I honestly don’t mind being single. Not in the short-term, at least. It means that on nights like last night, when I go out with friends – one married, one single – I get to be the one saying ‘No, stay a bit longer! Have another cocktail!’ rather than the one who’s thinking that she didn’t mean for drinks that started at five to last for five hours and that, really, her husband will be expecting her home by now. I get to stumble through the door, a little bit drunk, and lie in bed like a starfish, because there’s no one to complain that I’m not on my side or that I have all the duvet. But when I woke up, an hour ago, in that confused way you often do – Do I have to get up for work in a couple of hours? No! Why am I awake: hot, thirsty, bad dream? – I wished there was someone here to fuck me. I still don’t love morning sex but the combination of factors – heavy rain on the skylights, room a little too hot, the beginnings of a hangover pulsing behind my temples – that ensured that I wasn’t just going to roll over and go straight back to sleep also made me really damn horny. I wanted to open the window to let the cool and the smell of the rain in. I wanted things I don’t usually want: someone to pull back the duvet, to kneel between my legs and to lick me lazily until I come. I wanted to straddle him, to let him slide inside me and to ride him until he came with a sleepy grunt. None of this would help, of course, technically. It wouldn’t make the room cooler, or stop the rhythmic beat of rain on the roof. But if I’m going to still be awake an hour later, I’d rather be naked and sweat-soaked, the inside of my thighs slicked with his come.
Tag Archives: sex
On growing out of kink
I haven’t bought my Eroticon 2015 tickets yet. There are a few reasons for that: better to wait until payday, fear of a repeat of last year’s anxiety attack, and, most worrying of all, the ‘hope’ that I’ll be in a relationship that means erotica/sex blogging/kink will no longer be a part of my life.
I use ‘hope’ in the loosest possible sense. I’m not actively looking for a relationship in which I’m unable to express my submissive desires. It’s just that, well, finding decent guys on dating websites is hard enough, so inevitably, there are things on my wish-list I’ve decided I’ll compromise on if I have to. And finding a partner who’s at least a little bit dominant may be one of those things.
And yet. One of the most frustrating conversations I’ve had in recent weeks was with my best friend, who I adore. She’s got through her fair share of unsuitable men over the years, but she’s had some great sex with these men. Recently, she’s started dating a nice guy, but, in her words ‘It won’t last if the sex doesn’t improve.’
Ok, so for her, sex is a priority. Great. All the more frustrating then when, over brunch, I was talking about how it’s only in the last year or so that I’ve really started to embrace submission and how fantastic it would be if I met someone who I not only liked and fancied, but who also shared my kinks, and she said ‘Oh, but that wouldn’t really matter if you met the right person.’
FFS.
I feel like, in a way, I’ve come reluctantly to kink. In the past month two people, completely independently, have pulled me up on my claim to be vanilla, citing my increasing desire for pain, bruising and toys as proof that it’s simply not true. Not to mention increased participation in things like Sinful Sunday. Not only are they right, I’m also having the time of my life, sexually: I’ve discovered what turns me on, I have a sexual partner who’s happy to explore that further with me, and I am *loving* it.
I’ve written before about submission and self-confidence, and unlike Girlonthenet, I still think there can be a link between low self esteem and submission. I think it tends to be a more passive kind of submission – a letting someone else take charge so you don’t make any false moves, rather than purely because it turns you on – but I’d argue that it’s submission nonetheless.
Novels like Fifty Shades of Grey would have us believe that the only reasons you could possibly be interested in BDSM are a) difficult childhood b) trying to hold onto a billionaire who had a difficult childhood. They also promote a very fixed view of what BDSM means: it’s spanking, flogging, bondage, waiting on your knees for your Dom to turn up.
It can be any or all of those things. It can also be none of them. Girlonthenet wrote a wonderful piece a while back about being a ‘stroppy submissive’ and I associate with it more and more. When the boy grabs my wrists and forces them high above my head I don’t submit willingly: I try to wriggle free, desperate to get my hands on his belt, to suck his cock, to touch him. I let him slam them back against the wall, my rings clinking as they hit the plasterboard, and I beg him to let me have his cock in my mouth. When he refuses I don’t look at the floor while my inner goddess pirouettes with joy, I tilt my chin up and look him square in the eye. I’m as defiant in submission as I am outside of the bedroom.
I’d love to find a long-term partner who loved all those things about me and who wanted to embrace them within our relationship. Even before I started exploring my submissive side, sex was a key interest: I’ve been writing erotica for years and years. Not buying an Eroticon ticket for 2015 because I’d met someone who didn’t like that side of me would be a massive let down, really. It would mean I’d compromised massively on who I am. But would I put kink to one side if someone was perfect in every other way? Quite possibly, yes.
If I do though, it’ll be because I choose to compromise. It sure as hell won’t be because I ‘grew out of’ kink.
Wicked Wednesday: on snatched sex
One of the best things about sex is being able to take your time over it. Sex that’s made up of endless changes of position, long, languorous bouts of kissing, thrusts that slow to almost nothing before building back up to a frantic rhythm.
But I’m a sucker too for last minute decision sex, sex that’s planned ahead but that has to fit neatly into the slot assigned to it. Sex that’s tight on time, but heavy on sensation.
Last minute decision sex can obviously happen within seconds of the decision being made, but I like it when you have to work at it a bit, when you have to travel a bit further than is strictly reasonable, when you can barely justify it to yourself, let alone other people.
It reminds me a bit of Christmas: it’s ostensibly all about the day itself, but actually everyone knows that the real joy is in the run up and the day after. It’s about how wide my pupils are as I hurriedly brush on mascara in the car’s rearview mirror, about the way my Chanel No. 5 smells when it hasn’t yet had time to mellow on my skin, the way you can lose yourself in the crowd in a busy London pub, the way that first sip of red tastes …
The way he tastes …
So there’s this bar…
So pretty close to where I live, there’s this wine bar. Which was where I first met the boy.
About a year later, he texted, mid-morning: ‘Did you know the wine bar’s closing?’
I didn’t. I went, not with him, but with a friend, for one last glass after work. I was feeling sentimental.
It takes me a long time to settle in places. Just as I’m beginning to get comfy somewhere, people start to suggest that maybe, for the sake of my career, my desire to have children, for *some reason,* it might be best to move on. And often, I act on that suggestion.
That bar was just a bar. But when I rocked up there to meet the boy for the very first time, it was pretty much my only haunt. I’d been living in the city less than 4 months. I’d made a couple of friends at work, and my best uni friend lived nearby, but nothing felt like home yet.
We met, or went for post-sex drinks there, often, in the early days. And inevitably, I began to associate it with him. It was where I’d tried to decide if I even fancied him. It was where we’d gone together to a wine tasting on our second date and chatted politely to a lot of middle-class, middle-aged men while his hand slid further and further up my thigh…
The night it closed, he rocked up too, eventually. Friend and I left. He texted:
‘Hey, where’d you go?’
I went back. Obviously.
They’d said they would close at eleven or when the wine ran out, whichever came sooner. The wine got progressively worse, but it didn’t dry up. It turned into a lock in. We were both slaughtered.
When they turfed us out in the early hours, I was desperate to have him inside me. We snogged in the street and eventually ducked between a restaurant and an office block. I was wearing jeans, which was my worst decision of the evening, even worse than buying a third bottle. I knelt in the shadows and sucked his cock, and then we tried, pretty unsuccessfully, to fuck against the wall. It wasn’t the best sex we’ve ever had, in fact, it would probably be up there with the worst. If I could remember the details, that is. But it didn’t stop me thinking about it every time I walked past. *Still* thinking about it every time I walk past, for that matter.
And the bar? It reopened six months or so later, under new ownership. I don’t go there much anymore. It’s not the same as it used to be: it’s poncier, all cream paintwork and yummy mummies.
I’m glad it’s still there in one form or another, though. Because, y’know, memories…
On the four words it’s really hard to hear…
The Internet is filled with thousands and thousands of posts about casual sex, friends with benefits, fuck buddies, sex friends – whatever you want to call them. Most of them, or the ones written by people who aren’t sex bloggers and therefore have a tendency to be somewhat less sex positive than you might hope, take a cautionary line, especially if they’re aimed at women. Have casual sex if you must, with the same person multiple times if you’re *really* *really* sure you can handle that, but essentially, be aware that heartbreak is inevitable.
I’ve been toying with the idea of writing about casual sex for a while – largely with reference to Bryony Gordon’s book The Wrong Knickers where she said that no woman really enjoys casual sex. I haven’t read it in full yet, so that post will have to wait, but I do, as you’ll know if you read this blog regularly, have plenty to say on the subject of friends with benefits.
I’m trying to be a bit more upbeat about my current life choices than I was in the early days of the blog, which in practice means I try and write fewer posts beating myself up for caring about him and berating him for not doing the decent thing and ending things for me. That’s what happens in public, anyway…
But truth be told, no matter how many sex positive blog posts I write, no matter how much I love the bruises, the kissing, the fucking, the having my comfort zone constantly challenged, the reality is that, for me at least, a long term friends with benefits arrangement is emotionally bloody hard work.
I care about him. A lot. Certainly a lot more than I should. And I’m not good at hiding these things, so he knows that, obviously. Largely he knows that because of how often I turn on him and call him a cunt.
If you’d asked me 6 months ago, what I wanted most from the arrangement, I’d have said that, sex aside, honesty was the essential. If I asked him a question, I didn’t want him to lie, I wanted to know the truth, no matter how much it might hurt me.
I stand by that, because I think it’s the right approach to take, the grown up one, certainly. But fuck me, it’s harder in practice. We’ve fallen foul of it a couple of times, but there are four words in particular that kill me:
‘I don’t love you.’
Good girl
I’m lucky enough to live in a city that gives good date. As the sun goes down, it glints off the golden limestone. The tourists thin out. There are numerous riverside pubs and, well, it’s just bloody pretty, really…
So I was in a fairly buoyant mood as I headed through town earlier this week on my way to one of said pubs. On, get this: an actual date. I haven’t dated for a long, long time. Sure, I play around a bit on OKCupid and Tinder when I’m bored, but the idea of spending an evening messaging a bunch of different guys? Not really my idea of fun.
He seemed a nice guy, but then, the signs had been good from the start. He’d bothered to read my profile before he messaged me, he thought this was a good idea and he didn’t write as though grammar was an optional extra. In the flesh, he was tall, attractive and as intelligent as his messages had suggested. I asked for a glass of wine, he ordered a bottle. Apparently I pay even less attention to the One Drink Bailout than the guys who read my profile.
He asked as many questions as he answered. He didn’t make me laugh, but he did make me smile a couple of times. When I nipped to the loo and asked myself whether I’d consider a second date, I was leaning towards yes.
When I later told him I didn’t want to see him again, I gave what happened at the very end of the date as my sole reason. Looking back, I was a bit uneasy even before that. As long as we were talking about his MBA, his background or his hobbies, everything was fine. When he talked about women? Not so much.
I could, of course, be completely wrong about this. He might have been recounting his experiences exactly as they happened. His last long-term relationship was true love. Her family didn’t think he was good enough, and they split. He would always love her, and she him, and if anything went wrong in her life, he’d still ‘do anything for her.’
Since then, he’d been out with a handful of women he’d met on OKC. And these women, he seemed to be saying, were invariably a bit crazy. One just wanted him for sex and wasn’t afraid to say so. Another, when he told her he didn’t want to see her anymore, started sending him abusive messages. Wow, I thought: of the guys I’ve met online, mostly it’s just a lack of chemistry or stuff in common that stops me going back for more. There’s not normally, y’know, drama.
We finished the wine. He asked if I wanted more. I said I was ok, but I was happy to get him a glass and keep chatting for a bit longer. He turned down my offer, and bought another bottle himself. Hmm. Rightly or wrongly, I let him pour me a bit more. I went to the bathroom again. When I got back, he’d moved our stuff to a table nearer the river. More romantic, I presume.
It got to 11:30, and I wanted to make the last bus. I was still undecided about that second date, but I figured I’d think about it on the way home. He offered to walk me the bus stop. As we rounded the corner of the pub, he cornered me up against a wall and moved in for the kiss.
I’m a sucker for a snog, and I think it’s a good indicator of chemistry, so we kissed for a while. Ultimately, I pulled away. It wasn’t that great, and I still had time to get to the bus stop. And that’s when he pulled a condom from his back pocket and asked if I was ‘sure I was a good girl?’
I should have told him that I’m neither good nor bad. I mean, when I got home that night, my knickers were damp. I have a history of one nighters. Briefly, the flash of that silver foil packet made my heart beat faster, made me crave something different, something one off.
The rest of me didn’t feel sufficiently at ease to want to fuck him. I hadn’t decided. I wanted more time. All things that have nothing to do with whether I’m good or bad.
‘Good girl,’ has a place in the bedroom, definitely. I’m less sure it has a place on a first date.
List posts: are they *ever* sex positive?
Wow, I’ve been AWOL for a while, haven’t I? So much so, in fact, that the last post on my blog is still a topless picture of me, and while I’m very, very proud of that photo, it might be time to move on from it now…
Anyway. While I’ve been away, Exhibit A and Em at AnyGirlFriday wrote this response to this piece posted on the Metro website by a blogger called Hannah Gale. And mostly, it’s a very, very good response.
But I’ve read the comments on their post too, and a couple of people seemed to be suggesting that they’d got a little too personal in places; that the post at times became less critical of Hannah’s points, and more critical of Hannah herself. And it occurred to me that the problem with Hannah’s piece is probably only part Hannah: more likely, the real party at fault is the Metro.
Magazines/newspapers are notoriously bad for this kind of stuff – a brief look at the Metro’s blog page this morning yielded this:
OK, bottom right is positive, I guess, and to be fair, the one cut off on the top right is about not slutshaming Magaluf Girl. 10 things all London women know about dating is pretty neutral. But I don’t think you could claim that this selection suggests that the Metro is in any way sex positive. And it’s not just them. A few days back, I caused a bit of a stir on Twitter by sharing this awful Cosmo post called. ‘18 Reasons Not to Give Him a Blowjob.’ Generally, my followers felt there was only one reason not to give a guy a blow job: because you didn’t want to. Stretching it out to 18 increasingly dubious points including one about not wanting to ruin your matte lipstick is unnecessary, patronising and, I think, a completely inaccurate representation of most women’s attitudes towards (oral) sex.
But Hannah’s piece, I think, suffers from the exact opposite problem: while Cosmo desperately tries to stretch a single point out to fill a whole column, Hannah’s entire post, based on some fairly crude calculations, is around the 500 word mark. How many words did Em and Exhibit A use to respond? Well, if you deduct Hannah’s words, which they reproduced, I think it’s around 3000.
The Metro will have asked Hannah to write around 20 points, and probably that 500 words is a limit they set, too. There’s no room within that for Hannah to be nuanced in the way that the response post is. It’s total clickbait, and the Metro *know* that. They probably gave her the title, too and I challenge anyone to put a positive spin on something called ‘The 21 unsexiest things about sex.’
Yes, she doesn’t have to write for them – but the opportunity to write somewhere where you know your writing will be seen, which you could potentially spin as a fairly good gig on your CV might well be difficult to turn down. I don’t think the blame lies with her essentially – I think it lies with the paper and with the list post format. It *is* possible to be nuanced and positive in under 500 words (I try to do just that in most of what I write here) but while we keep clicking on these pathetic posts, we’re not giving the media any reason to change. Seek out independent bloggers instead, and share stuff you like – it’s a much better use of your time than the Metro’s bullshit…
20 things all men should know about sex
I know, I know, I’m not Buzzfeed. But bear with me. Someone asked if I would guest write a post about 25 things all men should know about sex and I turned them down. Which, retrospectively, was probably an error. It was a good opportunity. But a) I don’t think list posts are generally that interesting and b) I wasn’t that keen on the ‘all men’ part, so instead I asked Twitter what answer they’d give to that question. Three bloggers (if you count Bangs & Whimpers as a unit) kindly offered to contribute their top 5 and here they are, along with mine.
Horny Geek Girl
While everything HGG has to say here is a great point, I’m particularly with her on point #3. Just because someone says yes to something on one occasion doesn’t mean they’d say yes tonight. Check in – regularly. And check out Horny Geek Girl if you like sex blogging, food porn, geekery or great tits. You’ll find her here and here.
1) Sex isn’t just about penetration. It’s not about getting us wet enough that you can ‘slip’ inside. Lots of ladies can’t come from penetration alone. Sex is about mutual pleasure. Which leads nicely to my next point.
2) Sex doesn’t have to stop just because YOU came. As I said before, it’s about mutual pleasure – ladies can multiple orgasm much more easily than you men, and for some even if they don’t come it’s still a pleasure. Communicate with your partner, is she enjoying it? Is she wanting more?
3) Just because a woman has shared her body with you doesn’t mean you now own it. I don’t care where your cock, hands, tongue etc. have been, my body is MINE. Yesterday, today and forever. I may choose to share it with you again, multiple times, or exclusively, this still doesn’t mean you own it. It is MINE.
4) Yes, women can enjoy sex, yes, we can enjoy multiple partners, yes, we can sleep with whoever we want whenever we want. No this doesn’t mean you can call us slut, slag, easy, tramp, etc. unless we ask you to. Mutual respect. If you get a high five for ‘banging’ the hot chick from the bar, I want one for fucking the hot guy from the gym.
5) Sex is messy. If you’re getting busy and there’s blood, please don’t freak out. This can mean we’re on our period but often it just means you were a bit enthusiastic and your nail scratched the delicate tissue and it’s bleeding a lot because when we’re aroused blood cause the area to ‘engorge’ and swell. A rinse with cool water usually fixes it. Freaking out over it makes things awkward. Please don’t freak.
Bangs & Whimpers
Bangs & Whimpers write lots of seriously hot little vignettes about their escapades on their Tumblr, which comes highly recommended. You can also find them on Twitter. Here are their top 5:
1) It isn’t a race
Sex shouldn’t be rushed. The quicker you thrust the less likely the person you’re fucking is going to relax. Yes, okay, thrusting quickly IS going to give someone an orgasm but you need to vary the pace, switch things around a little. Slow, long, deep strokes varied with quick ones. We’re not saying quickies aren’t great and don’t have their place – we are saying you have to have variation. Speed isn’t sexy. Sex should be viewed as a good meal with at least three courses – starter, main and dessert. Not a KFC or McDonalds.
2) Communicate
We aren’t saying talk all the goddamn way through with a running commentary. Or indulge in ridiculous clichéd sexy talk. Or even anywhere in between the two. Letting the person know what she’s doing is feeling good and you’re about to come is always useful. Generally encouragement on either side is great, although we said earlier it isn’t a race, cheering each other on is just lovely.
3) Make sure you’re clean
It sounds obvious but the woman you are about to fuck has probably a) shaved her legs b) trimmed her bush c) moisturised, buffed, trimmed and perfumed herself in anticipation of this moment. We aren’t saying you need to do exactly the same but decorum dictates your dong should be clean. We’re probably going to put it in our mouth so make sure it doesn’t smell like days old washing (yes, this did happen to one of us)
4) Saying you don’t wear condoms just isn’t cool.
There is no exception here. You just can’t be too careful. Even if your partner is on birth control you are both at risk of STIs etc. it sounds boring and oh yes it feels different and better without one – sorry sunshine – no bag no shag.
5) Oral sex is the gateway to an orgasm
Well, it is in our book anyway. So its worth spending a little time down ‘there’ even if its to get a small precursor of what is to come. Likewise, she will want to spend some time getting to know your cock, after all you’re going to put it inside her, right? And if you can make her come with your tongue you are in for a really good time. Hell, she might want to marry you!
Any Girl Friday
Em, aka Any Girl Friday, writes a beautifully fun, thoughtful and discursive blog. She was also good enough not only to contribute her top 5, but to expand on her thoughts here. You can find her on Twitter, too:
1) Wet, wet, wet. Nothing is worse than a guy thinking that a quick nipple flick and some half hearted neck nuzzling is enough to get the engine running. It’s not. Guys who rush straight in, fingers ready, like horny 14 year olds, need to know that we probably won’t appreciate the friction burns. Lube it up, suck your fingers first or get her to suck them before you start exploring.
2) A WOMAN IS MORE THAN JUST HER BOOBS. Sure, it feels awesome when you treat them to some time but other parts exist bro; don’t ignore her shoulders, collar bone, back, inner thighs, neck or stomach. Also, that area above the knicker line feels incredible when lightly kissed or if you run your fingertips across it.
3) Kissing – this is my number one bugbear. As teens, snogging for hours was the hobby of choice but as we’ve gotten older it seems to have fallen by the wayside. Now, a bit of kissing at the start is the most you can expect. Nothing is hotter than kissing combined with some heavy petting though so don’t rush past this step. Kiss her lots!
4) TEASE. Good foreplay and build up will do wonders for the get her wet situation. This includes oral, clit play, kissing, exploring each other’s bodies and spending the time it takes for her to be turned on.
5) Don’t buy into the media bullshit about women and sex. Our orgasm isn’t an elusive holy grail that is only possible on the third Tuesday of a leap year, so don’t believe for a second that leaving her hanging is acceptable. A women is entitled to sexual pleasure, to enjoy sex and to do what she wants in the bedroom without being judged or being held accountable to society’s warped standards of femininity.
And here are mine:
1) Trust is paramount, and not just in the bedroom. The sex, and the general mood, will be a hell of a lot better if you’re reliable, make cancelling on me a once in a blue moon exception rather than the rule, and are honest about stuff from the get-go, even if it might upset me. If you’re seeing multiple people, I deserve to know that – only then can I make an informed decision about whether I want to sleep with you or not.
2) Intimacy is best served as a sandwich – even if you’re absolutely amazing at making me feel like I have your full attention before the act: not checking your phone, asking interesting questions, lots of kissing and slow build up, it’s a waste if as soon as we’ve fucked you’re up and off the bed disposing of the condom and generally not letting me savour the moment. Cuddles aren’t obligatory: lying with me for a bit while I bask in the glow is.
3) Don’t forget to tell me that you think I’m beautiful/hot. I feel like this gets lost sometimes, especially when you’ve been fucking someone for a while, but it makes my day to hear you say it.
4) Don’t be afraid to suggest trying new stuff. Obviously, no means no, but if I say ‘maybe,’ or my current favourite, ‘No… Er, yes?’ it means I probably am up for trying what you’re proposing, I’m just nervous about it and might need some coaxing. Point #1 above should help with this.
5) It’s not all about my clit. I suspect this is a little bit my wildcard, and some (many?) women might disagree with me, but I’m not a huge fan of you rubbing my clit when you’re fucking me. It’s true that I probably won’t come from penetration alone – it’s happened a few times, but it’s the exception rather than the rule – but penetration is a pleasure in its own right and playing with my clit, whether it’s me or you doing it, just makes me feel like I’m trying to pat my head and rub my tummy all at the same time. I’d rather just focus on that wonderful sense of fullness, if it’s all the same to you…
So there we have it – 20 things all men should know about sex. If you disagree or think there are other key ones we’ve missed, feel free to add them in the comments.
You took the words right out of my –
I hate women who don’t know how to be on their own. You know the ones – the girls who say, ‘God, I don’t know how you cope with being single!’ when their longest period of being out of a relationship is 2 weeks, or, worse still, the ones who say, ‘Oh, I love being single,’ when really, they never are.
But often I think strong feelings like that towards a particular group of people are born out of something uncomfortable that that group reflects back at you. It’s similar, in a way, to what I was getting at when I wrote this.
I’ve been single literally my whole life. It makes me uneasy when, on shows like ‘Take me out,’ girls say ‘I’ve been single for 3 years,’ and everyone gasps. Because if I talked about being single in terms of years, what would I say? When do you start counting? From birth? Sixteen? After uni?
I’ve been single my whole life, but I’ve never truly been without a man. Since my teens I’ve slipped effortlessly from one infatuation to another. The thought of being truly alone, without even a crush to provide that rush of emotions, that sense of being alive, scares me.
In the past I’ve used the word ‘love’ pretty indiscriminately to describe how I felt about those crushes. I grew up in a family where the word is used freely – I tell my parents and sister that I love them pretty much every time we speak – partly through force of habit, partly because it’s true, and I want them to know it.
It’s not a word I’m afraid of, essentially. But when the boy said, during an argument, something along the lines of ‘I was talking to a friend about this and in her view the problem is … that you’re in love with me and I’m not in love with you,’ it really jarred. It felt like a cheap shot, and I told him so.
The bit that bothers me isn’t the bit you’d perhaps expect. He doesn’t love me, I know that, and so it doesn’t come as a particular surprise to hear him say it. Sure, it stings a bit, because no one likes to hear stuff like that, but that’s all.
Being told that I love him, though? That I’m much less comfortable with. While I’m aware that if you read this blog regularly you might well have come to that conclusion, I’m still uncomfortable with someone else telling him that that’s how I feel. ‘I love you,’ is a pretty powerful phrase and I felt like they were my words to choose to say or not to say, as and when I felt ready.
I don’t feel ready. In this relationship (or whatever you want to call it) I can’t imagine I ever will be. Not that I haven’t conjured up its spirit on occasion: a few weeks back I was having drinks with a friend and she challenged my claim that I’m happy enough with the way things stand.
‘You don’t get it though,’ I countered, ‘I love him.’
She smiled sadly. ‘I don’t think you do,’ she said. ‘You talk about him like he’s the enemy or a battle to be fought and won. That’s not love.’
And you know what? She’s right. If you love someone, there shouldn’t be that much conflict, with yourself or with them. Despite what Hollywood would have us believe, loving someone doesn’t mean having to fight for them, or waging a constant battle against incompatibility. Of course, it is possible to love someone and for it not to come up roses, but if that really is how you feel, what should be coming across is affection, not aggression.
The other thing I think you realise as you get older is that love should be less about you than it is about the other person. Yes, that’s trite. Yes, it’s cliché, but it is essentially true. Most of what I get from him is still about me, selfish though that is – it’s about my sexual confidence, my thrills, my needs. If I’m brutally honest, my attitude to his needs is more often than not that if he doesn’t like what he’s getting from me, he should end it and get it elsewhere. Because I’m compromising so heavily on the open relationship side, I tend to think that all other compromises should be his.
I’ve never been a big fan of the line ‘You have to love yourself before somebody else can love you,’ – hey, we’ve all fallen for people with flaws – but I do think it’s easier to love someone else if you already love yourself. If you believe in what they see in you, it’s easier to look outwards and focus on them. If you don’t, love is just a line you’re feeding yourself to keep fear and loneliness at bay, and that can’t be healthy.
With all that said, I’d be gutted if, when it ends, I, or anyone else who knows about us, writes the whole thing off as pointless because we didn’t love each other. I think society still has a tendency to gloss over situations that don’t fit a standard narrative – especially the media. It’s bullshit. Love isn’t the only thing that can change you; it’s not the only thing you can learn from. It’s just one potential happy ending in amongst a whole heap of others.
Adrenaline
Cautious as I am, I tend to view adrenaline with a wary eye. I associate it so closely with anxiety that I often forget about its more life-affirming qualities.
For the last 6 weeks or so, I’ve been doing a teacher-training course on top of my usual job. Truth be told, before it started I’d been dreading it. I didn’t fancy the 4 hour round commute into London and back, nor was I looking forward to standing up in front of fifteen adults or being observed.
Sex blog (of sorts) 