Baby, Can I Hold You

Sad Reality of Dating

September 16, 2025

dating

I went on a date recently that really made me sad. It also made me angry, annoyed and frustrated. But I guess the core feeling was one of sadness.

We messaged for several weeks. He seemed nice enough. Conversation was easy and flowing if not hugely exciting. He sent over several pictures of him that looked like he was standing in pools of light. We agreed to go for a walk in a country park halfway between both of us and if it started to rain then we’d grab a drink in a local pub or the cafe at the country park.

When I got there there was a bit of back and forth over text about where we both were, where we were going to meet. And as soon as I saw him I knew immediately what had happened.

He’d misled me about his ethnicity. The pool of light pictures were saturated so heavily as to make him appear white passing instead of his actual ethnicity, which though I didn’t ask, is of an Indian background. His name was also anglicised to appear more English, I’d imagine.

His appearance as well was definitely misleading, he walked with the gait of an older person and he …just looked older than the 44 he’d told me he was. I only briefly sat down with him and one of the first things I brought up was the age of his children. He’d only mentioned them in his messages beforehand and I didn’t mind the brevity of that, but I was curious as to how he’d react to a direct question face to face. He paused very considerably before (I believe) telling the truth about their ages. He’d said in messages that he ‘was very young when he had them, younger than is now typical’ – and I now knew why this bizarre reasoning for why his children are older than is typical of a man whose age he lied about.

In some ways I get it. Indian men are discriminated against on dating apps and websites. Older men are perhaps not getting the number of swipes they’d like. Personally, I’m open to all ethnicities and my age range goes up to mid-50s on dating apps.

But what I cannot tolerate, and what I did not tolerate in this date, is any sort of deceptive behaviour. I’m not going to be the person who is all, oh so you lied about your age and ethnicity to show that you’re still desirable and interesting and attractive despite those things, cool. No. You lied to me to get me here but that isn’t to say I will stay.

And I didn’t.

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The Little Things

September 15, 2025

relationships

One of the problems with being friends with your ex like I am is that often we go periods of time without messaging each other (like we’re currently in) but even when we do catch up we tend to talk about the big things. Work, relationships, family. Big upcoming events like holidays or the adoption of a dog.

We tend to skip over the little things that friends share with each other. My ex has always been that person that I would save up interesting things to share with him. I remember when things ended nearly two years ago one of the things we talked about is both of us separately had created a list of the things that had happened to us recently that we would have talked about with each other but felt like we couldn’t because of the complicated state of our relationship, being exes.

Just for the fun of it, I created a list recently of things that I probably would have shared with him recently but haven’t. Not necessarily because these types of conversations are ‘off limits’ but more because we’re just not messaging lately for whatever reason.

I’m obsessed with a new podcast that I’ve been listening to. I’ve created a whole new schedule around this podcast for days I’m at work getting my food ready so that I can listen to a podcast across my lunch break. I listened to a podcast the other day about Ludwig van Beethoven and I was so fascinated by what I’d learned that I’d listened to a Beethoven playlist all the way through making and eating dinner that night. And also, I have a renewed interest in visiting Vienna.

I absolutely love watching videos of this joyous young woman who makes clothes out of old bedlinen. The bedlinen usually has some great design on it like Disney or Sesame Street that I think I’d have had something like that as a child. And I love what she does with her designs, really celebrating the characters or patterns that she’s been given. It’s such a fun project to watch and I start to feel like I really want to do something else to be creative like she is.

I’ve loved watching The Summer I Turned Pretty lately. The release schedule initially stressed me out with one episode a week but now I kind of love it. I can never remember if the new episode is available on Thursdays or Fridays but once it gets towards the end of the week I think Yes! one more thing to be excited about. I’m going to be bereft when this season is over and it concludes Belly’s story.

I went to Paris in August and because I was only there for a few days I figured my souvenirs had to match my length of stay. I got some postcards (that I use as bookmarks) and a magnet of the Moulin Rouge that I’ve left on my desk. But the souvenirs that make me the happiest is a pen I bought in the shape of a Parisian baguette and a pen that I bought at the Catacombs of Paris that is shaped like bones. I tell you, every time I use my bone pen I have a little smile on my face.

Even though I’ve been scared to start this new course (two years in length and the equivalent of a Masters degree) I did make some cute back to school purchases including a brown handbag big enough to fit my laptop in, a laptop case that’s this bold forest green and I bought a bright red cardigan that I plan on wearing to one of my tutorials. I kind of love combatting my trepidation for starting this big new thing with some colour.

I heard a story at work from a particular colleague that I absolutely adore. We were talking about some of the people we work with and my friend told a story about one of her friends. She said as a high flying woman in a profession not known for having senior women staff, she sometimes tries to disarm rather arrogant or condescending men at meetings by when she’s shaking their hands she’ll just casually let her gaze rise and settle just for a moment on the man’s hairline.

I was sitting at my desk with the window open the other day and this beautiful little bird kept flying near the open window. I was briefly concerned that he was going to accidentally fly in (I have a slight phobia of tiny birds – it’s a long story) but once I realised that it wasn’t going to fly into my window, I started appreciating its colours. I decided that I didn’t know a thing about garden birds in the UK so I spent a good hour online looking at pictures and reading up about common garden birds and how to attract them. It was interesting (and the bird was a great tit).

My across the street neighbour is super reliant on me to look after their house because one (1) time actual years ago I called 999 when I saw that someone was trying to break into their house. They were very grateful and since then I’ve been plagued by texts from them. (I still ride high on the time they texted to say they were currently in London visiting friends but that he’d read on the local Facebook group that teenagers were in the area drawing obscene things onto cars – could I go over and check if boys had drawn a cock and balls in the dirt on his Merc???) But this time he’d messaged me to say he’d had a strange visitor at his door asking if his car was for sale. My neighbour grew quickly paranoid that this person was going to steal his car (???) and wanted me to provide updates that his car was still there as he was on holiday in Turkey. He sent over the times and dates that the man drove by his house, parked his car, knocked on his door, the video from his Ring doorbell as he answered ‘no’ the car isn’t for sale and the man thanking him and leaving and also the time he got into his car and which direction the car drove. I still don’t know what he wanted me to do with this information.

I’ve also realised that … I probably don’t have anyone currently that I’m telling these things to. And I definitely find that sad. How come nobody is in the market for a new best friend?

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Storytime

September 12, 2025

sex

They had talked beforehand about him coming over to give her a hug. She was quite happy with this plan as often she just missed seeing him, being near him and the idea of a hug sounded quite nice to her.

But as it happened, because she had the house to herself, she pulled out some pieces of lingerie to try on and take pictures. Some sets she had worn before and others that she hadn’t. He liked to find out how she got on with the lingerie and it aroused her to know that he was seeing her in scraps of fabric, it aroused her to know that he liked what he saw in her pictures. She’d been taking to sending him more risque pictures, pictures she wouldn’t normally show to others. Of her naked breasts, or of between her legs that she would normally have covered demurely with her hand.

That day, she’d sent him a video of her pulling down the fabric covering her boobs, of her holding her naked boobs before finally pulling on each of her nipples releasing them one at a time. She was thinking of him as she filmed it, of him pulling at her nipples, of him touching her, of him watching her.

After the video, she had already told him that she planned to masturbate. She was charging a toy that she used only rarely, a rose toy that simulated sucking her clit that she enjoyed only at the highest, most intense setting. She’d also recently found under the bed restraints she’d forgot she had and had little opportunity to use and she’d liked using them during her masturbation sessions when she could, giving it that little bit of additional edge. She had already set up just the bottom half of the bed, intending to restrain her legs in a wide open V.

He’d sent a message asking how the charging of her rose toy was going. She’d responded to say it was giving a solid light and that everything was good to go. She had told him before that trying on lingerie and taking pictures excited her.

She mentioned the leg restraints and he shocked her by what he said next.

Best leave the front door unlocked for me to come in, he said.

Her breath slightly erratic, she responded with something non-committal to find out if he meant it. She liked it then when he’d asked her if what he had said was okay instead of using his command voice. By asking her it meant she could decide if this was something she was comfortable with as they hadn’t discussed anything like it before. He followed it up by asking again and she was reminded by how safe she felt with him.

She had no concerns, as soon as she’d read his message her heartrate had spiked in excitement. She knew that if he meant what he’d suggested that she’d fly down her stairs and unlock her front door straightaway.

Do you want to feel what it’s like to know or not know if I am going to walk in? he’d asked. She thought again about how sexy she finds him, that she loves that he can ask her this question.

And it does elevate things for her as she’s lying in the middle of her bed, naked, spread open with her rose toy pulsing on her clit. She’s had to adjust her legs so that her knees bending and her legs open pull at the restraints but not in an uncomfortable way. She likes the feel of them firm on her ankles holding her in position but that it also gives her some room for movement.

She becomes more aware of the sounds in her house, of her dog barking at passersby at the front of her house and she repeatedly wonders if one of those people are him. She decides she can’t stop every time she wonders ‘is that him?’ and instead she tries to focus on her own pleasure. She moves the rose toy so that all the suction is coming from one side of her clit instead of full on and she changes the setting so that it pulses and pulses and pulses and then stops and in each of the stops her breath catches and soon, she can feel the crest of an orgasm. But it is just out of reach.

She is needy and full of want but she knows she won’t be able to get to orgasm on her own. Not without a helping pair of hands and she thinks about him again. She pulls at her leg restraints, she arches her back thinking desperately if she can just get in the right position, if she could use her toy at just the right angle surely she must be able to tip her over the edge. Surely.

As the minutes go by she starts to panic that he might not show up. She thinks briefly that she will definitely cry if that’s the case but she decides that she’s still feeling too tightly strung to worry about it too much just now. She wants to sink into the feeling of pleasure again, the anticipation of it, the thrill of wondering when he’ll come. He will come, she’s decided.

She focuses on that thought as she pulls against her leg restraints and adjusts her rose toy. She’s hit on just the right spot that if she could just have something more, something just out of reach that she could probably get there. And that’s when she hears the telltale creak of the floorboards at the top of her stairs. And as much as she’s convinced herself he was definitely coming, she realises she also feels surprised and relieved hearing that sound.

When he pushes open her bedroom door and she sees him, she almost immediately has to close her eyes because the moment he arrived it feels like everything has changed with her body. Maybe it’s the anticipation of knowing that with him there she will have an orgasm, maybe it’s the excitement of knowing that her pleasure will be his focus, maybe it’s just because it’s so nice to see him but there’s an electric current running through her body.

Had she ever told him that having someone watch her masturbate is one of her favourite thoughts? Just having him standing in her bedroom this close to her as she’s naked on the bed, seeing her held open by the leg restraints, hearing her breathing all over the place brings her to the brink of coming. She forces her eyes to open to look at him, but her gaze is one of arousal, of need. She tries to say without words that she needs him here, closer, she needs that broken apart feeling of an orgasm ripping through her. But she has no words.

He leans over and first gives her an amazing kiss. It is exactly what she wants. Kissing is her favourite and he is a great kisser. Next, he leans over and he sucks one nipple into his mouth and then the other. She is so aroused by this point that he barely brushes his fingers along her clit before her first orgasm hits. At some point she has let go of the rose toy but he picks it up again and places it over her clit as he slides his fingers into her and she is lost. Waves of pleasure crash against her especially as he kisses her again.

It’s moments later when her breathing returns to normal and she opens her eyes. He looks at her and smiles, says hello. She feels reset from her orgasms, and she feels so much gratitude towards him. For being here, for giving her pleasure. She almost tells him this but he’s distracted by her naked body, her nipples, the sight of her and as he starts touching her again another round of orgasms comes rushing in and she marvels again at how responsive her body is to his attention, to his hands.

If it’s all right with you, I’m going to fuck you now, he says.

She’s almost too shy to watch him as he undresses and later she thinks how silly that is. Once he’s undressed and put a condom on, he positions himself between her legs. But the leg restraints means she can’t spread her legs any more and she wants to. She tries to scoot further down the bed but it isn’t working so he helps her to undo the leg restraints. He’d made a comment about why only the leg restraints were being used she said she needed her hands to use her toy.

But when the leg restraints are off and he’s inside her he says now that I’m here I can do this as he holds her arms above her head pressing her arms into the mattress restraining her in a way that felt so much better than the velcro straps. More so is the way that he looks at her as he’s fucking her. Him looking at her feels so intense, there’s so much vulnerability in it but she can’t close her eyes to him.

Everything after that is a blur.

She remembers the way before he leans over and swipes his tongue along the length of her and the gasping noise she makes when he does.

She remembers the way he leans over and kisses her leg. The look on his face as he sucks fingers into his mouth and uses his wet fingers to rub her clit as holds himself inside her, not moving until she’s had another orgasm.

She remembers holding him close to her, wanting him to press himself against her or to press herself against him, moaning as she comes, the noise of it straight into his ear. She knows he likes to hear her pleasure noises just as she likes to hear his groan of pleasure at the sound of her falling apart. She’s greedy for his kisses.

He asks her at one point, what do you want? and she struggles with an answer and he asks her again, go on, tell me what you want. In the end she says, I just want to feel good and she pauses before adding that she does feel good, that he feels good. And he murmurs some sort of praise about her that she doesn’t quite hear.

She remembers the way it thrills her when he says I’m coming and watching his face as it relaxes into pleasure, the way his eyes actually roll back as he comes. He looks so beautiful in that moment and she feels such warmth towards him.

When he’s recovered he asks her if she’s okay and she responds I’m very well, thank you in a very polite tone that she doesn’t mean but she can’t help herself from being awkward but he smiles at her anyway. She does something she’s always wanted to do and she touches his face in a gentle way. She’ll be embarrassed by this act almost immediately.

And almost to try to erase her prim answer to his question and the way she looked at him so tenderly just then she throws words between them without much thought.

He is still inside her when she’s asks him then do you know what I regret? and later she will kick herself at this wildly inappropriate question and timing. But he seems amused by this question and asks her what do you regret? She says not turning the fan on before I put on the leg restraints, it’s very warm. And they both get up and do some basic clean up before collapsing on the bed again.

He teases her after that as he settled onto the bed next to her and she pushes herself against him. They talk about the length of his hair and about cars and about her dog and she loves this part. She loves all the parts with him but especially this one, naked and spent, relaxation seeping into her bones and talking together before all the worry and insecurity will come rushing back to her when he leaves. She won’t think about that in that moment though, she’ll just like being next to him, being able to touch him, to see his pretty eyes and the way his lips quirk into a smile.

Later, as they’ve gotten dressed, she’ll remind him that that wasn’t just a hug as promised. I’m not complaining, she says. Just an observation. But as soon as she says it she thinks she really does want a hug. She almost doesn’t bring it up but decides to ask him anyway. She won’t know when she’ll next have a hug if she doesn’t ask. And without hesitation he opens his arms for her.

He’s so tall, she always forgets that. And it feels so warm and safe in that hug, especially the way he holds her tight and he doesn’t let go. Later she’ll cry thinking how great that hug is.

And after he’s left, she’ll pick up her phone to tell him about all the big feelings she’s had about seeing him again, about him coming over, about the sex and the almost risky nature of it. She’ll think about touching his face and about that hug. She tries to think of how to put her feelings into words, how to convey how she’s feeling to him. But it’s too hard and she can’t find the words so instead she types out a different message to him.

Thank you for coming over

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Anchors

September 11, 2025

life, relationships

I’ve been feeling really unsettled lately. And it seemed to be a general feeling of ickiness rather than a situational one. I can usually tell when things are off if stuff at home is going on or work is particularly crap. But this feeling lately didn’t seem to be connected to the usual suspects.

I had to really sit in my feelings for awhile to work out that on the whole I feel really … full of emotion. I can feel quite anxious, I can feel quite insecure. I can feel generally like I’m spinning out of control quite often.

And I’ve found over the years that one thing that helps me is having what I call emotional anchors. I did google the term earlier and the internet says the term refers to something else then how I’m using it but I’m going to stick with it anyway. The way I’m using it, I mean that there are certain things in my life that remain steady, constant, familiar, safe.

Work does that. Routine of life. Going to book club every second Monday of the month. That sort of thing.

But for me, I also find that there are friendships and relationships that steady me as well. My best friend in Australia is a big one for me. There’s something in that decade long friendship where I feel safe and accepted. Celebrated. There isn’t anything I can say to her where she’d judge me or think differently of me. Hers is a friendship where we’ve built an incredible trust between us. An unconditional appreciation for each other.

I started also wondering if there were other anchors other than her. And there are. My ex. We haven’t messaged much recently but even without regular contact I know that if I needed him he’d be there for me in whatever capacity he could be. Even if we aren’t in each other’s pockets as much now as when we were together, I still feel secure in that relationship. He’s important to me and I know that feeling is reciprocated.

My on/off person is an anchor too. It came as a bit of a surprise because I’d consider anchors to be consistent, reliable. But when I thought about it, he’s one for me. And it’s less about good communication and more about the way he makes me feel. The space we’ve created together but in the way I feel, more about the space he’s created for me to be able to bring up things that I worry about, or are unsure of. I tell him things that I don’t tell other people and he’s given me the freedom to share with him deeply personal things. And he’s always made me feel safe in that way. Emotionally as well physically.

But I’ve been feeling unsettled lately. Because I haven’t heard from my best friend in awhile, things were on the rocks with my on/off person and my ex and I, as I mentioned, don’t message as often as we used to.

I feel like it can be hard for me to have my emotional support be reliant on other people with busy lives and families and work. And so I’m trying to shift things more to what is in my control. But also accept that I need other people in my life. Maybe even more than just the three anchors that I have.

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On Queer Cinema

September 10, 2025

life

I went to the cinema twice last week. Both times I went based on the strength of the two main actresses and had no clue about the plot of either film.

The first film was On Swift Horses that looked like a rom-com starring Daisy Edgar-Jones (the reason I went to see it), Will Poulter, and Jacob Elordi. It ended up being a frankly quite sad film about two main queer characters during 1950s America where they have no rights. It was a story about risk and used gambling, whether that was on dog races or poker, as a metaphor for living your life as an out and proud gay person when public opinion and (crucially) the law isn’t on your side.

I’m not sure it quite hit the emotional highs that it wanted to hit but I was very pleasantly surprised to watch Daisy Edgar-Jones take part in several liaisons with other women during her marriage to sweet Will Poulter and also to see Jacob Elordi’s passionate love affair with the character of Henry.

The second film I impulsively watched at the cinema was Honey Don’t, a film by Ethan Coen and (I believe) his wife, Tricia Cooke about Margaret Qualley as a private investigator looking into the events around the death of a potential client. I absolutely was not expecting that Margaret Qualley is a badass lesbian in this film who turns down a man by telling him ‘I like girls’ over and over (and also has sex with Aubrey Plaza!).

I felt like Honey Don’t was a bit all over the place in terms of the storyline with plot threads left open and unresolved, it was a bit of a mess just in general. But with both films it just felt incredibly refreshing for that representation to be there. I left the cinema both times thinking … I want and need more queer friends in my life. I want to be more involved in this community. I want to feel like I belong in these spaces.

And I guess it just reminds me that we deserve to be represented in films, our stories deserve to be told. Whether that’s irreverent or poignant. We need all the stories.

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Blurred Boundaries

September 9, 2025

dating, relationships, sex

I’ve written in the past on the blog about certain doors closing. I wrote one about the end of a friendship, I wrote one about the end of my thing with my on/off person.

And now I’m friends with that person again and I saw my on/off person over the weekend.

And I think maybe I’ve struggled with this recently. I’ve been beating myself up about setting a boundary and trying to be comfortable and accepting of the reason for that closed door.

I’ve been thinking – am I being too soft? Am I allowing others to blur the boundaries that I have created? And I realised that it isn’t them at all. They are not blurring anything. It’s me.

Hi, I’m the problem, it’s me.

But in both cases, I don’t actually think I am the problem. Is this thinking the problem? I’m not sure. But when I said about ending the friendship with my friend, it was because something was hurting me. And I needed that emotional distance from him. I was saying in that moment, I cannot have you in my life for right now. I’m in pain and you are making things worse.

And it was the same with my on/off person. I had expectations that were not being met at the time. So I ‘ended’ it.

In the first situation, there was silence between us for several weeks. We do share an online space and we have (and will continue to) interact with each other in that online space. I felt that I needed that silence between us in order for the pain to go away, for my expectations to be reset. And I feel okay now that moving forward there will be less hurt or pain in our friendship. And I’m okay with that.

I think I’ve always been okay with giving other people more chances. I think you can see in some of my blog posts that I’ve struggled with making good choices regarding boundaries and respect.

And I think that’s the difference in these two situations. My on/off person doesn’t consistently communicate with me like I’d like and sometimes he disappoints me in other ways. But when we talk about things, he isn’t disrespectful of me or of my time. He and I went a total of four days without messaging before I caved and decided I wanted a different type of thing moving forward.

I want what I have with him. And maybe another time in the future I’ll end things again and it’ll be less of an ‘ending’ and more of a solidly closed door. But for right now? It isn’t.

Welcome to the rollercoaster of my existence. I do still feel like I’m getting somewhere and things are improving. I think I need to be kinder to myself about how blurred certain boundaries and I feel like I should trust myself a little more when I make decisions. It’s a work in progress.

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Late Night Chats

September 8, 2025

dating

I wouldn’t consider myself a very impulsive person. I don’t think I’m against spontaneity, I just don’t think that that is my natural state. I don’t often indulge in last minute or spur of the moment things. But sometimes I do.

I was talking with this man online for awhile. Over messaging he was flirty, interesting. But also very willing and eager to get to know me as person. He was asking questions, he wanted to have actual back and forth conversations!

I think we were on the brink of meeting up earlier than we did but something came up that he couldn’t avoid. So that put us off for another few weeks. When things started to settle down from his life thing, we agreed to meet up again but childcare meant a cancellation and there were times where availability didn’t align. I almost just called it all off thinking if this is how it’s starting…

But on an impulse, one evening he said he was free at around 9pm if I wanted to meet him at a trendy cafe that sells some kind of hipster beer. I wouldn’t normally go out so late (I have such grandma-like tendencies!) but I was curious enough about him that I said yes. I just got in my car and drove.

I love it when I’m able to do that. Not worry about how to get to a place I’ve never been, I’m not worrying about where I’ll park. But as soon as I got there I did very embarrassingly have to reverse park into a space with my date watching. Talk about full-on romance from the get go!

The rest of the date went well enough. Conversation was interesting and varied and just really, really easy. I hadn’t realised until I got up to leave (they were kicking us out) how incredibly late it was. It felt nice to be doing something a bit different and I could imagine that if I’d said it was too late from the start that I’d have stayed at home, been up just as late and spent it faffing about online doing very little of interest.

It’s a good reminder for me. Don’t get stuck in your ways.

In the end, there was some sort of communication mishap on his side and after our date we went from messaging a lot through each day into no messaging at all. But that isn’t the point! I’m glad I said ‘yes’ and had some late night in person chats.

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Am I ENM?

August 28, 2025

dating, relationships, sex

For awhile, when I was with my ex I did describe myself to friends as being ethically non monogamous. When he and I first got together it was only meant to be casual, I don’t think either one of us expected how feelings would emerge, that a relationship would begin.

Having said that, we both wanted to have more experiences with other people and neither one of us was exclusive to each other. It felt like it made sense to me.

Even when it felt like he was my ‘primary’ partner, I still wanted to continue things with others. During our relationship he too saw and had sex with others. We were open and honest with each other and it mostly worked okay.

Eventually I realised that even though he and I dabbled in meeting others together, I don’t think my heart was ever really in it. Towards the end of our relationship I felt like I was done exploring and experimenting with others and he was all I needed or wanted. I wasn’t intending to close our relationship but moreso that I wasn’t interested in making use of how open it was.

When things ended I wasn’t sure if ENM was a label that I needed anymore. Is that what I want/need? Or was that just the circumstances that I was in previously?

In moving on after the end of that relationship I met several people who described themselves as poly. And through conversations with those people I thought I wonder if I’m poly? I considered myself to still be in love with my ex, I had my on/off person that I’d quickly had feelings for. And I wondered if I was solo poly? If that were the right fit for me. I am capable of having multiple relationships where strong feelings are involved (even if things romantically and sexually ended with my ex).

But …would monogamy ever be something I’d be interested in? Or has ethically non monogamous and poly situations just been the right circumstances for me at those times?

These are the questions I’m struggling with. I really don’t know.

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Porn Watching Habits

August 27, 2025

sex

I never used to watch porn.

That’s not quite true. I used to do this thing quite often. Where I’d open a porn website and I’d scroll through the different videos and look at either the thumbnails for a certain look or style or more often I’d look at the titles of the porn videos. And I’d use either the thumbnail visual or the title as inspiration for coming up with my own storyline of what would happen, what it would look like, what it would sound like.

Sometimes if that didn’t work, I would click on the videos. But I’d stop them the instant one of my icks came into it. Bad acting, bad accents, bad visuals. For a long time I’d never finish a video. It was too much to sit through how bad it all was. And those things made it all deeply unsexy viewing.

I figured my imagination was always better.

But these days my porn watching habits have changed. I can’t tell if it’s because I’m relying on it more than I used to (when I could achieve orgasm on my own I had almost no need for porn other than for novelty!) or if it’s because I’m exploring my sexuality more.

Sometimes I watch porn and I only want to see women’s bodies. I want to see everything between two (or more) women. And that scratches an itch.

Sometimes I watch porn and I only want to listen to things. The slap of bodies together, the sound of breathing, of pleasure noises, of body parts coming in and out of another person. Orgasms if they sound natural. And that scratches an itch.

Lately though, things have changed.

Lately I’ve been watching porn and I watch it to explore aspects of sex that I am craving. I don’t necessarily want to do the things I’m seeing in these videos. But I like the idea of exploring the sex that I don’t have. That I can’t have because of how my sexuality works. And I find that exploring parts of sex that I’d closed off feels exciting and new. It feels liberating. And I’m enjoying that.

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Destruction Of My Heart

August 26, 2025

relationships

I’ve written quite a lot about my ex. The conversation we had on a dating app, the day we first met. The highs of our relationship. But I feel like it’s been building to this post. Because I think this blog feels a bit like therapy sometimes. I write about certain experiences almost as a way of processing it. And I had to write about the good, it felt like the majority of our relationship was good.

Until it ended.

The ending came out of nowhere. There I was daydreaming about dancing together at our wedding, I was dancing in the kitchen thinking about him, about us together. Seeing him walk towards me while we went for lunchtime walks put a massive smile on my face, I’d walk like I was skipping next to him, so happy was I in what we had.

And then just like that it was over. I had no control over it, there was nothing I could do to stop it, to change his mind. It was just gone.

It’s hard for me to remember the dark days after that.

There was a lot of crying. There was a lot of laying in bed near comatose. I couldn’t listen to music because every song about love or heartbreak or even music with a certain tone set me off. I found it hard to eat, I couldn’t follow conversations very well because it felt like the rest of the world existed on the other side of thick glass and I couldn’t see or hear other people that well. I was off kilter just that little bit.

I’d try to tell myself I needed to do certain things, walk the dog or cook dinner. But sometimes even doing the simplest tasks would mean I’d just start crying. It was okay when I was on my own, the tears would fall silently and if that progressed to light sobbing or even full on wailing nobody would be there to hear me.

But I couldn’t control when the sobbing started. The first time it happened in front of someone else was the day after he ended things. I was in the kitchen trying to warm up something for my lunch. And I felt like all of a sudden I just didn’t have the energy to stand anymore and I just slumped over onto the kitchen floor and there leaning against my kitchen cabinets, my hair a mess, still in my pyjamas with salty tears streaming down my face I told my ex husband.

He knew I’d been seeing someone, knew that I felt it was serious but we’d never had much of a conversation about it. Until that day. I remember he looked up from his desk with real confusion on his face. It had come out of nowhere for him too. He wasn’t expecting to wake up that day and deal with this, deal with me. And he was kind about it. Kinder than he ought to have been perhaps. I told him that things had ended and that I was sad, I might be crying more often than normal, that it would be harder for me to do things.

And he let me talk. And cry. He gave me a hug (which was the first time we’d touched each other in forever) and something in being held in that moment unleashed some of the biggest, ugliest sobs I’ve ever done in my life. And that’s how it went for awhile. Me crawling through my days, through the fragments of my life that I could still manage. All I wanted was the comfort of my bed, the comfort of my dog’s cuddles.

I think I wanted oblivion in those first days and weeks. It felt easier, simpler to just not exist whenever I could. To choose emptiness rather than to fill myself with the pain and agony. But I didn’t always have a choice. Some days it felt like my chest had cracked itself open and I didn’t know how to hold myself together. Some days it didn’t feel real. Some days I woke up and I’d forgotten that we’d broken up and I had to relive the memory all over again. Have my heart broken again in those moments as I remembered what had happened.

Some days I’d be angry. At him mostly. At myself. At the world for being unfair. Some days it made me feel better to hate him. It made me feel better to think he was a terrible person, that he’s a coward, that he played with my heart and with my emotions so casually. I’d think back on things he’d said or things he’d written in messages but I’d look at them only from a perspective of him being the bad guy, of doing the wrong things, of being hypocritical or disingenuous or insincere. And some days having that jagged edge around my feelings towards him made me feel better. But it sometimes made me feel worse too.

I’d think …what if things changed, what if we could go back. What if I changed, what can I do to make things different, to make them better. What can I do if it meant that he’d come back. The what ifs nearly killed me because any kind of hope when combined with him also kills me. For my own sanity, this was one of the first boundaries I put on my heart. Stop it with the hope already. It no longer exists.

My ex husband would check in with me on occasion. He didn’t do it often because I think he could see on my face how unwilling I was to talk about things. I also felt ashamed. I hated that the person I’d most hurt in the world was forced to watch me go through such a painful thing, the heartbreak of losing someone else. That he had to watch me come back from the total destruction of my heart.

He asked me once in one of those check-ins ‘Would you even want him back?’ and from the tone of his voice I knew that he meant would you even want him back after he didn’t choose you, after he did this to you? And I remember I’d say ‘yes’ when he asked back then. But I look back on it now and I realise that my answer would have to be ‘no’

I’d loved so big. And then I was crushed by it.

And I think I’m forever changed by it. I’m no longer the person that can love that big. That can trust someone so completely with my heart. I’m no longer the person that would allow someone back after they took a bulldozer to my heart, whatever their reasons or justifications for it were.

I want love again and I want intimacy and closeness and an approximation of things I had with my ex. And maybe some day I’ll want something as big. Some day I’ll feel capable of those big emotions.

But that’s not today.

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