Baby, Can I Hold You

You never really committed

March 19, 2026

relationships

I’ve been watching The Good Doctor on Netflix recently. Despite it being a medical drama, it feels fairly low stakes. I don’t think I’m ever that concerned about people dying or making mistakes or things going wrong. All of those things do happen but it feels like the medical side of things is just a vehicle for a bunch of characters to process life together.

I’ve just started season 3 and one of the episodes I watched recently was about two people talking. One says to the other that he never really committed in relationships, he didn’t allow himself to be vulnerable with others, he never let other people in. And that one scene is the reason I watch anything. Because it’s about this specific character. But it could be about me.

I’ve been thinking about it a lot. That despite being married my entire adult life I don’t think I ever really let my ex husband in. Not really. He probably knows me better than anyone else but that’s because of proximity mostly. That isn’t by design. I never really talked about my feelings with him, I never let him into my memories or experiences. We were just two people living together, sharing the remote and coasting through our relationship together.

I wanted to write that I have let one person in. I wanted to write that I was vulnerable with him. That I committed myself to that relationship.

But I don’t think that’s true. And I think he knew it too. He brought it up once. He asked if the situation he was in meant that I felt like I could be more open knowing that there was less risk. I probably attempted to talk him out of that being the case. But I don’t think he was wrong. I loved him. And I loved him in the biggest way I could. But I knew that it was restricted to the confines of what we were and maybe that did allow for some safety. For a bubble for me to be in with him.

I think I’m too afraid to do that with another person. With another person that has the full capacity to be with me fully. But I don’t want to be afraid of that.

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On Money

March 18, 2026

dating, relationships, sex

I only figured something out recently. And that is that money has impacted my sex, dating, and relationships. I… don’t consider the privilege that I have where I don’t think that much about money. And that has caused misunderstandings or made things worse. I feel like because of my behaviour and reactions, it has made others feel like I’m not someone they can be open with about. And I feel pretty bad about it.

There was the person where I suggested that we do this fun (expensive) thing together and then I got annoyed when they left me on read.

I’d badger another person to go out and do fun things with me and maybe the reason they hadn’t is because they’re being careful with their money?

I had one person who invited me to their home be weird about it. I remember I was lying on his bed after we’d had sex just enjoying the afterglow of orgasm and he said something like ‘I know, I know, I haven’t quite finished all the work in this room’ and later I realised he thought me staring at the ceiling meant that I was focused on cracks in the ceiling (or some other thing, I don’t know, I wasn’t aware of his ceiling).

Maybe I’m reading too much into all of these things. But maybe I’m not.

I don’t know what to do about any of it except be more aware of how things might be for others. I’ll probably be in a similar situation soon enough when my divorce goes through. Let’s see.

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Dating Disappointments vol. 8

March 17, 2026

dating

He sent me a message that if it were coming from someone else or at a different time I might have deleted it. But he caught me in a good moment and I took his fairly straightforward, confident message as something that made me smile as opposed to roll my eyes.

He asked fairly soon if we could meet up for a coffee. I said I’ll think about it, tell me something about yourself first. And he mentioned a few things, we started talking about his big, chaotic family. He made me laugh, it was easy to message with him, he’s very attractive. When he asked again about meeting up for coffee I asked when he’s available (because he’d have the longer commute to get closer to me). And he said a week Wednesday.

It’s a date, I said. And we carried on messaging. He warned me that he’d be away visiting his parents for a few days but even when he was there he sent me messages. One of the messages said something like ‘you’ll see soon’ and I responded that I was looking forward to it.

I figured when it got closer to the Wednesday we’d iron out some of the details beyond a time, day and general location. Only at the time of writing, he has not been online in the place we were messaging in 6 days. And that Wednesday? It came and went with no word from him about it.

I don’t know if it counts as being stood up or not but it also doesn’t feel great.

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Long Term Friends

March 16, 2026

life

Okay, I want to tell you this story first before I go into a bit of a thread on a similar topic.

For whatever reason, I was clearing out who I follow on Instagram and when I realised I had very little interesting content on my feed left, I ended up following some of the accounts that regularly appeared on my feed. One of those was a therapist who makes short videos discussing therapy concepts and ideas but in short video formats. I have an interest in psychology and therapy has been a big part of my life, so I thought ‘why not?’

Well. I have a great reason for ‘why not?’ and it’s because I watched one of these videos and I absolutely spiraled about it. I even messaged a friend afterwards to ask ‘do you think I’m a terrible person?’ to which, of course, my friend said ‘NO, why?’ When I explained he did say my first mistake was following a social media therapist (and I do not disagree!) But let me walk you through it.

I can’t quite remember what the topic of the video was. I remember the gist of it though which was about terrible people. And how terrible people don’t have long term friends. That makes a sort of sense, right? That people who are consistently awful can’t maintain friendships for long because people get sick of their shit and move on. Only as soon as I heard this therapist say this thing my first thought was ‘oh my god, I’m a terrible person’ – because my first instinct was to think that I don’t have long term friends. Therefore the reason is that I’m not a good person to be around.

Do you know that it took me months and months and months before I realised that isn’t the case? My friend tried to help me get there quicker by saying that trauma has probably paid a part and that trust in others is harder to manage. And I do agree with that and I appreciate his attempt at trying to make me feel better, I do.

But what I came to realise, and realise incredibly slowly, is …that I do have long term friends. My brain went to ‘who has known me since childhood and is still my friend?’ and there aren’t people like that. So I stopped there. But this year has been incredibly difficult for me in lots of ways and I’ve realised that I have friends all over the place.

The book group I’m part of has been running for almost 10 years and I’ve been part of that for almost that time. And I talk to my book group about men, and dating, and my ex husband and work and families and life generally. Why am I blind to this fantastic supportive network? And once I realised that I saw that there were other pockets of friendship. A family that my ex husband initially knew is a friendship group of over 25 years. There are people that I know and remain friends with from a hobby that I did for 10 years but stopped almost a decade ago. Friends I know that I used to work with. Friends I know that I met through my children. Friends that I’ve maintained through sex, dating and relationships.

What I’ve come to realise about this whole thing is that I’m quick to jump to the most negative thing about myself. Even when the evidence is there to disprove it all. I’m not a terrible person. I’m not awful enough that I’ve chased off any decent, friendly person in my life.

I have friends. I have good friends. I just need to view myself better. Reframe who I am to include being deserving and worthy of friendship. To include that I am a good person.

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Investing In Myself

March 13, 2026

life, relationships

I’ve talked about a bit, I think, but I was in therapy a few years ago. Best thing I ever did. And even now, years later as I’m going about my days, I still think back to things that were said or happened during therapy.

One of the things that happened was that my therapist told me that she thought I could do with a second weekly session. That I was presenting as quite fragile and that I needed additional support. It was something that I really struggled with. I didn’t want to be a bother, I was thinking about the cost of psychotherapy sessions that my ex husband I were paying for privately.

One of the things that I’d brought up in one of our sessions is that my ex husband once came home from and out of nowhere he told me ‘Thank you for being so low-maintenance, a lot of the other men at work complain that their wives are always asking for things – new curtains or a certain number of holidays or whatever. But not you.’

And I think at the time, I thought that was a compliment. I certainly took it as one and internalised this low-fuss, low-maintenance persona that didn’t need too much. But what I realised was that I was erasing my own needs. I wasn’t asking for the things I actually wanted or needed.

Same with the therapy sessions. Eventually, I did tell my ex husband that I needed a second session every week, the cost was less important than the benefits it would bring to myself. It may have been the very first thing that I ever demanded in my entire marriage. And it came way too late.

I think about that a lot.

After I put my foot down and insisted on the second session I felt incredible. It wasn’t just the emotional support that I was getting from my therapist. It was the idea of putting myself first and about recognising that there are things that I require. Whether that’s a second therapy session, or an actual desk to work at (I didn’t have one of those either and was killing my back trying to work from my bed with my laptop in my lap!) or whatever else.

The other day I called my GP about a niggling issue that I’ve been going through. That had been going on for several months. I recently sorted out some dental work I needed doing (even though it eventually cost me £800+!) I started my masters equivalent course last September after insisting on savings to be put aside to cover the full cost of the course.

And do you know what? I feel fucking great about all of those things.

All of these things matter. I matter. I’ve lived so much of my life shrinking myself into small spaces for other people. I’ve erased my needs from relationships. From work. From life. I’ve made myself small, I’ve adopted a ‘low-maintenance’ image.

I’ve had enough. I’m now focusing more on investing in myself. In my health, in my well-being. In what will bring me joy. What will decrease my anxiety. What will make me feel good.

And it already feels good.

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Levels of Pettiness

March 12, 2026

relationships

It’s a really sad thing when you’ve been married to someone for most of your life but you’ve grown apart and ask for divorce but instead of having a clean, quick break of it things linger on and you end up becoming shitty, petty people.

That isn’t a hypothetical, of course. I mean myself and my ex husband. We still live in the same house because even though I brought up divorce 5 years ago (and we’ve been separated that entire time) he has refused until now to actually finalise anything.

I won’t lie, having a continued joint bank account has benefited me but I think the whole experience has overall benefited him more. He likes the idea of playing happy families, delaying when he has to tell his friends and family that he is divorced.

There were times he was in denial about it. There were times when he was angry about it. There were times when he was really sullen about it.

Now though? Now he’s just fucking petty about it. And apologies for getting into the granular detail about how annoying of a person he is to deal with.

And I can’t help but ride that Petty Train right alongside him.

One of the things that pissed me off about him long before we were separated was his quest to ‘balance’ things out. If I do this, he’ll do that. If he does this, he expects me to do that. Without my agreement usually.

But nauseatingly, he has brought up several things that are ‘mine’ to do and ‘his’ to do. It’s never felt so …fucking regimented like it has in the last few months though.

Yes, one of ‘my’ tasks is to feed the dog his dinner at 6pm every day. Fine, I’m happy to do that. But on occasion, I am not home to feed the dog his dinner. I’ve noticed though that my ex husband keeps track of how many days I don’t feed the dog dinner and somewhat coincidentally, he’ll ask me to feed the dog his lunch instead (something that my ex husband usually does as he works downstairs but we have never ‘formalised’).

And how petty is that? Counting how many days he has to feed the dog and taking it out on me. Instead of, you know, just feeding the dog. He’s keeping score with me.

It isn’t my only example though. For the past several weeks he’s taken it up a notch. We had ‘agreed’ that I would walk the dog three days out of the five weekday and my ex husband would walk the dog the other two days. In light of that imbalance, he would also do the weekly food shop. This was never a problem because he’s fussy about the meat and vegetables he picks up and he doesn’t like me doing the food shop anyway. He was always going to do the food shop because he’s controlling like that. But in making this agreement he’s agreed the smaller amount of effort in doing the dog walk in exchange for something he isn’t willing to give up anyway.

It’s become a problem though because of my course that happens Tuesdays from 2pm-9pm. Because of this, he has to walk the dog his two days a week AND Tuesday afternoon because I am not around to do this.

On Sunday, we discuss the upcoming week, which days I’m in the office, which day he is. What our plans are. Can I have dog walks on Tuesday and Wednesday, he asks. Sure, but you’ll have to do Monday afternoon as well as I’m leaving right after work (with our child for an event that has been scheduled in for several weeks now).

That doesn’t sound very ideal for me, he said. Can you walk the dog Monday and Tuesday morning, and he’ll do the full day on Wednesday?

So you want me to walk the dog Monday morning, Tuesday morning, go into the office for 7am on Wednesday, and for me to walk the dog Thursday and Friday morning and afternoon? I asked. Not one day in the week to lay in bed in the morning and have a slow start?

Yes, he said. Because that makes it ‘ideal’ for him.

So, I’ve decided that every day this week my alarm is going to go off at 6am (instead of 7am). And instead of being really quiet about getting up, getting ready and getting dressed I’m not going to bother. If I can’t find the clothes I need and fumble around, if I need to turn the big light on so be it.

If you want to play the Petty Wars, I will show you how low I’ll go. I hope you enjoy your week of lazy, slow mornings lounging about in bed. With the big light on, the curtains opened, me opening and shutting the wardrobe, leaving the en suite light on. And whatever else I can think of.

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Dating Disappointment vol. 7

March 11, 2026

dating

I went on a walking date with a man almost two years ago. I decided not to go any further with that date because … and I am cringing as I write this… I thought he smiled too much.

I sent a message to a friend after this date that read ‘what do you think of people that smile a lot’ and then I carried on to say that I thought this man insincere because ‘nobody genuinely smiles that much’

I felt bad about it afterwards but by the time it was a bit too late. I’d already cut ties with him.

Or so I thought.

The same man reached out to me recently. I hadn’t remembered that it was him. We started a conversation, I was enjoying it. He mentioned meeting at some point. I said what I normally said about knowing a base level of information about a person before I meet them. That’s when he mentioned that we’d already met. Had already kissed.

I cringed as I realised I only remembered three things about him. His first name, that he drove a white car and that he smiles a lot.

I went back and forth about it. Do I go with my first reaction from two years ago? Even if I was hazy on the details? Do I give him a second chance?

I decided I would. Maybe I would be less cynical this time around and just appreciate his smiley nature as being …nice? pleasant? some other happy thing?

Only it never got that far.

We arranged to meet again. For a coffee date. Only on the day that we were meant to be meeting I had just been given a courtesy car from a local garage. They didn’t have any automatic cars available so they dropped off a manual car to me. No big deal, I can drive a manual car. I just hadn’t driven one myself in about three years.

Only when I got into the car, I couldn’t depress the emergency handbrake. And when I got it off my driveway, I couldn’t get it into first gear. I actually sat in that driver’s seat and cried my little eyes out. Thinking how could I have forgotten something so important? How is this so hard? How had I fought for so long to get a courtesy car and now I can’t even drive it.

I wasn’t thinking about him. I was thinking how am I going to get to work? How am I going to get to my course? How long am I going to have this car and when is my life going to get back to normal and when will I get my own fucking car back that I haven’t driven in nearly three months?

I sent him a message though. I was honest. I said I had been looking forward to seeing him again and catching up but I couldn’t drive my courtesy car with any sort of confidence and that I was distraught about it. Maybe after some catch up lessons that a friend had offered, I’d be able to meet him.

He sent me a dick pic. And insisted I was desperate for him.

His message was so far away from anything even remotely important to me at that point. I did start to explain how irrelevant he was at this point in my life but I realised in that moment that I didn’t care.

Why do I need to explain to someone that there are more important things than the possibility of being fucked by a stranger? I didn’t have the energy for that. So I blocked him.

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Turning Point

March 10, 2026

life

I was having this difficult conversation with him the other day and he said something that changed things for me.

It’s not different to things other people have told me. But for whatever reason, it landed at just the right time.

He said something like, I thought it was obvious – you’re a really sexy women. And then he went on to list some of the ways he finds me sexy.

It was nice to read but I don’t think I fully appreciated it until after that conversation when I was less emotional about everything.

And when I did think about it, my response was more along the lines of …do I need to reconsider again how I think of myself? Are the ways that I think of myself outdated and do they no longer serve me? Are the ways that I think about myself bringing me pain?

And I think they are. After he said what he said, I started to think …if I really believed him, if I really thought I’m a sexy person, if I thought I’m passionate in bed, that I’m good at taking part in sexy activities, if I thought that I am desirable person …would I be having the insecurities that I’m having? Would I need this amount of reassurance?

I think I’ve been stuck in a certain way of thinking for too long. And I’ve needed reassurance in the past from previous relationships or previous sexual partners that they find me sexy or desirable or …worthy. But do I think that about myself?

This whole line of questioning really stopped me in my tracks. It made me do quite a bit of soul searching. I think in the past I’ve tried to do quite a bit of internal work to improve the way I think of myself. My appearance, my body shape, the overall look of me.

And I think that without even realising it this thing has crept up on me and surprised me. And when I started asking myself the types of questions I did, I realised the most shocking thing ever.

I do believe him. I believe it in myself. I am sexy, I am desirable. I like the way my face looks. I like that I’ve grown out my hair again. I like the clothes that I’m wearing lately. I like the way my body looks. With and without clothes. I like wearing different types of lingerie that show off my body.

I like me.

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Women

March 9, 2026

dating

I recently changed what I was looking for on dating apps.

I thought what I wanted was to connect better with people and as that’s been a massive disaster with men, I thought why not try with women?

I go back and forth about my attraction to women. I’ve said before that if I had to choose between men or women, I’d always choose women. But then another bisexual woman asked me if that was just because I had less experience with women and if I’d be making that decision based on scarcity?

It was an interesting thought. I’d like to date a woman. I’d like to find out what it’s like, what types of things I’d encounter, how it would be different.

And I thought I was onto something … I matched with several women and thought ‘oh, here we go’ …

Only for me to send them first messages that I was hoping were interesting and enough to be engaging and I received silence in return.

I’m not interesting enough to appeal to other women on dating apps!

I do wonder over and over again how to meet people (men or women!) organically. I wonder if it would be easier to build up a friendship over time that would potentially lead to more.

I’m currently looking into low-pressure ways to meet more people. Wish me luck!

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Directness

March 4, 2026

dating

Sometimes you just have to laugh at yourself.

I was feeling a bit …unsettled with him. So after trying to bring it up with him twice in very vague ways, I eventually bit the bullet and sent a very direct question instead.

If I ask a bunch of really direct questions, would you answer honestly?

Yes, he said.

But because there was a time gap of about 20 minutes between me asking and him responding I ended up going down my usual route. Of total and utter avoidance.

Do you like Indian food? I asked instead. And sent a picture of my meal.

Why am I like this? It’s so frustrating. For me. For him. For anyone else even remotely connected to me. Instead of just asking the questions, instead of just plucking up the courage to have the difficult conversations I just end up prolonging my own agony. My own insecurities.

I am determined to do better. To work harder at being more direct. Open. Honest. About how I’m feeling. About how certain behaviours trigger things in me. About how I can emotionally heal myself.

But if you’re wondering, that Indian food was really incredible. Would have again.

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