Tag: love

Header image for a post on how to get over a broken heart

7 Things That Helped Me to Get Over a Broken Heart

Published on by Amy

Heads up: this is not a generic “how to get over a broken heart” listicle. This is tremendously personal and I hope I can trust my readers to be kind.

Yup. It’s been an entire year, and we’re finally talking about this! I have tried to write something cohesive about this experience so many times over the last year, but it didn’t feel like the right time until now. I had to wait until I was sure I was really okay, really truly over it and out the other side, before I could write about it with the benefit of knowing for sure that the pain really does end.

One year ago today, I experienced the most brutal, absolute and devastating heartbreak of my life from someone I thought I would be with forever.

“Blindsided” is not even the word.

It physically hurt. I felt like I was dying.

I still don’t think I have the words to explain the depths of the grief I sunk into, the anger and the confusion, that time I screamed in my car down a deserted road just to let out some of the pressure that felt like it was crushing me from the inside. The nights I spent alternately crying until I felt numb and drinking myself into oblivion just so that, for a few blissful minutes, I wouldn’t have to feel anything.

But this post isn’t actually about that pain, or about the person who broke my heart. It’s about how I got through it. Because that’s the reality of even the worst heartbreak of your life: you do get through it.

One day, you wake up and find you don’t actively want to fucking die. One day, you wake up and you’re not crying before you’re even fully awake, they’re not the first thing on your mind, you don’t see their eyes every time you close yours. Eventually, you smile again. Laugh again. Dance in your kitchen while you make dinner again. Have sex again. Eventually, you even love again.

So this post is for everyone whose heart has ever been broken. It’s for everyone who’s going through it right now, who needs a reminder that there is joy out there and that this too shall pass. But most of all it’s for the Amy of a year ago who felt like she had lost a piece of her soul and thought she might never be happy again. Hold on, sweetheart. Joy is coming back. More joy than you can imagine right now.

This is just my little love letter to seven of the things that pulled me through.

Mr C&K

I have to start with this one because fucking hell, this man showed up for me when I needed him. Supporting your partner through a breakup with someone else is a uniquely polyamorous experience, and my nesting partner could teach the masterclass. He picked me up off the floor (literally, once or twice.) He fed me and took care of the house and the cat and our life in the immediate aftermath, when I could barely get off the sofa. When I woke up in the early hours of the morning already crying, he pulled me close and reminded me I was still worthy of love.

Pretty words and promises are nice, but they mean nothing if they’re not backed up with actions. Real love? Sometimes it looks like someone who’s been by your side for a decade sitting with you while you cry and rage and work through the confusion, and then filling the fridge with all your favourite foods in the hope that you’ll eat something even though your body is so full with the sheer weight and volume of your grief that you can’t imagine having room for anything as trivial as food.

Sapphic music

A couple of months after my breakup, I started making a giant playlist of all the sapphic, lesbian and queer girl music I could find.

It was partly an attempt to reconnect with my own queerness, to remind myself that no longer having a girlfriend didn’t invalidate my identity. I found the angsty breakup songs cathartic. The love songs gave me hope that I might find something like that again someday.

Most of all, it was a feeling of being held by these women. Women I’ll never meet but with whom I feel a kinship because of our shared experience as sapphics in a world that simultaneously invisibilises and hyper-sexualises us.

Fletcher, MUNA, Hayley Kiyoko, Girli, Chappell Roan, Xana, Girl in Red, Renee Rapp and more wrapped their words around my heart and, on the nights I felt most profoundly alone, their songs reached out a hand and said “we got you.”

Crafting

You know the cool thing about having yarn, fabric, a set of knitting needles or a crochet hook in your hands? You can’t text the person who broke your heart (or pound that ill-advised fourth shot of gin of the night) while you’re doing it.

Sometimes, making things – counting stitches and rows, figuring out pattern instructions, occasionally ripping it all out and starting again – was the only thing that could stop me from thinking about her, calm my racing mind from ruminating on how stupidly happy I had been and how it had all gone to hell so quickly.

I crafted so much in the few months following my breakup that I ended up taking a stall of my yarn-based creations to sell at a Pride event. Every time I saw someone smile and pick out a piece I’d made in their pride flag’s colours, a little bit of my heart healed. I’d turned my pain into beautiful things, and those things brought other people joy.

Slow, careful and mindful attempts at dating

I got back on the dating apps around August. If I’m entirely honest it was probably a little too soon but I decided, fuck it, it’s been six months, maybe I’m allowed to have a little fun now? (Or maybe I just needed the emotional masochism of confirming, once again, my utter certainty that I would never meet anyone who was right for me ever again.)

Only… I did.

I had a nice date with a woman. Things didn’t go anywhere, but going on a date – laughing and eating sushi and getting to know someone new – felt like gently flexing a muscle I hadn’t used in far too long, like taking the cast off a broken bone. Then I dated someone lovely for about three months. We had fun. Then we realised we weren’t romantically compatible and parted on good terms as friends.

And then…

Well. The next bit of the story comes later in this post.

Queer community

There’s an invisibility that often comes with sapphic love. This is doubled (tripled, really) if you’re polyamorous and your relationship isn’t a socially-sanctioned, legally-sanctioned, highly visible, hetero-read one.

So many people in my life didn’t understand that the relationship might have ultimately been short-lived and non-escalator, but that didn’t make it any less real. It fucking mattered. My love mattered. My heart mattered.

It was my queer community, particularly my queer polyamorous community, that understood. Those people witnessed and held the reality of just how much this fucking sucked. They allowed me to be sad then angry then hopeful then hopeless and then sad all over again. They let me go from laughter to sobbing and back to laughter, sometimes in the space of minutes.

And they never told me it didn’t matter because it didn’t last. That I should have known better, or that polyamory is always a recipe for disaster. They didn’t say at least you still have a partner as if that makes a broken heart hurt any less, or any of the other shit that clueless straight people hit me with.

Friends who understand

Sometime around May, three months after my breakup, I went for coffee with a well-meaning friend. When I got home, I said to Mr C&K, “I feel like an alien in my own life.” I felt completely detatched and cut off from just about everyone else on the planet.

There were a very small number of people who made me feel understood and seen. One of them was someone I didn’t even know all that well at the time, who had gone through a breakup around the same time. Over the course of a few months, our two person #BrokenHeartClub (or #BoozyBrokenHeartClub on the more difficult days) evolved into a friendship I’m profoundly grateful for.

My best friend and his boyfriend let me crash with them for a few days in the immediate aftermath while I got my head back on straight. My bestie alternately took me out and got me drunk in healing queer spaces (Eastenders-themed drag? Surprisingly good medicine for a broken heart!) and let me rage-sob on his sofa.

Finding love again

I had to save this one for last. It’s ultimately one of the most significant pieces of this story and the most difficult to find adequate words for.

There’s something a little paradoxical here. After a breakup, we’re not supposed to start looking for a new relationship until we’re fully healed. We’re supposed to get over a broken heart before we try to find love again. Yet, at a certain point, there is a form of healing that happens within a new relationship. If you want to learn to trust again, at some point you need to practice trusting someone. If you want to fall in love again, at some point you need to let yourself fall.

I met my now-girlfriend Em on a dating app in late October. Our connection was fast. We both read the other’s profile and had a moment of “were you made for me!?”. But it was also slow, in that it was over two months before we could spend time together in person. In those two months, we clocked up over 40 hours of phone and video calls.

On January 7th at 8pm, she walked into the bar and she smiled at me and I knew. On January 7th at 10pm, she asked me to be her girlfriend. Then, on January 26th, I told her I love her. Was I terrified to try again? Of course. But at some point, you have to feel the fear and try again anyway.

She was the final and most crucial piece. She profoundly sees me, understands me, holds me in the messiness and vulnerability of all that I am and have been and all that I might be in the future. With her, I felt able to take that risk. To trust someone. To stare down the fear of opening myself up to that kind of pain again and decide she was worth the risk.

She was – is – everything I needed in a new love. And she found me at the perfect moment.

If you’re trying to get over a broken heart, I hope this gave you a little comfort. I know you’ll get through it. Listen I love you joy is coming.

Wedding cake with bride and groom toppers, for a post about The Bold Type's Suttard and incompatibilities around wanting children

On “Suttard,” Fundamental Incompatibilities, and Happy Ever After

Published on by Amy1 Comment

This post contains spoilers for all five seasons of The Bold Type! Stop reading now if you don’t want to be spoilered.

Like many fans of Freeform’s The Bold Type, which just finished its fifth and final season, I was rooting for a happy outcome for Sutton Brady-Hunter and Richard Hunter (known collectively by the fandom as “Suttard.”) They’re the best straight couple on the show by far, from their Bluetooth vibrator sex date to their incredible Paris reunion in the season 2 finale.

At the end of season 4, the newly married couple have a blow-out argument when Sutton realises she doesn’t want to have children, causing Richard – who longs to be a dad – to leave her and then (at the beginning of season 5) begin divorce proceedings.

Over the course of the final season, Sutton destroys her wedding dress, throws a “divorce party,” starts therapy, and quits drinking in an attempt to get over Richard. Then they meet up to swap divorce papers, predictably fall into bed with each other, and Richard realises how much he loves her and that he doesn’t want a life without her, even if it means giving up his dream of having children.

So far, so romantic? But…

Fundamental incompatibilities

No two people will ever be perfectly aligned on every issue or desire. That’s impossible because we’re all multifaceted, nuanced, and complex creatures. But there are, I believe, a few fundamentals. Things you need to agree on (or at least be genuinely, wholeheartedly happy to compromise on) in order to have a functional relationship.

Having children is one of those things. (Others might include getting married or not, being monogamous or not, and possibly even political affiliation.)

Some things are just deal breakers. Some things should be deal-breakers. Because in reality, much as we want to believe that love conquers all, it doesn’t. Love doesn’t conquer wanting different things in uncompromisable situations. You can’t have half a child. You can’t be half married. Love, however real and powerful, doesn’t make these incompatibilities go away or create the potential for a compromise where there is none.

Fairytale endings: fantasy vs. reality

I’m glad the writers chose to end The Bold Type the way they did. Ultimately, this show is escapist fantasy – a Sex & the City for millennials with little grounding in the real world. Suttard fans were crushed when the couple split up and were rooting for them to get back together and somehow find a way through their conflicting desires.

The writers gave us what we wanted. Find me a single fan who didn’t let out a collective “awwww” at this moment:

GIF of Richard Hunter and Sutton Brady (Suttard)

But it really is just fantasy. In reality, fairytale endings like this don’t happen. Or if they do, they cause intense resentment and bigger problems down the line.

I admit that I struggle to relate to Richard, personally. As someone who decided early on that I will be childfree for life, I find it very difficult to imagine wanting to have children more than wanting to be with the person I love. (And my god, these two really do love each other – Meghann Fahy and Sam Page have incredible on-screen chemistry!)

But many people do feel like that, and it’s valid and real. Many people want to be a parent more than anything, even if it means they can’t be with the person they thought was their forever person. And those people can’t just switch that off the way Richard seems to in this too-neat-to-be-real happy ever after.

Happy endings don’t exist

A much younger, more naive version of me thought that I’d find a happy ending someday. When I left my abuser and fell in love with Mr CK, I wondered if I’d found it – if everything would be plain sailing from here.

What I can tell you now, years later, is that no. I hadn’t found a happy ending. Not because this relationship isn’t wonderful. It was then and it is now. But because happy endings of the fairytale kind don’t exist.

Real relationships require constant communication, ongoing compromise, and recalibration as you both grow and change. You can decide to be together, to commit, to go all-in, but that doesn’t take away from the very real work required to make love work long term.

Love is messy, love is nuanced, love is the best thing in the world. But it is not magical. It does not remove all obstacles or effortlessly sweep them aside. And some obstacles are too big to overcome.

So I’ll enjoy the Suttard happy ending for what it is: escapist fantasy wrapping up five seasons of escapist fantasy. But I’m glad it’s not real. Because as much as I want someone to love me for the rest of my life, I would never want them to give up their greatest dream to be with me.

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Black BDSM cuffs on a bed. Text reads: 4 things that don't make you less of a dominant. For a post answering "Am I dominant enough?" and "what makes a good Dom anyway?"

Am I Dominant Enough? 4 Things That Don’t Make You Less of a Dominant

Published on by Amy

Something I hear a lot from new or would-be Dominants (Doms) in the BDSM world is, “Am I really a Dom if I like…?” The underlying questions are clear: Am I dominant enough? Am I doing it right? What makes a good Dom, anyway?

There are a lot of stereotypes of Dominants out there. Most of them are, frankly, bullshit. One only has to browse Fetlife for a few minutes to see people making all sorts of proclamations about the right, best, true, or only way to be a Dominant (or a submissive, for that matter.) All of this is nonsense.

Your dominance is your own and it doesn’t need to be fragile. If you’re secure in your identity as a Dominant or sometimes-Dominant kinkster, no-one can take that away from you.

Let’s look at four things that tend to cause new and inexperienced Dominants anxiety about their Dom credentials, and break down these harmful myths once and for all.

Am I Still a Dom if I Go Down on My Submissive?

It makes me really sad when I think about how many submissives are missing out on oral sex because their Dominant mistakenly believes that only submissives give head or that going down is degrading. And, for that matter, how many Dominants love sucking cock or eating pussy but won’t do it because they believe it undermines their authority.

The longer I’m kinky, the more I believe that virtually no sexual act is inherently dominant or submissive. Everything we do in sex and kink is ultimately imbued with the meaning we give it.

Most of us do this kinky stuff because it’s fun. As it turns out, a lot of people enjoy getting their cunt eaten or their cock sucked. Giving this pleasure to your partner doesn’t make you any less Dominant. There are even ways to explicitly frame it in a dominant manner, if that’s something you want to do.

Don’t believe me? Try having someone’s tongue on your clit or their mouth around your cock and being told you have to (for example) keep quiet or not come without permission. Then tell me that going down can’t be a dominant act.

Is it Okay for a Dom to Be Deeply in Love with Their Submissive?

Where did we get this idea that Dominants are cold, unfeeling creatures who are incapable of love? (And can we burn the Fifty Shades trilogy to the ground for, amongst many other sins, perpetuating this stereotype?)

BDSM and D/s is often a relationship build on profound vulnerability, trust, affection, and – yes – love. Not all BDSM needs to be based on a love match, of course, and casual play connections are valid if everyone involved is enthusiastically consenting to them.

Ultimately, though, Dominants are human beings with the full range of human emotions. So if you’re a Dom and you’re worried that catching feelings for your submissive will undermine your dominance: don’t be. If anything, intense feelings will just improve and deepen the connection you have and the ways you play.

If you’re a submissive and your Dom is incapable of love, care, or affection? Or if they can only do kink with people they hate, dislike, disrespect, or feel nothing towards? They’re probably an emotionally-stunted billionaire psychopath.

Am I Dominant Enough if I’m a Switch?

Lots of kinksters enjoy being dominant sometimes and submissive at other times. These people are called switches, and they’re not only valid but likely in the majority of kinky people.

Switching can manifest in different ways. You might be primarily a Dominant who likes to submit occasionally, or vice-versa. You might enjoy each role more or less evenly. Some people switch with the same partner, others prefer to let their different facets out to play with different partners. Some like to do the same activities in both roles, while others have very different preferences as a Top than they do as a bottom. However it looks, it’s all good.

One myth about switches is that they’re capable of being neither truly dominant or truly submissive, and are instead a watered-down approximation of both. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Switches are just as capable of being great Doms (or great subs) as anyone else.

In fact, some submissives even prefer to submit to people who switch. Having experienced both sides can lead to greater empathy for your sub’s experience, as well as giving you an extra avenue through which to get new ideas for things to try.

Am I Dominant if I Enjoy Being Penetrated?

I’m going to return to what I said above: there’s virtually no such thing as an inherently dominant or submissive sex act. The idea that being penetrated is inherently submissive is deeply rooted in patriarchy and misogyny. (The logic goes something like this: “women get penetrated, therefore being penetrated is feminine. Femininity is lesser than masculinity, therefore being penetrated is not only feminine but degrading and therefore submissive.”) I hope I don’t need to tell you what absolute bullshit this is.

When I hear of Dominants who’d really like to get fucked but feel they can’t take something in their vagina or ass for fear that it’ll make them submissive… well, it makes me really sad.

If you enjoy receiving penetrative sex as a Dominant, there’s nothing submissive about it. You can enjoy it and it doesn’t undermine your dominance in any way. And, just like giving oral sex, there are absolutely ways to get penetrated in a specifically dominant way. Ordering your submissive to fuck you exactly as you want to be fucked, in the position and at the speed and depth you prefer and not to stop until you’re satisfied? Sounds pretty dominant to me.

“Am I Dominant If…?” YES!

If you identify as Dominant – whether you identify that way always or sometimes or occasionally or only on Fridays during the full moon or just in this specific relationship – then congratulations, you’re a fucking Dominant. That’s literally all that’s required.

Please take this post as enormous permission to stop worrying about whether you’re somehow undermining your Dom credentials. There are no credentials. There’s no set list of required or prohibited activities to be a Dom. We do this shit because it’s fun. If you and your partner(s) are having a good time, that’s literally all that matters.

If you enjoy my content, giving it a share on Bluesky or Fetlife or buying me a coffee is a great way to say thanks! <3