‘At Least You’re Young Enough to Start Again’: What Not to Say to a Friend Getting Divorced at Thirty
Beyond the Barrier of Penetration: How Vaginismus Led Me to a More Adventurous Sex Life
The variety we found in our sex lives without penetration, and the amount of excitement and fulfilment we got from it showed me that the stigma peddled that sex between opposite-sex partners has to involve penetration simply isn’t true. It was freeing; it gave me permission to stop waiting for my vagina to be ‘normal’, to stop thinking penetration was what I needed to do to please my partner…
Travel, Communication and Commitment: A Conversation With My Partner About Our Binational Relationship
Having met in post-Brexit times, we don’t have the EU to fall back on for easy permits and open borders. This fact makes living in the same place that much harder for us now that we’ve decided to stay in the UK for the foreseeable future. The bureaucratic hurdles are intimidating. And expensive. Plus, it’s a completely new political and financial system that I’m not yet familiar with…
A Disappearing Act: Ghosting as a Product of the Digital Age and How to Get Closure if You’re Haunted
For most of us, a big part of our relationships are mediated through digital devices. We are used to being constantly updated on each others’ lives via social media or direct messages. The result is often that a lack of communication is seen as a problem and an absence of communication as disappearance. In the landline era, communication was more volatile and travelling harder, so vanishing was simple. Now, hyperconnection makes the absence harder to process…
‘We Were Never Going to be a Normal Couple’: Dating a Former Client as a Sex Worker
Now, I might be old school, but back in my day we had three basic rules in the industry: no kissing on the mouth, never share your real name with a client and never date a client outside of work. I broke all three…
‘If You Don’t Understand What It’s Like to be Sexually Abused, that is a Privilege’: To The First Boy I Loved After My Assault
Instead of doubting you, I doubted myself. It wasn’t until I heard what you did to other women that I felt like what had happened to me was valid. In all the sweet nothings I wanted you to whisper to me, you decided you wanted nothing to do with me. Our relationship lasted two-hundred-eighty-one days. You burned everything; you burnt me with it…
Making Friends as a Young Woman in My Early Twenties
It’s odd using Bumble BFF and going on ‘friend dates’ with people who are in the same position. You’d think it would be somewhat easier to go on a first date with a potential friend. Instead I’m beyond nervous, sweaty-palmed with shaking hands, worrying about whether or not they will like me. Seeking validation from a potential friend feels more stressful than when you’re on an actual first date with a potential love interest…
It’s Okay to be a Dating ‘Vicktim’: Red Flags, The Ick and Why You Should Listen to Your Instincts
They sneezed weird. They dropped their wallet. They stumbled. They ordered a German lager and mispronounced it. They got stung by a bee. They sent you a text saying, ‘I am hear’. Their stomach rumbled. They did that silly little run as they crossed the road (just let the car hit you, coward!). In short, this person revealed to you something that is best kept secret during the earliest, most fragile phase of a relationship: they are human...
‘How Are You Supposed to Feel Sexually Liberated with Mum in the Room Next Door?’: Sex While Living at Home as an Adult
Constantly thinking about how loud my partner and I are or how much noise the bed is making takes me out of the moment. Living at home makes it so much harder because you’re not trying to hide it from friends or strangers but from family, and I for one didn’t have a relationship with my mum that extended to her having to listen to me having sex…
‘Chaotic Life, Lots of Sex, Little Sense of Purpose’: Defending TV’s Messy Woman
I Hate Suzie, I May Destroy You, Everything I Know About Love, and Fleabag all explore the self-indulgence Nina Power speaks of in her book. These women hate themselves for it, filling themselves with guilt and shame about it and convincing themselves they are deeply flawed. They aren’t – but guilt is a trait deeply ingrained in the female psyche, especially when it comes to sex…
‘Everyone Deserves Representation’: The Dynamics of Queer Sex and Intimacy
Queer people typically define sex outside of the usual, heteronormative consensus that sex is only penis-in-vagina penetration! Rather, as Hannah (She/They), who identifies as queer, answered, ‘Intimacy is any intimate contact.’ Meaning, foreplay becomes defined as sex, as well as general touching, kissing, etc…
Praise or Degradation? What Exploring My Kinks Has Taught Me About Sex and Relationships
Who would have thought that having to strive for academic perfection for about seven years gives you a praise kink? Or that reading toxic hate smut has you considering degradation? I’ve been hogtied (not for me; I don’t bend that way), and I’ve even had hot wax poured on me (that is for me)…
What I’ve Learned Dating Multiple Genders
It took me an entire lockdown to finally accept that I was not 100% straight. I put this revelation down to too much time alone with my thoughts. Lockdown crawled by. Eventually, I went back to university. In other words, to a big, anonymous city with thousands of young, cabin-fevered people within easy swiping access. I took the plunge and set my dating preferences to ‘everyone’…
‘I Don’t Care that I’ve Always Been Single’: Why I’m Twenty-Five and Have Never Been in a Relationship
I don’t really care that I’ve always been single. I’m used to it. It’s my normal. My attitude is, ‘it might be nice to find my person, but I’m an introvert who is socially awkward, not the biggest fan of people and has a chronic fear of intimacy. So, logically, it kind of makes sense’. What does make me feel abnormal is the way other people view me when they find out this information…
‘The First Time I Tried to Have Sex, I Had a Panic Attack’: Overcoming the Fear of Vaginal Penetration
My exes didn’t seem too interested in finding other reasons for our bedroom issues. They were perfectly content to let me believe that sex wasn’t working for us because my body was flawed. Why is it that women always have to take responsibility for things that might not actually be our fault?
Zoned Out: Why the Traditional ‘Friendzone’ is Overly Berated, Outdated and, Frankly, Underrated
There is much discourse online to be found from petulant incels about how infuriating it is to be friendzoned, but I would argue that there is nothing more painful than having a breakup (yes, a breakup) with a friend who never really was. Whose care for you was reliant on a reciprocation that you weren’t even aware of…
Love After Death: Navigating a Relationship with a Widower
Nothing in her experience, lived or talked about or read in passing in a novel, had prepared Girl for how you really feel when the backdrop to your burgeoning relationship is photographs of Boy with another woman in his arms…
‘Exoticised and Fetishised’: Navigating Dating Apps as a Black Woman
The dating world for black women is often bleak and unwelcoming. Behind the screen and in real life, we are navigating a dating world filled with microaggressions, colourism and outright racism. Oftentimes black women put themselves out there on apps that specifically want them to message first and receive nothing in return…
Anxiety? Awkwardness? Asexuality? Tales of a Twenty-Six-Year-Old Virgin
I have a confession to make. Well, more of a truth to share. I am over the age of twenty-five and still a virgin. Comically, my middle name is Mary, like the Virgin. Why you may ask, does a relatively attractive woman have a problem getting someone in the bedroom?
‘The Lines Between When You Do and Don’t Have Consent Have Blurred’: How Hookup Culture Has Normalised Sexual Assault
One night, I was speaking to a few friends who also lived on campus. Our discussion topic was our current sex lives. Each time one of us got into the nitty-gritty, I became increasingly aware of how many things our partners had done that just didn’t seem right yet were normal and common among us…
‘Sometimes Friends Grow Together and Grow Apart’: Reflecting on Adult Female Friendships
At first, I felt guilty for not being there for her when she needed me. Although it didn’t seem like whatever was going on was too serious, since it’d been dealt with so quickly, it could have been urgent at the time. This guilt was balanced out by the fact that part of me was angry at her. She was making me the villain and accusing me of not being there for her while I was halfway across the world and having the most difficult week of my life…