I’m a big fan of meta sex advice: the tips that don’t tell you exactly what to do in bed, but instead guide you on how to better communicate with your partner. Recently one of my favourite sex writers, Joan Price, gave a perfect example of this kind of meta sex advice, and it just so happened to dovetail into a story I couldn’t work out how to frame from my own life, so it felt like a great opportunity to remind you all to follow her and read her amazing work.

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A lovely woman set me up on a blind date. Yes, my life is like a film now and I’m very grateful for that. How do you reckon the blind date went? For context, I can tell you that I had met this lady precisely once in my life, and during that meeting we’d spoken for less than two hours. She’s a very warm, open person though so our conversation went to fun places really quickly. We commiserated with each other about the terrible state of The Apps these days, and I told her about my dating challenges: why I’m trying to meet men in real life rather than repeatedly bang my head against the brick walls of Feeld and OKC. Three days later, this woman I barely knew texted me: I have a potential date option for you. (Yes I work fast). This magic dating fairy then went on to tell me that the guy in question was funny, sweet, asked questions and that a mutual friend of ours had approved the match. She wanted to know if I was still up for trying out the whole ‘blind date’ idea. I said what you’d expect me to say: Omg seriously?! I am SO IN. Predictions: what do you think?

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I don’t want to hop onto the traditional relationship escalator – the societal script that dictates broadly how committed relationships are supposed to play out, gradually escalating from ‘dating’ through ‘exclusivity’ and onward towards cohabitation, marriage, babies and beyond. Although I’m definitely still open to stuff like living together and owning a joint home, I’ve been burned so thoroughly on both of these things that I’m not keen to leap back in unless there’s a really compelling reason/guy. But that’s not to say that escalation in and of itself is bad. Here’s an alternative relationship escalator.

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If I’m shagging you and I’m going on top, there are broadly four things you can do with your dick if you’d like to – for want of a better word – ‘join in.’ Obviously the peripheral things are infinite and always up for grabs: touching my tits, making sexy moaning noises, calling me a good girl, kissing me, yelling my name at the ceiling like you’re trying to put cracks in the plaster, etc. But when it comes to the actual fuck, there are four things you can do. Three of them are brilliant, one of them sucks, and I don’t know how to tell men I’m fucking not to try and do it.

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I can’t tease you any longer, my friends. It was cruel of me to do so in the first place. The fun little trilogy that started with a dating challenge and moved on to me and a hot guy swapping sex stories is just that: a trilogy. It’s not the first chapter in a brand new erotic romance. Fuck it, though, he and I had a lot of fun, and personally I find it fitting (and deeply satisfying for my overall philosophy) that the guy who restored my faith in dating didn’t do so by being the perfect match, but by embarking on our dates with genuine emotional honesty. When I set out on the initial challenge (‘ask out the hot man who works in my shop’) it wasn’t about whether he said ‘yes’, only about whether I was brave enough to ask him in the first place. Likewise, the success of our dates didn’t come down to whether we kicked off a serious relationship, but whether we met as equals with a genuine desire to find out if we matched. The fact that we don’t match is no more than a footnote. The headline is that we found that answer swiftly, respectfully, and while having a fair bit of fun. Shop Man Part 3. Let’s do this.

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