A bright spot to my life recently has been watching Heated Rivalry. I hadn’t heard of it until I saw some short interviews at an awards thing for Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams. Maybe it was the clip of them introducing some award? Maybe it was something else. I had been oblivious to the gay hockey story until then.

But my face was hurting from toothache and I knew I needed a balm for all the shit things happening lately and so I started to watch it. And I’m now obsessed. The show is only 6 episodes long and they really just pack so much into those 6 episodes. So many scenes and dialogue to just absolutely love.

My algorithm on social media is now almost entirely Heated Rivalry related and I’m not disappointed. I’ve borrowed the audiobook from my library, I’m going to read the whole series eventually. I’ll most definitely rewatched Heated Rivalry. Maybe tonight after work. And it’s one of those things where I haven’t really tried to work out what it is about the story, the characters that I love so much. Does it have to have a reason? Can it not just be because it’s hot men having sex, falling in love with a very thin backdrop of hockey?

Well, it just so happened that (in my newly acquired awesome algorithm!) that someone else came to a conclusion about why women love Heated Rivalry so much. And when I came across it I thought … I don’t disagree? It said it’s popular with women because it’s intimacy without misogyny, without gender imbalance, without threat. But she goes on to say that women enjoy it because it’s a window into viewing longing, passion and sex. And when I read that I thought … that probably is what I’m missing from the sex, dating and relationships I’ve been having lately. These characters are emotionally open and vulnerable. There’s tenderness there.

And I want that. I miss that.