Baby, Can I Hold You

What Love Is

August 21, 2025

dating, relationships

I saw this post on Instagram today about a woman whose dad sent her news about her favourite music artist, her sister ordered her food at a restaurant and remembered to ask for it without a topping she doesn’t like and the woman ends her post to say that love is just being seen.

And I cried when I read it. It feels so true.

I feel like in every single significant relationship I’ve ever had whether that’s family, friends, romantic or sexual that I’m always overlooked. I don’t feel seen.

I feel like at a very basic level that’s all I really want.

It’s such a small thing but it feels so important.

I want to find someone that sees me enough to know that I don’t like blueberry muffins, or that I’d choose anything else over chicken in my burrito. Or that remembers that it was me that sent that link about that interesting thing or it was me that recommended that book to you.

I want to find someone that values me enough to know things about me. That is curious enough to find out things about me. Where if I give him the link to this blog he’s intrigued enough about my writing that he reads it whether or not I’ve written about him. Just for that glimpse into the way I write or think or feel.

Is it too much to ask to be seen by others? To be important enough that they pay attention?

No comments on What Love Is
Hot Day, Hot Sex

August 20, 2025

sex

I met him on the hottest day of the year so far in a hotel off the motorway. The hotel had no AC and we both ended up a sweaty mess by the end of it. Thank god he thought ahead and brought bottles of water. There was just one small desk fan pushing around the hot air in the room.

It had been so long since I’d had sex or had an orgasm that it became overwhelming, the feeling of coming over and over again were so intense. I’ve never had to take a break mid-sex before but that time? with him? I did.

It was one orgasm on top of another. With his mouth or his hands. And there was let up but the frequency of them was just hard to recover from so I stopped him, asked him for a minute. And he was lovely. He gave me water, and let me cuddle into the side of him while I caught my breath. Even though it was ten million degrees and sharing our body heat was probably too much. And he rubbed my back and when I could, we talked a bit.

I think I felt really warmly towards him for how patient he was with me when I first met him (nearly had a panic attack driving to the hotel) and how kind he was about everything. And so I stopped us again during quite a heavy make out session that I wanted something else in my mouth and I loved the way he smiled and said we could make that happen.

It’s crazy how days like that one made me realise how little I care about certain things. He warned me beforehand that he has a tendency towards sweatiness. And there was plenty of sweat. At one point he was over me and a drop of sweat rolled off his face and landed on mine. And apart from the surprise of not expecting it, I didn’t really care.

Afterwards, I felt so physically spent but still needed the closeness of skin against skin contact and we talked about it. That I guess it’s just not something that concerns me. I was much more focused on all the pleasure I was having.

No comments on Hot Day, Hot Sex
Martyr Points

August 19, 2025

dating, relationships

Someone asked recently if I’m the type of person who gives second chances? And my honest answer is that I’m the type of person that would also give third and fourth chances. In fact, when I look back at relationships with others over my entire life I feel like I’ve given million of chances to all sorts of people.

Family. Friends. Colleagues. People who are happy to take advantage of my generous nature. But also people in romantic or sexual circumstances. People who have let me down, people who have disappointed me, people who have said mean things to me, people who have treated me badly. But somehow at some point I feel like I’ve made it part of my personality that I’m a soft touch with others.

I remember that I had this roller coaster of a relationship with a very frustrating man online for awhile. He’d ghost me in the middle of a conversation, disappear for months. I once seriously searched online to see if he’d died to excuse his absence. He put me through the worry of thinking he was dead and I still took the man back when he came crawling back. I even wrote him this dramatic message all ‘I feel like my lot in life is to always love you and for things to never work out’ like … I was thinking it was romantic? That this guy was someone when really he was just one of many scumbags that litter the dating field with their bullshit.

So, whatever. I’m exhausted with collecting martyr points. There’s no award or reward for the number of times people steamroll over my wants, needs, or boundaries.

I’m no longer the type of person giving out those third or fourth chances. Get it right the first time. Do not fumble me, I’m worth more than that.

No comments on Martyr Points
Modern Dating

August 18, 2025

dating

I watched The Materialists yesterday. I hadn’t really known what it was about, just that I’d seen Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans and Pedro Pascal in some of the press tour for it. It looked a bit like a romcom and I like those so I thought I’d give it a try without watching the trailer.

I hadn’t realised it was Celine Song’s follow up after Past Lives.

And I guess I’m not really sure about how I felt about it after I finished it. It was okay? Pedro Pascal is ridiculously charming. It felt obscene to watch wealthy people dating and discussing the casual way money is brought up with no real understanding that most normal people are broke because of the cost of living and how the world is on fire? So it was hard to relate to some of it where people are like, I couldn’t possibly consider someone who doesn’t make 350,000 a year. In what world is that even realistic?

But other parts of the film? Yeah, I could get behind some of it. In particular when a white woman has a shifty look on her face when she says she is open to all ethnicities … but preferably start with white people. And I’m glad Dakota Johnson is in her cynical part of the storyline so that she could say ‘are you actually saying to me ‘whites only’ right now?’ because I’ve had to say to (white) people that I’ve matched with that I’m not white before. Especially if in the past it was just for a hook up.

I’ve had people tell me I was ‘too dark’ for their preferences. I’ve had people try to ‘collect’ my ethnicity before. I’ve had one person who was interested in me until he found out that I’m mixed race and then changed his mind. But no offence. It’s just his preference. I get people asking if I’m into interracial. ‘Into it’ – like I have a choice. Like, it’s a luxury item that you can pick up or put down depending on the mood you’re in. It’s gross. And I hate how racism plays into dating.

No comments on Modern Dating
First Love

August 15, 2025

dating, relationships

I started life online at a really young age. I was 14 the first time I joined my first chat room. And through that first chatroom I had my first chance at really expressing myself. With strangers, usually across the world from me. But once I had that opportunity I felt fairly addicted to it. I wanted more of it.

But nobody wanted to talk to a silly 14 year old girl. So at first I lied about my age. I went by a different name. I made up things about myself to appeal to a wider audience and …made friends. Friends that didn’t really know who I was as a person, sure. But they knew enough. Eventually time passed and I became a silly 16 year old girl trying to make connections.

The chatroom that I liked the best was fairly quiet, not very well populated. Which just gave me more opportunity to get to know the people who did log in. And some of the people who logged in were three mates, young university students who were also roommates.

I had crushes on all three of them, one after another. One was dark and broody and mysterious. He talked to me about gloomy music and philosophy that I didn’t understand. He was the first to get a life at university and stop logging in. I remember feeling bereft at the loss of his company and I started chatting to one of his roommates to get updates on his life away from the chatroom.

This roommate was a lot more fun and interesting than I had realised in how focused I was on his friend. This roommate made me laugh. He helped me with my economics homework, he’d ask me questions like ‘what’s the most romantic song you’ve ever heard?’ and shared his website he was working on which seemed to take the piss out of himself and all of his friends. He included me on it and I remember being flattered.

But it was the third roommate that I absolutely fell for. To this day, I can’t even tell you what it was about him that was so appealing. I only ever saw one picture of him, dressed up in cosplay for some geeky thing he was into. It wasn’t his physical appearance that I was drawn to. Perhaps his charm? The way he made me feel like I was the only person in the world and all his attention was on me? The way he’d ask questions and actually listen to my answers?

We used to chat on the phone. Him, the fun roommate and I. Sometimes just him and I. And I loved the sound of his voice. I loved the sound of his laugh. But he mostly let me talk.

Once, I got into a bit of trouble and he (bafflingly) sent me £20 in the post to help me out. I don’t remember what the bit of trouble was or if 20 quid really helped or not but he did it. He was like my actual knight in shining armour.

And I was smitten. So smitten. I used to daydream about him. I’d write him emails and never send them. I used to hint to him in conversation about my feelings for him. He was never patronising with it, he never made me feel like I was a silly little girl. It was like he knew how I felt and probably liked the attention but he didn’t exploit it, he didn’t make me feel bad for it. He also never encouraged me with any of it.

Apparently, his charm and single-minded focus were also skills he had outside of chatrooms and he was quite popular with the ladies. And that little nugget of information absolutely crushed my poor heart. Every time I heard about him out with another girl it felt like he was tearing strips away at my heart. And through it all, he’d be the one person in my life who was still asking me questions, still listening to my answers. Still being (what felt like at the time) my one true friend.

Eventually I ended up on my first date which led to my first boyfriend. And I ended up less and less in that chatroom. I still kept in touch though. I added the second roommate as a friend on social media years later and he got me in contact with my first love.

And I told him I was married with a family. And he told me he was engaged and with a baby on the way. Even though the news still brought a little pang to my heart, I was genuinely thrilled for him.

I asked him if he wanted me to send him that £20 back and he said ‘nah, you keep it’ My birthday was coming up and he said it was an early birthday gift for me. I think he mostly just didn’t want this crazy obsessed fangirl knowing where he lived, but I like to think he was just being kind just as he always was. My crush? It lives on.

No comments on First Love
The Highlights Reel

August 14, 2025

relationships

The time we first went for a walk together and I thought your arms would be too long for me to hold your hand, so instead of trying, I hooked my arm around your elbow and you looked at our arms together and did a silly little bow and said ‘m’lady’ in a way that made me laugh. You took my hand and we held hands every time we saw each other after that.

That first time we spent hours together at the hotel. It wasn’t just all the sex and orgasms (but there was a lot of sex and orgasms!), it wasn’t just all the physical closeness to you, spending such a long time naked and pressed against you. It wasn’t just the emotional closeness as we talked about things we hadn’t brought it before and it wasn’t just that I felt so close to you because of it. It was all of it, it felt like a very intense day and I was on an absolute high after it.

There was a time where maybe we were messaging each other? or maybe I was just thinking about you as I was cooking dinner and a song came on my playlist that was upbeat and happy and I realised the feeling I was having was one of complete joy thinking about you and it made me want to dance in the kitchen.

That time we were laying in the grass and I was feeling shit about that heavy dream I had and I said to you right before I started crying that I was going to start crying and you just held me while it happened. And afterwards we started talking about a philtrum and it always made me laugh that you knew what a philtrum was. And I loved how easy it was to go from emotional to light and easy.

I loved trying new things with you.

Another time, on a walk, you listened to me ramble about WWII films and about the lighting in animated films and about being inspired by pre-Raphaelite artwork and how none of it was ever something you were interested in but you were interested in me so every time I looked at you, you looked rapt by whatever I was saying and I felt like I melted in the way you looked at me.

Every time I had even a slight wobble or anything and the way you effortlessly reassured me and validated my feelings. I feel like you really listened to me whenever I felt shaky or insecure or annoyed or hurt or whatever feeling it was.

The tractor. Always the tractor.

No comments on The Highlights Reel
Can We Be Friends?

August 13, 2025

dating, sex

I had a difficult decision to make recently. I’d met someone earlier this year, we got on like a house on fire. Everything felt easy between us over messaging. When we met up socially, I ended up laughing for hours. I liked his face, I liked the way he made me laugh, I liked the way he made me feel funny and sexy and interesting.

We met up again after that a few times where sex happened. And the sex was great too. But it was in those intimate times after sex where we’re naked cuddling and talking that I felt the closest to him. We honestly were really good friends. There was no end to conversation which could be lighthearted and silly into really heavy, deep subjects. But there was always sensitivity, there was always understanding.

But it wasn’t all puppies and rainbows. Whenever there was stress in his life, whether that was family or work or whatever, it would be like he’d stop communicating. He’d stop reading my texts, he’d obviously not respond to them either. And actually, if he’d just said ‘things are shit, I’m not handling it well’ I wouldn’t have minded. But he didn’t. He’d spend time online, posting status updates, responding to forum threads. And it often made me feel like, why are my texts being ignored? Are they too …much? Am I too much? And I’m not. But it is how I felt.

The first time it happened, I just got silently annoyed and nursed my wounded feelings. The second time it happened I probably did the same. And the third. But eventually I did tell him that that they way he communicated (or more accurately, the way he didn’t) made me feel a certain way and it scraped against my insecurities. That paired with a time our wires got crossed and he booked a date with someone else on the same evening he and I were planning on seeing each other kind of nailed the coffin shut on anything we had going.

But I still held on. I thought, can we be friends? Still? Can we go back to a platonic thing, can we go back to a simpler time where there wasn’t expectations on our time and attention? I tried it for awhile, but I don’t feel platonically towards him so no is the answer. I can’t force myself to feel a way about him that I don’t. So as ‘friends’ he was still hurting me, still making me feel insecure or annoyed or whatever else.

So I made a decision. I sent him a message that said ‘I don’t think I can be your friend’ and ended things like a mature adult. I’m crying as I’m typing this right now because it feels so unfair. But I knew I couldn’t carry on trying to be someone’s friend when I was feeling like I do. I don’t want things to turn sour between us, I don’t want there to be a slow death, I don’t want there to be dragged on hurt.

So I guess sometimes we can’t be friends. And that still hurts.

No comments on Can We Be Friends?
Unrequited Feelings

August 12, 2025

dating, sex

Do you know how hard it is to feel things for someone else and for those feelings to not be returned? That’s the situation that I’m in and have been for quite some time.

I go through a range of emotions about the situation – sometimes I feel really sad or miserable about it. But other times I feel annoyed. Or angry. Sometimes at him for not returning my feelings, but sometimes at myself for carrying on with this thing knowing that the only person that’s getting hurt is me.

Sometimes I think it’s my fault. Because he’s always been honest about what he wants and about how anything ‘more’ isn’t something he’s willing to give for a whole range of different reasons. And I knew that, I’ve known that. But it hasn’t stopped my stupid heart from wanting more than that. So sometimes I do think yes, this is something I’ve created myself. I knew the stakes before we started and when things started to change the simplest thing and the least hurtful thing would have been to end things. But I’m not the greatest at making the smart decisions with these things.

I have tried in the past to put in healthy boundaries and set up certain ways of thinking that will help me. I try clearer communication (‘this is what I want and need from you’) and sometimes that helps. But it doesn’t completely solve the problem. It just delays what I feel is the inevitable.

I want more from him than he is willing to give me. I want to see him more often, I want him to open up to me. I had this frankly horrifying realisation the other day that I consider him a friend but I don’t think he considers me a friend. And do you know what a stab to the heart that is? I brought it up with him but I don’t think it went very successfully.

Sometimes it actually just hits me that I feel like I have to convince this man to see me. Like, ever. If I’m not the one instigating us getting together then we just wouldn’t. And it really hurts to think that I’m so unnecessary in someone else’s life. That it wouldn’t matter if I just disappeared from their life at all. Because I’m not ever really part of it.

I guess the point is that I want a lot of things and I guess, historically, I’ve always felt like I’m being unreasonable to want ALL THE THINGS. But when I look at things now I think … it’s not unreasonable to want the things that I want. It’s not unreasonable to want consistent communication or to spend time with another person that you care about. I get frustrated with myself because where did I go wrong in thinking that the basics are too much?

I guess my hope is that things will change. But I also think I need to have an element of realistic expectations and plan for pain and heartbreak. Will keep you updated.

No comments on Unrequited Feelings
What I Want

August 11, 2025

poetry, sex

What I want is for you to stay

What I want is for you to want to stay

I love the way that you look at me

When I’m naked and ready for you

But what I want is you for you to be that hungry for me all the time

I want to see you somewhere outside of the bedroom

I want to hold your hand

And lean into you

1 comment on What I Want
We Never Had Paris

August 8, 2025

relationships

Have you seen Casablanca? Do you remember Humphrey Bogart telling Ingrid Bergman ‘We’ll always have Paris’? I had the opposite. I never had Paris.

I met up with a friend a few months ago, just recently returned from Paris, and he was baffled and amused by the following story of how a trip to Paris essentially ended my marriage.

We were both really young when my ex husband and I got together. We had dreams about going on adventures and travelling the world. One of the first things we had planned on was buying a round the world ticket and literally travelling around the world to see it before we got old and had too many responsibilities and settled down. We even had the different destinations around the world picked out.

But before we bought the tickets, he had a change of heart. He suggested instead of the long holiday what if we used the money as a downpayment on a house? Looking back on it, it was a sound investment but honestly? We probably could have squeezed our pennies a bit longer and managed both. I agreed to the more sensible approach on the condition that we would still travel, if just on a smaller budget with time restrictions. He agreed.

We went on a long weekend to Prague and then he decided that Europe and city breaks just weren’t his thing. And from then on, he really only wanted to stay in the same cottage in the wilds of Scotland that we’d been to on our honeymoon. And we went there for four years in a row before I put my foot down and said ‘no more’. But after that? We just didn’t go on holiday.

At least until our 10th wedding anniversary. I think he understood that things felt rocky. He and I in the early days of our relationship lived in London itself. And I remember saying to him several times how weird it was that we lived so close to someplace like Paris and we’d never been.

For our 10th wedding anniversary, he brought up the idea that maybe he and I would spend our anniversary in Paris for a long weekend. He’d gotten the Friday off work, he’d sorted out childcare for the weekend and I had this flicker of excitement for the first time in a long time.

But instead of planning for the trip, my ex was fretting. He wasn’t sure if the weather would cause disruption in the travel there or back. He wasn’t sure if the childcare options would work out (it was family looking after them!). If there were delays, his concern would be the children then his work commitments.

In the end, the weekend never happened. No travel had been booked, no hotels booked. The planning began and ended at raising the idea (and therefore my hopes) and asking if his mother could have the children overnight for two nights (she was thrilled to have them). He cancelled his day off work and went into the office on that Friday. Eventually the reason he gave to me for not going to Paris was ‘wouldn’t it be nicer to wait until the children are older and all go together?’ For my romantic weekend getaway to celebrate our anniversary? No, I don’t think so.

That was 15 years ago and it felt like one of many reasons we ended.

It was never about Paris. But it was about promising me a certain type of life, one with adventure and travel that never materialised. I didn’t realise how one sided those dreams of travel were. And I didn’t realise how things might end up feeling like a slow death doing the same things, having the same routines, going to the same cottage again and again. Always living within the familiar, staying within someone else’s comfort zone.

No comments on We Never Had Paris