"I want children, but the love of my life doesn't": How do we choose between the life we have and the one we long for?

Hello and welcome back to Dial Emma! This week, I want to explore why we give some people the power to change our entire mood, without actually doing anything at all. I want you to think of someone who has the extraordinary ability to ruin your day, just by existing. You’ve slept well, you’ve got things done, and then you see their name on your phone or their car outside, and suddenly your entire mood changes. They might not have said a word, and you’re already irritated. Why does one person have the power to change how we feel so dramatically, and how do we share a world with someone without having our experience of it dominated by them? Today’s dilemma comes from a listener I’m calling Sarah. She’s been married for around 20 years, but the difficulty comes with her husband’s sister, Laura. Sarah has never particularly liked her, and over the years Laura has said things Sarah experienced as belittling or unkind. For a long time they didn’t see each other much. Then Laura and her husband moved to the same town, and their lives began to overlap in schools, clubs, and community events. Sarah has stopped going to things she enjoyed because Laura turned up, and now she’s wondering whether she needs to move away from a town she loves. Sarah's question is this: is there a way to feel better, or is the only solution to leave? Dial Emma is hosted by Emma Reed Turrell, produced by Lauren Brook. --- Book my 2027 women's retreat at Bliss House in Crete: https://bliss-house-experience.replit.app Social media: Emma Reed Turrell @emmareedturrell Email: [email protected]

Hello and welcome back to Dial Emma! This week, I want to talk about something I suspect many of us experience but aren’t especially proud of: finding other people really, really annoying. I don’t mean the obviously rude or provocative ones. I mean the perfectly pleasant friend who sends a seven-minute voice note when you asked a yes-or-no question, the colleague who begins with “can I just ask you a really quick question?” that you know will be anything but 'quick', or the person who tells you a story you’ve heard several times, and you still have to laugh in the right places. I do like people. I’ve spent my working life listening to them. But I can still find them annoying, and admit that it feels oddly mean, especially when it’s someone we love. Irritation isn’t very precise. It tells us something is bothering us, but not always what. So in this episode, I want to get curious about what it’s pointing to. Dial Emma is hosted by Emma Reed Turrell, produced by Lauren Brook. --- Book my 2027 women's retreat at Bliss House in Crete: https://bliss-house-experience.replit.app Social media: Emma Reed Turrell @emmareedturrell Email: [email protected]

This episode has been on my mind for a while, so I want to talk about something I think about a lot: concern. Specifically, the kind of concern that gives us a sense of permission to involve ourselves in somebody else's life. Being attentive to the people around us is a good thing. But I've been thinking about what happens when concern starts to carry an expectation - when the person expressing it begins to feel entitled to an explanation, a response, or a change in somebody else's behaviour, and the person receiving it experiences it not as kindness but as intrusion. There isn't a single listener dilemma at the centre of this one. Instead I want to pull apart a psychological distinction I think we confuse constantly: the difference between caring about somebody and feeling entitled to influence them. Dial Emma is hosted by Emma Reed Turrell, produced by Lauren Brook. --- Book my 2027 women's retreat at Bliss House in Crete: https://bliss-house-experience.replit.app Social media: Emma Reed Turrell @emmareedturrell Email: [email protected]

Today's question is one I hear all the time, from clients and in ordinary conversation. Why am I so tired all the time? I don't mean the tired where you went to bed at 1am and the alarm went off at 6. I mean the tired where you wake up already calculating how long until you can get back into bed - where the weekend arrives and somehow doesn't restore you, and by Sunday evening you realise you're starting another week without ever really feeling the last one ended. A quick note before you listen to this episode: persistent or unexplained tiredness can have physical causes. If this is new, severe, or getting worse for you, please speak to your GP. What I'm interested in today is the tiredness that comes from how we're living psychologically, because we tend to count the visible workload (work, exercise, the school run, the shopping) and rarely count the work of simply being ourselves. Today's dilemma comes from a listener I'm calling Claire. She's 42 and a mum to two children, works four days a week and sleeps reasonably well. But by the end of every day, she's drained. She doesn't want to see anyone, doesn't want another question, and even deciding what's for dinner can feel like too much. She looks at people who seem to do twice as much as her and wonders: what's wrong with me? Dial Emma is hosted by Emma Reed Turrell, produced by Lauren Brook. --- Book my 2027 women's retreat at Bliss House in Crete: https://bliss-house-experience.replit.app Social media: Emma Reed Turrell @emmareedturrell Email: [email protected]

Hello and welcome back to Dial Emma! Today I want you to think about the last time you felt guilty. Maybe you actually did something you regretted. But I wonder how many other things make you feel guilty too - saying no, cancelling plans when you're exhausted, buying something for yourself, resting on a Sunday, or even feeling happy when someone you love is struggling. We use the same word for all of these very different experiences. And once we've called it guilt, we tend to assume it's telling us something true. If I feel guilty, I must be guilty. But feelings aren't verdicts. So perhaps the more useful question isn't why do I feel guilty, it's what is this particular guilt actually trying to tell me? Today's dilemma comes from a listener I'm calling Rachel. She feels guilty about almost everything - saying no, not seeing her parents enough, working instead of being with her children, being with her children instead of working, resting, spending money on herself. She doesn't think she's a selfish person, and she knows rationally she can't keep everybody happy. But knowing that doesn't make the feeling go away. She wants to know how to tell when she should actually listen to her guilt. I don't think the goal is to become someone who never feels guilty. I think it's to become someone who knows what to do when guilt arrives. Sometimes you listen and repair, and sometimes you recognise an old rule knocking at the door and decide it doesn't get to run the house. Dial Emma is hosted by Emma Reed Turrell, produced by Lauren Brook. --- Book my 2027 women's retreat at Bliss House in Crete: https://bliss-house-experience.replit.app Social media: Emma Reed Turrell @emmareedturrell Email: [email protected]