heartbreak

The Best Thing to Do After a Breakup (According to Me)

Kate Sloan

Don’t be alarmed: my partner and I did not break up. I just felt like writing about breakups today!

Several friends of mine have been through breakups recently, and I feel for them. While offering unsolicited advice to a heartbroken person is a grade-A shithead move, occasionally pals will ask me for guidance when going through romantic turmoil (perhaps because I’ve been dumped so many times?!), and my favorite suggestion to offer is this: make a list of all the reasons your ex, and your relationship with them, was not actually ideal for you, and reflect on what that means for you and your future.

You have to pick the right moment for this, and that’ll depend on your personal psychology. Try to do it too soon after the event and you’ll find yourself at a loss for words, weeping into your notebook as you gasp toward the sky, “But they were perfect for me!!” (They were not.) Wait too long to do it, and it won’t be as effective – or you won’t have mental access to the clear memories you need to do this exercise. I think, depending on what kind of breakup it was and how you’re feeling, the best time to do this is after the initial grief-level agony has settled a bit – which could be a few hours, a few days, or maybe a week – but before the pain fully dies down to a numb, muffled throb. If your heart still hurts but not so much that you can’t focus on a book or a TV show, you’re probably in a good spot to do this.

I originally got this suggestion from a friend-of-a-friend named Nora when I was writing an article on breakups for a copywriting internship and polled my Facebook friends for their best breakup advice. This is what she wrote: “Make a list of reasons why they weren’t a good fit. Make a list of things you can now feel free to do or are excited to try. Refer to them when sad.”

I’ve since done this not only to ease the pain of a breakup but also to ease the pain of unrequited love, or just small sexual rejections that stung. It could be considered a form of cognitive-behavioral therapy, in that it serves to unmask your erroneous assumptions about the person who broke your heart – namely, that they were perfect and that no one else you date in the future will ever be better. Trust me, no matter how good you think the relationship was, neither of those things are true.

Making this exercise into a ceremonious ritual improves its effects greatly, I find. Here’s the step-by-step process I suggest:

  1. Set aside some time for your ceremony. Give yourself at least an hour of peace and quiet (door locked, calendar cleared, phone off, to-do list set aside) because, even if the exercise itself doesn’t take nearly that long, you’re gonna need time to sit with your feelings, cry, breathe, process, etc.
  2. Pick your medium: do you want to physically write out your list, or type it up? I always prefer to write mine by hand because it takes longer so I have more time to think about what I’m committing to paper. It also feels more cathartic to me than keying some words into a text doc. But hey, you do you. Whatever medium you pick, make it feel fancy and special somehow for yourself – that could mean a beautiful pen and elegant notebook, or a full-screened writing app with your device set to “do not disturb,” or even a creaky old typewriter dusted off for the occasion.
  3. First, list things you don’t like about your ex. You really don’t need to judge or censor yourself while you write these. It is totally okay if you write down stuff you would otherwise consider petty bullshit, like that he can’t seem to scrub a dirty dish to save his life or that she was always late for dates. The point is to get it all out there – and maybe make yourself laugh a little in the process. If you get stuck and need help, text a friend who always seemed to low-key (or high-key) hate your partner while you were dating them… They’ve probably got some stuff stuck in their craw that they’d be happy to share.
  4. Next, list things you didn’t like about the relationship. This is slightly different than your most-loathed qualities of the person, because they themselves could be wonderful but just terribly suited to you. Did your kinks not quite match up? Did you both tend to get snippy when you were stressed out? Did their schedule not allow much time for you? Did you constantly bicker about what kind of takeout to get for dinner? No matter how big or how small, write these things down. Take as long as you need.
  5. Finally, list some things you’re excited to do now that the relationship is over. Maybe you can date and fuck other people now, sure – but you can also do tiny acts of victorious rebellion like eat your ex’s least-favorite food any time you want, wear those shorts she thought were undignified, or blast the death-metal albums he couldn’t stand. This part of the exercise works best if you can make concrete plans to do some of these things in the near future – so maybe text a friend to ask if they’d like to go for absinthe cocktails the likes of which would’ve nauseated your ex on sight, or ask your mom if she’d like to get together next weekend to watch that slapstick comedy your ex thought was dumb. This is about not only looking for the silver linings of your situation but also giving yourself things to look forward to.
  6. If you want to make this all feel more real and final, read your lists aloud in whatever way feels best to you. Sometimes I choke mine out softly between sobs and wails of despair; sometimes I wipe my tears away and perform a zany dramatic reading to myself in the mirror. Put the words out into the world, listen to them, feel them wash over you, feel how true they are.
  7. Don’t forget to give yourself aftercare, because this process is intense. Ideally prep this beforehand so you’ll have self-soothing supplies on hand when you need them. Hydrate (especially if you’ve been crying), eat a snack or a meal, text/call/hang out with someone who loves you, read a beloved book in the bath, put on a cute outfit and makeup, watch a Pixar movie, masturbate wildly… You know yourself best, so you likely know what you’ll need at this juncture.
  8. Perhaps most crucially, refer to your lists as needed in the future, when heartbreak rears its ugly head once more. It’s normal and natural for grief to wrack you in waves, often unexpectedly – and when it does, you’ll be able to combat it by re-reading your lists to remind yourself why the breakup was actually a good thing. You may even want to make a recording of yourself (or your best friend) reading the lists aloud, so you can keep it on your phone and listen to it whenever a stab of anguish hits you right in the chest while you’re out running errands or riding the subway.

That’s it! This process won’t heal your heartbreak immediately or single-handedly, but I’ve found it extremely useful every time I’ve employed it. Like a decidedly sadder version of rose-colored glasses, recent rejection can make you apt to idealize your ex and rationalize away their flaws – so keeping those flaws close to you, explicitly spelled out for easier perusal, can work magic. “This too shall pass” is a cliché for a reason: sooner or later, it always does.

Every Time I Wanted to Give Up On Love

Kate Sloan

2004. A girl I sort of know is sprawled out on the grass next to me in a park on a sunny afternoon. We’re barely friends, but we’re whiling the day away by playing a game together anyway. The game is this: we pick someone in our sixth-grade class and rate their attractiveness out of 10. How do preteens pick up the concept of reducing people to numerical scores in the first place? Who knows; our culture sucks.

Eventually we run out of subjects and decide to turn our harsh spotlights on each other. I give her what I think is a charitable 8 out of 10, because frankly, rating someone lower than a 7 to their face is unspeakably rude. But then she tells me my rating, and it’s a 4, and I am floored.

Is this why none of the boys in my class have ever seemed interested in me, except for the shrimpy nerd who aces all his English tests (who I secretly would kiss if not for the social stigma)? Am I really that ugly? And am I therefore banished to a loveless life? Will my big nose, big forehead, and wide hips curse me and deprive me in perpetuity of what I want more than anything – love?

I laugh it off, like I’m taking it in stride. But the truth is I can’t take it at all.

2006. The man I think I love is 23 years older than me. And he’s gay. And he’s about to move to New York.

I have a well-developed tendency of obsessing over people I see in plays and musicals, but this is the worst it’s ever been. I paste photos of his face dutifully into a scrapbook; I set up a Google alert for his name; I comb YouTube and Vimeo for any sign of him. I crowd all my romantic hopes onto him without him even knowing. When we say hello at the stage door during the run of his last Toronto show, I blush hard and my guts feel like disco balls shattering. How can someone mean this much to me and not even know who I am?

He isn’t the first gay man who’s swept me up and bowled me over; he won’t be the last. Part of me believes this is how it’ll always be: I’ll fall over and over for people who don’t know me, don’t want me, don’t even want anyone of my gender. Maybe love, to me, will always be lopsided. I carefully resign myself to this until it feels a little less sad. After all, being in the presence of someone who lights you up is a pleasant experience, so long as you can divorce yourself from the hope of them ever noticing you, let alone loving you.

2008. The purple-haired gender-weirdo I call my ex-girlfriend is distracting, vexing. They send me a piece of confessional writing in which they converse with a fictional god, trying to convince the deity to “get me back” for them even though they ended our short relationship – but, they’re careful to add, they don’t actually want me back. We made a terrible couple, and we’d make a terrible couple again. I’d be inclined to agree if I wasn’t so goddamn hung up on them that my grades are actually starting to suffer.

It seems – as it always does when you’re in this situation – that there is no one as smart, as funny, as perfect as my ex in my entire world. Every face except theirs in the sea of students bores me; classes we don’t share are easily forgotten and classes we do share are spent staring at them to the detriment of my studies. Nothing feels as important as this love that could have been.

This, my first real crush on a non-dude, is world-opening in ways I’ve never felt before. It’s easy to suspect, in the wake of such glorious wreckage, that no one will ever be this wonderful and wantable again. And so I lean into my misdirected lust and limerence, and when other people try to get close, I only push them away. This non-love feels realer than anything else that could develop if I only let it.

2014. Predictably, I cry, ending my first serious relationship on a street corner. Three and a half years in, I’ve simply fallen out of love: poof, whoops. My once-beloved is holding me; it’s hard to imagine letting go of such a steady presence. But eventually I do, and I get into a car and never see him again.

Established love began to feel so itchy and insular; I ran out of energy to wrestle my doubts into submission. So I gave up, cut ties, let go. But now I wonder if this means love is out of reach for me in general. Do I alienate everyone who cares enough to get close to me? Does devotion raise my hackles, or worse, bore me? Am I an emotionally stunted oaf who deserves for fuckboys to never text her back until one day she dies alone with nary even a cat to keep her company?

I take some time to myself, solitary, single. I learn what it feels like to breathe in my own body again without someone else breathing down my neck. I think: I just want to be alone for a while. And then, one day, months later, I think: Okay. I think I’m ready to be not-alone again now.

2016. Drunk, I spill my guts to my fuckbuddy-turned-crush on my couch after everyone else has left the party. It, shall we say, doesn’t go well. He knows I like him. He probably knows I love him. I wish he didn’t know. I wish I didn’t love him. I wish a lot of things.

“I feel like you have this crush monster inside you, and seeing me awakens it and makes you feel terrible about yourself,” he says, brow furrowed in a concern I can’t help but find touching. He’s embarrassingly right; seeing him always feels like an illicit high, and always ends in a catastrophic crash. “I think we should just be friends for a while,” he offers, and I nod as tears slide down my cheeks.

The question that has plagued and haunted me for months is: Why doesn’t he love me? I’ll never get an answer that feels satisfying, because the answer is as simple and as awful as it always is: He just doesn’t. I know neither he nor I can force him to love me. I know it’s time to stop trying. Maybe one day we’ll actually be friends.

2017. My oldest friend makes me a gin and tonic and I cry into it until it’s closer to a briny martini, because I’ve just been through the most traumatic breakup of my life. “It’s okay,” she says, “you’ll get over it,” but I can’t imagine how I will.

He was my first daddy dom, the first person I trusted enough to let into that sector of my sexuality. He told me he loved me, treasured me, wanted to be with me for years. He lied.

I lock away my heart in a metaphorical box and tuck it into a metaphorical attic; it’s of no use to me now. But I do that with my kinks too, pushing them away self-protectively. If I never want, need, and enjoy anything that deeply again, I can never be this devastated again when it’s taken from me. I take another swig of my salty G&T and tell my friend, “I don’t know how I’m ever going to trust anyone again.”

But 4 months later, I go on a first date with someone whose daddy-dom vibes are off the charts. My inner submissive little girl stirs and stretches, but I shush her. It’s not safe for you out here, little one. Go back to sleep. She won’t. She’s starry-eyed. She wants to play.

So little by little, I let myself fall in love. I let myself open up. I let myself feel hope and safety and comfort and all those dorky feelings I thought had been smashed out of my heart. Love grows back like a stubborn seedling. I water it, and wonder if this time it’ll finally take.

A Year of Independent Living

Kate Sloan

A year ago today, I moved into the little west-Toronto nook that’s now my home. A terse duo of Russian men packed all my worldly possessions into a truck outside my parents’ house, and then my mom, brother, and I hopped in a car and followed them across town to my new place. We watched as they hauled my mattress upstairs, my dresser, my desk. And then, all of a sudden, I lived in a new location. My first move since my parents vacated our little Degrassi Street house when I was a baby.

Depressed people like me often move through life more slowly than our neurotypical peers. When just staying afloat and staying alive takes massive energy, it can be difficult to put additional energy into propelling yourself forward – so you can feel “stuck” as you watch your more emotionally balanced friends chase after new homes, new careers, new relationships. This is largely why it took me until age 25 to move out of my parents’ home and into my own: the financial and emotional stability necessary for this move were hard-won for me, and I wanted to make sure both were firmly in place before I took the leap. (The immense privilege of my parents’ support until that time is one I don’t overlook and can never really repay them for. What a gift. I was, and am, so lucky.)

A couple months after landing my current dayjob, I spotted a post on Facebook about a room availability in an apartment. It was within my budget, located in a neighborhood I loved, and my potential roommate would be a cool sex-positive and 420-friendly friend-of-a-friend. I reached out to her to ask if I could come see the place, and on one Friday afternoon that August, I did. She showed me the room, and I was instantly enamored: it was huge (for a downtown Toronto bedroom), had ample natural light (important for combating my seasonal depression), and had two closets (oh, the sex toy storage possibilities!). We discussed details, and I told her I’d have to run it by my parents, but I knew in my heart that my answer was already yes. I wanted this big, bright apartment to be my new home.

Weirdly, the day of that viewing was also the day my last boyfriend broke up with me. He’d been cold and distant for a couple days, and wanted me to come over so we could talk – which, naturally, spiked my anxiety like whoa. His apartment was walking distance from the one I’d just been to see, so I ambled in his direction after the viewing. “It’s weird to have looked at the new place right before doing this,” I texted my best friend. “I’m all jazzed and energetic on my way to the guillotine.”

Indeed, when I got there, he broke up with me on the spot, and sent me home with an armful of items I’d been keeping at his house: a vape, a paddle, a vibrator. I cried behind my sunglasses on the seemingly endless streetcar ride, all the way across town, thinking about how I was alone, and I had so much to do before the move, and I was alone, and I was alone, and I was so so so alone.

But the truth was, I wasn’t alone. A friend invited me over to her place, made me a gin and tonic (which I sobbed into), and sat with me quietly reading a book while I finished some dayjob work. When I had steadied myself enough to form complete sentences, I told her about the apartment – how perfect it was, how excited I was to move there, even though the brick blanket of breakup depression had already settled on my bones.

My pal vowed to help me with my packing over the coming weeks, because she – a fellow depression-sufferer – knew how grief and malaise can weigh on you in a very real way, making it feel impossible to even move through the motions of your day. Over the 3 weeks that remained before moving day, she came over to my parents’ house a few times, and spent hours with me in my hot attic bedroom, deciding which clothes, books, and sex toys to take with me and which to leave behind. She listened to me cry and rant about my ex as we picked through the detritus of my entire life. It was a catharsis, an excavation, a salvaging.

And so everything got packed, and the Russian men came to take my stuff away, and I became – by at least this one measure – an independent adult. My mom, an ever-hovering maternal firecracker, wanted to make my bed for me with the sheets and shams we’d hauled over from my old room – but I told her no, I wanted to do it myself. I appreciated her love and care, on levels so deep I couldn’t even verbalize my feelings, but I wanted this new place to be mine. I felt invigorated by the knowledge that depression could not defeat me, not even when I’d been faced with a task as dauntingly huge as moving across the city in the wake of a breakup.

That first night, my friend Brent happened to be playing a show at a bar downtown, and I went. A random dude in the audience recognized me from Instagram, bought me shots of whiskey, and made out with me in front of the stage. I cheered and clapped and cried as Brent performed his set. At the end of the night, drunk on attention and booze, I left the bar in my little leather jacket and wandered back to my new home-that-didn’t-yet-feel-like-home. On the way, I stopped off for some tipsy McDonald’s. This would become a tradition of mine on mellow, merry nights.

The first few months in my new place were resolutely lonely. There were days when I felt paralyzed by anxiety, unsure where in the neighborhood to get food or coffee, so I just stayed in bed writing and crying. There were nights when I desperately wanted to go to a comedy show, but feared going alone, so I’d get high and go out or stay sober and stay in. I texted my family whenever the loneliness felt overwhelming, and visited them at least once a week, sleeping on the den couch because the centerpiece of my old bedroom was now just a bare boxspring. I defied my introverted nature to make plans with friends as often as I could, aching to fill the void left by my old home and my dissolved relationship. It frequently didn’t feel like enough, and I spent many nights numbing out with weed and Netflix, wondering if I’d made a massive mistake – or perhaps a series of them.

But, over time, it got easier. On days when I felt strong enough to confront my anxieties, I marched into heretofore-unexplored cafés, diners, grocery stores, and bookshops, laying claim to happy new haunts. I refamiliarized myself with the reality that no one actually thinks it’s that weird if you go see an improv show by yourself. I blasted jazz through my speakers while sipping wine and writing, imbuing my new home with my old rhythms. I wrote in my journal that my ex felt “like a dark spectre looming over my life, a half-imagined ghost of what could have been, hazy at the edges and fading day by day.” I made out with a cute boy from OkCupid in a dark alley after a couple of beers. I flirted with Twitter crushes and Facebook friends-of-friends. I kept on visiting my family once a week, less because I needed them and more because I loved them.

It’s been a year now since I moved in here, and I have rituals and routines in my neighborhood now that make me feel grounded and safe. I’m not lonely anymore, most of the time: I have good friends, and a boyfriend who I get to see about once a month. Waking up beside him in my bed, in this bright and spacious bedroom, always makes me reflect on how wonderful it is to have found places – and people – that feel, at last, like home.

12 Days of Girly Juice 2017: 3 Fave Encounters

Kate Sloan

This is the third year I’ve done 12 Days of Girly Juice, and this instalment – the one about my top 3 favorite sexual encounters of the entire year – is always one of the most fun to write, and one of the most difficult to decide on.

This was true in 2015, when my sex life wasn’t terribly robust but each sexcapade nonetheless felt fresh and magical – and it was true in 2016, when my sex life was hoppin’ and each new partner brought something wonderfully different to the table. This year, I had more sex than either of those years, and, once again, it’s been tricky to choose just 3 encounters that stick out in my mind as top-o’-the-charts. But I think these 3 represent the kind of year I had sexually – which is to say, a very, very good year.

All rumpled in his bed the morning after.

Kink Mastery

I had a boyfriend from April to August who became, even in that short timeframe, one of my top-3 lifetime sexual partners by number of encounters – topped only by my previous long-term loves of 3.5 years and 1.5 years, respectively. That he managed to barrel into my top 3 in the few months we dated speaks to what total horndogs we were, both separately and (especially) together. Our kinks aligned perfectly, like lock and key – and when two sexually compatible pervs come together like that, lots and lots of good sex tends to ensue.

It’s difficult for me – even now, months after the breakup that devastated me – to look back on those experiences without sadness and remorse. But I’m getting there. The reason the relationship unraveled was that we didn’t actually have much in common outside of our sex life, a fact that seemed frustratingly inconsequential to me at the time but would’ve become more and more apparent if we’d kept dating. So I’m starting to view that relationship as what it was: a blisteringly hot sexual tryst, the romantic backdrop of which is ultimately forgettable and unimportant. (Does that sound mean? Well, it’s okay, because he broke my heart. As Anne Lamott says, “If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”)

Anyway, we had a lot of good sex, some of which still guiltily hangs out in my autoerotic archives. But one encounter that particularly sticks out to me is this: one night in May, we kissed and groped and moaned together in his cozy bed in a west-Toronto basement apartment. He spanked me over his lap, taking me into subspace sternly and easily. He made me suck his cock while he held my wrists down flat on the bed so I couldn’t use my hands, then fucked my face while holding me firmly by the throat, combining two acts I’d hated with everyone before him but somehow loved with him.

After that, he tied my wrists and thighs together with rope and fucked me, circling my clit with his fingers all the while, in the manner of someone who’s fucked me enough to know how to do it properly. He untied me and went down on me until I came in his mouth, spacey and incoherent, and then he held me down and fucked me until he came inside me, leaving a deep bite mark on my shoulder that I admired for days afterward.

What this relationship ultimately taught me is that I’m willing to put up with a lot of painful complications in exchange for good sex – and that maybe that shouldn’t be the case, going forward. But damn, was the sex ever fantastic.

Casual and Wonderful

In January, I spotted a boy from across a room and immediately thought, “Damn. Who is that?” It was the truest example of “infatuation at first sight” I can remember experiencing in a long, long time. He was geeky, cool, and unassuming. I felt my breath catching and was vaguely aware I had started to sweat. And then he turned, noticed me, and I saw him having what looked like the same reaction to me that I’d just had to him. He walked up to me, said breezily, “I don’t think we’ve met,” and introduced himself. A few minutes later, he was casually saying, “We should go to [local sex club] Oasis together.” It’s emblematic of my social anxiety and insecurity that even then, I didn’t fully realize or accept he was into me. Silly girl!

Over the months that followed, we gradually became fuckbuddies, and then, at some point, actual friends with benefits in the true sense. We’d meet at the sex club once a month or so, have drinks in the heated outdoor pool while catching up on each other’s lives, and then get down to the sexytimes. I found that every time we parted ways, I felt good – uplifted, confident, desirable, satisfied – in a way I’d never really felt when saying goodbye to other previous fuckpals. There was no sense of longing or rejection; I didn’t want any more from him than he was able to give me, and vice versa. It was a kind of casual bliss.

My favorite encounter with this handsome weirdo so far was much like most of the others. We hung out in the pool for a while, chatting and laughing. When I finished my drink and set it down by the side of the pool, my pal pushed me up against the wall and kissed me, fierce yet unhurried. I moaned, as I always do when he kisses me; he’s very, very good at it. He pushed his hardness against me through his swim briefs while we continued to make out and I felt myself get more and more turned on – another remarkable talent of his, given how difficult it is for me to relax into sexual situations in public.

There came a point where the things I wanted to do to him were no longer possible in the swimming pool, unless I intended to drown, so I told him we should go upstairs to the third floor – an area specifically designated for sex, where all men have to be accompanied by at least one woman to dissuade creeps. He pressed me harder against the pool wall, playfully kissing me and grinding against me until I reached a zenith of arousal so intense that I had to say, “No, seriously, let’s go. I want you to fuck me.” His signature goofy grin appeared as he said, “Yeah, that sounds good,” and followed me out of the pool.

Once upstairs, we kissed more, all chlorine-scented and towel-swaddled, and he pushed my towel aside so he could go down on me while I melted and writhed and called out meaningless syllables over the cacophony of other people fucking in the next room. Before too long, he was pushing two fingers inside me, deep, stroking me exactly the way I like it without needing to be told, and I was coming on his hand, feeling unrushed and unpressured. He’s very good, I thought, like I always do with him.

Then he fucked me relentlessly with his absolutely excellent dick, muttering all the while about how tight and hot and wet I was, until we collapsed in a damp heap on the red vinyl.

I treasure our post-sex ritual almost as much as our sex itself: we cuddle casually while watching and mocking the bad porn always playing on massive TV screens around the room. He makes me laugh and makes me feel safe. That night, I stayed until I was too tired to keep my eyes affixed on the porn anymore, and then he walked me downstairs, I got dressed, and we said good night.

The breakdown of romantic relationships always makes me especially grateful for my intimate relationships that are not romantic – their specialness and specificity, the affirmation they provide without demanding much in return, the needs they fulfill for me when more “serious” relationships feel too intense or difficult or unattainable. That hookup on the top floor of Oasis left me glowing, and not hurting. Except for the dull ache in my vag that means I’ve been well and truly fucked.

Sexplorations

This list is about my favorite encounters of the year – which, to be clear, doesn’t always necessarily mean the best sex I had all year. Sometimes the most memorable and meaningful encounters are also clumsy, imperfect, unpracticed. Sometimes sex is good emotionally moreso than physically – and sometimes it’s both.

Last week I went to hang out with a long-time far-away Twitter crush for a planned date. We had negotiated a broad range of activities, mostly including him inflicting sensations to me and exerting control over me, because that, as you may know, is my jam. Usually.

But once I got there, things felt different. I am ordinarily the subbiest sub and the bottomiest bottom, but this sweet pervy man turned to mush any time I climbed on top of him or told him what to do, even with commands as innocuous as “Come here so I can fix the tag on your T-shirt.” My dormant inner domme stirred, as we pushed and pulled each other’s limits and buttons. “I think I want to sit on your face,” I proposed as we laid in bed many hours into a multi-chapter sex-a-thon, and his voice trembled with excitement as he breathed, “Okay.”

Facesitting doesn’t have to be a dominant act, and I’ve done it as a submissive many times. Someone can pull you onto their face and hold you there until they’ve had your fill of you, while they lie with their head on a comfy pillow like a gluttonous monarch. This was not that, though. This time I was the queen… and his face was my throne.

I tugged on his curls to get him exactly where I wanted him, and took from him all the pleasure I wanted for as long as I wanted. When I was done, I brushed my hand along his skin, his chest hair, his belly and hips and the significant swell in his boxers. “Tell me what you want,” I murmured in his ear.

“I… I don’t feel I have the… the right to ask for anything right now,” he stammered subbily. I smiled.

“It wasn’t a question,” I clarified. “Tell me what you want. Nobody said you’re gonna get it.”

He swallowed hard. His words weren’t working so well. “I want to come,” he managed, at length. “I want your mouth on me.”

I purred with pleasure. This was the answer I wanted and he knew it. I crawled down his body and began to tease him with my tongue. A leisurely almost-blowjob, purely for my own tactile pleasure, my own amusement. “Tell me how beautiful I am,” I ordered, and he did. “Now tell me three things you like about my mouth,” I continued, and he did – still stammering, still barely coherent. “Do I need to stop?” I warned, his cock stilled in one hand, when he couldn’t quite get through an answer. “No, no, please,” he protested, and tried to get the words out. Good boy, I thought, but did not say, because my mouth was full of him. A very good boy indeed.

Dominance has always scared me because I anxiously and self-doubtingly believe no one will ever really want to do the things I tell them to do, because I’m not worthy of being wanted that much. But what I’ve learned is that some people do want me that much, and that sometimes the strength of their desire can lend me a confidence I don’t otherwise possess. And that can heal me, a little bit. As I take my pleasure from an obedient cutie, I can also pull some strength from them, some focus, some courage. Kink, as I’ve noted here many times before, is so much more than just a “sex thing.”

Interview: Alexandra Franzen on Break-Ups, Hope, and Surviving

Kate Sloan

Alexandra Franzen is one of my favorite writers on the planet. Her voice is relentlessly upbeat, incisive, and clear as a bell. She’s inspired and uplifted me countless times, whether she’s writing about how to say no, how to achieve a goal, how to become a better writer, or anything else.

So I was heartened when I saw she had a new book coming out called You’re Going to Survive. It came along at a time when I needed that exact message, badly: I’d just had my heart broken and was figuring out how to feel better and move forward. (I don’t know why I wrote that in the past tense. I’m still feeling that way, honestly.)

You’re Going to Survive is full of stories about real-life people and their real-life problems – and how they kept going, even when it seemed like they couldn’t possibly. In this book, authors, chefs, lawyers, musicians, web designers, and Broadway performers (among others) describe one of the worst moments in their entire career – moments when everything went catastrophically, heart-poundingly, mood-ruiningly wrong – and how they got through to the other side. Spoiler alert: they all survived their hardships. And you can survive yours, too.

I wrote to Alex to ask her a few questions about the wisdom of her book as it pertains to break-ups. Here’s what she had to say…

What are your best tips for surviving a break-up?

My last break-up was a little over four years ago. It was pretty intense. I’ve had about five major break-ups in total, including breaking off an engagement with my college sweetheart.

In the past, here are some things I’ve done after a break-up:

– Call a friend while hiding under my covers in bed.
– Cry until it feels like my eyes are going to fall out of my head.
– Write super intense poetry.
– Thwack a punching bag at the gym.
– Get a hair cut.
– Get my cash washed.
– Get a Tarot card reading.
– Get a new vibrator.
– De-clutter my home.
– Buy myself some flowers.
– Flirt with people just to remember what it feels like.
– Pack all of my possessions into the back of a VW beetle and move to another state.

Every person is different, and every break-up is different. So, I would say, do whatever you need to do. There are no rules.

Personally, I’ve tried to view each break-up as an opportunity to clear space in my life—both physically and emotionally. Bye, old clothes! Bye, old commitments on my calendar! It’s a new beginning.

We often hear that “time heals all wounds,” but is there any way to speed up the process?

There’s a woman named Christina Rasmussen who studies grief, loss, and reinvention. She’s written books on this topic. She says, “Time doesn’t heal. Action does.”

I totally agree. To heal and move onward, we can’t be stagnant. We have to take action.

After a break-up, I’ve found that really small action steps—like making my bed, or getting nice bath salts, or opening the window to let in some fresh air—can seriously improve my mood. Small, loving actions can make a big difference.

Any tips for dealing with feelings of unworthiness, undesirability, unloveability, etc. after a devastation like a break-up?

Once, I went through a break-up that totally rattled my ego. I felt like I wasn’t interesting or attractive enough to hold his attention. Even though I’d been the PERFECT girlfriend—I mean, I cleaned his entire damn house and bought groceries and tolerated his cat even though I’m seriously allergic!—somehow, it wasn’t enough and he wanted to date other women.

I was crushed. I felt so rejected and confused. I remember feeling like, “I want answers. I want him to explain why this didn’t work out. I need him to explain why I’m not enough. I need to hear this from him. That’s the only way I will feel ‘closure’.”

I told all of this to a friend of mine. She said to me, “But what if he never gives you the closure that you want? What if he can’t explain, or won’t explain, or refuses to meet up with you to talk? Is there some way that you could give a feeling of closure to yourself?”

I’ve never forgotten what she said. Because the reality is, with many break-ups, the other person can’t—or won’t—give you the answers that you crave, or the feeling of closure that you crave. You need to create that feeling by yourself, for yourself. This might mean doing a ritual (like burning old letters) or re-writing a story you’ve been telling yourself inside your head about what happened and why. Ultimately, the only person who can really give closure to you… is you.

Also, let us remember the wise words of Dita Von Teese: “You can be the ripest, juiciest peach in the world, and there’s still going to be somebody who hates peaches.”

It’s so true. Just because someone isn’t interested in being with you, that doesn’t mean you are undesirable! It just means you’re a delicious peach and they happen to want a banana or a pear. They’re allowed to have their preferences—just like you.

How can you be brave enough to “get back out there” when your heart’s been broken?

I know a woman who was single for a really, really long time. She was really frustrated, and she was beginning to wonder if she would ever meet someone.

One day, she got invited to meet up with a few people and have brunch. She was going to say “no,” because she’d already eaten breakfast that day. But she felt this funny intuitive feeling that urged her to go, so she decided, “OK, I guess I’ll go anyway even though I’m not hungry.”

She ended up meeting her husband at that brunch. It was totally unexpected and out of the blue. They’re madly in love and have the sweetest, most amazing relationship.

I think about my friend’s story a lot, especially when I’m feeling discouraged.

The truth is, whether you’re searching for love, or searching for something else, like a new job, the path to getting there might be really surprising and unexpected. A spontaneous gut decision—like getting brunch, taking a road trip, or making an online dating profile—might lead to something incredible. Personally, I feel “braver” when I remember that the possibilities are truly limitless, and today is always a mystery, and anything can happen.

So, get out there, and keep your eyes and ears and heart open, because who knows what tomorrow might bring? Or what today might bring? Today is not over yet!

What do you wish someone had told you after your last really awful break-up?

“Hey, guess what? You’re going to meet the love of your life about two months from now. Just hang in there. You won’t believe what’s coming next.”

Thanks so much to Alex for her words of wisdom! If you’re craving more, be sure to check out her website and preorder her new book, You’re Going to Survive. (And remember: you are going to survive.)