Did You Know We Don't Have to Date Terrible People? A Case for Getting a Vibrator
For someone who writes a column about sex and dating, I can't lie: my love life has felt like it's been on life support recently.
I have exes so odd, stories so humbling, you would rather assume I’m lying than believe they could be true. The last guy I dated ended things because he got circumcised and needed time to mourn the loss of his foreskin. I had a boyfriend fake leukaemia to avoid a breakup! (Although, I will say, that's on the extreme end of awful boyfriends. I think most of them tend to just cheat on you. But to be fair to him, he did also do that. He was an overachiever in that sense).
This streak of bad luck recently came to a head when a guy I was interested in, who had been flirting with me for a couple of weeks, was revealed by a mutual friend to already be dating someone. After a brief period of insanity induced by this discovery, I realised something: I am done being humbled by men.
I came home from this frankly horrifying experience to find that one of my wonderful housemates had cooked me dinner, plated it up for me, and poured me a drink. She put exactly two ice cubes in it – just the way I like it. No man I have ever dated would be so thoughtful.
This all led me to the conclusion I think many young women reach: most of the time, your friends will treat you so much better than a (typically, in my experience, awful) partner can. As I ate the food that my friend had so lovingly made for me, I decided to make a change. So here I am – making the case for conscious singlehood. Now, this is where vibrators come in.
I think being able to take care of your own needs is so important. I’ve absolutely stayed with people longer than I should have because I liked having regular sex. And I've definitely wasted my time on men I shouldn’t have, just because I was looking for someone to take back to my single bed.
We've all heard the advice that you can't love someone else until you love yourself, right? Maybe it's time we started applying that to our sex lives. Really, what I'm advocating for isn't buying a vibrator. It's more what it represents: taking time to figure out what you like, what you want, and providing that for yourself. I'm not saying I'll be shooting down every opportunity that arises for me to revive my dying love life. I just want to be more deliberate about the people I'm choosing to think about. Because at the end of the day, another man who doesn't know the clitoris from the left flap is not worth the stress he would bring to my busy life. I have things to do!
DISCLAIMER: This article is sponsored by Ann Summers. (That was a joke. I do not have a sponsorship deal with Ann Summers. It's with Lovehoney).
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