I wish I liked wearing make up ‘for me’, but I don’t. I hate wearing make up. I’m shit at putting it on, bad at choosing the colours that suit me, and guaranteed to smear half of it across my face when I rub my eyes after the second pint of the evening. So why do I bother wearing make up? I’m forced to conclude that it’s at least partly because I want to impress men.

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I often joke that I’m ‘lazy in bed’, but I’ve never really considered what I mean by that. Someone asked me recently to explain it, so I thought I’d have a go. And like many of the assumptions we make about sex, sometimes examining the belief reveals a truth that’s far more interesting.

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For a while I’ve been contemplating a series of blog posts in which I argue, essentially, with myself. Taking on some of the bad arguments or terrible opinions I had years ago, which still exist on these pages for everyone to see. Every time my autotweet widget spits out something from the archive, I cringe in anticipation of what my past self said, ready to be embarrassed today by what I said five years ago. I’m not alone in this: we’ve all said things in the past that we don’t agree with today. And we all have to consider how we deal with embarrassing stuff when confronted by it, years later. Should we edit old blogs that we no longer agree with?

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Yesterday some poor soul wrote in to the Guardian to ask why his girlfriend masturbates after sex. His assumption was that it was because she was ‘insatiable’, and the agony aunt explained that perhaps she just fancied a second orgasm, or wanted to pleasure herself without the potential anxiety or pressure of doing it in front of him. My answer is a lot more sweary and pretty NSFW, but here goes: maybe the sex made her really, really horny.

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We live in anxious times, soundtracked by the constant, incessant ping of phones and laptops. Notifications are everywhere, bleeping and flashing and demanding a response. So how do we deal with it? Some people probably just switch their phones off or put them in a different room. People like me, though, write blog posts trying to explain ourselves to others in a desperate attempt to either make them forgive me or make them leave me alone. So with good and bad, selfish and silly and paranoid and everything in between, here are a few reasons I have not replied to your message.

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