Since then, I’ve masturbated and shagged probably six times. It felt so fucking necessary. Almost as it did mid-January during this ‘Altar’ed States’ shag.

So today, instead of an essay, I have a Praxxxis guide to help you do the same. If you need a comp subscription to read it, let me know xoxo

We all know (right?) that women’s orgasms are far easier to reach, and much more satisfying, when they’re feeling safe. It’s physiology.

But humans don’t even need to read the news to inflame worries. Our sweet little life-sustaining brains can trigger these orgasm-depriving stressors all on their own. It’s psychology.

Yet, if we waited for prime comfort to orgasm, we’d come more infrequently and have a lot less fun wading through the weeds of life.

I’m in the is-my-hair-falling-out-from-chronic-stress-or-postpartum-hormones stage of life, yet I’m coming often enough to keep me close to my partner and mostly sane.

Here’s how I help myself come, even when my needs-hierarchy needs some scaffolding, and how my partner supports that process:

Read more

You don’t.

You don’t feel sexy when there’s rape in the news.

When there is rape in the news, your heart will ache, and your body won’t want to open because assault is not sexy. We should always listen to our bodies.

So what do you do when there’s rape in the news?

You have conversations. You talk. And you listen.

Not just online. In person.

You talk about respect, compassion, and the physical, tangible, practicalities of being a good human being. Like noticing, listening, considering, reflecting.

You say, “What does it mean to be a good human being?” to your kids, or your sister’s kids, or your adult friends who have kids. You say, “Tell me more.” You keep talking. You listen.

You ask anyone who has kids, “Can you tell me about the last time you talked with your kid about what it means to be a good human being?” because you’re curious how other people handle these conversations. Not because you want to call them out, but maybe it’ll remind them to have these conversations, too.

You start a small-scale book club, or film club where you discuss the ethical circumstances of a fictional or nonfiction scene. You say, “Why do you think Sebastian the sheep sacrificed himself to save the Sheep Detectives?”

You don’t call it an ethics discussion group or a morality debate. Some people’s parents forgot to show the value of character, so these topics aren’t enticing right now. But you know we can change that. We can make treating people well far more aspirational than wherever someone went to school or who they know.

When there’s rape in the news, you remind yourself that we got here as a society because of what we’ve valued, what we prioritized, and what we did and didn’t discuss. We got here because someone’s parents forgot to teach character in the small ways and the big ways — like demonstrating how to interpret people’s body language, or mentioning how assault isn’t sexy; it’s a violation of our very humanity.

The problem might not be you. But if you’re a good human, you act like one: You listen to your body’s response and encourage others to listen to their bodies, and the bodies around them, too.

And you have conversations.

Donate to Take Back The Night to fund survivors’ legal fees.

Become a member of MakeLoveNotPorn Academy to bring sex education to all.

I’m Abigail. I’m a mom who works in sextech. I write about love and sex in culture and my marriage every week.

This post is in lieu of my bi-monthly Praxxxis series, a paid series where I put the love and sex philosophies of my publication, Happy Endings, into practical practices.

I hope you have some great chats with great humans today.

Thank you for reading.

When I was pregnant with my first in London, our friend sent me The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read, and the whole time I thought, Actually, I don’t. My dad didn’t do a bad job. Maybe he was a bit intense about loading the dishwasher. Maybe my inherited compulsive tinkering isn’t great for my stress levels. But, all in all, I like how I turned out.

The worst lot of my childhood wasn’t something a parent could control. My mom died. And, well, I desperately don’t want my kids to have a dead mom.

It’s not even because I didn’t like having a dead mom. I have said it once and will again. That loss couldn’t be all bad… It made me me. But it’s still that sort of thing you wouldn’t wish on your enemies. I don’t think I even have enemies. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. And certainly not my kids; those two beings I love more than life. And I love life.

I recognize a fear of dying is a distraction from living and tell myself I prefer action instead of wallowing in anxious thought. Yet each day that I’ve aged beyond my mom’s last feels like a step further on an untrodden path where anything can happen. Great things. And also, potentially, unthinkable ones.

It’s like how, when my kids were helpless lumps, I’d scope hazards on their paths like a robot programmed to forecast and prevent problems, no matter the probability. I guess now that they’re sturdy, smart, and independent enough that any reasonable human could get them through their adolescence, my intrusive thoughts are no longer about their demise, but mine.

Recently, as my husband pushed our kids in a wagon across a street, I envisioned cars swerving at me, not them. I saw myself splattering in all directions. And the vision continued. I saw my husband on the sidewalk, shielding them from my remains, then soothing their grief for years to come.

This is what I mean when I say I don’t think this preoccupation is a good thing. It’s not constant by any means (don’t institutionalize me), but it takes me out of the moment. Even intermittently, it makes me the sort of partner who trails slightly behind the wagon, absentmindedly. And a mom who spontaneously cries and says shit like, “I’m just so grateful I get to be here with you,” when I ought to just be reading the book placed in my lap.

Last week, my kid said, “Mom, are you crying?” at dinner because my voice sounded faint. He rightfully recognized the pitch. But I wasn’t crying. I was just tired. Then I wondered if it was a normal kind of tired, or the sort of tired I’d feel if I was dying.

Could I be dying? I mean, I am, but like now? How would they feel about that?

Long ago, I confronted mortality in theory. I read a dozen books on the topic. This theory helped me ask questions like why would my mom’s soul and mine sign up for back-to-back repeating traumas? Surely souls would care about generational healing? But I couldn’t rest on my superconscious laurels. I knew I now had to confront my mortality, physically. So I decided instead of worrying, I’d take care of myself.

This week, I got a primary care doctor for the first time in my adult life. She’s a compassionate queer, a decade older than me. I told her about my energy levels, the new ovulation pain I’d been tracking for over a year, and how my boobs still leak milk even though my youngest just started in public school. We talked about my family history. My voice cracked when I answered her question about how old my mom was when she died: “32.” She said that people like me — by which she meant 34-year-olds, not hypochondriac offspring of cancer patients — often found their way back to her office after their 20-something-era absences. I said, “Hmff,” and smiled. No matter which books we read, or which books we wished our parents read.

I did the blood test she ordered, and saw the dermatologist where she referred me. Everyone told me I was fine. Healthy. Normal.

That night, our kids tucked into bed, I hugged my husband near our kitchen sink, and my knees gave out. I cried on his shoulder. He held me up.

“I’m worried I’ve been a bad mom, and a bad partner.”

“Why?” he said.

“Because I’ve spent too much time worrying.”

I was overwhelmed. With relief, sure, but mostly grief for those moments I’d spent ‘healing’ something no parent can control, an attempt that took me away from what I wanted to protect.

“That’s ridiculous,” he said. And he kissed my forehead. And I cried a little more. Then I slept next to him.

Our kids didn’t crawl into our bed. And in the morning, we pushed them to school in their wagon and talked. On the walk, our eldest told us he was afraid of the teacher who shouts a bit too much. Then our youngest said, “At school, I’m scared.”

And I said, “Why, baby?” And he said, “I miss Mom.”

“I miss you, too,” I said. “But Mommy will always come back for you.”

On the walk home, I looped my arm around my husband’s elbow.

Did you know that reading and watching love can fill you with more love?

This publication is my weekly reflection on love.

Subscribe to get this dose in your inbox every Monday. Once per month, one of these posts is a real sex story from my marriage for paid subscribers. Every other Thursday, I share an actionable way to add more love to your life, called Praxxxis, for paid subscribers.

I’m glad you’re here.

Sending you love, literally.

This post is my monthly extra-intimate story from my marriage (shared slightly earlier than usual. I guess I’ve been horny this month?). Paid subscribers enjoy these, plus Praxxxis (dropping every other Thursday).

I love your whisker burn on my lips, I thought, but didn’t say. It was a Saturday afternoon. Our kids were building a Duplo castle in front of us. I held onto those tender lips, and the memory of when I got them — sitting on his lap, making out — through a trip to Trader Joe’s and the park, through dinner and bath time, until after the kids fell asleep.

Then I found him in the same spot where I’d straddled him in the afternoon sun, and I took my place again, knowing I could do all I’d imagined since the last time we sat there.

I put my hands on my husband’s cheeks, then kissed him long, slow and deep, grinding my hips into his stomach with each lip smack.

“What was that for?” he said.

I slid backward, off his thighs, past his knees, to sit on the rug before him. I put my hands on his knees and looked at his freshly shaved face, which is never fully shorn. His cheekbones looked so high when not covered by more than 1mm of hair.

“Why are you being so cute?” he said, shifting in his seat.

I looked at his gray sweat shorts. His erection showed through. It was long, thick, and slightly curved.

I gasped. “Fuck,” I said. The sight made me choke on my saliva. “Take these off,” I said.

His cock bounced free. It looked soft and dry. I wanted to taste it.

Read more

If you consider yourself an erotically responsible, curious person, I must ask… Have you ever tried to sexualize something you initially felt repulsed by?

If I don’t feel like falling into rote masturbation, nor indulging in a slow-burn sensual session, tiptoeing across my psyche’s lines is one way I like to fast-track arousal.

There’s science behind this! Have you heard of the Old Brain? It’s that deep core brain which controls our vital functions and once powered our evolutionary ancestors. This Old Brain includes our hypothalamus. The hypothalamus manages our “Four F’s” — fighting, fleeing, feeding, and fornication. Since these F’s are all driven from the same small spot in our skulls, they can, and do, cross over.

It may be why after a fight you feel compelled to fuck. For my husband, and from practice, myself,1 the same sense that makes a person want to flee from disgusting, potentially life-threatening stimuli can turn you on.

If you want to explore new erotic domains, here are four nasty things I’d love to challenge you to sexualize. (Don’t worry, it’s not piss or shit. I’m not that weird. (No offense to James Joyce.))

Read more

For example, in my marriage:

• I want to go on a vacation. A cabin in Vermont, a Ghibli-themed tour of Japan, or even an all-inclusive vacation anywhere remotely tropical. My husband, Joe, prefers to travel where he is. Down Court Street to pick up some fresh focaccia.

• Joe wants to only fuck me. I would like to find a girlfriend sometime. Maybe this year. Maybe in ten years.

• I like ice cream. Joe doesn’t. But he buys me ice cream and sometimes has far more than a non-ice cream eater ought to take.

On each of these varyingly contentious points, we’ve communicated and come to another cliched relationship expression: “it’s all about compromise.”

I’m a master of making it work. Whatever the ‘it’ may be. Give me a budget, and I’ll stretch it. Give me an impossible timeline, and I’ll meet it, with a cold sparkling beverage in hand at deadline, despite a sweaty back (I wish I were lying; this is my sweatiest location (my husband finds it hot)).

When it comes to relationships, making ‘it’ work is complicated. In some ways, it’s a fundamental necessity for longevity. We won’t grow old together if we don’t. In other ways, it’s a recipe for self-abandonment and/or resentment.

In the past, I’ve lost myself amidst the busywork of making it work. My compulsion to problem-solve and fear of failure (even the interpersonal variety)1 have led me to stick it out longer than I ought to have, and kept me seeing the rosy, serendipitous side of things when the codependent (and all-out toxic) were slapping me in the face.2 After two relationships went this way, I resolved to address this tendency in myself. As I said, I like to problem-solve.

So, I’d not be myself if I didn’t sit here, nearly a decade into a happy marriage, and wonder — where is the line between wanting different things (expected) and wanting different things (separative)? When does making the relationship work come at the cost of oneself?

In Famesick, we can read about ’s inability to let her ex, a musician, go. Her deep-seated desire to be wanted overrode her self-preservation because, as her heart developed, she conflated being lovable with safety and held that belief despite mounting contradictions. Then we see the singer’s next lover, Margaret Qualley, step out in heels after a tenure in flats to accommodate the comfort of the musician.

It can make us wonder — why would they hold on to something that hurt? But I can understand these tendencies. I once made myself small, too. I think it’s a rite of passage. We love. We try. We find that sticking it out, and even choosing to exclusively wear flats, is the wrong side of the line.

From that cycle of sticking it out through loss of self, I’ve hard-won this lesson. But more importantly, I’m not naive enough to believe the issue will stay in my past.

Even in my marriage with Joe, I’ve had seasons of self-loss. For a couple of years, I wore a lot of my former indie-sleaze English husband’s clothing — his heavyweight LA Apparel cotton shirts, even his tight jean shorts (sigh). I was postpartum and becoming someone new altogether. For convenience, and to avoid extraneous milk vomit stains on my favorite fabrics, I wore his. It was not ideal. But in hindsight, it was a useful visual cue for something I could’ve fallen further into. With the aid of photos, I could see that, even if it were a passive choice in the name of sanity, convenience, or protecting my prized feather-weight fabric collection, it was still me slipping away from my own idea of self.

Now, I remember to prod at my true desires, my own fantasies, and dreams. I see the result in how dreadfully painful it was to accept Joe’s preferred apartment when we recently relocated. I see it in my journaling habit. This Substack. And, yes, even in the new heeled boots I asked for for Christmas despite already being an inch taller than my husband.

Wanting different things (expected) is only possible if you remember to listen to yourself and want, period.

In my never-ending quest to over-prepare, I find myself wondering whether couples who want different things (separative) stopped wanting to consider their partner’s preferences because they hadn’t cared about their own for far too long. To me, this resentment is inexcusable.3 To me, ‘making it work’ means checking in on myself to ensure this doesn’t occur.

But some couples grow apart because their differing wants evolve. Wanting different things is as expected as the fact that individuals will change. And not always in ways that complement their partners.

When Gweneth consciously uncoupled from her musical British ex-husband, their joint statement said they’d tried to make it work but found it wasn’t worth their happiness. When Joe and I had our first pregnancy ‘scare,’ I asked him how he’d want to handle this potential future predicament. Would we get bitter and stick it out? Or would we accept what was best for us, individually? I appreciated knowing we were on the same page, but I also look back at younger me, attempting to pre-navigate pain and sigh.

Perhaps Gweneth and her musician ex could’ve predicted their future division — Was there a schism in their evolving ambitions? Did their cross-cultural differences grow burdensome? (He is now dating a nice English woman, Sophie Turner, after yet another breakup with an American lady) — but why?

Every time Joe and I confront a major compromise —

• Our decision to live in New York — halfway between our families’ homes, neither of us where we feel we ‘belong,’ but also, in a new place we can build belonging together.

• Our decision to be open to being open one day. Perhaps this year, perhaps in a decade.

• Our decision to parent by divide-and-conquer, giving authority to the parent with dirty hands.

— we found through the conversations, as painful as they may have been, that not only did our love grow more potent, but we each knew more about ourselves. Through this love and partnership, I’ve found more growth, more self-knowledge, than I know I could’ve mustered on my own.

I suppose that's why I find “just wanting different things” so compelling. It’s justification for separation, but it’s also exactly what brings us together, and makes us who we are.

With practice, Joe and I have navigated these gaps in desire more deftly. Naturally, crisis will come, and old habits of people-pleasing may slip in and amount to much more than a molehill. But I hope when the time comes, I won’t see that division as the fault of the one who ‘got what they wanted.’

What I worry about more is what I may only ever have blind faith in — what will happen on Joe’s end.

One day Joe may decide he doesn’t want a partner who writes about her sex life online. Or perhaps he’ll develop bi-resentment. He may decide he wants a life in London or even further from an airport. Or he’ll tire of my American ways and realize he’d prefer a nice English woman with great banter. What if he wants something I’m not able to compromise on? Or something I’m not? Maybe one day he will grow so tired of his compromises, he’ll not even find my sweaty back charming.

I could listen to online influencers and become a high vibration woman. Or I could try to get ahead of it — to forecast our desires, chart our compromises in spreadsheets, and collaboratively journal to maintain mutual self-reflection and internal accountability. But what do they say about the things you hold on to too tightly? And what is fine-tooth-combed fairness but fascism? And what is life but a perpetual navigation of our present? And what is love but unending noticing?

To end with one last trite relationship phrase — it’s complicated. But it’s also not. Because when you sit with yourself and really listen deep down in your guts and bones, we all know what we want. Like how, despite major surgery, where part of her literal gut was removed, Lena knew it was time to separate.

If we’re listening (internally), we all know what we want. And if we’re listening (externally), we know that what we want is different. And if it isn’t, at least sometimes, that’s when we really ought to worry.

Enough about me, what do you think?

Leave a comment

I’m sharing reflections on love in culture, and my marriage, every Monday.

• Like this one about ‘how to be a good man’

• And this one about how MILFs are having a moment

Once per month, this post is an extra-intimate story, paywalled for an ounce of privacy.

• Like this story about what my husband did to me while blindfolded

• And this one about how I milked him

I’m also sharing practices to improve your own intimate world every other Thursday.

• Like this one about how to get out of your head when you’re not really feeling yourself

• And this one with inspiration on how to foster your horniness

It makes me so happy to have you in the Happy Endings universe. I hope all your endings are satisfying this week. I’m sending you love — literally.

Astute subscribers noticed that I offered the opportunity to answer their questions anonymously. This is my first time doing that.

Dear Abigail,

What makes a good man?

Thank you,

[Redacted]

This is not the first time I’ve been asked this question. I have an answer.

But first, some backstory:

I was on a panel discussing masculinity a few years ago. And last year, a research company interviewed me for a report on the gender’s changing aspirations.

I care about masculinity. I grew up with a single dad (my mom died young). Thus, masculinity almost feels like my north star.

Though a decade ago, I wore a pin that said ‘male tears’ because I felt angry about the state of our world and developed a blanket resentment toward men. When I was pregnant with my first, and the lab tech let the pronoun ‘he’ slip, my stomach dropped. It bothered me that a fetus’s genitals could give me such a reaction. Since then, I’ve worked to remove my gender bias. Now, I have two young boys, and I write about loving my husband, unironically, because I hope an example of love could spread love, and love heals.

To that end, I invited my husband, an intermittent commentator in the Happy Endings universe, to join the conversation. It (d)evolved into a lively chat about the evolving forms of masculinity, from the Middle Ages’ ‘Nine Worthies’ to Boomer hatewifing to wife-guys.

I hope you enjoy:

Abby: Babe, what makes a man a ‘good man’?

Joe: Lawrence of Arabia

Incredible intellect, charisma, but awkward with it. Eccentric

Deeply uncomfortable with authority but at the same time not anarchic

Self deprecating

Above all…Obviously has his issues, but he overcomes them by virtue of pure interest in the world he ventures into

Like, he is highly useful in the world, but by virtue of him paying attention in ways other people are not

Abby: Not a wife guy?

Joe: Ha

Abby: I’m only a little kidding. Your answer is very you.

There are many varieties of ‘a good man,’ right? You Englishmen love honor. My Midwesterners love responsibility.

I find it interesting to study the style of men that captures our current culture’s attention. Aspirational masculine codings wax and wane through archetypes, not all of them good. We can learn much about what society values by studying who has fame.

I think one of the positive archetypes of now is the wife guy.

Joe: [dropped a Wikipedia link to the Nine Worthies — nine men of the Middle Ages who exemplified chivalry such as Charlemagne, Caesar, and Judas “The Hammer.”]

Abby: Fascinating.

It would be fun to craft a modern equivalent. As a generous alternative to the ways incels categorize men (Chad, Beta, et al.)

But really, do you think you’re a wife guy?

Joe: Maybe

But the whole idea of wife guy is a reaction / hangover to either boomer hatewifing or the milder golf/fishing, general wife avoider

The idea that a bloke who likes his missus is weird and deserves a name proves the point

Abby: Yes. I can see that arc of history.

Hopefully, eventually, being a wife guy won’t warrant a label. Like how we called guys who take care of themselves metrosexual in the aughts.

Joe: We were chatting about the whole boomer ‘i hate my wife’ humor in a WhatsApp group the other day

Abby: Send a screenshot

Joe:

We were just talking about how cringe bosses do stupid shit to try and seem cool

Abby: Why do you think they joked like that at all? Were they actually unhappy? Was it just bully-humor — pushing away what brings you pain? Prodding at the ‘weak’ to seem ‘strong’?

Joe: Weirdly, I think it was a pride thing

It’s like ‘I must be a great husband to put up with this’

Martyr complex stuff

It’s the same as people at work glorifying their busyness

Abby: Mmm yes, it stems from where their own life dissatisfaction and their insecurities overlap.

The wifehater is insecure that their wife might not love them, then arrogant because they feel they deserve her love.

Joe: Yeah

Controversial opinion. But I think certain polyamorous types show a modern expression of that martyrdom

Like [Redacted] and his ex

Abby: Explain

Joe: She was feeling jealous, and [Redacted] said that is natural and normal

But any functioning person knows it’s not normal for your partner to rub your face in things that upset you

So it’s worn like the same arrogance

Rather than ‘I hate my wife and put up with her’

It’s ‘I love my partner and encourage them to hurt my feelings’

Abby: lol wild

Joe: I’m such a good person that I willingly let someone make me feel bad, but deep down probably deserve it, but that makes me a good person

You get what I mean

People using the relationship to feel good about themselves for enduring it

Abby: This felt like a deviation from our subject, but it is actually exactly on. Being a martyr is a negative way of being a ‘good person.’

And this brings me to one point I wanted to discuss here. I think that one marker of a good man, or a good person, is the capacity to unconditionally love.

And to our point here, people who exhibit martyr characteristics often didn’t feel well loved as children.

Joe: Maybe it’s parental love, or maybe not. But there is something psychological to it

Abby: Sticking it out to prove a point. What would Freud say 🤪

Joe: I think it’s like a sliding scale there though

Sexbored marriage is like the mildest - I soldier on because I am a good person

Then up a level is boomer humor hatewifing - I soldier on because I married the old bag

Then the final tier is the ‘struggle-session maximally ‘sit with your feelings’ style’ polyamory, where it’s like, “I don’t even hate them; I encourage them to make me feel bad — I’m that much of a virtuous person”

Think it’s probably down to a psychological thing of needing to feel like a good person being intertwined with suffering

Abby: I’m curious about this idea. Suffering is so interwoven with many age-old cultural ideas of goodness. But I really do oppose this definition.

Like perhaps pain and suffering are on one end of the spectrum, and success and power are on another, and somehow people think that being a ‘good man’ falls somewhere on this spectrum, but ‘goodness’ has nothing to do with the spectrum at all.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’ve dubbed ‘Columbo Masculinity’ lately. Maybe because he reminds me of you.

Columbo is clever, but he doesn’t need to be seen as such. He is comfortable and confident in himself.

And Columbo is absolutely a wife guy.

Joe: Yeah, though you never actually meet her…

Abby: It was the ‘60s. The wives were still at home :(

You may find it cringe and all, but I think you are a wife guy. I overhear you on your work calls talking about me.

And even if we ought not need a label for this sort of aspirational archetype, I think it’s positive. As you’ve often said, marriage is good for a man (statistically, both economically and criminally), so if we hope, as we do, for a more positive life for future people of all genders, a moment in time where a wife guy reigns trendy is net positive. In fact, it may be the counterweight to the whole manosphere.

Joe: Well yeah, I think the manosphere is downstream of a lot of economic and cultural things, and some of the stuff they point at as a problem is definitely true; it’s just that their solutions are completely dimwitted and stupid and pointed at the wrong things

If you step back and look at the economy, then it’s never been less rewarding to work for somebody else; the capital-owning classes gobble up more than ever - have women’s wages gone up a little bit at the same time? Yeah, but it’s not the women who are the issue. It’s Jeff Bezos - who, last time I checked, wasn’t exactly a feminist icon (though he did launch Katy Perry and his wife into space as a statement of solidarity with womankind)

But yeah, wife guys are trendy - but the issue is that these days the untrendy and vapid people (e.g. the manosphere) have a way bigger platform

Abby: Too bad the wife guys are getting laid too often to master the clickbait short-form video

But, speaking of the future, what sort of man do you hope our boys will be?

Joe: Free thinkers. Have verve and elan. Not easily led. Cheeky, charming, irreverent. Don’t take anybody or anything too seriously, themselves included. Characterful, good banter, clever, witty. Able to step outside the frame, emotionally self-regulated, good appreciators, not given to wanting things

Abby: I agree. Wholeheartedly. And I think we’re coming up to the main point I wanted to make here:

A good man is an emotionally healthy man. Like any good human.

They love themselves. They take care of themselves.

They will have insecurities and get arrogant from time to time, but they don’t bully others.

They have flaws, but they have the awareness to notice them. They make mistakes, and they have the humility to take responsibility and not blame others.

They have many interests — not just physical but also creative and intellectual. They feel their feelings. They talk.

They appreciate themselves, but not at the expense of others. They listen. They maintain relationships through care and consideration.

They don’t avoid problems. They don’t believe either status or suffering makes them good.

A good man knows how to unconditionally love.

A good man might ask the question that inspired this post. But a really good man would read this post, then think critically about it, and decide for themselves how to be good.

Joe: The absolute best one might even “leave a heart” on it for their wife

Abby: lmao, my super fan, my absolute best man.

Enough of our nonsense. What do you think?

Leave a comment

Note, dear readers: we’ve never once discussed earning potential or looks. Or even sexuality.1

If you’d like to know more about what I was looking for when I was courting potential partners, you can find that over here, and over here.

I share love provocations or peeps into my love life every Monday and love practices every other Thursday.

The extra sexy peeps (like this one about when my husband blind folded me and used medical gloves on my vagina) and the Praxxxis practices (like this opportunity to steal what’s making me horny) are for paid subscribers.

Did you know that when you read about love, you see more love around you?

I’m glad you’re taking the time out of your full life to dwell on love with me.

See you next Monday, dear reader. And if you can’t wait that long, send me a dm with a question.

This post is my twice-monthly Praxxxis series — a highly personal, yet universal guide to intimacy — for paid subscribers.

My low gut has tingled from the most peculiar things this week, and I love it. My fantasies are offline rabbit holes, enriching my erotic creativity.

The arousal sensations from these bizarre stimuli have made me feel more alive than that one time I bungee jumped. (Which, really, just made me feel spiritually constipated. (Why is putting our body at risk some totem of bravery? A cold shower is all the thrill and mind-over-matter that I need.))

What’s made you feel aroused-in-an-alive way lately?

Don’t leave it up to your partner, or accidentally scrolling upon someone with sexy eye contact…

If you want some help, or if you’re curious what’s got me going, read the five things that brought me close to the (metaphorical) edge:

Read more

“Did you masturbate when we were apart?” I asked my husband on the night of our reunion.

“No,” he said. It had only been twenty-four hours.

“No? Really?”

“No, really,” he said.

“Did you consider it?” I wanted him to have a juicy story for me. I wanted closeness. And arousal.

“I considered,” he said, “What I’d do to you.” His eyes were on me. “Just as I consider each and every day.”

I felt something leap in my lower abdomen. He isn’t usually a smooth talker. “Is that right?” I said, giddy. “And what was it you imagined?”

“How do you feel?” he said. “Not too shattered?”

I was up early that day, flying with our two kids. “Shattered, but not too.”

“Well then,” he said. “Lie back. Let me show you.”

My face flushed. I put my feet up and spread myself across our couch, propped up by three square pillows — one faux fur and two cotton ones with a cowhide print. My wet hair spread behind me. I pulled a knit blanket across my lap.

“Uh-uh,” he said. “Take that off. And the shorts.”

I did as he said. Then he handed me a leather blindfold with sheepskin eye covers and asked me to put it on. I did.

What happened next, I couldn’t see. But I heard the sound of rubber latex snapping.

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Music, and moving to music, is an expression of love, of course, but it’s more than that. Music taught me about love. I knew heartbreak before I felt it. I knew greater joy than a suburban Midwest kid with a dead mom ought to know, not just from lyrics, but from melody.

I used to wish I could create it, but the extent of my musical ability is playing Summertime on the harmonica. So, to explore my love of “love music,” and to (hopefully) delight you, dear readers, I’ve written this post: an analysis of the lessons the corny but lovable yacht rock classic “Escape — The Piña Colada Song” teaches us.3

The English-American author, playwright, composer, and singer-songwriter David Goldstein, known by the stage name Rupert Holmes, gifted us this one-hit-wonder in 1979. It couldn’t have been born in any other time, as I’ll explore in a forthcoming interview with my husband about masculinity, being a ‘good man,’ and Boomer wife-hating humor. But before we get deep, we’ll get superfiscial…

Here are the 9 lessons “Escape” infused in a young me, enjoying Kool 108, the Minneapolis Oldies station, to my dad’s dismay:

Women are often dissatisfied before their male partners

The song is about a male narrator’s extramarital fantasy. But the original person seeking the titular Escape turns out to be the narrator’s wife.

This is statistically true! Women initiate 2/3 of divorces. If you’re not feeling satisfied in your relationship, your partner likely already is, too — so don’t blame them. Perhaps address it together?

Know yourself well enough to write a personal ad

We’re all writing Tinder bios with boring-ass identity labels; meanwhile, Rupert gave us the blueprint for a truly evocative self-description in his lyrics.

Do you know yourself well enough to express in 150 characters what you’re really looking for in a lover, and a life lived with said lover? If you don’t, how do you expect to find them?

Figure out what you need. Then ask for it!

You’re probably taking your lover for granted

In life, as it is in long-term relationships, it is far too easy to sit and fester on your own dissatisfaction, as the narrator of “Escape” did, rather than to wonder how your partner might be feeling.

In fact, the inward fixation might be the exact reason you’re not feeling satisfied. When’s the last time you looked at your partner with fresh eyes? I call this my Stranger Spouse meditation. Stop the narratives you tell yourself about your lover for a moment. Notice “the curve of her face,” as Rupert sings, without attaching it to previous memories.

Getting tired of things that once excited you is normal

It’s not a crisis to feel tired of your routine, or your partner. It’s definitively normal. Humans crave new energy.

The question is — what are you going to do about it? Run away from everything you once loved, or find a way to spark excitement within?

“Falling into the same old dull routines” means you’re not communicating

It may be common to grow monotonous, but it doesn’t have to happen. To get ahead of this slump that the narrator of “Escape” found himself in, why not just proactively communicate with your partner?

Monotony and monogamy are a personal problem, not a relationship problem — are you making your life spicy for yourself or nah? Go dance in the fucking rain!

Role-Play is useful!

Last but certainly not least, Rupert likely didn’t experience this whole charade in his marriage. But he took the time to imagine it. To make art from it. I think that’s hot as fuck.

Imagine if you did that in your relationship. You sat and thought through a scenario where you two grew tired of eachother — what would happen? Now, imagine you enacted that with your lover. Isn’t that sexy?

This track is a product of its time, but I do find timelessness to its story. I love when music can remind me to savor life and the people I adore. What song does that for you?

I would never take you for granted 😘 Thank you for your readership and support (through likes, comments, shares, and, of course, your funds)! You’re keeping Happy Endings coming and coming…

Every Monday I share a post about contemporary love through the lens of my work in sex tech, and my born-again monogamous marriage (as a mother of two!). Once per month, this post is extra intimate, and I paywall it to add a bit of privacy for the innocent. (The last one was about rewarding my husband with “a milking” after he did some dirty house DIY projects.) Every other Thursday (or sometimes Friday, as happened last week) I share a post with sex and relationship advice. (The last one was on how to get hot when you’re not feeling hot.)

I wrote on Monday about fucking ugly people. It was a provocative title to make a point about how culturally influenced status symbols and beauty standards influence sexual attraction. I believe what makes you horny should be more carnal than cerebral. I want my pleasure devoid of propaganda. But regardless of the legitimacy of our individual definitions of ‘ugliness,’ these mental connotations can block our bodies. Or more simply, when I feel ‘ugly,’ it’s harder to get horny.

It’s a double bummer! When I feel down about myself, the best antidote is a great fucking orgasm to set me straight again about what’s really important. Feeling good, which of course can come from feeling good about yourself physically, also doesn’t have to…

So how do I do it — like literally have sex (cause masturbating isn’t as much of an intellectual challenge, is it?) — when I’m not feeling hot? Well, let me tell you.

I promise I’d never suggest a corny thing like turning the lights off and lighting candles (although it does work), and I’d never frame this as an emotional exercise to remind yourself of the ~goddess you are~ cause that’s not my style of sex blog.

My personal tip to bump uglies when I’m feeling ugly is to pretend I’m not going to. Let me explain…

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As a fellow woman with standards, who prefers her man ‘good,’ yet once had a seriously specific romantic type which proved to be detrimental to my love life, I feel called to call these women longing for a “Man in Finance” out (from this moment further, these women will be called MiFLs — Man in Finance Longers — not to be confused with MILFs, my piece on MILFs published last week).

See, I feel it is necessary for the exact reason I find it so excruciatingly embarrassing to witness. I empathize! But I managed to find my way past my love-life-limiting ‘good man’ container, which isn’t actually a ‘type’ but a cultural conditioning, and find genuine love. So to call you MiFLs out, I will confess something I’ve previously only considered writing about under a pseudonym. I underwent a self-imposed reverse-brainwashing to unlearn cultural influences of attractiveness. Or, in clickbaity, incendiary language, I pursued, dated, and fucked people I found ugly in some way, shape, or form, in order to challenge my understanding of ugliness. I believe you MiFLs should learn this lesson too, even if secondhand, so I will share. The long story.

It all started with my fear of dying. A mom’s death will do that to you — make you think you’re avoiding death by living ‘right.’ If she could die at 32, I could, too. So I would do no wrong. Be a good girl. Excel while I had the opportunity. But around the time I realized that ‘right’ — which to a suburban Midwesterner with a high GPA, meant attending the pre-med program I’d gotten a scholarship to, but wouldn’t spit me out into the ‘real world,’ where inevitably all living would occur — would mean I wasted 32 years stuck in academic training grounds, I wondered; Why would I follow someone else’s idea of right, when that would mean wasting my life living someone else’s ideal? Besides, I couldn’t even get an immunization with my eyes open.

So I started asking myself what I really, in my gut of guts, wanted. The answers — as little school as possible, a life where I could earn enough to live with as little stress as possible, and if I was even luckier, a job where I could help spread fun or love — undoubtedly made life feel good. GOOD — key word — meaning, right for me.

I found the inquisition into my true desires useful. So I kept at it. The small questions: Did I actually dislike tomatoes? No, it turns out. I’d just been having shitty ones. The hard ones: Did I actually want to live in Minnesota forever like my family had for a century? No, I just wasn’t brave enough to leave. And the bigger ones: Did I actually want a traditional relationship at all?

Which brings me to the decisions bolder than abandoning a doctorate’s student loans…

My first technical relationship started in college. I did what I thought I was supposed to do: commit to the elusive President of the service fraternity after discovering he was interested in me. I was a freshman who wanted to kiss everyone and yet, as if Newton’s law applied to a good girl’s commitment to the college sweetheart who took their virginity, I persisted. My college boyfriend and I dated for three monogamous years. Once the right circumstances arose for a clean, amicable separation, I formed a cozy friendship with a married couple within the week. I was 21, and felt infinitely more like myself. Exiting a box I knew I didn’t fit within was expansive and, perhaps, addicting. Certainly, it was good.

Then, the self-inquisitions became a reflex. Whenever I defiantly proclaimed, Oh, I’d never, I found myself forcing myself to experience whatever it was I believed was unsuited to me. Almost like how a naughty kid wants what they cannot have, but I was doing it to myself, to confront self-limiting biases because I knew that life was often better beyond the presumptions.

After I laughed a, Oh never, in response to considering a pixie cut, chopping my shoulder-length hair became compulsory. I’d always thought a tall woman like myself required lengthy, voluminous hair to complement her frame, but was that really something I thought? Proving I wasn’t constraining myself within a culturally imposed container usually led me to realize I was, indeed, sitting tight in a box. Pixie cuts are hot on tall women.

Then there were the acquired tastes. (I told you this was the long story!) Those tomatoes. Even Brussels sprouts. Coffee. Beer. All things I once thought I wouldn’t like, but with enough exposure, they’ve undoubtedly improved my years with simple pleasures. But the heirloom tomato lobby and beer distribution mafia wanted me to like their products. Someone was spending significant sums to sell me on a coffee drinker’s lifestyle. Society, too, sold me on the concept of a stable, monogamous heterosexual relationship. Society functioned more effectively with families as a backbone, so naturally we’d be indoctrinated to prioritize settling down. All these realizations made me wonder which lifestyles I wasn’t considering as restrictive, which nobody would benefit from pointing out to me…

At 25, I noticed one such box. One bigger and more opaque than the indoctrination of monogamous love.

Before the names of my past lovers completed the 17 syllables of a haiku, I saw similarities between them. Despite crossing genders, they could all have been in a lineup for a crime committed by an ethnically ambiguous Mick Jagger. We’re told it’s common to have a ‘type’, that perhaps I just liked lanky leaders with asymmetrical smiles and a recreational drug habit. But after a number of unsatisfactory affairs, something in me wagered that perhaps I’d learned this Mick type. That what attracted me to these lovers was not some innate undeniable truth. That the ‘rockstar’ was just as ridiculous to fancy on as the ‘finance bro.’

So I set out to test my hypothesis. I began a quest to understand why I was attracted to whom I was attracted to, and more importantly, why I wasn’t attracted to whom I wasn’t attracted to.

But first, more importantly, who was I? And what did I think of myself? I thought I was good. I was tall. My hair was thick and dark. My body hair was sparse and fair. I was not necessarily large, but I often wore that size. I liked going out and having fun, but really, in my heart, I was fairly straitlaced. A recovering good girl, afraid to break the rules, and compelled to do so for the same reason. I was looking for a rockstar to make breaking convention a give-in. And physically, I held the idea that someone shaped like me needed someone with a full head of hair and the height and build that made me look at least balanced, if not small. Deep down, it seemed, I was looking for a partner all because I wanted to feel small, and not have to choose to defy convention of my own volition.

I know. It’s embarrassing to admit. It makes me wonder why these MiFLs are looking for MiFs? And I wonder what they would learn about themselves if they did what I had:

Since I wanted someone with sexy, disheveled, full hair, I forced myself to appreciate bald men, and worse, men who weren’t confident enough to be bald, and hid their bald spots under hats and behind ponytails. After exposure therapy, I found this judgment to be utterly ridiculous.

Since I had age biases and body-shape biases, I humored men without heroine chic bodies.

Since I wanted someone who was tall, and righteously felt it was justified given my height, I forced myself not to ignore shorter guys. And fucking hell, this was the definition of self-limiting beliefs and cultural indoctrination. Shorter guys made me feel more pleasure and aliveness than fulfilling the longing to be fucked standing from behind while on relevé.

It’s not like it’s revolutionary! It’s intentionally breaking down my idea of ‘good’ from the bullshit culture teaches us. The revolutionary part was what I learned from it all.

What does ‘a good man’ even mean? The way it’s used, you’d think it was prescriptive. That we all know exactly what good means. That a good man makes large sums of money, is inches taller than their female counterpart, and has a BMI between dad bod and athletic. But when I hear a list of superficial characteristics describing ‘good’ I think, what do you really care about? Keeping up appearances, or that real, true, feeling of unique goodness?

Isn’t the whole idea of a one-size-fits-all definition of good, not GOOD?

See, we follow clothing trends we see other people wear. We dream of traveling to places we saw other people enjoy. We post carousels with the right spread of attractive selfies, scenescapes, and object-life-context to maximize likes. And we also let others’ approval guide who we sleep with and date. No wonder so many find the whole charade embarrassing. We’re too focused on what people think rather than how we ourselves feel.

It is human nature to seek belonging, of course. But I’m worried about us Longers. Because by focusing on our partners' approval ratings, we’re being good girls instead of trying to feel GOOD. Our bodies and spirits won’t suit the same apparel. And they also won’t suit the same prescriptive suitor. We’re wasting our love lives, living someone else’s ideal. We’re offloading the uncomfortable act of self-inquiry and, in the process, avoiding fulfilling our dream life by looking to love someone who embodies it.

What I was really wanting wasn’t to be chosen, romantically, by someone with rockstar energy. It was, as corny as it is to admit, to have rockstar energy myself. Once I acknowledged that this dream rockstar partner was a figment of my externalized desires, I realized that nobody who’s looking for a partner who makes them feel small will ever be the best version of themselves. I stopped looking for tall, lanky Micks. And I found what was right for me.

At 27, I met a man who I married at 28. He does have a bit of Mick about him. His teeth arouse the fuck out of me. But his wide shoulders are far from waifish. His energy is punk. In public, he’s a creative who garners fame. In private, he’s my sexual entertainment director. He even gives me butterflies when I’m tired and moody. He cooks. He’s a good dad. I’m lucky as fuck. But if I hadn’t undergone my exposure therapy, I might’ve missed the chance. Mostly because he’s nearly two inches shorter than me, and (when we met) had a ponytail covering his bald spot. Gasp.

That shorter guy with a bald spot gives me the best orgasms of my life, and we’re monogamous despite me being a relationship anarchist when we met. Which is, in a way, the moral of this story. It is ok to have a type. You might indeed get what you want, but it won’t be just like what you thought you wanted. Which sounds an awful lot like a quote from my guy Mick.

Some MiFLs might already have actualized their genuine, uninfluenced self-image and argue, I’m already the catch; I don’t want to compromise. And I hear you; more power to you. But then I say, maybe a relationship isn’t good for you. It’s cliché, but true — it takes compromise to make the good ones work.

Some MiFLs might say, Sure, but why? And I don’t blame you. It’s easiest to not question. To assume your interests are like everyone else’s. This comes naturally to us good girls. Even the progressive ones, and the ambitious ones. Even those who challenge norms in their art, their taste, their politics, still might not question their sexuality and their erotic preferences. And that’s the dangerous part…

Some women are done dating, period, because they think they can’t find what they want, so why try? I, too, assumed that my lack of excitement for my college boyfriend meant that perhaps a heteromonogamous relationship was just not something I could be passionate about. That if this guy that so many others crushed on didn’t satisfy me, perhaps I wasn’t supposed to do the whole relationship thing at all. You see? Our limiting beliefs create new beliefs, and the system will go on until you notice.

And plus, as reminds us, our media monopolies and the multi-billion-dollar beauty industry aren’t going to make more money if we all stop upholding the supposed attractive prerequisites they preach.

So, I say, try questioning your type. Expand your erotic palate. I had to gag on a few Brussels to appreciate the cruciferous delicacy. The discomfort of choking on sprouts brings numerous bodily benefits, including a taste for something good for you.

If you don’t try new varieties of tomatoes, how can you even know what attraction, what lust, what satiated hunger really feels like?

Plus, shorter men live longer.1

I love that you tuned in to my weekly provocation on contemporary love. I hope it’s given you more love to reflect on. Thank you for being here.

Remember, every Monday I share a post like this — discussing love and sex in culture and my marriage — which is almost always free, except for once per month when I share an extra-sexy true story from my marriage (like this one on getting massaged while I suck him). And every other Thursday I share a Praxxxis post — a how-to style guide from my experience working in sextech and being a general relationship-having love-lover (like this one on 8 ways to ride a face).

Over the last few years, the atmosphere’s been shifting.

There’s a MILF fever.

“Mother’s I’d Like to Fuck” are topping the charts. And I think this harvest says a lot about society right now. But first, the proof…

Searches for fuckable mothers have climbed the search ranks five years running, peaking now as the second most-sought category in the country1. Six years ago, it wasn’t in the top 5. While we watched this unfold through Pornhub’s reports, I saw it personally at MakeLoveNotPorn. More and more creators were sharing sex videos of their fertility journeys, fucking to progress labor, and navigating postpartum intimacy. And more conventional MILF’s — which in porn-speak rarely means new mothers, but mature women — were submitting, nests newly empty, exploring menopausal sexuality, and expanding their long-term relationships.

Outside of the adult landscape, my social feeds told a ‘safer’ version of the same story. Creators wiped tears, knowing their children would be teased for having a hot mom. The influencer gained hundreds of thousands of followers dispensing “MILF etiquette.” traced the etymology of the acronym here on Substack.

The oldest archetype, the mother, is a trend. Mothers are desirable. Not just tolerated. Wanted, and exhibiting her own want, openly and at scale. The MILF is having a moment, and a feminist reclamation.

In those same five years, I became a mom of two boys. My midriff gained a cesarean scar shaped like a Ren and Stimpy smile. My husband wiped poop off me as my second-born landed onto our Nordic Knots rug, tearing my taint. I nursed them, then weaned them. My boobs turned to empty skin. And I was having the best sex of my life. Using my body to its limits made my pre-maternal over-intellectualized intercourse and stifled-sneeze orgasms feel foolish. As I learned to care for my children, I started caring for myself. Parenting with my partner brought us closer. My body created; it wanted to create more; it wanted and wanted more. Motherhood rocked my world, erotically. I started writing about our sex on Substack. It turned out people liked a sexy mom blog. Because people liked MILFs.

Seriously. Imagine this with me. One of the most-visited websites on Earth, billions of views a month, reporting that the majority want mothers, in rising volume, five years and counting. Isn’t that incredible?

As Bennett found, this MILF forecast dates back to teenage lifeguards in upstate New York rating the hot moms at the lake. Then it migrated into humor magazines and linguistic papers on the ways we insult women, and finally to big screens in American Pie, where the teenage boy fantasy supplanted itself in my subconscious. I never wanted to be the teenage heartthrob. I wanted to be Stacy’s mom. To have it “going on” — the pool, the confidence, autonomy, and comfort within my sexuality in spite of an ageist, misogynist culture. And it seems like I’m not alone. Jennifer Coolidge as Stifler’s mom, and the aforementioned mother of Stacy imprinted the hot-mom lifestyle on all of us ‘80s and ‘90s babies who are now childrearing and refusing to shrink into a desexualized cliché, choosing instead to reclaim the trope. I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

For most of the history that’s shaped us, a woman’s sexual life and her maternal life were sequential. Her desirability ended when she reproduced. The mommy milker fetish was niche. The Madonna and the whore weren’t two women, but one woman’s two sequential phases. But that partition is dissolving. The mother’s eroticism is no longer confined to taboo or parody. Mothers, and the society searching for MILFs, are dissolving the trope as old as our Current Era. Moms needn’t be virginal. Mothers are a sex symbol.

If I treated this almanac as augury, I’d make grand claims. A shift this size isn’t just the fermented impact of American Pie. Nor is it cyclical fashion like bellbottom jeans. MILF fever is a dramatic response to absurd times.

Consider what else developed in these same five years. Society was diagnosed as sexless. The birth rate plummeted. The Surgeon General proclaimed both our stress and loneliness levels were an epidemic. We stopped dancing. Our literal Mother Earth is suffering. And global authoritarianism dressed domination up as fatherly protection, despite consorting with (or being) abusers. We, the populous, grew anxious. We craved nurturing. So starved of care, we sexualized it.

Which brings me back to Amanda Fowler, the “MILF etiquette” influencer. She and her husband became parents before their frontal lobes were fully developed. By the porn definition, she isn’t ‘mature’ — thus, she barely qualifies as a MILF. But to me, Amanda is proof this fever isn’t about older women; it’s about a population looking to be mothered. Amanda became a mother across these same years as me, looked at the state of the States and the care it didn’t extend to its people, mothers included, and decided to extend that care to herself first. She describes embodying a MILF as becoming the person she herself is turned on by. She honors her own eroticism so as not to be miserable, and teaches other women to do the same. To refuse the selfless-mother script. To stop doing things the way it’s always been done, because look where that got us.

That, in our sex-lite, porn-heavy, un-horny moment, is subversive. The MILF fever isn’t fundamentally about sex. It’s about a woman turning her maternal care back toward herself, and a culture which is starved for care that recognizes a mother’s self-possession as the most desirable thing available. When mothers come, we tend our own soil first. Whether that healing truly spreads to everyone witnessing it or reading about it online, I can’t say for sure. But based on the comments I get on Happy Endings, I believe it does.

The real Farmer’s Almanac fed a population by telling it when to sow and when to reap. I offer this reading of the adult website tea leaves in the same spirit. The population is hungry for MILFs. This trend, which contradicts longterm beauty standards and expectations for aging, shows us our historic conception of reaping and sowing is over. Desirability is ageless. Care — for yourself, and for each other — is hot right now. And even though mothers have always been the ones to want for others, now their wanting is what is wanted.

Happy Endings is how I spread love, in a care-starved world, by sharing stories from my marriage, and points of view on love in culture.

Every Monday I share a hot take or hot tale for free, except once per month it’s extra-explicit for paid subscribers (like this latest one about ‘milking’ my husband), and every other Thursday I share tips on how to expand your own intimate life (like this one on laughter sex) for paid subscribers.

I once saw a story about a dad dropping their kid off at their boyfriend/girlfriend’s house with a nugget of timely wisdom: “If you’re not laughing during sex, you’re not doing it right.”

It’s a precious point: to not be self-serious, and remember sex is all about connecting, feeling good, and having fun. But I’m no comedian, so if my dad had said that to me, sex would’ve been more pressure.

My husband, Joe, says I’m not conventionally funny. Humor exists to make people more comfortable with bad things, by subverting expectations. Or so Joe taught me. He thinks that my natural instinct to preemptively solve problems causes me to put jokes inside of a wrapper — protecting the humor from landing to anyone other than myself. But last week, I made him do one of those full-teeth, jaw-dropping laughs while we were starting to get intimate. And, God, it felt good. The successful joke, the shared laughter, and the orgasm.

I love all types of sex: Serious Sex, Emotional Sex, Intense Sex, Angry Sex (which in this relationship is usually an act, to be honest, because I prefer to verbally dissect bad feelings and then have Relief Sex (“please never leave me”)), but that dad wasn’t wrong. Laughter Sex is hot. Like an emotional towel-wringing. Like everyone is even more naked — their soul (and teeth) are just as bared as their skin.

So this week, my assignment for you is have laughter sex, whether with yourself, or a lover. Make your gut convulse from giggles before it clenches from pleasure.

Here are five jumping-off points to make that happen…

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Joe was slumped in a lawn chair. His eyes were fixed on nothing. His hand was in a C-shape, lightly grasping the cold Miller High Life I’d gotten him from our brother-in-law’s birthday party cooler.

“Baby,” I said, leaning toward him from my woven-nylon camp chair, squeaking the aluminum hinges.

He looked at me, face too tired to express.

“I will rub your shoulders tonight, and then I will milk you.”

“Milk me?!” he said much too loudly. I didn’t mean for the whole party to know. His face finally showed a reaction — surprise.

He’d worked hard that day, doing what every DIY home renovator we know proclaims as the worst of the worst — peeling popcorn off a ceiling. When I asked how he felt on the drive to my sisters, he said, “I’m utterly shattered.” Then he pointed from the base of his skull to his shoulder blade and said, “This kills.”

I’d gotten the long end of the stick. The project was my wish, but his plan. He told me, “Just keep the kids out of the house.” We’d been so far out of the house that we wound up playing basketball outside of a brewery with my dad and his sisters. It was not tiring. It was rejuvenating.

That night, at home, a half dozen High Life’s in Joe, and our kids in bed, I said, “Are you ready to be milked?”

“I guess,” he said, with a laugh. He looked timid and curious.

I started by rubbing jojoba oil in the same places he’d pointed to earlier. The base of his skull, his neck, the tops and blades of his shoulders. He moaned, and I kissed his forehead.

Then I laid a towel down for his oily body, and guided him to recline.

His penis was already hard, but I wanted it exceptionally so. So I brought my lips around his tip, looped my tongue around him, and sucked. Then, with three tablespoons of Good Clean lube in my hand, I gave him a two-handed hand-job.

“Is this the milking?” he said.

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I’ve been coming lately:

• From an engraved 24kt gold vibrator while imagining where I wanted my husband to lick me

• From a new, travel-friendly cerulean wand while watching two women grind on each other on my phone

• From my husband’s tongue, lips, and fingers on a navy leather daybed

• And his cock, in missionary

I’ve been swimming lately:

• Paddling pools without room to paddle

• Pools so full of chlorine that my swimsuit faded faster than my skin burned

• Shallow lakes’ surface algae stuck between my bikini bottoms and butt cheeks, kicking quickly past the seaweed

• Deep lake, cold, no seaweed in reach

I’ve been sucking dick lately:

• While wearing jean shorts, my backside to a mirror

• Covered in mosquito bites, behind a cabin, under the stars

• With my hands tied with silk-cotton blend rope

• On video, looking into my own eyes more than his

I’ve been crying lately:

• Gratitude — friends, help, thoughtfulness

• Love — sweet words, warm cuddles, comfort, safety

• Stress — packing, planning, timing

• Bliss — lake breezes, kid laughter, a glass of wine

• Overwhelm — hormones, hangovers, misunderstandings

• Exhaustion, relief — a long drive is over, we’re all home safe

• Guilt, disappointment — my kid’s beloved stuffed pigeon, left behind

I’ve been working lately:

• Making Instagram reels about asshole licking, facial cumming, and the general appeal of real world sex videos

• Planning and analyzing, for MakeLoveNotPorn’s growth

• Editing my debut novel, and responding to an interested agent (singular (for now))

• Writing for you, and, well, me:

  • Forthcoming Essays: one about attraction and ugliness, one about when individuals in a couple “just want different things,” and one about the cultural dominance of MILFs. And perhaps I’ll just fuck around and post a yet-unpublished piece I was paid to write: an essay about the psychosexuality of authoritarianism and, ultimately, whether bullying is sexy.

  • Recent Pieces: a plea to preoccupied women, and how I meditate when I want to re-prioritize my eroticism.

I’ve been seeing lately:

• Two dragonflies having sex

• Two wasps having sex

• Two flies having sex

• A red cardinal

• So many loons

I’ve been dancing lately:

• To La Vie en Rose by Grace Jones, or as my husband calls it, our family song

I’ve been buying lately:

• Ginger and turmeric shots

• Short-sleeve cotton-cashmere knit pullover

• Ice cream from MN Dairy Lab, Jeni’s, Sebastian Joe’s, Dream Creamery

• Red nail polish (for my toes)

• A second-hand dress from the Substack chat of ’s The Molehill

• The privilege of supporting my friend’s anthology, which you too can support.

I’ve been reflecting lately:

• It’s been two years since I started this publication. I have published every Monday and some Thursdays for 25 months. It’s a lot of work. It’s been fulfilling. Also, a lot. I plan to keep at it, for you, and for me.

• Being a salary-working parent of two small babes, in a relationship, with artistic pursuits and ‘side hustles’ is not for the weak. And sometimes I do feel weak. But mostly, I don’t.

• Generational inheritance

• Is goal setting and the pursuit of vision even possible when living in the present? Is living in the present even possible for a person balancing so many people’s needs, wants, and safety?

• Why do I expect balance to be a fixed state?

• Is pitching worth it at all when I get a yes from a major publication, they pay me $500, but the piece is still unpublished, losing relevance with every month that’s passed (nearly six, now)?

• Have I reflected too much? Mightn’t it be better to simply let awareness simmer subconsciously, letting my gut land on the answer and guide me in each moment?

I’ve been reading lately:

• Milk Fed by (if you haven’t, you have to read this book)

• An encyclopedia of butterflies

• An encyclopedia of birds

• So many Substacks — your notes, your posts, I prefer your presence in my inbox to most anything else

I’ve been wanting lately:

• Answers I can’t have

• Breaks I don’t give myself

• Less time on my phone

• Two weeks of clean air and sub-80 degree weather

• And to hear from you:

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I’ve been listening to lately:

• Herb Alpert

• Funkadelic

• My eldest son’s latest favorite song, Toxic by Britney

Happy Endings is a ‘peep show’ — an intimate look into my relationship, which would otherwise be concealed behind the heteromonogamous privacy curtain.

I publish a free story from my marriage, or an essay on contemporary love, every Monday. Once per month, I paywall an extra-juicy one that I’d like to keep slightly more private. Every other Thursday, I share advice that I’ve found useful in my sex and romantic life, in my paid Praxxxis series.

I like to think all subscribers can count on a weekly reminder to prioritize love in their lives, but my paid subscribers get even more Happy Endings.

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When is the last time the woman dearest to you came? Little stifled sneeze orgasms don’t count.

Even though sex is of great significance to me (I’ve built my career around it), I still have months where I come, then think, fuck it’s been too long.

On Monday, I published a piece about this phenomenon — women who are so preoccupied with their family, their career, their worries or ambitions that they start to think sexual pleasure simply isn’t for them, or at least, forget to prioritize it. I called this woman the Lost Body Woman.

Today, I am sharing seven steps to guide the Lost Body Woman back to herself.

It’s not easy to get un-lost. Staying lost — stuck outside of your own body — is favored by physics. Worse yet, we craft identities around being lost; I’m just not interested, we say when our partners ask if we’d like to come. When fear-based fixations or run of the mill life-crises distract us from our bodily sensations, coming back to ourselves in order to come is easier said than done. You might wonder why bother? The why is, well, a philosophical question about the purpose of life that I’ll write about another day.

But if you love someone — be it yourself or your wife — you’d hate to see whole segments-of-seasons evaporate without them taking time to feel blissed.

I want you to feel blissed. Everyone ought to — even, or especially, when shit’s all over the fan.

For the people who know somewhere deep down, that they want to reconnect with themselves, I’ve written a guide that works for me. I’m a type A mom with Midwestern work ethic, sense of externalized responsibility, and semi-toxic Millennial ambition — aka the perfect convergence for the sort of bodily disconnection that makes a happily married person see themselves in ’s divorce novel1.

If you are, or love, a Lost Body Woman, (help her) follow these steps to come again:

Read more

I’m Abigail, a mom of two boys, a meditation enthusiast, cocksucking feminist, born-again monogamist, sextech leader, and lingerie collector. This week, I’m writing from Minneapolis.

There’s a woman on my mind.

She’s a part of me. She’s a part of many people I know. You might be her. You might be married to her. Her most chronic archetype just wrote an anonymous sexposé in Playboy that fell through my Instagram feed propelled by serendipity and the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, because, as I say, she’s been on my mind.

She’s a woman who doesn’t orgasm often. Maybe once per month. Maybe less. And the reason isn’t because of intentional celibacy, health issues, asexuality, or ideology, exactly. It’s because she’s busy. She’s prioritized everything but herself. Her pleasure isn’t important.

If this is you, I’m writing to you.

Perhaps your deprioritization of climax is because you’re absorbed in the machinations of modern feminine life. Achieving expectations and gliding through the rat race at the expense of your self connection. I bet your challenging career is pretty damn balanced, the texts from your friends and family are responded to within reasonable timelines, you schedule and attend (without rescheduling) the recurring appointments required for your health and societally expected appearance. Perhaps you’re self-sufficient — thriving (attemptedly) without requiring a partner. Sometimes you’re the woman who does everything for everyone, including maintenance sex at an interval as to not cause a disturbance to your life.

Life, here, is defined as everything outside of yourself — what others see, others admire, others need.

I’m guessing masturbation is rote. Partnered sex is choreographed from learned successive actions plus a dash of externally inspired dynamism to not fall into a trap. You’re always steps ahead of traps. Because you’re always thinking ahead. Never here, never now. You’re lost above the now — in your mind, so much so, you’ve nearly lost connection to your body.

I call this woman a Lost Body Woman.

Lost, here, is defined as being missing from one’s own bodily sensations, disconnected, without an easy way back.

The Lost Body Woman knows something is missing, but she’s looking in the wrong place. Like Alice down the rabbit hole. Wonderland is societal expectations, someone else’s interests, or the fear-based ambitions you accepted as an identity long ago, and kept trundling toward, not questioning your trajectory. Alice’s tree, her real world, is the capacity to be present in your body enough to listen to your gut, and let arousal rise.

The Lost Body Woman is not a difficult image to conjure. She is all over our culture. But we can’t blame tropes and screenwriters. We could blame our bodies, as women’s hormones albeit push us toward self-sacrifice. Our bodies aren’t always easy to be present in. When modern strife and expectation are mixed in, the striving to fulfill all the dutiful checkboxes is no surprise.

At times, I am this woman. You might be her, too. Some of you will be in love with her, noticing the way she ignores her own sexual satisfaction, maybe you question her, but she simply says she’s just not interested today. Sometimes that’s true, but sometimes that’s the easy way out — to stay lost, and believe that’s where you belong. Seeing Wonderland as the real world is a compelling narrative to more than just a woman.

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That anonymous Playboy writer certainly wouldn’t have defined herself as lost before she came, from the guidance of someone called the O-Man. She thought she was too busy. She’d so manufactured her understanding of life around what other’s saw — her bylines, her figure — that she couldn’t even see sex as appealing. She’d pushed away the experience, and when obliged, stayed in her mind, imaging nonsexual things entirely, until the sex itself passed.

It pains me to see a woman lost, uninterested in pleasure. Because even though being lost is understandable — life will lead us away from our body, our minds will lead us away from our body — remaining lost is a choice made from pain and fear. This sexposé writer’s dismissal of her own pleasure was so engrained, it became righteous. Pain and fear kept her from coming, and tricked her into believing that’s where she belonged.

I write about sex, work for a sex video website, am viciously aware of the pleasure-void of martyrdom, and I still fall into self-dismissing identities on occasion. I want to be a great mother. I want to be a great wife. I want to be a great friend, a great employee, a great daughter. And with the impossible tasks on my shoulders, clouded by stress, I forget I’m in Wonderland, seeking perfectionist fantasies, forgetting to just sit at the roots of the Oak in my backyard and feel my body.

I wanted to write a plea to this woman because, as I said, she’s been on my mind. Because sometimes the only way I can remind myself to prioritize myself, is to think of you.

So I write to you, to the Playboy writer, to myself. I say: I understand. Pretending you’re a machine might be convenient, but that’s not who you are. You’re a human. With a body. Which, as the Playboy writer realized, will one day stop working. So before then, instead of chasing off death, fixating on work that makes you immortal or the health metrics/appearance that suggests you’re forever young, just stop. You lost yourself. Come back. Come, period. Then come again.

This Thursday, paid subscribers will get my advice on how to come back from the Lost Body state, including how supportive partners of these preoccupied woman can aid the bodily reconnection process, as a part of my every other week Praxxxis series.

Did you read my husband’s analysis of my red, green, and weird flags during our courtship? Or my report card on how his woo’ing characteristics have fared after the years of our marraige?

So I asked my husband what he found both compelling and concerning about me while we were dating.

My Compelling Characteristics

My husband, Joe, says there's only one must-have characteristic he’s looking for in a mate (romantic, but also broadly applicable). Besides the “obvious stuff,” he says, “like sexual compatibility,” he wonders, “does this person have an internal world?”

1) I have an internal world

My hobbies (dance) and interests (ergonomic footwear) and the way I’d fixate on un-cool things (like on “min-maxing” my Civilization after he introduced me to the PlayStation game), demonstrated that there was something going on in my head beyond trends and other people’s ideas.

2) I had unique taste

Relatedly, he says he liked how I had a unique taste and aesthetic. My design perspective didn’t fit a specific style. If Joe had to define it, he’d call it “sexy art teacher.” I wore a vintage silk leopard-print skirt set with Chacos one day, and clogs, embroidered crop trousers plus a knit wrap top, the metallic of a nipple ring shining through the merino, the next. I guess this was new to him?

3) I liked to idylly pass time

Joe says I was, and am, up for doing things that aren’t necessarily exciting or even good. We had our best times just standing in a pub for hours, grocery shopping, or seeing gigs that one of us thought was shit. This wasn’t to gauge my maintenance levels, but what he liked was that I “didn’t need premium aspirational activities that other people thought were good.”

4) I wasn’t trying to impress him, play games with him, or actualize anything through him

My sweetheart (clearly) didn’t want a lover who expected or exhibited performance signals like trips to festivals for the sake of photo ops. As he says, “[I like] unvarnished people who accept unvarnished people. Life’s too short to spend time with people who are doing what you think everyone else wants to see.” So naturally, he was set at ease that I wasn’t bothered that he wasn’t trying to impress me, and that it didn’t feel like I was trying to impress him either. There was no game playing. No “push and pull,” as he feels is boring. “Playing hard to get only works for people who have an emotional issue.”

“Does this mean you thought I was a chill girl?” I asked. “Well, kind of,” he said. “It was no pressure.” He liked how I wasn’t in a rush to define our relationship because of some baseless expectation of societal timing. This, he says, is when someone tries to actualize their dreams through their partner. And the astute readers will know he has a problem with people who use people, and that despite the lack of pressure, we did commit very legally and bloodily quite quickly.

My Concerning Characteristics

Unlike the short list of characteristics Joe looked for, the traits he didn’t want were plenty:

• He didn’t want someone who performed an aesthetic/lifestyle/interest for the benefit of perception instead of putting their real selves out there. Or expected him to perform for perception.

• He didn’t want someone who saw themselves as a prize — as if their association would increase their social stock — as it implied they believed a relationship served outwardly.

• He couldn’t date someone who obsessed over cleanliness. Sanitizer in general was a turn-off.

• No picky eaters.

• No litterers.

• No illiterates.

• No small bums.

• No one prejudiced — about anything. (Any big generalized assumptions, even things like “couldn’t watch sci-fi” or “sports suck” or “wouldn’t sew” was a No. He didn’t like people who closed themselves off from things for stupid reasons.)

I do like to tell him he’s lucky to have me, but otherwise, I fit his list. Yet the following characteristics he hadn’t considered previously gave him pause about me as a romantic partner.

1) I once said I was an immoral person

Joe and I can’t exactly remember the details, but we both remember it happening. When I asked him what was a potential “red flag” about me, he came right out the gates with this one, so it obviously left an impression. What I remember is we were having a long-winded debate in which he asked me whether I was a moral person. I might’ve had a few beers, or maybe I was just uneducated, but with hindsight I know that my saying “If you had to categorize me, I’d probably have to be lumped immoral,” wasn’t what I really meant. I was picturing myself slipping a few extra pieces of candy while pretending to the children around me that we were only allowed a piece for finding a red car, while he was imagining someone with no morals. I might have a few potentially questionable morals (without a candy-dispersion oversight committee, and in circumstances without any true suffering, I might extort candies I purchased under the guise of fair distribution), but I’m not immoral.

2) I had some questionable friends

After a few months together, I invited him to join me in Mexico City for an intervention. It was a memorable experience. He seemed shockingly smitten despite being confronted with information yet to be shared and the general messiness of my past. I didn’t realize it actually made him pause, as shortly thereafter we began not not trying to conceive. I have a soft spot for those who are working through shit, and I have no shame about it! Given it’s the first I heard of it, I don’t think he does either.

3) I had emotional reactions to our ideological differences

I once invited him to dinner with my landlord, a conventionally successful musician and friend, and my friend, a struggling artist. The two men disagreed with the two women about the net effect of social media for artists. His perspective made me upset. I stomped my feet the next day listening to Beyoncé’s “Hold Up” and took a solo trip to the coast to showcase my independence. If this gave him pause, the few pints of lager he had with his friends that evening sure pressed play again, because as I took a bath after reading Henry Miller, he texted me, “I know you don’t need me to, but I want to take care of you.” I forgave him. Then I learned to hate the idea, not the person.

4) I didn’t play my part in chivalrous gender relations

It really cracked me up to learn my husband questioned my wifely eligibility because I was somehow obvious to his English mores. I was “rushing about and not waiting for [Joe] to open a door or order at a cafe.” I guess my love was waiting for me to hand my dance card over by standing back and letting him take the lead. He wanted to be a gentleman, but I was too much of an American millennial to notice. Joe worried that my rushing was some character flaw, but in the end he realized it was only my self-reliance trauma response, lol.

My Peculiar Characteristics

As a bonus, Joe offered these “odd flags,” as he says. They were neither red nor green, but notable curiosities that he pondered while we courted.

1) I was unable to cook

He was bewildered by my saying that I lived on RX Bars and two-ingredient salads.

2) I drank from jars

I drank water from an olive jar, and he found that peculiar.

3) I had a bizarre sense of humor

It’s “entirely idiosyncratic,” he says. “It exists only for you.” Which to me is just fine, but to a man from the land of banter, it was surprising.

Now that I’ve gotten the same outside analysis as I’ve given my spouse, it’s reinforced my hunch… All these “red flags” and “green flags” are as useful as a comment section on a clickbait article. They reveal so much more about the one critiquing than they do about the critiqued.

Or as Joe says, “the whole red flags/green flags thing is, in aggregate, really boring and generic.”

Regardless, it was fascinating to hear these reflections from my love, because I find the world through his eyes — his inner world — to be rich and curious. But it’s also reminded me that, as he pointed out, I’m my best when I don’t care what other people think.

How about you? What do you think?

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I’m Abigail — a born-again monogamist, sex-tech marketer, mother of two boys, and writer of Happy Endings, where I reveal the juicy, gory details of my marriage every Monday and every other Thursday. Most of these are free, as I want to spread more love. But paid subscribers get even more:

• My how-to style Praxxxis guides on improving your intimate life every other Thursday,

• And my once-monthly uber-intimate real-life sex stories, like this one about how Joe’s love language is blow jobs.

I’m grateful for your attention — it is, after all, a version of love. It would touch me deeply to hear from you with a heart, comment, or share on this post.

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Have a love-filled week xxx

Since that first summer together when I was charmed by every flag shade, so much has changed. We’ve weathered a global pandemic, moved three times (internationally, nationally, and same zipcode), shouldered an emergency cesarean surgery, a mostly-alone home birth, job changes, and the usual stressors of life.

When I think back to our happy-go-lucky courtship, we seem like different people. So I wondered, were all the things that captivated me about my (hopefully) lifelong lover still present in him?

Here are the green flags that woo’d me and whether my husband still waves them:

He was a sweet drunk

When he got drunk, he was the guy who’d sit smiling from his own thoughts, his legs crossed on his bar stool. He might want to pick up a kebob. But he always just wanted to go home, crawl in bed, and snooze. If I made a move, he’d delightedly follow my lead, but mostly we’d have uber-intimate morning hangover sex. I’d only seen him get non-sweet drunk once. He was angsty over class injustice, and said things like “Fuck em, ya know what I mean? They’re all bastards.” It was still sweet!

And he still is.

Our drunk selves do reveal our inner worlds, don’t they? He’s still just as cheerful, and just as interested in a good night’s sleep. We get fewer kebobs in Brooklyn, but we’ll have a cheeky cheese and biscuits after our rare nights out. With our years, I’ve of course seen him angry, but even in our fights, I know he’s a sweet one.

He planned dates

He baked a plum cake for a park picnic in the middle of a pub crawl. He bought tickets for a gig he thought we’d enjoy in the moment, and as a longer-term introduction to each other’s tastes. I appreciated his initiative and his commitment to what he loved — music, food, and the amble of it all.

He still does, kind of.

He’ll orchestrate an afternoon rock hunt with stops for paints and pint (singular (he’s a responsible parent)), culminating in a craft hour at home with our kids. His ideal amble now includes our offspring, so we plan fewer date-dates, but fortunately for both of us, our ideal ambles are complementary.

He read aloud to me

A seafaring turn-of-the-century tale over coffee, hungover in bed. A random page of a hardcover original McSweeney’s collection over tea before meeting friends at the pub. It was years before the ‘performative male’ meme, so I had no reason not to be dazzled. He did subdued character voices. He paused when pauses were apt. I was charmed every time.

He doesn’t any longer.

The only things he reads aloud to me lately are things he’s written. It’s maybe more sweet. But less romantic. We have fewer of those leisure moments to fill with idle happenings right now, as parents to young ones. We prioritize to save our sanity. But I know one day we’ll find this habit again.

He had his own hobbies and interests

He had a collection of guitar loop pedals that he tinkered with regularly without ever feeling the need to record a track. He got lost in Wikipedia holes. He lifted weights and went to the swimming ponds with his guy friends. He frequented punk shows with his gal friends. He made pasta by hand because it tasted better, but when he had it from a box, he had his preferred brand. He was discerning. He prioritized joy, well-being, and fun for those reasons, not status or some shit.

He still does.

He finally transcribes and publishes some of his creations. But he still enjoys the ephemeral: He’s currently working out the best pizza dough, and he recently perfected the breakfast burrito.

He shared (well recc’d) art culture with me

After our first date, he gave me the recently published Convenience Store Woman. I adored it. He texted me, “‘Venus in Furs’ is so Abigail.” It was an accurate representation. He texted, “This made me think of you,” with the link for “Maria’s Theme” by The Liminanas, and I understood why. It touched me. He suggested we watch La Piscine, and we viewed it side by side on his pink corduroy loveseat. From these recommendations, I knew he knew me, and I knew I wanted to keep knowing him too.

He still does, kind of.

He’s the chooser for 90% of our post-kid bedtime evening viewings. He’s our lingerie shopper. He recently told me I “had to” listen to The Kink Machine, an audiobook by the FT. He was right; I did have to. Our diminished time for leisure and dates has impacted personal explorations, so we send each other fewer things, and when we do, they’re much more functional (sex, work, leisure). I’m sure we’ll spread ourselves more toward the gratuitous (which is never where sex is slotted, lol) soon enough.

—

To me, these were standout characteristics of a compelling mate. There are many more, of course: He had many real friendships. He had a real job and ambition, but he knew how to slack off. He listened. He cared. He wasn’t a poet, but he knew how to express his feelings enough to be vulnerable.

Lucky for me, he’s still the man I fell for, just with a few more gray hairs.

As for my red and green flags, well, I asked him. I’ll share soon. xx

I’m wishing you a love filled week, dear reader. Did you catch my last pieces — the summer erotic reset, or the sex story as demonstration of the hot potential of hetero communication gaps? If something related to this current piece interests you, consider this: