Baby, Can I Hold You

Little Black Dress

November 24, 2025

dating

I went to a sort of party last month and I didn’t know what to wear.

This has come up before, when I worked with a younger bunch of women, we used to go out in the evenings quite a lot and I’d mostly just wear what I wore to work that day out into the evening whereas some of my colleagues changed into more suitable nighttime going out clothes.

I’ve never had a wardrobe like that. And I think it’s because I got married ridiculously early and my social circle mostly consisted of my (now ex) husband and people we knew. So there wasn’t really an element of dressing up whether or not that was to attract a partner or not. It just didn’t happen.

But now that I’m single, the whole idea of it has come up again. Before that party last month I messaged a friend to ask what on earth I should wear to this thing? I didn’t think I had anything suitable. I can’t remember what my friend suggested but whatever it was, it felt reassuring. I took from it that I should wear what I felt comfortable in and what I felt looked good on me. So I did.

But after that night, I went online and ended up buying a few dresses, mostly little black dresses that I figured could (potentially) double as work clothes. Or… could be the start of my nighttime going out wardrobe that I never had.

I’ve been to another party after that first one wearing one of my new dresses with a pair of fashionable tights and I just felt so much better in it. There’s something about dressing up and looking and feeling good that I think I’ve missed out on by not going out when I was younger. By switching into this role of wife and mother too soon.

So I will go out again and soon. I might even practice wearing heels.

I don’t know though, let’s not go too crazy.

No comments on Little Black Dress
For Good

November 21, 2025

relationships

Last night I went to see a double-feature of Wicked and Wicked: For Good. I absolutely love musical theatre generally and also I love film versions of musicals. I was so excited to see Wicked last year and I’ve been looking forward to the second part ever since.

I kind of knew that most of the really good songs were in the first part but there is still For Good in the second. And I knew it would be emotional. And it was.

I cried all the way through the second half of the film and I cried through For Good. I was in the car on the way home after it and I was still crying.

And I think what hit me the hardest when watching that part of the film and also hearing the lyrics to For Good that I was thinking about loss.

I was thinking about the people that have had the biggest impact on me and on my life and how a lot of those people aren’t in my life anymore or that they aren’t in my life in the same way. And I just felt so much grief in that moment.

My dad. My ex husband. My ex. My best friend. Even the English teacher. The soldier. My favourite teacher from Year 2, the relationship I used to have with my mother-in-law.

There’s loss and pain there but there’s also gratitude.

Who can say I’ve been changed for the better?

But because I knew you

I have been changed for good

No comments on For Good
Always On Alert

November 20, 2025

Uncategorized

I was talking to someone the other day and he brought it up in fact. He said something like, and as a woman you’re probably constantly just scanning men for tone and content to keep continuously checking their vibe is okay.

It was the first time I’d had a man acknowledge that that’s happening. I’d seen videos online of prominent men who make videos about gender that have said similar. But not an actual man standing in front of me. And it felt surprising. And also really comforting to know that there is this shift in men being more aware that women’s nervous systems are just constantly on alert at all times.

I feel like I exhaust myself from constantly processing things like word usage, tone, intonation, body language, intention, facial expressions, the meaning behind their words to constantly keep asking … is this person safe, does this person make me feel comfortable. And I feel like things can shift quite easily. A person might ‘feel okay’ initially and then tell on himself as our interactions go on.

This is something that I feel like I’m still learning and while I lean heavily on my intuition, I don’t think that I always get things right. It’s a constant process and one in which I keep learning things about.

No comments on Always On Alert
My Privacy

November 19, 2025

dating, relationships, sex

I really value my privacy.

This came up recently. I ended up getting slightly involved with someone who has a lot of connections with other people. Some of them involve sex with these connections and some are just social connections.

Either way, he’d asked me to remain vague about mine and his relationship with one of the connections that we both shared. And I told him there would be no way this connection would hear anything from me about us having sex (or not). And then I said ‘no’ to something that would make things very clear to this connection and a lot of other people exactly what our connection is (sexual).

And I guess I hadn’t really gotten through to him well enough just how private I am. I think for people where I feel exceedingly comfortable I do share a lot about myself and about my experiences. But there’s a line that I draw and I do draw that line everywhere.

I find it really uncomfortable sharing with others things I don’t think they’d share themselves. If I am sharing that information, I make sure that nobody knows who I’m talking about. Much like on this blog. I write very specifically using ‘he’ or ‘she’ without names and I’ve done that on purpose.

But I do that in ‘real life’ too. I don’t think it’s anyone else’s business who I’m shagging. Or who I’ve had sex with previously. Or why things didn’t work. I don’t think it’s anyone’s business who I have plans with, who I’d like to fuck or who I absolutely would not touch with a 10-foot pole. I really just don’t talk about those things with people. Unless you’re in my inner circle. And even then you don’t get their real names or any identifying feature.

It feels a little bit weird to me. Because I’m very open on this blog and I share a lot of things. But I guess I hope what you’re taking from reading this blog is everything that I’m willing to tell you about myself, my reactions to dates or sex or relationships. Every thought I have, every feeling, every impulse. Because I’m happy to give it. I’m just not happy to give much else about those people who wander in and out of my life.

No comments on My Privacy
Phone Call

November 18, 2025

dating

I was messaging with this man the other day and I had a gossipy question to ask him about someone we both know. And he wrote back to say something like he had a lot to say about this topic, would a phone call be easier?

And I don’t know, I don’t think this is a usual or typical thing to suggest these days. Is this just me? But a little thrill went through me when he suggested it and I said ‘yes’

And I think what followed was an hour long conversation in which I almost entirely smiled through it. Have I ever told you how much I enjoy hearing someone else’s voice? Particularly someone that I am romantically or sexually interested in. This man wasn’t someone I’d had sex with but the ‘yet’ was implied.

And when I first accepted the call and heard his voice I thought ‘holy shit, his voice sounds even hotter than I remembered’ – and this is something that my brain adds to voices where I have some sort of emotional connection to them. I feel like everything about them becomes more appealing.

But voices just generally are sexy. And intimate. I loved hearing the different ways he’d say words, the pauses he’d put between words, the way things sped up when he was excited in telling the story, the inflection on different words. It made me smile and laugh and just generally feel closer to him.

There’s something about voices for me that this conversation felt like a warm hug.

No comments on Phone Call
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?

No comments on Family
The Actual Obvious

November 14, 2025

dating, relationships, sex

I was having a text conversation with someone the other day and I got hit in the face by the most obvious realisation about myself that I could possibly have come across.

It doesn’t quite matter what the topic of conversation was. But I had said that I had broken an arbitrary rule that I’d had for myself on several occasions. My friend asked what made you break your rule? So I sat with the question for about 90 seconds before I had my answer.

…I really like it when people give me lots of attention…

This was the most obvious thing I’ve ever realised about myself. And yet. And yet until I thought it the other day I had never actually considered it.

For actual years I’ve said when people have asked that my type were kind, funny, smart people with a passion for absolutely anything. All of that I knew. What I didn’t know was that I was missing that obvious thing. That I’m also ridiculously, wildly attracted to those kind, funny smart, passionate people who are also incredibly attentive and positively fascinated with me as a person.

How did I not know that?!

It makes so much sense. It means that these people are very interested in getting to know me as a person which means we’re probably emotionally connected and therefore that passes my demisexual condition. And it also is likely that they’d tell me of their sexual interest in me passing my reciprosexual condition … and with all that attention, it would be very likely that these people would give me the constant reassurance that I need so that the anxious part of my brain doesn’t shoot off into outer space.

Now that I am aware of the Actual Obvious Thing Ever I can see that I’ve written about this in so many different ways. On dates I’ll notice when someone’s attention is just on me. The time I had a spontaneous sexual attraction to that man on the train it was because he was paying me lots of attention. The sex that I like and crave is one where they’re looking at me, touching me, paying attention to my responses, my noises …and just generally fucking paying me lots of attention.

All of my relationships have been affected by attention or lack of it. What a lightbulb moment.

What’s crazy is that I’ve answered questions before about what turns me off a person? And I’ve always answered ‘disinterest’ without ever considering that the opposite is the biggest aphrodisiac of my entire life.

What will I do with this brand new information? I have no idea. But it’s good to know these things.

No comments on The Actual Obvious
Intensifier

November 13, 2025

sex

I didn’t think he’d come over.

I asked and he said no. And somewhat bizarrely, we ended up messaging about me having sex with someone else. Because things had been kind of weird between us (on my side, not his) I hadn’t had a chance to go over my thoughts about that experience with him. I love going over my thoughts specifically with him because he gives great feedback and asks good questions and in the discussing it, I feel like I come to better understand how I felt about it all.

But somehow in that discussion we both got a bit sidetracked and I ended up giving him a bit of a reminder of how much I love having his cock in my mouth. Listening to the way his breathing changes, the pleasure groans he makes. How hearing those pleasure noises turns me on more and gets me more excited to make him feel good.

He asked if today was going to be a lingerie and sex toy day and I responded to say ‘after this conversation? it definitely will be’ and I still had zero expectations from him at all so it felt completely out of the blue when he asked if a helping hand would be of any use.

I was a little bit nervous and I’d told him that earlier in the week – yes, I always like seeing him but at the same time after all the slight weirdness between us I wasn’t sure how I’d feel seeing him again.

Would knowing that he definitely did not have feelings for me change the way I reacted to him? I didn’t know.

I can say definitively that it didn’t change a single thing for me. As soon as I swung my door open to him standing there I had a big smile on my face. What I wanted to do was grab his shirt and pull him in. Both into my house and also in for a kiss. But instead, awkwardly, I told him about how I tried to get my bodystocking off while I was sprinting down my stairs and how that nearly resulted in me falling down them instead.

Despite it all, we ended up on my bed and we’re kissing and his hands are on me. And everything feels so good. How does it feel this good? I think briefly between orgasms that one of the things that I like about him so much is how he responds to all of my non-verbal cues. At one point I’d raised my left hand above my head where one of his hands were and he knew right away that I was asking him to hold my hand there, that I like that. But not only that, he then moved his leg to cover my right leg as it was spread open and in that second I had every bit of restraint that I wanted and needed.

I told him afterwards that he felt like an intensifier to me. I don’t know if that makes sense? But with other people I’m not as orgasmic as I have been with him. I’ve definitely been that orgasmic with (at least one other) partners but something about him, the way he pays attention to my body, to my reactions sends me into this sexual space where everything just crashes together into this chaos of pleasure.

Even when I start to think to myself, surely I can’t have another… or if I do, it’ll take longer to get th–and another one lands like a lightning bolt. And I feel really sexy when it’s happening. There was a moment where I was on all fours facing a mirror in my room, and my boobs are hanging in this bodystocking and I don’t think I’ve ever seen my face in the throes of that much pleasure and I’d normally think god, no I don’t want to see. But it was almost like I was seeing myself how he sees me? I could be reading too much into that but I was surprised by how much I didn’t hate it.

Do you know what? He can come over again sometime.

No comments on Intensifier
Choosing Me

November 12, 2025

relationships

I bought a 1,000 page book to read recently. It was the dark fantasy Alchemised by SenLinYu. I didn’t know anything about it before I started it, just that it was a social media sensation and ‘everyone was talking about it.’ In fact, when I bought it, nobody I actually knew was talking about it (mostly because I am no longer keeping up with those in the know regarding books or literature!) but I bought it on a whim.

I messaged a friend about the book and I said ‘I hope it breaks me’ or something along those lines. I meant that I wanted to read something incredibly emotional and engaging, something that would would make me lose myself in the world, in the story, in the characters and that by the end of it I’d be so entwined that their heartbreak or achievements would feel like mine. I really wanted the escapism of it all but I also really wanted a story that would grip me and that would make me feel. Hope, longing, despair, heartbreak. Whichever emotion would be strongest I’d take.

I finished reading the book the other day and it did break me in the way that I wanted. There was a moment towards the end of the book as the world in which these characters lived was falling apart and falling apart around them. And they told each other simply that they choose each other. When the world is ending and no choice is the right one, they choose each other.

And I cried.

Not so much because I really loved this story or these characters. I thought the book itself was about 300 pages too long and I didn’t love the non-linear timeline which made me less engaged. It was just an okay book.

But what made me cry is that in that moment I realised that nobody has ever really chosen me.

Not my parents or my brother, not my extended family. Not my ex-husband’s family, not my ex-husband. My (former) best friend recently made the decision not to choose me. My ex doesn’t choose me, my on/off person doesn’t choose me.

And I was staring at the words of this book, tears streaming down my face, thinking this long list of people in my life that don’t choose me. Trying my very fucking hardest to land on one name, any name where I thought this person, this person chooses me. And it was starting to get a little desperate when I finally got there.

I choose me.

I choose me in everything that I do. In everything that I’ve ever done in my life. In the face of rejection and disappointment and hurt, I choose me. I choose me by thinking hopefully about the future, about making the hard decisions now that mean the right things for me. I choose me by investing in myself, in my career, in the right relationships for me.

And it’s felt like a life-changing realisation. Like something broken inside of me healed just that little bit in the knowing that somebody does, and always has chosen me.

No comments on Choosing Me
Apologies For the Dramatics

November 11, 2025

relationships, sex

I feel like I really have to apologise. There’s someone I write about on this blog quite often (you can probably guess who it is!) and …things seem to go on a rollercoaster between us. I’m writing my sexiest blog posts about him, then I tell you I can’t deal with his inconsistency anymore, then I write and say ‘gosh, he’s really not that bad’ and then I leave you all hanging for a week talking about how broken up I was about him not having feelings for me.

And the thing is, all of that is true. That really is how I felt at those specific times.

But the thing is, I think even in some of those highs and lows I know that I’m being dramatic about him and about whatever thing we have between us is.

If I’m entirely honest, after he told me that he didn’t have feelings for me, I did feel quite broken up. I drove into work the next day and I had tears just quietly leaking out of my eyes for the entire 50 minutes of my drive. I felt miserable for a good few days and then I sat down with myself and really thought about it.

And I guess what I ended up deciding is that I don’t want things to change between us. I mean, obviously, that’s a lie. I’d love for things to change between us. But I mean knowing definitively that he doesn’t have feelings for me in return doesn’t change much of anything for me. It pinches, sure. But I pretty much knew it before he confirmed it.

And … I really like how he makes me feel. Obviously I like the sex between us. But I also just like him as a person. He inspires me to write some of my best blog posts. I feel like because it’s so present and current I can write better than I have done. About the big things and the little things. I like feeling something towards him specifically.

And I also really thought about my feelings for him. I know I’ve written the L word on this blog on more than one occasion, but I think that’s the High Drama talking. I don’t think it is love. But it’s something. If nothing else, it’s my deep appreciation for him as a person for making me laugh, for engaging with me on lots of different random topics, for opening up to me in his own way, my gratitude for how he makes me feel. It’s care for him and how he lives his life. It’s the trust I feel with him, it’s that he makes me feel safe and accepted.

So, all that being said, I will do my very best to stop with the dramatics about our ups and downs moving forward. I know it can be confusing. But I don’t call him my on/off person for nothing.

No comments on Apologies For the Dramatics