TAMPONS.
ANGRY FEMINISTS.
DISCHARGE.
PERIOD BLOOD.

Okay, now we’ve lost the men, let’s get into the juicy stuff.

A few years ago, after a lot of research — both theoretical and hands-on 😏 — I discovered a tongue-and-finger combo that’s since become somewhat famous for giving queer women an exorcism-like experience.

I’ve now taught it to more than 3,500 newly out gay girlies, including plenty who’d never been with another woman before.

And many of them have gone on to use it confidently during their first-ever wlw experience.

The thing is, I didn’t set out to become the internet’s lesbian sex-technique dealer.

I’d been working as a sex columnist and queer sex educator for years, and I was drowning in messages from women who had no idea where to begin with sapphic sex.

The same questions kept coming up:

But there weren’t enough hours in the day to answer them, and worse still, there was nowhere else I could send them.

Because at the time, a non-sleazy, accurate, genuinely easy-to-follow sex-ed resource for lesbians didn’t exist.

Sure, there are more than 33,000 research papers dedicated to helping men get erections. But helping women understand their own pleasure, or each other’s? Apparently that was too niche. 🙄

So I made the resource I wish I’d had when I was a Baby Gay: a queer sex-ed video course built from a decade of researching pleasure, talking to women about their sexual anxieties, and learning through real-life experience.

Most importantly, I made it simple and accessible.

Because your first time with another woman is already intimidating enough without having to worry about “alphabet tongue” tricks and positions that require a chiropractor on standby.

And making a woman come isn’t rocket science (and contrary to popular opinion, it doesn’t require ‘experience’).

But the course was never just about lesbian sex.

Because beneath all those questions about tongue techniques and breathing was something much bigger…

So many women have been taught, consciously or otherwise, that pleasure isn’t really for them.

We’re fed the idea that women’s orgasms are elusive and complicated. That we’re “less sexual” than men. And that sex is something that happens to us, rather than something we get to actively want, shape and enjoy.

It starts early.

Boys are taught about boners, wet dreams and ejaculation. Girls are taught about painful periods, pregnancy and the possibility that their first time might hurt.

Even our language reinforces it: men “rail” and “nail” women. We’re positioned as vessels for men’s erections — not people with desires of our own.

And when you’ve spent your whole life being taught to disconnect from your instincts, it can make it incredibly hard to recognise your sexuality. Let alone feel entitled to pursue it.

That little voice that says, Who do you think you are, fantasising about a woman? That’s indulgent. Embarrassing. Immature?

That’s patriarchy, babe.

It conditions us to equate womanhood with self-sacrifice.

To see pleasure as frivolous.

And to put our needs last.

It’s bullshit.

And it keeps us small.

When I launched my course a year ago today, I called it Rock Her World because it’s a guide to having the kind that of sex that rocks your worldview.

But it’s also a permission slip: for the woman who’s spent years being dutiful, careful and endlessly accommodating, and is finally ready to choose herself.

It’s for the woman who stayed in a quietly miserable relationship with a man because she thought it was too late to pursue the colourful, passionate queer life she actually wanted.

And for the woman who’s ready to stop treating pleasure like something she has to earn.

And if you’re still here, I need you to read this out loud slowly to yourself: it is never too late to start living the life you deserve.

Some of my favourite emails and DMs have come from women in their 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond — women who thought they’d missed their chance, then gave themselves permission to begin again.

I don’t care how old you are.

You deserve the bed-breaking, eyes-rolling-back, oh-so-this-is-what-everyone-was-talking-about kind of intimacy you’ve fantasised about.

It isn’t a myth. And it definitely doesn’t have to be difficult.

You absolutely don’t need Rock Her World to start choosing yourself. But if you’re ready to stop putting your pleasure on hold, you can take a peek below. 👀

✨Peep Rock Her World Here✨

In just 49 mins, it’ll teach you to:

✅ Eat her so well she gushes to the group chat about you

✅ Feel confident AF making the first move on dates

✅ Skip the cringe and give her the kind of orgasms that make her look like she’s having an exorcism

There are no tricks. No ‘Alphabet Tongue Technique’ or 17-step routines.

It’s based on real science about pussy pleasure.

And real lessons from seasoned lesbians who made me come so hard my life literally flashed before my eyes.

Regardless of whether you take Rock Her World, I need you to know this: No matter what age you are, how late you came out, or how inexperienced you feel: you are allowed to want more.

And you’re allowed to go after it. 😈

I once had an org**m on my kitchen counter.

It was in the midst of one of those pointless arguments you have with your significant other when you’re both tired and stressed.

One minute my girlfriend was muttering expletives under her breath, the next, I was screaming them.

Most of our arguments are resolved by banging. Because, well, we love to bang.

Of course, that’s not the story we’re told.

We’re conditioned to believe women aren’t as sexual as men (because we’re just not “wired” that way) and so, by default, long-term lesbian relationships are passionless.

And we most definitely aren’t taught women can get off without men.

How would that even work anyway, right???!!

I’ve lost count of the amount of times some random guy in my comments section has scoffed at a photo of me and my girlfriend, declaring, “You know you wish you had the real thing!”.

The insinuation presumably being:

a): Unless there’s a p**is involved, you’re not having “real” s*x, anyway

b): Lesbians are simply women who ended up with other women because we couldn’t find a dick for the life of us. You know, because straight men are so discerning about where they’ll put those things. (Let’s just say I wouldn’t recommend Googling ‘Why morgues prefer to hire women’.)

And yet, despite the fact wlw intimacy is still treated as not legitimate, and confusion persists around what we even do in bed (braid each other’s hair?? Cross-stitch???) it’s lesbians, not straight couples, who are getting off the most.

The most extensive study ever conducted into sexuality and pleasure revealed that, while straight men unshockingly climax 95 percent of the time during partnered intimacy, their female partners are getting there just 65 percent of the time.

Lesbian women, however, were found to reach the Big Oh 86 percent of the time; nearly as often as straight men.

It’s almost as if the “real thing” isn’t all it’s cracked up to be..?

(Also, if your entire bedroom repertoire consists of putting your dick in and out of someone a bunch of times, you might want to consider the possibility you’re sh*t in bed. Especially if your definition of it being “real” includes both parties actually coming.)

Still, intimacy between women is routinely labelled “lesbian s*x” as opposed to just, you know, “s*x”.

Because I hate to burst your bubble, but lesbians don’t do anything in bed straight people can’t do.

In spite of what p**n would have us believe, gay women aren’t slamming our pelvises together in a scissor-like formation, intermittently jamming razor sharp claws into each other.

(There are only two types of lesbians with long nails: Pillow Princesses, who are women who prefer to exclusively “receive”, and women whose manicurists think they always need the same two acrylics filed down because they’re really into bowling.)

According to a survey of over 13,000 lesbians by Autostraddle, the top three most popular practices among gay women are clitoral stimulation, finger techniques, and oral.

Note: not one of them involves penetration; the thing we’ve been told all women are simply gagging for.

A couple of years ago, I was on a podcast where I described a finger technique from my viral queer s*x course, Rock Her World.

Shortly after it went to air, a straight woman who’d listened to the episode approached me to make a private exclamation.

“I loved your episode. I hope it’s not weird to share this…” she began excitedly in a hushed voice.

“But my boyfriend used your move on me last night and I came harder than I ever have in my life. I just wanted to say thank you!”

Get Rock Her World here

Though the episode was about wlw intimacy, the techniques I shared were relevant to anyone wanting to get someone with a vulva off.

Because, to reiterate, lesbians aren’t doing backwards summersaults in bed.

Research published in the Journal Of S*x & Marital Therapy shows that, despite the heteronormative model of intimacy being touted as the gold standard, a mere 18 percent of women can reliably get to the finish line via exclusively P-in-V.

The most effective way to get a woman to the finish line is via external stimulation (incidentally, the top practice among lesbians).

This isn’t to say lesbians can’t, and don’t, enjoy penetration.

But the idea women require a stand-in for a D to experience pleasure without a man is science fiction.

Strap-on use isn’t nearly as common in real world sapphic relationships as X-rated content would have us believe (it didn’t even make the top five in Autostraddle’s Lesbian S*x Survey).

And until men’s appendages come in neon glitter rainbow and offer over a dozen different vibrational settings, comparing the two is illogical.

I’m sorry to disappoint you if you came here hoping to uncover salacious “secrets” about the hot, mysterious world of “lesbian s*x”, but lesbians aren’t a p**n category.

We’re not doing anything straight men couldn’t be doing if they accepted the fact the so-called “real thing” isn’t the route to most women’s climax.

Stereotypes about what queer people do in bed are just that; stereotypes. Not reliable indicators of what individuals enjoy.

I know lesbians who detest oral, and others who can’t get enough of it.

There are sapphics who wouldn’t dream of sleeping over at their girlfriend’s house without packing the strap, and some who’ve never even touched one.

My personal preference is banging it out on the kitchen bench.

Who’s to judge?

Unpacking your sexuality later in life is a little like living out that scene in The Matrix where Neo’s offered a choice between two pills.

“You take the blue pill... the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe,” Morpheus tells him.

“You take the red pill... I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”

Like most women, I grew up swallowing the idea I was attracted to men, writing off any feelings that conflicted with that as innocent ‘girl crushes’.

Questioning that premise meant accepting the existence of an alternate reality – something feminist essayist Adrienne Rich called ‘compulsory heterosexuality’; a term that’s become internet canon.

Rich’s theory isn’t dystopian, though.

It’s simply the argument that what we think we know about sexual attraction is actually just the byproduct of social conditioning.

And that actually, most women are going through the motions of their lives completely unaware of the fact they’re playing out a script that was written for them by someone else.

If an alternate truth starts to break through, we’re taught to quickly shut it down.

Sleeping with another woman is “experimentation”, dreading intimacy with your husband is normal because women “aren’t as sexual as men”, and feeling dissatisfied and empty despite having landed a good guy is a sign you should be more grateful for what you’ve got.

It requires a near constant cognitive dissonance that causes us to completely disconnect from our own instincts and desires.

We’ll sooner convince ourselves our libido’s broken because we don’t want to sleep with a partner than accept the possibility we’re not attracted to our partner.

Women will literally go to doctors and therapists concerned there’s something wrong with them because they can’t climax with their husbands, despite the fact they can do it easily and efficiently on their own.

One of the biggest ways compulsory heterosexuality, or ‘comphet’ as it’s more commonly known, distorts our reality as women, is by training us to attribute attraction to masculinity to an attraction to men.

But this logic ignores a rarely spoken truth.

Masculinity doesn’t belong to men.

Women can be masculine, too – butch, tomboy and so-called “masc” women are proof of this.

So ask yourself this question:

Are you attracted to men? Or are you attracted to masculinity?

If you’re struggling to answer, it’s not by accident.

That confusion is comphet at work.

The Matrix is able to exist because no one can clearly see it.

Now, here’s the red pill (and honestly, don’t take it unless you’re ready to potentially throw a grenade at your entire life):

This exercise will help you find the answer…

Read more

Throughout most of my early twenties, my vagina felt like it was on fire.

No matter how many doctors I consulted or tests they ran, I couldn’t extinguish the burning sensation inside me after sex.

I’d begun to believe the pain was in my head when a female GP posed a question.

“Are you lubricated during sex?”

It was the first time anyone had asked me about sex in the context of something that hinted at my pleasure.

And it may have been a turning point, given it bought to light the fact I’d never experienced lubrication with a man.

But it was quickly brushed aside after she passed me a piece of paper with the letters, ‘KY Jelly’ scrawled across it and sent me on my way to begin a religious devotion to lube.

Armed with the conviction it was my vagina – not who I was sleeping with – that was the issue, I continued having sex with men.

And, eventually, over time, the problem seemed to go away.

This, I thought, was pleasure.

More importantly, it was confirmation of my desirability.

As long as men were fucking me, I was being chosen.

“We’ve all been taught to lose our fucking shit if a boy, any boy, has chosen us. ‘WE HAVE BEEN CHOSEN!!’ And now, we must do whatever he wants because it is so special that he has chosen us!!” says Lane Moore in ‘How to be Alone’.

Perhaps it was this social conditioning, the diet of Disney princess stories and Sandra Bullock rom-coms I grew up being fed, or the absence of a stable father figure in my life, but unless I was being chosen – something I conflated with sexual validation – it felt as if I didn’t exist.

I waited for the void to disappear after I married a man in my mid-twenties.

It did not.

When the marriage fell apart, I didn’t grieve or speak to a therapist.

I slept with a stranger in a hotel room.

But even as I sobbed at the end of the bed feeling hollow when it was over, I told myself this was sexual liberation; I was crying tears of relief because I was finally free to have sex outside the restrictive construct of monogamy.

Not because I’d just had a dissociative, self-destructive hookup with a man I’d never met before.

It would be the way I’d retell the story for years.

In her ground-breaking book, ‘Come As You Are’, Dr. Emily Nagoski explains why people with vulvas often experience this cognitive dissonance around sex.

“Genital response, for all humans, indicates that they’ve been exposed to a sexually relevant stimulus — something that their brain has learned, through classical conditioning, to respond to… Subjective arousal, for all humans, indicates that they’ve been exposed to a sexually appealing stimulus — something their brain perceives in this moment, as being kinda hot,” Nagoski writes, referencing a 2008 study by Meredith Chivers.

Chivers study found that, while men’s genital responses mostly align with their subjective arousal, women have high levels of arousal noncocordance, which means our bodily responses often don’t correspond to our arousal.

In fact, Chivers’ research noted women’s brains categorised images of bonobo chimps getting it on as sexually relevant (and it’s safe to say women don’t secretly want to have sex with bonobos).

But women aren’t taught to hone in on our instincts.

We’re taught to recognise and respond to cues outside of ourselves in service of male pleasure.

“Women are constantly and specifically trained out of noticing or responding to their bodily discomfort, particularly if they want to be sexually “viable.” Have you looked at how women are “supposed” to present themselves as sexually attractive? High heels? Trainers? Spanx? These are things designed to wrench bodies,” Lili Loofbourow wrote in her iconic essay, ‘The Female Price Of Male Pleasure’.

And this self-distrust has real consequences for our sex lives.

A study published in The Journal Of Sexual Medicine found that, although nearly one third of women experience pain during sex, few tell their partners about it.

My gauge on what pleasure should feel like was additionally skewed by stories from friends who described sex as a performative task they could excel at; theatrically gagging during blowjobs for their partner’s gratification, faking orgasm to “get it over faster” and doing anal to emulate the horny up-for-anything women their boyfriends got off to in porn.

I couldn’t acknowledge, much less interrogate, the feeling of emptiness and unease that regularly followed sex, nor ask myself if I genuinely wanted to do any of the things I did in bed.

All I knew was, if men weren’t pursuing me, I felt worthless.

It wasn’t until I stumbled across Angeli Luz’s viral ‘Lesbian Master Doc’ – a 30-page dissection of ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ (the pervasive cultural expectation women are attracted to men), that everything began to come into focus.

“It’s possible to recognise a man IS attractive but not be attracted TO him,” the Master Doc points out, clarifying, “a desire to be attractive to men” is not the same thing as having a physical attraction to men.

For the first time since that day in the doctor’s office in my early twenties, I found myself examining sex in the context of how my body actually felt.

And like a lightning bolt illuminating a dark sky, an unseeable truth became clear…

I’d never been sexually attracted to men.

All of the experiences I saw as evidence of my boy-craziness were merely a desire for validation.

I was having sex not out of a craving for physical pleasure or emotional intimacy (or, as I often hyperbolically insisted to friends, because “I love D!”), but because I enjoyed the feeling of being wanted.

When I drilled down into it, I could only recall the sensations of arousal during times I was fantasising about or making out with women.

It’s been almost six years now since I came out as a lesbian, and I’m still unpacking how compulsory heterosexuality gaslit me into believing I was a boy-crazy straight girl.

At least once a week, I have a revelatory moment relearning what authentic pleasure, love, desire and romance feel like.

I’m not anti-monogamy anymore (turns out I just didn’t want long-term monogamy with a man) and while I’m certainly pro-lube (women aren’t human waterfalls, after all), I haven’t personally reached for a tube of KY Jelly in years.

I still feel a wave of sadness wash over me when I think of all the ways I betrayed myself because I believed I needed to be chosen by a man to matter.

But I also try to remember I’m choosing myself now…

Choosing to rewrite the script and live in my truth.

Which, ironically, means listening to my vagina.

If you clench your fist really tightly for a minute, you can witness a psychological phenomenon in real time.

Maintaining the position is initially torturous, but after 45 seconds or so, the pain magically dissipates.

What’s really interesting though, is what happens when you try to release it.

It’s surprisingly difficult.

Relaxing your hand hurts almost more than it did to clench it in the first place, because it’s (temporarily) become your body’s new preferred homeostasis.

This is kind of how compulsory heterosexuality – more commonly known as comphet – works.

Though it’s neither a natural nor comfortable construct for a lot of people, we’re so accustomed to living our lives by it, it can be easy to forget it’s there.

MKAY, so what’s comphet?

Simply put, comphet is the idea heterosexuality is treated as a default setting in our culture.

Women are expected to be sexually attracted to men.

And we’re reminded of this in constant, insidious ways…

From the fairytales we grow up having read to us, to rom-coms, song lyrics, and never-ending questions about whether we have boyfriends or husbands…

Questions that start disturbingly early, when adults coo, “Is this your boyfriend?” to little girls who befriend boys).

The message we hear on repeat, is that our lives are bereft of meaning until they’re attached to men.

And this narrative compels women – and by extension, femme and non-binary people – to centre our existence around men.

Often without pausing to ask ourselves whether we genuinely want to be with a man, or we’re just doing it because it’s something we’ve been told to do…

Which is why unpacking your comphet conditioning can be an incredibly confronting experience.

It’s likely the first time you’ve interrogated your sexuality, and it may result in a complete and total recalibration of your life.

Because, even if you still come to the conclusion you’re straight, you’ll never look at yourself or the world the same way again.

Here are some of the most powerful, covert ways comphet is probably affecting you…

Confusing attractiveness with attraction

How do you know you’re sexually attracted to men?

This would seem to be a simple question, but it’s one many women find difficult to answer, largely because we aren’t actually taught how to identify attraction.

What we ARE taught to be very good at identifying, are the precise ways to make ourselves attractive to men.

The male gaze determines our cultural beauty standards (read: be thin, but not TOO thin. Be sexy, but not TOO sexy. Wear makeup, but not TOO much makeup, etc) and often, how we’re treated by men.

Women who fall outside the criteria set by the male gaze, such as fat, butch and gender non-conforming women, routinely experience discrimination and are dismissed or treated as less human than their conventionally attractive peers.

And this ultimately leads us to overvalue our appeal to men.

Being noticed by a man, asked on a date, flirted with, or sexually pursued takes on a disproportionate level of importance in our lives, so we feel compelled to obsess over our desirability to men and consequently elated when men confirm it.

But here’s the thing: craving and even enjoying male attention isn’t the same thing as being attracted to men.

Likewise, wanting men to find you attractive isn’t an indicator you’re sexually attracted to men.

It’s merely a byproduct of living in a culture that’s conditioned you to prioritise men’s approval above all else.

Performing pleasure

Do you enjoy sex with men?

Or do you just enjoy being “good” at doing the things you’ve been taught get men off, and therefore make you desirable?

It’s surprisingly challenging to seperate the two when you’ve been taught to view sex as something men enjoy and women endure.

As young women, we learn boys get boners, have wet dreams, and experience ejaculation, while being simultaneously instructed to prepare ourselves for painful periods and childbirth.

We’re even warned losing our “virginity” (a heteronormative construct if ever there were one) will likely hurt.

Many of us additionally grew up reading magazines that provided us with tips for giving better blowjobs and being “the best he’s ever had” in bed.

Porn reinforces this performative idea of sex, depicting women’s bodies as vessels for men’s erections, rarely featuring foreplay, clitoral stimulation or a scene in which someone reaches for a bottle of lube.

This has led to the normalisation of disappointing, unfulfilling sex among women, epitomised in the archetypal joke of a wife feigning a headache to get out of sex with her husband, and backed up by research, which suggests that, while up to a third of women experience sexual discomfort or pain at some stage, only half will tell their partners about it.

In truth, sex is supposed to feel really, really good. If the only thing you enjoy about it is the knowledge you’re adept at going through all the motions of various acts male partners enjoy, or the feeling of being wanted, it’s possible you’re confusing genuine sexual attraction with a desire for sexual validation.

The “girl crush” myth

Has there ever been another woman you’ve been completely fascinated with? Someone you referred to as your “girl crush”?

Was that because you wanted to be just like her, or was it because you actually wanted to be with her?

Queer female relationships are so minimised and dismissed by our culture that, even when we experience legitimate romantic or sexual feelings toward another woman, we’re taught to instantly write them off as admiration or sexual fodder for straight men.

If you’ve ever made out with another woman at a party or in any kind of public setting, there’s a good chance you’ve had men thank you for “the show” or tell you how “hot” they found it, reinforcing the idea your same-sex experiences exist for their enjoyment.

Men are so centralised in women’s lives within comphet, even lesbians in fully fledged long-term relationships are assumed to be “good friends” – the connotation being, if a man isn’t involved, a meaningful, sexually satisfying relationship isn’t occurring.

And this belief is so pervasive, women frequently dismiss their queerness as “experimentation” or the result of having a few drinks.

However, straight women don’t fantasise about or make out with other women.

And if your “experimentation” happens on a regular basis, or you kiss women every time you’re drunk, it’s definitely worth considering whether your “girl crushes” are more than just admiration or fun between friends.

If you want to fully unpack comphet and discover your true sexuality, get my workbook Authentic Attraction here.

At least, that’s what I believed when I thought I was straight.

Being in a relationship with a man always felt... off.

Like trying to force the last few puzzle pieces into places they didn’t belong.

From the outside, everything looked fine.

But whenever I stepped back and looked at the bigger picture, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t quite right.

Maybe it was a quarter-life crisis.

Maybe I was just restless.

Or bored.

Whatever the reason, a couple of years into our relationship, I asked my boyfriend for an open relationship.

“Wait – you want to sleep with other men?” he’d asked.

“No, women,” I’d responded.

His eyes lit up immediately.

“Oh, so like threesomes and stuff?”

“No. Like just me, on my own, going on dates with women that may or may not end in sex. You wouldn’t be involved,” I’d clarified.

Then added: “You can sleep with other people too, obviously.”

After a lengthy discussion around the logistics of how it’d work, it was agreed we’d trial being what sex columnist Dan Savage famously calls “monogamish”.

Savage actually coined the term in a 2011 interview with The New York Times to describe his arrangement with husband Terry Miller.

The couple, who’ve now been together for almost two decades, have been consensually having sexual encounters outside the relationship for over half of that.

“For all of recorded history, men have had concubines and whores; then 60 years ago, straight relationships began to become more egalitarian and it was less of a property transaction,” Savage argued in a column with Big Think.

“Instead of deciding to allow women to have the same sort of freedom and leeway men did, we decided to impose the same limitations that women had on men … And we have watched the consequences of that, which are a lot of short-term relationships and a lot of divorce.”

And Savage has a point.

Not only are divorce rates high (according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 30 percent of marriages in Australia end in divorce, and in America it’s estimated to be 40 to 50 percent), research shows women in particular are more likely to lose interest in sex in long-term relationships because we require a greater amount of sexual novelty than men.

It’s no surprise then, that when I first wrote about my own open relationship experience years ago, I was inundated with emails and DMs from women asking for advice on how they could broach the topic with their partners.

Our attitudes towards sexuality and relationships are undoubtedly shifting.

While monogamish arrangements were once taboo, today more than half of Gen Z’ers say they’re open to consensually non-monogamous (also known as CNM) relationships.

There’s no rulebook on how to explore CNM in your relationship, but there are a few fundamentals worth discussing before diving in.

From my experience: boundaries, expectations and “what if’s” (these are the hypotheticals, like, “What if one of us gets a crush on the person we’re sleeping with?”).

The main obstacle to overcome, is jealousy.

Most CNM advocates aren’t immune to the green eyed monster, however they acknowledge it’s simply an emotion they don’t need to act on, and not necessarily a sign the relationship is doomed.

In reality, the same threats and risks apply to your relationship whether you’re strictly monogamous or consensually playing the field.

People often fall in love with someone outside their relationship, being in a conventional marriage doesn’t safeguard you against infidelity, and all couples risk creating conflict by failing to establish and routinely communicate clear boundaries – whether they’re CNM or not.

There’s also no easy or correct way to raise the topic with a partner (though it’s best avoided in the middle of an argument).

When I put it to my boyfriend, I started the conversation by asking, “Have you ever thought about having sex with someone else outside the relationship?”

After we agreed it was something we’d both thought about and determined the terms of how it would work (only people who weren’t existing friends or colleagues would be considered, no repeated dates with the same person, and we’d get the green light from one another before proceeding with anything) we decided on a six month trial.

A couple of months and a few dalliances with women later, I realised why something had always felt askew…

I was – am! – gay.

A lot of people would see this as proof CNM relationships don’t work.

After all, venturing into “monogamish” territory ultimately ended our union.

But from where I’m standing, the picture looks different.

An open relationship gave me the freedom to explore my sexuality and ultimately put all of the pieces of the puzzle in the right place.

It also ironically helped me come to the conclusion that, as it turns out, I was never a non-monogamous person.

Just a big ol’ lesbian.

If you want to unpack your own sexuality and find out if you’re actually non-monogamous or just gay, get my workbook Authentic Attraction here.