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 spectrum
• Breaking the couple script
• A three-parent family in real life
• Hyper-independence as a trap
• Friendship vs ‘Plan B’
• Collective care → collective power
• The audience is not the community
• Tech, AI & connection
• Class, gatekeeping & “self-made” myths
• Relational agency & reframing loneliness
  
  

Practical 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.org

Connect with Dr. Payal Beri & Reframing Perspectives:

• Instagram – Dr. Payal: https://www.instagram.com/dr.payalberi
  
  
• Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@payalberi?sub_confirmation=1
  
  
• RK Empathy: https://www.rkempathy.com
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/payalberi
• Speaking & Media: https://www.payalberi.com