Misseducated

For me, mastering the art of no-strings-attached sex was a total accident. Since I first wrote about dating Mexican men, I’ve been looking for a boyfriend on Bumble (i.e., a long-term, monogamish relationship). While my profile says I’m looking for “a fun, serious relationship with someone who lives in Mexico City,” that endeavor has proven to be very difficult. So I’ve been making casual pit stops into random men’s pants to maintain my sanity and have a little fun.

Today I’m going to share my very pseudo-scientific logic on how women aren’t destined to be bonded forever to every guy we fucked.

Come back for more…😋

The Logic

This process only works if you are 100% honest with yourself when it comes to the question: “Is he long-term relationship material?” To answer this question efficiently is a skill that you can build with time. It means not living in a fantasy land, and being realistic about the logistics of where you both live, who this person is, and what you are looking for.

The more men I’ve dated, the faster I come across deal-breakers. I no longer get hung up on workaholics, alcoholics, potheads, nomadic douchebags, men who tell me they have a thing for blondes, men who don’t text me back, men who are only in my city for a good time (not a long time), men fresh out of a relationship, or men who can’t make me laugh.

Instead, I pay very close attention to what these men say to me on our dates, what they are not saying, and how they act. If they don’t show genuine interest in me, or a desire to connect or care, I don’t think twice about it. I move on. Of course, sometimes I wish a hot, smart, rich guy were more available, but I can’t change that, and I don’t have enough time to sit around and wait for them to fix themselves or like me more. If I want to have sex with them, I do it to enjoy myself and nothing more.

If you’re not sure if a guy is long-term relationship material, and you might want a deeper connection with him, I recommend you withhold sex from them until you figure that out. Meet up again at a later point in time, and assess whether he meets your long-term relationship criteria in a different setting.

Send this to a girlfriend who unfortunately needs to hear this 😬

The Other Essentials

1. Make a good dating profile 📲

After tweaking mine for months, I’ve finally got it down. Below are the screenshots of my Bumble profile, which helps me match with lots of hot and interesting men. So, yes, you have to put yourself out there, and having a stellar dating profile is a great way to do that. If you only have old or uninteresting pictures of yourself, take some new ones and improve your profile over time.

2. Know what you want 🤓.

“I date younger men for sex. I want lots of stamina and very short recovery periods. I don’t get those with men my own age.” — Cindy Gallop, Style Like U.

I selected “Wants kids” and “Long-term relationship” on my Bumble profile. But the men I match with rarely read this, and I’m sure they just swipe anyway to see what they can get away with. That’s fine with me. I can have sex with someone simply because I want to. Read “How to be Shamelessly Sexy” to learn more.

3. Be smart about it 💡.

“Freedom without insulation is just exposure. To unwanted pregnancies. To STIs. To men who don’t believe in foreplay or boundaries. To misinterpreted power dynamics, coercion dressed up as flirtation, and full-blown abuse." - Casual Sex is a Rich Woman’s Sport, ensainte.

Obviously get birth control, use condoms, or just brace yourself for the fact that you might need to take Plan B. So make sure this is something you can invest in and do. And if it isn’t, then screw it. Go focus on your career.

4. Be realistic 🔍.

You know what is going to save your ass? Using logic and being honest with yourself about who this guy is. Not who you wish he was or who you imagine him to be when he gets a fancy job.

If a man has selected that he’s looking for “Fun casual dates” and “Intimacy without commitment” on his Bumble profile (see how casual sex is codified in our culture?), I use that extremely useful information, and I don’t try to change him.

5. Dip into the science 🧪.

Firstly, the popular claim that “women bond more after sex” is not supported by human data. While women can have much higher baseline oxytocin levels than men (up to 3x higher (Marazziti et al. 2019)), this can vary; human bonding is way more complex than just oxytocin levels. Both sexes use oxytocin for bonding through different mechanisms and timing, and the oxytocin response during orgasm shows no significant gender differences (Carmichael et al. 1987, the OG study). I said what I said.

6. Decide you don’t want to be in love, or if you must be, choose the right person 🧍.

“The moment you decide you don’t want to be in love, that just cuts a whole layer of crap out of your life.” — Cindy Gallop, Style Like U.

I believe falling in love with someone is a choice. You can choose who you fall in love with, who you give your energy to, and who you give the time of day. If you do really want to be in love with someone, then be sure to follow the Promises of the ACA 12-Step Program:

“We will choose to love people who can love and be responsible for themselves.”

7. Confront your shame 🫣.

Remember that shame is a normal human emotion, and it’s something you can work on as part of the journey to being shamelessly sexy. I felt ashamed last year when I had sex with a guy in my friend group, and he never really messaged me back. What I should have done was just forgiven myself and called it quits emotionally the moment the sex was over. We had sex. That was it. I didn’t want or need anything else from this person, and I don’t even need his validation.

8. Beware of your weaknesses 🏰.

If you start developing feelings for someone you hardly know after you’ve just had sex with them, I highly encourage you to speak to a professional. For example, when guys don’t message me back, I feel anxious and more attracted to them. Through therapy, 12-Step work, and analyzing my daddy issues, I’ve learned that I get addicted to excitement. It might feel like this guy is the one, but this is a pattern that I’ve witnessed with myself over and over. If I’m still hanging onto him, I give myself a couple extra doses of self-compassion, and then I move on.

9. Get your orgasms in 💦.

I don’t care who you are having sex with; your pleasure is a priority. Read “How to Achieve Orgasm Equality” and “The Ultimate Guide to Having an Incredible One Night Stand” and be sure to bring your toys.

So, there you have it! My guide to having good, quick, fun, unemotionally attached sex.

Let me know which tip was your favorite in the comments!

Love,

Tash

💌 ✍️

p.s. Behold, my Bumble Profile! 👀 🐝

Come join me and be shamelessly sexy! 🫦

Dear Wonderful Readers,

We did it! The first draft of The Sex Journal is done, and headed to the printers today! It’s 140 pages long, so my estimate of 70 sheets at the printers was bang on.

As I write this, I realize I’m probably going to regret not having any reader feedback before printing the first draft. Still, I look forward to learning that lesson the hard way when I return in August to examine the samples.

It’s not too late to sign up to be a beta reader of The Sex Journal! My offer still stands:

* If you’re a free subscriber, you can get 3 months of Misseducated’s paid tier comped in exchange for your feedback

* If you’re a paid subscriber, you’ll get a discount on the final journal once it’s released

I’ll be back in late August with more updates about starting preorders. If you’re truly dying to get your copy and don’t want to miss a second of updates, you can respond “Preorder!” to this email, and I will put you on a special separate list.

Share this with your favorite person…

Let me just say, if there’s one thing I’ve learned through this process, it’s that creating a journal is WAY easier than writing a novel. WAY easier. It took me two years to complete the first draft of my novel, and 14 years to publish it. I completed the first draft of the sex journal in about a month. It’s insanely faster. I’m grateful for that.

A month ago, I looked at this pretty massive mountain in front of me and I thought: how the f**k am I going to do this? Well, it’s been quite the creative rollercoaster, but somehow I pulled it together. For anyone who wants to try this at home, I’d recommend making your project your full-time job temporarily, picking an absolutely ridiculous deadline that you’re not sure you can meet, and of course choosing to focus on a project that you are actually dying to do. I think the fact that I want this sex journal to exist and I have a seriously limited amount of time to create it before I go on holiday / run out of money has been the perfect recipe for getting s**t done. It enabled me to blast through any and all gatekeepers and limitations that were standing in my way.

Now, I am not going to lie. I’m absolutely fried right now. I really wanted to write a funny, actually useful article for you today, but my brain is literally shutting down. On this home stretch, I’ve started sending emails to potential clients with spelling errors! For me, this is a small travesty and a sign. I can’t go on.

The good news is that I have SO many fun upcoming articles planned for you. Here are a few hints:

* “My 5 Kinks and Why”: I want to revisit a classic topic and delve deeper into the quirky psychologies I developed in my childhood. Thank you, Freud!

* “The Hot Gal’s Guide to Sex in Mexico City”: Echoing my piece about dating Mexican men, I’m creating a guide for the girls, the gays, and the theys (à la Blakely Thornton) based on my experiences of living in Mexico City for three years as a single person wedged in the dating scene. This guide will be full of local lore that you can’t find anywhere else, including which locations, bars, restaurants, and gyms you should frequent, depending on the type of person you’re looking to bang. This piece makes me smile every time I think about it.

* “We are the village”: This will be a more tender piece about how we can shamelessly support the young women in our lives with issues like sex, birth control, and healthy romantic relationships. I’ll be coining an unscientific term of “life auntie”, a role which I’ve accidentally taken on. It’s an ode to remembering that we matter when it comes to being there for younger people. It’s also an antidote to the insanely uncertain shitstorm of the world right now, because it’s a direct impact we can have on the lives of others and something we can control.

* Do you have a burning question or a topic you want me to write about? Leave me a comment, a DM, or a quick response to this email, and I’ll make it happen.

The bad news is that I am indeed going on holiday for almost a month. You can expect the next Misseducated update from me on Tuesday, August 19th. I know that is an age away. I will miss you because I love writing this newsletter. But the truth is that aside from the week-long creative orgasm of my sex journal, I have been struggling creatively. This is because of at least two major factors:

* I started using AI to help me edit my work. I started paying for Claude and ChatGPT, and while it’s been helpful to tighten my paragraphs for clarity and make it easier to find research articles for The Sex Report, for example, I feel like I’ve lost the way. I’m obviously a bit of a writing purist, so I only use AI to help me edit my work, but still. I don’t like the quality of the things I’ve been producing with its help. Looking back, I don’t like it’s ideas of what’s optimal. I need to take time away from the internet. Luckily, I’m going to the mountains of California with literally nothing but my own thoughts to nag me for almost two weeks. It’s the reset I need. Wish me luck.

* I’ve started stressing about growth metrics too much. Just like the type-A Wharton graduate I am, or like anyone who’s hooked on social media, I’ve been checking engagement, clicks, views, subscriptions, and all that crap of this newsletter for a few months now. I’ve noticed some trends as to what people like, but it’s started to consume me. I’ve literally forgotten about the fun things that I want to write about. I’ve become too focused on the outcomes, as opposed to just enjoying the creative process. According to Rick Rubin, James Clear, and a variety of modern-day gurus, obsessing about the outcomes and the performance of your work is literally the worst thing you can do, for your work itself and your creativity. And I’ve got a pretty heavy case of the outcomes obsessions. Here are some relevant Rick Rubin quotes:

“The best work is the work you are excited about.”

“Your trust in your instincts and excitement are what resonate with others.”

“If we second-guess our inner knowing to attempt to predict what others may like, our best work will never appear.”

And of course, it’s all exacerbated by comparing myself to other Substackers! Social comparison is the worst. I still haven’t learned my lesson. So a break from social media will also hopefully help me with that. The point is, I’m hoping a couple of weeks driving around in the Western United States, and retreating to the mountainous forests of Northern California, will help me remember why the hell I am doing this and what kind of writing excites me the most. I am not giving up.

Anyway, I want to say a big thank you for reading and being here with me for this ride! Your support helps to keep me going, reminds me to keep learning, and keeps me honest in the process.

I hope you all have a relaxing, creative couple of weeks, and I can’t wait to connect with you again soon once I’m back!

Lots of love,

Tash

💌 ✍️

Come back for more!

p.s. Here’s a smattering of things to keep you entertained in my absence.

My Road Trip Playlist 🛣️ 🌲 🏞️

Listen to the Misseducated Podcast 💌 ✍️

More From Misseducated 💌 ✍️

José

I am sitting on the cracked, faux black leather couch in a white beam of LED light. Underneath the sparkling sheath of my green-blue dress is my matching tangerine orange underwear set. José is crouched on his knees on the floor in front of me.

I notice the way he sees me. His drunken eyes double-take as I open my legs. I look down over the lip of my dress and back up into his brown eyes, teasing. I want to control him. It’s like I’ve made up a game with my own body. I will spruce up these used goods. Put the fruit back on the shelf at the supermarket, nice and ripe again.

I touch myself over my underwear as I look up at him. I am putting on a show for him. I quite like it. I feel powerful, in control. I notice the grey hairs in the scruff of his beard as he sips his beer. He leans in closer, tasting me with his nose.

When we are f*****g in his room, the breath is forced out of my lungs by the weight of his body and his protruding belly. He has cute brown moles on his face, deep brown eyes, and a wicked smile. Eight years older than me. He comes quickly. I feel dainty, young, fresh.

José drives me home at 3 in the morning. In his car, I hug my knees, my orange underwear back on but readjusted and slightly twisted. He winks at me, and I pause for a moment. I wonder. We can both look at my body, but perhaps we see very different things. How does he see me? As some kind of walking beauty? Humanly imperfect yet highly f******e?

Come back for more 🫦…

Todor

Todor starts to kiss my neck, and I am not a fool. I know that means he wants to f**k me. Three years younger than me, with plenty of muscle, I don’t want it to end. I love the feeling of his focus and attention, the feeling of his desire quietly unleashing itself, as he grabs my wrists and leans his whole body over on top of me.

After we have sex, I get up. I want to shower. I ask him if he wants to join. He is already inching across the shower’s step, the deep, muscular curve of his back temporarily hidden from my view as I let the warm water rush down my face, through my hair, over my shoulders. Todor is quite a bit taller than me, but I feel him close, and I lift myself up onto my tippy toes to kiss him. Our lungs pant with the heat of the water vapor, hardly catching our breath. I feel weightless.

Read more about Todor here and here.

Ariel

In Valle de Bravo, I am walking up the stairs at the spa. I am wearing these white and dark blue floral leggings that my dad got me. They are comfortable, but I think they are ugly. My English friend, Ariel, trails up the stairs behind me.

“Your butt looks great in those leggings,” she says, “I didn’t know you had junk back there.”

My eyes open wide as I round the top of the staircase.

“Really?” I say to her, glancing back at my ass to see how I look, “Thank you.”

I read things into her comment that I know I shouldn’t. I teeter between friendship and attraction. I can’t help it. She’s bisexual too. Yet, instead of guilt, I feel a sense of pulsing, silent pride. I keep secrets. I don’t like to, but sometimes I have no choice.

I flick a smile towards her. I wonder where her boyfriend is.

Read more about bisexuality here and here.

Gym Girls

I am sitting at an outdoor cafe. I look over the rim of my computer screen to see girls with perfect butts, boobs, and bodies glide out of the gym. Some adorned with a small fluffy pooch. Some wearing sunglasses under the gray sky. The tech bro in a t-shirt next to me stares at them for longer than I do. A wave of wanting washes over me, yearning almost, hitting me across my face and shoulders like a hot spray.

I, too, must do 1,000 planks and pushups and sculpt my butt to gain the tech bro’s attention. Stop eating fried chicken. You’ll never get abs like that. Having a brain or a personality in this world doesn’t matter.

Art

My nude body is in the New York Times. My first anonymous feature in a dream publication, and it happens to be that I’m lying upside down on a frozen, rotten staircase in a haunted, crumbling house in Mexico City. My body is art.

I lounge around with the other nude models, helping the photographer craft the perfect picture. Compare, compare, compare. I cannot help but notice the curves of the other girls’ thighs or their slightly saggy boobs.

I see I am one of the only ones fully unshaven. I wonder if their men prefer them that way, or they prefer themselves that way, or who gets to decide these things. Probably, it’s the razor companies. Some exec who wants to buy a bigger house in the suburbs.

The Sauna

Later, I go to the sauna in Mexico City. I think of José in his drunken stupor. Tasting me with his nose. I sit in the baking heat in my thin, light-blue bikini. I feel like I could go out and get any guy I ever wanted.

Sure, José is a man, and yet his eyes are far less judgmental than my own. Can men even tell the difference if I weigh 5 pounds heavier? Do they like my butt cheeks just the same if they sit like a shelf or sag slightly in the middle, like an ever-older piece of cheap plywood from Ikea, drooping from the weight like it’s filled with books?

I consider that the female gaze, the gazes we give each other, and the visions of edited people on Instagram are harsher than any way a man could see us. Much less a human man with a cute smile, lovable tummy, and receding hairline.

Baking, I leave the sauna. I still suck in my stomach a bit when I bend over to get in and out of the cold plunge tub. But I let the thong of my bikini bottom line my lower back. I leave the full, swelling cellulite of my butt cheeks out on display. The slight muffin top of my tummy, even, is there within the reach of people’s eyes. I let my square bikini top hang there also. Enough boob for there to be something to see.

I shiver in the cold plunge water, hugging my knees for warmth. Here I am, body imperfect, trying this new gaze on for size. Actually, I kind of prefer the loose-fitting worship of the male gaze to whatever goggles I was wearing before. When I catch a glimpse of myself in my reflection in the sauna’s glass wall, I see the elegance of my waist and a well-proportioned lower middle.

José, continued.

José drives up to my front door. He stops the car. He kisses me on the cheek.

I choose to ignore the judgments of my mother and the women of her generation.

Their standards sharper.

Their attention to detail.

Their whispers crueler than catcalls, even.

I see myself through José’s gaze.

I am a queen.

If this piece made you feel something, I’d love to hear it. Reply, comment, or share with a friend who’s learning to see herself differently 💌 ✍️

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TL;DR Better out than in. Be bold. Tell people you love them while you still can. No regrets. 💌 ✍️

Dear Wonderful Readers,

My grandmother is not getting out of bed. I can't help but think of what she's leaving behind: the things, the people, and the world outside her room. She spent all of COVID alone in her apartment on the second floor of a crumbling stucco building in Koreatown, Los Angeles. She was happy living there until she had to be taken to hospital when she fell over and broke her pelvis two years ago. She hasn't stood up unassisted since. When she moved, my aunt came and packed up everything that she owned and put it in a storage unit.

When I tell people my grandmother lives in Los Angeles, it sounds incredibly glamorous. Their eyes open wide. But they don’t know that she misplaced her divorce settlement money in the 80s on a hotel in Palm Springs. Then she didn’t want to look after Aunt Mildred, which at least would have left her with the three-story house in the Castro, San Francisco—a house that her granddaughter, paying astronomical rent in the same city some fifteen years later, would quite like to have had.

Share this with a fellow millennial who pays astronomical rent:

Still, I love my grandmother. She balks at the MAGA, conspiracy-theory-inclined, insecure man in my family and our circles. She pesters them, expecting better. She calls me up to remind me that I should subscribe to Heather Cox Richardson, the esteemed historian from Harvard. She listens to my podcast. She says I have a talent for interviewing people. She tells me of the love she feels towards one of the carers at her nursing home, blurring tender affection with attraction. I read between the lines.

My grandmother tells me getting old sucks. Half the time she calls me, it’s because she can't figure out how to do something on her iPad. The other half of the times she calls me, it’s to remind me of the things she has selected for me to have after she dies, the few treasures amongst the multiple boxes of rotten, rat, pee-and-poop-infested books that I’ve already hauled out of her storage unit on Pico.

That freaking storage unit. It's like a hospital for people’s dying memories of their old selves. Yet, unlike bodies, which you can put in the ground, you can’t get rid of the things in there. There’s too much “value”. Nostalgiafied, imagined value. These embodied artifacts of your soul make it impossible for any future person to get rid of them.

I've already siphoned off the treasures I wanted as payment for my time cleaning out the crap. The two ceramic Mexican masks and the two pieces of Huichol (Wixárika) felt art that I found in a trunk. A trunk that was buried deep in the bowels of my grandmother’s storage unit and which, I kid you not, also contained her mother’s, my great grandmother's, ashes. Thankfully, the soul of my great-grandmother has since been laid to rest. Her ashes scattered by my sister, my great-aunt, and my cousin at Stinson Beach.

My grandmother tells me she wants to walk, but she always said that exercising hurt her. One time, I dragged her, rushing, from Southwark tube station in London to the Tate Modern to see a Lichtenstein exhibition, which I didn’t even like. That was the closest I ever saw her to running; for a timed entry to a museum, which we simply could not miss.

My grandmother might never run again, or maybe even stand up unassisted again, but her saving grace is that she can still make art. My grandmother has painted all her life and recently started doing art again in her nursing home, even though she struggles to see and move her hands. I am glad for her, finally having fun and challenging her inner perfectionist. But she told me most of what she creates is a charcoaled blob. It’s to represent the darkness of the now-charred neighborhood, Pacific Palisades, which she used to call home, where she raised her children.

My grandmother's memories live in a version of Pacific Palisades that no longer exists. One of my grandmother's proudest, most cherished memories was starting Art Alley at Marquez, the elementary school in the Palisades, where she painted a series of murals with the kids. I don't know what the murals looked like, people in the "Pacific Palisades - Remember When" Facebook group definitely do. I once asked some famous YouTubers who grew up in the Palisades. They remember it also. My grandmother was very pleased when I told her that. For better or worse, of course, she had sold the two houses she once owned in the Palisades and the condo on the beach in Malibu long ago. No surprises there. In the wake of the fires, it’s hard to know whether this was a blessing or a curse.

We joke that my grandmother is a witch. Once, when my mother was a teenager and her boyfriend broke up with her, my grandmother made her a voodoo "Aidan doll" and pins to go with it. Aidan died a few years later. Smoking weed and a brain hemorrhage, they said. I warn my grandmother to be careful. She tells me she's working on our current president, but he's a tough one.

I take screenshots when I talk with my grandmother on FaceTime. It’s strange to have a relationship with someone where there’s always that thought in the front of your mind that this could be the last time you talk to them. I learned years ago now to always say, “I love you,” just before we hang up. The Englishness in me resents this and feels embarrassed. But, perhaps shaped by the beauty of Mexico, I'm learning to express that. Perhaps not all feelings are meant to be swept under the rug. Maybe it's like the characters in the staple movie from my childhood, Shrek, belching as he says, “Better out than in, I always say.”

The thought of expressing these feelings is bringing up a lot of emotion for me. Maybe that’s what I wanted to say here, and part of what this newsletter is about. While I was basically told to keep sweet my entire childhood, as an adult, I prefer to use my words. Say what I really feel. Leave no stone unturned. What’s the point of being alive if the closest people to us are left guessing whether or not we ever truly cared for them? If we ever truly loved them? If they ever meant anything to us?

Maybe it wasn't a mistake to tell two grown men last summer that I loved them. One of them was my old boss, another was an old friend. Both of them had been huge supporters of my work, which I later discovered is my Achilles heel when it comes to men. There’s nothing that turns me on quite like a man calling me a prolific artist. Unfortunately, neither of them has talked to me since. It seems neither of them could handle it. I have been feeling some shame about that. Still, it's not up to me to make them believe they're lovable.

That is why we must say what we feel. Be bold. Express what we feel we must say. No regrets. It’s mostly just to sense check with ourselves. To reconfirm with ourselves that we are truly alive.

Is there someone you say “I love you” to every time you hang up the phone?

Is there someone you wish you could say it to?

Or something you've been meaning to say but haven't?

I dare you to say it while you still can. If you feel like sharing, I’d love to hear it.

Lots of love, and have a great rest of your week,

Tash

💌 ✍️

Read me again sometime…

More From Misseducated 💌 ✍️

Dear Wonderful Readers,

This morning, I woke up grumpy and exhausted, scrolling depressively for thirty minutes, debating whether to even get up. My self-criticism has been flaring up again, making life almost unlivable.

“Come to this self-portrait event at Soho House!” my friend coaxed me via WhatsApp.

I frowned. Most of me wanted to stay at home, hiding. But after a short self-compassion practice to stop me destroying myself from self-hatred, I got up. I got a latte. I went for a walk. I decided to go to the self-portrait event. Because why the hell not?

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There, in the light-green glasshouse of the covered restaurant, sat Mina Serrano. I was confused at first because there were no mirrors for us to draw from. But then she said (in Spanish),

“Now, we’re going to do something a little different. You’re going to draw me. And as you do, I want you to think about identity, beauty, and bravery.”

She proceeded to take off the thin, beige mesh top she was wearing as she told us her life story. How, in Andalucia, Spain, she grew up knowing she had to leave. How drawing was her first love, but she soon found herself creating sculptures. She described the conundrum of sexuality and solitude. How trans women are trivialized and fetishized and stereotyped into sex work. How she would make beautiful poses on her own at home, only to wonder to herself: why is no one here to witness this beauty?

“Crecí sabiendo que tenía que irme.”

“I grew up knowing that I would have to leave.”

Her story fascinated me, not just because of her authenticity but also because of the risks that she had taken to be who she was. At some point during her story, the circle of people around her started drawing, as did I.

“Which part of yourself do you see in me?” she asked us. “What does that tell you about who you are?”

I drew her sitting on the stool, topless, holding the microphone. The microphone was symbolic to me. Her, taking up space. Her, using her voice. Her, vulnerably being. It stirred something in me. When we had the Q&A session afterward, I shared,

“I write a blog about my sex life. I love my work, but sometimes, I feel guilty because my siblings have their own companies. I don’t mind expressing myself and being my own person. But what if I’m negatively impacting their careers? With your authenticity, your identity, your beauty, and your bravery, how do you think about your family?”

She raised the microphone to her light-red tinted lips. She paused for a good, long moment. Then she said,

“I don’t have the perfect answer for you. Family is not easy." She shifted on her stool. “There is at least half of my family who rejected me. When you know that your family is gathering together, and you’re not invited, that hurts a lot. But I promised myself that I would accept myself. And not subject myself to the guilt. Ultimately, it’s not about them accepting me or not. I do not depend on them. I accept myself, and I choose to live as I am. And that is what matters.”

Her honesty struck me, the vulnerability in her words. She was saying that, at some level, our identities should not depend on other people who we cannot control. My family hasn’t rejected me yet for the explicit things I have published on this blog. In fact, some of them even read it (Hello there! Love you!) Still, my inner critic says,

“Who wants a sex writer for a sister?”

As I added the mono-chromatic touches to my drawing, I felt the pain of my own wounds swelling inside of me. For some reason, I was hit hard this week by the weight of my family’s unspoken values and my parents’ invisible expectations. Perhaps it’s because the summer family gatherings are coming, and I remember them looking down on me last year compared to other people. My fear bubbled up like thick goo. A message that’s been drilled into me, silently through sonar, since my childhood:

Making money is the most important thing. Being financially successful in this world is the greatest and only source of validation from others that matters.

It’s funny sometimes how the things that are never spoken are what we know to be most true. Still, that’s not who I am. And I am not going to sacrifice this only life; I have to make money in ways that make me happy. But unless I do the work to heal myself, I am left feeling worthless.

I took a deep breath as I sat there in the calm, glinting green midday light that streamed through the glass roof above me. I thought about you, my wonderful readers. I thought about this blog. I looked at my drawing as the shame in me subsided. In the undertones of my words to Mina, I had essentially asked her: Is it okay to not make a lot of money as a writer? Is it okay to be happy and pursue a career for pure joy? Is it okay to be different?

“I think so,” Mina’s elegant position, topless upon the stool, seemed to say.

I looked back at my drawing. I liked the colors and the slight messiness of it. This Tuesday morning, I was not bored to death at a day job that was lining my bank account but draining my soul. Here I was, simply enjoying myself, drawing and creating something beautiful. Something that was by no means perfect but something that I could be proud of. I smiled to myself.

How are you living differently from your family or your community? How have you handled this? What shame have you overcome? I’d love to know. Please share in the comments.

Shamelessly yours,

Tash

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Send this to a shameless friend! 💌 ✍️

More from Misseducated 💌 ✍️

Abstract (TL;DR) ⏰

After 64 attempts and zero orgasms, I finally understood why 81.6% of women can’t reach orgasm from intercourse alone. Here, I uncover the reasons why. I was in a one-year relationship. We were in our teens, and although we had lots of fun penetrative sex in different places, neither of us understood the importance of the female’s pleasure in a heterosexual relationship. I cite a research paper where I self-identify as part of the 81.6% of females who cannot orgasm from intercourse alone. Then I share which of the researcher’s suggested techniques for helping women orgasm also work for me. These include not feeling rushed, having a partner who knows what I like, and anal stimulation.

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Introduction 💦

I lay there, naked, as my partner pushed himself deeper inside of me. He grunted and closed his eyes from the intensity as he leaned down on top of me. Yet, as I hugged his shoulders, I was silent. My eyes were wide open. I stared at the cream-colored plaster flowers that lined the edge of the ceiling in my bedroom; their shadows elongated in the late spring evening. Despite all the girls in porn having so much fun during this part, I felt almost nothing. I was too embarrassed to admit to myself that I was almost…bored?

That relationship lasted for one year. I never orgasmed with that partner. This is despite the fact that we had sex about an estimated 64 times (see details below) and that I’ve been perfectly happy masturbating on my own since I was 14. What happened? Or what wasn’t happening? Why was this the case? The article is a deep dive into a phenomenon I want to call “an orgasmless relationship.” Here, I’ll share everything that I’ve learned so you can avoid this experience for yourself in your current and future relationships.

Before we get dirty, I want to apologize to my ex-partner, Will (not his real name), for the fact that I’m sharing the intimate details of our relationship on the internet. Unlike the situations of some women I’ve talked to who were also in orgasmless relationships (who had to fake them all in the end), Will was a very kind and loving boyfriend. I stand by the fact that he would have done everything he could to please me. The problem was that neither of us knew any better at the time. We were in our teens, and as you’ll come to see, we both lacked some key situational and psychological factors.

Relationship Data Observations 🧫

Here’s a detailed breakdown of our relationship:

Category: High School Boyfriend. Monogamous.

How we met: We took the same train to school and were also in the same choir. He took a liking to me, and at some point, we started talking on the way home.

Birth control methods: The pill and condoms.

Duration: 1 year, exactly. I broke up with him on our anniversary because I was on my period and got the ick.

Why we broke up: We had very different interests, and I didn’t have the communication skills to tell him I wanted to have penetrative sex less frequently.

Where We Had Sex: A Geographic Analysis 🗺️

Here is a map of all the places where Will and I had penetrative sex. Keep in mind that we were both in high school, so we lived with our families.

The school bathroom sex was not particularly warm or comfortable, but it was thrilling. Still, we almost got caught by some younger male students once. Around this time, I was in the running to become a school prefect, and Will was trying to get recruited to play rugby at university, so we decided it probably wasn’t worth the risk anymore. Yet the secrecy of it all was intoxicating. Looking at my Maths or English teacher in the face the next day at my lessons felt very cheeky and naughty indeed.

Analysis 📊

Given that I had so much sex with Will, why did I never orgasm? Here’s what was holding me back:

* I was never taught that my pleasure was important, or I saw it as less important than Will’s, so I never prioritized it. Plus, as a people-pleaser, I wanted Will to have an amazing time so that he could boast to his rugby friends.

* I was too embarrassed and ashamed to admit to Will that I knew how to orgasm or that I masturbated. Female masturbation was extremely taboo. Not even my closest female friends had ever mentioned it to me.

* I struggled to relax and simply receive. Will would eat me out until a certain point, but when it got to be too much pleasure, I quickly stopped it. I felt uncomfortable taking so much time.

* We didn’t explore anal or toys or anything like that. This was Will’s first relationship, and I already felt guilty for having penetrative sex with him, like I was corrupting him.

* I never thought to bring my bullet vibrator into the bedroom with Will because I didn’t want him to feel incompetent. I didn’t know the most basic rule that we need to transfer our techniques for pleasuring ourselves to our partnered heterosexual sex.

* From porn, I believed that the goal of foreplay was to prepare us for intercourse. I didn’t realize that foreplay is the main course for many women. Women in porn videos also seemed to find having penetrative sex very pleasurable, but apart from stimulating my g-spot with strange positions like "split the reed," penetration wasn’t pleasurable for me. I blamed myself and thought something was wrong with me.

* I had no idea that, for the most part, women cannot orgasm by penetration alone.

Be brave! Share this post with someone who you want to give you an orgasm:

Key Findings 🤓

My experience wasn’t unique, or so I learned from digging into the science. In June 2015, an amazing group of researchers surveyed 1,055 women aged 18-94 about their experiences with genital touching, sexual pleasure, and orgasm. They surveyed a large enough group with the hope of getting a representative sample of all the women in the United States. Most importantly, they found “that nearly three-quarters of women reported that adding clitoral stimulation during penetration was either necessary for orgasm or made their orgasms feel better.” I highly recommend reading the paper if you want to know the extra juicy details of how different women like their clitorises stimulated.

Their table shows a strong relationship between the stimulation of the clitoris during intercourse and a woman’s ability to orgasm on average:

They added a fun section where they asked women for experiences or techniques that helped them orgasm. I then compared which ones I’ve experienced as being helpful to helping me orgasm:

Discussion 🧘‍♀️

Reflecting on my relationship with Will, I wish I had learned how to be shamelessly sexy earlier in life. I wish I had believed what I teach now: our pleasure matters, and we should not be afraid to tell our partners that we masturbate. We must ask for what we want. It probably wasn’t until my next boyfriend (who I pegged), some five years later, that I felt comfortable enough to orgasm in front of my partner. I matured a lot in my next relationship, and I’m grateful I did.

However, I did not really begin to practice what I preached until I interviewed Dr. Laurie Mintz about her book, “Becoming Cliterate.” Since I wrote the piece “How To Achieve Orgasm Equality,” I made a rule with myself: we have to have at least one orgasm with any male partner before we have intercourse. I’ve pretty much stuck to that since. It may take each new partner a couple of sessions to learn how to play me like a new instrument, but given the fact that we will probably have sex and I have an affinity for creampies, it’s the least they can do.

Did you ever find yourself in an orgasmless relationship? Did you find a way to fix it? Share your story in the comments so we can normalize talking about what actually works for our bodies.

Thank you all for bearing with me as I try this new Tuesday schedule.

Love,

Tash

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Send this article to a naughty, nerdy friend 😈🤓:

Dear Wonderful Readers,

The following vignette is what we call a “raw write.” I wrote it in 40 minutes in my writing class called UnMute, led by my incredible writing teacher, ANN RANDOLPH. I've been attending Ann's classes for the last three and a half years, and working with her has been a huge part of my creative journey. She'll be starting up UnMute again in the fall for any of you who have a lot of stories bubbling away inside of you but are unsure of where to start. I highly recommend her class.

Today’s prompt was the poem “What The Living Do” by Marie Howe, and I took the question: “Write about something broken in your home—something small and stupid. Let the description grow. What bigger thing does it mirror or hold? What grief or yearning lives inside that broken faucet, that squeaky hinge?”

Also, I’ve got an exciting and quick Misseducated update. Starting this week, I will be experimenting with posting my work on Tuesdays. I've tended to publish too late on Friday evening, and I hope that publishing earlier in the week will give me more opportunities to share my work on social while it's still fresh. Still, I am eternally grateful to all my regular Friday readers, and I will keep you in the loop as to how it goes! You can expect posts from me on Tuesday from now on.

I hope you enjoy this piece and have a great weekend.

Love,

Tash

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Receive my saucy, mid-week reads:

What The Jigsaw Puzzle On My Dining Table Says About My Love Life 🧩 👩‍❤️‍💋‍👨

I have a giant jigsaw puzzle sitting on my dining room table. It takes up all the space I could use for dinners with friends. I planned to have it glued together and framed ages ago at this point. I haven’t broken it apart yet because it took me so long to put it together. My sister gave that jigsaw puzzle to me because my family always said I was good at them, and I do like them, but this one was quite hard, with all the pieces looking the same, so I can’t just destroy it. I’m going to make my time worth it and stick it together so that I never have to redo it again.

A guy (José) I am seeing came round the other day. He offered to have one of his guys come over and frame my puzzle for me. My sense of overwhelm at having the puzzle on my table for months was lifted slightly before the guilt of relying on another person to sort out my life clocked me around the head. He is sweet and generous enough. He has black whiskers on his chin, with a couple of grey ones in there, too, and deep brown eyes. When I am with him, it feels like the most natural thing ever. I don’t have to pretend to be somebody else. We snuggle mere hours into knowing each other. I’m still not convinced, but I kind of like it that way.

What I wanted was a boyfriend, swiping through the apps. Hinge. Bumble. Hinge. Luxxy. Raya. Hinge. Bumble. Feeld. Coffee Meets Bagel. Until I thought about it the other day. How many men and women have I swiped on? Hundreds of thousands of people at this point. I started using the apps over a decade ago, when I was a fresh little spring chicken, not even close to fully adulting, at the University of Pennsylvania. I’ve swiped through so many people my thumbs have begged me to stop from their aching long ago.

Deep in the bowels of these people’s profiles, what was I really looking for? The Prince Charming on a white horse. The Harvard graduate with lots of money. The perfect match that I couldn’t even describe to you because this human person does not even exist. All the fish pictures, dog pictures, graduation pictures, sky diving pictures, waterfall pictures, random group of men at weddings pictures, in bed with a cat pictures, with parents pictures, now nieces and nephews pictures. All just churning like thick buttercream in a barrel into one giant blob. An indecipherable mess of the reason why I can’t get laid and yet also some sort of cultural observation with data points and trends and themes that I should have sat down and started to track ages ago. At least that might have resulted in something interesting. I don’t want to accept the lost time. These are puzzles that I can’t break apart even when they’re not working.

But recently, I realized that a good chunk of my close friends are leaving town, and social events are winding down, so maybe this is a good time to try my hand at the cultural phenomenon they call “a relationship.” It’s been quite interesting to try to take down the barriers in my mind and my life to enable myself to let this phenomenon in, one brick at a time. I started to notice things about my lifestyle. I am too independent. I bike to the date on the shared city bike system rather than letting the guy pick me up from my house and drive me. I walk home alone, quite enjoying the peace of my own company on the dark, wet nights of Mexico City when the kind man with the deep brown eyes has offered to call me an Uber. I won’t get on his motorcycle because he only has one helmet, and I’m not an idiot, but that means I am cold, and I run home in the rain feeling a bit sick because we just ate a lovely ramen dinner that he paid for and wouldn’t even let me look at the check. But the idea of getting on a motorcycle terrifies me anyway. It’s a funny thing, you know, letting yourself be taken care of. Maybe this is what a relationship is.

The older man with the deep brown eyes messages me on WhatsApp and calls me “guapa” and “hermosa.” He says he can’t wait to take me out for dinner again. We did a spin class together as a joke. Every time before I see him, I feel nervous because I fear I will hate him. But when I see him again, my heart softens, and I remember that he is kind of cute. And I let him put his motorcycle helmet and his backpack in my locker at the spin class gym and I wonder to myself. Maybe this is modern dating. Maybe this is what a relationship is. We speak in Spanish, which goes against my strong principle of only dating people in English since my last partner, and I think to myself. Why do I make up these silly rules? Perhaps they only exist to be broken anyway.

I do not probe into his past yet or whether he wants children because I do not want or need to know these things yet, either. He is too kind, too soft, maybe, to spank me when I pull back my dress to reveal my pale thigh in the fluorescent light of his apartment. He doesn’t want to hurt me. I wonder if his tenderness is a sign of weakness or a sign of strength. If this makes him less or more of a man than the string of people I have been with. It may not be very hot or erotic, but what about feeling safe? I let him sit on my right side on our second date at dinner, the side where I have an eternity of ugly trauma stored in my body, the side that alerts me to danger without me even knowing it while I’m asleep in the middle of the night. With him, I feel nothing. No alarm bells. No fear. Just peace. That’s got to count for something, hasn’t it?

He messages me in the middle of the day. How am I? He messages me in the evening. Have I eaten? Am I hungry? Can he send some food to my apartment? He is very sweet, but I know better than to accept such generosities, too tied up in my own spiral of being an independent woman to allow myself to rely on anything else to find me food. For now, anyway. Maybe I will find it in my heart and let myself continue to soften. It scares me to give up this control. It’s too soon. We’ve only known each other two weeks.

I told him already I was worried about his drinking; I couldn’t help myself. I spent a year and a half dating a guy whose friend groups and housemates consisted of actual and functioning alcoholics. I won’t stand for it. After the mezcal tasting he took me to, we kissed on a rooftop bar looking over the quiet spires of the main cathedral in the Zocalo before he ordered another mezcal and the bar owners gave us a complimentary round because he knew them, and as I found out late…

Dear wonderful readers,

Today, we have the ultimate treat for you all! This week, two shameless sex writers on Substack sat down to share our personal experiences of what it's really like to publish the details of our intimate lives on the internet.

Share the steam with a spicy-minded friend 🔥

Abigail A Mlinar Burns, the married sex writer behind Happy Endings, and Tash Doherty, the single sex writer behind Misseducated by Tash Doherty, chose to spill all the juicy deets. We covered everything from anal equality to the serendipity of dating apps and post-partum intimacy secrets to throwing societal expectations of weddings out the window. Plus, we dive into the importance and the power of women being woo-woo.

We hope you'll love listening to this conversation as much as we loved having it! Be sure to check out our publications: Happy Endings and Misseducated by Tash Doherty

Enjoy, and thank you for being here as we explore what it means to write shamelessly about sex,

Abigail & Tash

💌 ✍️

Read our work 🫦

Happy Endings

Misseducated by Tash Doherty

Follow us on Instagram 🚀

@abigailamlinarb

@tashdoherty_

Podcast Interview Transcript 📖

[00:00:11] Tash Doherty: So, welcome back to Misseducated. You have no idea how excited I am for our chat today. We're meeting with Abigail Mlinar, who is the writer of Happy Endings, which has been my favorite Substack since I discovered it maybe like two or three weeks ago now. But we both focus on such incredible sexuality topics. Abigail specifically writes a lot about her marriage and sexuality within marriage, which I think is a topic that is so neglected in our society. And yeah, there's many myths that we can bust along the way. So, Abigail, welcome to Misseducated. So excited to have you.

[00:00:45] Abigail Mlinar Burns: Thanks for having me. I'm super stoked to be here.

[00:00:48] Tash Doherty: Yay! I feel like this is a dream come true. I don't think I've crushed this hard on another writer in like a long time. But we both went behind the scenes and like read a couple of pieces from each other's Substack, so we can start just with our backgrounds and whatever else anyone wants to know. And then hopefully dive into some pretty juicy, sexy topics as both of us have been writing for like a while now. So yes, let's get into it.

[00:01:13] Abigail Mlinar Burns: Yay. I know you have such a like, clear, beautiful like shameless is your brand, but just your voice is so like just real that I really f*****g enjoy reading what you write.

Is it okay if I swear?

[00:01:29] Tash Doherty: Yes, it's completely fine. And I also really f*****g enjoy reading what you write as well. And the first question that I actually wanted to start with for you is: could you tell us about the serendipity of the song "Tenderness"?

[00:01:42] Abigail Mlinar Burns: Oh my God. Of course, I can. This is my favorite story. I can tell this over and over again. It's just that I believe in magic, right? I don't believe in like magician's magic. I mean, I do in that it's a craft that they can hone. But I believe that there's magic in the universe, right? Yeah. And I try to follow it as bonkers as it can be at times because I feel like that's where you're meant to be, right?

So one day, I was on Tinder, which, nod to your Vogue piece about dating apps while traveling. Like that's literally me and my ethos and my whole life. So I saw that, and I'm like, f**k, of course, we're supposed to meet. Like we have so many similar thoughts in this life.

I was traveling constantly before I settled down, as happens in culture these days, right? Uh, I was traveling a lot, and my first modus operandi when I got to a new town was to pull up dating apps. And Tinder is my app of choice, or it was. I just feel like it's the dive bar of dating apps. It's so like random where you could happen into anybody, whereas you feel like on the other ones, they're a bit more curated, and you kind of know which type of person you're gonna get. I just love the randomness of Tinder. Yeah. Anyways, I opened it up. I was like wrapped in a towel naked, drying off after a shower from my leg travels, unpacking my suitcase in my new apartment. Well, I had a bedroom in somebody else's place, which is another whole story that's amazing. I'm humming a song that my dad introduced me to, and my dad is super important in my life. My mom died, and so it was just me and, my dad and my sister for a while. So he introduced me to the song. I'm humming it. It's so catchy. It's an earworm. It can't come outta my head. And I open up Tinder; the second third swipe is Joe, my future husband, who's in the other room. And his profile, it was just one photo and his favorite song, you know, the Spotify integration. "Tenderness" by the Parquet Courts, the same song I was humming.

I got total full-body chills. I was so freaked out and I swiped right without even thinking a second longer. And we matched. I sent a message immediately and was just like, "You won't believe this, so serendipitous. I was humming your favorite song while I stumbled upon your profile." And his response was just so perfect. It was like, "I love serendipity.

Let's get a beer today." And we met that afternoon just a couple hours later.

[00:04:06] Tash Doherty: Oh my God. That is such a cool story. And also, like, I love that you take advantage of the randomness of Tinder because a lot of times when people are mentioning the music that they like on the internet, it's so random, right? Like, it's like we all listen to a lot of different music on Spotify, whatever. But, like, the fact that that song match was so perfect is actually crazy lucky. Because yeah, again, there's so many people who are like Arcade Fire or like whatever. And I'm just like, I could not give a s**t about their music choices. But yeah, that was like the beginning of your entire relationship, and then things blossomed quickly. I know this was only in 2019, so this was only like six years ago, basically. Yeah.

[00:04:41] Abigail Mlinar Burns: Yeah. I met him, and then we were pregnant and married within like a year, year and a half.

[00:04:48] Tash Doherty: Wow.

[00:04:48] Abigail Mlinar Burns: So quite, quite a fast turn of events and a complete pivot from my lifestyle beforehand. But I just like I say about magic, I think when you know, you know, and you just follow that.

[00:04:57] Tash Doherty: Yeah. That is so awesome, and it really gives me hope as well, I will say. So it's been really awesome to read a lot of your work in that sense. And so at this time, you were also, because you're the Head of Growth and Sales and everything also at Make Love Not Porn, which we love, working alongside Cindy Gallop, which is an amazing company. And now you guys live in New York, so that's the vibe with two kids.

[00:05:18] Abigail Mlinar Burns: Yeah, two kids. My relationship with Cindy is slightly longer than the relationship with my husband because I started working out with Cindy a few months before Joe and I met. That was why I went to Europe was actually because I wanted to work in alternative adult content spaces to help change the big porn landscape a little bit by helping smaller creators be more dominant in that space and have more market share to then, like, hopefully, sway the supply of big porn. Anyways, came back to New York and the United States.

I'm from Minneapolis, Minnesota, by way of Europe.

[00:05:52] Tash Doherty: By way of Europe and picking up a husband along the way. So, that's been really amazing. And I've got some quotes from some of my favorite pieces of yours that I was reading. One of the ones that really stuck out to me was the one where you talk about, let's see what this is called. Is it "The Mother W***e Complex is Hot, Actually." And this is like an interview back and forth with you and Joe. And my favorite part, because one of the other questions I wanted to ask you because I've had this problem with my readers as well, is that I mostly slept with a bunch of different people, random on and off, and they often see themselves, you know, in my writing. But here, at the end, you have this amazing back-and-forth conversation, inc…

What you see on social media can stand in your way of being shamelessly sexy. Here’s what to do about it.

Short Answer ⏰

Comparing yourself to others on social media creates a shame spiral that traps you in four ways: expectation, comparison, striving, and validation. To counteract this, change your media diet (follow fewer accounts that make you feel terrible, and more accounts that make you feel good), reflect on what exactly you are jealous of in a post so you can take action to make it happen, and consider taking a social media break altogether.

Longer Answer 🍷

Yesterday, a post on Instagram completely derailed me. It was from Ellie (not her real name), whom I grew up with in London, and whose new book is featured in The New Yorker. Ellie’s sweet traditional publishing deal and PR team are propelling her to worldwide success. Plus, she had a smiling picture of her with her family around her book. I don’t have any of that! Within half a second of seeing that Instagram post, I felt like an utter failure, and I was furious.

Preparing this post for The Sex Report, the first study I read was called “Why don’t I look like her?” How adolescent girls view social media and its connection to body image.” In it, researchers in Australia interviewed 24 girls aged 14-17 about how using social media affects their body image. So, what does my book jealousy have to do with Australian teenage girls? Well, we both scroll on social media, a.k.a. the perfect shame spiral recipe for all women everywhere.

And as we know, to be shamelessly sexy, we need to work on our shame. But social media constantly challenges us on this by hitting us with a never-ending conflicting barrage of ideas, images, and representations about who we are supposed to be. And how [insert esteemed societal thing, e.g., pretty, successful] we are supposed to be as well. The researchers casually state that “The potential harms of negative body image is an important public health concern,” because body dissatisfaction, exacerbated by social media, has been linked to low self-esteem, eating disorders, plus our old friends, depression and anxiety. For me, this translates to: no matter in what way we’re comparing ourselves to others, regularly feeling like an utter failure from seeing Instagram posts is bad for us.

Let’s take a deeper look at the four themes the researchers identified for how social media causes us to compare ourselves to others:

The 4 Traps of Social Media Comparison

* “Wow, so that’s what she’s been up to?” 😲

Researcher speak: “Expectation”

The researchers thought that seeing over-sexualized images would have the biggest negative impact on girls’ body image, making them believe they were only valued for their appearance (Objectification Theory). But instead, they found that seeing an attractive photo of a peer was more likely to bring up strong feelings of body inadequacy.

Seeing attractive peers hurt the most because it created the “expectation” that a girl had to look a certain way. Actually, seeing photos of attractive celebrities wasn’t as bad either, because the girls believed their attractiveness was less attainable. Researchers also found that the girls' moods and feelings about themselves at the time of scrolling contributed to their negative body perceptions.

This echoed my experience. I don’t care if Michelle Obama is on tour for her umpteenth best-seller, but Ellie getting featured in The New Yorker? That’s where I need to be! Plus, it didn’t help that I’d had an unproductive day and was feeling grumpy and dehydrated when I saw Ellie’s post.

* “That could have been me!” 🥺

Researcher speak: “Comparison”

Whether or not the images were sexualized, the girls compared their bodies to the photos on social media in a wholly negative way. Peers who posted photos of themselves were considered confident and empowered by their appearance. It didn’t matter if the participants knew the photo had been edited or was only showing them at their best.

Similarly, it didn’t matter to me that I knew it had taken Ellie five and a half years to write her book; in my mind, I just judged her as “successful”.

* “I should be doing more so I can be like her.” 🧗‍♀️

Researcher speak: “Striving”.

After comparing themselves negatively, the girls shared they were more likely to strive to look a certain way, portray an enviable lifestyle, and get followers, ‘likes’, and comments. This included wanting to change their bodies. They believed they could attain their peers’ bodies by eating less, for example. The researchers noted that following fitness accounts ironically made the girls feel worse about themselves, and they strived to change themselves more.

Seeing these photos of Ellie did make me want to work harder to get a traditional publishing deal, but I’ve just been feeling the deep pain of not having one first. If anything, I feel overwhelmed by how far I have to go to build my indie publishing platform and reach a smidgen of her media features.

* “I'll post something like that so I can get those good comments too.” 🫡

Researcher speak: “Validation”

Girls talked about only posting certain types of photos of themselves to gain the currency of approval on Instagram. These photos were mostly based on their appearance, such as a photo of themselves in a bikini.

I might well be tempted to share posts on Instagram to show Ellie and all my friends how I’m thriving in my creative career. Because if other people aren’t there to comment on my successes, did they even happen?

What can we do about this? 🧐

* We can try to recognize each of the four traps when we compare ourselves to others on social media.

* We can follow accounts that help us build our self-worth, or that celebrate diverse body types. If appearance-based comparison is your thing, look here, here, and here. Unfollow or mute accounts that make you feel bad about yourself. Yes, I am muting Ellie.

* We can limit our time on social media. It’s an obvious answer, but I joined ITAA (Internet and Technology Addicts Anonymous) for group support almost three years ago, and it’s been helpful.

* A tip from my therapist: dig into where the jealousy is coming from and what exactly you want. The photo of Ellie with her family and her book particularly stung me. Maybe I can seek out more support from my family with the publication of my next book.

* Another tip from my therapist: make sure your jealousy doesn’t spill over into envy. The difference between jealousy and envy is that jealousy means you want what the other person has, while envy means you’re willing to destroy that thing so the other person can’t enjoy it.

* Though it’s hard, try to approach this with an abundance mindset. If someone you know has obtained this thing, there is room in the universe for you to obtain it also.

When was the last time you felt jealous from a friend’s post on social media? How did you handle it?

Let me know in the comments.

Lots of love,

Tash

💌 ✍️

On a warm afternoon in May 2011, I was walking down Tottenham Court Road in London. I had passed through the wide, open grassy squares of Bloomsbury and Holborn, filled with corporate people enjoying the late spring sun. Now, I was surrounded by the streets of fried chicken joints and tourist souvenir shops packed with people as I headed to catch a double-decker bus home.

At 16 years old, navigating London was nothing new to me. I had been taking the bus home from school since I was about 12. Still, this afternoon was slightly different. I was feeling curious, inspired, and contemplative. My school had just taken us out on a Maths conference field day. As I passed cars, lorries, and buses stuck in traffic, my mind zoomed, imagining all the possibilities of what I might study at university and beyond.

I was mid-bustle when I saw a sign propped up on the pavement. It read, “Free Personality Tests.”

A short woman approached me from the shop.

“Hello!” she called out, “Would you like to take a personality test?”

Much like the men selling Paddington Bears, Union Jacks, and keyrings, she seemed to be selling her wares. I almost didn’t turn around because I had already passed the shop. Yet I distinctly remember thinking, as I stood a couple of steps ahead of her, that maybe I should be more open-minded! A personality test sounded intriguing. My school activities were over for the day. I had nothing else to do and nowhere else to be. I thought to myself: why not?

“Sure, I’ll take a personality test,” I said to her, turning around.

“Amazing. Follow me,” she said, “There’s plenty for you to discover.”

I went with her into the narrow shop front. The space was quite small and bright, with a kind of beige old office feel to it. The hardwood wall had some kind of giant inscription written on it, and the floor was a faux marble with light brown-green speckles. There was a staircase with a glass, silver-handled railing. She took me down a short corridor, passed rows of books and pamphlets on shelves, into a small back room with low-walled cubicles.

She showed me to the cubicle where I was going to take my personality test, and I sat down on a scratchy, cushioned office chair with a round back. There were a couple of other people in there, flipping through pages of questions on small packets of white A4 paper that had been stapled together. I would have heard the scratching of their pencils on the pages, but there was a buzz of background noise and chatter throughout the place. She soon handed me a packet of questions. I wrote my name and my date of birth at the top of the page and got to work.

I didn’t feel particularly scared there; I was just curious. I was still at the age where I believed that most people were well-intentioned in the world, and I would just be able to leave any place, including this stuffy office room if I felt like it. If anything, my friends and I were the ones actively breaking the law, getting ourselves into less-than-ideal situations, and running away from the police. We’d pay homeless men to buy alcohol for us from the local newsagents. We’d bribe the guy at the corner shop to sell us cheap Egyptian cigarettes. Even if one of us was caught smoking a splif (a rolled mixture of weed and tobacco) in the park, we usually found a way to speak posh with our private school accents and talk the constable out of calling our parents.

I kept a steady pace through the questions, quite like the multiple-choice verbal reasoning tests I’d had to take for my entrance exams into secondary school. It had probably 30 pages of questions.

Did I get angry sometimes? How often did I feel misunderstood? Did random coincidences happen sometimes that I couldn’t explain? Did I ever talk about someone, and then they’d appear later that same day? Did I ever feel very excited but also very bored? Yes. No. Very often. Often. Sometimes. Rarely. Never. Strongly Agree. Agree. Neutral. Disagree. Strongly Disagree.

Gosh, that questionnaire was long. After at least about 20 minutes, I really hoped the personality test would be over soon. I was desperate to get the results. Was I a particularly angry person, with unacceptable levels of rage, getting angrier more than most? I thought about leaving the stuffy office, but now I had put so much into the first 25 pages of this thing that my time was such a sunk cost. Couldn’t someone just tell me what type of personality I had?

When I finally finished the questionnaire, the woman instructed me,

“Now, you’re going to watch this video where you can learn about the different personality types as we assess your results. You’ll know soon.”

Thank god, I thought to myself. This better be good.

She led me down the staircase with the glass railing into another smaller, slightly darker, stuffy office room. She sat me down in a similar low cubicle. There were a couple of other people in there, including a mother with her young boy, who was playing on the floor.

The woman handed me a round, cheap headset with a small black muffler at each earlobe, quite like the ones we got on planes at the time. The monitor was an ugly grey color. She put the DVD into the desktop computer and started the video.

I remember the video starting with bright yellow, gold, and orange sunsets and a man and a woman in hiking gear sitting there with their heads in their hands or running in slow motion up a hill.

“Do you get angry sometimes? Do you often feel misunderstood by the people around you, even your closest friends and family? Do random coincidences happen sometimes that you can’t explain? All this depends on your personality, and we’re here to give you the tools so that you can navigate your life and thrive. Our guides are here to assist you.”

I sat on my hands, praying that the whole questionnaire had been worth it. This was just starting to get good. About five minutes in, mid-video, the woman quickly came up to my cubicle and pressed stop on the video. She seemed huffed and bothered slightly.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “We can't help you. We hope you have a great day—”

I interjected,

“But I just spent 20 minutes filling out that questionnaire. You can’t tell me anything?”

“No. Sorry.”

Without much of an explanation, she hurried me upstairs. I noticed that most of the people upstairs had gone, possibly to a meeting or to watch videos with their guides and get the answers to their personality tests. She hurried me outside and shut the door behind me. Their white shopfront now looked sleepy and vacant.

I stood there for a moment, grumbling to myself, before I continued down Tottenham Court Road to the bus stop. What they had promised sounded kind of amazing, but it had all ended up being a waste of time when I could have been outside, enjoying the late spring afternoon. I regretted going in there only to have my expectations crushed. Why hadn’t she been able to give me any answers?

Well, it’s now 14 years later, and the hilarious thing is that the place still exists. I had entered the “Dianetics & Scientology Life Improvement Centre,” an active “non-profit” organization with a whopping 4.4 stars on Google Maps and 291 reviews, offering “courses and counseling to help you improve your life and reach your full potential.” Just wow.

I now know, thanks to this news article, that the questionnaire I took was probably their 200-question “Oxford Capacity Analysis.” The article says,

“The Scientology “personality test” is described by various Internet sources as a Scientology recruitment tool used worldwide on Scientology websites, in Scientology churches, and in public settings such as fairs and festivals. It also has been criticized by psychologists as not a bonafide personality test...Young people under age 18 are asked to have a parent or guardian sign the questionnaire.”

So, there you have it. Years later, I finally know why I was instructed to leave: I was underaged and alone. In that woman’s mind, once she saw my date of bir…