.
Speaker 4: You're like, gotcha, Teeter, No, it's about that.
Speaker 5: So I guess the truth zone because you know, when
Speaker 5: you're trying to persuade people and your hands are here,
Speaker 5: Believe me, you know it's impassioned. When your hands are
Speaker 5: up here. Below the waist is the casual zone of
Speaker 5: body language. So you can have mid intensity connectors whose
Speaker 5: hands are down here and you might they might even
Speaker 5: dart up here for a second and then they come back.
Speaker 4: Or one's down here and one's up here.
Speaker 5: So in my workshop, it's fascinating because I get people
Speaker 5: to just stand up and have a chat with the
Speaker 5: person next to them.
Speaker 1: Can you tell when someone's lying? Like, I know you're
Speaker 1: not a human lie detector, but because you're so in
Speaker 1: depth in behavior from people and responses, do you feel
Speaker 1: like they are very generic cues when someone's lying, like
Speaker 1: an eye dart or you know, like not.
Speaker 4: I think you're looking for.
Speaker 5: So when you're looking to detect lying or someone who's
Speaker 5: not telling the truth, you're looking for a deviation or
Speaker 5: a movement away from baseline behaviors. So to take me
Speaker 5: for an example, I can't remember the LST last time
Speaker 5: I toldal Ie not a big one anyway.
Speaker 2: No one you'll tell on you.
Speaker 5: So you'd be looking and saying, okay, well, Allie's normally
Speaker 5: high frequent. She talks a lot and talks quite quickly,
Speaker 5: and her hands are here. So if I was saying
Speaker 5: something that wasn't true, it might be that I, if
Speaker 5: I normally make eye contact with you, that I stopped
Speaker 5: making eye contact. But there are some people who rarely
Speaker 5: make eye contact, and so it doesn't mean that they're
Speaker 5: lying just because they do. I don't think it's useful
Speaker 5: to talk about a bullet point list. You're looking for
Speaker 5: someone moving away from their typical behaviors because they're trying
Speaker 5: to deceive. So they're not going to engage in how
Speaker 5: they normally speak. They're going to do something different.
Speaker 2: Just going back to this conversation about high intensity or
Speaker 2: low intensity individuals. When we talk about this in terms
Speaker 2: of like a workplace, not so much in a romantic relationship,
Speaker 2: but in a workplace environment, are there certain careers that
Speaker 2: people who are high intensity are attracted to and people
Speaker 2: who are low intensity are attracted to.
Speaker 5: So if you are extreme high intensity, for example, it
Speaker 5: gives you above average expression and courage and audacity. So
Speaker 5: I would say that both of you are high intensity
Speaker 5: and you are willing to share things that most people
Speaker 5: would be embarrassed to share in a public way.
Speaker 2: But that makes you hallie how dear?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Also fair true, yeah, but that gives you above
Speaker 1: average courage and fearlessness in expression that.
Speaker 5: People enjoy because they can live through you. So you
Speaker 5: become channels.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: So most people who are around the middle of intensity,
Speaker 5: who don't want to share unfiltered stuff about their embarrassing paths,
Speaker 5: they want to access people who are willing to do that.
Speaker 4: Do you see what I'm saying. So it's a gift.
Speaker 4: It's not about saying, oh, I'm not in the middle.
Speaker 5: But then if you're low frequency and really high intensity,
Speaker 5: above average empathy, if you're low frequency and low intensity,
Speaker 5: above average self sufficiency, these are the people who would
Speaker 5: be explorers who can go to Mars because they don't
Speaker 5: need people as much as other people do. Or if
Speaker 5: you're somebody who's high frequency but extreme low intensity. I
Speaker 5: know I'm saying a lot of terminology here, but above
Speaker 5: average grit. So these are the people who can probably
Speaker 5: go to war and deal with those sorts of extreme
Speaker 5: environments that most people go oh, that I couldn't do that.
Speaker 5: So it's not about right or wrong, or good or
Speaker 5: bad types. It's actually about identifying your type, your comfort zone,
Speaker 5: because it's like your skin.
Speaker 4: This is how I explain it.
Speaker 5: If you're highly intense, it's almost like having really fair skin,
Speaker 5: So when you go out into the sun.
Speaker 4: You are affected by that world.
Speaker 5: So when I go into a courtroom, if I'm a
Speaker 5: high intensity person, it's almost like going out into the
Speaker 5: sun with no protection.
Speaker 4: You burn too quickly, You burn really quickly.
Speaker 5: Whereas if someone's low intensity, they've just got maybe thicker
Speaker 5: skin and they can go out into the sun it
Speaker 5: doesn't affect them as much. But then they don't have
Speaker 5: that sensitivity, and they don't you know, there's all these
Speaker 5: different gifts that come from just finding out your type.
Speaker 2: Why do you think it's so important? I mean in
Speaker 2: terms of we've spoken so much in the past about
Speaker 2: things like being an introvert or an extrovert. We've spoken
Speaker 2: about knowing your attachment style or knowing your love language,
Speaker 2: Like there's a million different types of communication styles. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's a million different types of tests you can do
Speaker 2: to figure out who you are. I mean, we've all
Speaker 2: also done those tests when you've gone for a new
Speaker 2: employment to kind of put you into a category of
Speaker 2: what type of person you are. But why do you
Speaker 2: think it's so important for people to understand their connection type?
Speaker 2: And why do you think this is such a missed
Speaker 2: category that hasn't been explored.
Speaker 5: So and thank you for asking that, because I didn't
Speaker 5: want to create a new thing because I almost found
Speaker 5: it a little bit embarrassing in a way because there's
Speaker 5: so many quizzes out there and some people might.
Speaker 4: Say, oh, yeah, I know that, like what type of
Speaker 4: dog should you buy? Based on why.
Speaker 1: Do you like to run or not? Do you want
Speaker 1: to be a slot?
Speaker 2: And so that all of that.
Speaker 5: We grew up doing those quizzes in magazines all the time.
Speaker 2: And also try to put ourselves into different categories to
Speaker 2: better understand ourselves.
Speaker 5: Yes, and this one was different, And the reason I
Speaker 5: designed it is because I realized all these tests we're
Speaker 5: doing tell us about who we are, whereas this one
Speaker 5: has a different focus and it's more about the social
Speaker 5: environment that helps you thrive. And that's why this is different.
Speaker 5: That's why I wanted to create it because I did
Speaker 5: see a huge gap. So what I want people to
Speaker 5: take from this is not ah, that's who I am,
Speaker 5: full stop.
Speaker 4: It's actually okay, So.
Speaker 5: Here's my optimal connection environment, here's my optimal social environment.
Speaker 5: So how can I design my life in a way
Speaker 5: that supports me? So the gifts that you both have.
Speaker 5: If you were in an introverted, low intensity life where
Speaker 5: you were doing quite nonverbal tasks all day every day,
Speaker 5: I would expect you to really languish. I would expect
Speaker 5: you to be very unhappy because you're not living according
Speaker 5: to your connection environment. And equally, if you have someone
Speaker 5: doing a poods like this and they're low frequency and
Speaker 5: low intensity, they would be sweating, they'd be petrified, their
Speaker 5: mouth would be dry like they would have they'd take
Speaker 5: days to recover from something like this. So I want
Speaker 5: people to use this and then say okay, so this
Speaker 5: is the sort of environment I need. And so you
Speaker 5: ask a question about workplaces, and now post COVID, we
Speaker 5: have this huge opportunity to design workplaces in a flexible way.
Speaker 5: Not all can be And some people I speak to
Speaker 5: work in jails and they sort.
Speaker 4: Of said, oh, yeah, how do I do flexible.
Speaker 5: Working or working from home? If I'm a corrective services officer. Obviously,
Speaker 5: not every workplace can do this, but if you do
Speaker 5: work from home, now you can start to design your
Speaker 5: week in a way that supports your connection. What's really
Speaker 5: interesting is we're seeing this mid frequency, mid intensity way
Speaker 5: of connecting because most people live there where people let's
Speaker 5: just come into the office about half the time or
Speaker 5: three days a week and then work from home and
Speaker 5: the rest of the time and we'll have some collaboration time.
Speaker 5: In some ways, it's really you can see that the
Speaker 5: world is designed for the people in the middle.
Speaker 1: Ali, I'd love to talk about romantic relationships because it's
Speaker 1: a big part of what we talk about here at
Speaker 1: lifelon card. What is your take on this idea of
Speaker 1: opposites attract Because we hear this term all the time,
Speaker 1: opposites attract, But then we hear people say, oh, but
Speaker 1: you don't want someone to opposite because you're clash. You
Speaker 1: want someone to have some similarities with you. Then you
Speaker 1: have people say, I have mummy and daddy issues. I'm
Speaker 1: attracted to someone that's like my dad or like my
Speaker 1: mom in terms of personality and is that a connection?
Speaker 1: So what is your whole overarching idea on opposites attract.
Speaker 1: How many similarities do we need to have with someone
Speaker 1: in a romantic relationship for it to be a successful relationship,
Speaker 1: And why do we have daddy issues?
Speaker 2: I'm jo.
Speaker 5: Okay, So what I found through the course of the
Speaker 5: research was really interesting. We look for friends who mirror
Speaker 5: our connection type, and we look for partners, romantic partners
Speaker 5: who balance us out or enhance us in some way. Now,
Speaker 5: that's where opposites attract is not actually totally true, because
Speaker 5: an opposite in my language, would be someone completely on
Speaker 5: the other side of the model to you. So, for example,
Speaker 5: if your high frequency and high intensity, your opposite would
Speaker 5: be low frequency and low intensity, and those don't work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which I was going to say, I could obviously
Speaker 2: be friends with someone, but couldn't have a relationship with
Speaker 2: someone who was low intensity and introverted and needed to
Speaker 2: be alone because so many of my needs would go
Speaker 2: on mat.
Speaker 5: So what we do is we go out into the
Speaker 5: world and we're looking for it. If you think of
Speaker 5: a romantic relationship as being like a three legged race,
Speaker 5: you want someone who can be on the other side
Speaker 5: to you and running alongside you, able enough to meet
Speaker 5: your need.
Speaker 1: That I am picturing this this is such a funny analogy.
Speaker 1: It makes sense.
Speaker 5: So they're alongside you, okay, So whereas friendships are more
Speaker 5: like a mirror. So you're sitting and you're looking for self,
Speaker 5: and it doesn't make it an egotistical exercise that you
Speaker 5: go out and the world and find people like you.
Speaker 5: You are saying to this other person in front of you,
Speaker 5: this friend, you are my greatest key to self discovery.
Speaker 5: You can help me be more of me, be the
Speaker 5: best version of me. You're helping me be better. Right,
Speaker 5: So that's what friends do. But a romantic partner, in
Speaker 5: a really primal way, whether you want to have children
Speaker 5: with that person or not, you are looking at this
Speaker 5: romantic partner emotionally and saying, if we were to become one,
Speaker 5: you would make me better. So we might have a
Speaker 5: perception that we need smoothing out. We have a rough
Speaker 5: edge that needs a bit of smoothing out, so you
Speaker 5: might find someone who has a smooth edge in that place.
Speaker 5: You're looking for almost the other side of the puzzle piece.
Speaker 5: And that's why people say you complete me. You're the
Speaker 5: and so in a way that's correct, because you're a
Speaker 5: sort of puzzle piece with some jagged edges, and then
Speaker 5: you find the other bit that just makes that hole
Speaker 5: you're looking for a hole. So I'll give you an
Speaker 5: example in my life. My friends are all mid to
Speaker 5: high frequency and high intensity like me.
Speaker 4: So when we get together.
Speaker 5: It's a lot of animated talking and excited I don't want
Speaker 5: going off on tangents. And whereas my husband is a
Speaker 5: shape shifter, he's right at the center, mid frequency, mid intensity.
Speaker 5: And I think of our relationship almost as like I'm
Speaker 5: the kite out in the wind and he's this amazing
Speaker 5: anchor guiding the kite. You know, he comes to win
Speaker 5: and I'm just gonna pull it in or let it
Speaker 5: go out. And so I would describe him in ways
Speaker 5: like he centers me or he grounds me. And I
Speaker 5: think everybody, depending on your your needs and connection, will
Speaker 5: be looking for someone else who makes you feel like
Speaker 5: a better version of yourself.
Speaker 2: Do you think that this is where people can come
Speaker 2: unstuck in relationships in terms of in the way that
Speaker 2: we communicate. So, for example, if you are mismatched in
Speaker 2: your pairing in terms of how you show up in
Speaker 2: your connections. If you are somebody who is a high
Speaker 2: frequency and you have sought out a relationship with someone
Speaker 2: who's low frequency, feeling like you don't speak to me,
Speaker 2: you don't talk to me, and not understanding that maybe
Speaker 2: they just don't do that at all. It's not just
Speaker 2: not with you, it's that they don't have the capacity
Speaker 2: or the ability to tap into that side of themselves
Speaker 2: in the same way that someone who maybe high frequency can,
Speaker 2: and they may enjoy that connection in a different way.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, and so many of the conversations that I have
Speaker 5: with people are around that. But I think it's so
Speaker 5: important to say, and I'm really excited to say it
Speaker 5: here in this context, we've been conditioned to think that
Speaker 5: all of our connection needs should be met by one
Speaker 5: romantic partner. And my research shows that if you think
Speaker 5: of connection as being like a piece or a pie
Speaker 5: with eight pieces, your romantic partner is one piece of
Speaker 5: that pie, one piece. And we ask them, and we're
Speaker 5: raised with all the movies that we've watched, in the
Speaker 5: books that we've read, and the fairy tales, we're conditioned
Speaker 5: to almost think that they are seven pieces of our pie,
Speaker 5: and that we're the final piece with our family and
Speaker 5: friends and all that. But we have an entire pie
Speaker 5: of connection and belonging. We need to experience. And so
Speaker 5: when people say to me they don't talk to me
Speaker 5: or they're too low frequency for me, my first response
Speaker 5: is number one, we can't take anyone else's connection type
Speaker 5: personally ever, totally, because their connection type is developed pretty
Speaker 5: much before the age of ten. So if they're behaving
Speaker 5: as an adult in a certain way, it has very
Speaker 5: little to do with you. But yes, we do produce
Speaker 5: reactions with other people. Some people might make us feel
Speaker 5: comfortable at ease natural, some people might make us feel
Speaker 5: a little bit more uncomfortable. But if someone's not talking
Speaker 5: to you, they probably don't talk to anyone else either.
Speaker 5: It's not that they're sharing, you know. And if someone
Speaker 5: might say, oh, yeah, but I can see them with
Speaker 5: their friends, well maybe their friends are low intensity and
Speaker 5: they don't feel like they've got the spotlight on them
Speaker 5: for example. So if you're in a relationship with someone
Speaker 5: who has really different connection needs to you a don't
Speaker 5: take it personally. Be be curious about it rather than
Speaker 5: upset about it, and try to find ways to meet
Speaker 5: in the middle. But also it's about thinking about how
Speaker 5: can you meet your needs in other ways? So as
Speaker 5: I said, before my husband's a shape shifter. I meet
Speaker 5: my insane, high intensity needs through conversations like this, through
Speaker 5: writing the book that I wrote, through my friendships, through
Speaker 5: my relationships with my parents and my sisters and my brothers.
Speaker 4: There are so many sources.
Speaker 5: Of connection, and I almost feel like we're they're at
Speaker 5: a door with a key that doesn't work without just
Speaker 5: going to another door where that key absolutely works, and
Speaker 5: why doesn't my key work in this door.
Speaker 1: We often speak about how much pressure we put on
Speaker 1: our partners to be literally everything in our life, and
Speaker 1: that a big part of some conflict in a relationship
Speaker 1: is because we do expect them to be too much.
Speaker 1: But you just spoke about your husband at the start
Speaker 1: of your book. You spoke about your husband and your
Speaker 1: first date. I mean you talk about the fact that
Speaker 1: maybe you might clash at the beginning or have some
Speaker 1: you know, you think your connections not there, and then
Speaker 1: it can come later in time. How often do you
Speaker 1: think that is and how important do you think that is?
Speaker 1: To go off that first initial feeling, can things change.
Speaker 5: So what's really interesting about first impressions research is that
Speaker 5: we're generally correct in our intuitive response to someone, but
Speaker 5: the explanations and stories we give are generally incorrect.
Speaker 2: What do you mean?
Speaker 5: Okay, so you know, when you meet someone, we might
Speaker 5: have what we think of as being a negative reaction,
Speaker 5: or like that person aggravated me, or that reaction is
Speaker 5: true with a first impression, you know how you might
Speaker 5: think to yourself, Oh, that person's funny, or that person
Speaker 5: gives me an uncomfortable feeling. The story we might then
Speaker 5: tell after that isn't necessarily right.
Speaker 2: Because we're filling in the blanks and that's what our
Speaker 2: brain does when we don't have all the pieces of
Speaker 2: the puzzle. Yeah, we need to give ourselves a story,
Speaker 2: we need to give ourselves a solution to it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So what I'd say is trust the feeling, but
Speaker 5: don't initially or automatically make up a story about why
Speaker 5: that is and then believe that story.
Speaker 4: Just be curious about it.
Speaker 5: Because sometimes we might say, for example, have a competitive
Speaker 5: reaction with someone and ultimately they can become a friend,
Speaker 5: but it's just because they just sparked something in your
Speaker 5: stimulated in something, and you might not like that feeling initially,
Speaker 5: but it's not necessarily going to have a bad ending.
Speaker 1: Well, it's definitely something we get asked a lot. We've
Speaker 1: been in the situation, but it's when you have a
Speaker 1: first date with someone, or you meet someone for the
Speaker 1: first one or two times and you say they seemed
Speaker 1: amazing on paper, but I don't think the connection was there.
Speaker 1: I'm a big believer that it can develop, and it
Speaker 1: can develop in something amazing. I don't think it has
Speaker 1: to be fireworks on the first date or the first meeting.
Speaker 1: Would you tell someone that said I went on a
Speaker 1: first date, I just didn't feel like it was overwhelmingly great,
Speaker 1: didn't feel a fireworks. Would you tell them to push
Speaker 1: on to a second and third date, Okay, it could develop,
Speaker 1: or would you say, nap, chemistry is not there.
Speaker 5: This is a hard one because I'm almost not going
Speaker 5: to take my own advice. So with my husband, we
Speaker 5: went on a date and it was like trying to
Speaker 5: light a wet match. The conversation was except I was so.
Speaker 4: Attracted to him.
Speaker 1: You're like, let me just.
Speaker 2: I do not care if you can't speak, because you'll
Speaker 2: be good for other things.
Speaker 4: But I had this really weird.
Speaker 5: I wasn't even thinking it was sexual, but obviously what
Speaker 5: I was essensual.
Speaker 4: I was like, I want to be under his jump,
Speaker 4: I would.
Speaker 1: I was thinking to myself, what, literally, never had anyone
Speaker 1: say that, you don't feel like if.
Speaker 5: You saw a log if you're cold and you saw
Speaker 5: a log fire over.
Speaker 4: In a corner of the room, and you just wanted
Speaker 4: to be near.
Speaker 1: It, you wanted to just be as close as you're could.
Speaker 4: But he was annoying me at the same time. So
Speaker 4: like a moth, I'm playing.
Speaker 5: Every relationship is fifty to fifty, every single relationship, So
Speaker 5: in my fifty percent, I went into his first date
Speaker 5: trying to be impressive, and I was trying to say
Speaker 5: things that I thought he might be impressed by.
Speaker 1: And funny, yes, yes, all of that crap.
Speaker 5: And then at one point he ordered a tomato dish
Speaker 5: at the very beginning, and he's a chef, but he
Speaker 5: was being a gentleman.
Speaker 4: He said, would you like to try someone?
Speaker 5: And I said, no, thanks, I don't like roma tomatoes,
Speaker 5: because I thought he would think, oh great, we're like
Speaker 5: Kindred serious, because she knows roma tomatoes is a variety
Speaker 5: of Tomatow.
Speaker 4: Was trying to be sophistic nerd Burger and eventually then he.
Speaker 5: Goes, you'll be okay then, because he's a cherry tomorrow,
Speaker 5: and so I was like, humiliated. I was so embarrassed.
Speaker 5: I was like twenty five anyway, So then I thought, well,
Speaker 5: I didn't impress him by talking about food. I'm just
Speaker 5: gonna go and talk about things I know about it.
Speaker 5: I'm just talking about group dynamics and collective contry with
Speaker 5: Sunday Night. And he just opened a restaurant. He was exhausted, right,
Speaker 5: so read the room to me anyway. So at one
Speaker 5: point I'm talking and he just does the unthinkable for
Speaker 5: a first date and looks down at his watch for
Speaker 5: about three seconds. And this was before Apple watches, so
Speaker 5: he wasn't reading a message. It was an analogue watch.
Speaker 4: He was just staring.
Speaker 1: At the time, He's like, how much longer do I
Speaker 1: have to endure this tomato talk?
Speaker 5: Worse than tomato talk? I think he could connection talk
Speaker 5: this podcast?
Speaker 2: How long she.
Speaker 4: Had have gone?
Speaker 1: Thank you for coming?
Speaker 4: So embarrassing, And so.
Speaker 5: Then I said because I was humiliated twice tomato humiliation
Speaker 5: and then looking at his watch humiliator. So I said,
Speaker 5: is they're a problem? And then he said, look, I
Speaker 5: really want to talk about it.
Speaker 4: It's a lie. He didn't want to talk about it.
Speaker 5: I really want to have this conversation with you, but
Speaker 5: I'm really tired. Can we talk about something light and easy.
Speaker 5: So it wasn't that there weren't sparks there. So you
Speaker 5: asked a question about what would you say to someone,
Speaker 5: I would say, tell me exactly what happened. Because if
Speaker 5: you were annoyed at them and you were like they
Speaker 5: were getting under your skin, but you still wanted to
Speaker 5: be inside their jumper, I'd say go on a second
Speaker 5: date after that. If it was just awkward but there
Speaker 5: was a clear chemistry between you, pursue that.
Speaker 4: But if you're sitting there.
Speaker 5: Going, oh my gosh, this guy like I wanted to
Speaker 5: impress him. Yeah, I wanted him to think I was great.
Speaker 5: I was trying really hard. If I was with someone
Speaker 5: and I didn't feel it and I was going, oh,
Speaker 5: this is really awkward and I don't want to be
Speaker 5: anywhere near his jumper, I wouldn't go on a second day.
Speaker 5: But what I would say to people you need the
Speaker 5: like er, like the grunt, like I want to be
Speaker 5: around this person who doesn't.
Speaker 1: Need to get onto that jumper.
Speaker 4: Yes, I absolutely think you have to have that.
Speaker 1: LL just takes it back to balance what you said
Speaker 1: at the start, doesn't it.
Speaker 5: But maybe that's a high intensity thing to say as well.
Speaker 5: Maybe I'm just projecting all my stuff, Like maybe someone's
Speaker 5: sitting there going I don't have.
Speaker 4: That, but I love my partner one hundred percent.
Speaker 2: I think that that is And I mean, I know
Speaker 2: a lot of people who are in long term, very
Speaker 2: happy relationships and that sex drive is very very low,
Speaker 2: or that like want to be physically intimate is low.
Speaker 2: And I think that that's something that we can do.
Speaker 2: We can project like how we show up in our
Speaker 2: relationships and think that that's what's normal and that everybody
Speaker 2: else's relationship should be similar in order to be healthy.
Speaker 5: Yeah, what I did want to talk about because you
Speaker 5: raised it earlier and I realized I completely missed the
Speaker 5: other side of what I was going to say. You're
Speaker 5: talking about romantic relationships and opposites attract, and some people
Speaker 5: go into relationships for a lot of different reasons. When
Speaker 5: you have a healthy relationship, that's what I described before.
Speaker 5: You know, the puzzle pieces and someone enhances you. What
Speaker 5: about those ones where they become toxic? And I think
Speaker 5: that's a lot of people's experience, And it was absolutely
Speaker 5: my experience until I met my husband, And what's happening
Speaker 5: there is that if your friends are a mirror of
Speaker 5: your self discovery and you're unfolding and you can see
Speaker 5: yourself in them, toxic relationships are almost a mirror, like
Speaker 5: you know those mirrors that are a bit skewed, you
Speaker 5: know when.
Speaker 4: You go to a like the crazy.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they're hard to focus on. So some relationships become
Speaker 5: a mirror of our trauma. And so you see someone
Speaker 5: and you're drawn to them initially because you think, oh,
Speaker 5: I've got this thing that I want to work through
Speaker 5: and heal, and you look like you could really expose
Speaker 5: that for me.
Speaker 2: Why do you think people and I ask this because
Speaker 2: both of us have been in toxic relationships in the past,
Speaker 2: why do you think people are attracted to that? Why
Speaker 2: do you think we're attracted to things that we may
Speaker 2: have experienced already and then we almost like repeat that
Speaker 2: same patent behavior into toxic relationship.
Speaker 5: Because trauma is almost frozen or imprinted in our experience,
Speaker 5: in our psyche, and we're almost stuck at that age
Speaker 5: where it happened, and unless we process a find a
Speaker 5: way to process it, it's hard to move on from it.
Speaker 5: It can almost feel like it's just stuck there. So
Speaker 5: we get attracted to someone who can help us reexperience
Speaker 5: the same type of trauma because that's almost a way
Speaker 5: of unfreezing the original trauma.
Speaker 4: So it's a healthy thing.
Speaker 5: That's why I think we just need to see relationships
Speaker 5: much more about our evolution and our self discovery rather
Speaker 5: than do they like me? Do they love me? It's
Speaker 5: your trying to process thing. It's almost like you go
Speaker 5: into your heart, your psyche and think, what do I
Speaker 5: want to heal.
Speaker 2: It's so interesting you say that because I think I
Speaker 2: look back on my personal relationships and I know like
Speaker 2: I had the same It was over and over again,
Speaker 2: the same type of relationship. But I don't think I
Speaker 2: had the understanding, nor had I done the self work
Speaker 2: to realize that that's what I was doing. And I
Speaker 2: think that's the problem when people get into patent toxic
Speaker 2: relationships unless you know that there's a reason why you're
Speaker 2: choosing that person. You think you're being drawn to them
Speaker 2: by chemistry, or they're your soulmate, or there's some sort
Speaker 2: of undying thing that makes you keep on repeating that behavior.
Speaker 2: And I guess Without the self awareness, you can't do
Speaker 2: the healing.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, and in the book, I talk about some questions
Speaker 5: that we can ask to work out whether something is
Speaker 5: a healthy or a toxic connection.
Speaker 4: In that so we can.
Speaker 5: Have intimate clicks and intimate clashes, and intimate clashes are
Speaker 5: the ones that feel unsafe. You know, if you're driving
Speaker 5: a car and the road starts feeling, oh, this doesn't
Speaker 5: feel stable.
Speaker 4: So we absolutely need to be aware.
Speaker 5: Of how safe, how psychologically safe, we feel in a relationship.
Speaker 5: And that's why I say to people who really encourage
Speaker 5: to make some kind of a list, which sounds strange,
Speaker 5: but how do you want to feel in a relationship?
Speaker 5: Not necessarily who are you looking for? But how would
Speaker 5: you like to feel in a dynamic with someone? And
Speaker 5: so what's really interesting is that with my husband, if
Speaker 5: I was to have written a list, how do I
Speaker 5: want to feel, it's absolutely how I feel with him.
Speaker 5: It feels open, it feels safe, he's kind, he's caring
Speaker 5: all of those things that are more important, and he's
Speaker 5: funny than when I was twenty five and.
Speaker 1: I'm looking for someone who's this, this, this, But it's funny.
Speaker 1: It does change because mine now I would have been
Speaker 1: the same. I'm thirty five now and mine was different.
Speaker 1: I wanted to feel safe and trust like I didn't
Speaker 1: want the anxiety. I didn't want to wonder what they
Speaker 1: were doing all the time, because I feel like that
Speaker 1: was what my past relationships were, whereas my twenties was
Speaker 1: all about like feeling that sexiness and sparks chemistry, almost
Speaker 1: like a trauma, like Laura said, because you get used
Speaker 1: to wanting to be on this high where you're fighting
Speaker 1: all the time, and if you don't have that fighting,
Speaker 1: then what do you have.
Speaker 5: Like that's an addiction as well, an addiction to the
Speaker 5: drama of a relationship because that emotional cycle is absolutely high.
Speaker 5: So we can be drawn to people because it is
Speaker 5: a little bit unsafe and you can feel like, uh oh,
Speaker 5: here's the cycle.
Speaker 4: Of our relationship.
Speaker 1: Were going, Oh bah blah bah bah bah bah, oh.
Speaker 4: We come down.
Speaker 2: Alie, you speak a lot in the book about loneliness
Speaker 2: and there being three types of loneliness and how this
Speaker 2: connects into understanding connection. Can you give us a little
Speaker 2: overview of what that is and why I guess it's
Speaker 2: so important to understand connection, to be able to understand loneliness.
Speaker 2: So I was.
Speaker 5: Fascinated by this when I read the research because I
Speaker 5: never knew that you could compartmentalize different experiences of loneliness
Speaker 5: like a lot of other people. I just thought loneliness
Speaker 5: was when you're on your own and you didn't want
Speaker 5: to be. So loneliness is actually just a gap between
Speaker 5: what you are experiencing and what you want to be
Speaker 5: experiencing in that moment. So the three types of loneliness.
Speaker 5: The first one is intimate partner loneliness, and that explains
Speaker 5: why someone can love their life and have lots of
Speaker 5: friends and family but still feel that loneliness for a companion.
Speaker 5: That's intimate partner loneliness. And the second type is relational loneliness,
Speaker 5: and that's what you might feel if you don't have
Speaker 5: a trusted group of friends or you might not be
Speaker 5: seeing them. I felt relational loneliness just because I don't
Speaker 5: see my friends enough at different times in my life
Speaker 5: because we're doing different things.
Speaker 4: Some of us had young.
Speaker 5: Children while other people were still at work and it
Speaker 5: was hard to meet up. And then collective loneliness is
Speaker 5: when you don't feel like you're part of a community
Speaker 5: or a work team. Or something larger than yourself, and
Speaker 5: so we have these three buckets if you like, of loneliness.
Speaker 4: So I'll give you an example.
Speaker 5: When I had my first baby, I was at home
Speaker 5: with him a lot, as you are, and I felt
Speaker 5: really lonely, and I didn't know what I was with
Speaker 5: this child twenty four hours a day, and I had
Speaker 5: my mom and I had my husband, and I had
Speaker 5: some really good friends, and i'd see my neighbors and
Speaker 5: i'd go to the park, but I totally lost collective belonging.
Speaker 5: Collective belonging is just feeling like you're out there and
Speaker 5: you're living your life. And I wasn't seeing lots of
Speaker 5: the groups of friends that i'd seen before, so my
Speaker 5: world really shrunk in that time. So I didn't realize
Speaker 5: why I was so lonely. But now that I understand
Speaker 5: the three types of loneliness, I know exactly why.
Speaker 2: I feel like that's something that so many mothers would
Speaker 2: understand and have felt. Also, I think being lonely isn't
Speaker 2: just dependent on being around people, like you could be
Speaker 2: surrounded by people and still feel incredibly lonely. You could
Speaker 2: have friendship groups and feel lonely. And I love that
Speaker 2: where you describe it as being like that gap between
Speaker 2: where you are and where you want to be, because
Speaker 2: I think so many people can identify.
Speaker 1: With that, and I haven't heard it describes like that
Speaker 1: before either, but it makes a lot of sense. You
Speaker 1: could feel like you have so many amazing things in
Speaker 1: your life, but if you have this goal of what
Speaker 1: you want to be doing, or who you want to
Speaker 1: be with, or how you want to be feeling, and
Speaker 1: you're not quite there, then yeah, you can have this
Speaker 1: feeling of I sort of feel like I am on
Speaker 1: my own because I'm not living my truth or my dream.
Speaker 1: It's a really interesting concept because I think everyone in
Speaker 1: life experiences loneliness at a different time, but I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people mistake it, and I think that's
Speaker 1: a really important point.
Speaker 5: You see absolutely and some of the most in the research,
Speaker 5: it's documented some of the most profound experiences of loneliness
Speaker 5: our intimate partner loneliness, where you're in a relationship with someone.
Speaker 5: They might be sitting on the couch and you're thinking,
Speaker 5: you're supposed to be this person, my soulmate, my other heart,
Speaker 5: and you're not, and I don't feel a connection with you,
Speaker 5: and that's a profound experience of loneliness. And equally, some
Speaker 5: people love being on their own. So most of the
Speaker 5: groups that I speak to say, put up your hand
Speaker 5: if you love being on your own, pretty much three
Speaker 5: quarters of the room will put up the hand.
Speaker 2: So how do we deal with loneliness when we can't,
Speaker 2: for example, in that situation where you might not or
Speaker 2: even if it's someone who wants to be in a
Speaker 2: relationship but they haven't found that person yet, how do
Speaker 2: we deal or how can we cope with that type
Speaker 2: of loneliness.
Speaker 5: So the first thing I want to say to everyone is,
Speaker 5: for the first time in history, human connection is not
Speaker 5: handed to us on a platter. If you think about
Speaker 5: how we have evolved through our civilization, we used to
Speaker 5: live in tribes. We used to then live in villages
Speaker 5: where you knew every other person in that or in
Speaker 5: that village, you probably had a marriage arranged for you.
Speaker 5: You probably had friends that were just there. They were
Speaker 5: your friends because they were the ones who were there.
Speaker 5: The first advice I want to give to people is
Speaker 5: don't be ashamed, because there's so much shame wrapped up
Speaker 5: in loneliness. It's a need, it's our greatest psychological need
Speaker 5: to connect with other people. Now it's also a need
Speaker 5: of ours to drink water. If you are thirsty, do
Speaker 5: you think to yourself, it's because no one loves me,
Speaker 5: It's because I'm not good enough. It's because I deserve this,
Speaker 5: I deserve this thirst. We don't do that to ourselves.
Speaker 5: We go and get a drink of water. But when
Speaker 5: we're lonely, we get there and then we layer on
Speaker 5: the shame.
Speaker 4: Oh it's because I'm unlovable, it's because I'm never going
Speaker 4: to meet anyone. I'm just to be really proactive about it.
Speaker 5: Just like if you wanted to get a job, you know,
Speaker 5: we all just accept we've got to go out and
Speaker 5: work for it.
Speaker 4: You got to work really hard.
Speaker 5: Sometimes it's not going to be comfortable. That's how I
Speaker 5: am with relationships and connection. So now that I know
Speaker 5: the science, I think it's built my resilience around connection
Speaker 5: because it's almost like you know, swimming in the ocean.
Speaker 4: You know you're going to get dumped.
Speaker 5: Like sometimes you get put yourself out there, but sometimes
Speaker 5: it's going to be magic. And do you still want
Speaker 5: to go for a swim? Absolutely yes. And so now
Speaker 5: if I meet people, even new friends, and you think.
Speaker 4: Ah, yeah, this is a really click. No it's not.
Speaker 5: Okay, let's keep going, keep going, keep going next and
Speaker 5: not in it like a tractor way, but just just
Speaker 5: not taking anything personally, and it is so liberating. So
Speaker 5: I just want to say to people, understand your connection type,
Speaker 5: don't be ashamed if you ever feel lonely. See it
Speaker 5: as a signal, a great helpful signal. Someone said to
Speaker 5: me on the rate in an interview for the book.
Speaker 5: They said, what do you say that to all the
Speaker 5: people out there.
Speaker 4: Though who feel lonely?
Speaker 5: Great, Like, that's great to identify the feeling. Now you
Speaker 5: know what you're feeling. What are you going to do
Speaker 5: about it? Let's get really proactive about this rather than
Speaker 5: and I'm not saying anyone's feeling sorry for themselves, but
Speaker 5: I think our society tends to almost say, well, it's
Speaker 5: your fault, you must have done something wrong at some point.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 4: No, the world we live in now.
Speaker 5: Is set up for individualization, it's not set up for collective.
Speaker 5: Most people haven't done much to be proactive about connection.
Speaker 5: They just met someone here, or I was in high school,
Speaker 5: I met someone at work. So we're typically quite lazy.
Speaker 5: When it comes to human connection. I'm just saying, just
Speaker 5: exercise that muscle a little bit more, just like your
Speaker 5: financial security. The people who are happiest in their eighties,
Speaker 5: every single one of them, and this comes from a
Speaker 5: study from Harvard, the longest running study of adult developments,
Speaker 5: running since nineteen thirty eight. Every single person who's thriving
Speaker 5: in their eighties attributes that thriving to the quality of
Speaker 5: their social relationships. So if we know that, then you
Speaker 5: need to go after your social relationships with as much
Speaker 5: vigor as you go after your financial security and your
Speaker 5: career and all your.
Speaker 4: Exercise goals, all of those things.
Speaker 1: We've got a book of Dinner and Girls.
Speaker 2: I love that because I think it is so easy,
Speaker 2: especially as we go through different seasons of life, to
Speaker 2: move away from our friendships or to abandon our friendships
Speaker 2: because it's too hard to make time for them. And
Speaker 2: because we do prioritize this individualization. We do prioritize financial gains,
Speaker 2: we prioritize, you know, social gains, but in very different
Speaker 2: ways now as well, but not in terms of having
Speaker 2: those core friendship groups. And it's not until you don't
Speaker 2: have them that you reflect back on ten years prior,
Speaker 2: where you go, I had so many friends and now
Speaker 2: I don't have anything. And we know that as time
Speaker 2: goes on, we lose friends as we age, and I
Speaker 2: guess like it's the proactiveness that keeps that around you.
Speaker 5: And what's your metric for success in life? That's what
Speaker 5: I want to ask people, because my metric used to
Speaker 5: be achievement. My metric now is the quality of my relationships,
Speaker 5: because the science tells me that that's what's going to
Speaker 5: enhance every aspect of my life. So that's my priority now,
Speaker 5: every single one of my relationships, my husband, my children.
Speaker 5: Some people have relationship goals, you know, to spend this
Speaker 5: much time and schedule in this one on one time
Speaker 5: with this child, not just random family time.
Speaker 4: So have goals for your relationships. Like this is all
Speaker 4: really new.
Speaker 5: It feels uncomfortable, But if you do structure your life
Speaker 5: with your relationships as your priority, I can guarantee you
Speaker 5: that you will be happier.
Speaker 2: All right, guys, you know that we never finish our
Speaker 2: episode without our suck and our sweet, our highlight and
Speaker 2: our lowlight of each and every week, Miss Scotland, Miss Scotland,
Speaker 2: what's your lowlight? My suck.
Speaker 1: I got shamed. I got publicly shamed this week in
Speaker 1: Scotland by a lot of Ben's friends, a lot of strangers,
Speaker 1: a lot.
Speaker 2: Of the public, publicly shamed. What did you get? Taken
Speaker 2: out on the street and mocked?
Speaker 1: Like what happened? I was publicly shamed because I put
Speaker 1: sauce on my pie. That is not a done thing
Speaker 1: here in Scotland. Apparently no one puts ketchup or sauce
Speaker 1: on their pie. They think it's weird. They don't put
Speaker 1: sauce on anything. And I was publicly shamed. That's my suck.
Speaker 2: When you say publicly shamed, how public and how shamed?
Speaker 1: Well like strangers in it was at the soccer match.
Speaker 1: At the football match there are a pies there, which
Speaker 1: is amazing. It's like the best part of the match
Speaker 1: besides Ben. The best part of match is pies. So
Speaker 1: I was putting the sauce on the pie and then
Speaker 1: I was rubbing it in with my finger like a
Speaker 1: little grub because you know how like Ossie's he squirt
Speaker 1: you ketchup on your sauce on and then you rub
Speaker 1: it in with your finger, right, It's.
Speaker 2: Not just me, No, I'm disgusting with the pie. I
Speaker 2: lift the lid off it and squirt the sauce inside
Speaker 2: and then eat the filling and then eat the outside.
Speaker 1: Well, that was a lot of the feedback. No, a
Speaker 1: lot of the feedback was people were on my side
Speaker 1: because I put a pole. I ended up putting a
Speaker 1: pole up, so no looks of strangers right were saying, like,
Speaker 1: what are you doing? Why are you putting ketchup on
Speaker 1: It was a bit of a funny thing, and then
Speaker 1: we got into this heated discussion. Anyway, the Scottish media
Speaker 1: over here wrote an article on it. They wrote an
Speaker 1: article on the fact that I put sauce on my pies,
Speaker 1: So I was publicly shamed. Anyway, just in case anyone
Speaker 1: wants to know, I did do a pole on sauce
Speaker 1: and pies. Ninety seven percent of people said they put
Speaker 1: the sauce on their pie, so I'm not a weirdo.
Speaker 1: I'm not on my own. And then a big percentage
Speaker 1: of that actually said Laura that they take the lid
Speaker 1: off and then they put the sauce on like you,
Speaker 1: and then they put the lid back on. But I'm
Speaker 1: just a like it just goes straight on.
Speaker 2: The top for me, I don't put the lid back on.
Speaker 2: I eat the lid, then I eat the contents, then
Speaker 2: I eat the base. I eat it like a three
Speaker 2: course meal.
Speaker 1: But you do that with your pizza too, everything You
Speaker 1: deconstruct everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's weird, isn't it. I don't know why into that,
Speaker 2: Tim Tims. I eat the chocolate off the outside, then
Speaker 2: I eat one top piece and then I eat one
Speaker 2: bottom piece. I eat everything in like layers.
Speaker 1: You think you try to make it last longer.
Speaker 2: No, I think I'm just a bit special and that's okay.
Speaker 1: Well, my sweet was. I went to like a little
Speaker 1: lodge in the Scottish on a lake and we had
Speaker 1: like a little spa day. We had an infinity pool.
Speaker 1: It's still cold here, but you know, when you get
Speaker 1: to go into a warm outdoor pool but it's cold,
Speaker 1: it's really nice. So I just had a really nice
Speaker 1: night away with Ben. We don't get much time together,
Speaker 1: to be honest, because he has to work every single day.
Speaker 1: So when he gets a day off, we try and
Speaker 1: like jam pack every single thing he could possibly do
Speaker 1: into twenty four hours. So that was my seat.
Speaker 2: Can I just ask, when are you coming back from
Speaker 2: doing bougie bitch things over in Scotland. What day are
Speaker 2: you home?
Speaker 1: Well, to be honest, it's not that bougie. I'm on
Speaker 1: my own for like six days. Then he gets a
Speaker 1: day off and we do one thing on one day,
Speaker 1: so it'd probably look it's a lot more bushy than
Speaker 1: it is. Trust me, it's not. I'm back next week.
Speaker 2: What day we can talk about this after?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I feel like we can talk it off.
Speaker 2: I think I'm back on Saturday. All right. My suck
Speaker 2: for the week is doing colon prep.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's pretreciate.
Speaker 2: It's not exciting. It's literal shit, literal literally shit. So
Speaker 2: that's my stuck for the week. Colon prep. Also, actually
Speaker 2: I have two sucks. So Mally did this beautiful dance
Speaker 2: routine yesterday. It was gorgeous. She's really into performing now.
Speaker 2: And then she leapt off the concrete wall and she
Speaker 2: leapt straight into another wall with her nose, so she
Speaker 2: has two black eyes. And I thought she had broken
Speaker 2: her nose, but she didn't, but she literally stopped herself
Speaker 2: with her face. So that was my afternoon yesterday. So
Speaker 2: she all right, genuinely thought she'd broken her nose. She's fine,
Speaker 2: but I was like, oh, we're going to hospital now
Speaker 2: for a resilient little thing. Noses fixed themselves, what are
Speaker 2: they gonna do? But now the poor thing. She was
Speaker 2: so beside herself for the rest of the day. So
Speaker 2: Easter was very emotional. And what she's sweet, My sweet
Speaker 2: for the week is that we got in it. You
Speaker 2: know how we do the Mama necklace for Mother's Day? Yes,
Speaker 2: I do. Yes, you don't know, and you don't care
Speaker 2: because I mean, you can get one for Delilah. You
Speaker 2: could get one for you and Delilah. A Mama necklace
Speaker 2: for Delilah. I just think it's cute.
Speaker 1: I think I'll wait.
Speaker 2: We have one that has like a little thing transcribed
Speaker 2: and it has my life began with you, and you
Speaker 2: could have that for Delilah. Give it to her.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that's so funny.
Speaker 2: Okay, give me my Okay. So my sweet for the
Speaker 2: week is like that. This is a collection. We do
Speaker 2: this like Mother's Day collection. It's something that we've worked
Speaker 2: one for ages for Tony May and it arrived last
Speaker 2: week and I was very worried it was not going
Speaker 2: to arrive in time for Mother's Day. So trust me,
Speaker 2: that was it was a real moment of relief. Put
Speaker 2: it that way.
Speaker 1: Has that been selling like hotcakes?
Speaker 2: No, it hasn't come out yet. It comes out on Thursday.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, maybe brun swipe uppe.
Speaker 2: Hashtag Tony Make get on board, Tony Way, Jewelry, get
Speaker 2: a few mammas. I'm hoping to have an update and
Speaker 2: you don't. Yeah, all the dogmums. I'm happy to have
Speaker 2: an update next week too. I'm having my psychic reading
Speaker 2: with my new best friend next door the psychic. I'm
Speaker 2: having that tomorrow, so very nervous but excited. So I'm
Speaker 2: gonna keep you guys posted. I've had a lot of
Speaker 2: messages wanting for updates on Instagram, so here it is. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but now I want to know. Can they come on
Speaker 2: and give me a psychic reading too?
Speaker 1: I can ask him.
Speaker 2: No one cares, and none of the listeners care, but
Speaker 2: I want to know for myself. Anyway, guys, that is
Speaker 2: it from us. If you love the episode, jump onto
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts and leave a review, and also go join
Speaker 2: the Facebook group do all the Things. Join the lifelun
Speaker 2: Cut discussion group, which is Facebook. You can go and
Speaker 2: join us on Instagram which is life on Cut Podcast.
Speaker 2: We also have a TikTok that is also Life on
Speaker 2: Cut podcast. Everything is Life on Cut. You'll be able
Speaker 2: to find us. It's not that hard.
Speaker 1: Don't forget toe you mum, tell you Dad, tell you dog.
Speaker 1: Two friends and share the love, because well a love.
Speaker 5: Babama Kababadabadaba kababa