Stop Treating Friendship as ‘Plan B’: Why All Relationships Count

“If you don’t find a romantic, sexual partner, you will be alone forever.”That’s the story many of us are sold: if you’re not in a couple, you’re failing at connection. For David Jay, it was more than a fear — it felt like a guarantee. As an asexual person, he couldn’t see himself in the scripts our culture hands us about love, partnership, and family.Today, he’s living a life his younger self didn’t think was possible:co-parenting in a three-parent family,raising two kids,and building movements rooted in human connection and collective care.In this conversation, Dr. Payal Beri sits down with David Jay — founder of the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN) and author of Relationality: How Moving from Transactional to Transformational Relationships Can Reshape Our Lonely World — to rethink what counts as a “real” relationship.They dive into why we treat romantic love as the only path out of loneliness, how capitalism and tech have turned connection into a transaction, and what it would look like to normalize all forms of love: platonic, communal, familial, and interdependent.If you’ve ever felt “behind” because you’re not partnered, wondered if you’re “the problem” for not fitting the couple script, or craved a life built on chosen family and community — this episode offers a different map.🔍 In This Episode, We Talk About:“I will be alone forever.”Founding AVEN & naming a spectrumBreaking the couple scriptA three-parent family in real lifeHyper-independence as a trapFriendship vs ‘Plan B’Collective care → collective powerThe audience is not the communityTech, AI & connectionClass, gatekeeping & “self-made” mythsRelational agency & reframing lonelinessPractical steps to build community From game nights and taco runs to recurring meetups: small, repeatable actions that turn strangers into real relationships over time.Connect with David Jay:Book & contact: relationalitybook.com (as mentioned in the episode)Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN): asexuality.orgConnect with Dr. Payal Beri & Reframing Perspectives:Instagram – Dr. Payal: https://www.instagram.com/dr.payalberiSubscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@payalberi?sub_confirmation=1LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/payalberiSpeaking & Media: https://www.drpayalberi.com