There is one situation that regardless of whether you’re a slut like me, a virgin, or somewhere in between on the scale, all of us will find ourselves in: the post relationship ‘why’ fest. Why did we go out with them? Why did we let them hurt us? Why did we waste our time on such a dreadful person? Why oh why do we do it to ourselves?

Hour after hour I’ve spent pacing around trying to figure out a pattern to explain how I ended up dating a guy who owned one pair of shoes and critiqued my blow job technique. Or how I had a wonderful date with a beautiful girl, spent all day spooning with her, only to never hear from her again. I’ve drawn lists, made diagrams, beaten myself up mentally over and over again, and cried my eyes out, trying to get to the bottom of this ridiculous pit. It’s not all been alone though, my friends and I have sat over pints and tried to figure out how we’re all idiots and why we can’t get it together. Can we really all be so foolish? A generation of total dunderheads?

Then a few weeks ago, while comforting a friend who had recently broken up with her boyfriend I had a moment of clarity. Every single one of us is going to fuck up. Whether we’re smart or dumb, whether we wade into relationships giddy and full of dreams, or slowly and cynically. We’re going to fall in and out of love at the flick of a switch and sometimes it’s going to hurt so much it burns. We are going to have our wits charmed away by handsome men and beautiful women who are wicked, selfish, or just plain boring. We are going to do it over and over and over again all through our lives and it is going to blow hard.

So why bother? Because each time we fail better. We notice the signs quicker. We figure out when to cut the cord sooner. We learn how to recover faster and how to use that recovery period to become better more fulfilled people. We appreciate the wonderful people we date for the wonders that they are, and we understand that when they leave the picture, someone else will come along.

If we allow ourselves to make mistakes and carry on living then we allow ourselves the possibility of having a wonderful life. But if we stay in that tearful moment, beating ourselves over the head with everything we could have done differently, we sabotage the future that we want so dearly.

As I start this post I am struck by the thought that there are those who don’t fantasise while masturbating. Sitting here, curled up in bed, with the laptop on my legs I am trying to imagine it. A dark wasteland where I just rub and rub and I don’t think of anything other than the sensations in my genitals: it is terrifying. Fantasies are a warm blanket of joy to wrap yourself in where you are a hyperflexible sex bunny who can come on the flip of a coin and where everyone is willing and amenable to your every wish, even if that wish is for them to be terribly vile to you. And it’s bliss. It’s a place where you’re always right and always good at everything, and it’s yours alone.

For a long time I thought that the best way to enjoy your fantasies was to keep them special inside your mind as though exposure to the real world would taint them somehow. Then I started blurting them out to sexual partners who were half shocked and half thrilled. When asked if I wanted to actually act on them I would gasp “No! It’s just an idea!” but then I started to wonder if it would ever be possible to do these things for real, and without the use of yoga blocks. And reader: it is. It is so possible, it is a doorway through which some of the most joyful moments of your life await you. But only if you are very careful…

1. Lower Your Expectations
Sure in your dream scenario Channing Tatum is your partner and you’re fucking on 400 thread count sheets and afterwards you shower yourself down in Tattinger while Channing watches you adoringly, but let’s take a step back. This isn’t going to happen. Not only is bathing in Tattinger wasteful, it’ll probably make your skin very sticky. You need to isolate the part of the fantasy that is most alluring: is it someone devoting all their attention and expertise upon your body? Or is it the actual feel of 400 count sheets? Figure out the core of it and focus on that, rather than the nice trimmings.

2. Plan Plan Plan
Ideally our sexiest moments would all happen by chance: drifting through a bar we chance upon a pair of beautiful women, wink, and lead them through to the VIP room, they strip down and reveal pure silk La Perla underwear, and you dance with them on a table in just your heels till the strobe lights give out. This is almost totally unlikely to happen, not simply because you need to book the VIP room in advance. To make sure you have the right people and implements at the right time in the right place is a skill. Some people will claim that it ruins the spontaneity  and those people are the same people who’ll sit in the front room waiting for you to cook a three course dinner instead of helping as they don’t want to spoil the surprise. You’ll need to vet candidates for douchebaggery, their understanding of the words “No, I want to stop now”, and what they want to get out of the scene.

3. Acknowledge You Are Not The Only Person Getting Off
If your fantasy involves other people, which it almost certainly will, you need to be aware of their needs. Are they comfortable with what you would like them to do? Have you made sure this is genuine comfort not just a wish to make you happy? They might have suggestions and though you have worked on this fantasy in your head for weeks, months, or even decades, and think you don’t need any help refining it you’d be surprised how hot the ideas of others can be. Listen to the people who are getting involved and try and make sure that even if you aren’t all flopping about gasping “That was the best day of my life” you are at least all happy, spent, and not crying at the end.

4. Be Ready To Stop
You’ve lowered your expectations, planned the shit out of it move by move, chatted to the willing participants, and masturbated about the possibility of this happening till your hand is numb, and now you’re here in the moment, and suddenly you’re overwhelmed. It’s too much, it’s not how you thought it’d feel, you’re tired, ill, worried, scared. These are all legitimate feelings and you can tell everyone that you’re not having a good time and want to stop. Sometimes you might just need a cup of tea and some deep breaths before you’re consumed with a need to go back in and finish what you started, and other times you have to look at it as a practice run that went pretty well, and work on what to tweak to make yourself more comfortable next time. After all if we were good at everything the first time there’d be no excitement in life. There is no shame in calling it a day and everyone you’re with should be able to shout out when they’re uncomfortable and call for a time out.

5. Enjoy It
Look around you, savour the moment, bask in the joy of those around you, and relax. This is all for you, enjoy it!

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When I was 6 we went on holiday and found the hotel was nothing like the brochure had promised. The rooms were dirty, there was no air conditioning, and the stairs stank of wee. However the owner was lovely. Kind, helpful, polite, charming, every single thing you want a hotel manager to be, he was. My parents didn’t even unpack our suitcases, my mother went to the payphone then came back and my Dad took my hand. “Sometimes you have to tell a little lie so that people don’t feel bad, it’s called a white lie, and it’s ok every now and then.” I nodded earnestly and we all went downstairs and told the adorable manager that there had been bad news and we had to return to London immediately. Then we went to the next town and got a room in a lovely hotel there. Every time I tell a white lie or worse; lie by omission, I remember that story and try to smooth away my guilt by telling myself it is for the best.

Lying is a necessary shield between the elements of the world that we don’t like and our scared squishy naked selves.  When that creep on the bus asks what you’re doing tonight and you say you’re going to your ex-squaddie Dad’s house to watch him smash photos of your ex-boyfriends with his bare fists, then it’s legit. When you quit your pub job by telling your boss you’ve got the job of your dreams, but then move to a pub closer to your house where the manager doesn’t scream “SHOTS” at 5pm and thrust sambucas in your face, it’s totally legit. But when there’s a conversation going on about queer people and you’re sitting there gnawing your lips is it still legit to not mention your massive queerness? What about when people talk about kink, or non-monogamy? What then?

A part of me feels guilty at having all these secrets to hold in. I figure ‘normal’ people with their ‘normal’ desires don’t have to hold it all in. They can go around loving who they want and how they want, without worrying they’ll upset people or gross them out. When they do talk about it people aren’t wide eyed with strange fascination and the things they do aren’t shocking they’re just things they do. Normal every day things no-one cares about.

Obviously I have the joy of being able to lie fairly easily: my boyfriend and I can present as a beautiful, happy, monogamous, straight couple to people whenever we want to or have to. People are unlikely to fight me in the street by noticing something different about me. I don’t have a straight laced job to get fired from should people discover I’m a deviant. I am horribly, ridiculously, incredibly lucky.  To be dramatic I want to quote Britney Spears’ seminal hit ‘Lucky‘: Isn’t she lucky, this Hollywood girl?/She is so lucky, but why does she cry?/If there’s nothing missing in her life/Why do tears come at night? A tad hammy I admit, but keeping secrets is a way to drag your soul down into a murky depth with you. Ok that was even more hammy.

This year I told myself I was always to be the most me me I could be and that means not lying to anyone, not even to my parents, about the me that I am. I want to do it not to push boundaries or an agenda but because I am the sum of all my experiences, even the ones that make other people uncomfortable, and these are their issues, not mine.

However I still reserve the right to claim my boyfriend is Jason Statham when being accosted on the nightbus.

This blog is, more often than not, a catalogue of my failures. My failure to get people to want to see me again, to want to hang out, to want to commit, or even want to commit to nothing more than just pure dirty sex. For someone who writes about dating regularly, well, irregularly, I am kind of rubbish at it. My idea of flirting is being alternately mean and handsy, my attempts at romance tend to involve me blurting “Your hair looks so nice today!” then wanging some chocolates at them, and I have been known to dump people with the words “I’m sorry I just can’t” with no further explanation.

I want to be good at dating, of course I do. I want to be an international woman of mystery, inspiring great works of art, and leaving a trail of shagged out lovers in my wake. I think I might be fairly ok at sex at least when I’m sober: whatever happens under the drugbrella doesn’t count as I really should just be impressed that I managed to wade through the purple clouds and get to your genitals in the first places. In short, I want to be the best.

My competitive streak is however probably what makes me fuck up. My quest in life is always to do it right. When I made pork chops the other day for the first time they were good, they were edible and the veg I made was succulent and delicious, and yet I spent the whole dinner gnawing slowly and wondering how to tweak the timing, temperature and spices to make it better. At the end I felt drained and sad, it could have been so good. It could have been perfect. I’d let everyone down with my sub par pork chops. They were simply being nice in hiding their disappointment. I had failed.

When it comes to dating people always tell you there is no ‘right way’ to do things and a part of me would concede they are right. You can’t approach it as a one size fits model and use the same moves and phrases on each person. But this only makes me more mad. I have a nice dinner with someone and fuck it up by bleating “We should… do this… dinner stuff *waft hands* soon again” then running off to the busstop. My brain had rifled through every available word combination, it had scoured every prior time I’d done this, and come up with that. I go on dates and have awkward kisses outside closed bars because I didn’t know how to take it from ‘this awesome conversation we’re having’ to ‘kiss me’ and instead just lunged and hoped it was right.

The funny thing is that even though I’m doing everything wrong. I wear dark coloured lipstick to eat burgers in, I turn up with chipped nails and frizzy hair and no time to relax because I’ve agreed to do something straight after this date as I didn’t write in in my phone’s calendar, and ohgodIthinkIneedtohyperventilateintothisbagforabit I might be doing something right. Lately in my quest to be the most me me I can be, I have allowed myself to be a div on dates because being suave is so out of my reach it’s not worth trying. And I’ve had second dates and people sending me crushed out messages and I’ve fallen in love all while managing to say stuff like “If I don’t tell you I love you I might barf”.

But I want to get it right, I want to get it even more right than this. I think of getting it ‘right right’ and it’s all cupcakes and Paz de la Huerta and bliss. So what do I do? Accept the clumsy weird messy fun life or strive for the nights of satin and lace? If I shoot for the Paz will I get the…. wait, this clumsy metaphor is just further proof that I’m shit at romance, isn’t it? Damnit.

No idea where this image is from… the depths of Tumblr? If you made it, tell me!

Jane: Whatever happened to your very special feelings for Trent?
Daria: Like tattoos, those feelings were painful to acquire and sure to embarrass me in my old age.
Jane: Tattoos are permanent, Daria.
Daria – Pierce Me (Sarcastathon 3000 opening bumper)

There are those of you that read this blog and assume that every single person who ends up in my bed ends up on my blog. While this is sadly (thankfully?) not the case there are people who stick in my mind more than others and end up having scattered pieces written about them, and the subject of this post is one of them.

For all my sluttish ways I am a soft hearted girl. I have been the needy, clingy, girlfriend. Or worse: the needy one night stand. And then there’s the needy well-what-exactly-are-we-to-each-other? I met a person, almost two years ago now, a chance meeting with someone beautiful, charming, and who could make me laugh more than almost anyone I know. The moment we kissed it was like a switch flicked in my head. He was all I could think about for days on end. When he didn’t text it was torture. I found myself violently oscillating between feeling as though I were high on love and crying into my pillow because I was an idiot to have cared. There were times when I thought, briefly for a glimmer that it wasn’t so terrible, and that maybe love was a feeling you make yourself, and that maybe this could be ok. Maybe I wasn’t totally crazy.

We dated, if you can call it that, for a few months and spectacularly crashed and burned. I told myself, and my friends, that we were over and that that was ok. If anyone believed me they were fools. Just as I decided to give up sex for lent he appeared again. This time I thought, like everyone foolishly burned the first time round, that if I went into this, whatever ‘this’ might be, knowing he couldn’t give me what I wanted and that we were destined to fizzle out again that it wouldn’t be so hard. More than anything I wanted to feel that contact high again. The feeling that when I was with him I was ok, that life might work out. A part of me wanted to just hold his hand and look at him, that awful syrupy feeling.

It did not work out. This time there was no spectacular disaster that ended it. It just dissolved and I was left feeling even more stupid than the first time round. But it was easier to recover this time. Is recover the right word? It was easier to forget, and I did. It’s a year on and I don’t feel that sad burn when I think of him, and if I saw him in the flesh would it hurt as much? I doubt it. I realise now that we were horribly mismatched. And though I would like, in time, to be friends with him, I don’t want to get back together. In fact, of all the things I’d like to say to them, “Will you date me again?” is the last thing. Being in love, real, returned, true love now has shown me the error of my ways. My current boyfriend is wonderful, I realise now what real love feels like, something I had sorely forgotten, and I’m so grateful for it.

However sometimes when I think about those times. The times we had together, brief and fractured as they were, a feeling moves inside me. I don’t always know what it is: am I sad, thankful, disappointed? I don’t know, but I haven’t ‘forgotten’ that relationship quite as much as my ego would like me to think. And so I wonder to myself does love, no matter how misguided and obsessive it is, ever really die? Or does it change into something different? Something better maybe? I suppose only age and time will tell.

Photo by 9 Layer Cake and title from the Minnie Riperton song.

Once I didn’t have sex for a year. A whole fucking year. I didn’t kiss anyone I didn’t hold hands with anyone. I didn’t even put my head on anyone’s neck and look wistful. Nothing. I just floated along feeling like a little asexual pod person. While at times it seemed like unbearable torture, eventually I helped me realise that going a month without it, and whining, was unreasonable.

I’m sure there are some of you scoffing at this already: “A year? Try five!” Or six, or seven, or thirty-nine. Yes, I get it, there’s always someone worse off than me. However this isn’t a contest. For me that year was a useful. I had a nervous breakdown, moved to Mexico, taught kids English, and lived in a bungalow with two pugs on a dirt road. Celibacy meant time to concentrate on learning how to be happy again and how to do my job well. It meant a lot of time lying in bed in my knickers listening to Patrick Wolf and smoking cheap cigs. It also meant a lot of time to eat frozen waffles with kraft singles on top, which may have been a bad idea. Taking myself out of the dating pool eventually turned from depressing, to bearable, to actually quite enjoyable.

As I write this I have the luxury of being in a relationship with a wonderful person who loves me, is beautiful, and perfect in bed. It is easy for me to look back on those days and say “Oh it was a drag, but a bearable one!” and I’m sure you’re all scoffing and rolling your eyes. Obviously it wasn’t always bearable, there were so many days when I lay on my bed and listened to The Carpenters and cried while emotionally singing “Let me the one you run to, let me be the one you come to when you need someone to hold you.” not having anyone to be the ‘you’ in that sentence. There was often a feeling after I had showered, shaved, and buffed myself within an inch of my life that I deserved to have sex. That I had wasted my time looking good and being nice all evening. I felt let down by the whole world.

Let no-one tell you being single is easy. It’s not. However once you stop thinking that being single is a challenge you battle through in order to reach your pot of gold at the end it becomes easier. Being single is time for yourself. Time to discover who you are, what you like, what you despise, what you want. It’s time to grow your leg hair, let your room get covered in Cath Kidston prints, and just let go. For the last year I had been dating people, hoping each was a good bet. They weren’t but I learned. I learned from each person how I wanted to be loved. Each person made me realise what I could and couldn’t let go in a relationship. And then I was lucky, I didn’t earn my wonderful boyfriend, I lucked out. And now I have taken all the facets of me I’d been hiding, even the irascible grumpy side of me, and realised that I can be that person with him. That I don’t have to do my hair a certain way or like a certain thing, he really does just like me for me.

In a way I wish I was writing this and still single. I wish I could say that I was still enjoying it, and that I could take each of your hands, give them a squeeze, and let you know it’s going to be ok. Because it will. The less you see falling in love as a right, than a spark of luck, the more likely it is you’ll get lucky. Promise.

Kate Moss and Foxy Brown having fun eating salad and being sexy, by unknown

It may come as a surprise to some of you that I can be quite shy. As a teenager I was crippled with shyness, I was nicknamed ‘traffic lights’ because of how often I blushed, and I kissed precisely two people between the ages of 12 and 17, neither of whom I particularly wanted to kiss. They had simply offered.

My teenage days are long behind me and I’m closer to 30 than 13, but I still hold onto that shyness inside. When I am out and see someone good looking I freeze inside. There they are, across the dancefloor, shuffling around, looking beautiful in the spotlight and here I am staring. Obviously the main thing holding me back was a fear of rejection, but somehow growing older helped with that. I no longer dreaded the ‘no’ because I knew that more times I asked the more yeses I got. The no’s were just hurdles on the way to something better. Also it’s cheesy but getting older seems to make a lot of things easier. I hate it when people say it but it’s true.

But if I wasn’t scared of rejection what I was scared of? As I stood on the edge of a thousand dancefloors I thought about it. More than anything I was scared of ‘doing it wrong’. People always say you should hit on people just by saying ‘hi’. Where on earth do you go from there? Hi! I’m Vanessa you are an attractive person, want to find out if we despise each other? Hi! You’re cute! Hi! This song is terrible! Hi! You have toilet paper stuck to your shoe! Hardly the start of something beautiful.

While I had managed to fall in and out of one night stands and relationships my whole adult life I realised it was often by chance as opposed to a genuine desire to be with these people. I was watching beautiful people stroll on by into the arms of more confident people all because I couldn’t figure out what to follow up ‘hi’ with. And so I did something I thought I’d never do. I rang Dan Savage’s podcast.

That’s right. I, a blogger, someone who managed to win an award writing about sex and relationships, asked someone else for advice. One weekend after having the most beautiful woman with the most touchable hair, hold my hand and smile invitingly at me, I had stared in fear at her hand, and then at her, and dropped her hand because I thought “I haven’t made out with a girl in so long and I am terrified. I don’t know what to do or say to her. I will retreat into my shell.” The woman’s face fell and I watched her walk away. She walked away and I felt myself stare, goggle eyed at her, and think “Come back! I’m an idiot! Hi?”. So I rang Dan Savage, the only person I thought wouldn’t laugh at me, and who’s advice I would respect no matter what it was.

And he said to me: “Tell them you’re nervous” That was it. Tell them I’m an idiot, tell them I’m into them and that it’s making me feel giddy and stupid and nervous. Just fucking say something. Most of you are probably reading this rolling your eyes. What idiotic advice. Why didn’t she try that before? Sometimes it takes someone smarter and older than you to tell you the dumbest most obvious thing, and for you to do it.

Fast forward to my next date. I am sat with a beautiful woman. We are holding hands. I am looking at her and consumed with drunken lust. I am thinking about how much I want to kiss her as she tells me something interesting that I am not listening to. Suddenly I hear my mouth open and words start tumbling out. “You are really beautiful, and I really want to kiss you, but I’m incredibly nervous.” And then she kissed me.

Photo from Petra + Ariel’s Tumblr, title from Nicki Minaj’s Starships, obvs.

We all know what it’s like. You’ve gone out looking amazing, your hair is full of bouncity bounce, your stride is powerful, everything about you sings yes yes yes. All night you’ve danced and posed, and looked seductively at people through your eyelashes and yet here you are, in the beigel shop alone, wondering whether to get two bagels or one. The mirror opposite the counter is reflecting back a limp version of yourself, you wipe away the mascara smudges under your eyes. A sigh ripples out of you and across the glass cabinets. It is 4am. As you wait your turn you shut your eyes and you make a wish. “Please, please, I just want to meet someone beautiful. Someone charming and gorgeous. Someone gregarious. Someone who fancies the hell out of me and probably lives nearby. I just want to meet someone who I want to eat up with a spoon. Please.”

Ahead of you in the queue is a man, the kind of man you like. A tall man with a beautiful coat, and lovely hair. He is looking at himself in the mirror as you look at yourself and you catch each other’s eyes. Before you know it you’re smiling, sheepishly and he’s smiling back. Then the lady asks him for his order and the moment is gone. You buy your beigel, take your change and walk outside and the beautiful man is there, sitting on the bike rack smiling at you. “Hi” he says. You reply, despite your better judgement. Before you know it you’re chatting, he’s funny if a little drunk, but it’s ok because you’re a little drunk too. You’re cold, you tell him you are going to start walking home, and gesture in the direction of your house. He tells you the street he lives on and it’s two streets up from yours. “We should walk together,” you suggest, and he takes your arm as you feel your heart lift up with joy. You hold your bagel and look at the beautiful man and everything feels ok. You are probably more drunk than you realise.

As you walk down the street you notice the man is very quiet. You ask him a question and he takes a deep breath. A very deep breath. The breath goes on and on as though he were trying to inflate himself. Gently you disengage your arm from his and he spreads out his arms like an opera singer. Finally as you begin to step away from him he says “I don’t really know.” Confused you begin to eat your bagel. The man looks at you. “Your eyes are lilac.” They are not lilac. “They are. I can tell from your soul.” In terror you look at his own eyes and notice his pupils are enormous, almost engulfing his irises totally. “Are you by any chance…” you try to choose the word carefully but his eager puppy face just bobs in front of yours distracting you. “High?” He nods. Of course he is of course.

He can’t remember where his street is, but thankfully you do. You take his arm again and he begins to tell you how you have soul bonded so well together. How he feels so connected to you, that you were someone wonderful in a past life. That past life was connected with his and upon seeing you he had to get to know you better. You don’t feel very drunk any more. You’re tired. You want to eat this bagel and sleep in your warm warm bed. Alone. At the door to his house he stabs the lock with the key multiple times and giggles. “Why is everything so wobbly?” So you take his key and you put it in the lock and you push him inside the door. “Aren’t you coming in?” His face contorts into a sad mask. “I have to pick up some more drugs.” You’re adlibbing, wildly, here. “If you go up to bed, I’ll meet you there.” “Drugs! Yes, I’d like more of those please.” You take one last look at his face, his beautiful beautiful face, framed by his delicious hair, and you smile, you try to remember this moment, and you shut the door on it.

Back in your own bed, eating the bagel, you sigh hard and long. Next time when you make a wish, you will add “And sober.” to the end of it.

Once upon a time, a long time ago in fact, I was dating someone who had a girlfriend. When he chose her over me I was heartbroken. I wandered around my flat in a daze, making white russians, and crying, for days. Immediately I started to obsess over his girlfriend, that utter bitch. That evil hateful woman who had wrenched us apart. It was a horrible time, and I realise now how destructive my behaviour was not simply to myself, but to everyone around me.

I don’t hate his girlfriend because she is his girlfriend, but because in the aftermath of my dating him she turned on me hard. She called me every name under the sun, and made it clear when she saw me in person that I was to go nowhere near her. Even now when I see her name pop up in my Twitter feed I become livid. The thing here is that we’re both wrong, horribly wrong. In focussing all our anger upon each other we missed out on the person who was the most guilty: our boyfriend.

Our boyfriend had fucked us over: he was the one who’d promised the moon on a stick to both of us, and he was the one who’d let us down. When I’d started dating him, totally oblivious to the fact that he’d had a girlfriend, he’d made me feel special when I was no such thing. In an ideal world we would have teamed up, gone chola girl gang on him and taught him a fucking lesson, but we didn’t. We turned on each other as it was the easiest way to make ourselves feel better. If we admitted we’d both fallen head over heels with an arsehole then we’d have to look carefully at ourselves and admit abject failure.

While it’s too late to right this wrong I can look to my life now, and try to avoid making the same mistake again. I was for the last year or so, sleeping with someone who has a girlfriend. However, their relationship is an open one and she knew of my existence and was perfectly happy with it. We were, I thought, in a perfect situation. It took a while to get used to but I was blissfully happy. A few weeks ago I met them together for the first time and we had what I thought was a nice chat. My little black heart warmed to think that we could all be so happy like this. And then, that very night, he stopped answering my texts. I sent him an email after a week or so to ask if everything was ok, to no avail. He had disappeared from my life without a glance back.

The same emotions ran through my head: what had I done wrong? It was that BITCH wasn’t it? She hated me! She couldn’t stand me. And then I realised that I had forgotten to blame him. The one person I had any interactions with. The person who I’d spent time with and who didn’t value me enough to talk to me ever again. And I realised that I was trying to make it easy on myself, and easy on him. This woman seemed lovely, she seemed smart, and gorgeous, she had in no way tried to attack me, I just wanted to feel as though I wasn’t a fuck up for choosing someone who’d let me down.

Maybe I said or did something wrong, but without talking I can’t ever know this. All I do know is that I’m mad and disappointed. But that I will also place the blame where it is due: right at his feet.

Come discuss this on Facebook or Twitter!

So it’s that time of year again: tomorrow I will be sitting with my fellow Cosmo Blog Award nominees, desperate to find out who wins. This also marks the third THIRD!!! anniversary of this blog, and so as is now customary, I’d like to think about what I’ve learned in the last year.

While 2011 should have been a big year of learning (split up with my one true love boyfriend, moved house, blah blah blah) there were only a few revelations. This year however I feel as though I learn something new every goddamn day. Walking home from the library my brain is a firework show with ideas popping in every direction. Each time I hook up with someone I feel like I’ve scaled a fun sexual ladder that just gets better and better with each rung. Since I’m not selfish I am going to share some of these revelations with you, and hope that they make your brain a festival of glittery joy too.

Asking for what you want makes sex fucking brilliant
I know, I know, we really did just cover this, but this is just the number one all time most important thing I have to put out there. When you are in bed with someone and you are not sure what to do, or if you’re doing what you’re doing right: ask. If there is something you want done to you that you know you will love: ask. If you want to try to something new: ask ask ask. Asking seems terrifying because no can always be the answer. But if you get a ‘no’ ask why, ask how can you find something you both want to do, ask them to ask you something! I might hide under all of your beds with a big placard saying ASK and pop up when you’re having sex. Do you want that? No. Then ASK.

Everyone you sleep with does not have to be a potential life partner
When you stop looking at every hook up with a ‘this could be the one!!!’ mentality it becomes so much fucking easier to enjoy these moments for what they are. You want to fuck that hot dude in the bar but he’s too busy to date you? Fuck him! No literally: fuck him, let him fuck you, fuck him in the butt, whatever turns you on. If you want to fuck someone and they want to fuck you and you’re both in a place where you can make that happen, or can get there via public transport, then DO IT. Stop thinking they won’t date you or you won’t date them or this isn’t right. It’s all bullshit. If you both want to have sex, do it, and then see above.

Being single is not a consolation prize in life
If one more older woman says to me at a cocktail party “How are you still single?” I am going to punch them in the face and feel fucking good about it. Get it together my bitches: being single is ace. I get to eat smokey bacon pringles in my bed and not give a fuck. I get to do what I want on my terms when I want. Obviously there are moments when it gets a little lonely, but the less I believe that one person will stay with me for the rest of my life and save me from all my mental neuroses then the happier I am. Learning to revel in one’s own company means that when you do find your OTP that you will not live koala like upon them, hanging off all their dreams, and leeching the happiness out of everything.

I’ll spare you further revelations because at the moment these ideas form a beautiful trifecta of power for me. Every time I have a low moment I look back, think of these things, take a deep breath, and move on. Try it.

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Screencaps from The Hour