This was one of those evenings.

I walked into the living room after putting our boys to sleep. I found him, my husband, on the couch. And I dropped my body around his.

The collapse was like a hug. A straddle. A languid scissoring, but not the sex version — the thing kids do on swings.

I wasn’t planning to. When collapse is on the mind, mounting isn’t usually the first association. But his response to my arrival was enthusiastic. Oh, hey, baby, I think. The greeting beckoned me, and my lifeless body answered.

He said nothing after my collapse, and neither did I. At least for a while. He wrapped his arms around me, one at a time, and squeezed a little. His hands held his biceps, or his elbows — I don’t know, I couldn’t see. He kept me upright, and I closed my eyes.

After I didn’t even know how long of muscleless sitting, I said, “You’re getting me horny.”

He laughed. He wasn’t doing anything. But the contact and the relaxation aroused me. I started grinding on him.

“You still on your period?” he said.

“Yes, but I don’t mind,” I said.

I turned my face into the side of his. He turned his face into mine. Our lips touched. I pressed my bottom one between his. They smacked together. I kept grinding. His pelvis tilted up toward mine. His arms unlocked. He felt me up my back and down.

The whole room felt right. Objects were out of place, sure, but the lights were dim, and my husband was warm, and his mouth tasted like him.

We made out for long enough for me to moan with sincerity. An “mmm” came out of my mouth after traveling up from the bottom of my spine. I licked his earlobe. Then I said, “I will lick you every day of my life.”

He said, “I thought that’s what you wanted me to do to you.”

“Well. I do,” I said. “Let’s come. Me first. Then you.” I stood up before him, still in my faded cotton lounge clothes. “Unless you’re scared,” I said, joking about our habit of avoiding penetration during menstruation due to mess, my tender vaginal walls, and the stinging sensation of blood in his urethra. Then I said, “Unless you want to fuck me with something else?”

“Funny you should say that,” he said. “Look in that package on the shelf.”

We unboxed a small parcel addressed to him, with no sender's name. Inside was a metal butt plug, a marbled blue silicone dildo, and a promotional keychain of a hand in a gesture that’d make the dildo superfluous.

I asked him what the occasion was, and he said, “We only had the one butt plug,” which made sense to me. I told him so and that I claimed the keychain. He didn’t argue.

I was naked on the ground covered with a blanket, beside the lube and vibrator he laid out, when I laughed and said, “This is how my favorite type of sex looks.”

“What’s that?” he said.

“Fully concealed under a blanket.”

He chuckled. He pulled his shirt off.

“Take those off too,” I said, nodding toward his shorts.

He did so and pulled his cock down with his hand.

“I love you,” I said. “I love this.” My eyes grew misty.

“Me preparing to service you?” he said.

“Yes. Watching from here,” I said. “This. Well, it might be the best feeling of my life.”

It was. But then it was matched and surpassed…

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One of my favorite feelings is when a rush of arousal hits me. Like getting goosebumps, but inside of you.

Some depend upon visual stimuli to do this trick, but my husband and I prefer when the sensation comes from inside our minds. It lasts longer. It goes deeper.

I’ve compiled a list of 16 below that I bet will spark your erotic imagination.

Think of it like a writing prompt, but for getting carried away with yourself, or letting the mood linger all day, building up in you until you burst with someone you adore.

Imagine catching someone you crush on staring at you, and they don’t avert their eye contact.

Imagine a kiss on your hip bone.

Imagine your pants/skirt is made of a loose-weave linen, or cotton, or silk, and the breeze carries through it, past that part of your genitals with the highest proportion of nerve endings, sending a chill through you.

Imagine getting a text that said, “I dreamt of you last night.”

Read more

Abby:

So, husband, I think we would agree that sex shouldn’t be a reward, or something your spouse has to “earn,” in general, right?

Joe:

It depends on the sex that is the reward, I guess?

Abby:

I’m saying “in general” — meaning, if every time we had sex, period, it was something you had to earn. That would be pretty toxic, right?

Joe:

Yeah, that wouldn’t really be a healthy place for a relationship to be in my opinion.

Abby:

Like how I wrote about maintenance sex last week. Sex is a positive for every individual. So if someone is using it as a punishment device, that’s pretty twisted.

BUT… a few times I’ve offered a surprise, extra special blow job as a reward for you to accomplish something I’ve noticed weighs on you. A tempting carrot to lure you through a shitty work task. Do you remember the first time I did that? How did you feel about it?

Joe:

Well, that felt great obviously, and I think that is the thing really with this whole idea of reward sex, that can’t be like vanilla missionary sex begrudgingly offered — the idea that is even a reward is a bit of a humiliating punishment in itself.

Abby:

Lol, tell me more.

Joe:

The implication there is like, the relationship is not balanced, I guess. One person thinks the other is so lucky to have them that they need to work for and be thankful for what, in a healthy relationship, is normal.

There really isn’t anything more humiliating than being dedicated to someone who thinks you should be thankful for their time.

Weird tangent here, but it’s a lot like Trump and his cronies — how pathetic are these people who seek his approval and then he throws them under the bus.

Like he did with the DHS woman recently and a hundred others.

Like I said — weird tangent but same principle.

Abby:

He also just said he prefers hanging out with losers because they let him talk about his successes instead of having to let another person talk about theirs. This is what people who prefer to be with someone who is lucky to have them are like… they are afraid to question their own validity, in a way.

Joe:

Yeah, that is exactly it.

Abby:

So we both feel equally lucky to be with each other. We have good sex. And we don’t hold it against the other. Most of the time.

(There are times, of course, when one of us gets a little indignant when we’re stressed and feel like life is unbalanced in general, and then blames the other for not being balanced or some shit. And sometimes we play with that imbalance.)

So, in this context, reward sex can be a fun tool for a relationship instead of a problematic function. Or maybe we call it bribery sex?

Joe:

Yeah, the thing is that the ‘reward’ element has got to feel like a reward, I suppose. It can’t be something that is just what you both enjoy, or the natural ‘organic’ sex that just happens.

Abby:

How has the reward sex, or bribery sex, helped you?

Joe:

Well, first, I’m thinking of you…

Because, I think for us, it doesn’t really work the other way around. The things that you really like, that fall into that category, are more like sex in a public place or sneaking around or something spontaneous, which aren’t well-suited to a reward-type thing.

Plus, I think you also prefer the idea of being ‘spoiled’ over being rewarded. Or kept on your toes.

You prefer surprise to knowing.

Whereas I prefer to know than be surprised.

The thing I really like about reward or bribery sex is knowing that I am going to get what I want. To that above exact point. Knowing what’s coming (insert the easy joke there) is the best part.

Abby:

Yes, I don’t think that carroting me would ever work, you’re right. I’d get crabby with you. I like to know I have my baseline of requirements met in order to be a productive and happy person. And yes, being spoiled as a surprise is the best. A surprise trophy would be better for me lol.

For you, when I’ve noticed you’re really pissed about finishing something. I’ve said, ok, stay home instead of going to swim class, and if you’ve finished by the time we’re back, you get your dream BJ. If you’re not, you only get a casual BJ, right? Has it helped?

Joe:

Yeah, definitely, but the good part is definitely in knowing that the reward is there and attainable. If that makes sense. Like it wouldn’t work as a reward if it were a chance-based thing. For me at least.

‘All you have to do to get this thing you want, exactly how you want it, is to do this thing’ — that is a hot proposition.

And also the offer itself is good too, like it’s a way of saying ‘I know you really want this thing and I want to give you that.’

And also looking at things from the other perspective, it probably gives the giver of the reward a good way in for doing things that they might not be particularly into themselves, but just enjoy being able to do something a bit different from the usual.

Abby:

Yes definitely. And you accomplish the BS you had to do. Win-win.

Joe:

And maybe now thinking about it, I am pretty sure that any kind of out-of-the-ordinary thing would work as a reward, really. Like, say nipple clamps, because that’s not something I have ever really thought about. If you said, ‘I will let you use these nipple clamps on me if you redecorate the kitchen,’ that I would find hot. Even though I have no prior interest in nipple clamps.

Abby:

Lol. Ok. I’ll get back to this nipple clamps kitchen thing.

I feel like sex is a great tool to help people in life. Like the obvious example is when I have a great o, I’m a happier, more chill woman. But more extreme is like the other day, I could tell you were needing to be more of a decisive hard ass, so I made you do that to get what you wanted from me sexually. The sex energy translates into life energy.

Joe:

Yeah, but I would also say that having an orgasm falls into the more like, common or garden stuff, that is just a given.

Also worth saying that you don’t really suffer from procrastination or need rewards as motivation. If anything, you have the opposite problem. I need to intervene in your life by literally forcing you to stop spinning your wheels on things.

And I can’t really be like, ‘hey, if you sit down and have a cup of tea and just chill out for 45 minutes, I will reward you with an orgasm.’ It’s more like, I need to make you stop spinning your wheels to even be capable of having an orgasm in the first place.

And there it’s tricky because if I were to say even the word orgasm, that would lead to even more wheel spinning.

So for me, on the flipside, it isn’t about giving you direct certainty and like ‘do this get this’ — it’s the opposite, where there are a hundred tiny and individually imperceptible nudges to help you be more relaxed.

Like bringing you coffee in bed every morning isn’t a direct lay up to an orgasm, but if I didn’t do that, then ultimately you wouldn’t probably have as many orgasms because in general you would be less relaxed and therefore less into the idea of having sex.

Abby:

Yes, you know, even these chats tee up orgasms for both of us because when I notice and see how tangibly you understand and notice me, it turns me on and sets me at ease and makes me feel loved and loving too. Like, I’m a bit emotional right now just reading that from you.

And I guess that’s what I’m doing for you with the bribes. I’m noticing your needs and trying to help you achieve them. We support each other. And sex is a tool to do that in a basic and not basic way.

Joe:

Yeah, that is very smart.

It’s noticing the flaws and the wants and aligning them, really.

I start more things than I finish, and I want to know what’s coming — you align that up.

You get tightly wound up in your head, and your body wants to be able to relax — I try to nudge things into alignment.

And sex is a good way to either build that alignment in my case, or benefit from it in yours.

Abby:

Yeah, exactly. But back to your nipple clamps and kitchen redesign shit. That is actually completely different. But also something I wanted to discuss.

It’s when we take this a step further, and maybe more toward the true meaning of rewards and bribes. It’s that shit that I selfishly want. And maybe ultimately you do too, but not as much as me. Doing tasks for the house is a good example. A better one, and one that I’ve been teasing at this last month, and TO MY UTTER SURPRISE AND DELIGHT, you spontaneously brought up and said you’d like to do in April… the BJ-supported vape weening.

These are hard things. Not things that can be fit within the timeframe of swim class. And I think we agree that carroting sexy things can benefit the process?

Joe:

This is interesting to me because I tend to think the everyday stuff is more important.

Abby:

Yes, I agree. Which is why the kitchen example is a different thing. But it’s another convo, which I also wanted to have.

[We have an extended aside about our child’s swim school, bikinis, grocery shopping, and the evening’s ragu. Then we have sex (I wore the Lara Croft suit with a patent leather fixation harness over the top).]

Can we keep this going now?

Joe:

Yes.

With the vape quitting, the bribe is good, yeah. Because it’s something you have to do alone, and it is kind of shitty vibes.

The reward seems to be best when it is just about pushing through the pain-in-the-arse type stuff.

And devising a system of sexual acts that align with the nicotine withdrawal process seemed like a perfect way to motivate me there.

It makes me think of Dante’s circles of hell:

And obviously the Gustave Doré illustrations:

Like, is this ^ day 7?

Abby:

Lol. Yes. And day 8 is Hieronymus Bosch’s “The Garden of Earthly Delights:”

We’ll bring you through the depths of human experience, baby.

Who wouldn’t want that?

Especially when, in the end, you will only be a slave to your desire and the system, not the plastic “depression stick” bodega run 3x/week.

Joe:

Don’t forget being a slave to the rhythm:

Abby:

Lmao.

Ok, and, FYI, I don’t think I’ll be making any bribes about any renovations. That’ll have to be a team effort. And maybe a surprise reward will come if I’m particularly proud of your effort 😘

Joe:

Yeah, I agree there. You’d be better doing some kind of handyman role play lol.

Abby:

Yes. Hot.

We’ll keep the bribes for the sloggy shit. And home care as ‘fun team activity.’

Speaking of… [cliff hanger for next week!!!!!!]

(Joe says this song is a northern [English] guy’s idea of romance. Which is probably exactly why I’m so romanced by him, my northern Englishman.)

SERIOUSLY. THANK YOU. I’m really so grateful to have you all communing here with me, enabling me to transcribe the conversations my husband and I so enjoy having.

It’s not that I think it’s bad. It’s that the phrase’s implication is backwards.

Some people call it duty sex. It’s the concept of getting intimate out of obligation, not innate desire. It’s a byproduct of (heterosexual) long-term relationships. One partner, with a not-all-bad, natural impulse to peace-keep (consider the contentment of their partner and the stability of their domain), initiates sex. But in their peace-keeping perspective, they see sex as an offering, a gift, or a duty to something external to themselves.

My problem with ‘maintenance sex’ is its implication of that external duty – an outward interest, instead of self-interest – while simultaneously implying the discontent of prioritizing others before yourself.

I get it. I’ve been there (I’ll get to that). But isn’t it ironic that in our desire to care for others, even the language we’ve crafted to complain about that impulse forgets about ourselves?

It’s not an all bad impulse. It’s good to care for others. It’s just also good to care for ourselves.

All humans benefit from regular sex. And with sexual health, as with mental health, and even airline oxygen masks, it is far harder to take care of others if we don’t take care of ourselves first.

I don’t have a problem with seeing sex as a function to maintain. In fact, I do… but for myself.

Sex is a task, like grocery shopping or dish washing, that must happen for every individual human who wants to thrive, not just get by on junk. Grocery shopping, dishwashing, and sex can sure be seen as a slog. A chore. A burden. Something to maintain for others. Or it can be ridiculously goofy, absurdly romantic, mutually, excessively self-serving, or medicinal (in a hot way). However sex is served, it’s an integral ingredient of a joyful, healthy life.

Ignoring the personal potential in the routine, uneconomic endeavors of life isn’t in anyone's self-interest.

Maintenance isn’t a burden. It’s care. It’s opportunity. It’s a gesture of appreciation. For the objects you wash and mend. For the self you tend.

Maintenance sex is an apple a day.

And when that’s forgotten, and one sees maintenance as a burden — something for others — well, that’s when I knew I was not well. Which was, coincidentally, when I needed that maintenance more than ever.

How about you?

I write about sex because I like sex. But I’m still a human woman who gets tired, and wants someone (my man) to take the lead.

My husband and I once plotted out the most effective ways to seduce me, no matter what state of mind/body/spirit I’m in, into three routes.

We’re not sex nerds who think eroticism is mathematical, or anything. But with the hopes of better knowing myself, my sexuality, and my partner understanding the same, both the conversation and this seduction guide have been useful.

Besides, isn’t it plain hot to talk about what makes you hot?

I recommend crafting your own guide — for yourself, or with your lover. And I also wonder, would you like to try mine?

It’s playful, sexy, and sweet.

Here it is…

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It’s a simple story, really. I like wool. Merino. Lambswool. Shetland. Cashmere. Alpaca. I like wool. Recently, I needed a pillow. We also needed sheets. Joe bought sheets, and the company sold pillows. Specifically, a wool pillow. He bought it for me.

I got you a pillow. It’s a fancy pillow.

What kind?

It’s wool.

I’d never used a wool pillow. I’d used feathers and hadn’t liked them. They got too condensed, even hard, after some time. I’d used faux down. They’re supposed to not get dense. But it got too light and dispersed. I don’t know how it works, but I didn’t like it. So why not wool? I love wool.

The pillow arrived, and I was excited. I was truly excited about this pillow. It could’ve been something. Really something.

But it smelled. And I don’t know why I didn’t see that coming. I’ve had sweaters that have smelled. It’s always the ones from Scotland. I’m sorry, but it’s true. The pillow smelled like a Scottish sweater. Like a sheep. A wet sheep.

The pillow wasn’t wet. It was dry and bouncy. Actually, the give was perfect.

I gave it a shot. I slept with my nose pointing up that night. The morning after, my head smelled like Scottish wool.

The smell is musky. But not musty. It’s airy. But it’s air filtered through sheep’s hair. A little like mud and grass, and it got into my hair and also my pajamas. I didn’t want to wear my pajamas for a second night, as I usually did.

I washed my pajamas after that one wear. Then I left the pillow on our kids’ unused top bunk. They kicked it off. Then I left the pillow on our bean bag chair. I passed it every day. I checked on it every week or so. The smell didn’t change with time.

After a month, I started using it again. I wondered if it needed a head to wear it in. I figured my husband would’ve told me if the sheep smell bothered him. It didn’t bother him.

One night turned to two. I re-wore my pajamas.

One week turned to two. I woke without even a grimace. I put the pajamas on the next night without grimacing.

I woke, smelled my hair, and kind of smiled. I got in bed and squeezed the pillow between my arms and rested my cheek on it, and the smell wafted up into my face, and I smiled.

I smiled about the dirt, and dried grass, and the international sheep’s hair smell. I flicked my hair and smelt a bonfire. I closed my eyes and was outside.

It was many months before I read the label and saw the pillow was made of 100% British wool.

Now I wonder what this all says about me. About my adoration for the once unbearable. For the pillow I sleep with that once repulsed me. I wonder what it says about love. Or if it says anything at all.

What does it mean when love grows on you? Can adoration come from persistence and wearing down? Or is it the wearing in that adapts something imperfect to your specific needs? Is love looking past the superficial for what’s pure and true, and deeply, not necessarily densely, there?

I’m not the one to say. I just like wool. Even Scottish wool, when it’s a gift from my husband, who happens to be English. He wasn’t born in Scotland, but our last name is Burns.

I’ve made my bed. And so I lay in it.

I hope reading Happy Endings feels like writing Happy Endings — a way to reflect on love and keep it an active part of your week.

Your attention feels like love to me, too. Thank you for reading and supporting this practice.

Speaking of practice... My Praxxxis series — putting Happy Endings into practice — returns for its fifth installment this Thursday.

As my eyelids shook at 1 am on a red-eye flight, while my husband and two children slept around me, this statistical phenomenon, questionable causality aside, was on my mind.

That week, a women’s hormone expert that I follow on Instagram criticized women in relationships for taking on labor that contributes to the mortality of coupled women, suggesting we demean ourselves to our own demise.2

As I contorted myself – reaching behind my seat to pull a blanket over my child, seated beside my sleeping husband, with my arm that wasn’t cradling a sleeping baby and tingling from blood loss – I considered the Influencer’s case.

I certainly was depriving myself of rest for them. And even though sleep deprivation makes me crabby, I still – STILL – thought to myself: I’d do it again and again and again.

What the influencer might not know, given her demographic status, is that I cannot not.3

There’s a problem with the suggestion that coupled women simply stop doing the labor that theoretically plucks years off our lives. Sure, the data paints a grim picture. But the report, and this Influencer, doesn’t get what it’s like to live it. To be the married mom who loves someone so fudging much that she can’t go to sleep until she knows everyone she loves is comfortable.

And my, can that sometimes be uncomfortable. Grim, even. I likely get less sleep than the average single woman. I likely have more stress. I can absolutely see how it might cut a few years off my life. It probably will. But if I live fewer years than my peers of different relational status, it’ll be worth the cost.

The years I do have will be filled with the kind of love that is literally stretching my heart beyond its limits. And smiling, squishy, well-rested baby faces. And the pride and soul-level contentment of knowing I helped them get that sleep. No spare year is worth trading for this heart-size-growing love that makes you the sort of crazy that forgets you too are a human who needs sleep.

People could argue that I should, or could, work on that insanity. The subconscious attachment that needs to know my children, and even my husband, are asleep, breathing, and tucked in before I feel comfortable doing the same. The mother’s condition could absolutely be painted as psychosis in an absurdist suspense film. It wouldn’t even be absurdist.

But I don’t want to fight it. I like it. This love compels me, yes, but that compulsion doesn’t preclude choice. When you love people this much, the distinction collapses. And in this season of life, that’s my natural cycle. And isn’t that what that hormone Influencer’s account is actually all about?

I’m not saying I’m perpetually satisfied with my twitching eyelids. Sometimes the sleep deprivation and stress skews my gratitude. Sometimes I wonder why I’m optimally organizing children’s airplane backpacks when I could be lathering lotion so the cabin pressure doesn’t accelerate the wrinkles that came on extra quickly since delivering my children. And sure, in those moments, I think: where is the person packing my backpack? And did these munchkins say thank you enough? And does my husband acknowledge and appreciate all I do to keep this family going?

But on my deathbed, those few years premature, I don’t think I will be tallying moments of potentially unnoticed labor. I definitely won’t care what my face looks like. I’ll want to look into someone I love’s eyes and remember how happy we all were.4

Before then, I’m not longevity-maxxing. I’m not looks-maxxing. I’m love-maxxing.

Because love might make you forget you’re human. But prioritizing lifespan and looks, above all else, is not natural.5

So if you see me picking up socks in the afternoon and being the last to fall asleep, know I have someone bringing me coffee when I finally wake up after sleeping in late. Or don’t think of me at all. I have enough people thinking of me. I’ve filled my days with love.

Besides – and I saved this for last because it’s besides the point – there are also reports that parents live longer. But don’t go telling the longevitymaxxers. They’re making too many decisions based on data rather than the heart.6

It’s hard to deny my body’s biological desire to reproduce. I’ve written much about my cream pie preoccupation of late (1, 2, 3 (I’m not sorry)).

If I’m not penetrated, by even just a finger, before a sexual interchange ends, I’m disappointed.

@stephanie_sarley

Stephanie Sarley on Instagram: "From Still Life to Food Porn gr…

But even still, I have other erotic activities that come first.

My favorite sexual moments start with these five activities.

And I bet I’m not alone…

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I hope you enjoy it too.

Remember, if a paid sub isn’t something you can afford, you’re welcome to dm me for a comp.

This week, I have another Praxxxis post coming.

Next week, I have (totally free) thoughts on maternal mortality and lovemaxxing coming…

You knew you’d have unfucking believable sex that night when you hugged him that morning. First Choice was playing. You two locked hip bones and moved in sync with the beat. Then made out in front of your kids. You laughed. The sun was in your eyes, but you looked into his.

That full-body high stayed with you all day. Radiating out from your chest, crotch, and the skin on your face. Until you were alone…

The sun is down. Your kids are asleep, passed out far earlier than usual due to jet lag. You’d spent weeks in other beds, prioritizing other people, outside of your routine. So when he shuts the kids’ door, and leads you to the bed — your bed — you only think of yourselves. How badly you want his mouth on you and yours on him.

You take off all your clothes. No thinking. No hesitation. You crawl on top of him. You pull the duvet over. It feels surreal to be there, hidden from everything.

Your bodies are freshly bathed. The sheets are clean. Everything feels soft, and dry, and fresh. You fold around one another, rubbing up and down and around. The cuddling, fondling, dial the body high up. You are buzzing.

He grabs your hips and shoves you up the bed. You smile at his casual strength and control. He shifts your hips, stacking them, so he can bring his face against you while still admiring your butt. He loves your butt.

He kisses you between the legs. You yank the duvet back over you, where you thought it belonged. You stretch your legs out, looping your ankles around his calves, petting the backs of them with the tops of your feet.

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Whenever I’m in homes filled with photos of generations, I often get happy tears. Even the first time I went to my sister's boyfriend's parents' home (the second time I met them), I cried when his dad showed me a photo of his parents on one of their early dates.

Tears streamed down my face as I held the framed black-and-white photo of a young Wisconsin couple I’d never met. Because if it wasn’t for those dates going well enough to warrant a photograph, they wouldn’t have made my sister’s boyfriend’s dad, and he wouldn’t have met my sister’s boyfriends’s mom, and they wouldn’t have made the boyfriend and my sister wouldn’t have met him at university and I wouldn’t be here at their farm with my young family.

I call this the butterfly effect of relationships.

I think of it here, with photos of my husband, Joe, as a child — before his brother hit him in the face with a WWI rifle and knocked his teeth out of order, how they were when I met him at The Cock Tavern in Hackney.

This weekend, we went out for drinks with Joe’s teenage bandmates, who’d each taken different paths in life. One started a mechanics business since we’d last seen him — his wife even quit her job to work behind the desk. He looks thinner and tanner and says now he and his Mrs. work the same hours, their sex life is better than ever in their 18 years. The other is now dating a “Bobby,” and his kid turns 18 this year. They waxed on about their fourth bandmember, who’d died not long after Joe and I met.

Seeing people age, and die, and make life makes me reflect on my path. Particularly those throwaway moments that amounted to the best things in my life — inconsequential days and decisions that, if it weren’t for, I wouldn’t be here in the Midlands of England with the love of my life, the people who made him, and the people we made.

It looks like this…

I wouldn’t be here now if I hadn’t married my husband, Joe, because international couples can’t simply be in the same country without legal commitments.

I wouldn’t have married Joe if I hadn’t confessed I loved him, lying beside him in his dark bedroom.

… which I wouldn’t have done if my ex hadn’t visited the week before that, which took me away from Joe and showed me a mirror of what we had.

… which I wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t told Joe I was a relationship anarchist on our first date, tee-ing up a period of time where I thought this was just another temporary or temporal or non-life-path-and-belief-system-altering relationship.

… which I wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t gotten a pint with him on a Saturday afternoon at The Cock Tavern.

… which I wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t messaged him immediately upon swiping right on his profile on Tinder earlier that morning, my first day at my new flat in London, because I was dazzled by the serendipity that I was humming the song out loud that I’d see on his profile.

… which I wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t helped my dad upload his newest musical obsessions — including that specific song — to his music library earlier that week.

… which I wouldn’t have done if my grandma hadn’t died the week before that (see “Life is all about timing”(!)), prompting me to travel back home and stay with my dad.

… which I wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t already planned to move from Barcelona to London to escape the Schengen Region.

… which I wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t texted that guy with the soul musician’s name that I met at that music venue in Barcelona, while I was at the erotic writing conference in London, and saw how fun it would be to live in London.

… which then wouldn’t have given Joe the chance to swipe right on me long before my first morning living in London, because, as I later discovered, the flat of the guy named after the soul musician was blocks away from Joe’s.

… which wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t shown up at the Razmataz in Barcelona to see if Tommy Cash was as bizarre and creative in person as he was online on a microdose of LSD and waved at a stranger across the room.

… which I wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t gotten the nerve to buy the one-way ticket to Barcelona for that interview with Erika Lust.

… which I wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t noticed my discontent in Duluth, Minnesota, and asked myself a customized riddle to propel my path.

Or maybe it has nothing to do with self-crafted riddles and meet-cutes and butterfly wings. Perhaps, it’s a domino effect. A predetermined Rube Goldberg machine. However it is, I’m glad it is.

And freedom of global movement and immigration sure helped.

Dear reader, I’m grateful for your readership. That time and attention is a form of love. I hope it’s sent back to you and that your week is filled with love in all its forms.

Tell me… How did you get where you are?

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It’s a lofty claim that I, a (relative) stranger, might be able to impact your sex life.

In general, I think ‘tips’ are one-size-fits-all rubbish and a cop-out of your (erotic) responsibility. But everyone (ok, me) needs an annual (or seasonal) EKG jolt to their routines, even if just by taping a few reminders to their bathroom mirror.

For my sex life, these are what I’ve written on my (metaphorical) sticky notes.

To help spread the joy of sex, I’ll give a free 1-month upgrade to the first five people who restack this post xxxx.

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Today’s post is another interview with my husband, Joe. You might’ve seen our others:

• The Madonna Whore Complex is Hot, Actually,

• Whose Fantasy is Yours Anyway?,

• “We’re Married, We Have Sex, Do I Care That People Know? Not at all.” and

• The Trouble With English American Relationships.

I hope you enjoy this one, too. I also hope your Valentine’s Day was filled with love, especially for yourself.

Abby:
Ok, darling, you put a name to a very us relationship dynamic recently. I think it’s sexy, curious, and useful. So I want to discuss and share it with Happy Endings. Are you game?

Joe:
The down for whenever versus down for whatever thing?

Abby:
Yes.

Joe:
Yup!

Abby:
So, we have conflicting impetuses for initiating sex. It was something we were first oblivious to, right? Then we bumped up against it, and our come-ons to each other kinda missed the mark. Obviously not completely, but occasionally. And then, eventually, we found our way to not just ‘work through this disconnect’ but actually turn it into an asset for our relationship. But this whole time, we never really named it or even, really, discussed it aloud. Now is the time! Tell me your theory…

Joe:
Up for whatever / Up for whenever is the theory. And the easiest way to describe it would be with a metaphor.

Let’s use the metaphor of ice cream.

You would be satisfied if, very regularly, I cropped up at random moments and said to you, “Here, have some vanilla ice cream.”

Abby:
Ha! This is too perfect.

Joe:
You can have ice cream on a bus, on a beach, in the morning, in the evening, in the middle of the night. Wherever and whenever you’d always be happy to get some vanilla ice cream, and you’d be satisfied.

Abby:
Yes, in metaphor and not.

Joe:
Me on the other hand. I don’t need to have ice cream every day, but I do need to have a really indulgent kind of giant ice cream sundae of unusual flavors when I do have it. I am a more variety / indulgence person when it comes to ice cream.

Versus you, who maybe gets the novelty from the context. You like the vanilla ice cream in a different ornate china bowl, or at the beach, or up a mountain.

You’re up for whenever (and wherever), and if I’m going to eat ice cream, I want it less familiar.

Abby:
Oh, you’d have “ice cream” every day.1

Joe:
Of course, I’d have “ice cream” every day.

Abby:
But if it were only vanilla on the table, you’d pass.

Joe:
I just need a bit of perversion every week to feel myself.2

Abby:
Oh, don’t I know it *kiss wink*.

Joe:
But we’re not like sex nerds.

Abby:
We don’t have a safe word or anything.

Joe:
Hahaha.

Abby:
Not because we don’t value safety, or something, but, you know, we’re not adding labels and rules to shit. Unless that’s a part of the fun.

Joe:
Maybe there are times it could be useful.

Abby:
Yes, let’s discuss that haha.

Anyway, as with ice cream, the flavor of sex is less important to me than the quality. And I suppose I judge quality on connection, sure, but also on context. But in general, with ice cream, and sex, I am very easy to please.

The frequency and the type of sex we have doesn’t really make a difference to me feeling myself, but, yes, what does excite me most is the where/when. Like a quickie in a closet gives me joie de vive.

Joe:
Yes, you enjoy new experiences. And I like new things too. But I’d rather have two hours of really indulgent sex, where we get properly into it.

Abby:
Yes, I get more novelty from external, and you get that from more of an internal, interpersonal space.

Your longing for marathon-perverted-sex is fulfilled now, but back in those early days of our relationship, neither of us had shared – or perhaps even knew – this about ourselves.

Joe:
Yeah.

Abby:
And, for me, I was working from a, I guess, bias of men based on previous experiences. I was used to men who were simple-minded. They just wanted sex, period. The vagina and boobs were enough of a ‘what.’ So when I said, ‘How about now? ‘How about here?’ they were satisfied.

Joe:
Yeah, that’s exactly what I mean about being ‘satisfied’. I need more of an intellectual component, or a loss of the intellect. Or just something that is more in the mind and less mechanical. Indulgent is the best word for it.

Abby:
Yup, so my come-ons weren’t really hitting the mark. You never left me high and dry. And I learned about your needs eventually. But you weren’t necessarily bringing them to the table to begin with, either.

Why didn’t you? Did you not know this exactly, or were you not yet comfortable with me, or surprised by my approach?

Joe:
I would say a bit all of the above. Because you’re so intense with time. You’re a massive outlier on how you’re so purposeful with your time and fill your day with activities. So all the natural times that I would’ve had to initiate didn’t happen.

Abby:
I’m interpreting this as you were so dazzled by my drive that you didn’t want to stop my course of action *wink*. But, yes, I wasn’t used to an intellectual man, and you weren’t used to a type A American, hahah.

Joe:
Yeah, I think those discussions happen with proximity and boredom. And since we didn’t have the boredom…

Abby:
We were out and about a lot. In pubs. Going to gigs. Doing the life-experience shit that I prioritized.

Joe:
Exactly.

Abby:
Then COVID happened, and the lessons you were already inadvertently showing me – about the beauty of slowing down – started being forced upon me. And then, being a parent made me feel grounded in a way I’d never felt before. And I suppose that opened up the door for these moments of proximity and boredom.

Joe:
Yes. Another great benefit of having kids.3

Abby:
I think that’s where you see these erotic scripts are, on the surface, contradictory – you are a bit turned off by the ‘ok let’s have sex now because we have ten minutes’ – but when you put our scripts together, they actually feed off each other.

Joe:
Yeah, we have different contextual desires. But, really, you want to feel desired, cherished, kept, and kept on your toes.

Abby:
Yes *teary eyes*.

Joe:
And I need to feel that I get my opportunities to indulge myself. And those aren’t contradictory. The more satisfied you are, the more positivity there is in every aspect.

It’s a positive sum thing – if we have an indulgent 2-hour depraved shag-a-thon, then the horniness of that makes me more horny the whole week.

Also adding in how we make vids makes that even more the case – it gives me more indulgence, which inspires the spontaneity which you love.

Abby:
That’s exactly it. I think of sex more in a ‘where/when,’ but sex isn’t (and I know this is surprising to say given that I write about it so much) the thing I want so much as, yes, like you say – those expressions of love, the feeling cherished and noticed and known.

So when you put my core needs, my desire contexts, and your needs and contexts together, we both feel loved and satisfied. This is like love languages, except legit.

Joe:
Yes, it’s not zero sum, it’s a positive feedback type of thing.

Abby:
And we couldn’t have known these things about each other at the start of our relationship – so naturally, now that we do, we’re able to fulfill them for each other, and ourselves.

Joe:
Yes. I think our interests are also our strengths. I want the ‘whatever,’ and I also know what ‘whatever’ I want. Whereas you don’t suggest the contexts that appeal to you as readily.

Abby:
That’s true. I think the external context of where/when help me discover the ‘what’ that appeals to me. Getting frisky by the Mississippi made me suddenly crave anal, as an example.

Joe:
Hahaha, yeah.

Abby:
I am a bit simpler than you. I could honestly just have a kissing-to-penetration-to-oral-to-penetration routine, just plopped into new contexts. The kitchen counter, the bathroom at the pub, the morning, the evening. And through those moments, I’ve learned the best ways to touch me to give me my best orgasms. The external context brings me nuance and novelty. Which you’ve introduced me to, too, through roleplay.

Joe:
Yes, yes. But, there is risk for me to propose these contexts because you’re more varied than me in terms of… Sometimes you want to be the ‘disposable fuck doll’ and sometimes you want to be the ‘pampered empress.’

Abby:
Hahah, indeed. Like the other day when I came out wrestling and biting you. You thought I wanted to be roughed up.

Joe:
Hahah, yes, *crazy eyes* because what else would I think?

Abby:
Yes, yes. I am contradictory. But really, I just wanted to be a goofy brat and have you coddle me a bit.

Joe:
Biting and punching me, maybe, wasn’t the clearest way to communicate that, but I guess the misunderstanding was fun.

Abby:
It was fun, right? *Thinks about the safe word thing again*.

Joe:
Definitely.

Abby:
Those misunderstandings are a part of the play. You start roughing me up, and I can pivot it dramatically by calling you a bastard and telling you to hold me tight or lose me forever. And that’s hot.

Joe:
Yes, it was hot.

Abby:
And I suppose that’s a metaphor for our seven years together, and why we never thought our sex life was a problem. There have been misunderstandings, but we’ve been playing and learning.

Joe:
It is a good metaphor, because even though there might be minor moments when it steps in the wrong direction, overall it trends upwards. It’s also demonstrative of the fact that neither of us are monopolising the relationship and imposing anything on each other while the other just goes along with it for the sake of simplicity.

Abby:
I do have my cycles. That’s just me as a human woman, mother, creative, person with a job, etc. I think that’s why we haven't labelled it, even as we now know about it. We know these differences because they go beyond our sex life. I know you’re a heady man who just wants an excuse to get in his body. You know I’m a little neurotic and like external excitement. We slowly learned this through the context of our lives. And then, given that we know our sexual selves aren’t removed from our overall psyche, our sex life improves with our mutual understanding of each other.

Joe:
Yeah, I love that, it’s like peeling back the layers and seeing what you find, that’s what makes sex together so great.

Abby:
Aren’t we so cute? I love you.

Joe:
I love you.

Abby:
Ok, baby, how do you suggest others find their way to this point – to discover their disconnect and make it into a positive thing?

Joe:
You just buy a butt plug and say, “Oh, I bought a butt plug,” but not necessarily do anything with it then.

Abby:
Hahaha. That simple, eh? But, yes, I mean, that is it.

We found our flow by trying new things without pressure, bringing in new elements, and watching how we each reacted.

Try, notice, learn, repeat.

Which, really, is the same thing as the ‘miscommunication as play’ theory above.

Joe:
Exactly. Well, that’s made me horny.

Abby:
Then kiss me.

Then comment to tell me about your experience — are you a Joe, a me, or another type of love initiator?

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I bet you know the answer. If it’s not immediately to mind, I imagine it would come while you sat in a hot shower for ten minutes and thought of nothing other than arousal1.

Now, what do you need to do to have that come true?

We talk about dreams like they’re only available with our eyes closed, but really, it’s often so simple to see them, to have them, in real life. But how many people do the work to fulfill them?

Take my husband, Joe, for example. He’s hardworking. He only procrastinates on things like replacing the fridge light. He never compromises on his passions. He’ll only skip a meal for an emergency, and even then, he’d rather wait to enjoy his dinner. But even though sex is of equivalent life importance to him as cuisine, and even though he has me here, on a platter for him, every day, he doesn’t often take what he really, really wants.

We have sex. We have great sex. We’re both sexually satisfied. But there are still big, deep, dark, super longings he yearns for, but he doesn’t initiate.

In fact, we built a sexy activity with a tarot deck (I’ll explain this one day), and one of the cards symbolized his one true wish, and when we went to play, inside his mind, he hoped he wouldn’t get that card.

Guess which we pulled?

The thing he wanted more than anything, of course. The thing he was afraid to take.

Sometimes, it’s easier to accept dreams staying fantasies than to make them happen.

There’s mental anguish required to fulfillfantasies. Perhaps from a limiting self-image, fear of growing outside our comfort zone, shyness, shame, or, really, innumerable potential blocks. The one thing that connects them all is ourselves. We can blame society or circumstance. But ultimately, we cockblock ourselves.

I’ll share Joe’s dream and the sex we had after we pulled that card to demonstrate. But first, I’ll share my own cockblock, and how I work(ed) through it.

I’ve had many dreams I was once too afraid or too lazy to fulfill. To do the things I had to do in order to have them — rewire my brain and habits to be the person who had it, take the small steps, the big steps, until I’m walking the dream walk.

The first that comes to mind is how I wanted to have a relationship where my bisexuality wasn’t completely lost. It took being honest with myself and being honest with my partner. Which, practically, is a two-step process. But, emotionally, a heavy load.2

The other big one took longer. It’s how badly I wanted to be a writer.

I’m hardworking to the point that Joe chastises me for my unending putzing. I’m unafraid of effort and professional ambition. But writing — opening a word doc or grabbing a pen — felt so out of reach.

I wrote and hand-bound countless self-illustrated books as a kid. I sat at my mom’s Macintosh LC 580 for hours retyping Little House on the Prairie. But that ego developed, and culture imposed itself upon me, and before I realized, it’d been decades since I’d done the thing I really wanted to do because it scared me.

All I had to do was sit down and type enough to feel confident enough to put those words out there.

The mental is more Olympic than the physical.

I’m not lying when I say I wanted to vomit for the first 12 times I clicked publish on Happy Endings.

Why is it that we keep our deepest fantasies in the dark?

My Joe, who helped me get the nerve to finally put my stories out there, struggles with his own version of that.

When I asked him why, he said, “I think getting what you want all the time seems inappropriate.” He said he was afraid of being selfish. The way he talked about it, it was like he was so afraid he’d become Gollum, he restricted himself from what he really wanted.

But I think it’s more than that. He also said, “What if I take it too far?”

He wanted to protect me.

He said, “What if you thought I was a nutter?”

He wanted to protect himself.

But the overprotected are isolated from experience. From opportunity. From love.

After I fulfilled Joe’s wish this week, I told him that he not only deprived himself of his dream out of honor or fear, but also deprived me of the praise, gratitude, and love he had given me when he had his dream.

Really, you should’ve seen his face.

I want to see him living his dream every day. I want to see everyone living their dreams.

So, anyway, Joe’s dream…

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Some people are verbal processors, some are visual, some need to read the instructions. Some people don’t know what they feel until they journal. Some people need to talk things out.

No matter what kind of person you are, I’d bet that sitting down to write to your partner will be revelatory to you both. It always is to me (more on that below).

Everyone should write letters to those they love, whether romantic or not. To help you do just that, I’ve written a Happy Endings guide on how to write one yourself.

Collect Your Materials

1. Grab paper.

   1. The ultimate letter writing vibe is – I’m going the extra mile – so the whole tangible element is a must-do in my opinion.

   2. A letter should always fill more than the inside of a greeting card. So I prefer to bypass Hallmark and use loose-leaf or intentionally ripped notebook paper.

2. Grab a pen.

   1. I’m a G2 girl, but I also have a Kaweco Sport that I adore (with G2 inserts).

Before Pen Hits Paper

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I adopted her, a tiny tortoiseshell-colored longhair, with my ex’s daughter. The daughter was fourteen, and the cat was one. The daughter picked the cat, whose Shelter Name was Nymphadora — a Harry Potter reference. I renamed her Truly Scrumptious — a Chitty Chitty Bang Bang reference.

Four years earlier, before having a boyfriend with a daughter was an idea in my mind, I used to wash my hands every time I touched an animal. Even the indoor types. I was never a cat person. I was never an animal person. But living with cat owners, the girl and her father, acquainted me with the sweetness of caring for something and the companionship an animal offers. And once I was alone — no school pickups, no family dinners — the nights felt dark. Before Truly.

Truly lived with me for two years as I grieved — an old me, an old idea of the future, the ‘normal’ circumstance to fraternize with the daughter I so adored, or, as I often wondered, a latent grief for my mother.

Before Truly lived with me, she was another cat, too. A street cat. She’d even had babies, the shelter staff said. With me, she started to know the comforts of life, but not to the extent of the phrase... My life wasn’t exactly comfortable. I was, in some ways, in my street cat era (although the pregnancies would come later).

I learned, unlike Truly, that I would never be rescued. I needed to do that for myself. And to do so, I knew it meant moving somewhere a cat couldn’t join. My dad, who was always there for me after my mom passed, offered to be there for her while I went to Europe.

It had been two decades since my dad lost his wife, who wasn’t old enough to die. A year after we lost her, my dad got us a dog — a Welsh Corgi. Fifteen years later, when that dog passed, grieving wasn’t any easier. He told himself he’d ‘never do that again.’ Loss was too painful.

I moved to Europe. Then to England. My dad would send me SnapChats of Truly most days. Her laying beside his leg on his butter-yellow suede couch. Her chin on his knee. Him petting her back. She looked so comfortable.

It had only been a few months of their cohabitation when his sisters, my aunts, told me it’d be cruel to take Truly back. I knew it, too. I knew my dad would love Truly. She was a good cat. But it was more than that. My dad wouldn’t have taken a pet into his home if it wasn’t to help me out. But he ought to have. Truly was good for him. And he was good for her.

No matter how meant-to-be it felt, I still felt guilty for leaving my three-year-old cat. Like I felt for leaving that fourteen-year-old girl. Whether or not it was my choice, my fault, or my responsibility. No matter if it was too soon, too late. No matter the cause or timing, loss hurts.

This last August, Truly died. She was 10. It felt too soon.

She died while my husband, two boys, and I spent a few weeks in Minneapolis, where I grew up, where my dad lives, where Truly lived, and where my ex’s daughter lives.

I’d had dinner with that daughter the day before Truly died. We’ve stayed in touch all these years because we wanted to. We shared over this dinner things we’d not quite said out loud, though they were always obvious — we were so glad to have met each other, to be in each other’s lives, and though we wished things had worked out differently at the time, we know it was meant to be as it’s been.

I had to grow up. Out of the girl who didn’t like animals. Who hadn’t really grieved the big loss she’d had so young. To be ready to really welcome love. To have a family without holding back from all the losses that would surely come once more, but hopefully not too soon.

When my dad arrived to tell me that Truly was sick — really sick — the day after that dinner, I was surprised. Yet, for some reason, I was also not surprised.

Truly came into our lives to help us. She helped me. She helped my dad. And she was leaving during the three weeks of the year when she could say goodbye to us both. At a time in my dad’s life when there was still time for him to change his mind. To choose to do it one last time. To adopt a pet. To welcome love in.

My dad and I brought her to the emergency vet. As we sat alone, saying goodbye to our cat, Truly, he told me how he felt after our Corgi died so long before. How he’d sworn to never do this again. How it hurt too bad to lose someone. Yet here he was. I told my dad that I was glad he had the love he had when he had it. I was sad he wouldn’t have it anymore in his, god willing, another two/few decades. I knew it wasn’t what he wanted to hear, but I said, “You know, you could do it again.”

The next day, he said he’d thought about it.

I said I hoped he would. “I think Truly wants that.”

He scoffed. It sounded trite.

“No, really,” I said. “What are the odds she’d die when I was here? What are the odds she’d die this young? If she’d lived another decade, there’s no way you’d adopt another cat.”

He agreed. There was no way.

Truly was a gift to us all. Love, in all its forms, is a gift. But we must choose it — even if the timing doesn’t feel right, even knowing that one day the time will feel wrong. I think that’s what destiny is — timing. And knowing how big our world is, with billions of people and millions of cats, isn’t it magic to think you crossed paths with the right ones to find love? That sounds like great timing to me. Which I know is an odd way to describe dying, which is never great, but is just a matter of when. And why not see the when as divine?

I dedicate this piece to my friend, , who lost her cat last month.

Not a day goes by that I take your readership for granted. Thank you for choosing to celebrate love with me each Monday. I hope reading this trickles out into your real life loves.

This week is a Praxxxis week — I’ll see you in your inbox on Thursday.

I stood on a street corner with numb fingers, watching another street on my phone. A whistle in my ear. People near me in the real world walked by. I was unsure what the color of the sky was above.

My breath was lost. I asked for a sign. What should I do?

When I got home, my kids smiled and greeted me. Hi Mom! Everything inside was usual. But in the town I grew up in, where my dad lived, another man with the same name and profession as him was killed by people hired with my tax dollars.

I texted my dad as I got my family ready to leave: He was a male nurse named Alex.

Outside, crows screamed. I didn’t hear them. My kids did. A crow! They said it twice before I noticed. Where? I said. There. They pointed at the sky and the tops of the trees, and I saw nothing but the sky. It was so blue.

Our boys practiced swimming.

We bundled back up, wet hair under wool.

Look at the clouds, Mom, my kid said twice. I looked. They were mottled like coffee with cream before it's mixed. I saw a person in them.

At home, I couldn’t stop scrolling. I wanted more information. Nothing was enough.

Joe made me help him make biscuits. I pinched cold butter into flour. He poured in milk and cider vinegar. We mixed it. He rolled it and folded it. My baby helped. Little hands alongside my husband, Joe's, double-jointed thumbs.

I scrolled more.

We ate an English hot pot with American biscuits. It was the kind of meal that made you forget everything beyond the table.

I lay my head beside my children as they watch a movie.

I lay beside them as they fell asleep in bed.

I lay beside Joe on our couch. We watched a documentary about a tyrant, and I picked up my phone intermittently, scrolling, watching.

Our bed was cold before Joe got in. When he lay beside me, I wrapped around him. My head on his armpit. His arms held me around my neck. My legs bent between his. Our ankles tucked into each other’s. It felt safe. It even made us laugh. Then grow aroused. I left my mind.

We touched ourselves. We touched each other. I came with a vibrator on my clit as he pinched the sides of my vulva. His penis twitched twice in my mouth as it happened.

You came quick, he said.

It was all the cuddling. And where did you get the idea to do that pinch?

What can I say? Sometimes you’re called somewhere.

We laughed.

Yes, I called my reps with 5calls. Yes, I donated to the Women’s Foundation Immigrant Rapid Response and Community Aid Network MN and MN Rep Ilhan Omar, who has been helping immigrants (including my husband) since her political career began. But I was also called to look up and lie down.

I will never look away. I also can’t forget that my emotions are designed to be entangled with these scroll platforms. As I ask everyone to prepare for a general strike and boycott corporations, I can’t forget that my attention grows Meta’s ad revenue.

I can look at the atrocities, support my communities as my skills and resource allows, and I also need to look up at the sky, and lie down with my family, to maintain my humanity.

I’d love to hear how you’re holding your humanity together and what actions you’re taking to support others’ humanity. Let’s not forget we’re all under the same sky.

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After this year and a half of me waffling on in personal essay and storytelling format, I thought I’d start sharing useful practices that work in my love life (personal and interpersonal).

PraXXXis will be like My #1 Sex Tip – slightly surprising perspectives on how I seek satisfaction and joy in love, sex, and relationships – but more efficiently delivered. My tried-and-true, personally found and refined techniques, which, frankly, may or may not be useful to you (because you are unique, like me, but not me), but regardless, they will certainly be love-exhibitionistic, and (hopefully) entertaining.

Now, before I go ahead with it all, to kick this off with some fireworks, I’ll give away ten three-month paid subscriptions to the first subscribers to restack this post. (Sorry if that sounds ‘cliche saleswoman’ – I can’t help being who I am.)

Without further ado…

This is my (non)emergency guide for how to reconnect with a partner after a disconnect (i.e., fight, argument, miscommunication, disagreement, etc., etc.).

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The ‘POV’ content trend has been a cornerstone of feeds everywhere for the last five years. There are 92.5 million videos tagged as such on TikTok.

POV: You fell in love in Europe
You see a couple walking down a narrow cobblestone street, holding hands. Cut. They’re holding hands across a bistro table with flickering candles. Cut. Their leather shoes are touching under it.

POV: You won the husband lottery
You see a man in matching, tousled cotton pajamas, stirring eggs in a pot over the hob. Cut. He’s plating the eggs that look like custard with sliced avocado. Cut. He’s serving you at a wooden table with a printed cotton napkin.

Is this love?

No, it’s a microscopic moment, a vignette crafted for external consumption. It looks like love. Maybe even feels like love. But romanticized love is not romantic love.

Romanticized love is a reflection of romantic love. It is a bite of, a perspective of, romantic love. A singular POV. Humans have always confused the symbol for the thing itself. Alfred Korzybski called it mistaking the map for the territory.

I’ve wondered if our collective interest in warm-fuzzy, low-attention, high-feels pleasure hits might be rewriting our understanding of relationships. Are we measuring our real lives by the accumulated impression of many 12-second POVs stitched together in CapCut with a soundtrack and text overlay?

It wouldn’t be the first time visual media has influenced reality. We can debate culture-first phenomena versus culture-back. But if you ask me, Romanticized Love may be, could be, inevitably will be, like how porn was something you just watched to see something hot and then became the way people actually have sex. Porn’s influence over the ways young people have sex has been more severe, given the limited sex education they’ve had in comparison to the availability of porn. But isn’t that what young people are experiencing – more romanticized relationship content and less coupling up?

Speaking of, POV is the 13th most searched term on Pornhub in the US.

Humans create culture, then culture creates us. And repeat.

It’s the sometimes-conscious, frequently subconscious human habit of mirroring what we see around us. Our desire to belong. To not stand out as someone worthy of being kicked out of the community.

Relatedly, in certain circles, relationship avoidance is en vogue – like Chante Joseph pointed out in Vogue with “Is having a boyfriend embarrassing now?” Where, in decades previous, one might’ve chosen boyfriends with the romanticized publicly consumable moments like an engagement ring and wedding photos in mind. The phrases we hear, the images we see, the messages we receive, all build into habits, fears, and ways to measure ourselves against our peers.

Even the push-pull breakup drama romanticized in Sabrina Carpenter’s lyrics is an archetype of romanticized love. Feeling the passion and pain of incompatibility is a script we might inhabit without considering how satisfying it is or isn’t.

We’re drawn to recognizable narratives of love like we fall into patterns of living.

But those recognizable narratives are crafted from simplified stories, single perspectives, POVs. They’re Romanticized Love – what looks like love, but isn’t always what love feels like. There is a small overlap in the Venn diagram of what love looks like and what love feels like. That overlap is a beautiful place, no doubt, but expecting to inhabit short-form, romanticized romantic love in a long-form life will leave you disappointed. And love, done well, has disappointment, but isn’t disappointing.

To seek Romantic Love, we must free ourselves from these limited perspectives. Question our values and what drives our beliefs and behaviors, evaluate our choice to have a big wedding or not, and consume media without letting it dictate our lives.

We can dig into our hearts, instead of our minds, where what we know is so influenced by what we see or consume, and ask what do we really want to feel? Is it just society’s approval, or is it endearing love? And if it’s the latter, acknowledge that that feeling cannot be completely communicated in short-form content. Love is complicated. Love is rich. Love has challenges. Love isn’t always aesthetic. And love is far more pleasurable than entertainment ever could be.

Love, with true feeling and not the rose-colored expectations of an unreflective mind, is between two humans, not archetypes, not ideas, nor vignettes.

Every generation has had to separate genuine desire from cultural prescription, which Erich Fromm argued was a requirement of genuine love. What’s new is the scale and speed of the scroll.

This requires investing more in self-understanding than in how others perceive us. To stop measuring ourselves against POVs. To stop trying to shape the perception of ourselves in others’ minds. To spend less time in the plane of perception altogether, really.

We need to leave the POV. Open our peripheral vision, too, so our eyes can appreciate the whole plane of possible sight, feeling, awareness.

So that when we watch a POV reel on our phones, we can enjoy the entertainment without using it as a model for our lives.

I do enjoy an Instagram reels wind-down. My feed is more comedic, educational, and politically active than the videos I’m referencing here. They’ve certainly come through, but all in all, I appreciate my algorithm. I think some of our time’s most creative and intellectual minds are using social media as an impactful tool. If you’re a social user, remember to craft your feed with your heart and mind in mind, and to always interrogate your desires.

Whenever there’s a crisis in Minneapolis, I can’t sleep. It’s like the city, the state, is a part of my nervous system. Even if my time zone is 1 to 7 hours different1. But with all this practice the last decade has given me, my body knows a little about how to keep my blood pumping to what matters. I know how to keep love close and below my heart, so as not to lose my life.

I spent more time in parks this week than usual. With one kid, with both kids, with my husband Joe. Even once, while FaceTiming my dad back in MN.

Joe and I had sex a lot.

I was surprised that I felt arousal. When Joe’s hand grabbed my butt as I passed him by the kitchen, I felt it. I knew I wanted him to do it again, but in a specific way. I grabbed his hand and guided him; His finger tips pointing into my diamond — that part where the inner cheeks meet, above where the inner thighs meet.

After putting our kids to bed that night (which I never rushed, not once this week2), I walked out to find Joe reading on the couch, and I told him, “You know, it would be possible for me to get really horny.”

He said, “Could?”

“Yes. If I were touched the right way, I might get desperate for you.”

He looked me up and down and laughed.

I said, “It’s like how you sometimes say you could really go for a cup of tea, and would you put the kettle on. I need you to put the kettle on.”

“I’ll put the kettle on,” he said, and filled the kettle and set it on the stove.

When he walked back out of the kitchen, he said, “Go grab some things.”

“Things?” I said.

“You know, a vibrator of choice.”

So I did. I went to our box(es) of sexual artifacts. The vibrators I kept from the times before him, but never charged. The vibrators we bought together. The glass dildo shaped like a chili pepper. The suede flogger.

Looking at it all, I felt it was unnecessary. I wouldn’t have grabbed anything if it were up to me. I wouldn’t have bothered orgasming at all, actually. He asked, so I obliged. I grabbed the ones that felt beautiful and sturdy.

I lay the gold Crave necklace vibrator, the squishy pink seashell-shaped vibrator, the dark blue glass butt plug, and the silver metal double-sided curved dildo, and then myself on a blanket on the living room rug.

He brought me a Blow Job tea without naming it as such. He added milk to it, which he’d done by accident the other day, and then I asked for on purpose because it felt so comforting. Then he sat beside me.

He wore his forest green LA Apparel cotton shorts and nothing else. His chest looked hairy and broad. His toes had some fluff between them. I stroked his toes, slowly removing the fluffs, as we both drank from our hot cups.

When he finished his drink, he lay on his side alongside me. He reached up under my shirt and petted the side of my body. His hands felt calloused. It was soothing.

“You’re so soft,” he said.

“Mmm,” I said. I did feel myself softening.

“Look at your little altar,” he said.

“Hah,” I said. “I thought they’d look good together.” The word ‘altar’ felt more religious, or woo, than I was, which, I knew, was an arbitrary scale and the narcissism of small differences. So I let go of my biases and thought that indeed, it was an altar.

He told me later, after the altar was used, cleaned, and put back away, that the word altar comes from altitude. It means the things you raise up. I arranged objects to hold up and uphold what is most important in my life — the feeling of love. So that I could keep going. Keep love in my heart, and keep sharing it with other hearts.

What we did with those things might not matter, exactly, but perhaps the recounting will bring some positive recalibration to your life, too.

He said, “Take this off,” nodding to the shirt keeping him from me.

I did. And my trousers. And my underpants, which were the same shade of pink as the vibrator. Then I scootched my butt and lay back along the furry blanket beside my husband.

He guided me onto my side, away from him, so my butt would face him. He raised it up. He kissed me there, from behind. His face into the diamond. He breathed me in.

I sighed.

He rolled me back onto my back, then…

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I don’t actually know what the teachers or other parents think of me. But I do know what anonymous strangers online think, because here – under my real name – I write about my sex life as a married mother. And some people find that troubling.

They say, "What about her kids?" “Doesn’t she think about her kids?”

This didn’t surprise me. I grew up in the Midwest, where deviation was noticed. I know the pressures of peers within a conformist culture.

So before anyone had the chance to suggest I was endangering my children, I asked the question myself. I posed it to my husband. “How will Happy Endings affect our boys?”

His confused expression told me everything. He grew up with a mother who would paint watercolors from the Brian Duffy Pirelli Calendars and hang them in the bathroom. Sex wasn’t taboo in his home. Mothers and sexuality were never mutually exclusive concepts in his mind.

He said, “Our kids are a product of sex. They might find it gross, but parents are always gross in one way or another.” He said they’ll know their parents shag – it’s obvious. And besides, the moral judgment aimed at me was never about our children.

The moral judgement was panic, triggered by my openness, in people who never questioned the box they live within.

Isn’t it funny that moral panic so often disguises itself as child welfare? Like the ‘traditional marriage’ ideologues who worry about tots raised in homes outside of the two-parent heterosexual script. Or those Internet warriors commenting concerns over a stranger’s toddler’s screen time.

They’re afraid of something, but it isn’t gay marriage and YouTubers teaching sign language through nursery rhymes.

It’s deviation itself.

Something different registers as dangerous. Deviation becomes deviance. Their worldview is bound by a box that was supposed to keep them safe, but never actually did.

All this moral uproar makes me think of The Scarlet Letter, which was required reading even in my suburban Midwest school. Most people remember the terror of being labeled an outsider. Fewer seem to remember that Hester’s openness didn’t destroy her, but Dimmesdale’s secrecy destroyed him.

Anonymous internet users believe that expressing my sexuality in public harms my children. The alternative they’re proposing is silence. And silence is a known harm.

In the home I grew up in, sex was so taboo my dad couldn’t even say the word. He called it “hugging and kissing.” My budding desire felt illicit. Where there is secrecy, there is shame. Where this is shame, there is fear. Where there is fear, education struggles.

Leaving the box I was born into made me more responsible about desire, my truth, and the systems’ secrecy serves.1 Being raised in a home where sex wasn’t taboo made my husband a self-assured man, a whole human, a sexually satisfied person, and a great partner.

Everyone technically has the opportunity to peep on their parents. Bedroom doors are as easy to open as internet browser tabs. But who really does?

I never went looking. I didn’t want details. I just wanted to know my dad was human, and that it was okay for me to be human too.

When my children become aware of my sex writing, I imagine they’ll ignore it. Their friends might not. But frankly, it will still be a far more grounded education than whatever algorithmic mess they’d otherwise stumble into online.2

In our home, sex is not taboo. Our kids already know that babies come from intercourse. They know about their bodies. That erections are a biological mechanism. They know it might feel good someday, but right now they think it’s a major inconvenience.

Our kids may get embarrassed by my openness, but I hope they will never feel ashamed about their sexuality. And whatever frightens them in life, I will do my best to make sure it’s not me or their humanity.

Anonymous internet users: if you ever find the courage to recognize moral panic as discomfort with an inherited worldview, you too might discover relief beyond precedent and groupthink.

Then maybe your kids, like mine, won’t experience sex as fundamentally different from picking their nose, as my boss Cindy Gallop says.3 Something everyone does. Something to do safely, given nosebleeds and the risk of spreading germs. Something most people keep private, not because it’s shameful, but because it’s personal.

They might, unlike their mom, choose privacy. But that is different than silence.

Secrecy corrodes people. Honesty exposes them. Only one of those actually harms anyone. If you didn’t learn that in 10th grade from The Scarlet Letter, here’s the reminder. The danger was never a woman who refused to hide. It was the culture that demanded the hiding in the first place.

The best gift I can give my children is to model being unafraid. To be wholly myself – to do the work I’m called to do, to tell the truth, and show them that sex, and the art it inspires, is a healthy part of a fully lived life.

And for everyone else, I’ll wear a hat that labels me as such.