We’ve received this question many times before at AMT – eg here and here – but it is one of THE big questions, so here it is again in its latest form from “a very sad and confused” Emily from Aberdeen:
What’s the best way to deal with a break up when the person is your first love? I love my boyfriend a lot but I’m not his first love like he is mine, meaning he doesn’t feel quite the same way I do and it’s just too hard so breaking up seems the best thing to do.
However I have no idea how to cope with it (as pathetic as that sounds) and would really appreciate suggestions of how to move on. I’m 18 and just started university and this just seems like the best thing to do.
Aw, Emily, we feel your pain. Luckily, you’re off to university, where everything will be new and different. Though this alone won’t entirely obliterate the pangs of love, it will provide a massive distraction. Throw yourself into all the new activities presented to you; make new friends; cop off with boys (that you then feel you have to avoid for the rest of your degree).
Readers, please go to the comments to offer any further salves to Emily’s pain. While she awaits your advice, she can take the classic route of cranking up the break-up songs and having a good cathartic wail. AMT listeners have already provided a starter playlist, and there’s a near endless supply of suitable soundtracks to Lovelorn Feelings.
We usually enjoy listeners’ gushing emails in private, but we decided to share this one from John because he is kindly offering to make YOU gush from your privates*:
I wanted to say thanks for the amazing podcasts that you’re putting out, every time I listen to one there’s tears of laughter and sometimes shame.
And as I don’t think you get enough gratitude for this I thought why not give you 10% discount in my store. Feel free to let your listeners know as well (open to UK customers only).
All you need to do is go shopping at www.erotic-moment.co.uk [LINK NSFW OBVIOUSLY] and enter the code podcast1 in the gift voucher section upon checkout. Easy.
There’s a selection of thousands of sex toys; I am sure you could find something to suit.
As well as all of this they’re all delivered extra discreetly so no one has any idea what’s inside.
Which is perfect, as it’s only 84 shopping days till Christmas!
*sorry.
NB: This is not a paid endorsement, just an AMT listener offering wares.
In AMT272, Beth of Leighton Buzzard told us she had prepared for the birth of her child by downloading the AMT Holiday to accompany the agonies of labour. Surprisingly, the sound of our voices didn’t compel the baby to stay in the womb forever, because Beth writes:
I just wanted to say thank you. Not only did I enjoy your holiday album during early labour, but I also listened to your 19 September podcast whilst in the delivery room, 40 hours into (induced) labour and just 2 hours before my baby girl was born.
I didn’t have an epidural so the distraction was very welcome. No bad reviews from me!
As a doting new mum, I couldn’t resist including a picture of your youngest fan, Jennifer, who was born at 3.22am on Friday 20 September:
All together now: awwwwwwwwwwwww. And, in sympathy with Beth’s 42-hour labour, owwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.
We have blood (well, chlorophyll) on our hands, thanks to listener Davi:
For the past couple months I’ve been renting the spare room of an evil cunt-woman from hell.
I’m moving out soon, and I fantasize frequently about taking some sort of crushing, flamboyant revenge against her – however, she has a security deposit from me so I couldn’t do anything obvious or damaging that she could charge me for.
Instead, I took the advice of one of your previous shows about how to furtively commit plant murder, and I watered her beloved windowsill basil plant with salt water every time I was mad at her. Within a week it shriveled up and died.
She has no idea it was me and I feel good enough that I don’t think I’ll kill her before I move out in a couple weeks. Thanks for the great tip, and keep up the good work!
OK Davi, we will, until we are arrested as accessories to floricide.
Today’s questioneer Beth has chosen the AMT Holiday album to be the soundtrack to her child’s birth. If you have ever given birth whilst listening to Answer Me This!, we’d be curious to know. Although we refuse to accept responsibility for any psychological problems your child develops as a result.
Anyway, welcome to the world, babies born during Answer Me This! Episode 272:
Their tiny little damp ears would be caressed by such topics as:
Plus: Olly expects all aliens to keep it sexy; Helen has a box set ready to get herself through any occasion; and Martin the Sound Man has gender issues, if his predilection for Bounty Bars is any indicator. And if you’re a non-Brit wondering what a Bounty Bar is, we translate for you in this week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices or Android): it’s the same thing as Mounds. Great name, guys!
We’re taking next week off, so you have ample time to send us your QUESTIONS: leave voicemails on the Question Line (call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis) and send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
And don’t forget to check out squarespace.com, who have kindly sponsored today’s episode of AMT, and are even more kindly offering you two weeks’ free play with all their website-building tools and then 10% off their service if you use the code Answer9. There are myriad design templates and hosting options, and 24/7 support if you need a hand. So go forth and build beautiful websites! And do let us know about them when you’re done. As long as they’re not the kind of site that would traumatise your child if they accidentally found them whilst snooping in your browser history.
See you Thursday after next,
Helen & Olly
AMT272 Child-Friendly Rating: 34%. Quite a lot of swearing. Question from a child about a parent’s possible extra-curricular sexual activities, inc explanation of ‘dogging’.
On this week’s hot topic of aliens, here’s Martin the Sound Man just outside Area 51
Would you prefer to live a life with a normal amount of blowjobs but no cheese EVER AGAIN, or a life with no blowjobs but all the cheese you could want?
I’m sorry but I won’t be able to download your podcast any longer as I am working class and work with my hands, and as Olly said on Episode 271 I couldn’t possibly have any concept of what a podcast is or that people could carry out a type of work that involved only using a magical device called a phone!
What a snobbish patronising attitude you seem to have to us lowly manual labour types, let’s see how stupid you think we are next time something like your boiler breaks and you need one of us to repair it!
In Olly’s defence, I think what he was clearly trying to express was: anybody for whom the concept of work does not mean ‘sitting on a deckchair listening to one’s own voice’ – ie everybody – would deride Olly’s ‘work’. Like Rachmaninov would scorn David Guetta’s ‘music’, or Gordon Ramsay would scream at any of his Kitchen Nightmares victims that served ready-prepared food. Oh. Hang on…
Much as we want to, we can’t save Team AMT members from themselves. We told Kris once. We told Kris twice. And now it appears we have to tell him for a third time that his ex-girlfriend is manipulative, selfish, advantage-taking monster and he needs to GET RID:
Guess what, we got back together in January! After 8 months of crazy (her seeing 2-3 guys, falling pregnant etc) we decided that the fact we had talked every day meant something….and now we’ve broken up again (3 weeks ago). We had been discussing marriage and even up until two weeks ago were talking about getting back together and looking for a place.
It won’t surprise you to know that a week after our break up, she has met a new fellow via internet dating. She has described him ‘feeling like the one’. And he’s even asked her to move in with him in little over a month’s time. Yet surprisingly her behaviour has not seemed consistent. We awkwardly bumped into each other on the dating website, and she was still looking for guys after she’d met him.
She also has a box of my stuff she’s been ‘too busy to send’. She now claims she needs to source a box, which I suggested she could grab from the post office. She refuted that suggestion saying it would cost $10 and her parents have boxes for free.
Perhaps most baffling of all is that while she’s asked me to be happy she’s found her one, when I mentioned my own foray into the dating scene it was met with scorn and nitpicking on how stupid she sounded. It was the day after that she then changed her Facebook status as if to send me a message. I will admit to my own dalliance with immaturity by sending back a book which contained those lovely dovey questions. It was basically a bible of how I was the one and perfect for her – my argument was she’d kept our other sentimental shit in the past but to me it just felt hollow.
I guess the condensed version of this is, if she’s so happy with the ‘one’ why would she ever call me (admittedly not every day maybe every few days) and why would she pour such scorn on my own dating – I mean I’m happy she’s happy; why is this not mutual?
Because, as we said before Kris, this woman wants you to be available to her on her terms whenever she pleases. Your happiness is not important to her; frankly you are not important to her. She gives shits only about herself.
Even the most well-balanced person doesn’t relish hearing that an ex has moved on, even in the most friendly of circumstances. However, this woman is not that person. She does sound rather messed up – but regardless of that, she seems to be completely unrewarding as an object for your affections. Read your own emails: she has repeatedly demonstrated this.
So – say it with me, readers:
CUT HER OUT OF YOUR LIFE, KRIS!
I hardly think I can make this message clearer. And if you write to us again in 8-12 months with the same problem, I will assume that you have a fetish either for shit relationships, or for me berating you. Whichever it is, I don’t want to help you indulge in it.
Here’s a frosty email regarding AMT271 from long-term listener Magnum from Edinburgh:
Dear Helen, please learn to distinguish between scouting for girls and bowling for soup. I know it’s probably just a case of them both having the word for in the name and you were racking your brain to think of the correct band. But you don’t want to upset the BFS army. That way madness lies.
Perish the thought I’d upset the Souperheroes or whatever they call themselves! Don’t worry, Magnum, I didn’t confuse their music any more than I’d confuse a shrug and a wince. It was, as you suspected, a linguistic switcheroo, so henceforth I will refer to both bands, as well as any others using that name formula, as [Gerund] For [Irrelevant Noun].
Today we learn why all those people believe Elvis to be alive, whereas they don’t feign such confidence over the likes of, say, Janis Joplin, Robert Johnson, Mozart… Put on your white jumpsuit and conspiracy theorising hat, and get stuck into Answer Me This! Episode 271:
In which we also ponder:
office nemeses
servants
panpipes
table tennis bats
cupcake wars (interpersonal ones, not the tv show of the same name) Red Or Black vs Ant Or Dec
the parliamentary mace vs Geoff Hoon
The Flaming Et Cetera
and
the National Enquirer.
Furthermore! Of course Olly loves the sound of his own voice, but only in solitude; sure, Helen can bake, but it’s nothing really (on the other hand, talking shit every week is high art); and Martin the Sound Man posits that not only is Elvis not alive now, he was also not alive during most of his life. You still following?
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices or Android) Helen wonders how a duck foetus ends up in a glass of champagne on a tasting menu – and moreover why anybody would think that is a suitable first date drink.
Also not suitable for a first date, but perfectly suitable for most other times, is sending us your QUESTIONS: leave voicemails on the Question Line (call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis) and send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
See you next Thursday,
Helen & Olly
AMT271 Child-Friendly Rating: 88%. Opens with an email about Consenting Adults’ Bedsports, but other than that, very clean, even swear-wise.
In regards to your recent podcasts about domain names I thought you would find it interesting to hear about my husband’s experience. A few months back, he received an offer of $500 for his company’s domain name. He turned it down as it wouldn’t be worth the time and effort to reestablish a new name as he has used the same one for the last 16 years.
A few days after he turned this down, he got another offer and this time it was $5000.00. He asked which company was interested and although the broker wouldn’t tell him, he managed to do a little online sleuthing around the area code of the broker and the initials of his company’s name and it appears that a very large US gaming and casino company is involved!
He told the broker that it would take a lot more money to get him to give up the domain name and we are waiting to hear their counter offer! $$$$$$
How much should we hold out for?
You could do some research into similar cases and the amounts large companies paid for domains. Or you could think of a pleasing amount of money, then double it, then add another decimal point or two to compensate your husband’s business for the hassle it would cause to change it.
Henry in Vancouver, Canada thinks he’s some kind of rebel:
Hearing your notice not to send in zombie questions last week naturally made me think of some sort of check-mate scenario in that regard. With that in mind, Olly, answer me this, what is the plan for your cat in some sort of Zombie-centric emergency?
NO, HENRY. NO. NO.
And now there’s Joel:
Do the BBC and other such channels have actually have a system for a nationwide crisis, such as a zombie attack?
The answer to the sensible portion of your question is ‘Yes’. My response to the latter part is NO, JOEL, NO NO NO NO NO FOR FUCK’S SAKE.
Answer Me This! Podcast 