The Quick-Start Guide to Getting Over Someone

Kate Sloan

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Unrequited love is the woooooorst.

Oh, I certainly get the appeal. I see why it’s played up in movies, music, theatre, and TV. Unrequited love is dramatic, romantic, captivating, titillating. It keeps you on your toes, on the hook, on the edge of your seat.

But what those fictional portrayals don’t quite capture is just how bad it feels to love someone who doesn’t want you. It’s not all giggly-eyed banter in school hallways and pretty-crying in the bathroom mirror. The real pain of the situation is so much worse than that. And I say that as someone who’s spent many a night sobbing in bed until my eyes were so bleary I couldn’t see and my voice was too hoarse to form the words “Why doesn’t he love me?!” anymore.

When you get your heart bruised or broken, lots of people offer you advice. “Laughter is the best medicine,” they’ll say, thrusting a Mel Brooks DVD into your hands. “Time heals all wounds,” they’ll mumble with a shrug as they pass you a bowl of Häagen Dazs. “Everything happens for a reason,” they’ll chide, tossing you a pillow to punch to a pulp. And you’ll beat up that damn pillow, less because it helps your heartbreak and more because all this unsolicited advice is inciting your wrath.

With that in mind, I’m offering you six strategies which, used in tandem and in order, have helped me enormously when oblivious cutiefaces have stomped all over my heart. You don’t have to take this advice. You don’t even have to read this advice. But if you’re tired of living in a whirlpool of tears over someone who doesn’t break a sweat over you – if you’re tired of feeling swathed in lovelorn lethargy and you want to actually get some shit done – then give these tips a try. They’re not revolutionary or new, but they are effective.

Dump out all your feelings. Emotions are like trash. (Okay, not always, but go with me for the sake of this metaphor.) You can try to throw them in the kitchen garbage pail, slide them down the garbage disposal, toss ’em out a window – but unless you firmly, physically remove them from your space, you’ll never be completely sure they’re actually gone from the premises.

So take out the trash. Grab a journal and pen, and write out every single thought or feeling or idea or dream or fantasy you’ve ever had about the object of your affections. Write until your muscles ache – and then switch to typing if you have to. Look for sore spots – any particular concepts or memories that make you feel especially miserable and dejected – and unpack them until they can’t be unpacked any further. Resolve all your thought-loops of anxiety, worry, insecurity, sadness, and anger, so you can finally set them to rest.

You can do this verbally, too, by talking out loud to a friend. But I find journals are more patient and less judgmental.

Forgive them. If you still harbor any bitterness toward your love for not loving you back, you need to nix that shit. The forgiveness process might take time and reflection (boring, but effective), or you might be able to do it quicker with some empathy and the ability to put yourself in their shoes.

For example: when I get frustrated that a crush doesn’t like me back, I always mentally revisit times that someone has liked me and I haven’t wanted to date them. Maybe it was a lack of physical attraction, maybe some doubts about our compatibility, maybe a sexual attraction that just didn’t lean romantic enough, or maybe it was just the headspace I was in at the time. Whatever the case, there was nothing I could have done to conjure feelings for my unrequited admirer; it just wasn’t going to happen. That’s the type of reality check that makes it painful-yet-possible for me to forgive a crush in the present for not loving me back: I know they can’t help it. Because I couldn’t help it either.

View them through the lens of someone who doesn’t love them. You might have trouble viewing your amour with any objectivity, but guess what? Your friends can view that person accurately. You should take advantage of that power.

Ask your friends to tell you about the flaws, faults, and failings of the person you love. They might only have petty things to report – “One of her boobs is bigger than the other!” “He gets crumbs everywhere when he eats!” – but they might also have some bigger complaints to lodge, that they’ve been holding back for fear of offending you in your smittenness. For example, I’ll always be grateful to the friends who pointed out that a longtime crush of mine actually treated me badly, dismissed my ideas, and took my affection for granted. I hadn’t noticed these things at all because I was so wrapped up in my squeaky-clean image of him. Thank god for third-party neutral observers.

If you don’t want to reach out to friends to ask about your love’s flaws, or if none of your friends know the person you’re trying to get over, you can also try to unearth this information yourself. Journal for a nice long time about all the ways your love has slighted you, mistreated you, acted out, fucked up, and fallen short. Normally I don’t advocate focusing on people’s failures, but right now you need to be shaken out of your “I love them, they’re perfect!” mentality.

Publicly decide you’re getting over them. When I say “publicly,” I don’t mean you have to announce it on your blog or blast your Facebook friends with the news – that’s a bit much, even for me. But you should tell at least a couple of close friends that you have decided to get over your crush. To some extent, they can keep you from sending sad drunk texts, creeping your love’s tweets at 2AM, or taking a “casual stroll” through your crush’s neighborhood. You’ll feel more committed to your recovery mission if you’ve told your plan to people you respect.

But this attitudinal shift isn’t just important for your friends to know; it’s important for you to know, too. Once you’ve decided to get over your crush, you’ll (slowly, incrementally) stop mentally highlighting everything they say or do as worthy of your notice. You’ll scroll past their tweets like they were anyone else in your timeline, write about them in your journal only when they’re actually relevant to your day, and wait until you have a moment free to answer their texts instead of hammering out an instant reply. Treat them like a non-crush, and they’ll gradually become one. Mental categorization is more important than we realize, and that includes the mental category of “person I love.”

Destroy all mementos. Fuck, this is really hard to do! I am an appallingly sentimental person, and I cling to physical tokens obsessively if they remind me of a person, place, or time in my life that was important to me. But let’s be real: if you claim to be getting over someone, but you still own objects that remind you of that person every time you see them, you’re half-assing the task at hand.

“But Kate!” you might be screeching as you read this, “Why do I have to get rid of the endtable my crush made for me/T-shirt she gave me/stuffed animal he won me at the carnival?! Those things came from the person I love, but they don’t remind me of them!” Only you can know if that’s really true. If an item is useful to you, or genuinely makes you happy, and its tragic origins don’t come to mind when you glance at it, then it might not be so bad for you to keep it. But you have to get really real with yourself about this, and get rid of anything that makes you even borderline-sad.

If you truly can’t bear to let go of some of these objects – maybe because they’re expensive, one-of-a-kind, or you think you might want them years down the road – then put them in a bag (Gala says you should write “DON’T!” on the outside) and give that bag to someone you trust for safekeeping. It’s okay if your mementos stay in your mom’s garage or your best friend’s bathroom closet; having them out of your space will be good for you.

Go out and live your life!! They say the best revenge is living well. I say the best “revenge” is not feeling like you need revenge. Living well because you want to and deserve to live well – not because it makes you appear a certain way to a certain someone.

Throw yourself into your creative projects. Go to parties and events. Make new friends and new professional connections. Go on dates with other cute people, if you wanna. Learn new skills. Spend time with people who love you. Watch movies that make you howl with laughter. Go for walks in the sunshine. Make lists of goals and then get started. Dance your ass off surrounded by sweaty happy people. Start saving for a vacation. Get your hair done or buy some new clothes. Write a book. Make collage art. Roll down a hill. Write a gratitude list every morning. Listen to music that makes your heart pound with glee. Figure out what would make you happy and then go do that.

We make ourselves miserable when we wait by the phone, endlessly hoping our crush will get off their ass and finally notice us. Relying on other people to make you happy is emotional masochism. Make yourself happy, even if you’ve never really done that before and aren’t sure where to start. Just try a whole bunch of different things and see what sticks. Get out into the world, make things, do things, have experiences. Wash the bitter love from your system with as much hustle and joy as you can muster.

Keep going. Nothing worth doing is instant or easy, but it’s still worth doing.

 

What are your best strategies for when you love someone who doesn’t love you back?

We’re Having a Spanking Party (and You’re Invited!)

Kate Sloan

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My best friend Bex is turning 25 this month, and what they want for their birthday is to get spanked. A lot.

I enjoy hosting parties, and I enjoy spanking people. Before this, I’ve never had the opportunity to do both at the same time. I’m excited!

We combed Airbnb for an apartment to rent, and found a cute one with a great location, ample space for party guests, and plentiful surfaces to bend Bex over. We’ve invited a small group of sex-positive babes, including Taylor, Suz, and Rosaline. Each guest may give Bex 25 smacks (one for each year Bex has been alive) with an implement of their choice. Those who don’t want to participate can just hang out and chill – it’s a birthday party as much as it’s a spanking party!

I think it’ll be an interesting opportunity to observe the different spanking styles of my various friends. You can learn a lot about a person by how they smack an ass!

Here’s the really exciting part: you can join in on the fun, even if you live far far away. We’re going to livestream the spanking portion of the party via Google Hangouts On Air. The broadcast will get started on Saturday, September 17th at 9:30 p.m. Eastern time. You can buy your ticket by sending $8 (U.S. dollars, please) to Bex through this link. (Make sure to write your email address in the “notes” field, so we know where to send the link to the broadcast.)

The money will largely go toward Bex’s travel and accommodations expenses, enabling them to be with some of their best pals for their birthday. So it’s a double-whammy of deliciousness: you get to watch a cute babe get spanked, and you get to do a good thing for the aforementioned cute babe!

For bonus fun, you’ll be able to “virtually spank” Bex. During the broadcast, you can pay an additional $5 for 10 smacks, or $10 for 25. You’ll get to choose which party guest does the hitting (as long as they consent, obviously), and which implement they use. Fun, right?!

We’re all about social media, so if you want to live-tweet while you watch, you are more than welcome to! The hashtag for the event is #BirthdayBruises. If you feel like hyping us up and cheering us on, before or during the event, Twitter’s a lovely way to do that. You can also tweet the image above, if you want to invite your followers to join the party.

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I’ve already started packing my bag of spanking implements and accessories. Here’s what I’ve got up my sleeve:

• The Tantus Pelt and Wham Bam. These silicone paddles are stingy as hell and pack some snappy momentum into each stroke. I’m a bit sentimental about the Pelt because it’s the first implement I ever spanked Bex with, back in the early days of our friendship. Aww.

• A stone crop I bought at kink-themed café Leather & Latte on our road trip to Minneapolis. It’s very stingy, very mean, and very bruisey.

• A leather paddle made by by Peri Plunders. This is a cool multi-use tool: the flat leather surface is really stingy, but turn the paddle sideways and its thick edge becomes a thuddy bludgeon. I wonder what kind of marks it’ll leave.

• A Lexan paddle from KinkMachineWorks. It’s gorgeously thuddy and has quickly become one of my all-time favorite spanking implements. And it’s clear, so you can see the recipient’s butt smoosh as the paddle hits it. Swoon.

• A wooden spoon and a small bamboo rice paddle. I ordered these from Amazon in preparation for this party. The rice paddle is wide and thin, so it’s very surface-stingy, while the spoon has a bit more of a thud to it.

• Arnica cream! Bex’s poor butt will be pretty sore by the end of the evening. I want some pain-management solutions on hand incase they start to get genuinely uncomfortable – although, let’s be real, they’re a trooper and a pain-slut and I bet they’ll be fine.

I look forward to seeing you in our Google Hangouts chat when the party gets started! Don’t forget to buy your ticket for $8. See you there, friends!

8 Things Nobody Tells You About Getting the Backs of Your Thighs Tattooed

Kate Sloan

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I love my new tattoos more than I can possibly express. It gives me great joy on the daily to spot them peeking out of my skirts or shorts in the mirror, or to hear the squeals of delight when someone notices them for the first time. They are exactly what I wanted and look even better than I had hoped.

However, the healing process has been an ordeal, y’all. I took good care of my tats, washing them once or twice a day with Dove soap and moisturizing obsessively with unscented Lubriderm, so I didn’t get any infections or complications, knock wood – but infections aren’t the only thing you have to worry about when you get tattooed. The body part you choose can affect your life in lots of areas. Here are some things I wish someone had told me about getting the backs of my thighs tattooed…

You won’t be able to sit properly for a while. For some reason, when I pictured getting my upper thighs tattooed, it didn’t occur to me that that’s what I sit on when I sit down. My thought process was, “The tattoos won’t be on my butt, so I’ll be fine.” Nope. Your thighs are directly implicated in the sitting-down process. Some of this issue can be dealt with by just sitting less, e.g. working at a standing desk, which I did. But in my day-to-day, I didn’t want to subject my fresh or healing tattoos to scratchy couch cushions, filthy bus shelter benches, or fancy theatre seats – so I adopted a sitting position for the first few days post-inking that involved pulling my knees up so my thighs wouldn’t touch the surface below me. Not only does this look super weird (especially in more conservative environments, like the theatre), but it also started to feel not-so-great after a while: my bad knees didn’t appreciate being bent for that long, and I needed to take pain pills to get through those first few days. Yikes.

Using the toilet is risky business. Time for some real talk! What I just said about your thighs being involved in the sitting process? That’s true for sitting on the toilet, too. I experimented with sitting really far forward (often resulting in spraying the bathroom floor), sitting with my knees up (effective, but requires flexibility and impeccable aim), and even straddling the toilet so as to pee into it from above (hard on my knees, hard to aim, and looks goddamn ridiculous). This isn’t so much an issue at my own house, where I know the toilets are more-or-less clean; it was more a concern in public bathrooms, which are, as you know, a festering cesspool of bacteria. If I had this process to do over again, I would invest in a stand-to-pee device.

Spanking is off the table. I don’t think I fully realized just how integral spanking is to my sexuality until I got these tattoos. I took a spanking hiatus that lasted from a week before getting the tattoos to a week after, and that felt like forever. During that time, I read books about spanking, watched spanking porn, researched spanking physiology, sexted with beaux about the spankings they would give me once they were allowed to… I was a girl possessed. And in fact, I wish I’d waited longer to get spanked again after getting inked, because the people topping me, while well-intentioned, didn’t always have the best aim and sometimes smacked me right on the tattoos. I found, oddly enough, that spanking other people scratched that particular kink-itch for me – not completely, but enough that I could get through those spankless weeks without going off the deep end.

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Your sex positions are limited. Do what I say, not what I do: avoid getting doggy-styled for at least a couple weeks post-tattooing. I am an idiot and got fucked from behind three days after Tattoo Day – in a park, no less – because I was drunk and just wasn’t thinking about the health implications. I’m extremely lucky I didn’t scratch or irritate my new tattoos on my partner’s thigh hair or pubes, and that I didn’t get any dirt, dust, or lube in there. When I got inked, I initially intended to take a break from any kind of sex involving my genitals (BJ Week, woooo!), but I have zero self-control and that didn’t happen. Still: if you must get boned after getting your thighs tattooed (and trust me, I understand), just be careful, choose your positions accordingly, and wash your tattoos after, just incase anything got in there that shouldn’t have.

Dudes think they’re extremely sexy. I guess I knew this on some level. My tattoos are explicitly meant to be sexual, after all. But, wow, I still managed to underestimate just how much attention they would attract. Whether I’m in a sex club or just walking down the street, fully flashing my tats or just letting them poke out the bottom of a skirt, they certainly get me noticed. Sometimes this level of attention is welcome, and sometimes, less so. I think I’ll be careful from now on to keep my ink covered if I’m in a “please, nobody touch or talk to me” kind of mood.

You will end up showing a lot of people your butt. Your tattoo artist, for one. Your friends. Your partner(s). Your relatives. Pretty much anyone who’s heard about your new tattoos will want to see them, and if you oblige what they ask, that will involve turning around, bending over, and pulling up your skirt/pulling down your pants to show ’em what you got. I’m not normally too bothered by showing people my ass, but I did have a couple of close calls – for example, the time a conservative family member wanted to see my tats and I accidentally gave her an eyeful of fresh spanking bruises along with the ink. Whoops.

They’re hard to get pictures of. This is not a joke: you should probably buy a selfie stick if you’re about to get the backs of your thighs tattooed. I consider myself fairly skilled at taking butt selfies – it involves a lot of spine-twisting, arm-reaching, and clever angling – but your thighs are even farther away from your hands and your eyes so there is even more contortion involved. Do yourself a favor and pick up a selfie stick, because even if you don’t intend on taking “sexy” photos, you’ll probably at least want some pictures of the healing process for posterity. (Posterity… Posterior… Get it?!)

You can’t really even see them. Wow, I didn’t expect this! Without the help of a mirror or a smartphone’s selfie mode, I literally can’t see my tattoos at all. No amount of twisting and rubber-necking allows me to see any part of them. That might be due to my particular body (thigh size, lack of flexibility, and so on), but still: if you want tattoos you’ll be able to see all the time, the back of your thigh is a bad spot. As for me, I’m okay with it – I don’t mind looking in the mirror to see my ink, and I suspect I’d get sick of a tattoo faster if it was in my sightline all the time.

What do you wish someone had told you before you got a tattoo?

Monthly Faves: Pink Dildos, Pink Lips, & Pink Butts

Kate Sloan

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This was my sluttiest month to date, if you use “number of different sexual partners” as your metric for sluttiness, and I’m having a lot of complicated feelz about that. Cultural messages tell us promiscuity is the domain of the love-starved, fucked-up, and emotionally empty. Vindictive slut-shamers tell us promiscuity is unethical, hurtful, and harmful. It’s hard not to take those messages to heart.

But when I get real quiet and listen to my own feelings, I get a glimpse of the truth. Sure, sometimes my sluttiness is a ruse to bolster my self-esteem and fill my oft-depressed days… but mostly, it’s not. Mostly, my pursuit of sex is a joyful one, rooted in self-love, excitement, and freedom. I’m always safe, I’m not reckless, and I maintain my emotional integrity in sexual encounters as much as I can – so it’s a happy part of my life, generally. It’s easy to forget that, but writing my Monthly Faves post at the end of each month is a way of reminding myself just how much delight is brought into my life by sex, in all its many forms. Gratitude rewires your brain and I think it’s good for your sex life, too. So here are some of the sexy things I treasured most in August…

Sex toys

• Eroscillator sent me their Top Deluxe model and my clit is smitten. (“Clitten,” you might say.) I’ve loved my standard-model Eroscillator for over four years (!!) so it feels good and right to have finally upgraded to the fancier, more powerful version. I’m going to review it soon, but suffice it to say: holy hot damn, this thing makes me come like a mofo.

• I special-ordered Godemiche‘s new Ambit dildo in glittery pink silicone, and it makes me deliriously happy. It’s my dream femme cock. I can’t wait for the day I get to slide it through the O-ring of my pink leather harness and fuck someone cute with my sparkly dick.

• All of us bloggers got plenty of freebies at Woodhull. One of the treats I went home with is a little bottle of Sliquid Soul, a natural lube that’s primarily made of coconut oil. It’ll never be a go-to lube for my partnered encounters because I usually use latex barriers (and oil breaks down latex), but for solo fun or non-penetrative pleasures, it’s soooo sensuous and lovely. I love oiling up a glass or steel dildo so it’ll slide into me frictionlessly, and I love how moisturized and happy my vulva feels afterward!

Fantasy fodder

• I am an all-purpose spanking enthusiast. Whether I’m topping or bottoming, there is just something electrically hot and exciting to me about the impact of hands or implements on gorgeous butts. Sometimes there’s not even a particularly sexual element; I can spank or be spanked by totally platonic friends and I still get some kind of emotional satisfaction out of it. I try not to question it too much – who can tell why we like what we like? Spanking’s just something I enjoy, for whatever reason, and I’m glad I get so many opportunities to participate in it. (Check out the bruises I gave Suz. Yeesh. That lady is a champ.)

• You know, I don’t think of myself as much of an exhibitionist or sexual thrill-seeker, but I had two different sexual encounters in public places this month and enjoyed ’em both a lot. On one occasion, I got kissed, held down, and slapped around by a dom-y partner in an alley after a drinks date. Just a couple days later, I was out with another partner at night, and we walked through a deserted parkette and got a little handsy… and then a little more-than-handsy, naw’m sayin’? I’m not into involving spectators nonconsensually in my sexytimes, so I would only ever do this if I was pretty certain no one would see – but with that caveat, public fucktimes can be a rare treat!

• My kinks have shifted and changed a lot over the years, but one of the things that consistently and abundantly turns me on is when a partner knows my body really well. Maybe it’s my sex-as-a-service kink, but fuck, I love it when someone knows exactly how to get me off. My current longest-running sexual relationship is with an FWB who I’ve known for a year, and his expert grasp of my body’s erogenous zones and rhythms is so hot in and of itself.

Sexcetera

• It was so much fun attending my first Woodhull Sexual Freedom Summit this year! I got to commune with several of my blogger pals, soak up sex-nerdy knowledge from smart folks galore, and feel like a renowned and respected maven. It feels so, so good to have a community of fellow sex bloggers to rely on for emotional support, professional advice, and commiseration. I’m so grateful that the internet has enabled me to connect with like-minded folks and build these friendships that matter so much to me. 💖

• I got to do a lot of sex-related writing on other websites this month! I wrote about introducing sex toys to a partner, alternative uses for sex toys, and buzzy vs. rumbly vibrations for Ignite, and I expounded on A-spot toys for Peepshow. (Did you know I’m always available for writing projects? Click here for more info!)

• I bit the bullet and launched a Patreon! Now you can support my work financially if you want to. Each reward level comes with perks – for example, for $1/month, you get to read regular behind-the-scenes journal entries about what’s going on in my life; for $5/month, you get to read each new blog post a day before it launches; and for $10/month, you get access to my Snapchat. Patreon is a lovely way for fans to support creators directly, so if my work is meaningful to you and you’ve got some money to chip in, I’d love for you to come join my crew!

Femme stuff

• Hot pink lipstick is a signature of sorts for me, and I’m always looking for that next life-changing pink. I recently bought Bourjois liquid lipstick in the shade “Pink Pong” (ugh, quelle terrible pun!) and it’s the exact type of cool-toned bright pink that gives me femme heart-eyes. Plus it smells good (sort of like pink grapefruit?) and the texture is smooth. Just don’t expect to be able to make out with someone or give a blowjob in this lipstick; whenever I try, I inevitably leave a pink residue all over my beau. (Luckily, I mostly date the kind of person who just finds this cute.)

• The beautiful Hedonish gave me an orangey-red Bobbi Brown lip pencil at Woodhull and I wore it obsessively for the rest of the trip (and then the rest of the month). I don’t normally like orangey lip shades on myself, but this one is weirdly flattering.

• My main femme obsession this month was my new tattoos! They make me so freakin’ happy every time I see them. At the time of writing, they’re still healing and a little itchy and sore, but I can tell they’re going to look incredible once the skin’s done regenerating. I used to be insecure about my chubby thighs, but it’s really hard for me to hate a part of my body that’s emblazoned with adorable pink bows and my favorite kinky term of endearment!

Little things

Lifestyles Tuxedo condoms, “the dressiest condoms on the market.” Woodhull inside jokes, like “Damn, he’s got a dick!” and #Dildough. Smoking weed in the parking lot like a bunch of teenage degenerates. Everything Joanna Thangiah makes. Meeting Nina Hartley. A smart, handsome boy calling me “a cool cute cinnamon roll.” The Adventure Zone, always. Coffee shop work-dates with friends. The feeling of accomplishment when I successfully navigate an airport by myself. Blogging on a plane. Stranger Things. My wonderfully kink-positive and poly-positive new therapist. Beer Doms. “I want to go somewhere quiet with you and just talk for hours.” Allison Moon’s inspirational talk on “self-publishing for radicals.” Tough-but-kind romantic advice from Epiphora and Lilly. Dungeons & Dragons. Carly Rae Jepsen. Goldilocks spankings. Mango smoothies. “Don’t take this the wrong way, because it’s a very good thing: your boobs are the boob equivalent of Mario in Mario Kart. They’re middle-of-the-road; they offer something for everyone.”

What’s in a Name?

Kate Sloan

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“What do you want?”

He’s got me backed up against a fence, in one of the many residential alleys that crisscross through the Annex. The fence is painted bright turquoise, and it must make a beautiful backdrop for this foreground: a pale and blushing babe in a blue dress. Me.

His hand is on my ass. He knows what I want, but he’s still gonna make me say it. “I want you to spank me, sir,” I choke out, his lips so close to mine that he must feel my words as much as he hears them.

He chuckles. I can tell he likes it when I call him that. “I don’t have a name for you yet,” he replies, like this only just occurred to him.

I am more than prepared for this eventuality. “I like to be ‘princess,’ or ‘little one,’ or ‘babygirl,'” I list off. These names are well-traversed in my life, but they still feel fresh and important. They’re heavy on my tongue and hot in my ears.

“Okay, princess,” he says with a dark smile. “You gonna be a good girl for me?”

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“Princess” was my first kink honorific, the first name I remember loving being called. A dominant fuckbuddy casually mentioned it one day while we were discussing my burgeoning DD/lg kink. It felt right to me when he said it, in the same way it felt right when I discovered other words that describe me, like “femme,” “queer,” and “submissive.” I sexually identify as a princess.

Not a literal princess, you understand. I don’t have a kingdom to rule over, royal subjects, a family of other monarchs. I am a princess in the way that Veruca Salt and Angelica Pickles are princesses: a treasured and perhaps slightly spoiled little girl whose daddy unflinchingly loves her and dotes on her. A dainty little thing, with a bratty streak that comes out when provoked or challenged. A precious but ultimately powerless little gem of a person, revered but not really respected. I’m that kind of princess.

Though I’m enamored with the “Daddy Dom/little girl” dynamic, I almost never call partners “daddy.” It feels wrong to me, and not just because it’s taboo. I’ve never used that word with my actual dad either; it feels babyish and saccharine in a way I don’t particularly enjoy. I don’t say that to shame anybody’s kinks; if you like that word, that’s fine and good for you! But for myself, I gravitate more toward “sir.” It communicates what I want it to, without making me cringe. And, if I’m honest, calling partners that makes me suuuuuper wet.

“Little one” was introduced to me by the aforementioned dom fuckbuddy, too. He dropped it into our dialogue mid-fuck one day and my reaction far surpassed what I could have predicted. He was the exact same height as me, probably even weighed less than me, and yet, with those two simple words, he made me feel inescapably smaller than him. Diminutive and defenseless. A mere insect under his boot heel.

My relationship with this title is fraught with guilt, because I worry it’s related to patriarchal size-shaming. I’m a chubby lady so maybe it makes me feel better – sexier – to be literally told that I am small. But I don’t think that’s the whole story. Smallness is associated with traditional femininity, sure, but it’s also connected to powerlessness, a state of being that I eroticize deeply. When someone calls me “little one” and I get wetter and hotter, I think it’s more about the condescension and coddling than the physical littleness being evoked.

“Babygirl” is more ambiguous. Vanilla partners call me “baby” sometimes; it’s a common epithet, in this world of Biebers and Backstreet Boys. But there’s patriarchy baked right into it: this name infantilizes its subject in the most literal sense. My inner feminist struggles to accept my affinity for being called patronizing names. My inner sex-positive feminist, however, knows it’s okay for me to like whatever I like, as long as I don’t replicate those power injustices in my actual life.

Names, labels, identities: these things are important, regardless of what the “Labels don’t matter!” crowd says. Labels help us organize ourselves, understand ourselves, understand who we’re attracted to and what we want. Not to mention, they can be really fucking hot.

One night I was at a party, and several people were sporting tiaras. A domly friend of mine made a paper crown for Bex, since their gender identity isn’t always tiara-friendly. “How is the king?” he asked Bex later, when their makeshift crown was atop their head. And then, looking at me: “And the queen?”

“She’s not a queen, she’s a princess,” Bex retorted, before I could even respond. And they were right.