A long while ago now, I introduced the boy to a small group of my friends. I can still remember the conversation we had after he left, and specifically, this line:

‘He’s very alpha, isn’t he?’

Hmmm. Up to that point I hadn’t really considered where he sat in the Greek alphabet – all I cared about was that his confidence carried over to making me feel comfortable getting naked with him. But yes, compared to the men my friends and I were used to, he was / is very alpha.

The last guy I’d been interested in was the pure definition of beta – he was skinny, with mousy hair and a penchant for beige shirts over beige chinos. He was obsessive about his hobbies and while we were friends his hobbies consisted mostly of accompanying me to Take That concerts and trying to get as near the stage as possible. You think you know where this story is going, don’t you? But no, he didn’t turn out to be gay.

My point is that I am more used to that type of guy and the boy’s ‘alphaness’ still comes as a surprise, and one which doesn’t always make me wholly comfortable.

Take the sex blogging for example. While I’m messing around on the fringes of what couldn’t really be called sex blogging at all, he’s racking up posts on everything he’s ever tried – sex acts with other guys, threesomes, pegging …

I mentioned it to a friend, who misunderstood my concerns. ‘He’s done stuff with other guys?’ she asked, somewhat incredulously. Yes, and I don’t care. He can do what, and who, he wants – but just as I don’t want to know the details of the who, sometimes the sheer extent of what he’s tried leaves me wanting to crawl back under my rock.

My guest blogger from the other day wrote about how sometimes it’s better if consent isn’t verbally established – how sometimes you’re more likely to try new stuff on the spur of the moment. I agree, but equally, a lot of the stuff he’s interested in I know I never will be.

This leaves me in a position of not really understanding why he’s still fucking me. If it was just because he liked me, we’d be friends, surely, not friends with benefits? And I don’t really buy the argument that everyone likes vanilla sometimes – don’t most people prefer it combined with something much more interesting, like sticky toffee pudding?

So yeah, it’s not the acts themselves that are causing me to retreat under my rock, it’s the sheer volume of what he’s tried. Because I’d have to be some pretty damn fine vanilla to beat that …