Second opinion 3: Esther Calling: Will This Heartbreak Ever End?

At a listener’s request this episode of Second Opinion features Esther Perel’s Where Should We Begin podcast, in particular one of her ‘Esther Calling’ episodes, where she speaks with someone about their problem. In this case we can say that is exactly what she’s doing, although there are glimmers of good stuff, it’s mostly not good I don’t think. Anyway, endure / enjoy my long and rambly Second Opinion about Esther Calling: Will This Heartbreak Ever End.

Email me culturesexrelationships at gmail dot com

justinhancock.co.uk/coaching if you want a session

https://linktr.ee/culturesexrel to find the google form

patreon.com/culturesexrelationships where you can sign up to support the show and also buy the zines I mentioned.

I started off doing a reading from my latest article at BISH about the difference between a kink and a fetish. You can read that here https://www.bishuk.com/your-questions/whats-the-difference-between-a-kink-and-a-fetish/

Then I went off on one talking about how an ethical fetishist (which many of us probably are) is probably doing something more consensual than most of the other kinds of fetishisations we may take part in in our daily lives. Commodities, labels, and ourselves. All of which might amount to us being little capitalists, micro-fascisms.

Jeremy Gilbert wrote a piece about his book here https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/common-ground/

Here's that paper on infantilisation and becoming-child https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00131857.2022.2128759#d1e417

Here's my stream with Sinan

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2554705347

"In summary, I am scared that I might have half-cheated on my girlfriend. Maybe not on paper, but in the grey zones. And then, that I didn’t respect her limits with my oversharing, because either I was too much trying to be transparent or just processing, easing my insecurity or guilt. I would very much appreciate your insights in how to disentangle that mess."

In this episode I talk about relationships shouldn't just be about drawing hard lines. If we draw hard lines we run the risk of 'lining ourselves in' a corner, or a little box. Dividing our selves from our selves and relationships. Making us firmly held, and very unfree. How can our relationships become-other, to make a relationship a becoming? We need soft lines and lines of flight. When we have this, we will see our relationships as flourishing to an extent where we don't yet know what a relationship is capable of.

Hope you like the ASMR direction at the end.

https://justinhancock.co.uk/#coaching

Got a question? Email me culturesexrelationships at gmail dot com or go here https://linktr.ee/culturesexrel

This is an advice episode for someone who is feeling a little fresh and inexperienced in a relationship with someone who has relationship baggage. How can she feel a bit more secure? How can a different way of relating to relationships and even 'the self' help all of us to create the size and shape of relationship that can do what we need it to do?

You can book a one to one session with me and also ask questions for the show via the link below.

https://linktr.ee/culturesexrel

’m back with another Second Opinion. I’m doing another one of the Sexual Healing columns from the Guardian. Mostly because it’s so short but also it’s not pay-walled. I’m not going to reproduce the whole thing here, so you might want to click on the link to read the whole thing (it’s 340 words in total, for the question and answer)

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/jul/08/my-boyfriend-is-almost-perfect-but-hes-too-vanilla-in-bed

But the tl;dr is that the question is from a woman feeling bad that she’s dissatisfied that the sex she’s having with her lovely boyfriend is mundane. In the past she’s had sexy, experimental sex with men who weren’t as nice. The answer is that it’s understandable that she’s found herself in this relationship but is ‘endowing her boyfriend with fatherly attributes’ which makes it much less hot. So she should work on her unconscious to make the relationship work and try to use the relationship to find ways of attaching like an adult.

For the full version of this head to https://www.patreon.com/culturesexrelationships Where you can also find the Make Your Own Sex Manual and Make Your Own Relationships User Guide resources I mentioned in the reading https://www.patreon.com/culturesexrelationships/shop

From Series 3 Episode 1 of Sex and the City

"Later that day I got to thinking about fairytales.

What if Prince Charming had never showed up?

Would Snow White have slept in that glass coffin forever?

or would she have eventually woken up, spit out the apple, gotten a job, a healthcare package and a baby from her local neighbourhoud sperm bank?

I couldn't help but wonder. Inside every confident driven, single woman is there a delicate, fragile princess just waiting to be saved?

Was Charlotte right? Do women just wanna be rescued?"

In this episode of I Couldn’t Help But Wonder I discussed the idea of our insides (unconscious) and outsides (conscious) and whether our fairy stories entirely exist within us (as a Jungian archetype) or throughout us in a more Guattarian ‘machinic unconscious’ (within/without in an assemblage). Instead of asking what kind of archetype we are, we could ask ‘what would that do, and what else?’ In this way can we use these stories as part of our becomings? Might our Prince Charming and delicate fragile princess be with us in molecularised forms every day. How in our processes of our own becomings we have to learn to be our own primary caregiver in order to become….

I couldn’t help but wonder

While women are certainly

no strangers to faking it...

...we faked our hair color, cup-size.

Hell, we've even faked fur.

I couldn't help but wonder,

has fear of being alone...

...suddenly raised the bar on faking?

Are we faking more than orgasms?

Are we faking entire relationships?

Is it better to fake it than be alone?

Faking it implies that you know what ‘it’ is. The way that we talk about faking something is that it’s bad. An inauthenticity. That we are not being our true selves.

Miranda’s orgasms in the episode is a good example to draw on

Faking it till you make it. Maybe faking can be a potential line of flight? A becoming?

In this blog I try to use Deleuze & Guattari's ideas to help us to understand the current awful transphobia. Hopefully you'll find it useful (and easy enough to understand) with some hopeful / helpful ideas. Free at my CSR Patreon

https://www.patreon.com/posts/molar-and-gender-127351062?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

This one is a (very) extended reading of my advice article How Can We Have a Better Relationship With Our Phones over at BISH. https://www.bishuk.com/relationships/how-can-we-have-a-better-relationship-with-our-phones/

Here's the podcast I was on discussing Adolescence https://praxiscast.podbean.com/e/e333-dudes-dont-rock-ft-justin-hancock/

Let me know if you have any questions or if I've missed any links.

Justin

Ask Justin: Why are they unavailable to me and then magically available with others by Justin Hancock