Photo by Mike Taing/Freeform | Edited by Paige Vahla

This essay is part of Blurred Li(n)es — a BLUSSSH series examining the complicated overlap between friendship, attraction, intimacy and sex. New here? Start with the introduction.

Roles.

We all occupy them. We all assign them, consciously or not.

They shape how we’re seen.

They dictate what we’re given.

They limit what we feel entitled to expect.

No matter the form — situational, social, or emotionally driven — we exist within them.

Whether we like it, admit it, or resist it, some are rigid, others calculated, many simply convenient. The worst are inherited.

But none of them are accidental.

Within heterosexual friendships, there’s a position some women occupy without realising. A confidante in name, something else in practice. Not as clearly defined as a girlfriend or an ex.

This position thrives in ambiguity.

It’s the woman he vents to about both, and everything else he doesn’t say out loud. She becomes the stabiliser, but is still extracted like a mistress.

An emotional side piece.

So, what’s the difference between an emotional side piece and his “female best friend”?

A female best friend is chosen. An emotional side piece is relied on.

That’s what makes this so difficult to identify.

It blends, but never fully settles into friendship. And because of that, it doesn’t always feel complex. It feels natural, the way chemistry often does.

But chemistry has a way of blurring focus.

Especially in opposite-sex friendships, where emotional closeness can easily be mistaken for harmlessness.

And that’s what makes friendships like these so controversial. There’s room for projection, attraction, denial, and emotional dependency — all while insisting it’s just “friendship.”

That’s where the emotional side piece thrives. Where nothing is crossed, yet the energy makes platonic feel intimate beyond simply valuing each other as friends.

The shift is subtle, but enough to redistribute the role those feelings begin to play. You stop just being someone he feels close to, and become the emotional crutch he uses to stabilise himself elsewhere.

It rarely happens all at once.

You become the person he calls after an argument. The one he trusts to “make sense of it.” The one who helps him articulate what he won’t say to her.

And from there, the friendship starts to change.

You’re positioned as the one who understands him. And it becomes instinctive to meet that person.

To steady him.

To reassure him.

To hold emotional space for him in ways that subtly exceed friendship.

It’s no longer bonding. It’s outsourcing.

And that’s part of what makes the position so alluring.

As much as you’re extracted from, you haven’t been physically touched. The ambiguity can make the role feel simultaneously elevated and secure while remaining fundamentally fragile.

Because patterns like this rarely feel imbalanced at first. They feel like connection. And eventually, you stop being just a friend and become someone helping manage his emotional world.

But why is it still called friendship?

It still looks like friendship.

You call. Spend time together. Know each other intimately.

There’s history. Shared spaces. A level of familiarity that feels earned.

You’ve seen each other through a lot, and that leaves an imprint. The structure of the friendship is real. In fact, it’s the spine of what you have.

But that doesn’t make these friendships neutral.

Attention feels good. Being the person someone turns to can create its own sense of intimacy and importance — especially when some part of you enjoys being emotionally chosen too.

And that’s part of what creates the tension around opposite-sex friendships.

Not always because something physical is happening, but because something intimate already is. Like an affair, it can offer a different version of connection to the one waiting at home. A different energy. A different audience. A different version of the self.

I found that projecting a pedestalised version onto them often ricocheted back onto me. It gave me access to intimacy without the weight of real accountability.

Ironically, the perceived detachment only made the friendship feel more emotionally significant.

Which is why the girlfriend is often expected to dismiss her discomfort as insecurity, while simultaneously sensing that this woman may have access to parts of him she no longer does — or perhaps never fully did.

And when something is lacking elsewhere, the friendship can slowly become the primary emotional outlet. What starts as openness slowly turns into emotional dumping. Conversations he wouldn’t have elsewhere begin landing with you. Framed in a way that centres his feelings while softening accountability.

And as the emotional side piece, you make space for it.

In doing so, you reinforce a version of him that never has to fully confront itself — a version he then carries back into his other relationships. Over time, the imbalance starts to surface. You feel it in the weight of the conversations. In how much of him you’re holding. In how little of you is being met in return.

And ultimately, the arrangement benefits him more.

He’s able to straddle both worlds. The girlfriend he commits to. And the woman he tells her not to worry about.

It’s safer to be the woman he can’t break up with.

Eventually, you’re no longer being seen. Only used.

And once that happens, what exactly is left of the friendship?

The friendship triangle

I’ve found it’s never black and white, but it is usually triangle-shaped. I used to find a strange comfort in that. Understanding my position and acting accordingly.

Because there’s almost always a third position. You’re not just in relation to him. You’re in relation to her, too. Even if she’s never named or present.

But I benefited from it. I got to feel chosen — even if it was in a restricted, slightly rigid way. There was safety in existing around the centre of something, rather than inside it. Less exposure. Less direct impact. Less responsibility.

At least, that’s what I told myself.

Because while you may not be the primary target, proximity still comes with consequences. Sometimes, you just forget about the stray bullets.

It can pull you into a quiet competition, as ego, attachment, and protectiveness begin surfacing in ways neither of you fully acknowledge.

Just as the friendship begins threatening her position, it starts threatening yours too — particularly when, in many cases, you were there first.

But there’s usually something more complicated underneath it. You like the feeling of being meaningful. Of being different to other women.

And you realise it’s safer to be the woman he can’t break up with.

Because maybe then, he’ll never leave.

Final thoughts: the cost of being a function, not a friend

But at what cost?

Because eventually, the role starts warping more than just the connection itself.

It affects how you relate to others. What you tolerate. How much emotional weight you’re willing to carry just to preserve closeness.

Over time, you begin confusing emotional intensity with emotional safety. Availability with care. Being needed with being valued. And the imbalance rarely stays contained.

It bleeds into your boundaries. Your relationships. The way you see yourself.

There’s emotional depth, but very little accountability in the spaces where the friendship stops behaving like friendship. Because eventually, you stop relating to each other as people and start relating to each other through function. And once connection becomes positional, the friendship begins organising itself around emotional utility instead of reciprocity.

That’s the real cost.

Not just overextending. Not just blurred boundaries. But slowly abandoning yourself in order to maintain a role that was never designed to hold you properly in the first place. Because maybe the hardest part isn’t realising you were never fully chosen.

It’s realising you were afraid of losing a friend you never really had.

Rachel Green in Friends (1994). © Warner Bros. Television

I love love. But I don’t think I understood the practice of it. That was my first problem.

For much of my life, love has felt hypothetical. Always just ahead of me — contingent on someone else’s readiness, their healing, their decision to stay. It hasn’t had the space to be patient or kind. It’s been reactive, driven more by urgency than safety.

And yet, love has always been my organising principle — the lens through which I connect, imagine, and make meaning. Motherhood has stabilised it. Made it more precise. It healed me and humbled me, sometimes in the same breath.

But what I never questioned was whether, in my pursuit of love, I had centred men in order to receive it. Whether I had allowed romantic attention to dictate how lovable I believed myself to be.

We don’t just want love. We want proof that we are worthy of it.

The irony: to decentre men, I first had to examine how deeply they were embedded in my sense of self. Men were the entry point. The real work was me.

When people discuss centring men, they usually mean the obvious stuff: performing for attention, orienting your life around male approval, dating strategically, treating friendships as placeholders until a man shows up.

That was never me.

I wasn’t chasing men or rotating through them. I spent most of my twenties in a relationship. I rarely looked elsewhere, beyond the occasional flicker of noticing someone attractive and moving on. I wasn’t trying to compete. In fact, I thought I had already won.

I’m a serial monogamist. All in or not at all. I can’t exist in the ambiguous for too long. I need clarity. I value my time, so you can’t take too much of it without intention.

So when conversations about decentring men circulate, I’ve never recognised my adult self in them. Teenage me? Sure. Some family and friends? Absolutely. But not me, not then.

Or so I thought.

Centring men doesn’t always look like pursuit. It isn’t always loud. For many of us, it’s internalised early.

Pop culture, socialisation, family conversations — the expectations we absorb without questioning. Over time they settle into our self-perception like second skin, shaping not only how we understand love, but how we pursue it.

There’s a spectrum to it. It’s subtle, personal, often unconscious. It doesn’t look one way, even if certain traits and characteristics are easier to detect. And at the core of it is one consistent thread: being chosen. Being desired. Being safe in the knowledge you are wanted.

For a long time, I mistook this for relational security. After spending much of my young adult life partnered, desirability became tethered to stability. Being wanted meant being anchored. Love felt like protection.

Over time, being wanted curdled into possession. That stability I craved? Isolation. Objectification disguised as desire.

And I realised this had very little to do with what I wanted, everything to do with what I feared losing.

So no, I didn’t perform for men while single. But to stay in love with my man? Oh, I would tap dance to any beat. Soften my posture. Lower my expectations to meet their emotional limitations. Endure inconsistency — and even blatant disrespect — as if tolerance itself proved my worth.

I thought I was loving deeply. I didn’t realise I was auditioning for a role I didn’t even want.

So what does it actually mean to be a pick me?

It’s a specific strain of self-abandonment, even if the name suggests otherwise. The kind that comes from organising your identity around being chosen, mistaking endurance for virtue, and shrinking yourself, and sometimes others, to stabilise the person whose approval you’re trying to secure.

Pick-me-ism performs as the prize while pedestalising the chooser.

So, when an adolescent Paige asks her mother why she stayed with a man she knew she shouldn’t have, the answer — probably an echo of her own mother’s — is simple: “It’s better the devil you know than the angel you don’t.”

Other women — especially the ones you perceive as your equals or above — can threaten your position. Insecurity can fracture even solid friendships once male attention reshapes the dynamic. Comparison takes root. Relationships between women become murkier, more strategic. And if an opportunity appears between the man you want and the friendship, the latter becomes expendable.

It starts to feel like survival — of your sense of self. But the most insidious part is how easily that instinct can warp morality.

In my Congolese culture there’s a phrase: kanga motema — which literally translates to “close your heart” in Lingala. It’s often spoken with quiet understanding, a kind of inherited wisdom passed between women. But what it really means is learning to harden yourself to what you can’t change in your relationship. To endure mistreatment without letting it break you. To accept that some things will hurt, and to keep going anyway.

So, when an adolescent Paige asks her mother why she stayed with a man she knew she shouldn’t have, the answer — probably an echo of her own mother’s — is simple: “It’s better the devil you know than the angel you don’t."

So they endure with the belief that love is proven by what you withstand. I grew up watching tolerance reframed as maturity.

My ability to eventually walk away from unhappy situations was often framed as being “unforgiving.”

My mother would tell me to learn how to “let things go.” In the culture she grew up in, women were expected to hold love together quietly “through ups and downs” — even when the downs were often just a cloak for deal breakers.

Because once being chosen becomes the goal, almost anything can start to feel justified in the pursuit of it.

How it disguises itself as a virtue

That kind of loyalty to a romantic partner can easily be rationalised as principled. Patient. Understanding. It can even disguise itself as emotional intelligence.

But you can’t be the bigger person by making yourself small. You tell yourself that if you can endure more, regulate better, explain softer, you’ll be the one he comes home to — and therefore the one who is safe.

“Through ups and downs” becomes shorthand for what we tolerate. But being the “stable base” isn’t reciprocated to the same extent. The shine of the badge of honour that comes with being chosen eventually dulls.

But it still represents proof that you were good enough to keep. And once you believe that, the disposability of being “picked” becomes easier to ignore — even when you are kept, but never truly valued.

And it isn’t limited to romance.

Pick-me-ism can show up in friendships with men too. The belief that proximity to men in this dynamic grants you “insider” status, positioning you as the woman he confides in, the “female best friend”, the “cool girl” who provides emotional reassurance and ego validation.

It can feel like elevation above the “dramatic girlfriend” he vents about.

It feels like intimacy. In reality, you’re performing a role inside another stereotype.

Realising I was only a costume change away from another role inside the same male-centred system forced me to confront something uncomfortable: my performance wasn’t positioning me as a participant in a reciprocal relationship. Just a function.

Once I saw that clearly, something else became harder to ignore. Loving men had started to feel like a liability.

Why does loving men now seem like a liability?

It isn’t because love is dangerous. It’s because what I once called love wasn’t always rooted in understanding my own needs. It was rooted in learning how to meet someone else’s instead.

When you don’t know what you require to feel safe, you start mirroring what they need instead. You become fluent in their emotional language and slowly forget your own. What feels like devotion is often just adaptation.

We tolerate too much and call it patience. We give too many chances and call it grace. We baby people who know they should do better but simply don’t want to — and if we’re honest, sometimes neither do we. Not yet. Because confronting it would mean confronting ourselves.

This is the audition.

This is where emotional labour becomes a tug-of-war of egos. Managing his to regulate mine. Arguing not for resolution but for reconnection. Softening my tone mid-argument to avoid escalation. Editing myself to keep the room calm.

The possibility of abandonment isn’t just painful. It’s disorienting at the level of identity. If being chosen has become your proof of worth, losing that choice feels like losing yourself.

So we attach being wanted to being safe. No matter what it costs us. Because we’ve invested too much to leave — and walking away would mean admitting the role was never secure in the first place.

The silence after the audition

The alternative was silence and what it would dredge up. No more constant dopamine hits from male attention. No more half-available men orbiting. No more ego reinforcement disguised as connection. I knew the phone would go quiet — and it did.

But what unsettled me wasn’t their absence. It was my participation in the unhealthy dynamics of my relationships. Admitting that I helped keep the wheels turning in those toxic, cyclical relationships.

The unpredictability and chaos I once called chemistry kept me activated.

I was addicted to being addicted to someone.

The validation felt like intimacy. Attention felt like connection.

For years, I blurred the difference.

Once my phone stopped ringing, I was forced to detox. It wasn’t just administrative. It was a new reality.

Detoxing meant more than deleting, blocking and ignoring the quarterly re-entry texts from men who resurface when their options thin out.

It meant leaving unfinished business unfinished. No longer replying out of boredom. No longer mistaking horniness for longing. No longer doing things “for the plot” when I had already seen the spoilers.

It was confronting a lesson I had always known but avoided fully feeling: If your desirability disappears the moment you stop performing, it was never rooted in desire for you — only in what they could extract from you.

A hard realisation many recovering people-pleasers — and pick-mes — eventually have to face.

When you organise your self-worth around being chosen, abandonment isn’t just painful. It’s destabilising.

Some of the men disappeared because they preferred the performance. Some of them disappeared because I stopped making it easy. And some disappeared because their access, without genuine effort, was revoked.

None of these men actually liked me. And once they stopped calling, I realised how loudly their presence had been drowning out my ability to form a true sense of self.

But in that silence, I could finally hear myself — my needs, not the echoes of who I thought they wanted me to be.

Loving myself doesn’t mean rejecting men

But something interesting happened: neutrality was interpreted as bitterness. Boundaries were reframed as hostility. Not over-explaining became coldness. Not entertaining became arrogance. Decentring men, apparently, looked like hating them.

Even when all I was doing was writing about the lessons I’ve learned through my own experiences.

It comes with the territory. Writing about sex often invites the attention of men who mistake my art for availability.

Sex used to be one of my entry points to connection. But abstaining has shown me how often intimacy became a shortcut to attention — or an easy way to bypass repair and retreat into make-up sex instead.

That combination — intermittent reinforcement, trauma bonding, and sex — can create the illusion of a deep imprint.

When you start changing the terms of that dynamic, it can feel like rejection to the other person. Sometimes it even triggers entitlement, as if you’ve suddenly switched the rules of a game they were used to winning.

And when someone has managed to pull you back in before, they don’t always take the shift seriously.

Those reactions showed me who wasn’t equipped to be for me what I had once been willing to be for them.

And that kind of clarity only comes once the performance stops.

Final thoughts: I’m open to love, just without a script

I didn’t decentre men overnight. And I didn’t do it because I stopped wanting love.

I still want partnership. I still want intimacy that’s lived and shared — not just understood in theory.

What changed isn’t the desire.

It’s the terms.

For a long time I confused settling down with settling. I mistook endurance for devotion and proximity for love. I thought choosing someone meant learning how to make myself smaller so the relationship could survive.

I don’t do that anymore.

The way I love is expansive. It always has been. I’ve just stopped compressing it into relationships that require me to disappear. Now I give that love back to myself — not as a consolation prize, but as a practice.

And if someone enters my life, it will be because they add to that rhythm, not because I’m willing to interrupt it just to be chosen.

For the first time, love feels like something I can practise without leaving myself behind.

Photo by Alyssa Longchamp/Netflix © 2023 | Edited by Paige Vahla

If there’s one thing a bad romantic relationship will teach you, it’s that your biological clock has an internal alarm.

One that sounds when life loses momentum.

It doesn’t care if you’re still in recovery from heartbreak. There is no snooze button.

And yet we’re expected not to miss a beat — even when the structure of our lives has collapsed practically as well as emotionally.

So if we lose more than we gain from a romantic entanglement, why does it feel taboo to name what it interrupted — and easier to turn the blame back on ourselves?

Why must there always be a lesson, when sometimes all that was taken was time?

Let’s just say it plainly: the damage of a misaligned relationship stalls lives.

It halts trajectories.

It siphons energy.

Resources.

Identity.

It forces survival mode under the guise of co-dependency in an environment that’s supposed to encourage growth and expansion. Over time, all that minimisation narrows your worldview and breeds containment in a way that’s suffocating.

A misaligned relationship doesn’t always look dramatic — it looks like constant self-editing, emotional labour that isn’t reciprocated, and a life slowly reorganised around what feels safest rather than what’s possible.

We hear that single people tend to have better mental health outcomes than those in unhappy relationships. Research from the UK’s Mental Health Foundation has consistently shown that it isn’t having a partner that matters, but the quality of the relationship — and its psychological impact.

No wonder we’re wiped out when we finally leave, arms outstretched for some kind of relief — from someone, something, or simply the weight itself.

And there’s almost always attachment residue, sometimes calcified by a lingering trauma bond.

It’s never a clean break, no matter the intention. Long after the relationship ends, you’re left rebuilding routines, plans, and parts of yourself you didn’t realise you were mourning.

It rewires everything.

That’s what lingers — the knowledge that you don’t return to who you were before, only to who you have to become next.

Heartbreak is the feeling but delay is the damage

Survival mode isn’t always something you consciously realise you’re in. You move through the motions of living on muscle memory and the relationship becomes part of that regimen.

Over time, all of it compounds. Not into stability, but into erosion.

Often, heartbreak doesn’t arrive first. Numbness does. A quiet disconnection. A low-grade dissatisfaction with a dynamic that feels familiar enough to tolerate, even as it slowly drains you.

Because who’s to say what’s on the other side is any better? And yet, refusing to find out carries its own consequences.

As a woman who stayed, I know it’s not always because you want to. Sometimes it’s because every next move has to account for other lives, not just your own.

The effects of overstaying in a relationship don’t usually announce themselves all at once. They are subtle, showing up in places you don’t immediately connect with the relationship at all. What begins as emotional containment starts to bleed outward — into how you work, how you plan, and how you see yourself.

Over time, the damage spreads. Not always dramatically, but persistently. Ambition stalls. Confidence thins. Follow-through falters. Choices narrow. The future starts to shrink to whatever feels manageable in the moment.

For some of us, staying is about knowing exactly what leaving would cost — and choosing the option that keeps everyone intact for now. That kind of endurance doesn’t get the respect it deserves. It is prone to being misread as passivity — sometimes even stupidity — when it’s anything but.

As a woman who stayed, I know it’s not always because you want to. Sometimes it’s because every next move has to account for other lives, not just your own. In my case, my children. My income. My future.

It wasn’t a sacrifice, it was a strategy. And with the cards you’re dealt with in life, you have to consider the moves that work for you. I waited for a route to real safety and freedom to become possible, and when it did, I took it. Still, there are moments of guilt. Of regret. Of insecurity surrounding wishing I had known certain things sooner — even while understanding that without what I lived through, I wouldn’t know what I need to know now.

And yet, even when the opinions of others shouldn’t matter — being reduced to a stereotype still hurts. The bitter baby mum. The single woman. The unmarried one. I made those choices for myself and the life I want, but in a society that treats being over thirty without a partner as failure, that decision is still socially read as rejection by the man I actually walked away from.

Those feelings are messy and often conflicting, and I let them exist. I feel them when the waves hit, without trying to resolve them into something neat. Because the truth is, I could only ever make the right choices for the situation I was in — and that’s all any of us can do.

Not every loss is a lesson…and that’s okay

Some things should not be reframed to relieve the sting of heartbreak. At times, reframing doesn’t heal — it distorts. There are experiences you’re not meant to grow from. The soil is unviable. You need to be pulled out by the root, not replanted in the same conditions that caused the decay.

Glossing over that truth isn’t just a form of denial — it’s forced emotional regulation dressed up as healing.

We’re often unable to express an honest response when we’ve been diminished, blatantly manipulated, or covertly abused — no matter what that emotion is.

That same instinct — to suppress pain rather than honour it — shows up again in the way we’re taught to be gracious about what cost us weeks, months, and sometimes years.

I’ve had short-lived talking stages leave a deeper emotional imprint than longer, slow-burn relationships. Duration isn’t the same as impact. All of it is shaped by the same demand: to make ourselves palatable when we already know we won’t be heard anymore.

Because let’s be real, at some point it can feel embarrassing to openly mourn someone for significantly longer than you knew them.

There’s growing evidence that chronic emotional suppression doesn’t disappear quietly — it shows up in the body, in illness, in burnout, in isolation, in collapse.

And yet we’re encouraged to manage that fallout as a lesson. Doing so doesn’t just soften reality, it absolves harm and skips accountability.

It teaches us that every rupture needs a conclusion before we’re allowed to move on. That there’s a window where a strong emotional reaction is acceptable, and after that it must be concealed so we don’t appear bitter, difficult, “stuck” or defined by what we’ve been through.

But you can acknowledge something took from your life without letting it define your future. You can move forward without pretending it was worth it. You can do so in pain — without polishing it into emotional stoicism.

Final thoughts: structural pauses aren’t personal failures

Life doesn’t move in straight lines — even though we’re taught to expect it to. Delay, in this context, isn’t personal. It’s situational. It’s responsive. And it often reflects responsibility, survival, and circumstance far more than choice.

Many of us were never taught how to hold big emotions. We’re learning on the job — and when those feelings surface, the instinct is often the same: to turn them inward rather than let them move through us.

Instead of riding them, we’re crushed by them. Anger, grief, and disappointment don’t pass through — they’re muted or prematurely “resolved”. We default to minimisation. We tell ourselves it didn’t hurt that much.

I’ve learned that when you name harm instead of softening it — you can find yourself poorly received by those who have hurt you and refuse to be held accountable for it. Not because you’ve suddenly grown fangs and become a villain, but because clarity forces other people to confront feelings they would rather project than process.

There has to be a justification. A story that protects their self-image. And sometimes we do the same thing to ourselves. We rewrite our own pain to make it easier to live with.

This year, I’m choosing something different. I’m making capacity for myself — for the discomfort, the grief, the uncertainty. Because making space for my emotions doesn’t keep me stuck in rumination. It’s what creates acceleration.

And we all know that healing also doesn’t move in a straight line. It looks like reactivated wounds. Going no contact. Trying. Failing. Trying again. And while that space can be necessary, it can also become isolating if we mistake withdrawal for repair.

What we call “late” is often just untimely by someone else’s standard. And that standard was never built with survival, responsibility, or reality in mind.

Yes, time can’t be returned. But momentum can always be rebuilt. Neither truth exists to justify the other.

Photo by Erika Doss/Amazon Prime Video

I think I fell in love with my first best friend.

In the innocent way a six-year-old projects ideals and mistakes closeness for love.

Sometimes I wonder, now as a thirty-two-year-old woman, whether that was the first quiet blueprint for how I learned to be emotionally safe around men.

Or whether it was influenced by my single-parent household. Perhaps I was more drawn to male intimacy because I grew up without the anchor of a present father.

It never really felt like a wound, though. More like a groove. Something that makes you flinch when pressed — often by friendships that veered out of platonic territory, then back in it.

No wonder I’m writing this piece.

I wasn’t opposed to the friends-to-lovers trope. It always felt like the most ideal version of romance. And yet, I’ve found myself in situations where familiarity — the very basis of its appeal — became corrosive to the friendship.

In fact, research suggests that around two-thirds of romantic relationships begin as friendships, with people falling in love with someone they once thought was just a friend. Other studies show it’s common for people in opposite-sex friendships to experience ongoing sexual or romantic interest — not just retrospectively, but within the friendship itself.

It made sense in theory, but carried too much risk in practice.

So I keep coming back to the same question: Can people who are capable of attraction to one another really be friends?

Or am I overestimating my own ability to do so without it costing me something?

I’ve learned — slowly, repeatedly, and sometimes harshly — how easily lines blur when emotional proximity, access, and ambiguity are left unspoken.

Assumptions can’t replace boundaries in friendship

For most of my adult life, men have sat at the centre of my relational world.

The ones who left.

The male best friends.

The crushes.

The situationships.

The partners.

And I can see myself moving through all of it — weaving, adapting, trying to mould myself around each connection. Always with the same goal: to preserve them for as long as possible.

That, I’m realising now, was my first mistake.

Anything — or anyone — that costs you yourself usually is. It’s never a fair exchange. I treated boundaries like contractual fine print. And let’s be real — who ever reads that? When those invisible lines were crossed, there was no language for it. Only collapse.

Resistance hadn’t been learned in these dynamics — just surface-level ease and vibes.

It created the illusion that attraction could be managed — or ignored — and left to hover nearby, like a fly circling a window it would eventually find its way back through.

Sometimes it did.

Often, it didn’t.

Because it had no guide out.

Trust has to be earned. A good friendship can’t survive on the assumption that unspoken rules of respect are mutual. It’s easy to adopt that belief when everything else in the friendship feels so in sync.

I told myself this was maturity. That being open, flexible, and unguarded was growth. But after a few friendship breakups, it started to feel like denial: a subtle insistence that this time would be different if I stayed reasonable enough.

That friction revealed a lack of compatibility, not a flaw in the foundation of the friendship.

There’s no universal answer to whether friendship and attraction can coexist. It’s circumstantial. And I think that’s why there’s so much discourse around this question — because so many of us are speaking from firsthand experience, whether it worked out or it didn’t.

What I’ve learned is that the focus is often misplaced. It’s less about the outcome either person wants — and more about something many of us assume comes automatically: mutual respect within the friendship.

There’s very little nuance there. Either it exists, or it doesn’t. And the moment you step into any grey area, that ground begins to shift.

Slow-Burn Friendship Breakups

Maybe that’s why so many of these connections didn’t end with a fight or a clean break for me once we edged that line. They just fizzled out.

Like vapour.

Nothing was openly lost, but something structural was no longer there — the reciprocity, the sense of mutuality.

Psychology has a term for this kind of rupture: ambiguous loss. Relationships that don’t quite end, but never return to what they were.

And sometimes, after all that quiet erosion, something happens that makes the loss impossible to ignore.

For me, last weekend, it was an unsolicited dick pic from someone I considered a friend.

There was no build-up. No flirtation. No signal it was coming. Just a moment that collapsed years of perceived safety into something unmistakable.

But with most things that come out of nowhere, it didn’t actually start there. Over a year ago, there was a trigger — a blip in the friendship timeline. A line crossed, then smudged. Something I told myself could be ignored. I filed him back into the friend category, but if I’m honest, deep down, I suspected that I lingered somewhere in his maybe pile.

And that, I think, was the real end of our friendship — the moment we both decided crossing that line wasn’t worth the risk. Something had already changed. It was a micro-tear. And those cause damage, too.

So should I be surprised?

Or was this just a prolonged friendship breakup — predetermined long before his penis landed in my Instagram DMs?

This year, I’ve started to understand why my friendships with men keep breaking down

I’ve been forced to confront the role I’ve played in these dynamics — particularly in how I’ve occupied the “female best friend” position.

For almost a decade of my adult life, I was partnered with — and had children with — a man who was once one of my best friends. Which means I’ve lived inside the friends-to-lovers dynamic. I know how convincing it can feel.

And maybe that’s why the imprint runs deeper than I realised. The six-year-old who was convinced she would marry her best friend when she was “bigger”. The dad-shaped outline in my life. The absence that made trust feel complicated, but also made male validation feel intoxicating.

Together, those formative patterns impacted more than my romantic choices. They influenced how I’ve navigated closeness, safety, and boundaries with men altogether.

So this is where Blurred Li(n)es begins

This series isn’t about rules.

Or moralising.

Or pretending there’s a clean formula for intimacy.

It’s about the grey spaces we keep stepping into — between friendship and sex, intimacy and access, trust and desire.

It’s about what happens when lines blur.

Before anything physical happens.

After something physical happens.

When we try to go back.

When we tell ourselves it “meant nothing”.

When it meant more than we wanted to admit.

It’s about how these experiences shape us — our trust, our boundaries, our reliance on romantic relationships, our fatigue with connection itself.

And it’s about asking the questions we rarely sit with long enough to answer honestly:

Can friendship grow into something else without costing anyone safety?

Can it survive crossing a line?

Who usually pays the emotional price for ambiguity?

I don’t have a conclusion yet. Just patterns I’m trying not to retrace — and a willingness to look at this properly.

As the year closes, I can see how much has shifted — not just in my romantic life, but in how I approach connection altogether. I’ve been forced to examine the way I’ve been navigating closeness and access. I’ve lost people. I’ve outgrown patterns. And I’ve learned that protecting my emotional safety doesn’t make me “harsh” — it makes me clear.

Especially with men.

So the question I’m left with is whether I can have friendships with men without the lines — emotional, sexual, unspoken — ever blurring.

Photo by David Lee/Netflix | Edited by Paige Vahla

We’ve all heard the saying: to truly get over an ex, go under someone new.

But isn’t that just a mental reframe, not about someone else’s bed frame?

A distraction with a condom slapped on, because most of us aren’t looking for a body, we want an antidote.

Who wants to feel the full flush of heartbreak, all at once, in this economy? Please.

Some of the best distractions aren’t just entertaining, but educational. And despite it not always having the best success rate, a lot of us can vouch for jumping from one situation to another, or a few, as a temporary balm. Whether it’s to soften heartbreak, to give life a little zing again or simply because it matched the season we were in. Some call it a “hoe phase” when it’s really just a series of character-building side quests.

At least that’s what I’ve discovered.

So, what is a hoe phase?

Despite the unnecessary emphasis on body count, it’s more about curiosity and experimentation — like personal data collection. I’ve always hated that the term “hoe” was attached to it — but I love how we’ve reframed it, taken the word, softened its sting, and given the power back to ourselves and our bodies. It’s about testing what we can handle, what we can’t, what still hurts, and what finally doesn’t. It’s a selfish period, even if you choose to share it with others. Above all else, it’s you versus your pleasure.

A win-win, really.

But let’s be real — sometimes, it’s just sex. And not always good sex, either. It’s a period of time we cringe over because it’s tied to old pain, to versions of ourselves we no longer recognise. We pick the juicy parts, gloss over the icky ones, and file it under a time we were doing dumb shit — if we ever admit it at all.

Read between the legs

Maybe the hoe phase should just be treated as research — part education, part exposure therapy.

Somewhere between learning the sex and dating faux pas that reveal how easily attraction, lust and the high of something new can blind you to red flags.

Because really, how else are we going to learn to read between the legs?

Everyone is currently debating whether having a boyfriend is embarrassing now, so it’s safe to say the stakes of dating today feel higher than ever. Add sex into the mix and things get even murkier.

Our past sexual partners can make us more discerning if we let them. They can teach us emotional durability, and being a “hoe”? It doubles as on-the-job training in pattern recognition, one of the truest markers of character.

Especially when the connection is based mostly on seeing each other naked. And science backs this up: a 2020 study found that people with broader dating experiences often develop stronger emotional regulation.

To make your way to the centre, you’ve got to crack the surface — which is why I find you can learn a lot from a situation that doesn’t require much from either party, yet or ever. Basic respect, consideration, not being objectified…aftercare, even.

Because a soft landing — whether it’s a pillow to prop up your hips for that position you favour, or the hope of love — is about ease, finally being able to exhale because you’ve found a situation that makes sense for you. It can dredge up a lot of uncomfortable and sometimes awkward scenarios or it can be as fluid as water. I guess that’s part of the fun — and the torture — of sex.

That was the hard lesson for me, realising that even in a situation with minimal emotion, I still required soft love, not necessarily from the sexual partner, but myself. Because I couldn’t control how they behaved, and it wouldn’t always feel warm after the deed was done, but the way I moved through those moments said more about my relationship with myself than anything they did.

What I’ve realised is that the cost of getting involved in any kind of physical investment is ourselves. We are the offering. And with that, anything can happen.

No shame, no gain

The way we perceive our sexual past — or lack of it — often reflects the part we think we need to play in someone else’s desire.

Some people find embarrassment or shame in not having experienced enough by a certain age, or by comparing their sexual history to their peers. On the other end of the spectrum, some try to conceal their past altogether.

Then there are people who don’t care and would never disclose — a reaction that still reveals how deeply we’re shaped by both social expectations and internal narratives. The truth is, no matter where you land, we’ve all got a story. But will we own it or let it own us?

Maybe the real work is to understand why we feel the way we do about it. The goal is to notice where discomfort lives and to soothe it without needing validation from someone else.

It isn’t always about desire. Sometimes it’s perception. How we think others will read us, measure us, or slot us into a category we never asked to be a part of — like, say, a hoe.

Other times, having a sexual history at all makes us feel like we’ve already been defined — too much, too soon, too open — and that we’ll never be taken seriously again.

Last year, a guy I knew admitted he thought I might be too experienced for him, purely because I write about sex. Egos will do what egos do, no matter what. If someone projects their feelings of inadequacy onto you just for existing — and in my case for using my keyboard — how is that ever about you? Even if they ghost you, which is what happened in my case. I never hid who I was, and I wasn’t going to dilute what I did to make him feel we were sexually compatible just because he wanted to sleep with me.

Those kind of insecurities can be internalised just as much as they are projected. And when that happens, we start lying, embellishing, or minimising — our body count, our past relationships, or even our sexual preferences.

In fact, a 2024 Europe and US survey by Superdrug Online Doctor found that 17.5% of men and 8.2% of women admitted inflating their number of sexual partners, while 18.6% of women and 13.7% of men said they deflated theirs. It shows how tangled our sexual history can become when filtered through ego, insecurity, or shame. That kind of self-preservation can morph us into a version of ourselves we don’t recognise when it becomes performative.

There’s real power in pacing yourself. Sharing what feels right, when it feels right. Some things will always be disclosed early — especially around sexual health and consent — but beyond that, when curiosity turns into interrogation, it stops being about connection and inches into control territory.

Nothing gives me the ick faster than someone feeling entitled to your history before they’ve even earned the right to it. Learning to be proud of yourself — whether that’s your past or your lack of experience — starts quietly, with honesty. Not the kind that demands confession, but the kind that builds self-trust. And once you have that, no one can use your story against you.

You can lose your mind chasing good head

But we still want an insurance policy, don’t we? Something to save face if falling for someone — or just their body parts — doesn’t go to plan.

I think that’s the real exchange when you pursue the chase. You don’t actually have control, so you manufacture it.

It shows up in covert ways — creating arbitrary communication cut-off times, spacing out meet-ups, pretending you’re too busy to reply. Or bolder ones, like only initiating contact on your own terms. But it doesn’t change the truth: we don’t really make the rules. There are none, not in an environment where vulnerability is inevitable. And the more we try to detach, the more we prove that we can’t.

There’s a reason we lose control. The right — or wrong, depending on your perspective — mix of hormones can blur logic in seconds. Oxytocin, dopamine, and pheromones are one hell of a drug. How do you get the upper hand on something that’s chemical, automatic, and wired straight into your emotions?

No wonder we lose more than our clothes between the sheets, wanting to feel whatever that was over and over again.

The pull never really goes away.

The real empowerment is in accepting that. I’ve realised it’s only then you can truly separate the two.

Sex can absolutely be just sex, and a hoe phase can be what it is — but first, you have to acknowledge that it also can’t be. An open mind keeps you from closing off, filtering, or numbing yourself to the feelings that might disrupt the outcome you want.

People will argue it’s not that deep, meanwhile the person is literally inside you. So if we’re being technical, yes, it’s that deep. The act itself is designed to be.

Curiosity has to be about the cat first

The best lessons about yourself often come through others. In a space where seeking pleasure with someone else’s body can easily become a form of self-abandonment, learning to advocate for your own turn-ons, voice what you don’t like, set your limits and boundaries and figure out what feels safe for you are significant acts of self love.

It’s those moments you realise that clinging to control for safety in an environment that’s meant to feel boundless isn’t the answer. The control is in our autonomy, not in the act of connection. Real connection asks for an exchange. But it doesn’t have to cost your self-respect or safe words. Curiosity is essential, as long as she stays the priority. We’ve got to understand our own hunger before we start feeding anyone else’s.

So, did being a “hoe” teach me anything?

That even when it’s just about sex, it’s rarely just sex.

But it’s always an energy exchange. The way control, curiosity, and clarity weave through it, and how easily we can attach our emotional coping mechanisms to something that’s meant to stay surface-level.

We have no real say, and that’s part of the fun. Yet if we remain curious, and open minded, it can reveal more about ourselves than any new kink could. Who you’re sleeping with isn’t the only one who needs to find the pulse of your centre. You guide them — with your refined pattern-recognition skills, knowing what to never let slide, and how your body not only reacts to pleasure but the emotions and situations surrounding it.

You realise how easy it is to drift out of your own body, to perform through motions, to dissociate — and still call it sex positivity, or worse, fully consensual.

Whether you’ve had a hoe phase or not, it’s the same lesson: choosing yourself when other people are involved is an internal muscle, one you have to build. It’s not always easy. It can get complicated, a little messy, sometimes painfully clarifying. But that’s the point — you’re meant to come out of it knowing how to stay in yourself, even when you’re undressed.

Maybe that’s what character building really is. Not wiping the slate clean, but learning how to hold the parts of you that you feel got dirty — without shame.

Because starting over is overrated.

But re-emerging from where you currently are? Now that makes for a sexy plot twist.

And I would rather be self-aware than spotless.

That chest-aching yearn of dopamine-driven attraction?

There’s nothing else like it.

You know, all the things you’re not supposed to like.

Possessiveness.

Toxic, air-choke chemistry with someone you know is trouble.

The cyclical back-and-forth.

The wit.

The flirt.

The tension.

The dramatics.

The release.

It was the one thing I craved most in my romantic pursuits. Because chemistry was supposed to mean everything, right?

And it really did. I loved it, not just how I felt, but the version of me I became. I saw myself through the lens of the pedestal you’re hiked up on right at the first blush of connection.

To me, it was a sign of compatibility because I would do everything I could to remain that woman.

And that’s when you could really get excited. Because if they could match your energy, throw banter back with bite — you were on to a potential winner.

So, when it all falls apart — because let’s face it, relationships like this always start to unravel at the seams — what is it that you’re really mourning?

The glossy version of you that couldn’t be maintained, or the reality of you that was able to disappoint?

Was it ever real — or just a chemically-induced, manufactured version of a relationship with meaning? But even so, it still meant something. To your heart, maybe — but especially to your ego.

And when I realised this? It was one of those life-defining moments you almost wish you could remain ignorant of. (Isn’t love a little better when you’re not too self-aware?)

Because now, I can’t unsee it. I can clearly separate the two — but I’m also conscious of how much they criss-cross and blur together when you’re caught up in the throes of new love.

So, when I feel the urge to go back to that circus of a relationship, send that impulsive, flash-angry paragraph, feel lonely or just bored; I check my ego first before consulting my heart or my vagina.

Because most of the time, it’s got nothing to do with them.

Dopamine love: chemistry, chaos, and craving control

There’s something so comforting about existing in the in between of a budding relationship.

The man who isn’t my man…but he is.

When it feels this good, surely it will get a label soon.

But that’s just one of the many grey areas you get lulled into when the relationship status is blurry — situationships, friends with benefits, talking stages or sometimes just texting.

It’s just as frustrating as it is thrilling because sometimes, a sprinkle of toxicity makes things a little more interesting.

Besides, you couldn’t get hurt in this limbo…if you didn’t lean in too much.

It took me a long time to realise that this was my way of staying in control, even though inside, I was completely losing my cool. Having your guard up doesn’t just filter out potential threats — it can cage you in. And paradoxically, it leaves you more exposed.

And if you ever want to indulge in your feelings, stay in the comfort of rumination. It gives the false illusion that you can’t really be disappointed, because you were never fully invested to begin with.

It’s so easy to inflate and romanticise those aspects when you’ve had time away from the situation. You fill in the blanks with projected ideals of what could have been, reidealising them, and the version of yourself you want to be: safe, secure, and in love.

Control disguised as detachment, safety, and ego

It took me a long time to realise that this was my way of staying in control, even though inside, I was completely losing my cool. Having your guard up doesn’t just filter out potential threats — it can cage you in.

And paradoxically, it leaves you more exposed. You’re vulnerable to being taken advantage of, because you’re performing safety, not actually living in it. It’s so easy to confuse a need for control with an inability to connect. It becomes an ego-driven push-and-pull. A power play that feeds the belief that, in relationships, the person who cares the least holds all the cards.

But is that really love — if you’re cutting yourself off from feeling the full spectrum of the emotion? Isn’t constantly self-restricting vulnerability just a desperate attempt to maintain a false sense of control?

It was all ego and self-preservation. It was fucking us up in relationships.

We can let that need to win take over.

To have the last word.
To make them jealous.
To leave on our terms.

But we’re still attached, it’s only a matter of time before we go back. Because we leave to be chased and reignite the pursuit. All because we’re feeling something.

Disconnected. Anxious. Neglected.

We’re dysregulated, and instead of voicing it in its simplest form, we probe, test, and pull away — hoping they’ll notice, try harder, fight for us.

Overindulging in passion comes at a cost: self-abandonment, trauma bonds and toxicity

This frustratingly addictive cycle of intermittent reinforcement — where the affection and attention you crave comes and goes without warning — turns your partner into both the trigger and the fix, the high and the crash, the knot in the trauma bond that keeps pulling you back.

And somewhere at the core of it all, maybe even the fear that this is the best you’ll ever get — as well as not wanting love if it doesn’t hurt this good.

So, you stay, even though by now, there’s a good chance you should have left.

The love-and-hate, lovers-to-enemies-to-lovers-again trope is only cute in TV shows and films.

In reality, it drains you and causes you to self-abandon just to survive. All in the hope you’ll feel that high that made you eventually fall for them in the beginning, to then crash and burn again.

I’ve found that eventually, like any other addiction, it only brings out the worst in you.

You begin to act out of character. There’s no safety in a consistently emotionally-charged relationship. No room for healthy communication, true honesty, vulnerability. Because in the end, it’s another form of escapism — from the work and self-exposure needed to throw yourself into something real.

But ironically, what’s scarier than that?

So, we play games…

We push each other’s boundaries.

Tracking patterns. Looking for signs of how they initiate heartbreak. Staying one step ahead provides a false sense of safety.

Wanting to know them down to their core, and at the same time, monitoring.

And when we’re hurt, we throw all this information back in their face.

We say the worst things.

Abuse the block button.

Crossing the line becomes routine, and strangely, it’s in those moments of emotional chaos that our soft cores are exposed.

We use those flickers of vulnerability to wave the white flag, to admit why we lash out.

But it’s not an excuse, is it? Knowing why the toxic behaviour happens doesn’t make it better, it just proves we’re self-aware enough to explain it. So now what? How do we actually stop doing the thing we know is hurting us?

It adds another layer of ambiguity to these kinds of relationships — the talking stages, friends-with-benefits setups, situationships. All those in-betweens without clarity. They come back to bite during a vulnerable moment. You start to yearn for closure — to answer the questions about why it didn’t work out. The passion, the intensity, the love was there. You fought with and for each other. You both knew your flaws. So why weren’t you more patient, more compassionate?

And just like that, the twinkle of hope starts to flicker. That maybe… you could reconcile. Now that time has passed.

Addicted to making up and restarting the cycle

We start to ruminate about them coming back — the grand gesture, the endless apologies, the declarations of their feelings.

We want to be wrong just as much as we want to be right. Because deep down, we hope that the closeness that comes right after reconciliation will seal the deal. This time, we’re going to be better for each other.

And when things start to feel shaky again, we burn the whole relationship to the ground — maybe with an argument, maybe by stonewalling — just so we can make up all over again.

It’s sobering to realise that not only are you toxic…but the version of love you’ve been chasing is a fantasy on a loop.

As much as we crave to be seen in our most stripped-back form, we don’t even know how to love that version of ourselves.

So how could we ever truly love someone else’s?

And deep down, it wasn’t love they represented. It was what I wanted them to fix in me.

Final thoughts: my ego is my biggest cockblock

Sometimes, the easiest way out…is back in.

Spinning the block is like a trick of the eyes. It feels like a good idea when you’ve had enough distance to romanticise the past and downplay the problems that eroded your relationship in the first place.

Especially when the grass on the other side isn’t looking much greener — and the loneliness, the sheer panic of being single again causes your ego to lurch out of your chest and reach for something familiar.

But I don’t really want familiar or I wouldn’t have left the relationship in the first place.

I was starting to understand my issue: my inability to let go of expectations. They were the only thing I could cling onto while I experienced a loss of control simply falling for someone.

The Let Them Theory — a concept popularised by Mel Robbins and also the title of her book — is something I now try to practice in all my personal relationships — with gritted teeth, mind you.

But I can’t fault it.

I’m responsible for me. Not for how others treat me but for what I’m willing to tolerate, especially from myself.

So many things in relationships exist in the grey, in the in-between. But where you stand shouldn’t be one of them — whether you want to be exclusive or not.

And if I wanted to stop my ego from rearing its inflamed head, I had to stop spinning the block, and stay exactly where I was. To figure out what I needed, so I didn’t keep seeking it from the very person I knew couldn’t give it to me.

Do you know what one of my favourite things about sex is? Abstinence.

It’s a form of post-nut clarity, isn’t it?

A moment to catch my breath before the next round. To readjust the focus on my pleasure, away from the haziness that lust can cloak over us, on top of everything else. Because in life there’s one guarantee — a distraction. So, you need to be intentional about bobbing your head out of the water every once in a while, taking a gulp of air before lowering back down again.

That’s how you retrace your steps back to yourself: by really looking at the parts of you that need to be reconnected with often. It could be as simple as holding a mirror up to yourself — the parts you don't examine every day, like your vagina. Seriously, when was the last time you took a moment to admire it?

A study found that nearly 50% of women report feelings of dissatisfaction with the appearance of their genitalia — a part of our bodies that can play a significant role in our sexual experiences. Is it any surprise we’re not liking what we see down there when we don’t even know what we’re working with? It’s bad enough there’s an orgasm gap — we need to see ourselves, to feel ourselves.

Do we truly take the time to find our sexy, outside the projected perception of desirability? Is there even an opportunity for this, when an analysis found that 20% of women have reported to never experiencing an orgasm, compared to only 2% of men?

Unfortunately, I can be a faker. A really good one, too. In my pursuit of validation, I found myself redirecting it towards my sexual partner instead. Not like a praise kink, either. I was eager to please in the most self-serving way. My ego was lapping it up. Yet I still felt parched. This was no longer about sex.

Or me, apparently.

The closeness I was searching for with another person, ironically, had to come from myself. Pursuing it through someone else only deepened the void within me — my need for security, intimacy, something genuine — one that could give the orgasm gap a run for its money. And I was done paying the price.

Reclaiming my body by revoking access

I had to make cutbacks.

As you do, when you realise there’s an area you’re splurging on more than you can afford to. A behaviour that seemed so insignificant — like faking the big O - actually carried so much weight. The first stroke (pun intended) of an intricate pattern of self-abandonment. Where my ‘no’ became a sacrificial offering for fleeting acceptance. Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon. Dare I say, it’s one of those little tricks we, as women, pull from our bag when the bedroom calls for it. Research has found that about 50% of women fake orgasms — whether to speed things along or, a reason I personally resonate with, to please their partner.

Sex for me had been reduced to a ritualistic seeking of approval. But I hadn’t known it to be anything else. It was becoming clearer to me that before I could fully explore with someone else, I needed to first reclaim my own pleasure and understanding. Otherwise, what was the point of even doing the deed? I couldn’t be a masturbation assistant for the rest of my peak sexual years.

What I quickly realised was that I loved the idea of sex not just for pleasure, but for the comfort, security, and safety it could offer. Something my sex toys couldn’t achieve, no matter how many vibration settings they had.

As certified sex educator and intimacy expert Shan Boodram put it in her interview with Naïra NYC, "When you have self-love, you learn about yourself and take time to get to know yourself. When you delight in your own company and pleasure, that’s a turn-on in itself."

I had to create a clear distinction between these two aspects of intimacy in order to truly be present in the act and advocate for myself. They can, of course, blend — but first, I needed to immerse fully in self-pleasure before allowing them to integrate again. Otherwise, I risked losing myself in pleasing someone else as a measure of my worth.

Revoking access to my body was the easy part. But exploring myself beyond a rushed climax — that was harder than I thought, even in the name of deeper intimacy and self-love.

It was time to stop faking it and finally feel it

The fun part, of course, is always the toys. Some can be intimidating, especially when they target areas you’ve never explored before. So much of initiating new territory in sex for me was tied to my desirability — how adventurous, how alluring I could be for them. It wasn’t about finding new sweet spots, connecting, or having fun. I never considered how much of a disservice this was to the person I was having sex with. How, amongst so many other things we’re told about sex, this was just another form of sexual misinformation. I had a lack of sexual identity and a disconnect with an important part of my womanhood and my body.

Could that ever reflect positively with someone I’m having sex with?

We don’t benefit from protecting another person’s feelings in an environment where we should be advocating for ourselves. We end up distorting our own reality, projecting that deficiency into how we treat ourselves and internalising the habit of not prioritising our own needs. This inauthenticity restricts us from fully immersing in the experience. We carefully curate what we consider a more attractive way of coming undone.

We restrict our moans.

Our eye contact.

The positions we engage in.

To control how vulnerable we are in an act we literally do naked. A bit counterproductive, don’t you think?

And for a while, I blamed them. If they were more attentive, less self-absorbed, and genuinely wanted to engage in the act, maybe I would feel safe enough to show them everything without self-restriction. And yes, there might have been truth in those thoughts — but weren’t they getting theirs in the same way I should have been? I knew what they liked, how they liked it, and paid attention to how I could enhance and amplify that. And in their eyes, they were responding to the false cues I was giving them.

Aside from when we engaged in mutual masturbation, they had no idea I only ever got off on my own — just my fingertips and the right vibe.

Some of my favourites? The KAZÉ vibrator by Iroha, which delivers deliciously intense and concentrated vibrations, and my absolute favourite — the Womanizer OG Pleasure Air G-spot Vibrator, which continues to blow me away. Literally.

I didn’t realise it at the time, but I was creating a physical foundation of what self-love looked like — one PR-gifted sex toy at a time. There isn’t a sample I would turn down. And in time, I was no longer fantasising about sharing these experiences with someone else; this was solely for me, just as the act was intended.

I could strip away the performance, free from the weight of perceived scrutiny, and redefine how sex should feel. The best part? I got to explore what happens when I commit to the moment. Just me, no noise…except for the occasional buzzing.

Sex is meant to evolve with us, and setting boundaries enhances self-pleasure and sexual growth

Suddenly, this was something worth protecting. It became an exercise in developing physical boundaries for myself, where even on my own, I had to operate from a place of sexual discipline.

I needed to stop overthinking, learn to healthily detach from external opinions, and laser in on me. I had to get used to seeing my body through the lens of a partner — to unlearn the shame that made me turn off the lights or shut my eyes whenever their gaze felt too exposing. It was time to really look.

With the nature of solo play, I was exposing myself to acting on impulsivity to meet an immediate need, rather than actually enjoying the act for what it was. So, to figure out how to have sex with other people and enjoy it, I had to take my time and give myself the consideration I desired someone else to give my body. This wasn’t just masturbation; this was a physical declaration of the type of sex I desired and deserved. Where I was empowering myself to slow down, connect with my body, and truly care for myself.

It’s not always about the destination — and women like myself, who don’t traditionally climax during penetration, can sometimes vouch for that. The focus shifts to the moments we create to enhance and enrich the experience. It doesn’t always have to include the fake moaning and leg shakes. And research backs this up — a study published in the Journal of Men's Health found that greater sexual self-confidence leads to more satisfying and fulfilling sexual experiences. Because aren’t the best encounters the ones when we’re not in our heads? That’s exactly what I’m working towards — keeping the people-pleaser in me in check by embracing a selfish streak in between the sheets.

I never want to treat myself like an afterthought again. Even when my mouth can’t, I’ll make sure my body speaks up because I’ve shown it how.

This shift is about mentally reprogramming how I view my needs, desires, and intimacy in relationships. I’m finally owning it — from foreplay to aftercare. And I know that before I get on my back for someone else again, I’ve always got mine.

Final thoughts: sex begins and ends with me

So, I’ll likely revisit these seasons of abstinence as a way to check in with my body. I'm working on completely detaching from fear and perception, feelings that can arise even when you're alone during sexual acts. Being turned on is more than just becoming aroused, it’s about being present. There’s control in the relinquishing of it — giving yourself permission to feel it all without restriction.

Feel the vibrations when you hum and sing in pleasure, where your body tenses and quivers, what makes you gasp in surprise at the strange, unfamiliar, and intensely moreish. How to make yourself do it again, and again.

Pausing to notice what’s changed. Where my desires are pulling me. What void I’m trying to fill when I seek sex for comfort. Listening to my body when it whispers and gently steers me towards what gets it going will help me own my desires more boldly in the presence of someone else.

I never want to treat myself like an afterthought again. Even when my mouth can’t speak, I’ll make sure my body does, because I’ve shown it how. I’ve learned that it’s not just about pursuing what feels good, but about creating an environment where it can find you too.