It’s another ‘Cultural Artefact’ episode and in this one I’m ranting about Love Actually. It’s on ITV X this Christmas (annoyingly with ads) so this makes the Watchalong episode I did last year more relevant, which you can find here at the Patreon https://www.patreon.com/posts/118365605

For this I am doing a reading from the article at BISH I did about it, a Sex and Relationships Education Guide to Love Actually https://www.bishuk.com/your-call/a-sex-and-relationships-education-guide-to-love-actually/ which is actually really good. I use this as a jumping off point for my reading of the film and having a discussion about the ontology of love in Richard Curtis’s world compared with mine. I also yell and make snide and funny remarks about this bloody awful film. Enjoy!

Here's that blog about Consensual Christmas https://www.bishuk.com/relationships/consensual-festivities/

Hi everyone

I got a request to talk about 'limerance' from a listener who was also kind enough to share their experiences of attraction and connection. Whilst I'm not a fan of 'Limerance' I am a fan of feeling strong connections and 'love' in our lives: what if we could experience this intensity for all of relationships, our selves, our assemblages? What else would that do? How might we do it?

Hope you find it helpful!

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.

Justin

[uploading again with a different name for the track]

In this episode Dr Eleanor Janega joins me to talk about Lily Allen’s West End Girl. We talk about the themes, and resulting discourses, emerging from this cultural artefact. Is it an album about an open relationship gone wrong, or is it something else instead? What is everyone getting wrong in their discussions about the album? Does it in fact bang?

Here is the house

https://www.architecturaldigest.com/video/watch/open-door-inside-david-harbour-and-lily-allens-brooklyn-town-house

Here is the flat (Pussy Palace)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dS3njIz_Qzs

Here is a red carpet interview Eleanor wants you to see

https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/awkward-footage-of-lily-allen-and-david-harbour-resurfaces/video/8b9f51e95b7ffa679d226ba960409a91

Listen to our Listenalong at the Patreon feed for the podcast

patreon.com/culturesexrelationships where you can sign up to support the show (and buy the zine I mentioned)

Email me with your questions at culturesexrelationships at gmail dot com

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

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

This week’s Ask Justin is about how to find hope, confidence and possibility in the future after a break up. Lots of advice here about break ups and moving forward reflecting on my own experiences, how we make use of feelings, critiquing the should stories, and of course the practical and experimental philosophies of Delueze and Guattari - this week ‘How do you make yourself a Body Without Organs?’

Here’s a recent podcast from the Machinic Unconscious Happy Hour about the BwO https://soundcloud.com/podcast-co-coopercherry/deleuze-and-guattari-how-do-you-make-yourself-a-body-without-organs

Here's an online copy of A Thousand Plateaus by Deleuze and Guattari https://files.libcom.org/files/A%20Thousand%20Plateaus.pdf (BwO starts on p149)

This is Abolish The Family by Sophie Lewis https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/2890-abolish-the-family?srsltid=AfmBOoqfP9U54Prh3ZqOwjJULgbnHG0ykElanIQQsqROQPWagCtNVHQt

Here’s that ACFM about Alexandra Kollontai https://novaramedia.com/2025/04/27/acfm-microdose-alexandra-kollontai-make-way-for-winged-eros/

And here’s the podcast from me about Wittgenstein and Solution Focused Practice

https://soundcloud.com/culturesexrelationships/wittgenstein-solutions-not-problems

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.

An Ask Justin episode (yay) where I answer a question about how to open oneself up to getting back to a sub / bottom dynamic after a break from a big sexual trauma.

Here's that interview with Cory I did about Curative Kink https://soundcloud.com/culturesexrelationships/cory-cascalheira-curative-kink

If you have a question for the show ...

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.

This week we look at a Dan Savage column. The reader is bored with the sex, but also gets shamed from his wife for wearing a ‘gay’ T-shirt. Dan’s advice has some helpful ideas and affirmations (despite it being a short Q&A). How does the politics of the advisor affect the advice? What is the reader / advisor relationship? Then I offer my own extra advice. Are there other little microfascisms going on? How to talk about issues. How dis/inhibition is a problem and evokes Irving Yalom’s ooze. What does thinking about affects, rather than causes and effects, do? It’s a long one I’m afraid!

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.

Article of mine on how to make sex and relationships chats easier

https://www.bishuk.com/relationships/how-to-make-sex-and-relationships-chats-easier/

This is a pretty nice article featuring that ‘ooze’ I was telling you about

https://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2025/04/irvin-yalom-confessions

Here’s more about that particular book, thank you Kayleigh for lending me your copy. I never gave it back to you but I put it to good use.

https://www.yalom.com/momma-the-meaning-of-life

Here’s that article I referred to from Petra Boynton

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(15)00009-7/abstract

Petra’s website No Star To Guide Me is a great starting point if you want to learn to give good advice

https://nostartoguideme.com/

Here’s that podcast I did with Jacob Johannsen

https://soundcloud.com/culturesexrelationships/jacob-johannsen-fantasy-online-misogyny-and-the-manosphere

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