Baby, Can I Hold You

Sexy List

March 26, 2026

sex

That you check in with me if you think how much time you have is enough for the things I need

That you always smell so good

The way you look at me, I like that you appreciate my body, the way that I look

This sound you make, I can’t get enough of it, when you find out how wet I am for you

You make a similar sound when I have one orgasm after another like just that gives you so much pleasure

You pick up on the unspoken things I tell you during and the way you choose to act on those things is incredibly hot

You remembered something I said I liked months ago

You challenge me to come out of my comfort zone in a way that makes me feel alive but also safe

Your ridiculous focus on my pleasure, your generosity is appreciated

Fuck me, your hands

And your eyes

And that spot on your face that gets a little bit red in a blush when we’re talking after

No comments on Sexy List
All By Myself

March 25, 2026

life

I was without WiFi at home recently. I was changing broadband providers and there was a problem with the installation which meant that for several days I had no access to certain things.

I started off thinking … this will be fine? I don’t need constant access to the Internet or Netflix or whatever else.

And then I realised it’s not the constant access to shows or websites that I missed. It was the constant access to people giving me attention. I missed the constant noise that a stable WiFi connection in my home gives me. A Spotify playlist constantly blaring. Or an audiobook. I’m binge watching a show. Access to films to watch … to fill that space inside me.

I’ve always considered myself a relatively solitary person. I spend a lot of my time on my own with just my dog for company. But I don’t, not really. Because the vast majority of the time I’ll be messaging people. And when I’m not doing that, I’m filling my brain with other things to distract, entertain, avoid.

I’ve wondered recently about this dip in creativity. And now I’m wondering if I don’t have the space or capacity to create, to be inspired because I’m constantly consuming. Am I avoiding just existing? I do think this might just be a recent thing. I don’t think I’ve thought in the past that I was afraid to be on my own with own thoughts. But I think I need a shake up. Get back to myself.

No comments on All By Myself
Therapist Thread vol. 2

March 24, 2026

life, relationships

This is a follow up thread to Therapist Thread in which I wrote about a thread on Threads that really spoke to me. I did have to google it to find out what the first part said, which was this:

I opened up to my therapist that I develop feelings too quickly. She handed me a journal and said, “If you lose yourself when someone gives you attention, these 10 questions will show you why their attention feels like the oxygen your nervous system searches for.”

In the first post, I wrote about the first question this Threads Therapist mentioned. Today I’ll be writing about another question that hit home with me. You may remember that in the first post I had thought that the original tweet of the thread was talking about anxious attachment or inconsistency. It really makes everything more relevant knowing that it’s about developing feelings too quickly. That being said, I feel like not knowing what anchored it was important for me too. The question is important regardless of the context.

But here is today’s question:

5. Do I give more than I receive because generosity helps me avoid being abandoned? Over giving is often fear — dressed as kindness.

I read that and I thought ‘oh god’

I guess I haven’t really talked about my parents that much. And they are important. A lot of who I am, and crucially, how I am is because of my relationships with both my parents.

I did learn from an early age that neither of my parents were stable in their emotions, in their behaviours, in their reactions to me. My dad was finally diagnosed as having bipolar shortly before he died having lived with it untreated for most of his adult life. I don’t think you need a medical degree or lived experience to understand that having a parent with untreated bipolar disorder was a challenging thing.

Apologies for the oversharing in the rest of this post.

My dad was erratic, unpredictable and unstable. It was chaos at home. His moods swung wildly between the mania and the depression. He had no boundaries and would overshare wildly. He had the highest expectations of me. He’d suggest spur of the moment crazy plans or projects. He’d go through long stretches of depressive episodes that led me to grow up really, really early. He was short-tempered, irritable, angry.

My mother checked out both emotionally and physically when I was 11. She decided she could no longer ‘deal’ with my dad, with me, with my brother. And she left. I’d only see her a handful of times after that and I haven’t seen her in person since the age of 17. We would talk on the phone ever 6-7 years when she remembered she had a daughter and the emotional scarring from her abandonment has been something I still struggle to get through.

It makes sense within the context of my relationship with my parents that I might over give in my relationships. I have experienced the worst kind of parental abandonment and I’m keen to not experience that level of rejection again. I’ve known previously when I’ve reflected on myself and my own behaviours that I’m maybe overly nice as a way of counteracting my parents. It feels very much like ‘Please like me, and stay. You’ll stay, right?’

It’s breaking that cycle that’s the hard bit. How do I maintain a sense of myself and only give of myself in a healthy amount? How do I navigate relationships and not feed into the idea that I have to pour myself into the needs of others. How do I set boundaries for myself? How do I start to believe that I am enough?

No comments on Therapist Thread vol. 2
A Strange One

March 23, 2026

dating

I had an unusual exchange with someone recently. In which he messaged me and I wrote back to him ‘you’re a strange one, do you know that?’

And he asked for clarification and we went back and forth and again I said ‘but this goes back to my original comment that you’re a strange one…’

Essentially what had happened was this: I started messaging with a man ages ago. Last year sometime. He’s smart, he amusing, he’s good looking. But conversation tailed off with no mention of meeting or taking things any further. That’s fine. I wasn’t upset about that.

Then out of nowhere months later, an hour before I was going to an organised social event he messaged me to say ‘Oh! You live close by to this (organised social) – are you going to be there tonight?’ I wrote back and I said …yes, I was planning on attending. How very flattering that I’m such an afterthought though, and I added a laughing emoji so he knew it wasn’t that serious.

I was planning on attending to meet up with another friend anyway but I did see him that evening and we had a brief conversation. It was lovely to meet him. Some people don’t look anything at all like their photos, some people can’t bridge online communication with in person communication. But that wasn’t the case here. I really enjoyed meeting him. After we met up, I sent him a message letting him know that I’d enjoyed meeting up and was curious to know what interest he had in seeing me again?

He didn’t respond. And then several weeks later it comes up again in a roundabout way and I told him I asked about his interest in me and there was no response? To which he said he’d been out of the country on business and still he provided no direct response regarding his interest in me in either direction.

Then! I posted a new picture of me in the place where we’ve been messaging. And he sends me a very suggestive message. To myself I think, oh okay. Guess that answers the question about his interest in me and we do engage in some flirty messages. At one point he says ‘should I just pop over then?’ and I said no, but at a more suitable time and place I’d say yes… And in response to this he says something non-committal and the conversation comes to an end.

Weeks after this, I post another picture and he sends me another vaguely suggestive message and that’s when I told him he’s a strange one.

Because my messaging is inconsistent, he asks? I guess, I reply. But that’s only part of it. The other half is that you’ve done nothing or avoided times where I’ve said ‘let’s move this forward’ Our initial conversation ended because there was no solid plans made. He met me at that social but didn’t respond to me afterwards about me suggesting plans. We engage in some spicy discussion and I said ‘let’s meet up at another time and place’ but he doesn’t take me up on my offer.

In the end I said it feels like either you’re not that into me or you are into me but only as an online distraction? And he tried to be very direct at that point and be like, should we meet up for a drink? in a bar? in a bar in a hotel room in case we want to move things forward? When?

And I had to tell him I don’t think our communication styles or our directness in terms of what we want is aligned. So no. But good luck.

It was a lesson in frustration more than anything else. But there’s no way that I would accept this sort of inconsistency and lack of clarity about his interest in me. Anyone’s interest in me. If someone wants to date me or fuck me, just be clearer about it. I don’t mind being direct about my interest in someone else but I can only take that so far and this many near-misses just makes me certain that a level of miscommunication and lack of clarity will continue to happen. And continue to send me bonkers.

No comments on A Strange One
Therapist Thread

March 20, 2026

relationships
I’m on Twitter or Threads or Bluesky or any of those things. Or at least I’m not actively on them. My Instagram cross posts things to Threads and sometimes I get notifications on my Insta that people have liked my posts on Threads or it will recommend a thread from someone I follow. But I almost never click on them. In a past life I used to love Twitter. And then just as quickly I fell out of love with it and deleted most social media apps off my phone.

But the other day, I was curious. So I logged into Threads and as expected my feed was full of stuff that I had no interest in and from people I didn’t know. I was completely disengaged. But in that moment I thought ‘but maybe there’ll be something here that is worthwhile’

And that’s when I came across this thread from a Therapy account called therapistalks and I didn’t take much notice of the first thread but it came with a list and three of the lists hit me like a sledgehammer.

The first one said this:
1. When someone goes quiet, do I assume they’re losing interest instead of simply living their life? Silence feels threatening when consistency was never promised to you.
And the way I felt when I read that. I had to take a really big breath in and let it out slowly.

I’ve almost never thought silence from someone just meant living their lives. I think the beginning tweet on this one was something about inconsistency? Anxious attachment? And this is something I’m really trying to work on.

I wish I could go back and ask people ‘if I don’t hear from you, is it because of disinterest? or some other reasonable explanation?’ instead of just jumping to my own conclusions and potentially sabotaging things I’ve had with people. I wish I could be more straightforward and direct in how I’m feeling. I wish I could tell people what I feel in a way so that I’ll be heard and understood.

Instead, I’m going to try to inch closer to where I’d like to be.
No comments on Therapist Thread
You never really committed

March 19, 2026

relationships

I’ve been watching The Good Doctor on Netflix recently. Despite it being a medical drama, it feels fairly low stakes. I don’t think I’m ever that concerned about people dying or making mistakes or things going wrong. All of those things do happen but it feels like the medical side of things is just a vehicle for a bunch of characters to process life together.

I’ve just started season 3 and one of the episodes I watched recently was about two people talking. One says to the other that he never really committed in relationships, he didn’t allow himself to be vulnerable with others, he never let other people in. And that one scene is the reason I watch anything. Because it’s about this specific character. But it could be about me.

I’ve been thinking about it a lot. That despite being married my entire adult life I don’t think I ever really let my ex husband in. Not really. He probably knows me better than anyone else but that’s because of proximity mostly. That isn’t by design. I never really talked about my feelings with him, I never let him into my memories or experiences. We were just two people living together, sharing the remote and coasting through our relationship together.

I wanted to write that I have let one person in. I wanted to write that I was vulnerable with him. That I committed myself to that relationship.

But I don’t think that’s true. And I think he knew it too. He brought it up once. He asked if the situation he was in meant that I felt like I could be more open knowing that there was less risk. I probably attempted to talk him out of that being the case. But I don’t think he was wrong. I loved him. And I loved him in the biggest way I could. But I knew that it was restricted to the confines of what we were and maybe that did allow for some safety. For a bubble for me to be in with him.

I think I’m too afraid to do that with another person. With another person that has the full capacity to be with me fully. But I don’t want to be afraid of that.

2 comments on You never really committed
On Money

March 18, 2026

dating, relationships, sex

I only figured something out recently. And that is that money has impacted my sex, dating, and relationships. I… don’t consider the privilege that I have where I don’t think that much about money. And that has caused misunderstandings or made things worse. I feel like because of my behaviour and reactions, it has made others feel like I’m not someone they can be open with about. And I feel pretty bad about it.

There was the person where I suggested that we do this fun (expensive) thing together and then I got annoyed when they left me on read.

I’d badger another person to go out and do fun things with me and maybe the reason they hadn’t is because they’re being careful with their money?

I had one person who invited me to their home be weird about it. I remember I was lying on his bed after we’d had sex just enjoying the afterglow of orgasm and he said something like ‘I know, I know, I haven’t quite finished all the work in this room’ and later I realised he thought me staring at the ceiling meant that I was focused on cracks in the ceiling (or some other thing, I don’t know, I wasn’t aware of his ceiling).

Maybe I’m reading too much into all of these things. But maybe I’m not.

I don’t know what to do about any of it except be more aware of how things might be for others. I’ll probably be in a similar situation soon enough when my divorce goes through. Let’s see.

No comments on On Money
Dating Disappointments vol. 8

March 17, 2026

dating

He sent me a message that if it were coming from someone else or at a different time I might have deleted it. But he caught me in a good moment and I took his fairly straightforward, confident message as something that made me smile as opposed to roll my eyes.

He asked fairly soon if we could meet up for a coffee. I said I’ll think about it, tell me something about yourself first. And he mentioned a few things, we started talking about his big, chaotic family. He made me laugh, it was easy to message with him, he’s very attractive. When he asked again about meeting up for coffee I asked when he’s available (because he’d have the longer commute to get closer to me). And he said a week Wednesday.

It’s a date, I said. And we carried on messaging. He warned me that he’d be away visiting his parents for a few days but even when he was there he sent me messages. One of the messages said something like ‘you’ll see soon’ and I responded that I was looking forward to it.

I figured when it got closer to the Wednesday we’d iron out some of the details beyond a time, day and general location. Only at the time of writing, he has not been online in the place we were messaging in 6 days. And that Wednesday? It came and went with no word from him about it.

I don’t know if it counts as being stood up or not but it also doesn’t feel great.

No comments on Dating Disappointments vol. 8
Long Term Friends

March 16, 2026

life

Okay, I want to tell you this story first before I go into a bit of a thread on a similar topic.

For whatever reason, I was clearing out who I follow on Instagram and when I realised I had very little interesting content on my feed left, I ended up following some of the accounts that regularly appeared on my feed. One of those was a therapist who makes short videos discussing therapy concepts and ideas but in short video formats. I have an interest in psychology and therapy has been a big part of my life, so I thought ‘why not?’

Well. I have a great reason for ‘why not?’ and it’s because I watched one of these videos and I absolutely spiraled about it. I even messaged a friend afterwards to ask ‘do you think I’m a terrible person?’ to which, of course, my friend said ‘NO, why?’ When I explained he did say my first mistake was following a social media therapist (and I do not disagree!) But let me walk you through it.

I can’t quite remember what the topic of the video was. I remember the gist of it though which was about terrible people. And how terrible people don’t have long term friends. That makes a sort of sense, right? That people who are consistently awful can’t maintain friendships for long because people get sick of their shit and move on. Only as soon as I heard this therapist say this thing my first thought was ‘oh my god, I’m a terrible person’ – because my first instinct was to think that I don’t have long term friends. Therefore the reason is that I’m not a good person to be around.

Do you know that it took me months and months and months before I realised that isn’t the case? My friend tried to help me get there quicker by saying that trauma has probably paid a part and that trust in others is harder to manage. And I do agree with that and I appreciate his attempt at trying to make me feel better, I do.

But what I came to realise, and realise incredibly slowly, is …that I do have long term friends. My brain went to ‘who has known me since childhood and is still my friend?’ and there aren’t people like that. So I stopped there. But this year has been incredibly difficult for me in lots of ways and I’ve realised that I have friends all over the place.

The book group I’m part of has been running for almost 10 years and I’ve been part of that for almost that time. And I talk to my book group about men, and dating, and my ex husband and work and families and life generally. Why am I blind to this fantastic supportive network? And once I realised that I saw that there were other pockets of friendship. A family that my ex husband initially knew is a friendship group of over 25 years. There are people that I know and remain friends with from a hobby that I did for 10 years but stopped almost a decade ago. Friends I know that I used to work with. Friends I know that I met through my children. Friends that I’ve maintained through sex, dating and relationships.

What I’ve come to realise about this whole thing is that I’m quick to jump to the most negative thing about myself. Even when the evidence is there to disprove it all. I’m not a terrible person. I’m not awful enough that I’ve chased off any decent, friendly person in my life.

I have friends. I have good friends. I just need to view myself better. Reframe who I am to include being deserving and worthy of friendship. To include that I am a good person.

No comments on Long Term Friends
Investing In Myself

March 13, 2026

life, relationships

I’ve talked about a bit, I think, but I was in therapy a few years ago. Best thing I ever did. And even now, years later as I’m going about my days, I still think back to things that were said or happened during therapy.

One of the things that happened was that my therapist told me that she thought I could do with a second weekly session. That I was presenting as quite fragile and that I needed additional support. It was something that I really struggled with. I didn’t want to be a bother, I was thinking about the cost of psychotherapy sessions that my ex husband I were paying for privately.

One of the things that I’d brought up in one of our sessions is that my ex husband once came home from and out of nowhere he told me ‘Thank you for being so low-maintenance, a lot of the other men at work complain that their wives are always asking for things – new curtains or a certain number of holidays or whatever. But not you.’

And I think at the time, I thought that was a compliment. I certainly took it as one and internalised this low-fuss, low-maintenance persona that didn’t need too much. But what I realised was that I was erasing my own needs. I wasn’t asking for the things I actually wanted or needed.

Same with the therapy sessions. Eventually, I did tell my ex husband that I needed a second session every week, the cost was less important than the benefits it would bring to myself. It may have been the very first thing that I ever demanded in my entire marriage. And it came way too late.

I think about that a lot.

After I put my foot down and insisted on the second session I felt incredible. It wasn’t just the emotional support that I was getting from my therapist. It was the idea of putting myself first and about recognising that there are things that I require. Whether that’s a second therapy session, or an actual desk to work at (I didn’t have one of those either and was killing my back trying to work from my bed with my laptop in my lap!) or whatever else.

The other day I called my GP about a niggling issue that I’ve been going through. That had been going on for several months. I recently sorted out some dental work I needed doing (even though it eventually cost me £800+!) I started my masters equivalent course last September after insisting on savings to be put aside to cover the full cost of the course.

And do you know what? I feel fucking great about all of those things.

All of these things matter. I matter. I’ve lived so much of my life shrinking myself into small spaces for other people. I’ve erased my needs from relationships. From work. From life. I’ve made myself small, I’ve adopted a ‘low-maintenance’ image.

I’ve had enough. I’m now focusing more on investing in myself. In my health, in my well-being. In what will bring me joy. What will decrease my anxiety. What will make me feel good.

And it already feels good.

No comments on Investing In Myself