12 Business & Blogging Lessons From My Blog Idols

Kate Sloan

a dildo, mug full of pens, pair of glasses, and laptop on my desk

For years, I wondered what my life’s purpose was. I felt (and still feel) drawn to many different endeavors – journalism, creative writing, audio production, music, even musical theatre – and wasn’t sure how to meld those together into one cohesive career.

But something clicked when I started this blog, almost five years ago. As I tried out different types of content and developed my style, I slowly realized that running a blog could combine my passions in any way I wanted. Now, my days of “blog work” are comprised of writing, editing, social media promotion, taking and editing photos and videos, corresponding with readers, and rustlin’ up sponsors – all tasks I adore and didn’t think I could meaningfully combine, let alone earn money from. How dreamy!

I wouldn’t be where I am today without my blogging mentors: people whose blogs I’ve admired for years, whose instructional and personal content I’ve read and re-read, whose guidance I’ve taken to heart and put to good use. Here are some of those blog heroes, and some of the valuable biz-‘n’-blogging lessons they’ve taught me…

blogger Gala Darling wearing a pink dressGala Darling (galadarling.com)

It’s okay to overshare… selectively. Gala grew up during the height of LiveJournal‘s popularity (as did I, sort of), so her writing has always been tinged with tropes of the online-diary format. In the LJ days, it was commonplace for folks to divulge all sorts of glamorously mundane details from their lives: the music they were loving, the perfume they currently adored, the absurd adventures they’d recently gotten up to. These details were (and are) simultaneously banal and fascinating, when shared in an engaging way by someone in whom you already have an interest. Reading Gala’s work is instructive in striking that balance between “too small to be interesting” and “too showy to feel intimate.” Personal details invite your reader into your life, and – when shared tastefully and artfully – create a delicious connection between writer and reader.

Picture, and know, your “ideal reader.” Gala co-founded The Blogcademy with two of her blogger pals (including Kat, who I’ll tell you about in a minute), and one of the central lessons they impart on their “Blogcadettes” is the importance of vividly picturing your ideal reader in your head when you write. If you know who you’re writing for, you’ll automatically have a stronger sense of purpose and of what kind of content you should be producing. My “ideal reader” is a mental composite of actual readers of mine I’ve met and a younger version of myself. It’s an image that keeps me on-task and helps propel me forward when I’m feeling stuck.

Above all, be kind and loving. Gala’s brand centers an optimistic, adoring attitude, and I’ve always admired that. She is the human embodiment of the tenet, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” It’s not that she never speaks ill of anyone – it’s obviously valid to call out people/companies/entities who are being shitty! – but she doesn’t engage with cruel trolls or petty gossips. Instead, she mostly just directs positivity and love at her readers. Her blog, brand, and persona are cohesively focused on optimism and integrity. When I’m doing that really well, I see it mirrored back at me, in the form of equally positive and sweet readers – which is exactly what I want!

blogger Kat Williams doing a kiss face and making a peace signKat Williams (rocknrollbride.com)

Treat your blog like a business. Because, spoiler alert: it absolutely can be. Mine certainly is. Kat’s been blogging full-time for years, so she does this magnificently. She’s methodical about her emails and other blog admin tasks, and as a result, she’s able to post fantastic content EVERY DAY (sometimes even more than that!). Depending on your life circumstances, it’s not always possible to pour time and energy into your blog – but Kat inspires me to approach mine more professionally and purposefully, in order to get back professional and purposeful results.

Write kickass, valuable sponsored posts. When I first started writing sponsored posts, I felt super gross about it. How could I possibly get paid to write about a company without coming across like a promotional sleazeball? But bloggers like Kat have set the gold standard for what a sponsored post ought to be: authentic, fun, and valuable to your readers. I don’t accept sponsored-post assignments unless I genuinely feel I can make them fun and interesting for both myself and my readers. Otherwise, the posts would just be an empty sales spiel, and nobody wants that.

writer Alexandra Franzen smilingAlexandra Franzen (alexandrafranzen.com)

Set clear, loving policies. My policies page quotes Alex’s, because she’s brilliant at this sort of thing. Boundaries are crucial, both personally and professionally. Having crystal-clear boundaries in place makes you appear more professional to potential clientele, plus it helps you weed out stressful bullshit and focus only on the projects that actually align with what you want to achieve. I feel like such a badass bosslady when I fire off an email that begins, “Like it says on my policies page…”

Underpromise and overdeliver. Alex says the secret to success is just being really, really, consistently good at what you do. There’s no point making outlandish promises about what you’re capable of; just get super great at blogging, and over time, the readers and sponsors will flock to you, even if your social media and SEO and all those extras aren’t especially on-point. Content is king, and good content – well-written, engaging, valuable content – will build you a devoted audience faster and better than anything else. So practice your writing and try not to stress too much about the other stuff.

You don’t “find” your voice, you create it. Your “voice” as a writer is something you should purposefully craft, not magically stumble upon. Alex taught me that shaping your writing style is a conscious, deliberate act. How do you want your reader to feel? What do you want them to experience or learn as they read your work? What do you want them to take away from your writing? Get clear about this stuff and you’ll find your “voice” gets clearer, too.

an illustration of blogger Lilly doing sex toy science experimentsLilly (dangerouslilly.com)

Never shut up. Lilly is notoriously critical of shady sex toy company practices, toxic materials, and awful toys. This conflicts with my earlier point about being a positive and loving blogger, but I think they’re two sides of the same coin: being a positive force in the world means radiating love most of the time but busting out the big guns when you encounter something worth destroying. Bloggers have the power to change the world, and that is not a responsibility we should take lightly. Fuck shit up, make change, punch up, and dismantle systems of oppression in any way you have access to.

Build community with other bloggers. To be fair, this is important to all my blogger babes, not just Lilly. But she vocally supports blogger solidarity, and adds so much value to my life in doing so. Creating community with fellow bloggers is fantastic not only for social reasons but also for professional ones: you can consult with each other about setting rates, dealing with difficult clients, crafting tricky posts, and any other blogging snafus you might encounter. Since befriending tons of other sex bloggers, my work not only makes me happier and more fulfilled but also brings in more money and feels like more of a professional pursuit.

blogger Epiphora wearing a hat that says "Pay Me"Epiphora (heyepiphora.com)

Get paid first. At companies’ behest, I used to sometimes write and publish sponsored posts before receiving payment for them, with the understanding that I would get paid after publication. I see now how risky that was, and how much it signalled those companies’ lack of respect for me and my platform. “You should not have to do work you weren’t even paid for,” Piph told me. “No need to lift a damn finger until they put the money in your pocket. Fucking insist upon it.” She is always reminding me, through her words but mostly her actions, that our work is worth money and we do not have to put up with rude, unprofessional clients.

Never apologize. Okay, apologize if you fuck up. But never apologize just for being you in a way you’re worried might not be to others’ taste. I can’t count the number of times I’ve written/said/thought some form of, “I’m sorry if this post is really rambly,” or “I’m sorry this post is so personal and emotional,” or “I’m sorry I have so many feelings about frivolous femme shit.” Piph’s writing is unabashed and unapologetic, and I think that’s part of what draws people to her website in droves. As a blogger, your personality is your brand; it’s what your readers are there to read. Stop playing small, stop denying your greatness, stop papering over your glorious quirks and start showing them the fuck off. Your people will find you, but only if you’re being your real, whole, amazing self.

What lessons have you learned from bloggers you admire?

Review: Godemiche Ambit

Kate Sloan

a pink glittery dildo!

The concept of penis envy has always mystified me. I have penis curiosity, sure. Penis intrigue. If someone offered me an hour in an alternate universe wherein I would have a dick and could receive a blowjob from, say, Olivia Wilde circa 2004, I would not say no. But I have never actively longed for a penis. At least, not one attached to me.

But the concept of a “femme cock” nonetheless stirred my interest. I’d read Artemisia and Melissa Broder rhapsodize the power of wielding a girly member. I kept an eye out for that perfect harness-and-dildo combo that would let me feel feminine as hell while strapping on. I cooed over harnesses by Velvet Nest and Tantus, and felt comfy rocking colorful dildos from Happy Valley and Vixen Creations. But then I fell in love with a pink Aslan Leather harness and a pink glittery Godemiche Ambit, and my perfect femme-cock combo was formed.

I’d previously tried Godemiche’s Adam, and while I liked it, it had no curve – and curves are important to me. So I was excited when Godemiche launched the Ambit, a gently sloping G-spot-focused dildo with a defined coronal ridge. My vagina ached for it, and even moreso when they told me they could custom-make one in their sparkly pink colorway.

Godemiche’s silicone is midway between hard and soft: I can fold this dildo in half, but it takes effort. It’s firmer than Vixen and Tantus‘ dual-density silicones, but squishier than their regular silicone formulations. It’s a good happy medium for my G-spot, which usually likes being stroked but not being aggressively pounded.

a pink glittery dildo in a pink leather harness!

At 5.75″, the Ambit is long enough that it can reach my A-spot if I pull my knees to my chest and push the toy really deep – but that’s not really where it shines. This is primarily a toy for G-spot stimulation and it does that very well. The flat, angled head finds my spot with precision, and a well-lubed Ambit is easy for me to thrust in and out as fast as I like.

Sometimes, mid-masturbation, I start to crave something a bit bigger and more targeted than the Ambit – at which point I might switch to a tried-and-true fave like the Uncut or Adam. The Ambit has a 1.5″ diameter at its widest point, and I’m used to using toys in the 1.75″+ range. But on an average day, it feels plenty good enough on my G-spot to get me off, when paired with a decent clit vibe.

Because its head comes to a tapered point, the Ambit is also great for anal play. Its curve would make for some good prostate stimulation, I’d imagine. I like the gentle popping feeling as this toy’s big head slides into my ass, and the otherwise smooth shaft means it doesn’t overwhelm my butt with sensation.

While I wouldn’t say the Godemiche Ambit is a standout favorite dildo of mine, it’s good to have around for days when I want medium-intensity G-spot stim and don’t feel like being filled up with a massive cock. Plus it looks totally gorgeous when I strap it on – and I’d imagine it’ll look even prettier when I (eventually) fuck the vag/butt/mouth of someone adorable with it. It is truly my dream femme cock!

Nude, Lewd, Screwed, & Tattooed

Kate Sloan
Photo by Taylor J Mace

The day before I got my first tattoo, someone on Twitter told me to take a break from sex for a while, and I laughed.

See, my sex life at that time was not exactly hoppin’. I’d only just broken a year-and-a-half-long dry spell, and the person who’d broken it for me had gone back to the far-away city where he lived. So my sexual future didn’t seem bright. This well-intentioned Twitter warning felt like when I got my wisdom teeth out at age 17. As I drifted out of my anaesthesia cloud and back to earth, the dentist told me, “You should probably avoid drinking, smoking, and exercising for a while.” And 17-year-old me – neither a partier nor an exerciser – burst out laughing, to the mixed embarrassment and amusement of the dentist and my mother.

It felt like a moot suggestion. Just like someone telling me to intentionally avoid sex, when it felt like I’d been unintentionally avoiding sex for a long-ass time.

And yet, the very day after I got that tattoo, I found myself cuddled up with a cute boy on his couch, his face so close to mine that my cheeks glowed red-hot.

“Wanna see my new tattoo?” I asked excitedly, two or three hours deep into one of those intense, confessional conversations that make you want to bang someone real bad. (Or maybe that’s just me.) “Yeah!” he confirmed, and I lit up. I pushed my skirt a little lower on my hips, tucked my thumb into the waistband of my panties, and tugged.

To our mutual horror, the underwear stuck to the healing heart, pulling the mushy top layer of skin along with it. “Eeeeuuuugghhh,“ me and Cute Boy both intoned. (Tattoo enthusiasts, worry not: I went for a free touch-up at my tattoo parlor a month later, so the damage was not permanent.)

It was a gross moment, but apparently not gross enough to scare him off; we had sex less than an hour later, in his cozy basement-apartment bed. After teasing me for long minutes – his hands and lips and tongue all over every part of me but my genitals – he paused and observed, “Normally, at this point, I’d take your underwear off, but I’m gonna ask for your help this time, ’cause I don’t wanna hurt you.” I giggled and obliged.

It was my introduction to an experience I would come to adore: Having Sex While Tattooed.

There are certain phrases that come out of my mouth a lot when I’m having sex. Some pertain to logistics: “Can you go a little deeper?” “I would really like to go down on you…” Others are hallmarks of my anxious brain: “Are you getting tired?” “Do you want to stop?” Still others are just stock phrases I blurt when excited or nervous: “Sorry I’m giggling so much; I do that.” “Aaah, words are hard!” I like to imagine listing these phrases to a room full of my past sexual partners. They’d all laugh and say, “Yep. She says that a lot.”

One such phrase, since I first got inked, is: “Do you like my tattoo?”

Without the benefit of hearing my inflection or seeing my face, you might have read that and assumed I ask this question out of insecurity or a need for validation: “My tattoo is cute, right? Please tell me you think it’s cute.” But that’s not how it feels when I ask it. It usually crosses my lips coquettishly, a sly grin on my face. It’s not really a question. The subtext is: My tattoo’s goddamn excellent, isn’t it.

One such incident happened on a chilly night in March. It was the type of first date I didn’t expect to end in sex: our rapport unfurled leisurely but delightfully over drinks, and I thought, I would like to have sex with this boy, but probably not tonight. But one thing led to another and he ended up in my bed with me – ostensibly just to cuddle and sleep.

“Do you like my tattoo?” I asked as I shed my skirt and tights and climbed into bed beside him, tugging my panties a little lower on my hips so he could see the little red heart.

“Yeah! It’s so cute,” he said, with genuine enchantment in his voice. “Can I kiss it?”

I laughed a little to hide my surprise, and said yes. This sweet, gangly boy slid down the length of my bed til he was eye-level with my pelvis. I felt his warm breath on my lower belly. He pressed a firm kiss to my heart tattoo. All that heat and pressure and careful attention, just inches from my clit. It would be an understatement to say that I swooned.

I hadn’t meant to have sex with him. But like… after that… how could I not?

My boyfriend in the summer of 2016 was covered in tattoos. They each meant something different and magnificent. When I confessed I wanted more ink but worried I’d regret it years later, he told me, “Tattoos are just a snapshot in time. They don’t have to represent who you’ll be forever; they just represent who you were at the time that you got them.”

He was one of the first people I told about the tattoos I wanted to get on the backs of my thighs – two pink bows with the words “good girl” above them. “They’re gonna look so sexy on you!” he declared. Sometimes he’d even talk dirty about my hypothetical tattoos while we fucked. “You’re such a good girl,” he’d grunt against my shoulder while I was pinned beneath him. “Soon it’ll be on your skin so everyone’ll know it.”

Ironically, though that boyfriend was more excited about my “Good Girl” tattoos than anyone I knew, he never got to see them on me; we broke up before I actually got them. But it was fitting: I was not a good girl with him. I was in love with someone else, constantly half-distracted, one foot out the door. He was excited for the good girl I would become, though he’d never get to meet her.

Three days after I got my thighs tattooed, my fave fuckbuddy bent me over in a park at 2AM and fucked me like the world was ending. We were drunk and nothing else mattered. He felt deliciously thick inside me and noises bubbled up from my throat unprompted. All I knew was that I didn’t want him to stop.

But he stopped. “Oh, shit,” he said suddenly, stilling inside me. “Am I hurting your tattoos?”

This possibility had literally not occurred to me. But then, of course, alcohol numbs us to such things.

“No, I’m fine,” I said, but by then we were no longer fucking, and instead, messily kissing, because drunk sex makes one activity blur into the next in a way that feels retrospectively picturesque.

He zipped his pants back up, I smoothed my skirt back down, and we caught a streetcar back to his neighborhood. He bought Subway sandwiches for both of us, because he is a goddamn gentleman. When we arrived at his place, I realized I had forgotten to bring moisturizer, and my flaky, healing tattoos felt dry and achy. “Hang on a minute,” he called from the bathroom, as I whined tipsily, face-down in his bed.

When he returned, he was carrying a bottle of fancy face moisturizer. “Shh, just stay still,” he instructed me, so I kept my face planted in his pillow as he rubbed cool wet lotion on my blistering thighs. His touch was warm and tender, and felt somehow more intimate than his dick had felt buried in me mere minutes earlier. “There. That’s better. That’s good.” That’s a good girl, I whispered in my own ear.

A few days after that, I met a cute boy at a sex club and went home with him. He made me laugh and I felt safe around him; that was all there was to it, and that was all I needed.

When we arrived at his apartment and I flopped face-first on his bed, I heard his voice from behind me: “Oh my god.” I didn’t know what he was reacting to: my curvy and excellent ass, the spanking bruises on my skin from earlier that evening, or my adorable new tattoos. Frankly, I didn’t care. The reason for the reaction mattered less than the reaction itself. It was the reaction I wanted.

Tattoos, I realized, are the only femme trappings I can never take off. My carefully-constructed outfit will be shed, a blowjob might erase my lipstick, my perfume will fade into the atmosphere, but my tattoos are forever. Never again will I be reduced to a blank human canvas, devoid of the markers that make me me. I am perpetually emblazoned with these images: one red heart, two pink bows, and the words “good girl.” No one can take these things from me. They are mine, for always, forever.

“God, your tattoos are so hot,” this cute funny stranger said to me as he laid down beside me and began to kiss me, and I thought, Yes, they fucking are.

You’re Vanilla. I’m Not. But I Love You.

Kate Sloan

It’s a giddy-hot summer in Toronto and I am out having lunch with my new boyfriend (soon to be ex). My collar is chafing my neck in the sticky heat, so I unclasp the buckle and slide the leather off my neck and into my purse.

Boyf looks up from his menu. “You took it off,” he comments softly. “You should’ve asked first.” A wicked grin creeps over his boyish face.

I giggle and blush, but it’s perfunctory. When he says dom-y shit to me, it’s like I’m watching a porn scene: it turns me on, in an abstracted sort of way, but it doesn’t thrill my innermost subby self because it doesn’t feel like it’s happening to me.

Because he’s not my dom, not really. You are. And you don’t even know it.

I am a kinkster who loves a vanilla person, and it feels like this:

I plunge my hand between the bones of my chest until I find my heart. Closing my fist around it, I pull it out of me til it’s freed from my body with a sickening pop.

With the gingerest touch, I reach out and place my heart in your open palm. We both watch it, beating, twitching. My blood drips between your fingers and onto the floor. When at last I feel brave enough, I drag my gaze up to meet your eyes… and you look horrified.

“What the fuck,” you mutter under your breath, and toss my heart into the gutter. “Gross.”

I know you don’t mean to make me feel that way. But you do. It’s no one’s fault you make me feel that way. But you do. You didn’t choose to be the vanilla-est vanilla boy in all the land. But you are. And I didn’t choose to be collar-over-heels, sweetly-starry-eyed, dreamily-devoted in subby love with you. But I am.

I notice it first in the way I always sit below you if I can help it. The night we met, you sat on my piano bench and I sat cross-legged at your feet, staring reverently up at you like I was six years old and you were telling me a story (you probably were). It becomes a pattern with us: at your place or mine, in the bedroom or the kitchen, surrounded by friends or just the two of us, if you’re on a chair then I’m on the floor. It just feels… right.

You’re barely taller than me, and when we crunch down crowded streets together, we look like equals. I don’t want to be your equal, have never felt like your equal. Sitting at your feet restores a natural equilibrium I can feel but you can’t. I know you can’t feel it because you always ask me, “You sure you don’t wanna sit up here? You’ll be more comfortable.” You don’t get it. I’m comfortable when I’m where I belong: on the floor, looking up at you.

We trade sex secrets and carnal confessions over pints in the brew pub. Your eyebrows knit together in that way they do when you’re trying to understand something incomprehensible. In this case, it’s my kinks.

“I just kind of fall apart when someone calls me ‘little one,'” I tell you. What little nonchalance I can muster is being channelled into keeping my voice steady, trying not to betray how much this means to me. “If I’m having trouble coming, sometimes that’s The Thing that finally makes it happen.”

You stroke your chin in a broad gesture of thoughtfulness and reply, simply: “Interesting.” I wonder if you are filing away this piece of information to be used at a later date. But probably, you’ll just forget. You never call me “little one.” You never call me “princess” or “babygirl” or “sweet darling.” You just call me my name, sometimes. And never in bed.

Names are important to me. Names frame my understanding of a sexual situation. Names are the real-world manifestation of the archetypes and roles floating around in my white-hot kinkster brain. Names matter.

When you’re fucking me – with your fingers, a toy, or your cock – sometimes I want to call you names. They float at the periphery of my awareness; sometimes they ghost across my lips. My mouth forms the syllables “Oh, Daddy” or “Please, Sir,” but no sound comes out. I’m ashamed. I hide these silent pleas in the crook of my elbow, bury them in the warmth of your shoulder. I don’t want to ruin the moment or make you uncomfortable.

It’s agony that the words which would flip your switch from “on” to “off” are the same words that rev my internal motor. Sometimes you ask me, “How can I make you come? What would you like me to do?” and I list physical acts I know will work on the mechanical level, because I don’t dare ask for the mental-emotional-psychological stuff that might scare you off.

You ping my teacher’s-pet kink without even realizing it. One night I send you a draft of something I’m writing, wanting your feedback, and your critique jokingly begins, “Well, if you want to earn an A+ from me…” Of course I fucking do. I make all the changes you suggest, even the ones that conflict with my own taste and voice. I feel that old familiar sense of surrender I’ve experienced while tied up or getting spanked: the deep belief that someone else knows what I need even better than I do. When I show you the finished piece, you tell me it’s perfect, and I feel a rush of something halfway between “just got a 95% on my philosophy exam” and “just gave the best blowjob of all time.”

On bad mental health days, I feel like a useless, unsalvageable failure. Friends remind me I’m smart, funny, talented, kind, and valuable – but I don’t fully believe it until I hear it from you. Earning your A+ makes me feel accomplished, whether you’re complimenting my sexual skills, my writing, or my overall value as a human being.

One night, I’m anxious as hell about an impending deadline. It feels like an end-of-the-world emergency: if I don’t get this article done in time, or if my editor hates it, all will be lost. My head is swirling with panic; I hyperventilate at you via text. “You’ll get it done and it’ll be great,” you tell me, with more confidence than I have ever felt about anything. And suddenly, I know that you’re right. In the hours that follow, I get it done. It’s great. It’s all for you, and you’ll never know.

“Service submission” has never particularly resonated with me. I’ve occasionally fantasized about it, but I’ve never done it with a real-life partner, because I’ve never wanted to. Until I met you.

When I show up at your place with the exact kind of beer you like, or accompany you to events you’re nervous about, or ask a waitress to move us because a wobbly barstool is hurting your bad back, you tell me, “You’re a good friend.” But that’s not really what this is about. I’m not being generous; I am serving you. Being your good girl. Of course, you don’t see it that way, and I’ll never tell you.

When you go out of town to attend a work conference, I sit at home fantasizing about how I’d serve you if I was your plus-one. I picture myself bringing you your coffee first thing in the morning, made exactly how you like it. I would organize your schedule, prepare the documents you needed, choose and press your outfits. At the end of a long day, I’d kneel in front of you, slip your shoes off, and ask you if a nice blowjob would help you relax. I’d suck you off and then bring you a beer, and watch you drink it from my favorite vantage point on your floor.

Service-submission feelings toward a vanilla person are essentially a deep, carnal desire to be their unpaid personal assistant. I’m a feminist and so are you, so I get the sense you wouldn’t accept my “help,” even if you knew what it meant to me. We speak different languages; my word for “purpose and fulfilment” translates to “heartless exploitation” in your native tongue. This can never work. But I still sometimes think about shining your boots.

It occurs to me one day, as I’m walking home in a shirt you let me borrow because I misplaced my dress amid your bedsheets somewhere, that you’ve never left a mark on me. Other partners smack bruises onto my ass, bite toothmarks onto my fleshy hips, carve crimson hickeys into my neck – but you’ve never left so much as a friction-burn on my thighs. It’s ironic, I think, as I pull the sleeves of your shirt down over my chilly hands, that you’ve marked my heart more deeply and irrevocably than anyone else I’ve banged, and yet signs of you have never shown on my skin.

My one souvenir of you – which embarrasses me to even contemplate – is a dime on my bedroom floor. It fell out of your jeans pocket the first time we made out in my bed, and after you left in the morning, I just… kept it there. For the better part of a year. Friends who knew me well would visit and say, “So that dime’s still there, huh? When are you gonna move it?” I’d respond, “It makes me happy to look at it. I’ll move it when that’s no longer true.”

The day I decide to get over you, I text my best friend: “I picked the dime up off the floor.” They reply with a blue heart emoji. There’s nothing else to say, really.

Once, we’re out to dinner, and the subject of kinks comes up. (It always fucking does.) “I just feel like you could be such a good dom if you tried,” I lament for like the twentieth time. I’ve had too much rice wine and am being an asshole.

“Being dom-y makes me anxious,” you tell me through half a mouthful of sushi. I know this. You’ve told me this before. I hate myself for not wanting to accept this answer.

“I dunno, a lot of things used to make me anxious before I got good at them,” I counter. “Maybe if you practiced more, you’d feel more confident about it.” The conversation stagnates and we switch gears.

I’m wracked with guilt for days afterward, and text you: “Hey, I’m sorry I got kinda pressure-y the other night. You said taking charge makes you uncomfortable and I should just respect that. I won’t ask you about it again.” It’s the only decent thing to do, but it feels like giving up on the thing I want most in the world.

“It’s okay,” you text back. I sigh, from relief, or sadness, or something.

Here’s Why I’m Not Setting Sexual Goals For 2017…

Kate Sloan

I’m a sentimental person and I don’t like to break traditions. They’re both grounding and buoying to me. Every year in the first week of January, I write about my sexual goals for the year, and then I go through the rest of the year trying to achieve those goals.

But these past few weeks, my gut has been telling me to back off of sex and dating, and to do less of those things, not more. Here’s a journal entry I wrote about my swirling thoughts on this subject recently; I present it by way of explanation. I only have one “sex goal” this year and it’s more of a resolution, an intention, a self-care-oriented promise.

I have been rejected twice in one week. [Redacted: a detailed explanation of what happened, and how sad I was about it.]

This kind of bullshit is EXACTLY the reason I want to prioritize dating/sex less highly in 2017. I have what sometimes genuinely feels like an unhealthy addiction to romantic stimuli. It lifts my mood and my self-esteem, but at what cost? I just end up feeling like I can’t possibly feel happy or valuable or successful in life if I am not actively flirting with/dating/banging someone. And that leads to dating people who are wrong for me, pining over people who don’t want me like that, having bad sex with people I barely like, and leading people on with false flirtations I have no intention of following through on.

Yes, it is exciting to want and be wanted, but it is not everything; there are plenty other potent and viable dopamine triggers available to me. Spending time with friends, working on creative pursuits, even reading good books. I am SICKENED by how much I’ve relied on men to somehow magically solve my mood troubles this year. I am better than that. I have not spent 9+ years working on my radical self-love only to give away my personal power to other people.

There’s this moment in High Fidelity when, after Rob’s been persistently pursuing his ex Laura to try to get her back for ages, his sister Liz asks him, “WHY do you want Laura back so badly?” You see the confusion spread across his face as he ponders this question. He’s never even considered it before. He’s pursuing Laura because he’s never entertained alternate possibilities, and because Laura has been in his life for years so what else would he do? I feel like that about men. I need a sad-eyed Joan Cusack to shake me by the shoulders and ask me, “WHY do you want men to like you so badly?” And I don’t know how I would answer. “It makes me feel good about myself. It makes me feel like everything is going to be okay.” But those feelings are temporary. And I can conjure them without men’s assistance.

This week has felt to me a lot like that week in February when [a boy I liked] left town and [another boy I liked] rejected me on Valentine’s Day: a compound whammy of sadness, insecurity, rejection, the fear that no one will ever want me and I’m destined to be alone forever. In February I believed that story, and it led me into one misguided romance after another, because I felt so desperately and fundamentally unlovable that I jumped on any and every opportunity to see that myth disproved. But this time I will not react that way. When the universe sends you versions of the same challenge again and again, it’s because there’s a lesson in there somewhere that you still have not learned. I think the universe is telling me to nix my addiction to love-or-the-idea-of-love. This year has sometimes slammed that lesson over my head like a frying pan, and other times gently slid that lesson in front of my face like a note passed in class. I have not been listening. I have not been paying attention. I want to apologize, to repent, to fix it. I can’t believe I let myself treat myself this way.

It almost feels like I need to go cold-turkey… No sex, dating, flirting, or sexting for maybe the first 3 months of 2017. That feels unreasonable, impossible, but it’s not. In all honesty, I may not need to impose strict rules on myself for them to get followed: I’m not currently seeing anyone, I’ve promised myself no more one-night stands in 2017 because IMO they’re always bad, and I’m currently feeling so wounded that I can’t imagine wanting to flirt with anyone for quite a while. Maybe I’ll read this over in a few weeks and laugh at myself, I don’t know. But for now it feels good and right and manageable and necessary for me to take some time away from the thing I’m addicted to, so that hopefully eventually I can come back to it healthier and better-adjusted. I don’t want to have a toxic relationship to love and sex; I love those things. In 2017 I want to pursue them much more mindfully, less desperately, and LESS overall. That’s hard and good and good and hard.

Have you ever taken a break from dating/sex/etc. for mental health or self-care reasons? How did it go?

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