#01: My new approach to dating 📝

From July to October, while the COVID-19 restrictions had been relaxed in London, I was involved, to varying degrees, with seven different men.

The dynamics at play were all wildly different, but none of them were in any way healthy, let alone nourishing.

I know that most of them follow my writing, so I’m not going to go into detail otherwise they’d all recognise themselves and get cross.

My self-esteem, which is fairly low even on the best days, became cripplingly poor. I’d let ever increasing touch deprivation and desperation for sexual contact have the edge over taking care of my emotional wellbeing. In accepting chronic emotional unavailability and avoidant attachment styles, I was continually inviting behaviours that were far less than I deserved.

And then, I remembered that the kinds of people we attract is simply a re-affirmation of what we believe about ourselves.

I wasn’t acting like I deserved better, and so I never saw the authenticity and honesty that I so desperately craved. But I was so wrapped up in defining my own sexuality and lifestyle choices that I wasn’t able to acknowledge my reluctance to address my own deep-seated feelings of inferiority and abject fear of rejection.

I’m lucky that I have people around me that I can talk to about all my shit. And during the Autumn, I was able to vent to a few close friends, safe in the knowledge that I’d be listened to intently, and without judgement. By November, I’d worked out the roots of some of my problems, and, serendipitously, had also been commissioned to write an essay for the anthology Dating & Sex: The Theory of Mutual Self-Destruction, which features 84 essays on self-preservation vs self-destruction as viewed through dating and sex.

So, I included some analysis of the emotional turbulence I’d experienced in the essay. To read the piece in full, buy the book via the Superchamps Books website: superchampbooks.com/dating-and-sex-the-theory-of-mutual-self-destruction, when it’s out on 12 January.

Hot on the heels of penning that piece of work, I had a number of conversations which led me to take a long look at the way I’ve been conducting my sexual relationships. I’d created a personal brand and regular income from advocating for sexual pleasure outside the patriarchal constraints of monoheteronormativity. Because, sex feels good, right?

Let me rephrase that: good sex feels good. And I’ve gotten really good at having really good sex.

But I’m also someone who often feels anxious, disempowered and overwhelmed. Add all this to my ungovernable imposter syndrome and life starts to become pretty turbulent.

If I think more intentionally about the phenomenon, this is actually more likely to be the fact that I continually experience “credibility deficit” and “testimonial injustice”. These are phrases coined by philosopher Miranda Fricker in 2007 to describe the experience of opinions (professional or otherwise) that aren’t as likely to be regarded as rational, competent or credible as others, because they belonging to a minoritised group. On the flipside, “credibility excess” refers to those whose word is more likely to be taken the most seriously due to their social identity.

So I use sex to self-soothe.

It’s much easier to teach people how to be physically explorative – as I do in my sex-positivity work – than to be brave enough to be authentically emotionally vulnerable. And realising that more than a decade has gone by, in which time I’ve not actually had a single functioning romantic relationship, is a horrifying revelation.

It’s easy to offer yourself up as a sexual object. What’s hard is to see enough value in yourself not to.