When you and I were exchanging messages on Instagram, you mentioned that you had listened to this podcast and that

it helped you through some situations.

So I came to it through like looking at, so I have ADHD and I've seen a lot around like ADHD limerence.

And so that's how I kind of got into like exploring, okay, what this, this has kind of given a language to what I'm experiencing.

Because when I did have relationships, they felt so real.

intense in a way that like none of my friends were experiencing, which then made me incredibly avoidant when it came to relationships because it was an intensity that consumed me in a way that I felt unable to control.

And I don't think that I would act out, but I think internally I was being tormented.

For anyone listening who... feels pressure to be in a relationship or feels embarrassed about being single or who is attempting to, let's say, embrace their singlehood, what advice would you have for them?

In particular.

Do you know what? Off the top of my head, I can't think of anything that is like pertinent to discuss.

But there's obviously always so much happening.

I mean, not directly related to us, but there's quite literally these like pogroms happening in Belfast as we're talking about this, where they're knocking on people's doors and asking if they're born here, like harassing ethnic minorities, harassing people.

who are immigrants and I think it's a very, very worrying time to be any sort of minority living in this country.

It's so weird to think of how far we've come maybe from like the sixties, but also how far we haven't come in the sense that there's still this sort of like awful pervasive racism that like permeates every aspect of like British culture and society.

And now more than ever, I definitely think to your earlier point, we do need more black journalists writing and documenting these very, very tense times, what they're leading up to, what our experience is, what demands we should be making of our government.

As a follow-on question from what you said before as well, is how can boyfriends be less embarrassing?

Thoughts on hetero pessimism?

Oh my God.

So hetero pessimism, you know, this idea that people are so kind of defeated and over straight relationships that they are just like, they've given into the idea that this is what it's always gonna be, I'm never gonna try again.

But yet they're still like dating men, and they still wanna be with men, and they kind of have just given up trying to push for anything else.

And I totally understand it.

I understand why women particularly are kind of over, over it completely.

It is hell out there.

[laughs]

Gotcha.

...

but now it kind of feels like you are, uh, are- are kind of like reverting to kind of old archaic ways.

And I think it's the way that the sort of, like, heterosexual romantic relationship has almost b- been co-opted a little bit by the right.

It feels traditionally very sort of conservative.

I feel like I'm aligning to this idea of the world that doesn't really feel n- natural to me.

That's what's really got people.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

... we talk about it.

And because we talk about it, that sort of, like, heterosexual romantic fantasy is really starting to just dissipate.

It doesn't hold the way it did, it doesn't grip people like, "I need this thing." Because we know what's happening behind the curtains.

And so I think now we can kind of have candid conversations about our desire or our lack of desire to be in romantic relationships, and we don't get judged for it like we used to.

And I think that's really just worked people up into a frenzy, you know? I think th- this...

It's been very, very polarizing.

Mm-hmm.