I don’t want to depress you, but none of us gets to live happily ever after. It’s not just cynics like me who can’t sit still for five minutes: none of us does.

I talk about sex myths a lot – the idea that faking orgasms makes you a bad person, or that you can’t be a feminist and suck dick – but some of the most pernicious myths out there are around relationships themselves.

Happily ever after

Once upon a time there lived a little girl. She was slightly scruffy, very enthusiastic, and if you wanted to make her day you could either tell her she was great at ballet (she wasn’t) or offer to let her read aloud from her book of ‘101 jokes that only children find funny.’ If you asked her what she wanted, she’d probably have said ‘a pony’, but a rainbow-coloured one, because no one wants an ordinary old pony. She believed that one day her prince would come.

Years later, that little girl grew up to be a teenager. The rainbow pony was replaced with an overwhelming desire for a black motorbike, and the skill to ride it. If you wanted to make her day you’d tell her that the purple streaks in her hair made her look a bit witchy, or that – despite being nearly six foot tall – she was graceful like a ballerina (she wasn’t). She believed that one day her prince would come. This time, though, she was a bit more realistic. She thought the prince would be unlikely to wear armour, and imagined him instead in tight black jeans and a t-shirt that clung deliciously to his stomach. He’d probably play the guitar, and read Wittgenstein.

Now, though, that girl is thirty. You can make her day surprisingly easily – with a pint of cider or an offer to do her washing up. She loves fucking, reading, and being comforted when she thinks she’s made a dreadful faux pas, and she fancies the kind of guys who sit in dark rooms writing computer code. She knows there are no princes.

‘Settle down’ forever and ever

Of course there aren’t any princes – even William and Harry are probably twats behind closed doors (or sometimes even in front of them). Besides, I don’t actually want the kind of idealised partner the fairy tale offers. Someone riding into my life to sweep me off my feet, removing all of my responsibilities and replacing them with some a saccharine, loved-up suburban ideal makes me as uncomfortable as it does sceptical. If my prince actually did come, I’d be less likely to fall at his feet than to ask him what he was selling.

And yet the myth of a ‘happy ever after’ lives on in the way we talk about relationships. People have always told me – since I was that tiny girl doing rubbish pirouhettes in my tutu – that one day I’d ‘settle down’. Which, when you think about it, is a pretty odd phrase – implying that my entire life up until the ‘settling down’ point has been an irrelevant stew – nothing more than the bubbling experiment that forms me into a complete human being. One day when I’m not too hot, not too cold, and certainly not too adventurous, I will pledge my life to someone else who’ll live out their days with me in a tranquil, almost opiate joy.

Well, bollocks to that. Because even if it were desirable (which it’s not, in my opinion – imagine a lifetime of cotton-wool calm), it’s not even close to the truth. I’ve been in a few monogamous relationships and – while wonderful, enjoyable, loving things – not one of them would ever be described as ‘settled’, or even moving towards that.

If pushed, I’ll say we’ve sometimes been ‘comfortable’, in which ‘comfortable’ could be defined as ‘haven’t had any blazing rows/worries about money/collapsing bathroom ceilings and job losses and panic attacks’ for a month or two. But even with this level of comfort – even if you love each other – you’re bound to hit a dodgy patch one day that has you shouting at each other in the kitchen over who forgot to buy the milk. Or, to pick a less trivial issue, even if you feel like you’ve ‘settled down’, a day will come when you meet someone who isn’t your partner, but who makes your chest tight and your stomach flip and you wonder ‘Oh God Oh God what if…?’

And we’ll all be sixteen forever…

These examples are just a couple out of many things that happen on a daily basis. And yet the word ‘settled’ invites us to keep striving for something permanent and tranquil – as if any relationship is a lake, and if we wait long enough the fish will stop swimming and the insects stop landing, the wind will stop blowing and eventually the surface will be smooth like glass.

Well, it isn’t fucking true. There’s no such thing as ‘settling down’. There’s deciding, and committing, and loving, and there’s a sense of security and relief that comes from not having to wade through crap responses to your online dating profile any more, but ‘settling down’? For ever and ever amen? I don’t think it’s real.

If we pretend it is then we end up with billions of disappointed humans who strive for relationship tranquility, when what they should actually be striving for is enjoyment. Love, passion, fun, all that jazz. Sometimes it’s calm, sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it’s settled, and sometimes it’s shaky and nervewracking and the kind of thing that keeps you awake staring into the dark and wondering how you can make things right.

There are no princes: only humans. And I’m still quite shit at ballet.

This is a weird one because I’m writing it while the subject is in the next room. Sitting in his pyjamas, frowning at the mysterious black box of web code while he does magical things with his fingers that make the internet happen.

When we’re together, we watch TV. We paint walls, we count pennies, we laugh. And, of course, we fuck.

He’s good at touching me. He touches me all the time – playful slaps on the arse when we’re making dinner, a casual grope while we catch up on Game of Thrones, kisses and sly strokes that end with his hand down the back of my knickers, warm and soft against my arse.

If I wanted to, I could walk through into the next room to touch him right now. But I won’t.

I’m crap at affection

Despite being a filthy girl, keen to be used and abused, I’m not so great at touching. While I’ll happily sit and stroke someone for a while, or get comfy in the crook of their shoulder as we watch TV, I reject casual affection the way you’d swat away a mosquito.

Fuck off, I’m busy.
Don’t touch me, I’m eating.
Cooking.
Doing the washing up.
Just… get your hands off me. I feel trapped.

Because I associate hugs and affection with a certain kind of choking panic, I anticipate that every hug I enter into could end up siphoning five minutes of otherwise productive time out of my day. I’m an idiot, of course – if affection and touching were as terrifying as my knee-jerk reaction tells me it is I wouldn’t have spent half my life in bed with guys who make me cry with orgasmic joy.

And yet I look for escape routes. I watch the clock over his shoulder. I forget that, actually, I do really enjoy this when I can just shut my brain up for five minutes and settle into it.

The hotness helps my brain do exactly that. A cuddle for the sake of a cuddle brings on trembling and twitching – an unnecessary and irrational this-isn’t-getting-the-bills-paid panic. But a sly hand down the back of my jeans, cupping one of my arse cheeks and pushing two fingers’ worth of knickers into the crack of my crotch? That’s distracting. That’s fun. That’s the button I need pushed before I can sigh relief and hug back with enthusiasm.

An absence of affection

As I say, I could touch him now if I wanted to. I could wander into the next room, strip to my underwear, and slide his laptop off his knee. I could straddle and fuck him on the squeaky sofa, pushing my nipples into his face and reveling in his delighted moans.

But I’m not going to do that, because the anxiety tells me that I shouldn’t be fucking, I should be working, and affection can wait until later. It can probably wait until tonight, when we’ve both clocked off. Sadly then I might not be in the same hungry-horny mood: the waves will have subsided and I’ll be back to pushing him away, twitching at his deliciously warm hands teasing my cunt while I’m trying to cook dinner. At the time I won’t regret it – I’ll see myself as the sensible one, She Who Shan’t Be Distracted, who Gets Things Done.

It doesn’t really matter today, when he’s nearby, but when this blog goes live on Sunday, I’ll be far away. Creeping hands and playful slaps will be replaced with curt texts and joky emails, and all the ‘Miss you’s and ‘Love you’s that I forget to say when he’s around. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and it also makes the brain realise what an incomparable prick it can be when it has everything at its fingertips.

I won’t be able to walk through to the next room to touch him. I won’t be able to bury my face in his stomach and tell him he’s delicious. I’ll feel, but be pathetically unable to articulate, just how fucking stupid I am for knocking him back day after day. His hands won’t be on me, and I’ll have all the time and space and independence I am usually crying out for.

And because I’ll have it, I will hate it. And I will miss him.

Last week I wrote about cheese-sandwich sex. The kind of easy, everyday, sex-for-need that you have when you just need a quick fuck. Today’s exceptional guest blog is right at the other end of the spectrum: this is 12-course gourmet sex. The kind of sex you dream about, have, then think about for the rest of your life.

Both the story and accompanying picture are courtesy of @HigherKinks, who you should follow on Twitter if you love hot pictures, and the gleeful, lusty delight with which a pair of perverts go about enjoying each other.

Joyous abandon

One look from a lover can last you a lifetime.

She was kneeling in front of me, naked. This happens a lot.

She was breathless too. Not from thrashing about, I realised – though there had been an agreeable amount of the bouncy stuff prior to this particular moment – but from something more subtle. A tiny gasp, reminded me that some joys are so exquisite to contemplate, that you momentarily forget to breathe. This doesn’t happen as much.

She looked up at me, eyes wide, lip slightly bitten. And that was when I saw the look that I will carry with me into dotage. It was the look of someone who digs you, seriously fucking turned on. Like, stupidly, impossibly, nothing-will-ever-feel-quite-the-same-again turned on. But it was more than that even. It was a look also of acceptance, of longing, of trust and of urgent desires that needed to be quenched. Some folk call it the look of love, but unless you’ve been in this exact scenario I’d invite you not to consider me a twat for suggesting that. (Oh, and there was a gentleman sucking my cock two inches from her face. I maybe should have mentioned that). She moaned at the sight and orgasmed on the spot. This had never happened before.

Some context for you.

New Years Day. Two lovers with no obligation to anyone but each other that day. No work. No kids. No stress. A lot of fucking, obviously. There had been pillow talk.

“We could call him..”
“He says he’s a bit tired and hungover…”
“We don’t have to do anything, just hang out…”
“Yeah.. he’s texted. He’s on the way…”’

It wasn’t much of a gamble. He was her friend, someone we liked and respected, and was good company. But we weren’t sure anything would happen. Or even if we’d want it to. After an enjoyable evening, and perhaps sensing a moment alone was needed, our friend went to the toilet. We looked at each other. We both knew what the other was thinking. She grinned the grin that says “Can we?”. By the time he came back downstairs, she was kneeling over me on the couch, skillfully rolling her tongue around the end of my penis while I babbled something about inviting him to join us or something – I can’t remember exactly what I said because he agreed inside 2 seconds.

From this point on, my memory is jumbled. A highlight reel of joyous abandon and giggling depravities. We undress her. I watch her beguile his cock, watch him eat her out. I get so excited I have to slide myself down her throat as she stretches under us and for the next few hours it just feels like we are drawn from one intoxicatingly filthy scenario to the next like a little boat magically propelled to different islands, each lovelier than the last. That might sound twee, but one of the fantasy islands we visited was the island where the lady gives head while her lover fucks her steadily to orgasm in the ass. Always wanted to visit that one.

In between bouts, we smoke, drink and lounge around, marvelling at my girl’s beautiful body and the pleasures of consenting, carnal adult activity. We talk about other folk we’d like to fuck, of experiences and delights yet to be had. We get so randy we fuck all over again. It was a stupefyingly good night. We took lots of pictures. Like tourists on holiday.

But here’s the thing. When you find someone you love, who you never want to stop shagging, it’s amazing. But when that person sees no reason for you both to not fuck other people together too? How can I explain this to the nerd generation? It’s like levelling up while playing the best computer game ever.

The other day I walked in on the boy asleep on the sofa, wearing just pants and a t-shirt, right hand cupped gently around his junk and wide out in the open. Mmm.

There’s definitely something comforting about touching yourself – not necessarily in a filthy way that means you’ll get hairy palms, go blind and/or go to hell. Just holding yourself to get some warmth, and feel the solidity of your genitals beneath your palm.

I love to do this. On rare occasions when my hands aren’t occupied with a cigarette, a laptop or a cup of coffee, I’ll stick my hand down my knickers and cup myself. Silk or lace up against the back of my hand, coarse hair and warmth on my palm. It’s not hot like a bent-over fuck but it’s nice like a warm bath or coming inside from the rain.

I do the same with my tits. Boys I’ve known have occasionally commented that if they were girls they’d play with their tits all the time. Rarely do they stop to consider whether those of us with tits do that anyway. Running our hands over the underside of our breasts, slipping a hand inside the bra just to grab a bit of extra warmth. It’s thumbsucking for grown-ups, and I love it.

Cup me

That rather long ramble was merely a shameful excuse to tell you that this happened the other night, and it kicked me so solidly in the gut with lust that I couldn’t help but write about it.

I was in bed, and awake early in the morning. Having slipped out to go to the loo, I’d stumbled back in and smooshed around a bit, trying to find the warm patch I’d had to leave behind. As I snuggled down, the boy with me stirred. He’ll do this at any time of night, no matter how asleep he is: movement from me equals him turning, reaching out, grasping for me in the dark. Usually he flings a limb over me, or runs his hand up my stomach before his forearm settles just underneath my tits, pushing them gently up so they rest on him.

I love this. I love this more than I can say. I love this so deeply that it makes it harder for me to go to sleep, because I’m busy enjoying the feel of his big arms around me, throbbing warmth into whichever bits his sleeping brain reaches for first. The occasional tired moan or snore into my ear. Amazing.

But the other night he didn’t reach for the same places. As I got back into bed, feeling cosy and soft and on the verge of tipping back into sleep, his hand explored downwards. I leant up with my back against his chest, and his right hand ran softly over my stomach, coming to rest in exactly the comforting crotch cup that I use myself. Inside my knickers, with the silk against the back of his hand and his palm up against my skin, he gave a very soft sigh and rested there.

I stayed awake for thirty minutes, trembling slightly, holding myself as still as I could so that he wouldn’t move. The feeling of his hand cupping me felt more intimate, more arousing, more significant than a pinch of my nipples or even a fuck. It was made hotter by the thought that it might have happened before, but neither of us knew it. Touching me in the dead zone between waking and sleep, running his hands over me without knowing where they were going, and warming each other while our minds were dreaming elsewhere.

When he woke up his hand was wet.