This time he comes to mine to do the stuff swap, I won’t put the effort in to meet him. He comes to my place, and he texts on the way: do you want me to just leave it at the door? No.

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Sometimes I feel like part of my body still belongs to him.

Throughout my life I’ve been fucked in so many different ways: like I’m precious; like I’m trash; like they’re hungry and I’m the nearest hot meal… but only one or two men have ever fucked me like my flesh was theirs by right. Fucked me like they owned me. As if my body – my cunt, my thighs, my hands, my mouth, my heart – belonged to them exactly as much as their own. He was one of them.

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When I was young, my family used to be big followers of soaps: Neighbours, Eastenders, Coronation Street. I can’t remember what else there was to do on evenings in the nineties besides yell things at the telly as ludicrous fictional characters cocked up their lives in ever more creative ways. Perhaps this is testament to how my Mum raised me, but when I watched soaps, the thing that got me most irate was how terrible people were at just fucking talking to each other. 

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Some men have worried in the past that they’re not able to dispense exactly the kind of love that I crave – i.e. relentless praise, on an almost minute-by-minute basis, lest I wilt like a houseplant you’ve forgotten to water. To be honest, I often find myself worrying about this too. In an ideal world I’d be the recipient of an almost constant stream of written, physical and verbal encouragement – reminders that I’m sexy, fun, valid, wanted, loved. A good girl. I need this kind of thing so much that those I rely on to help me feel loved might think it borderline sarcastic to plough on even during the (frequent) periods when I’m not doing much to deserve it. I understand this. But there are other ways to make me feel loved, and one of the ways I practice love in return is by noticing and mentioning them…

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The first time I tried to get this man to hold my hand, we were walking beside a London canal in the early evening darkness. I thought it was romantic – the lights reflected off the water, the gentle strolling pace, the early days of a relationship that felt extremely exciting. The first time I tried to hold his hand he let me do it for exactly half a second before pulling away and announcing “I’m not much of a hand-holding person, actually.” It was useful feedback, of course, and I respect how good he is at articulating his boundaries. However, as I explained ten seconds after I’d collapsed into awkward giggles, he could have said it a little more quietly… so the guy walking past at that exact moment didn’t witness my humiliating rejection. I tell you this only so you can see that the man in question here is not, traditionally, a hand-holding kinda guy. He’ll do it if we’re sitting on the sofa, but when we’re out and about the closest he comes to a PDA is the odd subtle smack on my arse or a peck on the lips. He doesn’t like being publicly affectionate, and would rather save certain types of physical contact for when we’re alone. Fair play.

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