Enjoy Sex (How, when and if you want to)

2. You and Sex

Your messages, background and experiences

Self-care

Being present

Self-touch and solo sex, fantasies, erotica and porn

‘procrastibate’ (wanking-from-home!)

‘biopsychosocial’ when talking about sexual experiences.

Rewriting the Rules (Routledge, 2013), The Secrets of Enduring Love (Penguin Random House,

Meg-John is a senior lecturer in psychology at the Open University and has published many academic books and papers on topics including non-monogamous relationships, sadomasochism, counselling, and mindfulness, as well as co-edited the journal Psychology & Sexuality. They were the lead author of The Bisexuality Report and they are involved in running many public events on sexuality and relationships, including Critical Sexology. Meg-John is also a UKCP accredited therapist working with gender, sex and relationship diverse (GSRD) clients. In addition to their many academic books, they have now written several books for the general public including Rewriting the Rules (Routledge, 2013), The Secrets of Enduring Love (Penguin Random House, 2016) and Queer: A Graphic History (Icon Books, 2016). They are fre

Meg-John is a senior lecturer in psychology at the Open University and has published many academic books and papers on topics including non-monogamous relationships, sadomasochism, counselling, and mindfulness, as well as co-edited the journal Psychology & Sexuality. They were the lead author of The Bisexuality Report and they

Classic books of fantasies, such as Nancy Friday’s collection of real women’s fantasies, My Secret Garden, or Emily Dubberley’s more recent book of the same, Garden of Desires.

Let’s imagine that I am holding an object made of gold. It is so precious, and it is mine – I feel I must hold onto it. I grasp it, curling my fingers so as not to drop it, so that nobody can take it away from me. What happens after a while? Not only do my hand and arm get cramp, but I cannot use my hand for anything else. When you grip something, you create tension and limit yourself.

Dropping the golden object is not the solution. Non-attachment means learning to relax, to uncurl the fingers and gently open the hand. When my hand is wide open and there is no tension, the precious object can rest lightly on my palm. I can still value the object and take care of it; I can put it down and pick it up; I can use my hand for doing something else.3

I have one friend who I can talk to about everything. Whenever we get together we do a kind of bullet point list of whatever’s going on for both of us at the start of the conversation and then we just cover it all!’
‘It really helps me to keep a journal where I write out all my thoughts about whatever’s going on. At first I really struggled to actually do this, so now I go to my favourite cafe once a week and make it part of a ritual with coffee and cake, so it’s a really pleasant experience.’

I try to notice my feelings and allow them to happen instead of what I used to do – distracting myself by watching TV or whatever. I try to let them happen, maybe write them down or just sit outside somewhere.’