Category: life

Changes

January 28, 2026

life

I have a list on my notes app on my phone of ideas for future posts on this blog. One idea in particular that I’ve been mulling over how to approach it is my ex husband’s fear of change. I had a few different examples I was going to write about, and I might still write about them. But something happened last week that has given me a different perspective on both change and my ex husband’s attitude towards change.

I’ve been in my current work role for the past almost three years. I’ve been applying for other roles in the hopes that I can get a promotion elsewhere that I haven’t been able to achieve within my current organisation. I would say that 90% of the time I am confident that I can do the promotion… but last week I attended a job interview with another company willing to consider me for a promotion into the higher role.

As part of the interview process they wanted me to carry out a 10 minute presentation followed by some competency-based questions. And I left that interview thinking …I feel good about my answers. I’m excited about this opportunity, I’m excited about the people that I’ve met, the description of the team, the role, the challenges. I felt like I was riding high on the possibility.

Until that weekend when I got hit with a massive case of imposter syndrome. I started thinking there’s a reason I haven’t been promoted in my current role, what makes me think I’m good enough to do the job at this other place? What if they realise fairly soon that I’m not up to scratch?

And to multiply some of that anxiety I also started thinking about the additional commute if I was successful in this job. How would that change my routine? How would I cope with the added commute times, with the journey, with my travel anxiety. I have no sense of direction, what if I start every day I’m in the office with anxiety about getting my train, being on the right platform, being on time, getting lost getting from the station to my office, to finding where I’m meant to be.

And from there it just spiralled back to what if they don’t like me, what if I don’t have the skills needed to do my job, what if I don’t pick things up in time, what if their expectations of me aren’t met, what if I’m just not capable of it all.

And at the time I was fully invested in this mental breakdown and nosedive in my own confidence and abilities. I didn’t really consider much else outside of those very specific worries and doubts. But now that some time has passed I do sort of wonder … how will I react when the divorce is finalised and I’m living somewhere new and on my own? What will change look like for me then? Will I be celebrating or hiding under my duvet doing breathing exercises until everything feels better?

We shall see.

Updated to add: I didn’t get the job.

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Women and Friendship

December 11, 2025

life, relationships

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I’ve just really, really been loving how amazing it’s been to interact with more women and having these hits of friendship and camaraderie.

I was at this party the other day, I’ve already written a little bit about it. But the best thing about it is that I spent the majority of my time there talking to a group of women. Just about life. We did talk briefly about pubic hair preferences for ourselves and partners, sure. But we also talked about our children, our dogs, life just generally.

Not since I was in school have I gone to the toilet with a group of women. And honestly, it was a pretty great thing to experience. If only for as I was walking out, one of the women pointed out that I had toilet paper stuck to my shoe and helped me get it off. It’s such a small thing but it just highlights to me how lacking my life has been. That I don’t have women friends to just hang out with.

That same night one of the women offered to invite me to the next girl’s trip to a sex club. And I’ve never been more excited about something. Because I’ve been to sex clubs with men. But I think it’ll be an entirely different experience to go with women. And I’m excited.

This is going to be my goal for 2026. Less focus on sex and sexual partners and more focus on including women and friendship with women in my life. Women friendship brings me so much joy.

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Facing Rejection

December 8, 2025

dating, life

I’ve been job hunting recently. Recently is probably misleading. I’ve been in the same job for 2.5 years and the same week that I started this new job I was already looking for a new job. It’s been kind of off and on but I would say lately job hunting has taken up a significant amount of my time.

I put a lot of work into job applications. And because I’ve been putting a lot of effort into job hunting and job applications lately, I feel like I can’t help but raise my hope and expectations that something good will come of these job applications. Work has been quite challenging recently and I like to work towards the idea that soon enough all my hard work will pay off, someone will see the inherent value in what I would bring to a new organisation and offer me loads of money to make that change.

Except the other day, I was faced with the hardest rejection I’ve had to date. Where a role came up and the location, the job responsibilities, the company, the benefits, everything about it made think ‘this one, this is the I want.’ And then I was summarily rejected for it in one of those mass automated emails.

I cried. And then I took myself out for Thai food. And then I decided last-minute to show up to this party hosted by people from the sex website I use. I thought, why not head over? I’ll see people I know, maybe meet new people. It’ll be something fun and exciting and will distract me from my life disappointments.

And… in going to this party I ended up facing even more rejection. I guess I didn’t really think it through beforehand. But I knew a handful of people going including someone I’ve recently had sex with and who I’d planned on meeting again soon. I figured what could go wrong?

Well. What could go wrong is that I’d feel awkward around the person I’d recently had sex with because he was feeling awkward about someone else there. We’d barely interact and because of a misunderstanding when a group of women and I went to the toilet it looked liked we’d all left and so he left without saying goodbye. And that felt weird.

When I brought it up the following day with him it turns out those plans we had? He’d made plans with someone else for the same day. And I just can’t. I know they were tentative, not set in stone plans. We hadn’t discussed where we’d be meeting or when we’d meet or any level of detail other than are we both free that day. But even so, it hurt.

I feel like this early on in a sexual relationship I shouldn’t be feeling like I’m not someone’s priority. Or like plans with me are easily changeable without consequence. I don’t want to feel like I’m not important or like I’m second or third choice. So this whole thing has been paused. Who knows if we’ll come back to it if priorities shift or the situation changes? But for now? I’m chalking this one up to another rejection.

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Restoring My Faith

December 5, 2025

life

As I mentioned in a previous post, I was planning on deleting my account at the sex website I use. It was wearing me down, I wasn’t getting success from it. But I had agreed to attend a type of party so I delayed deleting until after it.

And …I don’t know. I feel like maybe there’s still life and enjoyment and value to be had from that place. Because I went to this party and I had the absolute best time. It was so nice to meet old friends, new friends. I wanted to go because the host is one of the most delightful people I’ve ever come across and I wanted to meet her. She didn’t disappoint. She was beautiful and friendly, at one point she came up to me really close to my face and said why don’t we meet up sometime, just me and her and watch a film together and eat some snacks. And I feel like I fell in love with her a little bit in that moment.

I met another friend (who I’ve written about on this blog) and we talked about films and dating in a way that we used to do. There are some people who just get me on a certain level and this friend does that. It was nice to see him again. I met a couple who were incredibly sexy but also just really cute with each other that tried to get me to play a guessing game with them (I hate guessing games).

There was a woman who joined sort of late who just immediately popped up and shared the craziest story about using LinkedIn to get a date and I was absolutely fascinated. I ended up speaking to the host after the event and said I met the most intriguing woman but I don’t know how to contact her now! and luckily we’ve been put in touch.

I guess I hadn’t realised how many people I have met on this journey until this night. It was a large group but I knew so many of them. It felt familiar, it felt friendly. And as I was going home that night with memories of shared laughter and a little zing of flirtiness, I thought …maybe I shouldn’t be so quick to walk away from the connections I’ve made.

Am I focusing too much on sexual connection? And have I been overlooking the lovely friendships that were all around me that night? I think so. But there’s a lot to be said for making friends.

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Women

December 3, 2025

life

Have I already mentioned that I’m doing a Masters equivalent course currently? It’s work related and for it, every week I leave work early to travel to a place 45 minutes drive from me and sit in a room for 7 hours with a group of 20 somethings.

When I first joined the course I thought ‘oh god’ at the ages of everyone else. I felt like I wasn’t going to fit in, that I’d stick out, that I wouldn’t have things in common. But there’s 12 of us on this course. One man and 11 women.

And can I just say these women are all fucking incredible?

There’s something so wholesome about being around them. They give me energy, they give me joy, they make me happy. Every week that I’m there something happens that just makes me endlessly smile.

Last week as I was walking in two different people said to the youngest woman there ‘your hair looks great’ and she positively beamed. She said thank you and that nobody at work even noticed that she’d had her hair done and actually everybody noticed straight off as soon as she arrived.

The week before when hair came up, I’d said I was growing out mine but I hated this in-between phase where it isn’t short and it isn’t long and just feels scraggly and they told me to ‘trust the process’ and gave me compliments.

There are women there who are getting married this year and we’ve talked about flowers and dresses and venues. There is one woman older than me who has a daughter going to prom and we’ve shared the best places for dresses, for shoes, for accessories.

We’ve talked about going to the gym and getting into Hyrox. We talk about the food we cook, one woman asked for advice on how to ask for a raise. The women have all complimented each other on our coats, our trousers, asked where we’ve gotten our shoes. We give each other encouragement on our assignments, advice about what to do in tricky work situations.

This kind of friendship and fellowship is the reason I’m doing this course face to face and not online. You can’t put a price on this sort of interaction on a weekly basis. For the next two years.

Women are incredible. And going to this course every week makes me yearn for a better network of women friends like this.

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Family

November 17, 2025

life, relationships

Somewhat weirdly I had the same conversation with two groups of people in the space of a week. A conversation that I don’t normally have.

The first happened when I was at one of my book group dinners. It was towards the end of the evening and others had left and it was just me and two other people and the conversation was around family. The other two were saying how their families don’t really get them. Well-meaning that they might be, one didn’t feel that connected to their family and the other felt their families wanted them to perhaps be something they’re not?

The second conversation I had was at work with a colleague. She and I don’t work closely together but we are friendly. She shared with me a deeply personal thing that is going on in her family life and I said to her that even though we don’t know each other very well I definitely understood how much her family means to her.

Then both asked me the same question. What about your family? What is it like?

At book group dinner, because it happened first, I stalled for a few minutes before answering the question. And as I was answering it did really hit me that I don’t think I’d ever said the words before.

I don’t have any family, I said. Not really.

My colleague nearly cried when I said it. My book group friends looked surprised and then possibly uncomfortable. I realised that this is probably why I’ve never said those words in that order before. People don’t know how to deal with that answer. Even if I say it in a way like, it’s okay, I’m okay with it. Even then, it’s not something everyone knows how to respond or deal with. And that’s okay too.

I started thinking about my life and my lack of family a lot since those conversations. From therapy, I did know that it’s a very good reason that I married young and started a family young. It’s probably the reason why I waited as long as I did to raise divorce conversations. It’s a reason that the loss of a friendship like I’ve had recently has hit me harder.

I feel like even when I did have family around me I’ve always felt alone. I’ve leaned into hyper independence because I can’t trust that others around me will have my emotional wants or needs as a priority. I’ve come to rely on myself. But that’s hard. And lonely.

I’ve never really considered, beyond my early marriage and starting my own family, the impact of not having reliable family has had on my dating or sex life. I’ve always known that I am how I am (and I’m okay with who I am, I’m pretty great!) but it surprises me that I haven’t before now unravelled more of it, to dig a little deeper into things.

I know that I’d very much like to not be so strong. To not be so independent. I’d love to be able to lean on others sometimes. To be taken care of in small and big ways.

I don’t always know what it feels like to have a parent worry about me, even if they’re a bit annoying with it or don’t always get things about my life or my decisions. I don’t know what it’s like to have a brother or sister to go to for advice or to know my aunt or cousin or whoever will always be there to drive me somewhere or look after my dog at short notice. I don’t have big family dinners on my birthday or at the holidays, I don’t have phone calls with my family or see them on the weekends for brunch or shopping or whatever families do together.

What is that like?

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Friendship Breakups

November 4, 2025

life

I remember reading somewhere that friendship breakups are so much harder than romantic breakups. And it’s so true. I still feel a little unsettled from the ending of a friendship that happened nearly 10 years ago. And I guess I’m going through it again.

Besides the huge loss of a friendship which is hard to handle just on its own, I think friendship breakups are harder because other people still in your life don’t understand it or support it in the same way as a romantic break up. There aren’t friends or family calling up after a friendship break to check in on how you’re doing or asking if you want to talk about it or watch shit telly and eat ice cream together. Friendship breakups feel lonelier, like not only do you have to go through it but you have to go through it alone.

I’ve written a bit about my best friend on this blog. She’s someone that I strongly connected with initially and just built on that connection over the last just over 10 years. We’ve been through a lot together. She held me together when I needed it, listened to me crying, laughed with me over the funny things, celebrated the wins with me.

And during that time I was there for her during breakups and a move to a different state, her marriage, the birth of her two children. I honestly thought we’d continue our friendship until we were old and grey.

But that’s not to be.

And I feel absolutely heartbroken over it. She’s fallen off the face of the world for over three months. And at first I thought it was that she was poorly, her kids were poorly, life stresses getting to be too much. But surely not for that long?

So I reached out to people in her life. Her husband, her ex boyfriend that she shares a cat with. I figured something must be wrong for her to just vanish from my life. And when one of them got back to me to say she’s fine, I spoke to her two days ago I thought … oh. It’s just me then.

And that feels like a rejection of me as a person. Of me as a friend. That kind of dismissal from me in her life makes me feel like I wasn’t important to her, that the friendship was never as strong as I thought it was.

It makes me question so many things about me, about her, about our friendship over the years. Was any of it real? Was it just me being generous with her, filling in those gaps how I wanted to see her or our relationship? I guess I’ll never know.

I wrote the above when I was still in the sadness portion of my grief. And it is grief. I’m grieving the loss of this friendship, there are still things that are happening right now and my first thought is to tell her about it. But I’m over the sadness part. Now I’m into the anger stage. And my therapist used to tell me that tapping into my anger is like tapping into the version of myself that knows I don’t deserve this pain or unfairness. My anger keeps me strong and with healthy boundaries.

And right now? My anger is saying fuck her. Fuck her and her choice to cut me out of her life. I’m a great fucking friend and it is her loss that I’m no longer part of it. I don’t want to spend anymore of my time second-guessing her decision or asking ‘what if?’ because that way lies madness. And I have no control over the thoughts and decisions of others.

All I can do from here is acknowledge the deep, deep pain I am in right now, look after myself a little more right now and throw my energy into the people and things that are worthy of my time, attention and love.

The people in my life are few but the ones I do keep around definitely mean a lot to me. I think this whole thing just goes to show that nothing is certain in life. And I’m grateful to those who do stick around.

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Shame

October 17, 2025

dating, life

Is it just me or are many things in my life fuelled by shame?!

I met a lovely man recently, we had a lovely time. The date was a walk in a local park. Partway through we did find a bench and natter away without the addition of the physical activity. But before we got to the sitting and talking we did the walking and talking.

And do you know much I was filled with shame when he was like, should we go this way or that way? And I’d choose the option that was less uphill? We did end up going up some of the hills in the bloody park and do you know what happened? I ended up feeling out of breath as I walked uphill and continued to chat.

Christ alive, that’s embarrassing. So, in the end, I felt like change was needed. The next day, which happened to be the start of a new month I decided was the day I got back into running.

I used to run quite a lot. During lockdown, I used to have a 5 day schedule for running to keep it interesting. Wednesday was my sprints day where I’d run 1 minute sprints as quickly as I could then walk. Sprint and walk. Fridays, for a bit of excitement, I’d run for longer and do a 10k. What an exciting life lockdown was for awhile, don’t you think?

But those days have been long gone. Aside from this new surge in running, I hadn’t run since things ended with my ex. I honestly felt like I just couldn’t face it. Part of that was because at the time I’d had designs to join the same running club he was part of. I thought it’d be fun to do something together. And then I thought can I even do this on my own again and enjoy it in the same way?

And that feeling led me to me being so unfit that I couldn’t even walk up a mildly steep hill without wanting to pant at the top of it. How did I get to this point in my life?

I am enjoying running again though. I’m hoping to add in some strength training so I have more definition in my body too. But I’m definitely doing this for the most part because I love that I’m setting time aside for myself. I remember telling my therapist years ago that I loved our sessions because it was a defined time in my life, in my week where I am the priority. And when I put my running shoes on I get that same sort of feeling.

I’m also hopefully getting stronger and fitter and with a better ability to chat for ages. Because good lord, once you get me going, I could talk forever.

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The Biggest ‘Why?’

September 29, 2025

life

Do you ever just learn something really monumental about yourself almost by accident?

Recently I went to a large social gathering of people at a sex club. The event itself was ‘vanilla’ in that everyone was normally clothed, there were ‘normal’ activities as ice breakers and the expectation was that there’d be no sexual activity during this thing. It was just happening in a sex club.

And I decided to go to it. I hadn’t really interrogated my own reason for wanting to go other than I don’t want to be put off going to these things because of my own fears and anxieties. I don’t love the idea of driving there, I don’t love the idea of parking there, I don’t love the idea of walking into the place on my own, I don’t love the idea of socialising with large groups of people.

And that last one was the one that I thought I was going to this event in order to ‘get better’ at. I don’t want to be intimidated by large groups of people, I don’t want to avoid them. I want to be better at socialising and meeting new people etc. Or at least that’s what I thought.

So I get to this place. I drive there just fine and as I’m driving there I think … I’m not in the least bit panicked about driving to this place. Huh. That’s interesting.

So I get there and there’s one spot left in the car park. So I reverse park into it and … I’m not in the least bit panicked about parking in this car park space. Huh. That’s interesting.

It’s like these things that I’m holding onto myself (that I have anxiety about driving new places and that I have anxiety about parking hold me back from doing things and going places) and they’re possibly not true.

So I get out of my car and I join the queue to get into this place. I meet a friend in the queue and we end up chatting to the people ahead of us in the queue and to the people behind us. I don’t have any problem engaging in conversation with either my friend or the 5-6 new people I’ve only just met.

I get into the club, I meet other people. I go up to a group of strangers (there were 5 of them?) and say to them without prompting ‘Hi, this is my first time at a social like this, can I join you?’ and it wasn’t scary. Almost like I don’t have a problem at all socialising with strangers. Or groups of people.

At some points during the evening the people that I do know or have met leave me to go to the bar or to speak to other people and I feel content to lean against the wall at the edge of the bar area. There are lots of people around me that I could have spoken to … and what I realised during the night is that I didn’t have any issues or concerns about approaching any of them. I just didn’t want to. I didn’t feel compelled to.

And it actually felt like a life-changing realisation. I was shedding so many outdated beliefs about myself that night. But the one about socialising? It felt big.

What I realised that night is that I’m not shy. I’m not reserved. I don’t have social anxiety. I can talk easily to people. I know that most people like me when they meet me. I don’t worry what other people think of me. I’m not overthinking things when I’m meeting new people.

The reason I don’t do well in large groups of people is that quite often I don’t have a big enough ‘why’ to approach other people and start conversation. There isn’t that ‘why’ that motivates me to change things enough. What I realised in the middle of this sex club is that I was quite happy to talk to the couple of people that I knew beforehand. I was happy to make the effort in socialising with others … but only when it suited me. Only when the ‘why’ to do so was greater than staying on my own.

And I fucking love my own company.

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Reasons For Writing

September 26, 2025

life

I recently had a really long think based on a conversation I was having with a friend. The think ended up being a justification almost for why I write this blog. And my response ended up covering several different reasons. I thought it was interesting enough that I’d write them out here too.

The first is that I love storytelling. I was raised by a single father with a big personality. Big everything, really. Big voice, big opinions. And one of the things that he did was that he turned everything into a story. It didn’t matter if it was a boring story about going to do the big food shop or retelling childhood stories everything was an adventure, there was something there. Something big or magical or hilarious, something. He turned everything into a good story.

And I grew up listening to his stories. Sure, I liked to read and I got hooked on the storytelling elements in books and films and songs. But my main interest in storytelling came from my dad. He knew how to spin a good yarn and at some point in my life I decided that I wanted to be a good storyteller too. Not in the same way, obviously. I don’t have the magnetic presence he did, I don’t have the skill in the same ways. But I feel like I do a good job telling a story my way.

And some of that is that I like the control in it. I like transforming an uneventful date into something entertaining by focusing on certain things, highlighting feelings, cutting out the boring middle parts. I’m choosing where the story starts and ends and where the focus is. I like making word choices, I like playing with structure, with the perspective. These are things I enjoy.

I also think that I’m on a journey here. And I write this blog almost to document the changes I’m making, to mark my own development when it comes to sex, dating, and relationships. I feel like I’m always learning and changing but when you’re so close to things it can be hard to see the changes we’re making in small increments. And I don’t want to miss those changes. I write this blog to bear witness to me growing as as a person, as a person in relation to other people. And in the hopes that I am continually aiming for where I want to go or towards who I want to be. And maybe those things change along the way too but if they do, I’d like to document those changes as well.

But the third and final reason that I write this blog is to understand myself more by writing about some of my experiences. I can sometimes struggle to understand how I’m feeling about a person, or about a situation. And I need that time to really delve into those things, to examine them a little closer.

Sometimes the act of writing about meeting someone else, sometimes the act of writing about us having sex or whatever it is means that I’m sitting in that experience a little bit longer. And I’m spinning over what’s been said, what’s been done. And it’s helping me. I’m so clueless sometimes about things and I need that little bit of extra time to consider things. Especially with something so new.

As an example, I had sex with someone a few months ago and it took me a full month before I realised I felt uncomfortable with some of the things that had happened. I’m not suggesting there was a lack of consent or that I felt unsafe, but it took me writing a post about that experience to go over it again in my head to really know in myself that I didn’t feel comfortable in what had happened. It’s like there’s something stunted in me that it takes me a little bit longer to understand or to realise.

So those are my reasons. I’d love to know your reasons for reading this blog. For spending however much or little time reading my words and what it brings you. Whatever your reasons, I’m glad you’re here with me.

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