dating

10 Ways Sex & Hookup Websites Can Be Safer For Women

Kate Sloan

For as much as I talk about dating sites and the hours of amusement they’ve brought me, I don’t actually think they’re that great. They’re too often full of creeps and trolls, seeking to offend and harass more than they’re seeking actual dates or hookups. The situation is dire. Even at times when I’ve been highly motivated to find dates and/or sex on these sites, sometimes I felt cockblocked by my insidious fears about getting catfished or doxxed – or worse, assaulted on a date. It doesn’t have to be this way!

Since so many dating sites and apps are subpar in this area, I’ve put together these 10 suggestions for how these companies can make their services safer and more appealing for women. (A lot of this applies to people other than women as well – anyone vulnerable and/or marginalized, potentially – but I’m a woman so that’s the perspective I’m coming from.) I wish more sites would take these ideas into account!

Comprehensive blocking. I’ve yelled about this before, but… please, please, Hookup Websites, give us a decent blocking feature. You should be able to block someone before you match with them, not just once you’ve already matched (*cough* fuck you Tinder), and once you’ve blocked someone, they should be unable to see any aspect of your profile ever again. This isn’t even that difficult to implement and would make lots of people feel much safer.

A reporting feature that works. If someone is sending unsolicited dick pics, or misogynist screeds, or using pick-up artist tactics, or (god forbid) attacking people on dates, there should be an option to report them on the app or website and have them investigated by a human person (not a robot!) from the platform. If need be, their profile should be pulled. Letting creeps run wild on your site is a surefire way to make women nervous about using it.

Functional filtering. Beyond just making it easier to find compatible dates, this feature can also prevent a lot of scary or annoying situations. I simply don’t want non-feminists to be able to view my profile, let alone interact with me. I’m not saying everyone who rejects the feminist label is dangerous, but certainly in many cases their ideologies are (who the fuck doesn’t want gender equality in this day and age?!), so I just want them gone from my digital life. Nip that “friendly debate” about my personhood in the bud. Byeee.

Identity verification. Okay, this is a controversial one, because some people are understandably skittish about having to upload their ID to a dating site. Some folks even get angry when asked to do so. But I think, provided the data was kept private and managed responsibly (i.e. maybe deleted altogether after verification was complete), it would be worthwhile to make sure people actually are who they’re claiming to be. The internet makes it all too easy to catfish folks, and that’s not cool. Plus I think people would behave better on a platform if they knew it had all their info on file.

Vouching. If you’ve had a good date with someone, maybe you could leave them feedback in the form of a review, like on Yelp, or a rating, like on Uber. Of course, this feature is somewhat objectifying and would likely be abused – I can imagine shitty men leaving bad feedback for women who didn’t “put out” after their date bought them dinner, for example – but it could be useful for shunning creeps.

Taking privacy seriously. I had no idea, for example, when I linked my Instagram account with my Tinder account, that matches and even non-matches would be able to click through to my IG profile and thus immediately learn everything about me; I thought this feature would just show my pictures on my profile. Some dating apps use geolocation, some force you to disclose your school or your workplace, some make you use your real name… All of these “features” are problematic because they put you at risk if someone decides to track you down. Let users decide how much they want to disclose!

Gender self-identification tools. I hear lots of different things from my trans, non-binary, and genderqueer friends about how they wish gender worked on dating sites. However, the common thread seems to be that they wish there were more options rather than less, even if they wouldn’t actually use the options provided. Not every trans woman will feel comfortable disclosing on her profile that she’s trans, for example (especially since doing so often brings on harassment and even violence), but some trans folks prefer to air that stuff upfront so they don’t have to deal with it later. Dating sites should allow for this. In doing so, they’ll also normalize gender disclosure for everyone, not just trans people.

Tools for setting expectations. Many dating sites already have this – but many don’t, and it’s weird! You should always be able to indicate whether you’re looking for something casual, something more serious, either, or something in between. This can help prevent some of the tension that arises when you go on a date with someone whose dating goals end up being different from yours.

Clear community guidelines. I’d rather they be too harsh than too lenient. No unsolicited sexual media, no pick-up tactics, no racism, no sexism, no homophobia, no transphobia, that kind of thing. Setting these boundaries clearly and publicly, and standing by them, would make a company seem more trustworthy to me, and thus more worthy of my patronage.

Investment in sexual health and anti-sexual violence causes. Okay, this one’s more abstract and indirect. But I would definitely trust a hookup platform more if it had made tangible monetary contributions to these causes. Being publicly sex-positive and feminist isn’t just a marketing tactic; it helps establish a culture on the site, and shows abusers and misogynists that they’re not welcome.

What safety features do you wish more dating sites had?

 

This post was sponsored. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

5 Features I Wish All Dating Apps Had

Kate Sloan

Dating apps are exhausting. As App Store searches and online reviews here will attest, there are soooo many of them – a surprising amount of which are more gimmicky than functional.

I’m dating an app developer, so I could just complain to him about all this. But I’m a blogger, so you get to hear about it too. (You’re welcome…?!) Here are 5 features most dating apps don’t have, which all of them should…

Actually useful filters. There was a time in OkCupid’s history when you could set certain answers to certain compatibility questions as “mandatory” for your potential matches, and the site would hide people from you who didn’t answer the way you wanted them to.

This feature could be used to swiftly expunge from your dating queue anyone who – for example – held racist/sexist/homophobic beliefs, felt differently from you about eventual marriage or procreation, or even just… didn’t like giving oral sex. (Hey, we all get to decide what’s important to us in a potential partner!)

Many of the site’s filtering features are now reserved for paid users, and it’s a real shame. I don’t want it to even be possible for me to accidentally strike up a conversation on OkCupid with a Trump supporter, a selfish lover, or someone who thinks women are morally obligated to shave their legs. I should be able to erase them all from my world in one fell swoop.

Comprehensive blocking. Internet safety has become a bigger and bigger issue as the online world has interlaced with the “real world” more and more – and yet many social networks and apps still don’t take it seriously enough.

Tinder, for example, lets you block someone you’ve already matched with, but doesn’t let you block people who just come up in your swipe queue – which is a problem if, for example, you spot your abusive ex on the app, or someone makes multiple creepy accounts in an attempt to contact you, or you just keep running into the same douchebag over and over.

If a dating app values safety – especially the safety of its most vulnerable and marginalized users – it should provide a blocking feature which works, completely and immediately, no questions asked, and which can be used on anyone you encounter in the app, not just people you’ve matched or messaged with.

First-message length minimums. One-word messages are an epidemic on dating apps. “Hi.” “Hey.” “Sup.” Frankly, I think that if you only want to put that much effort into dating, you’d be better off posting on Facebook to solicit dates with former high-school classmates, or trotting down to the local bar and shouting “Anyone interested?!”

OkTrends, OkCupid’s now-defunct blog of dating-based statistical analysis, found that the ideal first message length is 200 characters – so, about the length of a tweet, but like, a substantial, thought-out tweet that you didn’t dash off in five seconds.

Granted, not everyone’s attractions work how mine do, but if it were up to me, I would instate an 100-character minimum on first messages in every dating app. Read your potential match’s profile and find something to comment on or inquire about; if you can’t do that, then why are you even interested?

Organization tools. Okay, not to sound like a total slut or a total nerd (I’d rather be equal parts of both), but sometimes I wish my Tinder inbox had folders.

Kind of like how I have one Airbnb wishlist for far-away destinations and one for weekend getaway spots, I need a Tinder folder for “potential relationship material,” one for “could be a fun hookup,” and one for “you already went out with this person and it didn’t go well – beware.” And that’s just for starters.

If it sounds like I’m reducing people to their objectlike utility, well, I probably am – there’s a reason the phrase “meat market” persists, despite our better intentions – but I also think the ability to sort matches would help cultivate more actual, IRL connections. Part of the reason I so often forget to message people is that by the time I’m in the mood to reach out to someone, the cuties I was most excited about have often been pushed down in the queue by more incoming matches. If I could find the most promising among them, quickly, whenever the mood struck, I’d be likelier to actually make contact.

Activity-based statuses. Tinder had the right idea with their “Matches Up For…” feature, which allowed users to mark themselves as “up for” drinks, coffee, and a few other boilerplate date activities. But what dating apps really need is a blank field where you can type whatever you’re up for.

True, this feature would be abused immediately, by people who don’t understand that nonconsensually showering strangers in dicks is a dick move, even in text form. But just imagine how good it would be if it worked. “Up for… seeing the Harry Potter improv show at Comedy Bar tonight.” “Up for… a marathon viewing of The L Word over Chinese delivery.” “Up for… co-working at a coffee shop, with intermittent flirty eye contact.” Being able to articulate whatever weird datelike activity you’re craving, and maybe actually find someone who wants to do the same thing, would be blissful.

This feature would, of course, be useful for sexxxy purposes too. While there are lots of times I’ve just craved sex, it’s far more common that I crave a specific sexual act. “Up for… a thorough paddling from an experienced, sadistic dom.” “Up for… no-reciprocation-expected cunnilingus.” “Up for… a handjob while listening to Vivaldi.” Some apps go to great lengths to determine your sexual compatibility with potential matches, but I think knowing what someone wants to do in bed right now might give you an even better window into their sexuality than their answers to prefabricated questions, which they may have answered months or years ago anyway!

What features do you wish all dating apps had?

 

This post was sponsored. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

The 5 Essential Elements of a Good DM Slide

Kate Sloan

Ah, the delicate and controversial DM-slide! I remember nodding vigorously when I read Priscilla Pine’s essay “What Comes After Tinder?” and got to the part about Twitter. “Most of the friends I polled who were active Twitter users mentioned it as the app where they had had the most success meeting potential partners, and I know at least one person who eschews dating apps entirely because her DMs have been so fruitful,” Pine wrote (emphasis mine). “In a way, that makes sense: Twitter mimics traditional social interaction in that you can find new people via friends and observe their personalities and senses of humor over time before feeling compelled to proposition them for a date.”

It was a succinct statement of something I already knew to be true: that Twitter was the social platform likeliest to introduce me to new crushes and fan the flames of those feelings, and that Twitter was probably the platform on which I’d be most open to a stranger asking me on a date. Not proportionally, you understand – of 100 people who express interest in me on OkCupid or Tinder, I probably go out with 5 of them, whereas the same calculation on Twitter would be more like 1 out of 300 – but if I develop a Twitter crush, I’m way more motivated to turn our flirtations into an IRL date, if possible, than I am with online-dating randos. I’m already more-or-less sold on them, from consuming their brain in 280-character chunks.

Having met three romantic partners (this guy, this guy, and this guy) and three casual sexual partners (this guy, this guy, and this guy) via Twitter, I’m pretty clear on what I like and what I don’t like, vis-à-vis people sliding into my DMs. Here are 5 elements your next DM convo with a stranger should definitely possess…

Previous rapport. Like Bex says in our Dildorks episode about social media flirting, DMing someone you’ve never actually interacted with before (aside from, maybe, faving their tweets) is like going up to a stranger at a party, tugging them into a closet, and declaring, “I have to talk to you.” They’re probably gonna be freaked out and wonder what the fuck you’re up to.

Establish rapport by adding value to your Twitter crush’s life. Most of my successful DM suitors replied to my tweets with funny jokes, helpful suggestions (when requested), and supportive cheerleading – as relevant – before they dared take things to the next level by DMing me. This is important. When your name and face show up in my inbox, I should recognize them and ideally have a positive association with them from our previous interactions. Hint: if your crush has never faved, replied to, or otherwise acknowledged your public communiqué, they’re probably not interested – or you just need to build rapport for longer before you ramp things up.

A specific reason to message them. Bex recommends following up on a previous conversation the two of you had publicly – e.g. if you and your crush recently commiserated about something sad that happened on your mutual favorite TV show, you could DM them a link to a great article about the show a few days later and say, “Thought you’d like this!” Or you could DM them a link to a local event you think they’d enjoy attending, a thought you had about their latest blog post/podcast/tweet that seems too specific to say in a public tweet, or a thank-you for something they helped you with or introduced you to.

The first time my Sir DMed me, he was following up on a compliment I’d tweeted at him earlier in the day. “Hey Kate! Thanks for that compliment earlier, it made me blush,” he said. “You’re very cute yourself!” This is simple but it worked well because it gave me the opportunity to talk to him more if I wanted to (which I did) or to just say “Thanks!” and move on if I wasn’t interested. Similarly, my first DM from an erstwhile FWB was a response to me tweeting about being sad about the sexual dry spell I was going through at that time: “Sounds like we have similarly sparse dance cards lately,” he said. “Toronto’s been great for work, but surprisingly boring socially.” You’ll notice that this wasn’t a direct date-ask – he left me space to suggest we get together, if I wanted to, which I did – but was nonetheless relevant to our earlier public conversation.

Sometimes your specific reason for messaging them might just be wanting to ask them out. That’s okay, if done well. See “a statement of intent,” below.

An introduction. You might not need to front-load this into your first message if you think your crush is already aware of you and what you do, but it’s nice. Even something as simple as “Hi, I’m [name]! Long-time follower, first-time DMer” could be enough. Introducing yourself is respectful and polite. You probably wouldn’t go up to a stranger at a party and launch into a monologue without at least saying hello and telling them your name, so try the same thing in your Twitter approach.

My Sir did this in his second message to me. “I’m [name], a New York-based [job title]/sex nerd,” he wrote. “Recently found your work and your tweets and it’s all great stuff.” It was a concise statement of who he is, what he does, and why he followed me. Along with his respectful approach, it told me everything I needed to know in order to decide whether I wanted to get to know him better (I did).

A statement of intent. You probably don’t wanna put this in your very first message, because asking someone on a date (or whatever) before establishing rapport is risky, scary, and less likely to work. But if you do decide to ask your Twitter crush to meet up with you, you should give them some sense of what you’re actually asking. Don’t couch your romantic or sexual intentions in a vague request to “pick their brain over coffee” or “talk about [their work].” (And hey, if your intentions are strictly professional, or even casual or platonic, you should find a way to mention that, too. Less confusion = better results for everyone.)

You can straight-up tell them you’d like to take them on a date. You can tell them you’d love to get to know them better over coffee/drinks. You can suggest a specific activity you know the both of you enjoy (e.g. going to a comedy show), ideally one that’s culturally coded as date-y. You can disclose the nature of your feelings about them so they can infer you’re asking them on a date (e.g. “I think you’re really cute and cool and I’d love to take you out sometime” or “I’ve been crushing on you from afar for a while and would love to hang out in person if you’re into that”). My Sir said, “If you’re ever in New York and want to meet a Twitter admirer in person over coffee or something, I’d love that,” which is perfect because it expresses enthusiasm, indicates a specific activity, and gives me an easy out. So many good ways to ask cuties on dates!

Some fucking respect. Twitter isn’t a magical universe where you get to treat people like garbage. Those are real humans in there, so be good to them! Be polite, take “no” for an answer, and be appropriately apologetic if you fuck up.

Make sure you keep in mind, too, that someone ignoring your DM or declining your advances might not have much to do with you. They might be busy, or stressed, or going through a complicated situation of some kind. Don’t take this shit personally, if you can help it. You’re great, and there are always more Twitter crushes in the sea!

Have you ever asked someone out – or been asked out – via Twitter DM? How did it go?

Links & Hijinks: Flirting, Crying, and David S. Pumpkins

Kate Sloan

• Ask Polly has some advice on what to do if you want to date men but also you hate men. “Dating, like all arbitrary, tedious, pointless social exercises, requires a higher level of Zen. Surrender to the excruciating nothingness of the task at hand, and try to enjoy it. Yes, most men are shit. But you are not taking an exhaustive survey of most men. You are looking for one good, kind, exceptional man. They exist.”

• These tools for recovering from sexual trauma are neat as hell!

• Not exactly relevant to my blog, but oh well: I enjoyed reading this oral history of the David S. Pumpkins SNL sketch. It made me think about how we’re drawn to silly, meaningless entertainment in times of sociopolitical turmoil, and also about how fucking great Tom Hanks is.

• You can use the teachings of Aristotle to get someone to go on a date with you. Hmm!

• Luna told the story of moving her massive sex toy collection when she moved houses. “The thought of a box of fantasy toys tipping over and disgorging its colorful contents in the back of my dad’s SUV is the stuff of nightmares.”

• Girl on the Net wrote about crying after sex and it was so beautiful and relatable that I cried, too.

• What does it mean to be a “kink lifestyler” and how do you know if you are one?

• Here are a bunch of stories about dicks getting stuck in things.

• What can you do when your social media addiction is curbing your creativity? This article is chicken soup for the creative soul, truly. “Sometimes the most skilled, unique, emotional writers are the ones who struggle with feelings of inadequacy the most,” Heather writes. “Refuse to imagine what will impress other people. Seduce them into loving exactly what you have to give instead. Savor your craft and enjoy yourself.”

• Here’s how to prepare your bed for sexy guests.

• Sammi’s Satisfyer review includes a cool sex toy hack that will be of particular interest to transmasculine folks. Gotta love the ingenuity of sex nerds!

• I shrieked with laughter watching this video of Jeff Goldblum reacting to tattoos of himself.

• Would hiring a sex worker help predatory men (e.g. Weinstein, Spacey, CK) work through their fantasies? Experts weighed in. And then Alana Massey weighed in. Lots to think about here.

• Miles Klee makes a case for period sex. I think I’ve reached a point where I can no longer date folks who are squeamish about the crimson wave…

• I’ve been fascinated by fear play lately so I loved Taylor’s post about why they love it.

• I loved reading about this vibrator that tracks your orgasm statistics. Sex nerdiness, activate! (Also, why don’t I own this toy?!)

• Where does the slang term “fap” come from?

• If you’re a dude who flirts with women, or would like to flirt with women, read this guide, please. It’s very good.

Trust Your Body & Say What You Mean: A Sweet & Salacious Tarot Reading

Kate Sloan

The older I get, the more I appreciate people who perform emotional labor for myself and others. These skills are undervalued, underemphasized, rendered almost imperceptible by this culture which says emotional labor isn’t labor at all. Anyone who makes that claim simply doesn’t understand how much they have benefited from the emotional labor performed for them by people in their lives. If they saw it for what it was – if they recognized it while it was happening, instead of breezing past it in an entitled huff – they would be in awe. They would be grateful.

I feel this way about so many people in my life who perform emotional labor for me regularly: the friends who sit with me calmly when I’m sad, the partners who remember which small things upset me and which small things bring me joy, the therapist who puzzles through my motivations with me, even the baristas and waiters who remember my usual order. They are all giving me an exquisite gift made from compassion, intuition, and mindfulness. I do not take it for granted.

I feel this way about Carly from Tiny Lantern Tarot as well. Our reading last year opened my eyes to many worrisome patterns I was perpetuating in my dating life; Carly helped me see these issues by reading my cards, drawing on her knowledge of me, listening to my questions and concerns, and simply being present with me. (Carly uses both she/her and they/them pronouns, so I’ll be alternating between those in this post.)

This past week I went back to see Carly for another reading – specifically, a reading about my sex life, which Carly calls a “pussy fortune.” (They’re quick to point out, of course, that this language doesn’t resonate with everyone and there are many other things you could call a sexy tarot reading. My pun-brain is whirring… A “pre-dick-tion”? A “whore-oscope”? A “get-off-ecy”?!)

I’m a sex-nerdy, kinky, non-monogamous queerdo, so if I’m going to open up to someone – in either a personal or a professional capacity – I need them to be cool with all those things, or even involved in those communities themselves. Carly totally gets all of that, and I feel 100% comfortable unpacking sex/kink/poly things with her. If you are similarly inclined and live in or near Toronto, I would highly recommend booking Carly for a reading; their knowledge of and comfort with these areas of sexuality sets me deeply at ease.

She made me a cup of coffee and we settled onto the couch in her little turquoise office. We discussed some questions I’ve been wondering about: 1) How can I adjust my approach to dating to attract more people into my life who I’m emotionally and sexually compatible with and who want to date me? and 2) What areas of sexuality should I explore next, in my personal life and in my work? (Sex is inextricable from work for me. My sex life fuels my sex writing; my sex writing fuels my sex life. I cannot discuss one without the other.) I watched as they shuffled their gently glinting black-and-gold cards and laid them out methodically on a navy chest repurposed as a table, and we began the reading.

It was a long reading, full of thoughtful silences and the internal whir of one “aha!” moment after another. One of my favorite things about Carly’s readings is that she leaves long, comfortable silences in between sentences and cards. As a journalist, improvisor, and podcaster, sometimes silences make me panic – they’re “dead air” and that’s bad, right?! – but they are incredibly useful in a setting like a tarot reading. Sometimes I need a good ten or twenty seconds to absorb and process something one of us has just said – to turn it over in my mind and look at it from all angles – and it’s in those long pauses that I connect the dots, find the common threads, reach revelations. In everyday life, we so rarely get the opportunity to take a breath, think, and decide at our own pace what we want to say next. Carly holds space for their clients in ways both figurative and literal, and it is such a gift.

They pulled many cards and we discussed many facets of my dating life, sex life, and work life, so I won’t go into detail about all of it – but here are a few key concepts that have stuck with me in the intervening days…

Listen to your body. Trust your body. Let your brain take a backseat. This message came up in multiple cards. It’s something I frequently struggle with, as an anxious weirdo who over-intellectualizes and over-analyzes sex. Sometimes my body really does know best, and that’s hard to accept; I want to be able to conquer all problems with sheer brainpower! But my body is at least as smart as my brain, and I need to let it do its thing.

This has come up in my dating life a lot lately. I’ll force myself to go on a first date (and then sometimes a second or third date!) with someone because they seem like a good fit for me, logically. But my body knows different: my shoulders get tense as I enter the plan in my calendar, my eyelids feel heavy as I force myself out of bed the morning of the date, and I’m fraught with anxious nausea as I slide my shoes on and head out the door. There is a difference between good-nervous and bad-nervous, and I can distinguish between the two if I silence my brain-chatter and listen to my body. Nine times out of ten, my body has a better sense of whether someone is good for me than my brain does, and I should heed that more often.

This lesson also plays into more established relationships. It’s been over a year since I found out my ex-FWB was chronically abusive to other partners of his, and I keep reflecting on all the warning signs my body noticed that my brain decided to ignore. I didn’t feel good around him, I never got excited to go see him, and he often said creepy things that grated on me – but I kept assuring myself these were small things that ultimately didn’t matter, since the sex was good and he was, on the surface, “nice.”

Contrastingly, I recently had sex for the first time with a new beau who I believe is actually nice, and afterward, he breathed in my ear, “I have a good feeling about you.” I had a good feeling about him, too – in my body, not just my brain. Our bodies are wiser than we give them credit for.

Say what you mean, and mean what you say. One of the cards Carly pulled for me this time, the Seeker of Feathers, also came up in our last reading, which I gather means I haven’t learned its lesson yet. This card is all about honesty, assertiveness, telling the truth, even when doing so is hard. I think most of us could stand to get better at this.

Sometimes I tell dates I like them and want to see them again when I kinda don’t. Sometimes I tell dates I’m cool with us keeping things “chill” and “casual” when I utterly am not. Sometimes I tell dates I’m “not sure what I’m looking for” when I actually know I’m looking for a committed primary partner.

Sometimes I tell partners I don’t care that I didn’t have an orgasm, when I actually do care. Sometimes I tell partners what they’re doing feels great, when I actually know what would feel better. Sometimes I tell partners our sexual incompatibilities are solvable, when I’m actually frustrated to catastrophic levels with one crucial mismatch or another.

I get myself into trouble when I lie, distort the truth, or omit pertinent details. I end up going on dates with people I barely like, making out with people I’d rather just cuddle, having sex with people to whom I should’ve said “good night” hours ago. To be clear, these experiences are consensual; they just lack the passion and enthusiasm and “oh yes”-ness that I consider vital. If there isn’t mutual excitement in a romantic and/or sexual interaction, why am I even there? What is the point?

I told Carly about how I struggle with letting people down, even when I know I’m not feeling a connection. She reminded me that dating is inherently risky and most people know that. There is always a risk of rejection, sadness, conflict, disappointment. That’s just part of the deal. I don’t have to protect people from that. Trying to postpone those feelings often just worsens them in the end. “Stop going on second dates with people you know you don’t want to keep seeing,” Carly advised me. Okay. I’ll try.

Consider your intentions. One of the cards Carly drew – the Ten of Feathers – was meant to represent how others observe or interpret me, and it indicated a fall. Chaos. Mental health struggles, addiction, loneliness, fears.

I felt a rush of embarrassment when they explained this to me. I flashed back to Kat Williams advising against being a “car-crash blogger” – a blogger who only writes about bad things that happen to them, in an effort to get clicks and sympathy. I often write about difficult stuff – but is that what I want to be known for?

As I blathered about this internal crisis, Carly reminded me that having a public image laced with conflict and chaos isn’t necessarily a bad thing. And I realized they were right. I’ve received so many nice notes from readers telling me that my writing about soul-crushing experiences – unrequited love, rejection, insecurity – helped them understand and get through tricky situations of their own. This was a nice reminder that I should consider my intentions with regards to my work: writing sad stuff isn’t necessarily bad, it should just be something I deliberately choose to do, if and when I do it.

We also talked about how I should be more deliberate and intentional in my dating life as well. If I’m going out on multiple first dates a month with new Tinder suitors, I should ask myself: why? What am I hoping to get out of this? Am I actually having fun, or am I just doing this because I feel like I’m “supposed to”? If I’m having sex with a lot of people, is it actually as fun and exciting as I want it to be, or is it just exhausting? Am I pursuing romantic relationships because they’re what I’m “supposed to” want, or do I actually want them?

These are all questions for which my answers tend to oscillate, but the important thing is that I’m pondering them at all. Things get messy when I wander into new endeavors with no idea what I’m really doing – whereas, if I know exactly what I’m hoping to get out of an experience, I’m likelier to have a good time and get what I want.

Just like last time, I left Carly’s house feeling inspired, emboldened, and amped up. Their perspective, advice, and the simple act of listening to me had helped me shake loose some areas that had felt stuck. On the subway ride home, I stared at the notes I’d scribbled in my journal, and it felt like I was looking at a road map to a more satisfying sex life.

If you want to book a reading with Carly – which you should, ’cause she’s fucking terrific – you can make arrangements to come see her here in Toronto. They also occasionally travel to other locales; follow them on Twitter for updates on that. Carly also writes a tarot advice column called Ask a Feelings-Witch, to which you are welcome to submit questions.

I’m never entirely sure how I feel about witchy, magical practices – whether I believe they actually help or they’re just made-up silliness – but what I know about tarot is that it bridges a gap between the magical and the practical. The cards tell you some things, and you can connect those messages and lessons to the events of your own life, in ways that are often shockingly illuminating. Whether you believe tarot is a mystical practice imbued with the supernatural, or merely a secular window into your own psyche, I think it can be a helpful tool. After all, if you ask me, all the best things in life have a little ambiguous magic in them – and the wisest people are those who are open to mystery, to the unexplainable, to being surprised by life.