I know a lot of the time I tell you what an incompetent shithead I am but recently I realised something. In terms of online dating, my ‘hit rate’ (i.e. my ratio of dates attended to men I have actually liked) since I broke up with my ex is pretty high. By which I mean I have been on a few physical dates after contact on The Apps, and broadly I’ve liked all the men (except one – he didn’t ask me any questions, and that was very annoying). I might find The Apps themselves tedious, and moan about having to go back on them when I find I have a slot on my dance card, but when you examine the raw numbers there’s no getting round it: I am fucking exceptional at dating. Today I am going to share what I think is a key aspect of my dating strategy with you, and pretend I am much cleverer than I actually am by explaining how to write the best online dating profile. Get ready to be wowed.

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I’ve had these adorable Hot Octopuss nipple pegs sitting in my slut kit for months. When they launched their range of BDSM toys, HO (who sponsor my site, so if you buy from them you’re supporting my work etc etc) kindly emailed me to see if there was anything I’d like to try out, and obviously I leapt on the opportunity to use my job perks to chat up a hot boy. I sent the link on to Bracelet Game and asked him to pick something fun. ‘Check out these kinky objects – with what do you fancy ruining me?’ A week or so later these lovely silver nipple pegs appeared in the post.

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Recently I ran a competition on Twitter with my awesome site sponsor The Pleasure Garden. We wanted to do something a bit more fun than the usual ‘retweet to win’ competition, so instead we asked people to contribute their best sex tips: what advice have you picked up during your own sexual play that you’d like to pass on to other people? The results were amazing, and although the winner is being announced over on The Pleasure Garden’s blog, I was so delighted by the fabulous suggestions that I wanted to show them all a bit of extra love here, and share some of the wisdom that people were kind enough to chip in. Here’s a selection of your best sex tips…

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There’s a documentary currently running on All4 called ‘My Massive ****’ – it’s about living with a huge dick and dealing with some of the down-sides of having one. I’m not here to rant about the concept (which is interesting), but I think there is a huge problem with the show itself, and it annoyed me enough that I’m bumping today’s planned post to Wednesday, so I can spend a little time yelling at Channel 4. Because although C4 does often have some great sex output, this particular programme is appalling from a consent perspective. It treats some pretty extreme consent violations like they’re one big joke, and fails to mention that in some cases violations of this kind may well be against the law. This problem could (and should) have been spotted and solved long before this show aired. Channel 4, please sort your shit out.

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I’ve written quite a lot about anxiety here on the blog, but I don’t think I’ve ever written anything as beautiful as this guest blog on performance anxiety. The way he captures the minutiae of life intruding on sexual pleasure, then zooms out to place those in the context of larger existential panics – it properly punched me in the heart. If you’re thinking of pitching me a guest blog but you’re nervous, please read this and see that you don’t always have to focus on one specific story, or give a super-comprehensive and detailed piece of advice: sometimes the best sex writing is about capturing a feeling, articulating it beautifully, and then sharing it to help other people feel a little less alone.

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