Episode 34 - A Listener Letter with Amar: All Relationships have some form of pain

Today, I tackle a letter with an old friend, Amar, who some of you may know from his work on The Final Straw Radio. He is one of the reasons I am making this show, as The Final Straw invited me in to start recording conversations. In past Final Straw episodes, Amar and I have tackled different internal and external struggles with people addressing conflict or proposing new paths for social relations. Amar's curiousness and openness has always been personally helpful to me when trying to chew over difficult feelings and ideas. He has a capacious understanding and gives so much grace to the experience of problems we run into while we are trying to do good.

Now, this letter has actually been sitting in my inbox for a while, and I feel bad that I let it go for so long. I can make excuses, like last year involving a bunch of personal stuff that took up most of my attention, and then the need to finish my new book. But I'll also admit that at first I wasn't sure how to tackle the issues the letter writer raised in a way that honored all of the feelings. There were many factors going on in a time of great crisis and I wanted to try to hold them all together. I kept batting around ways to approach it, until finally I realized Amar would be the perfect person to bring into the conversation. And as you will see, I was not wrong!

In our conversation, we tackle the breakup of a long monogamous relationship and the debut of a new polyamorous life, an international romance beset by war and geopolitics, and the sudden letdown of planned encounter canceled at the last minute. There are so many big feelings here that the letter brings up and each one could be the focus on its own conversation. Bringing them all together surely tangled up the writer who was trying to sort out a new phase of life and a new way of relating to lovers.

I hope the writer is still listening to the podcast and can find some support in our conversation here. It is likely that their life has moved on in ways, but perhaps there is some feeling lingering here that can find some reflection in our engagement. But of course, I imagine that our discussion will reach other listeners too.

With this letter episode, my wish is to spark some more correspondence. It hasn't been the focus of the most recent Breakup Theory shows, but it is one of my favorite things to do and I know listeners love to hear these discussions—whether they are the one who wrote or not. We are all getting hit hard out there. So please write, or tell your friends who are struggling to reach out.

You can leave us a message at (917) 426-6548 or use the form https://form.jotform.com/thebreakuptheory/stories (the latter is encrypted and anonymous). Or find me on Instagram @thebreakuptheory and DM me with your question. I really love hearing from you—and so do the other gay anarchists and friends who listen.

If you like this podcast, please rate it and follow it on the different apps where you listen to it. That does help boost the potential audience. Also, tell your friends too!

If you want to access more of my work, as well as the work of the wonderful carla joy bergman, Dani Burlison, and Vicky Osterweil, you can sign up for our newsletter at https://cawshinythings.com. If you subscribe, you will also get access to all of our articles, our discord server where we have discussion, movie nights, writing workshops, and book clubs, and more. Our podcasts, advice column, and zine and sticker library are always free. I am proud of the thing that we are building together, creating a support system for the lonely and often impoverished work of writing—and also finding new ways to engage with new people committed to collective thinking and writing.

If you want to reach any of us there, you can email Caw.Shinythings@proton.me

I will be hosting a book club on our discord server June 3 at 5pm eastern on the queer anarcho-nihilist journal baedan (the first issue), a hugely influential text for me. Subscribe and join us, whether or not you read the book! Everyone is welcome!

As Amar says at the end, go find The Final Straw Radio. It is a long-running resource to learn about anarchist actions, struggles, analysis, and ideas. The show is so wide-ranging in its subjects and guests, it will surely open up your horizons. Plus, they make zines out of the transcripts of different episodes. You can print them out for the event you are tabling at. You can find them on any podcast app and select radio stations. But also support them at https://www.patreon.com/tfsr There are different tiers of membership that help fund the transcription. You can get gifts like zines, stickers, and pins. You can even get your zine sent to an incarcerated comrade.

You can find their tremendous back catalog at https://thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org/

If you search, you will see the episodes I contributed (under an old name).

I'm linking to a conversation we recorded with Vicky about a really interesting essay put out by Your Lazy Comrades in the year following the George Floyd uprising and another on misogyny in anti-fascist movements.

https://thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org/post/2022/04/10/the-interregnum-roundtable-with-vicky-osterweil/

https://thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org/post/2021/08/09/combating-movement-misogyny/

The Breakup Theory is a member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts, which pulls together a wide variety of shows taking an anarchist perspective on culture, politics, actions, and more. Check them out at channelzeronetwork.com