No Straight Answers

We’re back with a secret loan, a school reunion and some middle aged purchases.

Stuck in the Middle borrowed money from his wife’s brother a year ago and promised to keep it quiet, and now he is lying to his wife about a mystery monthly transfer she has noticed. Does he break the promise, keep lying or tell her and hope for the best?

Dave is thirty years out of school and won’t go to his reunion unless he loses five kilos, which leaves him three weeks. His wife says “just go”, which hasn’t helped. Does he go and suck in his stomach, skip it with an excuse or find a way to stop caring what a room full of fifty-somethings thinks?

Plus Suran asks Clayton which year of his life he would go back to and live again in the AMA section.

We’re back for series three, with a copycat, a coffee cup and a look at what Suran has been asking of her AI buddy.

Susanna has discovered that the leader of another organisation has been copying her weekly newsletter word for word for 18 months, weather chat and spelling mistake included. Should she confront her or leave it alone?

Mark and his wife have a three-monthly brunch with a couple who bring their own coffee cups, share a scone and are always late. Do they say something, suck it up or let the friendship slide?

Plus Clayton asks Suran to reveal her last three AI search prompts and she turns the table on him.

Got a dilemma you’d like us to not solve? Send it to [email protected], or find us on Instagram @nostraightanswersnz.

It's the Season 2 finale!

Jo from Wellington has become the unofficial IT support for her 85-year-old mother, who has early-stage dementia. Clayton and Suran get into the funny side and the heartbreak of caregiving, the way anger about a malfunctioning device is rarely actually about the device, and how you keep showing up for someone you love without losing yourself in the process.

Private Pete has been with his new partner for a year and she is wonderful. She also documents their relationship on Facebook with too much enthusiasm and refers to sex as 'making love,' which Pete finds immediately deflating. Clayton and Suran wrestle with consent and privacy in relationships, whether public declarations of love are about the person you're with or the audience watching, and how to ask someone to dial it back without hurting their feelings.

This week's AMA: Suran's worst habit, and what superpower Clayton would choose.

This week Clayton and Suran go back and forth with two letters about situations that are COMPLICATED.

Mark has been having an affair for nearly three years. His partner says she'll leave her husband when the time is right, when things settle, when the kids are more stable. Will it ever happen though...

A senior leader writes in about an accidental Tinder swipe. She matched with someone junior to her at work - he's been giving her a look and she has been catastrophising ever since. Clayton and Suran talk her down from the dating ledge.

Plus Clayton asks Suran about the small things that bring joy, and Suran asks Clayton what people get wrong about him.

This episode deals directly with suicide and suicide bereavement. If that's not where you're at today, give yourself permission to sit this one out or come back to it when you're ready. Support details at the end of these notes.

Clayton and Suran are back, and this week they cover a lot of ground. Millie is 47, happily partnered, and has been quietly faking orgasms to end sex when she's tired -- not because anything is wrong, exactly, but because her partner can go all night and sometimes she simply cannot. Now she's stuck in a pattern she can't walk back without a conversation that will make him mentally replay everything.

Then there's a letter from a bloke who lost a close mate to suicide not long ago. He's carrying the grief, the shock, and real anger. And then guilt about the anger. On top of all that, he's somehow ended up as the strong one with no obvious place to put his own feelings.

In the AMA, Clayton talks through his sliding door moments -- the chances he didn't take -- and Suran considers the stereotype she least wants to become.

If this episode has brought anything up for you, please reach out:

Free call or text 1737 any time for support from a trained counsellor.

• Depression helpline (24 hours a day, 7 days a week): free phone 0800 111 757 or free text 4202.
• Suicide Crisis Helpline: free phone 0508 828 865 (0508 TAUTOKO).
• Lifeline: free phone 0800 543 354 or free text 4357 (HELP).
• Samaritans crisis helpline: free phone 0800 726 666 if you are experiencing loneliness, depression, despair, distress or suicidal feelings.

Clayton and Suran are back, and this week the co-parenting wars come to the hockey pitch. Fraser's wife is a Black Sticks player with strong opinions about sportsmanship. Fraser thinks his eight-year-old was mid-cry and in pain. Both of them are a little bit right, which is the most annoying possible outcome.

Then Vickie has found her biological half-sister Donna, they get on brilliantly, and she is visiting London later this year. The problem is her adoptive sister Rachel also lives in London, has an immovable husband, and assumes Vickie is staying with her. Blood versus time, obligation versus wanting a decent night's sleep.

In the AMA, Clayton almost soils his pants running with the bulls, and Suran describes the friendship she's most proud of.

Clayton and Suran are back, and this week things get a little ungodly.

A listener writes in about the person she becomes the moment she gets behind the wheel, she's calm, patient, reasonable by day; full swears unleashed the second someone pulls out in front of her car. Her seven year old heard everything then went home and repeated it to Dad...

Then there's the story of a houseguest who accidentally broadcast porn through his hosts' Bluetooth speaker at increasing volume, after which everyone sat down for toast and said nothing. Ouch.

And in the AMA, Clayton faces a choice: would you rather your boss could see your browser history, or every text you've sent in the last year?

Clayton and Suran are back and, if anything, sitting on the fence even more than last time.

Sarah has a problem: her favourite fruit and veg shop has the best produce in the neighbourhood, and possibly some employment law concerns. She doesn't want to shop at Shein, but is Dave at the corner dairy actually the same thing? What can one customer do?

Then Benjamin writes in four months after losing his wife to a long illness. He's developed feelings for one of her closest friends, someone who was there through all of it. They've talked about it, agreed it's too soon, and left it there. He just wants to know if he's a terrible person.

In the AMA, Clayton confesses what he got catastrophically wrong about women (wrong hole anyone?), and Suran resurfaces a story involving a trophy, boobs, and a Hooters restaurant.

Clayton and Suran are back and already proving their ineptitude.

A parent writes in about their child coming out as transgender - the love is not in question, but the grief is real and they're struggling to process it all.

David has a problem with his boss's email sign-off. "Thanks for your cooperation." Four patronizing, authoritarian words. Worth saying something or not?

In the AMA, Suran reveals her piercing history (including a Prince Albert. Impossible? That'll make you listen to the end...), and Clayton contemplates what he'd do with fifteen million dollars (basically lie to everyone).

Clayton and Suran are back after six months away, with updates, a new puppy, and the usual inability to give a straight answer about anything.

Matt quit drinking two years ago and hasn't looked back - except at his social life, which quietly disappeared along with the bottles. It turns out a lot of his friendships were basically just shared drinking habits, and now he's 51 and starting over. How do you find your people when the thing that used to connect you is gone?

Karen told a small lie about candles to a new friend and is now four candles deep with no exit strategy. Are candles really worth getting worked up about? Karen thinks so, what do your resident (in)experts think?

In the AMA, Clayton reveals the words that make his skin crawl ('panties' makes its show debut), and Suran confesses to her worst ever fashion moment.