Here we are now…

Bear with me while I get this site up and running.

You can probably glean from the title of the blog the sort of thing I’ll be blogging about.

I once had a seven year long accidental bout of celibacy – I think that constitutes like a drought or a famine or a plague rather than a bout, but still – and during that time I joked about Sex and the City being irrelevant to my life. There I was, young, energetic, full of energy and ragingly frisky and…no one to have sex with. No wonder I smoked so long!

But the realities of meeting new people, the humour in the frustrations and odd moments, those are the things I want to talk about. The very real negotiations and dilemmas involved in satisfying my desire for sex and affection while maintaining the boundaries that are important to me, as well as the ‘what the fuck’ moments of dating, and the reality of the difficulties of meeting people given my life circumstances (location, work situation, study situation, family situation etc).

Just as I really embraced the idea of blogging about being a woman with a love of sex and no one to have sex with, it fell by the way side. I got involved with someone and we had lots and lots of wonderful sex and hours and hours of smoochy affection…ah, those were the days. But now we’ve broken up and I am going to again have to navigate the world of dating, the negotiate how I can *have* sex in my circumstances, weighing up my desire for sex and affection with my ambivalence about getting into a ‘relationship’ again given the demands on my time etc.

I have no ethical issues with casual sex, but I am a single mother which leaves me in a bind – I will not go home with someone I don’t know as I am nervous of the risk (that’s to do with reading criminal law cases, not to do with being a single mum*), and I don’t feel comfortable bringing someone I don’t know into my house when my son is here – I simply don’t feel enough trust for someone I don’t know at all, and fear I would be unable to protect my son should anything go wrong.

So that’s where I’m at. I have plenty of stories about my first foray back into online dating, and I guess I’ll pop that up soon and we’ll go from there. Happy to hear feedback, or to publish other women’s negotations of the complexities of navigating sexual interactions, or just their funny stories of dating/love/breakups/shennanigans.

*I just want to make it perfectly clear that just because I am a ‘Nervous Nellie’ when it comes to going home with someone I don’t know because of the risk, that I do NOT want to make women feel like they ‘shouldn’t’ or they’re not ‘sensible’ if they do. My stance is this: if you get raped, that’s because someone raped you. It’s not anything to do with what you did. Women should be safe to be sexual when/where and with whom they please, and going home with someone does not mean you consent to being raped. This is going to be a vehemently feminist space – I’m not going to truck with the bullshit of women ‘ask for it’ or the Madonnas/Whores crap. Just so’s we’re clear.