Cast your mind back to the last time something gave you a kick of surprising new lust. You know what I mean, right? The little moments during sex when someone said something with a particular intonation and it caused you to melt from the inside. The written erotica that made just a few tweaks to the kind of phrases you think about when you masturbate, and suddenly opened the door to a whole new avenue of fantasy. Maybe you were scrolling through your favourite porn site, and you discovered a fresh way to position two subs for a beating that gave you… well… feelings. Cast your mind back to how you felt when you were last turned on by something that surprised you. Now hold that thought, and treasure it: it may be much rarer in the future.

Guest blog: The porn video that changed my life
This week’s guest blogger has already brought much joy with this amazing post about the sexiness of armpit hair. Today, he’s back on another topic very close to my heart: the ways that porn can benefit and improve our sex lives. As someone who’s been creating sex content for over a decade, personally I am bored of having the conversation about whether porn is ‘good’ or ‘bad’, ‘harmful’ or ’empowering’. The simple truth is that porn, like all other media, can be both good and bad depending on what’s being produced. And wrapped up in that truth is another very beautiful one: some porn scenes can genuinely change your life for the better. Please welcome today’s guest, who is here to tell you about the porn video that did exactly that for him…

Two different ways to try and win someone back
The most sensible strategy, if you want to win someone back, is probably a combination of loving words and powerful actions: promise change, show how you’re working on that, tell me you love me, and remind me of all the things that I can’t help but love about you. That’s a pretty good strategy, right there, if you’re wedded to the idea of having one. There are two others, though, and enough time’s passed on each that I reckon it’s OK for me to tell the following stories. The first one is romantic, the second is horny as fuck.

The way that I miss him
Right now there is someone I am missing. And because of the kind of stories I usually write, I imagine you think the next thousand words are going to describe a kind of urgent, aching desperation for them. Fair enough, I write that stuff so often. The intensity. The horn. The trembling need for somebody that borders occasionally on similar tingles to ‘fight or flight’. I want to fly to him, then fight him naked on a big soft bed before tumbling into sweaty giggles. That sort of thing. I do it so much that my fingers almost instinctively want to type that story, but this one’s different. The way I am missing this person right now is softer and calmer than that.

Guest blog: Finding validation through public rope bondage
This week’s wonderful guest blog comes from fellow sex blogger Starcross (check out his awesome work at that link, and find him on BlueSky here!). He’s written before in response to a very direct and curious question I asked – what does it feel like to penetrate someone? – and I absolutely adored the way he managed to capture the sensation and intimacy of being inside. Today’s blog also touches on closeness and intimacy, but this time in a very public setting. He’s here to explain how doing public rope bondage with his partner, J, helped him find validation and security in kinky spaces. It’s a really beautiful perspective on something I have only ever seen from the outside before, and I am so grateful to him for sharing this with us here.