The Waiting Room

Summary

The Good Sex Project – "The Waiting Room"

Release Date: June 23, 2026
Host: Melody Thomas, PopSoc Media

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Episode Overview

Theme:
This episode delves into the evolving narrative of singleness: from a “waiting room” before real life or love can begin, to a space of autonomy, community, and personal contentment. Host Melody Thomas discusses the pressures, joys, and realities of single life with two candid New Zealanders in their 40s—Beth and Scott—alongside international expert Bella DePaulo. The conversation unpacks both cultural scripts around relationships and the nuanced lived experiences of those with chosen or circumstantial singledom.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Changing Narratives Around Singleness (01:51–06:03)

• The ‘Glowing Single’ Trend:
  Melody reflects on the rise of confident, autonomous singles showcased online and contrasts it with the “waiting room” narrative that dominated 90s-00s culture (e.g., Bridget Jones, Sex and the City).

  • Quote: "Singledom was a waiting room…Even Carrie ended up with Big. The clock was still ticking." – Melody (04:16)

• New Societal Scripts:
  Pandemic-induced introspection and generational shifts are challenging the assumption that coupleship is always the goal.

2. Beth’s Story – ADHD, Romance, and Self-Acceptance (06:23–17:25, 24:26–26:56, 32:20–34:23, 44:14–44:32, 45:25)

• Beth’s Background:
  A charismatic 42-year-old, “heteroflexible” woman in Wellington, Beth navigates life and love through the lens of her ADHD and a big social appetite.

  • Quote: “I have been with women and attracted to women, but men give me boners.” – Beth (07:08)

• Relationship Patterns:
  Beth describes repeated cycles of intense infatuation followed by let-downs as dopamine fades—a common ADHD experience.

  • Quote: "It feels like I’m in a video game...you think you get to the end of the game when you find someone…but then you just have to start the game again." – Beth (09:31)

• Transformative Breakup:
  A five-year relationship revealed difficulties: secrecy, controlling behavior, and emotional invalidation. Beth’s self-worth was impacted until, post-breakup, she slowly rebuilt her independence and friendships.

  • Quote: “I just wanted it so bad that I lost myself entirely.” – Beth (11:29)
  • Quote: "I've never felt more lonely than when I was in that relationship." – Beth (24:59)
  • Sudokus and stained Airbnb sheets serve as comic yet vivid illustrations of heartbreak and recovery.

• Embracing Non-Romantic Intimacy:
  Beth finds partnership outside romance—through friendship and flatmates.

  • Quote: "This is partnership. It’s like a beautiful jigsaw puzzle…" – Beth (26:00)
  • Quote: "Why does that have to change?" – Beth (32:49)

• Redefining ‘Winning’ at Life:
  She acknowledges the fulfillment in her “four out of five” pillars—family, friends, meaningful work, and a home—questioning the necessity of romantic love as a final missing piece.

  • Quote: "Maybe it’s a little bit unreasonable to expect all five [pillars]. And that’s okay." – Beth (34:01)

• New Perspective:
  Beth updates her ‘video game’ analogy:

  • Quote: “It’s just this quiet realization of just being, like, suddenly getting a gold star…Turns out the final boss was yourself all along.” (44:20–44:32, 44:32)

3. Scott’s Story – Self-Discovery, Loneliness, and Friendship (18:15–24:26, 27:01–32:03, 34:23–44:14)

• Identity Journey:
  Scott, a 40-year-old non-binary Aucklander (he/him, usually dates men), recounts his slow coming-out process and navigating ‘90s/’00s queer invisibility in media and family spaces.

  • Quote: "I actually rewatched Buffy…there was a lesbian relationship there…and one random gay character for about five minutes, like, was still a bit taboo." – Scott (18:43)

• Long-term Singlehood:
  After a major breakup in 2018 and the onset of the pandemic, Scott spends seven years single, slowly differentiating between solitude and loneliness.

  • Quote: "You have a not so good day and you end up having a couple of glasses of wine…It becomes a band aid." – Scott (22:12)

• Cultural Programming and Comparison:
  Even without a deep desire for marriage or children, he wrestles with internalized narratives of inadequacy and comparison.

  • Quote: "Do I just desire the Cinderella story or do I really want someone in my life?" – Scott (23:29)

• Reimagined Relationships and ‘The Ones’:
  Scott realizes that connection—be it with his sister, friends, or community—provides necessary intimacy.

  • Quote: “Cherishing those things is sometimes more important than hoping or wishing for my life to be different in some way.” – Scott (44:04)

• Desires for Future Partnerships:
  Scott muses about wanting an open relationship rooted in honesty, growth, and adaptation rather than monogamous closure.

  • Quote: “If you’re still pretending like [the relationship] is the same when you first got together…you end up living in a box that’s not fit for purpose anymore.” – Scott (42:40)

4. Cultural and Structural Biases Against Single People (05:41, 35:09–38:22, 38:41–41:16)

• Expert Voice: Bella DePaulo

  • DePaulo critiques societal and institutional biases that favor couples—financially, legally, socially—while single people subsidize these privileges.
    • Quote: “Single people are subsidizing the couples.” – Bella DePaulo (05:50)
  • She coins the term “singleism” for the stigma and discrimination singles face at work, in policy, and in relationships.
    • Quote: “There’s so much stigmatizing of single people as being alone or lonelier…even the words we use as synonyms…that’s completely wrong.” – Bella (37:35)
  • Couples become insular; single people keep networks alive and are often more socially healthy.

• Societal Reactions and Community:
  DePaulo’s online Community of Single People now includes 10,000+ from over 100 countries, demonstrating unmet need for single-positive spaces.

  • Quote: “We are happy and flourishing because we are single, not in spite of it.” – Bella (38:33)
  • Quote: "Reading Single at Heart was like finding a home." – Bella sharing reader feedback (38:47)

5. Emotional Labor, Loneliness, and Gender (27:42–32:03, 28:29–31:36)

• Male Loneliness and Systemic Factors:
  The episode challenges the narrative of an exclusively “male loneliness epidemic,” highlighting data that shows both genders are equally likely to be lonely, but with women retaining stronger support networks.

• Capitalism and Patriarchy:
  Time scarcity, lack of “third places,” and emotional repression in men all intensify isolation.

  • Quote: “It’s scary to think we’re getting more and more disconnected.” – Tom Scott (30:00)
  • Quote: "Patriarchy’s first demand of men isn’t violence towards women. It’s that men mutilate themselves emotionally, kill off the parts of themselves that feel." – bell hooks, paraphrased by Melody (30:07)

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On Single Life as Complete:
  "I have lots of people who are significant others to me. I’m not having sex with any of them, but I consider them significant." – Bella DePaulo (37:35)

• On New Scripts for Love:
  “Not a case for or against coupledom but for paying attention to what’s already there. For not sleepwalking past the love that’s already in your life while you’re busy waiting for the one." – Melody Thomas (43:20)

• On Self-Sufficiency:
  "I know what I want in my life and I’m enough." – Beth (45:25)

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Important Timestamps

| Segment Topic | Speaker(s) | Timestamp | |----------------------------------|---------------------------|------------| | The “waiting room” analogy and pop culture critique | Melody Thomas | 03:03–04:16| | Beth’s romantic history, ADHD, and heartbreak | Beth, Melody | 06:23–17:25| | Alain de Botton's advice on being single | Beth | 16:40 | | Scott’s coming out and friendship | Scott, Melody | 18:15–21:09| | Coping with loneliness and shifting desires | Scott, Melody | 22:32–24:26| | Building intimacy through friendship/community | Beth, Melody | 26:00 | | Cultural bias and “singleism” | Bella DePaulo, Melody | 36:02–38:22| | Redefining the value of romantic vs. platonic love | Bella DePaulo | 39:47 | | Scott and Beth’s current attitudes & updated analogies| Beth, Scott, Melody | 42:34–44:32| | Final thoughts: “The ones” over “the one” | Melody Thomas | 43:20–44:32|

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Episode Takeaways

• Singleness is not inherently a transitional state but can be a chosen, fulfilling life path.
• Systemic structures often penalize single people, and cultural scripts promote coupledom as the default or only “win.”
• Intimacy, connection, and ‘partnership’ can be found and celebrated outside of romantic relationships—through friends, family, and community.
• Self-acceptance and intentionally cherishing what is present leads to deeper satisfaction—whether or not romantic love is part of the equation.

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Tone & Language

The episode balances humor, vulnerability, and sharp social critique. Conversations are candid, sometimes raw, and often buoyed by irreverence and warmth—from Beth’s saucy analogies to Melody’s wry narrative asides, and Bella’s steady, data-backed optimism about the potential for full, thriving lives outside coupledom.

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This summary covers the main narrative and emotional arcs, offers key timestamps, and preserves the original speakers’ voices—allowing listeners, new and old, to engage deeply with the episode’s insights, questions, and calls to reconsider what makes a truly “good” life or relationship.

Transcript

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[Narrator (Melody Thomas)]

Kia ora kouto this series is about sex, which you have probably figured out by now. In this episode, though, there are also outdated attitudes. There is a bit of swearing. There is a bad breakup. Perhaps most alarmingly, there are several bad puns. Some names and locations have been changed, and this podcast was made with the support of New Zealand on Air.

[Melody Thomas]

Scroll through your feed right now and you might be seeing a fair bit from a particular kind of person. They live alone, travel alone, eat dinner alone, maybe even girl dinner. And they look good, peaceful, glowy, unbothered. Complete control over your life. You get to decide what's going to make you happy.

[Ad Voice / Commentary]

Financial freedom and self actualization.

[Melody Thomas]

I never believed I did.

[Ad Voice / Commentary]

I'm like, you're so happy. I love to see it.

[Melody Thomas]

Like, what do you got a new man? Like, what? If I had a new man, I'd be miserable.

[Ad Voice / Commentary]

This glow.

[Tom Scott]

This is me.

[Bella DePaulo]

Seven more things that I love about being single and living alone.

[Ad Voice / Commentary]

Number one no 1.

[Melody Thomas]

Guilting me for wearing clothes to bed.

[Beth]

2.

[Bella DePaulo]

I eat what I want. When people tell me I'm glowing, I'm thriving, doing well.

[Ad Voice / Commentary]

It's when I'm not focused on men at all.

[Melody Thomas]

Online, at least, singleness has a newfound confidence. Like maybe it doesn't need to explain itself anymore. Like it might even be something to aspire to.

[Ira Madison III]

Single women and married men are the

[Ad Voice / Commentary]

happiest, the happiest groups of people.

[Melody Thomas]

Let's advocate for policies that support a family of one.

[Scott]

There's nothing wrong with being single.

[Ira Madison III]

There's nothing wrong with being alone.

[Melody Thomas]

Men are like Salt the seasoning makes

[Beth]

it a little bit better, but it's not necessary.

[Melody Thomas]

You actually have the space to work out what makes you truly happy. But this is a relatively new story in movies and television from the 90s and noughties. Think Muriel's Wedding, Bridget Jones Diary and Sex and the City. Being single was a problem, something to fix. You had to find your Mark Darcy, ideally before turning 33 and dying alone. Found three weeks later half eaten by Alsatians. That's not my line, by the way. That was Bridget Jones's actual stated fear. And while all this pressure often landed hardest on women, men had their own version of the script. Grow up, commit, settle down, find the right woman and then you'll understand. Different expectations, same ending. Singledon was a waiting room. Sex in the City might have made it glamorous, given it a rabbit vibrator and a newspaper column, but. But even Carrie ended up with big. The clock was still ticking. Then from the early 2000 and tens came the apps. Suddenly you could optimize your search for the 1. More options, more efficiency, more control. Same destination, but a much slicker on ramp. And then really quite recently, something shifted. Maybe it was the pandemic which forced us all inside and made a lot of us quietly reassess what and who we needed. Maybe it was a generation that watched their parents marriages up close and wasn't that impressed. Whatever it was, the script didn't just change, it collapsed. And into that gap walked the girl with the solo dinner reservation, the vacation tan and the face that says, I'm thriving actually. And the guy who tells you he's not dating, he's building, he's in monk mode. He's got a morning routine, a high protein diet and a five year plan. A relationship would just be a distraction from the grind. But how much of this is real? And how much of it is just a better looking waiting room? In this episode we meet two people in their forties navigating singleness in a world that still can't quite decide what to make of it.

[Beth]

I get told all the time how much I deserve love.

[Scott]

Do I just desire the Cinderella story or do I really want someone in my life?

[Melody Thomas]

Plus, one of the world's leading experts on singleness, Bella De Paul on why the story we tell about solo living might be more political than we think

[Bella DePaulo]

single people are subsidising the couples.

[Melody Thomas]

And what she'd say to anyone who's looked at their single life and thought,

[Bella DePaulo]

I love being single. It's my best life.

[Melody Thomas]

I'm Melody Thomas. And this is episode three of the Good Sex Project. The Waiting room.

[Andy Beckerman]

Oh, hi.

[Melody Thomas]

I'm in a gorgeous little apartment in central Wellington. This is my city. I've lived here all of my life, but my place is out in the burbs. This apartment is a couple of minutes off Cuba Street. I've only been here a few times, but every time, basically the moment I walk in, I'm offered a freshly made cocktail, usually with a special seasonal twist, by a host.

[Beth]

Welcome to my boudoir.

[Melody Thomas]

This is beth. Beth's a 42 year old babe about town who gets a lot done and always looks awesome while she's doing it. Her pronouns are she, her, and she initially told me she was heteroflexible. When I asked what that meant to

[Beth]

her, she said, I have been with women and attracted to women, but men give me boners.

[Melody Thomas]

You're more horny for boys.

[Beth]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Melody Thomas]

Yes. Well, there's definitely people listening who are going, babe, that's still.

[Beth]

Well, look, here I am saying that I am bi.

[Melody Thomas]

Bi, heteroflexible, demisexual. Beth has adhd, so we won't make her choose. She was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult 10 years ago. And neurodiverse listeners might also relate to this. But Beth's occasionally been described as too much.

[Beth]

I am extremely extroverted and my social tank is enormous.

[Melody Thomas]

I think she's just right.

[Beth]

Someone said, beth, you live the shit

[Bella DePaulo]

out of your life.

[Melody Thomas]

I met Beth a few years ago and we bonded pretty immediately. Like me, she doesn't have much of a filter and I was always gonna love somebody who started off a conversation

[Beth]

with stuff like, I was a really horny kid.

[Melody Thomas]

Or hang on, here's another one.

[Beth]

When I was a teenager, I called my dad a penis. I was like, shut up, Dad's such a penis. And Mum goes, now, now, Beth, a penis is a very beautif.

[Melody Thomas]

For this interview, Beth and I have clambered up a little ladder to a romantic mezzanine filled with cushions and fairy lights and a movie projector. It's not a date, but we will be talking about dating and love and sex and about not being in love

[Beth]

when I am actively single. It's definitely some of the easiest times of my life and happiest. So is it not as worthy? You know,

[Melody Thomas]

Beth's a romantic through and through, always has been, always will be, and her ADHD has upped the ante, emotionally speaking.

[Beth]

I was always just having huge crushes for Beth.

[Melody Thomas]

Crushes and dating have always involved Navigating, passionate, intense, hyper fixation in the early

[Beth]

stages, just being able to feel those big emotions and love the story of romance. And you know, like little kind of serendipitous things have happened. I just like absolutely lap that up.

[Melody Thomas]

But then when the dopamine rush fades, the interest fades with it.

[Beth]

Once you settle into what would be considered more of a normal relationship, it sort of fizzles out.

[Melody Thomas]

She has a great analogy for this pattern.

[Beth]

It feels like I'm in a video game and you're going through the level, which is dating, which is a nightmare, and there's hurdles and gremlins and all that kind of stuff. And you think that you get to the end of the game when you find someone and you meet that match, that's the final boss. But then you realize if you get that connection and then suddenly you're just on level, you're just on level two and then you just, you know, you fall over in the first few seconds and you're back to the square one. Like you don't even get to get the multiple lives. Yeah. And then you just have to start the game again.

[Melody Thomas]

Over her life, Beth's reached level two on World of Woocraft or Call of Booty. No, okay, I'm gonna stop.

[Beth]

Sorry.

[Melody Thomas]

Beth's reached the one or two year relationship mark a handful of times, and she had one that lasted four or five years, which we're gonna hear about soon. But every time there's a breakup, she has to start the game again. And then the same old thoughts come

[Beth]

back to haunt her, like, what am I doing wrong? And that has at its lowest manifested as, why aren't people willing to commit to me?

[Melody Thomas]

But more and more, as she's gotten older and had more time to puzzle all of this out, Beth's thinking has started to shift.

[Beth]

Maybe if we'd had this conversation, you know, four years ago, then it would have been a lot different. I was a real people pleaser and really did think something was wrong with me and I had to change who I was and not be my full, authentic self in order to be in a relationship. I just don't feel that anymore.

[Melody Thomas]

But it's been a journey to get to this place of self acceptance and it hasn't been an easy one.

[Beth]

It took really losing myself to somebody. I just wanted it so bad that I lost myself entirely.

[Melody Thomas]

Let's rewind a decade. Beth is 32. If you're younger than that, you're going to think it's old, but trust me, it's not. 32 is still a tiny, tiny baby baby. Beth is managing a festival at a time when craft beer, manicured facial hair, and tech are all going off in Wellington, when she meets someone. Let's call him Tim.

[Beth]

It started as a friendship, but there was very clear fireworks.

[Melody Thomas]

Beth and Tim were both in relationships when they first met, but the sparks were immediately obvious.

[Beth]

Everyone was like, what's the deal with those two?

[Melody Thomas]

And eventually the fireworks caught and they started dating. But they did keep it secret for quite a while.

[Beth]

And so that came with all of that. The sort of dopamine hits of just like, clandestine meetups and that kind of thing, but actually just zero nurturing for my soul. And I have been so bad in the past of putting in my own boundaries, of saying, this doesn't make me feel good. I don't want this, because I was so scared to lose it and to be alone. I then finally plucked up the courage to say, I can't do this anymore. Either you love me and we do this, or you don't. It took, like, less than 24 hours for him to come back and be like, no, I really want to do this.

[Melody Thomas]

This should have been a really happy moment. Finally, Beth and Tim were going to take their love out of the shadows and into the open.

[Beth]

And I remember ringing my sister and saying, why do I feel deflated?

[Melody Thomas]

I think part of the answer is in the things that we value as a society. This culture will congratulate a couple for 50 years of marriage, even if they haven't had a real conversation in all of that time. Basically, any relationship, good, bad, or average, gets treated as better than no relationship.

[Beth]

You know, society tells you that this is the ultimate goal, but there's a

[Melody Thomas]

good chance that Beth's ADHD was also playing a part.

[Beth]

So much of that relationship was about the chase. And so then actually, when you get it, that game is over.

[Melody Thomas]

You don't have to have ADHD to relate to this. But it's a pretty classic description of the ADHD brain in love. It's not about being fickle or unable to commit. It's that the uncertainty in the novelty, the will they, won't they? It's not just exciting, it's neurologically necessary. The chase delivers exactly the kind of dopamine hit that ADHD brains are wired to seek out. Which means that period where the relationship was a secret was on some level, the perfect drug. Even though Beth had very real doubts

[Beth]

about it, I wasn't overly sure if he would be a caring partner.

[Melody Thomas]

There seem to have been Signs of this from pretty early on.

[Beth]

It was very much on his terms and I guess some warning signs of controlling behaviour, of like how I should act and that I shouldn't be a certain way.

[Melody Thomas]

It was actually during their will, they won't they period that Beth got her ADHD diagnosis.

[Beth]

Often at night. If I wanted to have a conversation and it was about the relationship and it was shut down and then obviously I got upset. It was always asking whether I'd taken my meds.

[Melody Thomas]

In my opinion, using someone's diagnosis to dismiss their feelings isn't concern, it's control. Anyway, five years in, which includes that period of secrecy, things came to a head and they broke up. At the time, Beth and Tim were living together and she'd rented out the apartment. We were doing this interview to somebody else so she couldn't come back here right away. She booked herself into an Airbnb for a two month long heartbroken wallow.

[Beth]

I spent most of the time in bed doing Sudoku. Do you know what's hysterical? Is that because I left a pen stain on the sheets from all the Sudoku.

[Bella DePaulo]

Yeah.

[Beth]

My Airbnb review now says, great guest. However, left stains on the sheets doesn't specify. It does not specify what the stains are. That I'm just like, I'm just this bed soiler. You'll be really good at Sudoku. I am sensational. I am expert level, actually. And then once I got back into this apartment, I just remember being back in here and just being like, this is me, this is my place, I'm home.

[Melody Thomas]

Beth had returned to herself, or she had started to from there.

[Beth]

I remember watching the School of Life, Alain du Botton. And it was about how we are so scared to be alone. And I remember just this one quote that he said and it was like, not until you're happy with the idea of being alone for the rest of your life. Only then are you ready to be in a relationship. And I said out loud, oh, fuck. Because I knew that I wasn't there and I knew that that was going to take a lot of work to get there.

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[Melody Thomas]

We're going to come back to Beth and follow her along as she figures

[Beth]

all of that out.

[Melody Thomas]

But first, I want to introduce you to somebody else.

[Scott]

Hi, I'm Scott. I'm 40 and I live in Auckland. I like to practice yoga and I've been trying a lot harder this year with meditation.

[Melody Thomas]

Scott isn't the kind of person that opens a conversation with that info, by the way. I asked him to share his hobby so I could check his sound level. Scott's non binary. He asked me to use he him pronouns for our interview and he generally dates men. But the road to figuring out all of that was a slow one for Scott.

[Scott]

I grew up in a time when the major queer reference was Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Maybe you had Will and Grace. I actually rewatched Buffy the Vampire Slayer recently and there was a lesbian relationship there. And one random gay character for about five minutes, like, was still a bit taboo, even. Or undesirable is probably the best word to use.

[Melody Thomas]

Scott's earliest crushes were on girls, though as he developed, he realised there wasn't really a sexual component to those. To Scott's horror, at the time, it appeared that those feelings were reserved for boys.

[Scott]

But I was shit scared to do anything about the gayness. I hit sort of rock bottom when that's never going to happen. I don't know what to do.

[Melody Thomas]

Then when he was 18, Scott went away for a weekend with his friends and him and one of the other boys shared a kiss.

[Scott]

Just being drunk and silly. And that was so long ago.

[Melody Thomas]

After the friend group got back home, Scott and this other boy made a plan to meet up again.

[Scott]

I could barely look because I was drunk the night before. I could kiss him. And then when I was sober, even though there was no one else in the room, no risk of anything, I couldn't do it. It was really, really confronting. I think we had to put the blankets over our heads. Well, I had to.

[Melody Thomas]

By his early 20s, Scott had come to accept these things about himself and he came out to his parents.

[Scott]

I used to smoke cigarettes back then. I was like, oh, I'm going to want to have a cigarette immediately after. So I'm going to come up with both things. I'm gay and I smoke.

[Melody Thomas]

Mum was silent for a moment.

[Scott]

She's like, oh, I don't know about the second thing, but the first thing's fine. And she said she'd known since I was at kindergarten.

[Beth]

Classic.

[Melody Thomas]

Scott's dad didn't mind. He'd come out himself a few years

[Scott]

before this and I was like, oh my God, I am the only gay person in the world with a gay parent. This is crazy. And then it wasn't till I actually slept with a guy whose mother was a lesbian. I was like, oh, this is actually a lot more common than expected.

[Melody Thomas]

Through his 20s, Scott met lots of guys. He had a few flings, lots of hot nights and one pretty long term relationship which lasted five years before fizzling out.

[Scott]

It was an amicable end. We both decided that it had kind of run its course romantically. We kind of got him brotherly in a way. We're still really close friends, which is nice.

[Melody Thomas]

That relationship ended in 2018 and after the initial heartache began to subside, Scott found himself in a pretty good place. He wasn't really interested in getting into another relationship.

[Scott]

I just kind of wanted to be sexually a bit freer, but also process what had happened, what we'd been through and who I was.

[Melody Thomas]

Then, just as Scott's starting to think maybe he'd like a relationship again, Covid hit Shit.

[Scott]

I'm back at home alone. Bubble of one Fuck yeah.

[Melody Thomas]

And so began seven years of singledom.

[Scott]

Yeah. And then I just haven't met anyone where it sort of worked out, I

[Melody Thomas]

guess, which at first wasn't a big deal.

[Scott]

I think the first four years, totally fine. I spent a lot of time alone. My work was quite alone and I did live alone for a lot of that period.

[Melody Thomas]

He was alone, but he wasn't lonely. Until recently.

[Scott]

The alone time has been spent a bit more, but darker at times.

[Melody Thomas]

And it's led to some less healthy behaviours.

[Scott]

Like you have a not so good day and you end up having a couple of glasses of wine, even if it's not really intense, becomes a band aid. You don't really work through that darkness properly.

[Melody Thomas]

In 2023, Scott took a year off drinking. It was really good for him. But sometimes he did really miss having that band aid in a bottle.

[Scott]

A couple of times there was like these quite dark depressive moments that didn't last for really long periods. But some of that in a monologue would frame itself around. You're alone, no one wants you, everyone else is with.

[Melody Thomas]

We've all had moments like this when you're feeling low, lonely or like a failure. The brain is so good at pointing out all the ways that everyone else around you is succeeding. As Theodore Roosevelt may or may not have said, comparison is the thief of joy. And for Scott, in these moments, the pictures that his brain was serving up were idealised snapshots of happy couples holding hands, having kids, buying their first home. All things that he hadn't done himself, but which, interestingly, he didn't even really want for himself, aside from the holding hands part.

[Scott]

But when you're in a darker headspace, it becomes fuel for the fire. You don't have those things because you're not good enough or your life hasn't worked out as well as other people's have. Yeah, there's obviously some sort of programming in our minds. I mean, I grew up in a nuclear family. I was given all sorts of Disney stories as a kid around. You'll grow up, you'll meet someone, it'll be amazing. This is how it'll all unfold. And then you have to get rid of it all later. Unlearn all these lies, essentially, about how human interactions and relationships work. And, yeah, I wonder sometimes what it is that I actually desire. Do I just desire the Cinderella story or do I really want someone in my life? And what does that mean?

[Melody Thomas]

Following her breakup with Tim, in between playing Sudoku and staining the sheets of her Airbnb, Beth had been asking herself a lot of the same questions about whether a relationship was something she actually wanted or just something she'd been taught she should want. Something that she couldn't be complete without. She started seeing a therapist, got a promotion and the job that she loves, took pottery classes and found out she was actually pretty good at it. She also put some time and energy into rekindling the friendships that she'd let slip a bit during her relationship.

[Beth]

I've never felt more lonely than when I was in that relationship so alone and had been cut off from a lot of those networks that I had built up.

[Melody Thomas]

As we heard Beth say at the beginning of this episode, her social tank is enormous. She's someone who likes to go out and connect and share banter and talk shit. But when she was in that relationship, and to some degree in any relationship she's ever been in, Beth's focus had been pulled in one direction.

[Beth]

What I used to do is look to that one person to fill that tank and do what I could for that person and bring joy to that person's life. But then it's not healthy and that's not that great for the other person either.

[Melody Thomas]

Well, it's one of the myths that we are sold, is that we'll find a person who meets every one of our needs, and we meet every one of their needs.

[Beth]

Yeah, yeah.

[Melody Thomas]

It takes a while to untangle that and be like, oh, actually community and friendship and all of those things. We can spread that load more widely than that one person.

[Beth]

Yeah. And I've really had that realization recently that has come from good, healthy, long periods of singledom and building those connections and intimacy. And I don't mean that in a sexual way. The other day, I helped my friend paint her room, picked her up. We went down to pick up some paint and the paints and paintbrushes and things. Went back to her place, painted this room, listened to music, and at the end of the day, sat out on her deck, drank a beer. And I was like, this is partnership. It's like a beautiful jigsaw puzzle, you know? And I can get this kind of thing from that person and just take up a lover to fix the rest.

[Melody Thomas]

Being alone's not the same as being lonely. Scott explained this difference well.

[Scott]

Alone is the being physically on your own. You're reading a book, having a nice time, having a bath, cooking. Loneliness. It's a mental space where you could be in a crowd of people, you could be with some of your best friends and still feel incredibly alone.

[Melody Thomas]

One of these is neutral, even pleasant. The other's distressing. And the difference is connection. As humans, we need to feel connected to other humans to thrive. We've learned a bit about that over the series, and especially in the last episode of the podcast. If we don't have connection, we suffer. Which I think goes a long way towards explaining our current cultural preoccupation with this.

[Ad Voice / Commentary]

Men are struggling more than ever now. There is a male loneliness epidemic. And as a divorce lawyer, I.

[Tom Scott]

There's no male loneliness epidemic.

[Melody Thomas]

You're just a fucking weirdo.

[Ad Voice / Commentary]

Ask for help, do anything you can, because real strength isn't.

[Melody Thomas]

They don't want you.

[Ad Voice / Commentary]

They don't want you.

[Melody Thomas]

You actually have to be likable to find someone.

[Ira Madison III]

Men are lonely.

[Melody Thomas]

They join a book club.

[Ira Madison III]

When men are lonely, they become fascist

[Melody Thomas]

and blame women for it.

[Bella DePaulo]

Okay?

[Melody Thomas]

People are worried about boys and men. They're lonely, disconnected. They're being recruited and exploited by manosphere influences and looks maxes, which don't make me explain it. You can Google it, and you probably should if you have a teenage son. Women are increasingly choosing to be single, which leaves some men feeling like they're not sure where they fit in anymore.

[Tom Scott]

This is such a fucking cliche topic.

[Melody Thomas]

Like, oh, male loneliness.

[Scott]

Males are Lonely. Someone go get the males and.

[Tom Scott]

But honestly, we don't.

[Melody Thomas]

Lonely.

[Tom Scott]

We're all fucking lonely.

[Melody Thomas]

This is Tom Scott, a musician and rapper that we're gonna hear more from later in the series. And he's right. When it comes to the actual research, this idea of a male loneliness epidemic doesn't stand up. Men and women experience loneliness about as much as each other. The difference is that women are more likely to have a wider network of support to tap into when the distress of loneliness overwhelms them.

[Tom Scott]

I seen a thing the other day that women do way better in breakups than men and widows actually report to be happier.

[Melody Thomas]

Yeah, and single women are happier, bro, and single men are not.

[Tom Scott]

Yeah, well, because women go and, like, strengthen their friend networks and, you know, put their time into resources that feed them and stuff. Men just go drink it away or something. You know, you're good. You very well good. You know, same old cliche. And the reason why this is, like, important, whether it's women or men, is the system's making us more lonely. This is not like an accident, this system. Capitalism, not the system. Fuck the system. The capitalism as a way of doing things. We're having less time to hang out, and there's no third place. I was just about to catch up with my bro this morning, and he's like, bro, this job fucked me over. Like, I just had to go fix this job up, da, da, da, da. And we didn't catch up, so he's too busy.

[Melody Thomas]

That's scary.

[Tom Scott]

It's scary to think that we're getting, like, more and more disconnected.

[Melody Thomas]

To Tom's point, I'm going to add another system that has a lot to answer for, which is the patriarchy. In her 2004 book the Will to Change, feminist icon bell hooks argued that patriarchy's first demand of men isn't violence towards women. It's that men mutilate themselves emotionally, kill off the parts of themselves that feel. And this comes back to me all the time because it clarifies a major misconception, which is that patriarchy is a system that's against women and for men. In reality, it hurts men, too. You can see it in the suicide data. The highest rates clustering around Men aged 44 to 60 often post divorce or separation, when the one relationship that invested everything in is gone and there's nothing left. No network, no male equivalent of the sisterhood, because that was policed out of them early. Scott gets this, even if his own experience has been a little different.

[Scott]

I mainly am friends with females, my sister is one of the people I'm closest to. So there's always that connection to go there if I'm really, really down. But I can see how for heterosexual men might be a bit more difficult. Even if it's like hugs touch, not even sexual touch, but just being around someone and putting your kid on their lap while you watch TV or something. I feel like that's what. Two women might do that, but two heterosexual guys, probably not.

[Melody Thomas]

You've maybe picked up that Scott's a sensitive guy, someone who soaks up the horrors of the world, which understandably leaves him feeling a little deflated.

[Scott]

Yeah, the world's a pretty messed up place at the moment, and I'd rather place my hope in other places than me having someone next to me in bed. I would rather not spend tons of time craving for something that it just isn't on the menu for me at the moment, apparently.

[Melody Thomas]

You know, that said, a truly caring partner could make the weight feel lighter.

[Scott]

Someone to hug you while you watch a genocide live streamed on your phone. I think that's sometimes the tough part.

[Melody Thomas]

For Beth, it's also about wanting companionship. She's a foodie, so the idea of coming home to somebody and sharing a meal with them, that's really important to her.

[Beth]

I love to cook so much. It's really depressing cooking for one. And also because I just want to be told I've done a good job, so I just want to cook and someone say, oh my God, this is yum.

[Melody Thomas]

But she actually already has that. Beth's been sharing her apartment with a flatmate for a few years now. And the arrangement works so well.

[Beth]

About six months ago, we were just sitting there watching TV and we'd made dinner together and maybe I'd like made us a martini or something. And I was just like, I need to remember what this feels like. If I'm to ever live with someone again. This really easy, loving companionship, I need to remember this. But then I'm also just like, why does that have to change?

[Melody Thomas]

In 1960, the great Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung shared what he called his five pillars for a happy life. The basic factors for happiness in the human mind. They were fulfilling relationships, good physical and mental health, the ability to see beauty in art and nature, having meaningful work and reasonable living conditions, and a philosophical or religious perspective. Beth mentioned five pillars in our interview as well, but she's got her own version.

[Beth]

I have an incredible family, very close. I have great friends. I'm a little bit of a Friend, collector, you know, But I nurture all of those. I have an awesome job. I love it. It's so fulfilling to me. And I own my own apartment.

[Melody Thomas]

According to Jung's List, Beth actually has all five pillars already. But by her own count, she's missing one. Romantic love.

[Beth]

And it was this realization of going, well, actually, maybe it's a little bit unreasonable to expect all five. All five be perfect. And that's okay because, yeah, it's actually quite rare to then get all five.

[Melody Thomas]

Neither Beth or Scott are saying that they're swearing off of love forever. I think they're saying something more interesting than that, which is, what if the life I already have is enough? What if the love that's already here in my friendships, flatmates, my pets and family members, and the friends I'm yet to make, what if all of that counts just as much?

[Bella DePaulo]

Sure, married people have the one, but many single people have the ones.

[Melody Thomas]

Bella DePaulo is an American social psychologist, blogger and author. She wrote the book Single at Heart, among others. And she's known since she was pretty young that she wanted to be single not as a waiting room or a consolation prize, but as her actual chosen, deeply satisfying life.

[Bella DePaulo]

I have been single my whole life, and I will be single for the rest of my life. And that's because I love being single.

[Melody Thomas]

Except for most of that life, people have failed to believe her.

[Bella DePaulo]

You get these dismissive answers like, oh, you just haven't met the right person yet. You're just fooling yourself. Or my current favorite, you'll change your mind. Well, I'm 72. I don't think I'm gonna change my mind.

[Melody Thomas]

Back in 2015, DePaulo set up an online forum called the Community of Single People. It's now got 10,000 members plus from more than 100 different countries. And what brought these members to this group wasn't a feeling of loneliness or failure. It was a gap between the lives that they wanted to live and the structures and attitudes that appeared to be pushing back against them.

[Bella DePaulo]

Married and romantically coupled, people are advantaged in so many ways. In the workplace, in the marketplace, in the healthcare system.

[Melody Thomas]

Solo travellers pay more for hotel rooms. Car insurance costs more. A Netflix account costs the same. Whether you're one person or two, it's harder to buy in bulk at the supermarket. And unless you're flatting, your rent and power bill are yours alone. And then there's the social tax, the

[Bella DePaulo]

assumptions in the workplace that if you're single, you don't have a life. So you should stay uncovered for the married people when they want to leave early, or you should come in on the holidays and just getting demoted by your friends who become coupled or married. And maybe you used to see them all the time and then once they get into this serious relationship, then you're not in the couples club, so you're not part of that.

[Melody Thomas]

Scott actually talked about a version of this as well, about how sometimes his couple friends will organise group holidays and forget to invite him. It's pretty stank and it's deeply normalised, so much so that we barely notice it. After my interview with Scott, I was racking my brain for all the ways that I might have left out my single friends in exactly this way. Bella actually has a word for all of this singleism, which is the stereotyping and discrimination against people who are single. The assumptions that their lives are smaller, that they're waiting or they haven't quite made it yet. She pushes back hard on this kind of language.

[Bella DePaulo]

There's so much stigmatizing of single people as being alone or lonelier. Even the words we use as synonyms for single, like, she's alone, he's unattached, well, that's completely wrong. I have lots of people who are significant others to me. I'm not having sex with any of them, but I consider them significant. There's research showing that when people get married, they become more insular. You know, they spend less time with their friends, they call their parents less often, whereas single people who are out there still maintaining, maintaining their relationships with the people who matter to them.

[Melody Thomas]

The world has a lot to say about single people, but one look at the community of single people and other forums like it, you'll find that single people also have a lot to say back.

[Bella DePaulo]

We are happy and flourishing because we are single, not in spite of it.

[Melody Thomas]

The stories that have come out of these communities and in response to DePaulo's books have floored her.

[Bella DePaulo]

Within the first couple of weeks after Single At Heart was published, I got more than 100 heartfelt emails and social media contacts and even some handwritten cards sent by snail mail. One person said, I have felt such a lightness, validation and empowerment. Another said that reading Single at Heart was like finding a home.

[Melody Thomas]

Now, Bella doesn't get crushes. She's aromantic, so she doesn't want romance and she's never felt the pull to find the one.

[Bella DePaulo]

My vibes are for friendship, you know, I can remember being at a social event recently and talking to this woman and she was so interested and thought, yeah, that's friend material.

[Melody Thomas]

But fans of single at heart, members of the community of single people, they aren't all aromantic. They're just people who've looked at their lives while single and thought, you know what, this is good, this is me.

[Bella DePaulo]

I want people to understand that for some people, single life is how they achieve their deep and fulfilling happiness. It's how they flourish. And if they married, that to them would be a lesser life.

[Melody Thomas]

I've got to say that even as someone who isn't single at heart, this approach does sound pretty appealing.

[Bella DePaulo]

I love waking up in the morning or anytime I want and getting to arrange my day however I want, getting to eat whatever I want, and I go for long walks every day and I like the big life changing decisions that I get to make on my own. For example, in the year 2000, I moved from the east coast to the west coast of the United States, thousands of miles away. And I loved it so much that instead of staying for a year, I wanted to stay forever.

[Melody Thomas]

And you just did it.

[Bella DePaulo]

Yes.

[Melody Thomas]

Given the response to De Paulo's book, I wouldn't be surprised if right now someone's listening and having a bit of an out of body moment, like, oh, I'm single at heart. Hopefully you're not married already. But we'll never actually know how many people feel this way because the messaging runs so deep with the Disney stories, the waiting room and the ticking clock that most of us have never even been able to ask ourselves, honestly, if romantic love's even something we need or want. We've never had a Bella in our lives or on our screens or in our earbuds. Modelling a different option. How many of Scott's darker moments, that voice saying, you're alone, no one wants you. How much of that is genuine longing and how much is just the program running. How much of the pain that Beth felt losing herself entirely to someone she wasn't even sure would be a decent partner, came from a deep belief that without a partner, she simply wasn't complete. Maybe they're single at heart, maybe they're not, maybe their true love's just around the corner. But they deserve to know that a full, rich, chosen single life was something that existed, that it had a name.

[Bella DePaulo]

I never heard of such a thing as wanting to stay single.

[Melody Thomas]

Bella was 18 when she set out on the pathway that would lead her to happily single at heart. She had no map, no community and no language for it. But her readers do. And now maybe so. Do you. Let's go back to Beth and Scott one last time and see where they're at. While Scott isn't actively searching for love at the moment, he remains open to

[Beth]

it it if it shows up.

[Melody Thomas]

But he's got some ideas about what that love might look like if it were made just for him.

[Scott]

I would want an open relationship, but not so I can have sex with a bunch of different people all the time. It's more like as time goes on, the world around the two of you changes and morphs. And if you're still pretending like it's the same when you first got together, you kind of end up living in. In a box that's not fit for purpose anymore. And so for me, I would want something open that's more like talking about stuff. Got a crush? Tell me about it. Did something at the work do on Saturday night that's okay like, but don't hide it from me for the next six months.

[Melody Thomas]

Not a smaller love, but an honest one. And maybe that's what we've been building towards for this whole episode. Not a case for or against coupledom but for paying attention to what's already there. For not sleepwalking past the love that's already in your life while you're busy waiting for the one. Beth and her friend drinking a beer on the deck after a day spent painting walls. Or with her flatmate sharing a meal and a drink. Scott with his sister. Or his best friend who just had a baby. Congratulations, by the way. The jigsaw puzzle. The ones Scott got there slowly. Seven years of figuring out who he was without someone beside him.

[Scott]

I think cherishing those things is sometimes more important than hoping or wishing for my life to be different in some way. Yeah.

[Melody Thomas]

And Beth, well, you remember her video game analogy? She's updated some of her thoughts about it.

[Beth]

It's like not this big ending in the Final Boss or anything. It's just this quiet realization of like just being like suddenly getting a gold star. You could quietly clock to the level, you know.

[Melody Thomas]

Turns out the final boss was yourself all along. We started this episode in a waiting room. Bridget Jones was was waiting. Carrie Bradshaw was waiting. All the real life single people who were downloading and deleting and then redownloading the apps were also there were waiting. And maybe the wait's going to prove worth it. Maybe Beth will find her Mr. Darcy and Scott will find his Mr. Big. But life doesn't happen inside a waiting room. It happens out there where your friends and your family are the people who love you Now Whether you're single or coupled or somewhere in between, stop waiting for the one and start focusing on the ones, on the people who love you now, exactly as you are.

[Beth]

I know what I want in my life and I'm enough.

[Melody Thomas]

I'm Melody Thomas. Thanks for listening. Coming up in the next episode of the Good Sex Project, we hear from some of the people working in the oldest profession. Standard service would include kissing, French kissing, as an extra about the realities of this often misunderstood industry.

[Scott]

Later, they said that they would pray

[Acast Host]

for me, and I thought that was

[Scott]

just an absolute sweet thing to say. Because who can go wrong?

[Melody Thomas]

With more blessings, we'll hear how technology continues to disrupt the landscape of sex work. There's a lot of competition, complications with hidden cameras at the moment, and about the stigma that follows people home long after the working day is done. There's a real attitude out there that, oh, well, sex workers, they've chosen this job, they just have to deal with this. See you next time. Thank you to my beautiful friend Luke Rowell, also known as Disaster Radio, for the song Nothing in the Valley, our video game music that we're listening to now. If you loved this episode, please do share it with friends, family, or even complete strangers. You can tell that person at the sauna or your book club or the cafe or the bathroom line at the gig all about this amazing podcast and we would really appreciate it. The Good Sex Project was made by PopSoc Media. It was written and developed by me, Melody Thomas. Our producer and audio editor is Kirsten Johnstone. Co producers are Kay Heke and Alaina Bates. Phil Brownlee recorded me in the studio and our sound mix is by Mark Chesterman. Paddy Fred did the music and some of the sound design. Thank

[Tom Scott]

you.

[Acast Host]

Acast Powers. The world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend.

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