Deal Breakers, Bad Kissers & Why Quitting Smoking for a Man You Barely Know Is a Red Flag — S3E5 with Treyvonne Moosa

About This Episode

In Season 3 episode five of And Just Like That… We Found Therapy, host Isabel MV is joined by her oldest friend and creative strategist Treyvonne Moosa — joining all the way from South Africa — to unpack Sex and the City's "No Ifs, Ands or Buts." It's the episode where we meet Aidan for the first time and he immediately tells Carrie he can't date a smoker, Charlotte tries to coach a man out of his terrible kissing technique and fails spectacularly, Samantha gets a stern talking-to from Siobhan's sister about dating outside her race, and Stanford discovers his potential boyfriend owns fifty porcelain dolls.

What We Cover

• The full tongue assault: what a bad kiss actually tells you about what's coming next

• Deal breakers vs. control: when Aidan says he doesn't date smokers, is that a boundary or is he parenting Carrie on a first date?

• Why quitting smoking for someone you barely know is not compromise — it's shame doing the work

• Charlotte's kissing bootcamp: can you teach someone to kiss, or is it a lost cause?

• ​Aphelile Amadoda ("men are finished")

• "Black talk" vs. "African American talk" — what Charlotte accidentally got right, and what the scene reveals about how America exports its version of Blackness to the rest of the world

• Proximity to Blackness does not equal permission to the culture: Trey unpacks the nuance

• Adena telling Samantha her brother shouldn't date a white woman — red flag for the relationship or just a dealbreaker to escalate?

• Miranda shrinking herself to fit Steve: love as a room with only one chair, and who's the tenant

• Why negotiating your love life decisions with your friends instead of your partner is a sign something is off

• Stanford and the dolls: some things are non-negotiable and that's okay

• Desperation should not be the motivation for love

About Our Guest

Treyvonne Moosa is a creative strategist, writer and the founder of The Blue Table Projects — an initiative archiving Africa's stories through food, recently featured at the Venice Biennale. He writes about re-parenting, love and early childhood memory on his Substack at Treyvonne Moosa. All links in the show notes.

Transcript

Bonjour, Boundary Babes. Welcome back to And Just Like That We Found Therapy. Today, I am joined by one of my oldest and best friends, Treyvonne Moosa.

Trey joined me to unpack an iconic episode of Sex and the City, Season 3, Episode 5, No Ifs, Ands or Buts. And if you're currently dating, this one is for you.

We meet Aiden for the first time, but also we discuss the healthy difference between a deal breaker and compromise in a relationship, what to actually do when a family member doesn't approve of who you're dating, and yes, what to do when someone is a

terrible kisser, but everything else is great. I hope you enjoy it.

I love you all. Bye.

Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of And Just Like That We Found Therapy. I am your host, Isabel Envy, and I am so excited to be joined by one of my best friends, Trey, who is looking sharp as hell. Welcome, Trey.

How are you?

Thank you, darling. You said Sex and the City. I said let's do a little stand, let's do a little SJP moment.

You know.

This will be on YouTube if you're listening only on audio.

And like, let me tell you, you need to check out this outfit because it's giving a lot of what I need today.

Amazing. And you know, it's all local design. It's all South Africa.

I really want to put that out there.

That some of the best fashion in the world, it's coming out of this continent and you guys are going to get on.

Can't wait to go shopping with you.

Trey and I actually met eight years ago at Africa Burn in South Africa, where Trey and I somehow created one of the deepest bonds to this day I have. But he's a creative strategist and very talented.

So anything else that you want to add to our listeners?

One of the wildest times of our lives, hey?

Yes. I'm not sure that we can repeat it, but we'll do something better.

No, we can't. Now we'll just go on to a yacht and drink some margarita. How's that?

Yes.

No roughing it.

No roughing it. I will not go tending ever in my life again, okay?

No, thank you.

Just like everyone give up smoking.

I love it because again, if you're only listening, today we're here to discuss Season 3 Episode 5 of Sex and the City, No Ifs and Buts, where there was a lot of talk about the smoking, and I love that Trey is smoking a cigarette for this episode.

I know I'm bad.

I know I'm bad. It's bad for my health and all, but I just can't give it up.

It looks so cool. But anyway, this claim is bad for you, but Trey, you get away with it. So let's get into it.

In this episode, we start by meeting Charlotte at her stoop, and Carrie's voiceover is saying, like many people will risk the horror that a first date can be, just for the possibility of that perfect good night kiss at the end of the first date.

And Charlotte is kissing this guy named Brad, and this guy starts just like softly kissing her, but then starts licking all kind of like the lower area of her face.

My first question to you is, what would you do if at the end of like what I suppose was a great first date, somebody kissed you like that?

Look, firstly, I'm going to be completely shocked, OK? Where is your kissing etiquette and who trained you? Next question.

But next I think it just will be followed by confusion, because I don't think that read as passion for me. He like completely took over her body and assumed the space, you know? If I just fast forward to later on, he speaks about being his trick.

And I think there's a difference between like sort of chemistry and this feeling of entitlement over people's bodies. We are talking about therapy here.

And I think there's a thing around earning someone's the ability to access someone's space is quite important. So I would have pushed him away and just like told him straight up. This feels like an attack.

But like a few pointers here, if like a kiss ends with you like kind of like rubbing saliva from like one third of your face, something went very wrong.

And if you can't get the kiss right, how are you going to get the bedroom right, honey?

I mean, listen, I'm excited by all the use that he's putting on that tongue.

And for that, there must be a pause made. And that's why I think Charlotte didn't dump him in and there.

Charlotte was desperate, let's be honest.

Yeah, bar was low. But the girls are then at this restaurant called Fusion discussing about it.

And they're all discussing all the different bat kiss and techniques that like they've seen through the years, the kind of like clam mouth where like the tongue just sits there, the pointy tongue. Yes. And there's a lot of eww going on.

I wanna hear from you. What's the worst kiss you've ever had and did it involve any of these techniques?

So back in high school, we snack off to have a little cigarette, you know, and that's how long I've been smoking. There was this girl, I hope she's not watching, but I think her name was something like Petronella or something. I was super shy.

I was definitely not this person as a teen. I was super shy. I was 17 and I had still not been kissed, okay?

So she like literally took it upon herself to go, you need to kiss somebody. And she laid it on me, like just grabbed me cigarette smoke in my mouth and just like, ah. Now, very reminiscent of Charlotte's kiss.

Very reminiscent. Tongue, full tongue. And I think that like a full tongue assault is actually the worst kind of kiss.

A little tongue action is great if we like both want a little tongue action. But come with your lips. Come at me with like, you know, your hands caressing my back, leaning in.

Yeah, that was the worst kiss. I think it's also the primary reason that I'm gay.

Maybe if that kiss was better, I would have been straight.

We'll put it on Petronella, but we'll. Maybe, but we're sending her a lot of love because like, listen, she made an icon.

But after the girls are done with her, eww, eww, eww conversation, we get introduced to Adina, who is the head chef of this restaurant called Fusion. And then this very good looking black man walks over. It's Adina's brother.

And Adina introduces the man. And it turns out that Siobhan, who's the name of, like it's the name of the guy, knows Samantha from a party that she had thrown for like a record label or something like that. And they flirt a little bit.

And as he's walking away, Samantha says, mm-mm, I'd love to get me some of that. And then of course Charlotte is like, oh my God, Samantha, do not talk like that. And Samantha's like, don't tell me that.

Like that's not black talk, that's sex talk. And Charlotte then is like, it's not supposed to be black talk. It's African-American talk.

So first question is, do you think it was black talk? And second question is, what do you think about Charlotte being like, well, if we're gonna call it anything, we're not gonna call it black. We're gonna call it African-American.

Two things come across, right?

What is black talk outside of me using indigenous African language? And like, has dialect progress to such a point where slang is offensive? We also have to think about the time when this was shot in, right?

And the politics of the day, quite the eruption of the woke agenda, being careful about black people occupying space and allowing them to occupy space and where the American agenda was at that point.

So, I'm wondering if we're thinking that like dating a black person immediately accesses, allows them access to blackness, does the proximity to blackness equal permission to the culture? That's the bigger question, I think, for me, you know?

I love that question and I love what you say about where we were in politics, because from the 2026 lens, it does look like they decided one-sidedly to go woke on, you know what, we're equals, et cetera, but it does feel like a non-informed decision

of like, this is what we should call them and this is how we respect their culture. Because I do think it's very American-coded, like you're not African-American.

Definitely not.

And that's what I want to get to is the next point, right, is that like, I think America assumes or has the assumption because of the long history of blackness in America and its evolution, that blackness runs through America as sort of like this

centralism, like it's the culture of of blackness. And that's how I understand blackness. I don't think that's how Africa understands blackness. I think from where I stand, blackness is really more communal, it's layered, it's diasporic.

Now, we don't own this idea of blackness and we don't rank our blackness according to cultural nuances.

I really do think that that was an African-American type of...

But I think what you're saying is so relevant. I remember reading this book that it was in Obama's, I think it was like 2021 reading list, called Americana.

And this is Nigerian woman saying, I never realized I was black until I went to the United States.

Until I went to America. Yes, yes, yes. Because it's just so politically charged there.

This idea of blackness is centered around historical trauma. And my blackness is not centered around historical trauma.

Even though I come from systemic oppression in apartheid and et cetera, I don't center my blackness around how whiteness has tried to architect my blackness.

I don't think that the space I occupy as a black person is the only kind of blackness that the world experiences. And so kudos to Charlotte for saying this is a black talk. This is African American talk.

Because she's right.

That wasn't Afro American and definitely not for the whole black people.

Sorry I'm laughing. All right. I know and I love that Charlotte gets something right in this episode.

In the next scene, Carrie is at home with an Australian vogue when suddenly there's a knock on the door and it's Danny. And he says, hey, come on, get dressed. There is a furniture designer opening up a shop in wherever in New York.

He's super cute. We got to go check him out. And Carrie is like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Like I'm not going to go and like suddenly drop everything because there's a cute dude in Soho opening up a store. And Danny says, he's straight. He's like, I'll get my purse.

Yes.

I want to ask you, have you ever done anything similar to like try to get to meet a person that like maybe you thirsted about or after before you actually got to meet them?

Me and my girlfriends have many a times gone to a specific locale, dressed a specific way, occupy the specific space in order to garnish attention from a cutie.

We have this saying in South Africa that like, Aphelile Amadoda, which means men are finished, there are no men left.

So like, honestly, when you find someone cute, attractive, has a job and a hairline, get dressed, call your girlfriends, go to the bath.

You have to, yeah. Like you have nothing to lose. Um, have you, have you ever had like a successful story?

Did any of those cuties translate into Aiden's?

Um, no, again, Aphelile Amadoda, the honor name.

I'm going to ask you for how to spell that. I want to put that in the show notes.

Um, I just, I think, um, some of those cuties have ended up in my bed, you know.

Good for you. That's sometimes the best kind of return that you can get from like an outfit investment.

Thank you. Thank you. And thank you, sir.

That was fun. Bye bye. Do not kiss me like you kiss Charlotte.

Thank you.

In the next scene, Samantha and Siobhan are going to a club and there's a lot of chaos around it.

And the voiceover says like, it was not a first for Samantha to go into a club, but it was definitely a first that she got asked to spread her legs before she went into the club.

So I'm just curious about your thoughts on the portrayal of like a club that is obviously supposed to be very popular within the black community. Do you think that it was African American community?

Do you think that that was like a bit of a way to caricature like portrayal of like dangerous, loud, chaotic? Or do you think that were you OK with that portrayal?

I think here we can say well done to the director because these aren't just African American spaces. Black spaces are a real thing. I think a lot of the cultural and musical underground has been fueled by black culturalism, right?

That space, however, being portrayed as or said as chaotic or, you know, violent to watch your purse is another stereotype. I don't think that that club was ex-excessive. I don't think that it was, um, dangerous.

I think it was expressive because as black people, we are rather loud. Um, we, we, we do loosen up completely. We're expressive.

It's not chaos. It's just the oxygen of us breathing in life into a space. So to another world, a really polite, um, world, it might read as like too much.

Um, but that's the thing about expectation or like trying to figure out things is that it will serve as your POV, but it won't be the actual reality.

Understood. It does make sense. And I love that you say that it was not chaotic.

It's just that probably I'm too much of a square.

But also, like I said, you know, blackness again, and like Siobhan says, that blackness isn't one-toned, you know, that it can be both soft, it can be hard, it can be loud, it can be expressive, it can be muted and toned down.

Yes.

I think that that's the thing about blackness and culture, that it's quite dynamic in how, based on where it's rooted, how it expresses itself, you know?

Yeah.

There are spaces on the continent where blackness is Muslim, for example, and that's quite toned down and reserved, and you know, but there's other spaces like South Africa, really, really shaking our bodies every weekend out in these streets.

And that's just what blackness is. I think it's non-homogenous. Yeah, it's layered and it's like, yeah, yeah.

Okay, I love that.

Okay, then on to Carrie and Aiden. So at the show, when Aiden opened this store, Carrie basically splurged $2,000 on this armchair that he created because she was really into him, while Stanford also bagged a designer.

I think his name was Marty Mendelson. It was basically labeled a write-off per Miranda, because Carrie got a date out of that armchair.

So here we are after the first date, Carrie looks to have had a jolly good time. They're sitting at Carrie's stoop, and Carrie comes gleeing about the fact, because she lied about being a designer to get a discount.

And she says, listen, I'm so sorry, I lied about being a designer, but that's the only thing I lied about. And then she's being very coquettish as she takes out a cigarette from her purse and starts lighting it.

And then Aiden seems super put off by it. And he's like, do you smoke? And she's like, oh yeah, but just a little bit.

And I think her voiceover says something like, as soon as the lie came out of my mouth, I realized that I liked them quite a bit. And she puts away the cigarette, and she's like, yeah, there you go. I'm not smoking anymore.

Sorry about it. And then they have a kiss. And Aiden, in my opinion, was so dramatic about it.

Cause he's like, ugh, I can still taste that cigarette. And Carrie goes immediately into fix it. I'm like, I'm so sorry.

I completely understand. I have an altoid. I swear, I swear.

And Aiden's just like, I'm so sorry, but like, I don't think I can date a smoker. Do you agree with me? Do you think he was a little bitch?

And what did you think about this whole deal breaker situation?

Absolute bitch.

Okay.

And like, I don't think Aiden's all that cute to be giving up smoking for.

I don't know. He's so tall.

He's just tall.

He's just tall.

And he's like a daddy, you know. It looks like he's going to take care of me in the holiday finances.

But if someone asked me to quit for love, I think I'm going to like really, I wouldn't like get angry or put out the cigarette or immediately or whatever. I need to question myself. Is this from a point of care for my health?

Or is this a point of control of the situation or the relationship? Right. Yeah.

Because there has to be a middle ground. You have to be able to talk to me about, especially on a first date. How dare you?

You don't know me. There has to be a middle ground. Like talk to me.

I don't think that you can manage me in that way so early on in a relationship. Because the important thing that that scene taught me or what I pulled from it is that Aiden was trying to control the situation.

And love for me doesn't control, it can request, but it can't regulate what happens within the space.

I have a different read. Because I don't think, I think it's fair to be like, you know what, I don't date smokers. I think I would have put it in like a much more palatable way.

But I agree with your read of like, is this coming from a place of care? Or is this to me coming if I decide to quit smoking for this guy from a place where, as Carrie, I feel that there's scarcity in or scarcity.

I never know how to pronounce that word. But like lack of men. I keep hearing, what is it, Penila's daughter?

That's what I hear when you say the South African.

Aphelile Amadoda.

So is it coming from that place of fear that like he is the last coke in the desert and therefore if I don't quit smoking, I'm going to die an old hag? Because that's not a good place to make decisions from.

She's in her 30s. She's single. She's in New York.

Very much me, you know, quintessential bachelor.

But I wonder, I wonder, do we live or do we have such strict desire or boundary controls that don't allow us room for another person to exist in space that does not exactly mirror or reflect what we believe are the perfect ideals?

Are we able to create space to say, okay, cool, you might smoke, but don't smoke around me. Don't smoke before you see me. Smoke outside.

I don't know. Like, I don't know. But are we really, as a society, at a point where love and desire are really like a scarce commodity?

Hey, like finding love at our age is like very, very hard. And are we going to be so stuck in our pre-required desire spectrums that we don't allow any other room for someone outside of what we thought is perfection?

To actually exist and give us the perfection that love actually can.

And you're missing out on the experience.

I love what you're saying about this, because I do think that sometimes, because it does give the illusion of controlling outcomes in some part of our lives where we have absolutely no control other than consent in a way.

And I do think you do miss out on that. But after this, Carrie goes upstairs to her apartment, and I think she starts writing what is to be the column of the week. What are the deal breakers or non-negotiables in relationships?

And was it really that cut throw that is like black or white? I don't date smokers, you are a smoker, everything about you else aside from smoking I love, but because of that, bye.

And she starts thinking about it, and we go into Charlotte's storyline again, because she's not given up on Brad. And they have another kiss, and Charlotte is such a trooper, because she's trying to guide him.

And she's like, oh, you know what I really love? When you open your lips up. I have to say, like, I love that she, because I am not black and white.

I'm like, okay, this is what we're working with. Let me voice what I would want to work with and see if we can get there. But it goes, it goes to shit.

And, like, I think he starts sucking on her chin. And that's where she's like, you know what? I can't do this.

Bye. So that is a deal breaker for Charlotte. Then Stanny is on his first date with Marty Mendelsohn, where he's just, like, getting to know him.

And he gets introduced to a collection of dolls, porcelain dolls, that are super creepy. Yeah, super creepy looking. And this may or may not be a deal breaker.

In Carrie's voiceover, Stanny thought, could he be enough of a queen to sleep with another queen that owned a bunch of queens? So we are... Nadine.

Yes, yes. I'm very Stanny. Sam and Siobhan are having dinner at Fusion again, and Adena comes over, and she's like, hey, our aunt is heading out.

Do you want to say goodbye? He's like, yeah, oh my God, Samantha, would you like me to introduce you to her? And Adena is like, no, she's on her way out.

I'll keep her company and sits her down to give her a very stern talk where she's basically like, listen, I'm sure you're a very nice person, but Siobhan is my only brother and I don't approve of him being my only black brother dating a white woman.

So what do you think about this conversation? Do you see any point to Adena and would you have told on her?

I think it's a very poignant reflection of what used to be the outcome of America's black trauma. The fact that black for black, black never is gay. But that idea that black people will date black people is like an American ideal.

I mean, it's really what's the way now in 2026. There's mixed race couples everywhere. But I think that like an old, an old collective thinks that way, that we should be dating in our race.

And that darling, that whole system of within my race, I feel so uncomfortable.

I totally agree.

So yes, I would have told her.

I would have, the minute Siobhan sat back, I was like, you will not believe what your sister told me.

I would have gone straight up there. Yeah.

But after this, the girls are talking about it, and Samantha's just like, I don't understand, like, what is her problem to diss me like that? And she's using a lot of like terms like diss, whack, whatever.

Right.

Carrie takes that opportunity to make it about her. And she's like, yeah, I mean, you are who you are. And like, you shouldn't be judged upon that because there's some things that are intricate towards you.

Like Mia's smoking. And I think Charlotte is sitting there being like, stop talking about all this nonsense. My chin hurts, which I find hilarious.

Cause I don't know if you've ever suffered from this, but I remember once in college, I made out with a guy that had like a three day old beard or two day old. And then it burns my entire chin. And I was going on spring break.

And I remember having to travel with a Vaseline container to rehydrate my burned chin. So justice for Charlotte and I relate. But what do you think about this discussion when the girls are at brunch and like Samantha's obviously super upset about it.

Do you think that she was right in her thoughts?

You know what I love about Samantha? She's not a neutral bitch. Okay.

She is loud. She's confident. She's curious.

She's pro desire.

And I stand her.

I stand her. I think that sometimes intimacy and fantasy can coexist. It's just that at some point, the fantasy will become less objectified and the personality and the reality will start being at the forefront.

So, yeah, I stand Samantha. I think she was right with her choices. She was right to hit that goal and tell her to F off.

And she's no one has the right to tell her who to sleep with, no matter how bad of a bitch she is.

And that her, her, her, her opera wasn't that good anyway.

Perfect. So then afterwards, Carrie is having a cigarette and some Cosmopolitans or Martini's with Stani at her flat. And she's just like, what is wrong with cigarettes anyway?

And Stani's like, nothing. They're fabulous. And they're talking about their deal breakers.

And she's just like, I'm going to smoke because I want to smoke. And Stani says, and I cannot be invested into this guy's dolls. So no.

And then she was like, OK, I'm going to make you a deal. I'll consider quitting smoking for this guy if you will give this other guy a shot and forget about the dollies. And he says, fine.

Do you think that this screams desperate or do you think that this is healthy compromise?

That is super unhealthy, super, super unhealthy. I don't think we need to moralize our choices based on our desires, first of all. And then secondly, I think we can check our friends in real time.

I think we can tell our friends in real time that a man who has 50 dolls in his bed is crazy and probably needs a few years of therapy.

And that smoking as a habit should not be, or that a man, sorry, should not be the singular driving force to give up anything that brings you personal pleasure. So I think we must moralize our habits. Like I said, I think own the choice.

Make sure that the choice drives you. So, no, I would have checked my girl and be like, bitch, fuck you, smoke if you want to smoke. And I am not going to sleep with this man who has 50 dolls in the bed.

And you love a bottom, and you love a bottom, what do you mean?

I love this hot take because I was like, oh, this looks like healthy compromise. Like this will be our starting point for negotiation. That's how I saw it.

So, Carrie goes to-

But can I ask, though, why are we as friends negotiating on our love lives?

Like, I don't understand where does friendship and intimacy connect to a point where the negotiation happens outside of the intimate space of the romantic relationship, and inside of the openness of the platonic relationship? That's madness.

Interesting, because, like, in- If we roll the tape forward, because, like, Carrie goes to see Aiden to say, like, hey, I actually- I'm going to offer you a little deal.

I will- I've been thinking about quitting smoking anyway, so I'm going to quit smoking, because I think you think that I'm actually a bigger smoker than I am.

And they go on this very long date where she behaves like a junkie, and she's just, like, runs out of the date because she is desperate to break into her emergency cigarette that she hid in her Dior saddle bag. And Aiden catches her.

And this is where the whole episode comes to a head. Because Carrie gets caught smoking a cigarette that has fallen into a dirty puddle. Stani breaks Mary Queen of Scots, and I guess they break up.

Samantha breaks up with Siobhan because they're at the club. And as you said, Samantha insults Adena's okra after Adena told her, I don't care about how many Jennifer Lopez outfits you got in your closet.

This is a black thing, you don't get it, go away. And she's like, you know what might deal breaker? Siobhan being a pussy who was whipped by his sister.

Charlotte obviously breaks up with Brad and Miranda, whose storyline we haven't touched upon because it's too sad for words, but she's basically having a horrible blow up with Steve because Steve has this crazy dream where he is going to make a half

court shot and win a million dollars and Miranda's not supportive of it. court shot and win a million dollars and Miranda's not supportive of it.

To the closing scene, Carrie saying, I was gonna quit anyway eventually, but I just hope he's worth it. So I'm gonna jump into the advice to the girls.

To Carrie, do you think that it's still an unhealthy, she compromised that she did for a man that she doesn't know?

Yes, two words to her or a few words to her. Talk to me, don't parent me. Future boyfriend.

Yeah.

I love that because she obviously has daddy issues. So I guess she was into him parenting her.

Yeah, it felt a lot like the power dynamic was anchored towards the man and therefore the patriarchy and that the shame was held completely by the woman and that cigarette and her sense of pleasure being shamed.

And so, you know, when you look at it from that lens and not from the lens of, Oh, these are two people trying to fall in love.

The dynamics of control are clear and just how shame can play a role in motivating one to create decisions that aren't really true reflections of what they would have done in other circumstances.

Interesting. I agree partly with that, because I do think your partner should push you to be a better version of yourself. But I don't know if Carrie is really being motivated by the right reasons in this case.

I'm not ashamed of the motivating factor.

Yeah, I agree.

There's a lot of shame. And religion, I think, uses guilt and shame to shape our minds.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know, just unlike Miranda, we're like a hot second and a hot take, just like a hot take on that whole basketball thing.

Yes, please.

We all know, and there's going to be future discussions around how this relationship turns out.

But this was an early signifier of somebody who had allowed her need for partnership, her need for relationship, her need to be chosen to outplay her personal ownership of space and love.

Yeah.

Because there's no synergy in that relationship. She is a hardworking 9 to 5 girl, career girl. He is a barman hoping to make a million dollars off some basketball, impossible basketball shot.

And I understand that opposites attract. But you can see that within that relationship, Miranda has clearly shrunken herself to fit into the dynamics of what love could be. I'm writing an article right now.

I've titled it Love is a Room With Only One Chair. And one of the points that I got to was, if love is a room with only one chair, that means that someone is standing and someone is resting. And if you own that room, are you the tenant in the room?

Or are you the landlord in the room? And these are sort of like the dynamics that I think that that space with Miranda brought up for me as well as I was just rewatching it. I felt like, oh, she's shrinking to be in this relationship.

She can see early signifiers that this man is not actually her type. It just, sex is great, but nothing else. Yeah, desperation should not be for love.

I can't wait to read that article, and I love the analogy.

Because I do think that Miranda can be a bit cold in the ways that, like he was saying, like, do you know how many law things I've been to and how many things I do because you care about them and you show nothing in terms of interest for the things

that I care for? Which I think is a fair point, but at the end of the day, the problem in this relationship is he's a kid and she is like a one woman powerhouse.

Powerhouse, yes!

So yeah. Yes. Okay.

So what about Samantha? How would you have handled maybe the conversation, maybe the talk of the club where like Adena pulled her hair?

I would have beat that bitch down, okay?

That bitch would not even... Her little wig of hers would have come off. She would have looked like a piece of acro when I was done with her, firstly.

I don't condone violence.

We don't condone violence. But Adena would have not walked out of their feeling so hearty dotty, if that's an expression.

No, she would not have.

And then also, I think, because that was the second or third conversation. I can't really remember if it was the second or third time she had brought this up, this whole racial thing about her, her brother not dating a white woman.

Already in the first conversation, I would have taken that to my man and be like, you don't know that your sister says one, two, three, four, five, because that's a deep red flag, okay?

I was married to a white man whose family at Christmas lunch or whatever, you know, whatever special occasion we had, really treated me like an outsider.

And it was one of the reasons our relationship eventually fell apart was because of how the family had seen me within my black body and then within this white space and me as an outsider encroaching onto whatever sacred whiteness they held sacred.

And that for me is an early sign red flag.

If your sister is thinking like that, your mom will be thinking like that, your grandma won't be thinking like that, your auntie won't be thinking like that, and we're going to have a big ass problem a year or two from now.

So I guess you would have done what Samantha did, which was like, fine, you know what? This is not about me, and I'm taking my sweet ass home.

Loser.

Yeah. Okay, and just to wrap it up, so if Charlotte was your friend, and she was like, well, I'm going to try to do a boot camp of kissing to Brad and like make him a keeper, what would you have said to her?

I would have been like, girl, you know, once upon a time, I tried to teach a man how to fuck me, and after three months of trying, I still failed. When they ain't good at it the first time, girl, they might not be good at it the last time.

Okay. That's a great way for us to wrap the episode up. Trey, thank you so much for coming on.

Can I just ask you to maybe tell our listeners where they can find you, what you're working on, and whatever else you want to share?

Awesome. Right now, I am really interested in re-parenting myself so you can read a lot of my thoughts and musings on my sub stack.

I love it.

It's called, it's my name at Treyvonne Moosa. It really just unpacks anything from early childhood memories to right now, understanding love and its place in my life.

You could also find me at the Blue Table Projects, where I am cooking up a storm and archiving Africa's stories through food.

Amazing. I also found Trey being featured in the Biennale. I went to Venice, I was admiring Arith and suddenly I had Trey screaming in my face looking beautiful.

And I was like, wait, is that you? And he was like, you betcha.

She's an international star.

She is. I love you so much.

Thank you for being me.

I love you. I'll link all of that in the show notes as well so that people can find you easily. Thank you so much, Trey.

Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Just Like That We Found Therapy. If you loved it, follow the podcast, leave a five-star review and send this episode to someone who needs it. It really helps the show.

And don't forget our new segment this season. He's not you, Mr. Big.

If you have a love dilemma, you won't answer by one of our in-house experts. You can now submit directly through the form on my website. Link is in the show notes.

Or if you prefer to keep it personal, slide into my DMs on Instagram at We Found Therapy Pot. See you at our next therapy session. I love y'all.

Bye.