‘At Least You’re Young Enough to Start Again’: What Not to Say to a Friend Getting Divorced at Thirty
Sinking the Situationship: Say Goodbye to Drama and Emotionally Draining Dating
With the casual nature of situationships, you’re never owed loyalty from the person you’re in it with. So, while you have those comforting nights together, you also have a lot of nights when you’re cancelled on, not replied to or ditched. The comfort against loneliness can be taken away just as easily as it’s given, and there’s not much you can do about it…
‘In an Abusive Relationship Your Partner is Your Happiness and Your Biggest Fear’: Overcoming Love-bombing and Gaslighting to Leave Toxic Situations
I didn’t leave his side, even when confronted with the biggest red flag of all: his domestic abuse charges. If anything, I was so blinded and confused by his showers of love that I felt like I needed to protect him from what those women were accusing him of. It took me a long time to admit to myself that I had been emotionally abused and to understand that I could have been another victim of toxic love if circumstances and an ocean hadn’t come between us…
‘It Paints My Sexuality as a Phase’: Why I’ve Always Found ‘Barsexuality’ Troubling as a Bisexual Woman
‘Barsexuality’ is a term that should have stayed on 2010 Tumblr, but I’ve been carrying it around like a cursed object since I was fifteen. Drunk on a Nalgene full of vodka, I’d confessed my love for the female drummer in my high school band. I had expected my ‘out’ friend Melanie to catch the secret and protect it fiercely, but there was apparently no secret to keep. I was barsexual not bisexual. I was Madison and Louise in Gilmore Girls, kissing each other so men would buy them drinks…
An Exploration of Desire: Recognising Asexuality, Alongside Illness and Trauma, as Valid
As a teenager, I fantasised about the perfect kiss. Kissing in heavy rain, in someone’s car, in a booth in a bar I would someday be old enough to go to. I watched teen rom-coms and read YA romance – enemies to lovers, friends to lovers, slow burn – and pictured carving out a love with someone like that. I rarely thought about sex. When I did, it existed in some faraway land that I did not feel any big need to visit…
‘At Least You’re Young Enough to Start Again’: What Not to Say to a Friend Getting Divorced at Thirty
I fall into months of despair. Dark, frantic days that I drink bottles of wine instead of eating meals and analyse every facet of my personality to find the flaw to explain why we ended up here. Why didn’t we succeed? It is amicable, and we are friends. And yet I can’t suppress the feeling that it is all my fault. Or all his fault? I want a reason, just like everyone else…
‘I Don’t Know How to Flirt in My Mother Tongue’: What is the Love Language of an Expat?
I truly learned how to have sex in English, if sex is a learned thing. I read its dictionary in people's beds after I moved to London. My first long-term relationship was with a Brit, and the following one as well. The things I asked for, what they asked of me… I only knew one language to say those words in…
Loving a Person Publicly: Queer Paranoia from The Middle East to the West
Moving abroad to the West, I found myself struggling with any public display of affection from hand-holding to feeding my partner a bite of my food across the table. It made me paranoid. ‘What if someone who knows my parents sees us?’ I would often think to myself obsessively, looking over my shoulder. This made it hard to fully experience my partner…
Queerly Beloved: A HER Success Story
Outwardly I am very straight passing, which though not an obstacle per se made it harder to signal my interest in spaces that weren’t queer. One time, at a friend’s house party, I got chatting to this beautiful girl. We laughed and flirted the whole night and exchanged numbers to meet up for a drink later that week. Over espresso martinis in a chic, low-light bar, she leaned toward me and said how happy she was to make a new friend. It's a queer girl rite of passage...
‘The Scarcity of Positive Representation Distorts Reality’: Recognising Abuse in Lesbian Relationships
It’s in the little things – the missed classes, the unwinding friendships, the interests that you’ve picked up because it makes sense. You can’t be alone because why would you be? You can’t make your own decisions because this is a partnership. Things that had consecrated themselves so deeply in your identity, in your very being, lose their importance and one day you look in the mirror and what you see isn’t a reflection of yourself but of your relationship…
‘Can I Be Pregnant Even Though I’m a Virgin?’: How OCD and Intrusive Thoughts Stole My Enjoyment of Sex
My intrusive thoughts morphed into a specific, unexpected and absurd manifestation: I became hellbent on the irrational belief that I was pregnant… despite being a virgin. Having undergone therapy and had time to heal from this phase of my life, I almost laugh at the ridiculousness of this obsession. However, having never been told that the human brain can torment itself with thoughts so mind-bogglingly illogical, this obsession felt like a truly terrifying reality…
How to Embrace the Freedom and Flexibility of Independence Whilst You’re Single
I’ve been single for the majority of my adult life. Most of the time I adore my independence; it has allowed me to work abroad, build amazing friendships and have the freedom to do what I like, when I like. But being single isn’t always easy. Here is my advice on how to be single when you’re feeling pretty shit…
Sick of Dating Apps? Try Giving Out Business Cards Instead: An Experiment in Love
I have always found it very difficult to approach people and it has been my goal to get better, especially since I don’t drink much alcohol anymore (the classic inhibition remover). Inspired by a friend, I decided to make some business cards to give out to people I fancied…
‘Bisexuality is About Attraction, Not Action’: Embracing Authenticity and Coming Out as a Bisexual Woman Marrying a Straight Man
In a world that often tries to confine individuals within predetermined boxes, the path to self-discovery and acceptance can be an emotionally charged journey. For bisexuals, embracing their true selves while in a relationship that doesn't align with societal expectations can be particularly challenging…
Chuck Traditional and Tune In: Why I Adore Audio Porn
It’s hard to get over the visuals in traditional porn – to be able to see past the perfect bodies, extravagant lighting and general lack of bum crack sweat. For me, it distracted me from the pleasure on-screen and replaced the intimacy with an insecurity that I would simply never look that good. Audio porn has allowed me to re-embrace my love for pornography…
Am I Conflating Comfort with Happiness? Why It’s Time to Question Our Romantic Relationships and Learn to Value All Love Equally
bell hooks’ book, All About Love, completely changed my life when I first came across it as a 20-year-old in my undergraduate course. What struck me is the notion that not all interpersonal connections are treated as if they matter in different important ways. Many of us inevitably lose out on robust friendships as we’ve been taught that nothing is more important than a romantic partner…
How To Recognise The Signs of Coercive Control and Regain Your Sense of Self After Abuse
Although awareness has increased in recent years around coercive control and there has been more education on what this level of abuse entails, there is a gap in the literature on how we can recover and reclaim our identity after escaping this trauma. The first step in recovering from coercive control is understanding the severity of it and recognising it as abuse. It should not be underestimated...
‘Representation Hugely Informs How We Come to Love’: Navigating a Second Adolescence After Coming Out as a Lesbian
Girls were not exposed to anything other than heterosexual relationships. My school library would not stock queer love stories for fear of corrupting students, depriving young queer people of a script. This was never something I consciously realised, but when you only see women being adored by macho heroes or knights in shining armor, there is a risk of falling into binarised traps and maybe even wanting to save distressed damsels!
‘Single Friend Who Gives Great Advice? That’s Me’: Dating as a Late Bloomer and Why it’s OK to Take Your Time
I’ve always found myself enamoured by the idea of love and romance – the effect of someone who binged too many romantic comedies and read even more books. After a while, there reached a point where the love I would read and watch on screen seemed to be a distant fantasy for myself. Since dating never came naturally to me, I came to believe that I might not ever get it, or at least not in the way I truly wanted…
Playing the ‘Feeld’: Getting on the Sex-Positive App and Opening Up My Marriage Last Year
We’re ethically non-monogamous. Keen to have fun with emotionally intelligent, kind humans. This is what my profile reads. I’m the most excited I’ve been in a long while about my sexuality. Having met my husband so young, we’ve only ever been with each other. Now there was the biggest, widest door open before us. I was so fucking ready…
Beyond the Barrier of Penetration: How Vaginismus Led Me to a More Adventurous Sex Life
The variety we found in our sex lives without penetration, and the amount of excitement and fulfilment we got from it showed me that the stigma peddled that sex between opposite-sex partners has to involve penetration simply isn’t true. It was freeing; it gave me permission to stop waiting for my vagina to be ‘normal’, to stop thinking penetration was what I needed to do to please my partner…