Fully aware that I am about to launch into ‘why GOTN is wildly irritating’ territory, I ask the third guy in the space of a week: “You say you like me but… what exactly is it that you like?” It’s not that I want him to kiss my arse, I genuinely need to know the answer. Without a real answer to that question, I don’t think I can meet him. Dating during Covid has helped me realise that what I’m after in a date has been refined – or just better defined – since the last time I was single.

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Back when I was dating, in the times Before Him, a mate used to sometimes ask the question: “is he a friend? Or a Good Friend?” Good friend – that’s how we discerned them. The boys I was fucking from the boys I was not. I’m gonna tell you now about one of my Good Friends.

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Men: they’re fucking everywhere, aren’t they? God, I had almost forgotten they existed. I used to walk down streets past men every day and barely give them a second glance, but suddenly now I am starting to notice them. Men. Everywhere. This is a post written loosely off the back of a pep talk I gave to a friend, in which I urged her: shoot your shot. (hat tip to @Oloni for introducing me to that excellent phrase)

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There are tonnes of things to mourn at the end of a relationship. Not least, in my case, a really awesome holiday I had planned for April this year. Lockdown put paid to that, but the ferry tickets still exist, and the rescheduled dates sit in my diary taunting me: a cycling trip with fondue and fucking and fun which will now likely never come to pass. There are infinite possible worlds in which we didn’t break up, or in which we broke up in far less painful ways, where some of this stuff might have occurred. But in this world, the one that exists for me, here are a few fucks that will never happen.

Note: the third story in this trilogy involves sex-while-asleep. It’s pre-negotiated and fully consensual, but I know some people aren’t into that, so this is just here to let you skip over it if you’d like to. 

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The problem with suddenly becoming single is that it throws up a bunch of dating problems that I very much hoped I would never have to deal with. I appreciate that absolutely none of these are serious – they are all things I’ll happily overcome, about which my whining is intended to be no more than a brief and amusing distraction as you trip down whichever path your Wednesday happens to be taking. My current mantra, as life gets harder, is ‘I like doing difficult things.’ Doing difficult things is incredibly empowering, and having the freedom to do those things excites me. Nevertheless, as I start to explore the ways I will throw myself into the exciting hard stuff, I can’t help but bump up against dating problems that I genuinely do not want to tackle. Here is a brief (and likely non-exhaustive list) of things I can’t be arsed with.

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