From the moment we're born, we are just inundated in every media and from our families with the idea that the most important relationship of your life is the romantic relationship.

And that if you have one, you're good and if you don't have one, something's wrong and you're miserable and you're alone, that you should ditch everything else for that.

Like you should ditch your friends.

You should basically graduate from your natal family into a new marriage. And, like, that's life. And, like, you happen to have some friendship when you're a teenager. Like, that's not important. And you should ditch all of your own expectations for this relationship. And inside that, there's a bunch of assumptions that if you find the, quote, unquotequote right person, that they'll be able to read your mind.

And it'll always be like easy to have sex and you'll never disagree. And so that people are very disappointed. They project, oh my God, I've found Prince Charming or whatever. And then they're like so disappointed that we're not that. And that we expect to put all of our eggs in their basket. This person should be everything, which leads to tons of resentment. I think most people end up very isolated in marriages.

Most people in our society, like this, I think the romance myth and that shape of like a marital-centered society is a form of social control that pushes people into this. It's a model of consumption that you should be in these family units that are highly mobile for the workforce and that will be like the site of consumption. All right.

Hi.

How's going?

How are you doing?

How are you holding up?

What is happening?

A lot is happening in the world, in the news, in your life, in my life.

I hope that you're finding some time for yourself.

This is my podcast. Welcome to it. I'm glad you're here. I'm glad to be here. I'm especially glad to be here today.

Bringing you this conversation, I recorded just last week with long-time activist and author

of several books, including his latest book, Love in a Fucked Up World. Dean Spade is here.

We talk about the complexities of modern relationships and the challenges that we face as a society that's shaped by disposability culture, which makes us so afraid of giving feedback and receiving feedback, the fear of being wrong in public,

and being thrown away and how that impacts our relationships. The way Dean looks at conflict,

it's actually good for relationships and managing our reactivity. It's something that I, that felt

very present for me.

And another favorite part of this conversation was when we spoke about something that

Dean calls the romance myth, which he defines in this, but it's basically how

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