September 3, 2025 • 35 mins
What do you do when you’re longing for touch? Glynnis MacNicol followed her intuition to get what she needed — by booking a flight to Paris. Now, she shares how her desires have shifted.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
I didn't need to know how my Voiceober girls are
doing because me I long for intimate touch and it's
been difficult. It's been worth it, but it's not been easy,
and it's been filled with boilapses. That was me in
(00:23):
twenty twenty four, in the middle of my Voiceover year.
My next guest has also been touched starved, though for
different reasons than I was, And this week we hear
how she took matters into her own hands and got
what she wanted. I'm Hopewitdard and welcome to Voiceover, a
(00:51):
space where we're learning and unlearning. All the myths were
taught about love and relationships. Glennis McNichol was living alone
in New York City when the pandemic hit, and after
(01:12):
about a year and a half without close human interaction,
she knew what she wanted. She wanted to touch, she
wanted to interact the second she could. She flew to
Paris to have the most pleasurable summer possible, which included
friendship and she's and of course having sex. In her
(01:33):
book I'm Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself, which came out
last year, she wrote all about this. It's about Glynnis's
summer of following her intuition to get what she needed.
But more largely, it's about the way seeking pure enjoyment
as a woman can feel like a radical act these days.
She talked to me about all of this and what
(01:53):
she's been thinking about since, how her desires have shifted,
and why it's important to be in touch with your
desire in the first place. Glennis, welcome to boy Sover.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
And Emily, our producer, brought you up because she was
telling us about your time in Paris, right, can you
tell me about it?
Speaker 3 (02:15):
I stayed in New York during COVID. I was alone
in my top flour studio apartment on the Upper West
Side for like a year and whatever it was, we
were all in lockdown, like a year, a year.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
And a half.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
It was a very long time of like seeing people
I loved but at a distance and sort of an absence,
not sort of an absence of touch, an absence of touch.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
And did you ever think about leaving? Like I know
some New Yorkers were like I'm gonna go to the
Hamptons and I'm gonna get a house in the suburbs,
like you were like.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
I'm staying no, I never leave New York.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
It was such a unique moment, but also I think
we all got the most extreme version of our life
choices in that moment. And you know, friends who are
partnered or who have children were like, I did not
sign up to be this partnered, and I did not
sign up to be this much of a parent. And
I was like, I did not sign up to not
be touched by another human being for sixteen months or
(03:06):
whatever however long it ended up being.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
I love how in your book you said not even smelled.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
Not even smelled, not even smelled like I was like,
do I exist? And also my building everyone left, so
it was like me, the woman down the hall, the mice,
the dorman, the exterminator.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Yeah, what did that loneliness feel like at first? Or
maybe a loneeness.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
It wasn't loneliness at first. It was so extreme for
all of us. There was a shock to that, and
then the novelty of having New York so empty and
being able because I ride my bike everywhere. I was like,
I can make it from seventy second Street to Union
Square in seven minutes.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
That's amazing.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Yeah, I was incado, and I'm sure exactly free. So
at the end of that I had spent summers in
Paris previous and I missed my friends there. And when
vaccines rolled in in the spring of twenty twenty one,
I emailed the person that I normally rented the apartment
from and I said, I don't know, should we think
about doing this because they liked to come back to
New York for a month and they had an apartment
(04:02):
in Brooklyn they owned, and I would take their apartment
in Paris for very little money in the grand scheme
of things, So it was just to have a friend.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Like, yeah, it was a great, great setup.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
By the end of July, the Delta virus started rolling
in and I thought, I'm just going. I cannot be
alone and in this one place any longer totally. So
I was just like, I'm going.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
What was like your intention of going.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
I don't know that I was thinking that far ahead.
I wanted to just go, and I thought, I have
the apartment, I know people in Paris. I might get
caught there. I'm just I'll deal with it when it happens.
So I landed and I thought, okay, I'm here in Paris.
Prioritizes pleasure in a way that I think very few
other places.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Do say more about that. I just want to hear
more about it.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Yeah, I really think the French they think of sort
of rest and pleasure as a human right, and in
America we think of it as something you have to earn,
like we really think about vacation as something like as
a reward for your hard work. And there it just is,
they're two separate things. It is very much like everyone
gets the month off in August and everyone you know,
(05:08):
your day stops at a certain time. The cheese, of course,
the cheese is good, of course, Like so it's sort
of just as part of.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
The identity and part of the language.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
You can even see it in the language, like there's
no way to send a short email in French. You
could in America you'd be like, i'll be back in
five And in French trying to say that is like
seven sons, right, there's.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
No way to be thinking about going out.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
I was thinking about you. I mean, it's very much
in the way it offerates. So I landed, My friends
were there, and immediately it was nice to be in
community with people who live similar lives in me. And
then it was nice to be sitting outside in cafes
and having cheese and having bread and having wine, indulging, indulging. Yeah.
And then I got on the apps in Paris and
(05:52):
I was like, I'm just gonna just see and then
maybe I'll go out on one date. And then actually
the first person I ended up connecting.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
With connecting was not off an app. I think I
sometimes thing is kissing, connecting is dating.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
Oh new to nudity, connecting It is like full yeah, no, no, no,
closer off yeah all everyone take it?
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
That is another title for the book Everyone's Naked. My
argument sometimes for the apps is not that you're going
to meet someone on there necessarily, but sometimes I think
it puts you in a mindset of thinking about opportunity
and like interacting with people with a sense of potential,
whether that potential for romance or love or sex or
(06:37):
whatever it is that it sort of shifts your mindset.
And that was true of me in that moment. Whereas
I'd been having all these conversations. First of all, I
was blown away by the amount of attention I got
because not only had I not been seen, I'd gone into.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
COVID at age. What would have been.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Forty five, right at the age women are really promised
invisibility and like your attraction is just going to disappear.
And I'd come out of it forty seven or for
forty six, and I was like, am I invisible? If
I just reached the age of invisibility?
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Like will anyone be able to see me? And of course.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
Immediately I am like inundated with attention from people of
all ages. And I was like, oh, that's great. Maybe
this is all I need, Like maybe I don't even
need to meet anyone. I'm so happy seeing my friends
and it's really lovely being here. And then we went
dancing on it. It's so ridiculously picturesque like French, but
we went dancing on the sun. There was no tourists
in Paris. Many French had left, so the city was
(07:30):
like just Parisians and it's normal to go and have
like sort of a picnic on the scent and like
impromptu dancing. So we got it, had a picnic, it
turned into dancing. It ended up dancing with this very
handsome gentleman. Then I ended up was like, no, you
should definitely come back to my flat, and then he
spent the night and well.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Everyone must have been so hot, like turned on for
itandemic like, yeah, not only you through this time alone
like everybody was.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Everybody was.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
Everybody was just ready for quickly can we all get naked?
Like I was not, There was no, It was just
everybody was feeling like this.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
And so you're meeting people in real life, you're meeting
people ina on the app.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
Well, what happened after that one night was like, oh
I want more of this. It was not just like oh,
I'll be satisfied by interactions or like a fun makeout
session or whatever. It was just like, oh no, I
want more of this. And then I was like and
I want more, and I want more, and I.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Want most meaning attention, this meaning sex, this.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Meaning just naked, not even necessarily sex. I mean, yes,
sex is what it turned into, but it was really
like touch and pleasure and the like physically being with
other totally humans. Because so much of the book, the
attention to the book that came out of this, I'm
mostly here to enjoy myself, which was what I would
(08:44):
respond to men on the apps when they'd be like,
what are you looking for in Paris? And I'd be like,
I'm mostly here to enjoy myself. So much of it
was being with friends, it was community, it was the
agency of sort of having Paris to yourself, the movement
as a woman, like all of these things were all
tied into pleasure for me. And also when I was
(09:07):
like I want more of this particular thing, it was
really like physical connection, like just touch and bodies and
three dimension and like smells and all.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
The other stuff.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Tell me about the apps you were on Hinge Tinder.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
There was one Wait, I love that.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
It doesn't Sorry, I feel like I missed Hinge so quickly.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
I you know, to this day, I don't. I don't.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
Hinge doesn't work for me. I've gone back on it.
Sometimes I literally get zero. Matt, I don't know what
it is I'm doing incorrectly. But there was one app
in Paris that summer that everyone was using.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Called Fruits with a z H.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
What's it like?
Speaker 3 (09:44):
It doesn't exist anymore? And everybody asked me if I
made it up, and I said no. The gods of
dating apps were on my side because like it was,
it was so delicious and ludicrous, like if you needed
something to reflect of, like what a moment that was.
If everybody's just out of their mind. It was like
everyone's using an app called Fruits with a Z or
a Z if you're not American, so you would like
(10:06):
mark yourself as there was four fruits and you chose
which fruit you were depending on what you were looking for.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Everyone is just looking like eggplant or eggplant is not
a fruit. Cherries uh huh.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Yeah, watermelon was no seeds attached, Cherries is something else.
I forget the other two. But literally everyone's looking for
the exact same thing. Like there was no there was
no like, oh can I just have a glass of
fine with you? I was just it was so funny
and so everyone is on this app and the conversation
would just immediately. It was not sort of like, oh
(10:43):
I'm here for a relationship where I'd really like to talk,
like it would just but in a really interesting way.
I do think the French, because they have such like
the language around everything and the language rituals around everything,
there was still this sort of ingrained consent even in
the like after not after after seventy two hours, I
was like, I'm getting so much attention, how do I
filter through who.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
I actually want to talk to?
Speaker 3 (11:05):
So I started saying to people, I'd be like, they'd say,
what do you because everyone would say that what are
you looking for here? And I'd say I'm mostly here
to enjoy myself, and they inevitably would say some version
of what I can.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Help you with that? And then I learned pretty quickly
to say.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
How wait, how do you say I can help you
with that? In French?
Speaker 3 (11:21):
No no, I was talking, yeah, but you do they
not speak to you in French?
Speaker 2 (11:26):
No?
Speaker 3 (11:26):
No, It was It was funny everybody most people speak English.
But also even if what I would notice is that
if they didn't, they'd put their answer through Google Translate
before they sent it to me, which so I would say,
how are you going to help me enjoy myself? Like
give me details, I want to know what you intend
to do, And sometimes the answer would come back I
would be like one of the guyn in coologist because
they would have put it through a Google Translate, so
they'd be like, no, yeah. It would be like the
(11:48):
most clinical language, which in and of itself.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Was sort of charming because I knew what would happen.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
It was it was like vagina explicitly or oh for
sure with your glitterist.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
I am going to move they in this direction, and
the first time it happened, I was.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Like, are you a gynecologist?
Speaker 3 (12:04):
And then I realized what was happening because they were
using and then I thought, well, who am I to criticized?
My French is so hit and miss, like that's.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
So u So it was just startling the language, like
when you're trying to be like sexy turned but.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
You guys got really And that's why at the beginning,
I was like, maybe these messages are enough, Like I'm
really enjoying hearing someone articulate all the ways they're going
to bring me pleasure. But then once that manifested literally
in real life, I was like, oh no, I'm not
interested in these Like these messages are just like uh
the foreplay literally until I decide whether I want.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
To see right, I want the fruits of the labor.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Literally, what fruit were you? Watermelon?
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (12:43):
No, seeds, no seeds attached?
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Okay, when you came back from Paris, how did you feel?
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Amazing?
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Did you bring that sort of sexual energy back to
New York?
Speaker 2 (12:53):
I did?
Speaker 3 (12:54):
And then New York went back into lockdown. Oh my god,
you know it was quite funny. I do I think though,
what came out of that trip was a sense of
empowerment and optimism and understanding that what I wanted I
could have, things were not out of my reach and
all you think.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
You could have found that conclusion in New York or
do you think traveling abroad alone is what gave it
to you.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
I think I would have come to that conclusion over
a much longer period of time, and it was the
timing of the trip and the intensity of it just
sort of.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Fast tracked it.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
But also I think what I took away from that
experience was maybe more of a reminder than a full realization.
But it was just like, particularly women are really encouraged
to think of these milestones as a happy ending, you know,
like there's a finality to marriage, and there's a finality
to kids, and you've achieved these things and understanding life
(13:48):
like there's death, that's when life ends, and before that happened,
life is more like I think of life more as waves,
Like instead of waiting for the other shoe to drop,
I was like, you're just going to ride this first
as long as it goes, and then when it's over,
it'll be over, and then you'll go through a difficult time,
but with the understanding that at some point that too
(14:08):
will be over. And it's more like thinking of life
as like a female orgism, which is like yes, wage right,
it's not like the male or is more like, oh,
you know, like you sore up and then you come
down and then.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
The next time write it down. Life is like a female.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
That if you approach it like that.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
I really think the way we think of narrative, because
male men have had so much control over the structure
of narrative, is very tied to how they experience pleasure.
And when you really think about what a female narrative
looks like, if you tie it into how women, not
all women experience the same, but like more of how
women experience pleasure, it is much more like ups and downs,
(14:45):
and sometimes the crest is better and sometimes the low
is lower, but it's like up and really go approaching
life like that, and for the bad times too, it's
just like when things feel like they're working against you.
It's not that it's not upsetting, and it's not that
it's not difficult, and it's not that it can't be devastating,
but like it's not a permanent existence. And I sometimes
(15:06):
think we have an easier time when things are terrible.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
Being like, oh, just things are terrible and this is
just how it's.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
Going to be than when things are really good and
experiencing them without the fear of it ending, just being like,
I'm just going to let everything go. Yeah, it's just
gonna it's just going to go my way. I'm just
going to assume it's going to go my way and
at one point it won't. But I don't know when that, Like,
I'm just going to assume it's this is the way
it's going until I'm it's old.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
Otherwise.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Your time in Paris, right, did you ever like fall
in love? Was that ever your intention?
Speaker 3 (15:50):
I see some of the men that I met that
summer still, but not in a i'd like, am I
going to be in a relationship with the twenty seven
year old?
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Probably? Not, Like I wasn't sleeping with twenty seven year
old when you were forty two?
Speaker 3 (16:02):
No, I was forty six, forty seven, you were forty six.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Was it your first time sleeping with someone younger like that?
Speaker 2 (16:11):
No? Okay again, And can.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
I just say in my present I've joked about this,
but not really even joking in the last two years.
If you think of like the top five things that
your brain is occupied with, Like pre COVID, I was
young for this, because I think it happens to many
people in their early fifties. But I had two parents
back to back, quite ill who needed a lot of caretaking,
and so I had gone from being not a full
time caretaker, but a lot of my life was spent
(16:39):
in that role to COVID to this. So there was
sort of a stretch of this where I was like, oh,
I was just like sex and I'm so excited this
look it's so available to us. And we were this
is such a lie that as you age, you're not
attractive and I can't you know, sex and touch going
from number one to like number five, and now the
only thing I think about is money, followed by real
(16:59):
estate eight, followed by right, Like it has dropped to
the bottom now where I'm like, what was I thinking about?
So maybe that'll be the next book. But it's interesting
how that shifts. And it's not that I'm not interested
in sex, or that I don't have a sex life,
or that these things aren't appealing, but it's just the
priority has shifted and I think it's very reflective, not
really even of my age, but of this moment that
we're in, and also the experience of five years of
(17:23):
knowing that this is available to me when I want
it and how I want it, and subsequently it removes
that anxiety of oh my god, if I don't grab
this now, it might be my last chance, which I
think gets attached to a lot of conversations around women
and men in general, but particularly.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
As you age.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
So the reason I'm reaching back for this sometimes is
like I'm just like, what was what did happen?
Speaker 2 (17:47):
I can't actually right?
Speaker 3 (17:49):
And then I remember I just have to It's not
at forefront of my mind the way it was a
few years ago.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
No, it makes complete sense because I do think sex
moves on that priority list all the time, and like
some times it's really important and sometimes it's not, and
we don't really, I think, have control over when it's
important and when it's not.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
And it's also like it's a measure of everything else
that's going on in your life. You talk to women
who have small children, and the most romantic thing they
can describe is their partner loaded the dishwasher and cleaned
the bathroom. Or they're a good parent for the children,
and I and having now sort of had a cat
(18:30):
bird seat to that in so many of my friends
different versions of relationships, I recognize why when you have
small children, the most romantic thing that could possibly happen
to you is someone alleviating the load or witnessing someone
being a good parent. But what we find the most
satisfying shifts so significantly depending on the acute need that
(18:52):
we have in our lives. And then in addition, you're
not approaching something as like it's scarce. There's no scarcity
mindset around this, which I think for women and romance
and love and sex and attraction, it's you're always trying
to think of it, as you know, with a scarcity
mindset that's Internet speak. But no, no, no, particularly as you age,
(19:13):
you're really like, oh, you're so lucky someone took a
look at you. And I think that can encourage you
to approach it with a level of sort of anxiety
and fear and I'm holding on to it. And once
you realize that there's an abundance of it, and you're like, oh, right,
I don't have time to deal with this storey now
because I really want to think about where's the money
coming from, and what does healthcare look like?
Speaker 2 (19:35):
All this, all those sorts of conversations.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
I guess I want to know if you are just
sort of like in your nature a defiant person, and
so those sort of like messages that are sent towards women,
if you just again in your nature sort of like
didn't believe them, or if there's something that happened that
made you be like, wait, fuck that, I'm going to
like find the love and sex that I want regardless
(19:58):
of what everyone's sort of telling me I should be.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
So I think it's shifted.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
The culture around this has shifted enormously in the last
ten years. When I was thirty nine turning forty, I
wrote a book it was called No One Tells You
This about that experience of not being partnered and not
having children at this age where you certainly when I
was thirty nine forty was like the cliff you go
off of, never to be seen from again.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
That is really how it was framed.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
And to get to the other side of this and
realize the things that were hard were not what I
was prepared for. I was, as I said, in the
early days of being a real caretaker for ill parents
and other family stuff. And on the flip side, I
was having so much fun and I was not prepared
(20:43):
for either of those things to happen.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
You were both feeling like immense joy and power.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
And also the ways in which not having a support
system when you are everyone else's support system is really
really hard, and because we don't have ritual or narrative.
This has changed again in the last decade. Incredibly, we
don't have a lot of narratives of value around women
outside of marriage or outside of partnership or parenthood. It's
(21:11):
hard to be recognized and there's no ritual around it,
and it's very difficult to shoulder all those things when
there's no way to celebrate it or recognize it or
mourn it or anything. And so being in that position
and not having a cultural support system around it, but
also a regular support system around it was really difficult.
(21:33):
And at the same time, I was like, oh my god,
I'm having the time of my life. I've become a
source of envy, which you're not prepared for as a
forty year old woman for so many people around you,
And that became a fun but also very tricky and
weird thing to navigate a source of envy is so, yes,
that increases, It only increases.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
I've gotten used to it.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
But being if your friends were jealous because everywhere untethered.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
Yes, it was just you're like a source of envy
over you know, the amount of freedom you have, the
ability because right when I was sort of hitting this
sense of power and being in my prime is right
at a moment, many friends were in the deep end
of small kids, and it was like I was able
to tap into the level of intelligence and maturity and
(22:19):
like finances and freedom of all these life choices in
my prime in a way that women raising children often
don't get to do until their sixties. And so I
went from feeling like I was very behind at age
thirty nine to buy forty five, feeling like I was
a decade ahead.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
It was a weird flip.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Well, I love how you keep saying in my prime, oh,
because I think of that hannahgatz By set where they're
like a girl who's sixteen is never in her prime. Yeah,
but that is so the language is when you're sixteen
when you're twenty five. But to be like I was
forty five and I was in my prime like that simply.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
I think this is why we have I mean, I
have lots of theories around this, but like the reason
that the way we talk about we don't see women
in their forties or fifties in their prime as fully
realized creatures is because it is scary to have moved
I don't know, for the patriarchy, for lack of a
better term, to have women who've moved on from needing
(23:16):
that recognition to being very powerful and with enormous agency
and the ability to make decisions, and it really is
destabilizing to a lot of systems, systems that are in place.
And I think that's why we get those women are
often portrayed either as the punchline, the cougar.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Or the witch.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
There's there's very you sort of go from the virgin
to the whore to sort of like the cougar, which
is we're going to mock you, to the witch, which
is that you're scary. And I was like, I feel
so powerful and so fully myself and so in my prime.
And because of that experience of being a writer who'd
(23:58):
often look to narratives as we all do, to figure
out how to move through life and how to think
of ourselves, to have them all completely disappear, and then
the ones that existed be the complete opposite of my
own experience. I just stopped paying attention to it at all,
So it was not I don't think of it as
defiance necessarily as like folly want shame on you, but
like eventually it's like I don't believe any of this
(24:20):
because none of it has proven to be true. I
just can't even be bothered to turn my attention to
it because it just feels like a waste of time.
It's like the definition of insanity, like doing the same
thing over and over. There's just nothing, there's no accurate reflection.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
I'm curious, like you have you sound you seem to
have always been so independent. I'm wondering if there was
a time like earlier in your life where you did
think you were going to get married, where you did
think you were going to have kids, or you did
think you were going to sort of do the nuclear
family thing.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
I'm sure I don't. I think that it was. It
wasn't even that I thought. I think it was just
an assumption. Hm. I grew up in a family that
was emotionally what was emotionally on sane, it was the
financial unstable though, so I've been supporting myself out of
necessity since I was seventeen or eighteen, and also generationally
from a generation where you just didn't call your parents
right like because you couldn't because it would cost a
(25:09):
lot of money.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
So part of that is that.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
But I'm sure some of the anxiety I was feeling
at thirty nine was this sense of like, oh, I
just assumed at some point I would be partnering or
I would be having kids, and now I really have
to look at if these are things I directly want,
I'm going to have to make different decisions in my
(25:32):
life to make them happen right now. And I never
fault women who are like, I want to have a baby,
this is my number one priority.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
I want to make it happen.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
Or I want to be married, and my number one
priority is getting married, and I'm going to prioritize that
because once you get out of university or college, you're
not in the milia that supports that necessarily. And I
think at thirty nine I really was like, what is
it you do want? Like I had to make that
decision because when I made that right around thirty when
I was like, you've got to get your professional life
(25:59):
in order. I went into overdrive for a long time
of just like I work, and it was amazing work
and I was very happy doing it, but it was
my main focus. And so I sort of got to
the end of my thirties and I was like, hold on,
hold the phone, what do you know If I want
to have a kid right now, You're going to have
to make really different decisions about children and do you
want to be married, Like what is it that you want?
(26:20):
And it was at that point that I was like,
I don't know. It's not that I don't want these things.
I don't want them enough to particularly with children. I
knew I'd be okay without children. It wasn't a clear
I'm sometimes skeptical about how black and white these decisions
sometimes are, that's the way they get framed.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
It wasn't like I don't want children.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
It was a recognition that I didn't want them enough
to make all the changes in my life that would
have to happen financially, geographically to support bringing a child
into my life, and that I recognize deeply I would
be okay without children.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Something we talk about on this show a lot is unlearning,
specifically unlearning something you've been taught about love. Can you
speak to something you had to really unlearn about love
in your experience?
Speaker 3 (27:24):
I will say I think that unlearning and I think
this is probably true for everyone, but I think it's
particularly true for women of deserving love that you can
just be loved that you don't. There's no romance story
where a woman has not had to do the I
never loved Bridget Jones the movie books Board the shit
out of me, and I could never hold my attention.
But that idea of counting calories, or when you rewatch
(27:45):
sex in the city and she's like, oh my god,
you farted.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
I farted. He's never going to love me.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Like all of these insane belief systems that are like, oh,
I have to deserve the attention or deserve love is
a hard thing to unlearn.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Well, it's also reminding me immediately of what you said
about Americans and earning vacation, yes, or earning rest. Yeah,
It's like, we do have to really earn everything, don't we.
The love that we get, the rest that we take,
the vacation that we go on.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
And I would encourage everyone and particularly women to like.
So many of these rituals and expectations are rooted in
a history, all of history up until fifty years ago,
and that only then for certain conjure society is women
were fully financially dependent on men, that marriage was an economic.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
Decision to move through class systems that you did.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
Your survival was so dependent on keeping the money earner
whenever that looked like, at whatever time period that was
happy and satisfied that that you literally forget about earning love.
You had to earn your survival. And we have confused
that with love and a narrative to make it look attractive.
(28:59):
But these things are coming from anywhere. And when I
look at my friends, when I look at my mother's generation,
my parents didn't divorce, but friends of mine's mothers who
did divorce and then immediately got remarried or were immediately
thinking like I have to be married for social value
or for finance, And I'm like, who am I I
can't pass judgment on this because your financial safety was
(29:21):
dependent on this, And of course you're going through all
these hoops and we have now inherited those expectations without
necessarily the financial need for it, and then we've confused
it with many many other things. But I think it's
such the last my lifespan has bridged such a vast
transition in this, and it's all gotten confused together, and
(29:44):
there's now a pushback to it. So unlearning that it's
like a privilege to be able to unlearn that because
I live in a world where it's possible that I
don't have to earn someone's love, which is pretty rare
on the scope of history.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Absolutely, because it sounds like when you were interacting with
men and the way you interact with men and sex,
it's really from a distance, it doesn't seem to not
always take okay now, I mean, you just have this
my My perception of you at this point is like
you have this really strong, safe, secure relationship to sex
that doesn't really shake your.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Oh it doesn't. I mean, please, I've had my.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
More than more than I care to count. I think
I'm less prone to that now. It's more the sense
of the things that we I think are really conditioned
to find exciting in romance, and that when we're younger,
you start to see, as I guess, red flags or
(30:50):
I'm like this thing that I would have thought was
so that I did think was so romantic and so
exciting and so like, Oh, I now look at it
and I'm like, oh, this is a problem that I
don't have time. I'm for like it is, that is
what happens. It's not the I'm holding it emotionally in
the distance. It's more like I recognize more easily what's
actually going on.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
Yeah, earlier, what's one red flag that you used to
not ignore that you have to ignore? Now?
Speaker 2 (31:15):
Oh God, what would it be?
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Now?
Speaker 3 (31:17):
I'm so good at I don't even think about it.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
It's sort of like it's what if people call it so?
Speaker 3 (31:22):
Of course, some of this language didn't exist when I
was your age, where it's just like the love.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Bombing of it.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
I just remember falling madly, madly in love with this guy,
I mean really in a devastating way when I was
in my thirties and he was just like, sweep you
off your feet, flowers everywhere and doing this, and it
was just that behavior is no longer appealing to me
because it is not coming from a place that has
(31:48):
anything to do with me. It's not even that I
look at it now and I'm like, oh, you've a problem.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
I just literally it just.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Flies by me in a way that it just can't
hold my attention anymore. But oh my god, did that
hold my attention when I was in my thirties, like
just to a degree of like, oh, I'm so in lover,
this is so romantic or you know, all of those things,
because it is exciting and I see it now and
I don't think I'm cynical, and I don't like to
be cynical, but I just sort of I don't even
(32:14):
have to think about it now. I'm just like, oh,
you know, this is not based and anything having to
do with emotion or love or value.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
When someone sort of love bombs, it doesn't hold your attention.
I do want to know what holds your attention?
Speaker 2 (32:29):
This is a good question.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
Right now, the only thing that holds my attention is
the ways I make money. It's New York real estate,
Like what helps?
Speaker 2 (32:41):
That's where women should be putting their attentions.
Speaker 3 (32:43):
Oh my god, yeah, completely completely. I do think thoughtfulness
and intelligence. But then again, you're meeting a lot of
fifth year old men who are either newly divorced and
don't know how to be alone, or they're in open
marriages and that the exhaustion of all of it just
overwhelms me. And I'm like, I actually don't need to
be in a relationship at this point to think about money.
So that's when I go back into my like where
(33:03):
is the money?
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Send me some?
Speaker 1 (33:09):
My last question, Yeah, what's your advice to women when
it comes to dating? Oh?
Speaker 2 (33:14):
God, I don't know. Do I have advice?
Speaker 1 (33:18):
My god? What's your advice to me?
Speaker 2 (33:21):
I think, what do you want?
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Yeah? Figuring that out.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
Because I really think what do you want? And like,
whatever you want is fine. If what you want is
love for whatever however you term that, or in like
emotional support, satisfaction long term, if you want to build
a family together. Knowing what you want and I think
that women have been mocked punished for saying what they want,
(33:45):
but really knowing what you want is the starting point
of proceeding. So if all you want is like physical pleasure, great,
go and get it. If what you want is someone
to come home to, is cooking for you, go and
get that. But like, know what you want?
Speaker 1 (34:02):
Yeah, thank you, Okay, thank you so much. Glitnas for
Chris Delight. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
It's a good exercise for me Fangku out.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
We were reminded to think about things other than pre
war apartments on the over rest.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
What do I want? This is something I'm always asking myself.
After talking to glynnis I definitely want to go to Paris,
But in the long term, I'm still figuring that out.
Maybe next week we can figure it out together. Thanks
for listening. I'll talk to y'all next week. Boys Sover
(34:46):
is a production of iHeart Podcasts. I'm your host, Hopewordard.
Our executive producers are Christina Everett and Julie Pinero. Our
supervising producer is Emily Meronoff, engineering by Bahid fre and
mixing and mastering by a Boo Zafar. If you liked
this episode, please tell a friend and don't forget to rate, review,
(35:08):
and subscribe to boy Sober on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
and wherever you get your favorite shows.
I didn't need to know how my Voiceober girls are
doing because me I long for intimate touch and it's
been difficult. It's been worth it, but it's not been easy,
and it's been filled with boilapses. That was me in
(00:23):
twenty twenty four, in the middle of my Voiceover year.
My next guest has also been touched starved, though for
different reasons than I was, And this week we hear
how she took matters into her own hands and got
what she wanted. I'm Hopewitdard and welcome to Voiceover, a
(00:51):
space where we're learning and unlearning. All the myths were
taught about love and relationships. Glennis McNichol was living alone
in New York City when the pandemic hit, and after
(01:12):
about a year and a half without close human interaction,
she knew what she wanted. She wanted to touch, she
wanted to interact the second she could. She flew to
Paris to have the most pleasurable summer possible, which included
friendship and she's and of course having sex. In her
(01:33):
book I'm Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself, which came out
last year, she wrote all about this. It's about Glynnis's
summer of following her intuition to get what she needed.
But more largely, it's about the way seeking pure enjoyment
as a woman can feel like a radical act these days.
She talked to me about all of this and what
(01:53):
she's been thinking about since, how her desires have shifted,
and why it's important to be in touch with your
desire in the first place. Glennis, welcome to boy Sover.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
And Emily, our producer, brought you up because she was
telling us about your time in Paris, right, can you
tell me about it?
Speaker 3 (02:15):
I stayed in New York during COVID. I was alone
in my top flour studio apartment on the Upper West
Side for like a year and whatever it was, we
were all in lockdown, like a year, a year.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
And a half.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
It was a very long time of like seeing people
I loved but at a distance and sort of an absence,
not sort of an absence of touch, an absence of touch.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
And did you ever think about leaving? Like I know
some New Yorkers were like I'm gonna go to the
Hamptons and I'm gonna get a house in the suburbs,
like you were like.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
I'm staying no, I never leave New York.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
It was such a unique moment, but also I think
we all got the most extreme version of our life
choices in that moment. And you know, friends who are
partnered or who have children were like, I did not
sign up to be this partnered, and I did not
sign up to be this much of a parent. And
I was like, I did not sign up to not
be touched by another human being for sixteen months or
(03:06):
whatever however long it ended up being.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
I love how in your book you said not even smelled.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
Not even smelled, not even smelled like I was like,
do I exist? And also my building everyone left, so
it was like me, the woman down the hall, the mice,
the dorman, the exterminator.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Yeah, what did that loneliness feel like at first? Or
maybe a loneeness.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
It wasn't loneliness at first. It was so extreme for
all of us. There was a shock to that, and
then the novelty of having New York so empty and
being able because I ride my bike everywhere. I was like,
I can make it from seventy second Street to Union
Square in seven minutes.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
That's amazing.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Yeah, I was incado, and I'm sure exactly free. So
at the end of that I had spent summers in
Paris previous and I missed my friends there. And when
vaccines rolled in in the spring of twenty twenty one,
I emailed the person that I normally rented the apartment
from and I said, I don't know, should we think
about doing this because they liked to come back to
New York for a month and they had an apartment
(04:02):
in Brooklyn they owned, and I would take their apartment
in Paris for very little money in the grand scheme
of things, So it was just to have a friend.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Like, yeah, it was a great, great setup.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
By the end of July, the Delta virus started rolling
in and I thought, I'm just going. I cannot be
alone and in this one place any longer totally. So
I was just like, I'm going.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
What was like your intention of going.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
I don't know that I was thinking that far ahead.
I wanted to just go, and I thought, I have
the apartment, I know people in Paris. I might get
caught there. I'm just I'll deal with it when it happens.
So I landed and I thought, okay, I'm here in Paris.
Prioritizes pleasure in a way that I think very few
other places.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Do say more about that. I just want to hear
more about it.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Yeah, I really think the French they think of sort
of rest and pleasure as a human right, and in
America we think of it as something you have to earn,
like we really think about vacation as something like as
a reward for your hard work. And there it just is,
they're two separate things. It is very much like everyone
gets the month off in August and everyone you know,
(05:08):
your day stops at a certain time. The cheese, of course,
the cheese is good, of course, Like so it's sort
of just as part of.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
The identity and part of the language.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
You can even see it in the language, like there's
no way to send a short email in French. You
could in America you'd be like, i'll be back in
five And in French trying to say that is like
seven sons, right, there's.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
No way to be thinking about going out.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
I was thinking about you. I mean, it's very much
in the way it offerates. So I landed, My friends
were there, and immediately it was nice to be in
community with people who live similar lives in me. And
then it was nice to be sitting outside in cafes
and having cheese and having bread and having wine, indulging, indulging. Yeah.
And then I got on the apps in Paris and
(05:52):
I was like, I'm just gonna just see and then
maybe I'll go out on one date. And then actually
the first person I ended up connecting.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
With connecting was not off an app. I think I
sometimes thing is kissing, connecting is dating.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
Oh new to nudity, connecting It is like full yeah, no, no, no,
closer off yeah all everyone take it?
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
That is another title for the book Everyone's Naked. My
argument sometimes for the apps is not that you're going
to meet someone on there necessarily, but sometimes I think
it puts you in a mindset of thinking about opportunity
and like interacting with people with a sense of potential,
whether that potential for romance or love or sex or
(06:37):
whatever it is that it sort of shifts your mindset.
And that was true of me in that moment. Whereas
I'd been having all these conversations. First of all, I
was blown away by the amount of attention I got
because not only had I not been seen, I'd gone into.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
COVID at age. What would have been.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Forty five, right at the age women are really promised
invisibility and like your attraction is just going to disappear.
And I'd come out of it forty seven or for
forty six, and I was like, am I invisible? If
I just reached the age of invisibility?
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Like will anyone be able to see me? And of course.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
Immediately I am like inundated with attention from people of
all ages. And I was like, oh, that's great. Maybe
this is all I need, Like maybe I don't even
need to meet anyone. I'm so happy seeing my friends
and it's really lovely being here. And then we went
dancing on it. It's so ridiculously picturesque like French, but
we went dancing on the sun. There was no tourists
in Paris. Many French had left, so the city was
(07:30):
like just Parisians and it's normal to go and have
like sort of a picnic on the scent and like
impromptu dancing. So we got it, had a picnic, it
turned into dancing. It ended up dancing with this very
handsome gentleman. Then I ended up was like, no, you
should definitely come back to my flat, and then he
spent the night and well.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Everyone must have been so hot, like turned on for
itandemic like, yeah, not only you through this time alone
like everybody was.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Everybody was.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
Everybody was just ready for quickly can we all get naked?
Like I was not, There was no, It was just
everybody was feeling like this.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
And so you're meeting people in real life, you're meeting
people ina on the app.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
Well, what happened after that one night was like, oh
I want more of this. It was not just like oh,
I'll be satisfied by interactions or like a fun makeout
session or whatever. It was just like, oh no, I
want more of this. And then I was like and
I want more, and I want more, and I.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Want most meaning attention, this meaning sex, this.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Meaning just naked, not even necessarily sex. I mean, yes,
sex is what it turned into, but it was really
like touch and pleasure and the like physically being with
other totally humans. Because so much of the book, the
attention to the book that came out of this, I'm
mostly here to enjoy myself, which was what I would
(08:44):
respond to men on the apps when they'd be like,
what are you looking for in Paris? And I'd be like,
I'm mostly here to enjoy myself. So much of it
was being with friends, it was community, it was the
agency of sort of having Paris to yourself, the movement
as a woman, like all of these things were all
tied into pleasure for me. And also when I was
(09:07):
like I want more of this particular thing, it was
really like physical connection, like just touch and bodies and
three dimension and like smells and all.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
The other stuff.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Tell me about the apps you were on Hinge Tinder.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
There was one Wait, I love that.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
It doesn't Sorry, I feel like I missed Hinge so quickly.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
I you know, to this day, I don't. I don't.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
Hinge doesn't work for me. I've gone back on it.
Sometimes I literally get zero. Matt, I don't know what
it is I'm doing incorrectly. But there was one app
in Paris that summer that everyone was using.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Called Fruits with a z H.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
What's it like?
Speaker 3 (09:44):
It doesn't exist anymore? And everybody asked me if I
made it up, and I said no. The gods of
dating apps were on my side because like it was,
it was so delicious and ludicrous, like if you needed
something to reflect of, like what a moment that was.
If everybody's just out of their mind. It was like
everyone's using an app called Fruits with a Z or
a Z if you're not American, so you would like
(10:06):
mark yourself as there was four fruits and you chose
which fruit you were depending on what you were looking for.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Everyone is just looking like eggplant or eggplant is not
a fruit. Cherries uh huh.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Yeah, watermelon was no seeds attached, Cherries is something else.
I forget the other two. But literally everyone's looking for
the exact same thing. Like there was no there was
no like, oh can I just have a glass of
fine with you? I was just it was so funny
and so everyone is on this app and the conversation
would just immediately. It was not sort of like, oh
(10:43):
I'm here for a relationship where I'd really like to talk,
like it would just but in a really interesting way.
I do think the French, because they have such like
the language around everything and the language rituals around everything,
there was still this sort of ingrained consent even in
the like after not after after seventy two hours, I
was like, I'm getting so much attention, how do I
filter through who.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
I actually want to talk to?
Speaker 3 (11:05):
So I started saying to people, I'd be like, they'd say,
what do you because everyone would say that what are
you looking for here? And I'd say I'm mostly here
to enjoy myself, and they inevitably would say some version
of what I can.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Help you with that? And then I learned pretty quickly
to say.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
How wait, how do you say I can help you
with that? In French?
Speaker 3 (11:21):
No no, I was talking, yeah, but you do they
not speak to you in French?
Speaker 2 (11:26):
No?
Speaker 3 (11:26):
No, It was It was funny everybody most people speak English.
But also even if what I would notice is that
if they didn't, they'd put their answer through Google Translate
before they sent it to me, which so I would say,
how are you going to help me enjoy myself? Like
give me details, I want to know what you intend
to do, And sometimes the answer would come back I
would be like one of the guyn in coologist because
they would have put it through a Google Translate, so
they'd be like, no, yeah. It would be like the
(11:48):
most clinical language, which in and of itself.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Was sort of charming because I knew what would happen.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
It was it was like vagina explicitly or oh for
sure with your glitterist.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
I am going to move they in this direction, and
the first time it happened, I was.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Like, are you a gynecologist?
Speaker 3 (12:04):
And then I realized what was happening because they were
using and then I thought, well, who am I to criticized?
My French is so hit and miss, like that's.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
So u So it was just startling the language, like
when you're trying to be like sexy turned but.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
You guys got really And that's why at the beginning,
I was like, maybe these messages are enough, Like I'm
really enjoying hearing someone articulate all the ways they're going
to bring me pleasure. But then once that manifested literally
in real life, I was like, oh no, I'm not
interested in these Like these messages are just like uh
the foreplay literally until I decide whether I want.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
To see right, I want the fruits of the labor.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Literally, what fruit were you? Watermelon?
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (12:43):
No, seeds, no seeds attached?
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Okay, when you came back from Paris, how did you feel?
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Amazing?
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Did you bring that sort of sexual energy back to
New York?
Speaker 2 (12:53):
I did?
Speaker 3 (12:54):
And then New York went back into lockdown. Oh my god,
you know it was quite funny. I do I think though,
what came out of that trip was a sense of
empowerment and optimism and understanding that what I wanted I
could have, things were not out of my reach and
all you think.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
You could have found that conclusion in New York or
do you think traveling abroad alone is what gave it
to you.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
I think I would have come to that conclusion over
a much longer period of time, and it was the
timing of the trip and the intensity of it just
sort of.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Fast tracked it.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
But also I think what I took away from that
experience was maybe more of a reminder than a full realization.
But it was just like, particularly women are really encouraged
to think of these milestones as a happy ending, you know,
like there's a finality to marriage, and there's a finality
to kids, and you've achieved these things and understanding life
(13:48):
like there's death, that's when life ends, and before that happened,
life is more like I think of life more as waves,
Like instead of waiting for the other shoe to drop,
I was like, you're just going to ride this first
as long as it goes, and then when it's over,
it'll be over, and then you'll go through a difficult time,
but with the understanding that at some point that too
(14:08):
will be over. And it's more like thinking of life
as like a female orgism, which is like yes, wage right,
it's not like the male or is more like, oh,
you know, like you sore up and then you come
down and then.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
The next time write it down. Life is like a female.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
That if you approach it like that.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
I really think the way we think of narrative, because
male men have had so much control over the structure
of narrative, is very tied to how they experience pleasure.
And when you really think about what a female narrative
looks like, if you tie it into how women, not
all women experience the same, but like more of how
women experience pleasure, it is much more like ups and downs,
(14:45):
and sometimes the crest is better and sometimes the low
is lower, but it's like up and really go approaching
life like that, and for the bad times too, it's
just like when things feel like they're working against you.
It's not that it's not upsetting, and it's not that
it's not difficult, and it's not that it can't be devastating,
but like it's not a permanent existence. And I sometimes
(15:06):
think we have an easier time when things are terrible.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
Being like, oh, just things are terrible and this is
just how it's.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
Going to be than when things are really good and
experiencing them without the fear of it ending, just being like,
I'm just going to let everything go. Yeah, it's just
gonna it's just going to go my way. I'm just
going to assume it's going to go my way and
at one point it won't. But I don't know when that, Like,
I'm just going to assume it's this is the way
it's going until I'm it's old.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
Otherwise.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Your time in Paris, right, did you ever like fall
in love? Was that ever your intention?
Speaker 3 (15:50):
I see some of the men that I met that
summer still, but not in a i'd like, am I
going to be in a relationship with the twenty seven
year old?
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Probably? Not, Like I wasn't sleeping with twenty seven year
old when you were forty two?
Speaker 3 (16:02):
No, I was forty six, forty seven, you were forty six.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Was it your first time sleeping with someone younger like that?
Speaker 2 (16:11):
No? Okay again, And can.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
I just say in my present I've joked about this,
but not really even joking in the last two years.
If you think of like the top five things that
your brain is occupied with, Like pre COVID, I was
young for this, because I think it happens to many
people in their early fifties. But I had two parents
back to back, quite ill who needed a lot of caretaking,
and so I had gone from being not a full
time caretaker, but a lot of my life was spent
(16:39):
in that role to COVID to this. So there was
sort of a stretch of this where I was like, oh,
I was just like sex and I'm so excited this
look it's so available to us. And we were this
is such a lie that as you age, you're not
attractive and I can't you know, sex and touch going
from number one to like number five, and now the
only thing I think about is money, followed by real
(16:59):
estate eight, followed by right, Like it has dropped to
the bottom now where I'm like, what was I thinking about?
So maybe that'll be the next book. But it's interesting
how that shifts. And it's not that I'm not interested
in sex, or that I don't have a sex life,
or that these things aren't appealing, but it's just the
priority has shifted and I think it's very reflective, not
really even of my age, but of this moment that
we're in, and also the experience of five years of
(17:23):
knowing that this is available to me when I want
it and how I want it, and subsequently it removes
that anxiety of oh my god, if I don't grab
this now, it might be my last chance, which I
think gets attached to a lot of conversations around women
and men in general, but particularly.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
As you age.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
So the reason I'm reaching back for this sometimes is
like I'm just like, what was what did happen?
Speaker 2 (17:47):
I can't actually right?
Speaker 3 (17:49):
And then I remember I just have to It's not
at forefront of my mind the way it was a
few years ago.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
No, it makes complete sense because I do think sex
moves on that priority list all the time, and like
some times it's really important and sometimes it's not, and
we don't really, I think, have control over when it's
important and when it's not.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
And it's also like it's a measure of everything else
that's going on in your life. You talk to women
who have small children, and the most romantic thing they
can describe is their partner loaded the dishwasher and cleaned
the bathroom. Or they're a good parent for the children,
and I and having now sort of had a cat
(18:30):
bird seat to that in so many of my friends
different versions of relationships, I recognize why when you have
small children, the most romantic thing that could possibly happen
to you is someone alleviating the load or witnessing someone
being a good parent. But what we find the most
satisfying shifts so significantly depending on the acute need that
(18:52):
we have in our lives. And then in addition, you're
not approaching something as like it's scarce. There's no scarcity
mindset around this, which I think for women and romance
and love and sex and attraction, it's you're always trying
to think of it, as you know, with a scarcity
mindset that's Internet speak. But no, no, no, particularly as you age,
(19:13):
you're really like, oh, you're so lucky someone took a
look at you. And I think that can encourage you
to approach it with a level of sort of anxiety
and fear and I'm holding on to it. And once
you realize that there's an abundance of it, and you're like, oh, right,
I don't have time to deal with this storey now
because I really want to think about where's the money
coming from, and what does healthcare look like?
Speaker 2 (19:35):
All this, all those sorts of conversations.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
I guess I want to know if you are just
sort of like in your nature a defiant person, and
so those sort of like messages that are sent towards women,
if you just again in your nature sort of like
didn't believe them, or if there's something that happened that
made you be like, wait, fuck that, I'm going to
like find the love and sex that I want regardless
(19:58):
of what everyone's sort of telling me I should be.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
So I think it's shifted.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
The culture around this has shifted enormously in the last
ten years. When I was thirty nine turning forty, I
wrote a book it was called No One Tells You
This about that experience of not being partnered and not
having children at this age where you certainly when I
was thirty nine forty was like the cliff you go
off of, never to be seen from again.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
That is really how it was framed.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
And to get to the other side of this and
realize the things that were hard were not what I
was prepared for. I was, as I said, in the
early days of being a real caretaker for ill parents
and other family stuff. And on the flip side, I
was having so much fun and I was not prepared
(20:43):
for either of those things to happen.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
You were both feeling like immense joy and power.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
And also the ways in which not having a support
system when you are everyone else's support system is really
really hard, and because we don't have ritual or narrative.
This has changed again in the last decade. Incredibly, we
don't have a lot of narratives of value around women
outside of marriage or outside of partnership or parenthood. It's
(21:11):
hard to be recognized and there's no ritual around it,
and it's very difficult to shoulder all those things when
there's no way to celebrate it or recognize it or
mourn it or anything. And so being in that position
and not having a cultural support system around it, but
also a regular support system around it was really difficult.
(21:33):
And at the same time, I was like, oh my god,
I'm having the time of my life. I've become a
source of envy, which you're not prepared for as a
forty year old woman for so many people around you,
And that became a fun but also very tricky and
weird thing to navigate a source of envy is so, yes,
that increases, It only increases.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
I've gotten used to it.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
But being if your friends were jealous because everywhere untethered.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
Yes, it was just you're like a source of envy
over you know, the amount of freedom you have, the
ability because right when I was sort of hitting this
sense of power and being in my prime is right
at a moment, many friends were in the deep end
of small kids, and it was like I was able
to tap into the level of intelligence and maturity and
(22:19):
like finances and freedom of all these life choices in
my prime in a way that women raising children often
don't get to do until their sixties. And so I
went from feeling like I was very behind at age
thirty nine to buy forty five, feeling like I was
a decade ahead.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
It was a weird flip.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Well, I love how you keep saying in my prime, oh,
because I think of that hannahgatz By set where they're
like a girl who's sixteen is never in her prime. Yeah,
but that is so the language is when you're sixteen
when you're twenty five. But to be like I was
forty five and I was in my prime like that simply.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
I think this is why we have I mean, I
have lots of theories around this, but like the reason
that the way we talk about we don't see women
in their forties or fifties in their prime as fully
realized creatures is because it is scary to have moved
I don't know, for the patriarchy, for lack of a
better term, to have women who've moved on from needing
(23:16):
that recognition to being very powerful and with enormous agency
and the ability to make decisions, and it really is
destabilizing to a lot of systems, systems that are in place.
And I think that's why we get those women are
often portrayed either as the punchline, the cougar.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Or the witch.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
There's there's very you sort of go from the virgin
to the whore to sort of like the cougar, which
is we're going to mock you, to the witch, which
is that you're scary. And I was like, I feel
so powerful and so fully myself and so in my prime.
And because of that experience of being a writer who'd
(23:58):
often look to narratives as we all do, to figure
out how to move through life and how to think
of ourselves, to have them all completely disappear, and then
the ones that existed be the complete opposite of my
own experience. I just stopped paying attention to it at all,
So it was not I don't think of it as
defiance necessarily as like folly want shame on you, but
like eventually it's like I don't believe any of this
(24:20):
because none of it has proven to be true. I
just can't even be bothered to turn my attention to
it because it just feels like a waste of time.
It's like the definition of insanity, like doing the same
thing over and over. There's just nothing, there's no accurate reflection.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
I'm curious, like you have you sound you seem to
have always been so independent. I'm wondering if there was
a time like earlier in your life where you did
think you were going to get married, where you did
think you were going to have kids, or you did
think you were going to sort of do the nuclear
family thing.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
I'm sure I don't. I think that it was. It
wasn't even that I thought. I think it was just
an assumption. Hm. I grew up in a family that
was emotionally what was emotionally on sane, it was the
financial unstable though, so I've been supporting myself out of
necessity since I was seventeen or eighteen, and also generationally
from a generation where you just didn't call your parents
right like because you couldn't because it would cost a
(25:09):
lot of money.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
So part of that is that.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
But I'm sure some of the anxiety I was feeling
at thirty nine was this sense of like, oh, I
just assumed at some point I would be partnering or
I would be having kids, and now I really have
to look at if these are things I directly want,
I'm going to have to make different decisions in my
(25:32):
life to make them happen right now. And I never
fault women who are like, I want to have a baby,
this is my number one priority.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
I want to make it happen.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
Or I want to be married, and my number one
priority is getting married, and I'm going to prioritize that
because once you get out of university or college, you're
not in the milia that supports that necessarily. And I
think at thirty nine I really was like, what is
it you do want? Like I had to make that
decision because when I made that right around thirty when
I was like, you've got to get your professional life
(25:59):
in order. I went into overdrive for a long time
of just like I work, and it was amazing work
and I was very happy doing it, but it was
my main focus. And so I sort of got to
the end of my thirties and I was like, hold on,
hold the phone, what do you know If I want
to have a kid right now, You're going to have
to make really different decisions about children and do you
want to be married, Like what is it that you want?
(26:20):
And it was at that point that I was like,
I don't know. It's not that I don't want these things.
I don't want them enough to particularly with children. I
knew I'd be okay without children. It wasn't a clear
I'm sometimes skeptical about how black and white these decisions
sometimes are, that's the way they get framed.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
It wasn't like I don't want children.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
It was a recognition that I didn't want them enough
to make all the changes in my life that would
have to happen financially, geographically to support bringing a child
into my life, and that I recognize deeply I would
be okay without children.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Something we talk about on this show a lot is unlearning,
specifically unlearning something you've been taught about love. Can you
speak to something you had to really unlearn about love
in your experience?
Speaker 3 (27:24):
I will say I think that unlearning and I think
this is probably true for everyone, but I think it's
particularly true for women of deserving love that you can
just be loved that you don't. There's no romance story
where a woman has not had to do the I
never loved Bridget Jones the movie books Board the shit
out of me, and I could never hold my attention.
But that idea of counting calories, or when you rewatch
(27:45):
sex in the city and she's like, oh my god,
you farted.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
I farted. He's never going to love me.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Like all of these insane belief systems that are like, oh,
I have to deserve the attention or deserve love is
a hard thing to unlearn.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Well, it's also reminding me immediately of what you said
about Americans and earning vacation, yes, or earning rest. Yeah,
It's like, we do have to really earn everything, don't we.
The love that we get, the rest that we take,
the vacation that we go on.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
And I would encourage everyone and particularly women to like.
So many of these rituals and expectations are rooted in
a history, all of history up until fifty years ago,
and that only then for certain conjure society is women
were fully financially dependent on men, that marriage was an economic.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
Decision to move through class systems that you did.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
Your survival was so dependent on keeping the money earner
whenever that looked like, at whatever time period that was
happy and satisfied that that you literally forget about earning love.
You had to earn your survival. And we have confused
that with love and a narrative to make it look attractive.
(28:59):
But these things are coming from anywhere. And when I
look at my friends, when I look at my mother's generation,
my parents didn't divorce, but friends of mine's mothers who
did divorce and then immediately got remarried or were immediately
thinking like I have to be married for social value
or for finance, And I'm like, who am I I
can't pass judgment on this because your financial safety was
(29:21):
dependent on this, And of course you're going through all
these hoops and we have now inherited those expectations without
necessarily the financial need for it, and then we've confused
it with many many other things. But I think it's
such the last my lifespan has bridged such a vast
transition in this, and it's all gotten confused together, and
(29:44):
there's now a pushback to it. So unlearning that it's
like a privilege to be able to unlearn that because
I live in a world where it's possible that I
don't have to earn someone's love, which is pretty rare
on the scope of history.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Absolutely, because it sounds like when you were interacting with
men and the way you interact with men and sex,
it's really from a distance, it doesn't seem to not
always take okay now, I mean, you just have this
my My perception of you at this point is like
you have this really strong, safe, secure relationship to sex
that doesn't really shake your.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Oh it doesn't. I mean, please, I've had my.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
More than more than I care to count. I think
I'm less prone to that now. It's more the sense
of the things that we I think are really conditioned
to find exciting in romance, and that when we're younger,
you start to see, as I guess, red flags or
(30:50):
I'm like this thing that I would have thought was
so that I did think was so romantic and so
exciting and so like, Oh, I now look at it
and I'm like, oh, this is a problem that I
don't have time. I'm for like it is, that is
what happens. It's not the I'm holding it emotionally in
the distance. It's more like I recognize more easily what's
actually going on.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
Yeah, earlier, what's one red flag that you used to
not ignore that you have to ignore? Now?
Speaker 2 (31:15):
Oh God, what would it be?
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Now?
Speaker 3 (31:17):
I'm so good at I don't even think about it.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
It's sort of like it's what if people call it so?
Speaker 3 (31:22):
Of course, some of this language didn't exist when I
was your age, where it's just like the love.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Bombing of it.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
I just remember falling madly, madly in love with this guy,
I mean really in a devastating way when I was
in my thirties and he was just like, sweep you
off your feet, flowers everywhere and doing this, and it
was just that behavior is no longer appealing to me
because it is not coming from a place that has
(31:48):
anything to do with me. It's not even that I
look at it now and I'm like, oh, you've a problem.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
I just literally it just.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Flies by me in a way that it just can't
hold my attention anymore. But oh my god, did that
hold my attention when I was in my thirties, like
just to a degree of like, oh, I'm so in lover,
this is so romantic or you know, all of those things,
because it is exciting and I see it now and
I don't think I'm cynical, and I don't like to
be cynical, but I just sort of I don't even
(32:14):
have to think about it now. I'm just like, oh,
you know, this is not based and anything having to
do with emotion or love or value.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
When someone sort of love bombs, it doesn't hold your attention.
I do want to know what holds your attention?
Speaker 2 (32:29):
This is a good question.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
Right now, the only thing that holds my attention is
the ways I make money. It's New York real estate,
Like what helps?
Speaker 2 (32:41):
That's where women should be putting their attentions.
Speaker 3 (32:43):
Oh my god, yeah, completely completely. I do think thoughtfulness
and intelligence. But then again, you're meeting a lot of
fifth year old men who are either newly divorced and
don't know how to be alone, or they're in open
marriages and that the exhaustion of all of it just
overwhelms me. And I'm like, I actually don't need to
be in a relationship at this point to think about money.
So that's when I go back into my like where
(33:03):
is the money?
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Send me some?
Speaker 1 (33:09):
My last question, Yeah, what's your advice to women when
it comes to dating? Oh?
Speaker 2 (33:14):
God, I don't know. Do I have advice?
Speaker 1 (33:18):
My god? What's your advice to me?
Speaker 2 (33:21):
I think, what do you want?
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Yeah? Figuring that out.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
Because I really think what do you want? And like,
whatever you want is fine. If what you want is
love for whatever however you term that, or in like
emotional support, satisfaction long term, if you want to build
a family together. Knowing what you want and I think
that women have been mocked punished for saying what they want,
(33:45):
but really knowing what you want is the starting point
of proceeding. So if all you want is like physical pleasure, great,
go and get it. If what you want is someone
to come home to, is cooking for you, go and
get that. But like, know what you want?
Speaker 1 (34:02):
Yeah, thank you, Okay, thank you so much. Glitnas for
Chris Delight. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
It's a good exercise for me Fangku out.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
We were reminded to think about things other than pre
war apartments on the over rest.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
What do I want? This is something I'm always asking myself.
After talking to glynnis I definitely want to go to Paris,
But in the long term, I'm still figuring that out.
Maybe next week we can figure it out together. Thanks
for listening. I'll talk to y'all next week. Boys Sover
(34:46):
is a production of iHeart Podcasts. I'm your host, Hopewordard.
Our executive producers are Christina Everett and Julie Pinero. Our
supervising producer is Emily Meronoff, engineering by Bahid fre and
mixing and mastering by a Boo Zafar. If you liked
this episode, please tell a friend and don't forget to rate, review,
(35:08):
and subscribe to boy Sober on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
and wherever you get your favorite shows.
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