The Doe’s Latest Stories

Depending on which source you look at, and the specific mental illness in question, a partner with a mental illness increases the risk of divorce by 20 to 90 percent. According to a multinational survey study, bipolar disorder specifically makes marriages 80 percent more likely to end.

After 12 years of marriage, my ex-wife and I failed to beat those odds. I’m writing this in hopes that some couples can see my mistakes and experience more success than we did.

We met in Japan, while both of us were there teaching English, and discovered we had grown up 90 miles apart. We knew the same locations, had the same favorite bookstore. We’d been to three of the same concerts and had one riot in common. People said it was meant to be.

Things went well for the first six years. We traveled together, indulged in our shared love of martial arts, high-energy music, and Dungeons & Dragons. We ran a business together. We adopted a son and did our best to raise him right and spoil the heck out of him. We had our share of fights, but overall it was a pretty nice time. Near the end of that sixth year, we had a biological son together.

Here’s the thing about bipolar disorder: It typically shows up either during puberty, or in a person’s mid-twenties. It’s hereditary, and my wife’s father had bipolar symptoms so severe he took medication under a court order, but we got married in our thirties so we figured she was in the clear. 

As it turns out, bipolar disorder also occasionally shows up immediately after a woman gives birth.

I became judgmental, even self-righteous. I was not the partner she needed in those moments.

About two weeks after our son was born, my wife experienced a manic episode where she went without sleep for three days. She ended up hospitalized for two weeks, and during that time received her diagnosis. At first, I was properly supportive. When she got her rest-of-her-life prescription, she was alarmed and a little embarrassed. I told her we knew both of us would end up on some medication or another, whether it was for high blood pressure or some other thing. I did double duty with our newborn so she could rest, and read, and build new skills. We moved from breastfeeding to bottles to ensure she got an uninterrupted sleep. 

Things fell apart over the next five years. Some of the specifics will remain between us, but I can share the mistakes I made and what I learned from them. 

When somebody gets diagnosed with a mental illness, it’s just like getting diagnosed with any other illness or injury. I wouldn’t ask a partner with a broken leg to join me running a marathon, and I wouldn’t think a partner with ALS just wasn’t trying hard enough. My ex-wife’s illness prevented her from fulfilling her role as a partner and a mother the same way she had before she was diagnosed, and I confess to my shame that I didn’t handle it well. Especially when her emotional regulation started affecting the kids, I became judgmental, even self-righteous. I was not the partner she needed in those moments. 

We fell into some unhealthy and unproductive patterns. When somebody gets a diagnosis — either for mental illness or something more visibly physical — they have two choices. They can use the specifics of the diagnosis to figure out how to make things work, or they can use the label of the diagnosis to let them off the hook for their accomplishments and welfare. The people in their support networks make a similar choice about whether or not to view that person as a human with a defined, treatable challenge. 

At the time, I viewed it as her failure. I saw her leaning into her symptoms instead of caring for our children or managing her career, and viewed it as a conscious choice. In retrospect, I can see how I enabled and infantilized her over those first few years, ultimately viewing her as a third child in my family rather than a co-adult, partner, and peer. 

I also failed to manage my self-care well. Because her symptoms peaked immediately after the arrival of our newborn, I took on the lion’s share of that task. I took care of our new arrival, worked my job, helped our oldest child with homework and coached his wrestling team, and managed the household chores. In the few spare hours I had available, I got some sleep. I missed out on social time, gym time, reading, and all of my recharge activities. 

Over a couple of years, that level of effort turned into exhaustion. The exhaustion became resentment, then anger, and slipped into contempt. Ask any marriage counselor what the biggest predictor of divorce is. They won’t tell you resentment, or substance abuse, or even infidelity. They’ll tell you things are over if one or both partners feel contempt for the other. 

And that’s the other big mistake we — I — made: We got help too late. By the time we sat down on a therapist’s couch, I was already checked out. We went through the motions, but I did not give it 100 percent. A marriage deserves full effort, and I could have given it in those first few years. But we didn’t start the real work until I was no longer, well, doing the work.

I wish I had better advice, but winning coaches rarely come from losing teams. The best I can hope for is that folks who read this can catch these missteps as they’re developing, and before they metastasize into something fatal to their relationship. 

As a Muslim Arab woman living in Saudi Arabia, I have been conditioned to believe that premarital sex is a taboo and a sin, to the point that I was expected to pretend like I had nothing between my legs until my wedding night. I was indoctrinated to carry the weight of preserving my family’s—if not my whole tribe’s—Sharaf (honor and dignity) by holding onto my virginity.

Virginity in the Middle East is held in such high regard that there's a tradition where a white cloth is given to the man on the wedding night to prove that the woman has never been touched before him. After the deed, he gives it back to the family with the drops of blood that prove her purity. Women have been murdered—if their chastity was questioned—as a punishment by their own families in what is called “honor killings.” 

So I religiously abided by those rules until I was 29, when I had my first sexual experience with my longterm boyfriend of five years. I figured we were going to end up married, anyway, so why the wait? It was awkward and we laughed a lot at our own confusion. And just like that, I was no longer a virgin. Suddenly, a wave of bewildering terror washed over me. I remember thinking my life would be ruined if we didn't end up married because no one else would want a “used” woman. I reassured myself that he was the one and that we'd probably be married in no time. I waited patiently for the ring, but it never came. 

He ended up breaking my heart by cheating and then ghosting me the moment I found out. That harsh betrayal was the first thing that burst my monogamous bubble. Poly relationships were not new to me; after all, traditional Islam societies permit a man to marry not one, not two, but four wives simultaneously. To this day, plenty of women end up adding to their marriage contracts the condition that their future husbands are not allowed to take another wife. 

Because of the secrecy, my love life felt thrilling and terrifying at the same time.

Still, I had to read up on a version of polyamory that took women’s desire into account. I started exploring my sexuality and educating myself on sex. I read Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski, and The Ethical Slut by Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy. I found myself loving the idea of being open and exploring what was forbidden to me for the last 29 years. What I was protecting my entire life no longer had power over me.

I learned about communication and how to discuss boundaries and rules between two or more consenting adults. I read about jealousy and how it's built on the fear of losing the love you have, and how if reassured and dealt with correctly, it could strengthen the bond between people instead of breaking them apart. I started identifying as a polyamorous pansexual and I enjoyed relationships that honored honesty and respect and were good for my journey into abundant love. 

I've been loved by multiple people at the same time, and my heart loved them, as well. I had a long-term relationship with a man and a woman as a throuple for a year and a half which was a genuine escapade that allowed me to have a support system as I learned more about myself. The relationship ended, however, when they crossed a boundary. I was sad about the loss but knew that it was what was best for me. 

Absolutely no one in my community knew about my love life. I couldn't talk about it with my best friend of more than a decade. It would have been such a scandal that my family would've disowned me. I would have probably had to leave the country by any means necessary to stay safe. Because of this, my love life felt thrilling and terrifying at the same time. It almost felt like an affair in a way, even though it wasn't since everyone I was dating was in the know. I was happy with my new normal, and I felt comfortable in my own skin.

But after a while, the excitement fizzled, and hiding a dangerous secret like that weighs heavily on your mental health. I still felt the old fear of not being "wife material," because I chose to prioritize my pleasure—even though logically I knew that if I ended up with someone, it would have to be in parallel to the lifestyle I chose for myself. I wanted to have full control over whom I invited into my sacred body. I wanted to love people without the need to “own” them and limit their experience to only me. 

And that's when I met my husband. A loving, kind man who told me that he wouldn't want me any other way, that my past has added to who I am and how I experienced love and life. He used to be in an open marriage, as well, so the transition was easy. With him, I felt heard and understood in a way I've never been before, and this time I did get the ring. 

It took us some time to discuss our expectations, set our boundaries, and agree on what was off-limits. We even went to therapy to better handle this crucial conversation openly and maturely. Being in an ethically non-monogamous relationship meant we got to learn how to reassure each other and prioritize our connection. We then started dating other people. I had two consistent boyfriends and I was on the lookout for a girlfriend. While I needed to create an emotional bond with people before being with them physically, my husband was more into one-night stands. 

Being with other people didn’t take away from the intimacy and love we carried for each other. We were on the same page on how we don’t own each other. The thought of my partner enjoying himself with someone else used to be scary, but now we get excited about it and switch stories of our sexual adventures. 

Even though the choice to open up my marriage has many merits, it can be awfully isolating and lonely, despite the fact that I have more people in my life (boyfriends, girlfriends or partners). Regardless of the secrecy, I can honestly say that I fully enjoy the new rhythm of my life. I know the path of ethical non-monogamy is the right one for me.

A warning to our readers: This piece discusses child abuse. We encourage you to read this story as an act of empathy-building, and please be gentle with yourself.

My father only hit me a handful of times in my childhood. But the times he did were enough to leave a mark on my psyche. The threat always seemed to be just under the surface. My baseline feeling for my father was one of fear. But that’s normal, right? That’s what fathers do, isn't it? You’re supposed to be afraid of getting an ass-whooping from your old man. Every stay-at-home-mother warns you that your father will hurt you if you don't listen to her, right?

That was my belief. If anyone asked, I had a normal, happy, and healthy childhood. Abuse was something that happened to other people. I went along with this belief for a long time. Two things changed it: getting married and having children.

I don’t remember the first time my wife said that I was raised in an abusive household or how she phrased it, but I remember my response: complete and absolute indignation and denial.  She might as well have told me my parents were aliens. This would be something she’d voice often when my family would start trouble, and I would expect her to kowtow to them, as I always had before.  

Whatever my parents wanted—visiting on a specific day, changing our plans, or allowing them to step over our boundaries—was “the norm,” and my wife’s refusal to go along with it was a disruption and threat to my peace. If she would just allow them to watch her give birth, for example, then they wouldn't have said anything unkind about her or harassed me with guilt-trips. 

Over time, my wife’s attempts to explain that my parents’ way of acting was unacceptable began to slip past my defenses and I began to consider the truth.

Between my mother's guilt-trips and my father's insults, I did not feel allowed to have my own feelings.

Then there was becoming a father. Suddenly, I saw events from my childhood in a new light. I remember one Halloween when I was “difficult” about wearing the Bionic Six costume purchased by my mother. As a result, I was made to stay with my father while my sisters went trick-or-treating with my mother. I never got any candy and I was told that it was my fault for disagreeing with my mother. Over the years, I laughed about what a “pain in the butt” I must have been to my folks to warrant that. My wife never laughed with me. “You were only four years old!” she’d say. It was having a four-year-old, and dealing with his occasional stubbornness and respecting his likes and dislikes, that made me realize my parents’ severity.

But the abuse wasn’t just that their punishments included physical aggression or tended toward the severe. It was their way of asserting control, of manipulating me to do things their way through guilt, insults, and pulling the strings of my worst fears.  

A tipping point in overcoming my denial came after a miscarriage. My wife and I felt as if we were drowning in grief. We both invited relatives to our home on a Saturday afternoon. We hoped it’d be healing to spend time with loved ones. My sister declined, telling me she didn't feel like coming. In a rare act of assertiveness, I voiced my disappointment. I told her I didn't feel like she cared about me. 

The response was swift and severe, a call from my mother berating me: “How dare you upset your sister?” and threatening that I “wouldn’t have a family anymore” if I disagreed with or upset my sister again. 

That threat was a coded message that immediately triggered a panic response in my brain. Lose my family?! I couldn’t lose my family! The room began to spin. Breathing became difficult. My wife told me my mother shouldn't have said that to me. She was trying to help but it just felt like an attack. I was like a cat with its claws stuck somewhere—quick to perceive even an attempted rescue as a threat. I lashed out, saying something about not being able to take it anymore and threatening suicide before I drove off.

Truth be told, this wasn't the first time I had felt suicidal because of my parents’ harsh words. When my father disagreed with my choices, even over trivial matters such as postponing a visit or choosing a wedding DJ other than the one he preferred, I was told I wasn't a man, wasn't his son, he didn't know me, I disgusted him. Between my mother's guilt-trips and my father's insults, I did not feel allowed to have my own feelings or my own choices as I grew up. I began addictions as a teen to cope with my unhappiness. I continued these addictions in secret until I hit rock bottom in my early 30s. 

Part of my recovery involved seeing a counselor, who often wanted to know about my childhood. In our conversations, certain images began to stick out. 

My father boasted that I had been left in the crib crying at dinner time so that they could “enjoy their meal in peace.” One Easter when I was eight, my mother sobbed for hours because I told her I was too big for the coloring book she’d bought me. I remembered my father’s readiness to insult my weight or intelligence whenever we disagreed. I recalled my mother’s resorting to sobbing when I made plans she didn’t agree with (such as wanting to join the military after college).

I began to see what my wife had recognized earlier on: I had been abused. I had been made to feel less-than, unimportant, a bother, and a target. I had grown up without security or reassurance, constantly feeling that I needed to maintain the fragile peace or everything would fall apart. I “wouldn't have a family anymore.” 

At the beginning of one of our sessions, my therapist remarked “I just started treating a new patient that reminded me of you—he just left a cult.” I let out a surprised laugh. It was true. I had left a cult. In my late thirties, I was, for the first time, learning to assert myself and accept my wants and needs for what they were without referring to my parents.

I had already cut off contact with them a few years earlier because of an incident after my wife and I had our third baby. I asked to postpone a planned visit because my wife and I were feeling exhausted. My parents and both of my sisters were outraged and spent the day sending text messages designed to make me feel guilty. Once again I was told that they didn't know me, I was a disappointment, I must be emasculated and under my wife's thumb, I would miss them and would be alone. All this, despite my willingness to reschedule for the following day. 

They collectively ignored me through Thanksgiving, Christmas, and my birthday. Seven months later, they felt like speaking again. I didn’t. That was six years ago.

In the past six years of healing, I’ve made progress but continue to struggle to unlearn habits and ways of thinking I’ve clung to over a lifetime. Once a year or so, my parents or my sisters will try to reach out and re-establish contact. I ignore them. Whether it will always be that way, I cannot say. All I know is that my primary focus is on my own life and family. My wife deserves a partner, not an addict who desperately seeks his parents’ never-available approval. My beautiful kids need my head to be on straight. They need a childhood with only relatives whose love is unconditional. Clearly, that doesn't include my family. 

Was I smacked around? Only a little bit. Was I locked in the closet? No, nothing so dramatic as that. But was I abused? Yes. 

This story is based on an interview with the editors of The Doe.

A couple of years ago, when I was in the middle of my PhD program, my dad gave me a hefty down payment to buy a house. It turned out to be one of the biggest regrets of my life. 

I was born in 1994, and grew up on this wealthy, touristy Gulf Coast island. My dad owned his own business for decades, building houses in the area. I didn’t really have any financial responsibility, and I was never told “no.” We lived in a small house around a lot of other richer families, so I didn't know we had money. But I have these memories of my mom picking me up from school and going to Target, and I could just walk in and get whatever I wanted. The day after I turned 16, I got a car. When I went to college, I did not take out student loans; my dad paid for everything and gave me a monthly allowance. I worked three jobs in college, but they were resume-builders; they weren’t determining whether I was going to eat or not.

Then I went to grad school. Again, my dad was paying out-of-pocket for my grad school and giving me an allowance and paying my rent. After I finished my Masters I started working full-time in Birmingham and was no longer supported by my dad. I was making maybe $43,000 and scraping by. My rent was $900 for a two-bedroom apartment, and that was half my income. I turned 26 right as I finished my Masters, so I immediately got kicked off my health insurance, as well. The real world kind of punched me in the throat. 

In June 2021, my dad bought me a condo in cash for $100,000 in Tuscaloosa. The condo was his way of helping me get through my PhD. But six months in, I was like, “This place sucks. I can't do this.” I was alone; I had full days when I didn’t speak to anyone. I also struggle with a lot of mental health issues. I wanted to move back to Birmingham. I was genuinely excited to be alive: I was properly medicated, and I had also recently left the church, so I felt a freedom I had never felt before. I felt unstoppable and on top of the world because I was telling myself, “You're in a Ph.D. program. You’re a bad bitch.” 

Because he’d bought me this house, my dad felt entitled to weigh in on my life.

That’s the moment when my dad was like, “I’m going to buy you a house.” He didn't buy it outright, but he provided a significant down payment. I absolutely rushed into it. We started looking for a house in early 2022, during the season where you could be offering $60,000 over asking price and it wasn't going to be enough. We ended up finding this house for $275,000 in a really great area of Hoover, Alabama. It was built in 1947. It had a beautiful stained glass window in the bathroom. My dad came over and inspected the house for me. He didn’t say it in these words, but he was trying to tell me that even though I could afford the mortgage, I couldn't afford the house. I mean, it needed a lot of work. But at this point, I was like, “He doesn't know what he's talking about. It’ll be fine.”

I closed in March of 2022. Besides a leaky faucet, everything was great for a while. I painted my dining room black and hung up disco balls and any Saturday I was bored, I would paint a room. I took baths next to the stained glass window. And then about a year later, I finally decided to fix the leaky faucet myself. I thought I could just go on YouTube and figure it out. It was one of those double handles for hot and cold, and it got stuck. I couldn't fix it. For months, people were turning on the shower with a wrench. Finally I brought out a plumber, which cost $500. At this point I'm still in school and I was working full-time remotely, and making $3,000 a month after taxes. So $500 was a lot for me. 

After that, shortly after my boyfriend moved in with me, the house kinda started falling apart. I was taken aback by all the maintenance it needed. I had to pay for pest control, lawn care every other week for $150, and a $400 monthly power bill during summer in Alabama. We also had really bad summer storms that took the power out. There was a tree in the yard that dripped sap all over our cars. That's the kind of stuff I just didn't think about. I didn't know how to take care of an old house. It’s like that moment in your early twenties when you think, “Where’s the adult?” And then you’re like, “Oh, I’m the adult.”

Because he’d bought me this house, my dad also felt entitled to weigh in on my life. Even after the house was closed and it was mine, I was scared to stand up to him. His name is nowhere on the house, but there was this fear of pissing him off. For instance, I put up a Pride flag outside the house, and he told me he would not be returning to my house if I didn’t replace it with an American flag. He didn’t talk to me for a time after that incident, and he started to do that periodically when he was disappointed in my behavior. In his eyes, he taught me how to be financially responsible when in reality he taught me how to be rich. Once he saw me as a woman with a voice, our relationship was broken. 

A year ago, I was sitting in the house, and it was hot as hell and I looked at my boyfriend and said, “You know, I could just sell this house.” It felt like freedom because I felt like the house owed me. I’d been letting friends live in my house for free, but they’d come to resent me because they were disgusted by the fact that I got a house handed to me. We ended up having a falling out, but they were actually the first to suggest that I sell it. My boyfriend (who’s now my husband) and I decided to leave Birmingham and move to Tennessee.

Selling my house felt similar to escaping the brainwashing of religion. It actually felt a lot like leaving the brainwashing of my father. My father hasn’t spoken to me since I sold the house. He did not respond to our wedding invitation or come to the wedding. It’s weird and complicated, because my dad is older and he has bad health, but I can’t beg him to love me.

I’m about to turn 30, and I’ve been reflecting on my twenties and the shitshow that they’ve been, and I’m thankful to know myself the way I do now. But at the same time, I'm terrified to buy a house again. I do have this rule now: I want to be older than the house. As much as people ask whether Millennials are financially ready to buy a house, I don’t think we consider being emotionally and mentally ready.

It was the beginning of the new year and I had just moved into a new state for my youth service, a compulsory one-year program for all Nigerian graduates. This was the first time I was living alone in a new state. I would have an interaction, the third event in just a year, that would make me realize how much being the eldest daughter defined me.

The first was my final days in university as an undergraduate. Fear was my companion in that season, and for the first time, I vocally communicated to a friend how my worth was strongly tied to my grades. As a big sister, I'd been told that I was setting a standard for my siblings. The truth was if I didn't get those grades, I'd be sad because I worked hard; however, I felt shame in anticipation because I had probably fallen short of the expected standard.

The second was me falling terribly ill not long after my finals. I'd girlbossed so hard that I crashed completely, and was dependent on my family to help me. Accepting their help became hard for me, because I'd been conditioned to have them rely on me. 

The third was when two friends and I went to get groceries. I was buying the most things to get because I was new in town. My hands were heavy, and when my friend J asked if I needed help, I refused, only for him to say, “You're new, but I've noticed you have a problem with asking for help or letting people help.” He proceeded to help me, for which I was deeply grateful because my hands hurt. And that evening, walking to where we all lived, I finally acknowledged how much being the eldest daughter had affected me, and decided to fix its negative consequences.

I grew up having this sense of responsibility instilled in me, and I inevitably got exhausted.

Growing up, I learned that to be a first daughter is to be a second mother. It is to mother your younger siblings even as a child. It is to sacrifice your childhood to ensure that your siblings have their own childhood and are able to make mistakes, but to be so restricted that you can't do the same. To be a first daughter is to carry burdens you're not ready for but have no choice but to carry. 

As a young kid, I was called "Iya Keji,” which translated from my native Yoruba, means "Second mother.” This title came with responsibility, and honestly, I enjoyed being their sister. I was so protective that I would fight guys twice my size when they tried messing with my siblings. I lost sometimes, but at least nobody would say that my siblings were treated unfairly and I didn't speak up. 

I grew up having this sense of responsibility instilled in me, and down the line, I inevitably got exhausted, a feeling that I still have every now and then. My parents said things like “But what were you doing when your brother was making a mistake?”  "Couldn't you be more responsible for your siblings?" “Have you forgotten that this is the reason you're the big sister?” It wasn't just their reminders that fueled this exhaustion; it was also the fact that I didn't get to nurture my hobbies because I was making space for my siblings, or that I canceled previously scheduled engagements because of them.

Being from a low-income household means additional responsibility as the first child. I love earning money, but it comes with a lot of pressure, because being the first means I earn not just to support myself, but to support the family, at least to a certain extent. While I started earning as a teenager, it would take years before I had autonomy on spending my money because usually this money was channeled to my younger siblings. I was quite happy to support—the family had needs—but I hated the expectation, hated that I couldn't have desires without feeling like a bad daughter, and then I would hate the fact that I felt this way. 

Being a first daughter hasn't been the worst experience of my life. I love my younger siblings, even more now that we can explore past feelings as adults. Being a big sister has given me strength. Empathy, responsibility, organizational skills, project management have been integral to my professional life, and being a first daughter really brought these out in me. Over the years, despite being a shy kid who would rather stay hidden, I learned to show up, take up space, and lead. I hate seeing disorganization or clearly unqualified people leading and doing a terrible job. As a result, I've been bold enough to hold leadership roles, and I'm very good at it. 

Yet, it affects me sometimes, as people often refer to me simply by my titles, not my name. It's the same way my siblings call me “sister.” I wonder if people realize that behind these titles, there's a real person. Sometimes, I really want someone to simply sit and talk to me about casual stuff, and not about some task or expectation they have of me.

I'm still navigating how to set my boundaries before I become resentful. I'm learning to heal my inner child, and do the things I wish I got to do when I was younger. There's so much I'm unlearning, and I'm thankful for it. The process is still messy, but if there's one thing I've learned, it's to keep showing up.

I've been to residential eating disorder treatment for anorexia three times: at 15, 17, and 19. Each time, I lived with a rotating cast of 20 to 50 other patients for several months in what felt like a mix between a bizarre extended sleepaway camp and a hospital. We played cards, did puzzles, attended group therapy, and ate meals under close supervision.

In this environment, I met and interacted with people I never would have otherwise, and certainly not in such an intimate setting. We relied on each other for much-needed social connection. In fact, we couldn’t escape each other if we wanted to. This brought me a certain level of social confidence that I never experienced in regular life, and my relationships with my peers flourished. 

Making friends has never come easily to me. I’m always second-guessing myself, worried that people are talking behind my back and thinking I’m weird, that I’m not following some secret social code I’m unaware of. I always had a solid group of friends through elementary and middle school. But by ninth grade, my friends from eighth grade had either moved away or ended up in different classes, leaving me isolated. It wasn't that I couldn't make friends, but I lacked the confidence to put myself out there. In this loneliness, my eating disorder thrived.

In treatment, however, I became gregarious and sociable. I didn’t fade into the background. In treatment, I never felt silenced, afraid to say the wrong thing—I couldn’t shut up if I wanted to. I did say the wrong thing sometimes, and I apologized. This bizarre microcosm of society, with its odd social stakes, broke down all my walls. The structured-down-to-the-minute schedules and seemingly arbitrary rules meant I wasn’t guessing or second-guessing social norms. They were clear and enforced.

In treatment, I learned that social life is less about fitting in and more about showing up.

At treatment, we were all becoming alive again. I remember one assistant mentioned that his favorite part of working at a treatment center was watching people’s personalities come back. We were simultaneously uncomfortable and awkward and so excited to be alive. We related to each other in an ultra-specific way, and we felt shared pain and shared joy on a daily basis. 

I often think about my dinners with “Nina,” a married woman in her forties. We were the only two patients who had earned the privilege of eating in a separate room, so we’d sit in a strange little kitchen (which had probably never been cooked in), eating tater tot casserole and green beans and dinner rolls with butter packets, having long conversations about life and recovery. When she left, she wrote me a card: “I appreciate your positivity, enthusiasm, encouraging nature...Thanks for being you.” It was a simple gesture, but it meant so much to me—the idea that just being myself was enough for a friendship, that I didn't have to pretend to be someone cooler, more stylish, and funnier. 

Of course, there was social tension. When you put so many emotionally vulnerable people together in such a competitive and controlled setting, conflict is unavoidable. I once wrote a fraught journal entry detailing my overdramatic displeasure with people who didn’t want to go outside or play cards. A few pages later, I expressed heartfelt thanks to everyone I had met at treatment, even those I had apparently been so enraged with just a few days before. We loved each other, hated each other, and couldn’t live without each other. And for the first time in my life, I was not hovering on the edge, afraid to make a mistake. I was in the midst of it all.

I met so many fascinating people: “Ryan,” a little boy who loved lizards and perfected his hair gel every morning; “Susan,” a woman in her sixties who taught us the joy of writing letters and hand-washing dishes; “Jane,” my quiet roommate who had four sisters, wise beyond her years; “Ella,” from Maine, smart and funny with a perfect pixie cut and dreams of becoming a farmer; and so many more.

In our social media-driven world, it's easy to see people only in their best moments, and think they aren’t struggling. But at treatment, we were all struggling, plain as day. We saw each other in our hardest moments, becoming our worst and best selves. None of us were perfect, or we wouldn’t have been there. I witnessed people I would have assumed were perfect in any other setting cry, lie, and become their most vulnerable selves.

In treatment, I learned that social life is less about fitting in and more about showing up, being present, and being authentic. The friendships I formed were built on a strong foundation of mutual understanding and vulnerability. 

Emotions were high, and we couldn't avoid causing each other pain. We became briefly and intensely enraged with each other, and just as dramatically made amends. The mantra “focus on your own recovery” was hurled like an insult, indicating you were perhaps a little too preoccupied (read: obsessed) with someone else. It hurt, often and sharply. I made mistakes, and I was painfully embarrassed. I sometimes hurt other people, and that was horrible. But these moments of strife ultimately made our connections stronger, deeper, better. 

This environment also forced me to stick out developing friendships with people I probably wouldn’t have otherwise. At first impression, I would think some people “weren’t for me,” but after living with them 24 hours a day for weeks on end, I realized that I had so often miscalculated. I first went to treatment soon after the 2016 election, and it was the first time I encountered someone publicly expressing very different political views than my own. I was shocked at first, but it didn’t change my view of that person. I knew that they felt pain in the same way I did, even if our politics didn’t align. There is always more to people's stories than meets the eye, and first impressions are never entirely accurate.

If I'm being honest, the only reason I transformed during treatment was because I had no other choice. But the payoff was surprisingly beautiful. When I left treatment, I carried with me a newfound confidence. I had navigated the strange social dynamics of a treatment center more adeptly than I could possibly have imagined, and it gave me a taste of what social life could be. The lessons I learned continue to shape my interactions to this day.

In the end, what I learned about social life in eating disorder treatment is a universal truth: that genuine connections are formed through shared struggle and mutual support, through accepting each other's flaws and loving each other despite—and because of—it all.

I love a wank. Who doesn’t? Nowadays, with newly accepted types of relationships—polyamorous, aromantic, situationships—sex and love have become more and more complicated, but wanking remains a timeless and straightforward activity.

Recently, I’ve taken this love of wanking to the next step: mutual masturbation.

In practice, mutual masturbation can mean a couple of things. Some people define this as two or more people wanking each other off simultaneously (as preferred by Oxford English Dictionary). Whereas others understand mutual masturbation as two or more people wanking themselves off, but next to each other and at the same time (as favored by Urban Dictionary).

The version I’m into is the latter. That’s what I’m going to be endorsing here.

Over the past year, my partner (male) and I (female) have been experimenting with self-pleasure while next to each other in bed. Sometimes as a precursor to penetrative sex, sometimes after penetrative sex, and sometimes without any penetrative sex (gasp).

Mutual masturbation's thrill comes from doing something naughty or taboo.

As someone who’s had their fair share of mediocre sex with men, I can’t recommend mutual masturbation enough. Beyond the undeniable fact that you can nearly always bring yourself to orgasm better than anyone else, there’s also something uniquely sexy about getting to see your partner in the act.

When I watch him jerk off, it feels so vulnerable that I almost want to look away. I feel like I’m intruding on him in a way that’s also a turn-on.

I reckon this unique sexiness comes from the lingering shame and guilt around masturbation. It’s definitely not something I ever talk to my family about. Like death or shitting, it carries an awkward taboo; we all know it happens, but we don't really talk about it.

I've been conscious of this shame for as long as I can remember. But now, when I share masturbation with my partner, that shame morphs into something that enhances our sex. Yes, I'm watching you masturbate—an act society deems so shameful. And I get to see you doing it.

For me, great sex is often about pushing boundaries. I think this is true for so many of us. The thrill comes from doing something naughty, subversive, or taboo. Mutual masturbation can be another way to experience that thrill.

It’s as if him letting me watch is a testament to our intimacy and affection, too. Like when you’ve been in a relationship for a while and start pissing in front of each other in the bathroom.

The intimacy also comes from being able to look at my partner's face, all screwed up and sweaty. With penetrative sex, this isn’t always the case. Even during missionary sex his head is often buried in my shoulder, which means I miss out on seeing him. Choosing a partner purely for their looks might be shallow, but it’s even more pointless if I can’t enjoy looking at their face when they come.

Surpassing the emotional benefits, there’s a powerful advantage: no risk of STIs, no chance of pregnancy, and no need for condoms. It’s like a teenage dream come true.

To me, the many benefits of mutual masturbation are clear. So why isn’t everyone at it? I get the impression that it’s not seen as “proper” sex. Whenever I talk to my friends about my current sex life, they usually assume mutual masturbation is just foreplay, or something we do when we're too tired for “actual” sex. And this is what baffles me. Where is all this masturbation hate coming from?

It seems widely believed that penetrative sex – the traditional penis-in-vagina lark – is the only form of proper sex, while everything else is considered second-rate.

As a queer woman, this offends me. When I do have sex with women, there’s rarely a penis substitute involved. I’ve never used a strap-on with women, and I’m friends with some queer women who actively avoid strap-ons because they don’t like the idea that they must imitate a penis in order to have sex. I really feel where they’re coming from. I hate the idea that the sex I have with women could ever be considered not real, or not proper sex—just because there’s not a penetrative element to it.

This tendency to privilege “penis-in-vagina” sex strikes me as very odd, and it makes me worry about the types of sex we all feel compelled to have. I hate the idea that lots of people could be enjoying different kinds of sex, but feel obliged to perform “proper” sex instead.

So this is my parting plea to you: Give mutual masturbation a try. It might just be the best sex you’ve ever had.

One thing noticeable about my body is the presence of thick, dark, coarse hair. I look at myself in the shower or in the mirror and can see it clearly on my armpits, arms, legs, and face. The idea of removing my body hair has been a goal since childhood but, short of the laser hair removal I can’t afford, there isn’t much I can do.

I’ve struggled with my body hair my whole life, as an Indian girl in mostly white schools in Britain. When I was six years old, we had regular PE classes and our kit would include shorts. That meant that my bare legs were exposed and, therefore, my leg hair. During one lesson, on the way to the nearby field, a group of girls in my class began making fun of my leg hair. One girl came up to me and said, "Top tip: shave." She proceeded to touch my legs with her leg and mockingly say “hairy.” Once on the field, I started crying. I felt humiliated, embarrassed and, now thinking back, violated. My friends began consoling me and our teacher noticed. But I didn't find the courage to explain what was happening.

I wish this were the last time my hairy legs received an unwarranted comment at school. But I have lots of memories like this. During a typical assembly, I was in a school dress uniform which also revealed my bare legs. Every student sat down on mats, cross-legged. While the teachers were speaking, a girl in another year nearby looked at her friend and said, "She's got hairy legs." I immediately felt embarrassed again and tried to cover my legs by stretching my dress over them as much as possible. 

I still can’t help but see it as one of my body's most unlikeable features.

Towards the later stages of my childhood, I was determined to shave regularly. My mother didn’t approve at first, but let me have my own razor. So began my shaving routine. 

My facial hairs weren't the same level of thickness as my leg hairs. But my upper lip was, so I shaved off those hairs too. Later, I started dermaplaning my face (but that’s another story). 

In secondary school, thankfully, my body hair didn't seem to be of much concern with my fellow students. But there was one instance when a classmate pointed out my slightly noticeable sideburn hairs during a math lesson. A friend next to me came to my defense and told me to say, “At least I've hit puberty.” That restored some confidence in me again. Still, during these years, whenever I had an event to attend and I was going to wear a dress, either I would cover up my hair or my mom would remind me to shave my armpits and legs. 

Now, in adulthood, I find the shaving routine exhausting. Pair this with depressive episodes and it really ceases to be a routine. Whenever I dedicate time in the shower to shave my legs or more of my body, it takes around 20 minutes, the razor has too much hair caught in it to work smoothly, and I end up with razor cuts. In the summer, when the heat calls for looser clothing and shorts, I sometimes just continue wearing trousers instead of go through my whole shaving ordeal. I've tried plucking out each individual hair from my legs with a tweezer in hopes that it would at least make the hair grow back thinner. It has worked a little. But that, too, is time-consuming and tiring.

I try to cope with my insecurities through humor or glamorizing my body hair as a “garden” (as a Rupi Kaur poem puts it) or as a natural “coat” for winter. When I watched the Netflix series “Never Have I Ever, ” I felt validated by a plot point that focused on an Indian character’s facial hair, even though my self-esteem over my own body hair was at a low. 

I'm happy for the women who can embrace their body hair, but I feel so much empathy for others who’ve been bullied for it, too. I still can’t help but see it as one of my body's most unlikeable features. I can forgive the bullying and offhand comments from classmates; we were young and it's been many years. But these childhood experiences have forever warped how I view my own body.

I’m someone who identifies as an incel, or “involuntary celibate”: I don’t have sex despite my innate desire to do so. I am a guy in his early thirties who has never had sex, never had a girlfriend, and faces inevitable rejection every time I attempt to connect with a woman. This predicament comes with a lot of negative emotions and even (I’m ashamed to admit) intrusive and aggressive thoughts about what I’m missing out on. I’m finally able to push those thoughts away and will never let them manifest into violence towards others. But it took a while to get here.

Every stage of my life has been marked by utter disregard and rejection from the opposite sex. 

In elementary school, I was never included in the giggly kisses that the other kids enjoyed. I even recall crying at the sight of the girl I loved starting a relationship with another boy (or what passes for a relationship among third-graders).

For much of high school, dating didn’t seem like an option because my school was all boys and I was very fat. I managed to lose a lot of weight just prior to my penultimate year (which is when we start to share classes with our sister school). I got glances and smiles from girls, but I had no confidence to pursue them. I was body dysmorphic and still felt fat and inadequate. My school was also very strict and rife with bullying, so I was in “survival mode” the whole time and therefore was in no mental state for romance.

College was very different: I had overcome body dysmorphia and I knew that I looked good. The college environment was very relaxed and bully-free. I felt unencumbered, like nothing would stop me from becoming the ladies’ man I knew I could be. But it didn’t happen. The girls I expressed interest in rejected me, often cruelly. I recall being at a club dinner in a restaurant and a girl I was crushing on said to me, “I was hoping there’d be cute guys here…no offense.” I’m ashamed to admit that, during my college years, I came dangerously close to Elliot Rodger Territory—being an incel who can’t handle it and wants revenge on others. I resorted to purposefully making girls who weren’t interested in me feel uncomfortable, through intense stares and continuing to direct flirtatious attention towards them. I figured that their feelings of discomfort were fair retribution for my feelings of unworthiness.  

I’m thankful that instead of hurtling too far down that wrongful path, I sought professional help. My GP referred me to a psychiatrist, who diagnosed my mental health issues (autism, OCD, and depression), prescribed me helpful medication, and gave me an outlet to air my woes instead of letting them fester inside me. I was able to correct my course.  

Although I do function well now, I don’t wish to understate the mental anguish that comes with being an incel.

In all honesty, I do understand where the “bad incels” are coming from. In the words of Elliot Rodger, in one of his many self-pitying online posts that preceded his despicable rampage in 2014: “I wish girls were attracted to me. I don't know why they aren't.”  

I don’t fully know, either. In 2024, I’ve been on 10 dates with girls I’ve met from apps. Nine times out of 10, I got ghosted or received a follow-up message saying that they just didn’t feel a click or connection. (And one of the girls called things off because she wanted to focus on queer relationships instead—that’s all good.) And a couple of months ago, I attended a speed dating event in which nobody matched with me. In every one of these encounters, I’ve looked nice, smelled nice, I was polite and friendly, I told funny stories and so on. But it wasn’t enough and I genuinely don’t get it.   

Of course, there’s context for my inceldom. For me, it’s a perfect storm of having evident mental issues, which repel many people away, in conjunction with having erectile dysfunction and a member that’s of below-average size. The latter means that, even though I’ve managed to click with and date some girls, I’m much too insecure to take my pants off with them. The few girls that I manage to attract uniformly lose interest and depart upon my reluctance to go all the way.

So while I do know the reasons, it doesn’t make the pain of rejection any duller.

I’m thankful to have naturally developed safeguards against many of the dangerous aspects of inceldom. I grew up reading all about history and culture, about great thinkers and great achievers. This has given me an informed worldview that has helped prevent me from being warped by any dumb anti-woman ideologies that thrive online and prey on those who are similarly young and lonely, but gullible. 

I’m glad I was raised by loving family members who taught me to love and respect others. Although I have lapsed and treated others in an immature and antisocial way at times, I never had it in me to inflict any tangible harm upon anyone. It also helps that I grew up with a healthy fear of prison (thank you, The Longest Yard). I’m thankful to be someone who has wide-ranging curiosity and a desire to try many different things. This means I have numerous hobbies and projects that I can channel my energy into and distract myself with so I’m not constantly stewing about my lack of sex. 

I believe strongly that a head full of wisdom, a heart full of compassion, and a schedule full of fulfilling activities can stop an incel from becoming dangerous. 

Although I do function well now, I don’t wish to understate the mental anguish that comes with complete sexlessness and constant rejection. To be an incel is to walk through a very crowded and varied minefield; so many different things hurt you to so many different degrees and you step into them almost constantly.   I feel the pangs of despair when I see a woman I’m drawn to who I know would reject me. I feel the sting of frustration when I see couples in an amorous state. Or when I think about confident and attractive men who aren’t only enjoying a sexual partner now but will quickly find a new one should the current one end.

I feel the burn of injustice when I hear about people who have enjoyed steamy workplace romances when I’ve previously been mocked and reprimanded for asking out women I’ve worked with. I feel a gaping emptiness when I see my dating app profiles devoid of any matches or messages. I feel enraged bitterness when I read personal articles that give vivid and ecstatic descriptions of the sex that I’m missing out on. Even when I’m doing the work I enjoy, that in itself opens me up to painful feelings when I come across people who are having sex and achieving much more professional success than I am. 

There are times when I read about sexually successful people and my brain will bark condemnation of “sluts” and “whores” with the fervor of a fanatical preacher. Walking around my city, steeped in misery at the sight of couples and appealing women I’ll never get, my brain may recite an abstract manifesto of destroying sex and all who enjoy it. (The autistic and compulsive mind can run a mile before the rational mind puts its sneakers on.)  But I will forever stop the wall between those thoughts and my actions from breaking. It’s as simple as forcing my brain to think about a different topic that makes me happier. And in the case of sexually active people who are more successful, I think about productive ways in which I can do my work even better than they do. 

Ultimately, one of the most effective antidotes for my inceldom is optimism. The belief that I do have very good things on my horizon and I need to keep going until I reach them. That I shouldn’t do anything to jeopardize my future.  I’ll keep walking through the aforementioned minefield until I reach greener, mine-free pastures. Walk with me, fellow incels. 

This story is based on an interview with the editors of The Doe.

I met John at work. At the time, I was single, and then I entered into a relationship with somebody else for about a year. That relationship fell apart after he told me that he wasn't attracted to me anymore, which was heartbreaking. At that point, I considered John a close friend. He was nine years older than me, so I sort of viewed him as more of a guiding force in my life. And he helped me through that breakup.

One night after work, a group of us went out for drinks, and John and I ended up sharing a kiss. I knew that he was in a relationship, but he didn't really talk much about her. Initially my thoughts were like, Oh, maybe they broke up. The next week, he shared with me that he and his partner were actually in an open relationship, looking to bring in a third person. He said he was attracted to me and that his partner would also be interested in me. I asked to think about it, then came back to him a couple of days later and said, “I’m flattered, but no thank you.” He was like, “No worries. We’ll just forget that kiss ever happened.”

Except a couple of weeks later, the same thing: We went out for drinks, got a little too drunk, and shared another kiss—which then spurred into this whole other conversation. I suggested we spend some time apart, because I didn’t want to come between him and his girlfriend. And he replied, “I’m really interested in you. We are interested in finding a third person, but we are also exploring the idea of dating other people separately.”

To have someone chase after me and seemingly put so much on the line to be with me was intoxicating.

I was quite flattered. This person was attracted to me and was choosing me, after I'd been through this other break-up and not feeling attractive at all. From that point, it spiraled into an affair. I say “affair” because he let me know his partner had vetoed anybody he worked with. But his attitude was “Well, what she doesn't know won’t hurt her. I'm really into you. We can do this. We’ll be sneaky.” He started coming over at least once a week, almost every Friday night. He never stayed the night because that was a rule between him and his partner.

At the time, it was thrilling. I didn't really care about the fact that he was in a relationship, because the validation I got from him meant more to me than anything else. 

It was also the height of COVID, so you couldn't really go out and do anything—you had to go to someone’s house. My mom had an autoimmune disease, and I was really worried about catching the virus. I hadn't seen either of my parents in almost six months. The city I lived in put a restriction on how far you could travel, and all of my friends lived outside of that boundary, so I couldn't even go and visit my friends. I felt really isolated from my family and friends. All I was doing was going to work and coming home. And my work situation at the time wasn’t great—I felt under-appreciated and was so worried that I was going to get fired every day. It was a dark time.

John was the person I saw the most. He was my main human contact. The fear of losing him weighed so much more heavily than it would normally because if I didn’t have him, who did I have? 

At the time we had an affair, he had a child that was maybe two or three years old. I got the sense that he never wanted to be a dad and that the pregnancy was a little bit of a shock to them. And so for him, being with me was sort of an escape. He was getting to live out this life where he got to be a young, single, child-free person. 

We broke it off after we’d been seeing each other for a year. It wasn’t a clean break. We’d agree we had to end it and we'd spend two weeks apart and then we'd hang out and he'd end up back at my house. We just kept falling back into this routine. Eventually I moved cities, and we said we’d keep in touch but then I heard nothing from him. He was always looking at my Instagram stories, even though he never posted on social media. Finally, I blocked him.

I think when we talk about affairs, people don’t often talk about the “other” person in that situation. But trying to understand where their feelings come from are just as important. I don't think anyone sets out into an affair to be malicious; you’d have to be pretty narcissistic to do that. There were many nights when I would lie awake thinking, “Who am I?” If his partner were to find out, she would be so hurt and the fact that I would be the cause of that hurt—I felt awful. But I couldn’t stop it because my feelings of validation and lust were stronger than my guilt. I’d never viewed myself as a sought-after person, so when I had someone chase after me and seemingly put so much on the line to be with me, it was intoxicating.

Having an affair is like being in a blender of emotions, all wrapped up in this weird little mix of head versus heart. Ultimately this affair was a coping mechanism, albeit not a healthy one. Yes, it might not sit right with your morals and values, and that's okay. It definitely didn’t sit with mine. I like to think of myself as a good person—I try to live my life in a way where I'm kind to everyone. But when you're just trying to keep your own head above water, sometimes that leads to hurting other people. I think that there's a grace in understanding that hurt people hurt people.

The last few days of a glorious solo trip to Paris, I decided to open Hinge. I connected with David. In his profile photo, he was standing in front of a designer watch store with his hands in his pockets, smiling. He had also posted a video of himself wearing a Speedo dancing at a party.

I texted him, complimenting his dance moves. He joked that they were “purely fueled by alcohol, not talent.” Handsome and silly, he passed the vibe check. We made plans to get a drink in the evening, but I took an ill-conceived nap and jolted awake at 10:30 PM. Oops. He was already under a blanket on his couch.

I offered to run with him at 11 AM the next day, something he had jokingly suggested. He said “OK, I’ll pick you up.” I realized the next morning that I needed a place to put my luggage before my 4:20 PM flight. I told him my conundrum and he said, "You can leave it at mine!"

Why I thought meeting a stranger and leaving my luggage at his place when I had an international flight to catch in Paris just a few hours later is beyond me. 

His profile said he was 43. In person, he told me right away that he was actually 47, which somehow didn’t bother me. He walked my luggage into his kitchen and we continued chatting while he made me fresh coffee. I perched on top of his red bar stool, googling, “Do people in different countries ever poison their date’s coffee?” I found Reddit threads about women putting trace amounts of bleach in their husbands’ drinks. I’m relieved it’s mostly a woman-owned murder tactic. 

He was tender, respectful, and I loved how he took charge. 

I learned that his parents got divorced when he was young. He now takes care of his mom who has Alzheimer’s. I softened at his warmth, took off my running gloves, and continued chatting. 

A few hours later, he swung my backpack over his shoulder and escorted me to a train station to get to the airport. We passed a few Indian restaurants and beautiful buildings on the way. I already missed Paris. When he ran to the station bathroom, it hit me that he was carrying my laptop, passport, and other important belongings. Hopefully he comes back, I thought. 

When David came back, he hugged me goodbye and said, “You can come back to mine if you miss your flight.” I laughed. I missed my flight by eight minutes.

I WhatsApp-ed him, telling him I’d be headed back to his, wondering if I was making the safest choice by trusting him, again. I thought, OK he carried my luggage, made good coffee and conversation, and he hasn’t tried to kiss me. Instinctually, I thought, I trust him. This would have to be enough, because there was no way I was paying for an expensive, tiny hotel on top of the extra flight change fees.

He had made us lentil soup, homemade fries, and runny eggs. It was a perfect cozy lunch, after which I dozed off on his couch and he prepared his guest bed.

After I woke up from a nap, I took a long shower. Then he watched me blow dry my hair, something I’ve always found really intimate. This Hinge date was really shaping up to be quite different from what I’d let myself ponder, which was bloody murder.

I have absorbed that the men I am taught to trust are sometimes more dangerous than strangers.

The restaurant was filled with dim lighting and candles. I got orange wine—my favorite—with steak. He got steak and a drink, as well. This may have been my tastiest meal in Paris. As the wine flowed, we talked openly about sex in relationships, what intimacy meant to each of us. He got divorced in 2015 and has been single since then. He used to be a watch designer and is currently on a sabbatical. I like that he's exploratory. He seemed to have shame around not having “figured it out.” I don’t think there is an “it” to figure out. Right? We just live, and enjoy moments like this one.

I decided I would rather lounge and listen to music than go out after dinner. While we cuddled and told stories and laughed, I kept drifting off. He told me I twitch like a baby when I am almost asleep and then jolt awake. I never realized that was weird. 

He slept under the blanket with me so I got to hold him. Earlier he was sitting out of reach and I had to keep reminding myself not to rush intimacy. He had withheld enough physical touch that I really wanted him.

He put his warm toes on my frozen ones. Then he tipped my chin up and kissed me. He was a really good kisser. I consented by opening my lips and kissing him back, biting his lower lip. He pulled up my shirt and continued to kiss my torso while I shivered happily. He was so in tune with my body language, the way I was vibrating. I asked him to finger me, in English, because I don’t know how to say it in French. (Duolingo, if you can hear me, please address sexual consent in different countries so we can fuck in peace.) He didn’t understand, so I giggled, pulled on my leather pants, and gestured down there.

At some point he picked me up and carried me to his bed. He pulled me onto his lap and whispered, “trust me.” I hadn’t done this, felt wanted like this, in so long. So I surrendered and he thrust into me. He was tender, respectful, and I loved how he took charge. 

I didn’t come, which is unusual but fine. I’ve always hated when a guy prioritizes his own pleasure over mine. I didn’t feel like David was doing that…or maybe he was? I’m so naive in these situations sometimes.

Sometimes when I’m having sex in the dark with someone new, I think back to 10 years ago when I was roofied and sexually assaulted by a friend. Since then, I stopped assuming stranger danger and started eyeing men I know with far more suspicion. They say that 80% of the time we are assaulted, it’s by people who we know, which is an uncomfortable reality.

So even though David was a stranger, he made me feel safer than most men I come across. Stable male energy is not something I come by often. Since having been assaulted by a friend, and having to shut down businesses due to male investors hitting on me, I have absorbed that the men I am taught to trust are sometimes more dangerous than strangers because they’ll use that trust as leverage to take advantage of me.

Just days before, I had gone on a date with Sebastian, a guy who was the host of an AirBnB speakeasy tour. He was handsome and quiet. He invited me to go to a cafe. After he picked me up from the train station, instead of going out, we walked to his apartment. This already felt deceitful. I didn’t want to go, but the words didn’t leave my throat.

His apartment had high ceilings, fancy furniture, and a soulless energy. I walked up to the French press and watched him closely to make sure he wasn’t putting anything in my coffee. After stilted conversation on his couch, during which he made no effort to emotionally connect, he told me I had a pretty face and asked if he could kiss me. I said no and left. I wanted to die or vomit or masturbate. 

After I came back from Paris, I asked my therapist, “Why is it that I felt so comfortable around David but like I was in feral danger around Sebastian? I met Sebastian in real life through a vetted experience, and David on Hinge. Shouldn’t it have been the other way around? Am I crazy?”

She smiled and said, “It seems like you are finally beginning to trust your instincts. Why not let that continue to happen?”

I think that was the entire reason I came to Paris alone in the first place.

I was in sixth grade when I learned my father was a chronic cheater. It was years before my mother figured it out and asked him to leave. But she always forgave him, allowing him to move back home until the next time...because there was always a next time. Years of witnessing my mother forgive Dad's infidelities made me lose all respect for her. I loved her, yes, but she was gullible and blind to his lies, and over time, much of my love for her turned into pity.

Shortly after I married my husband, I asked my mother why she kept forgiving Dad. Why not just get a divorce and move on? "Just because someone is unfaithful to you doesn't mean you can automatically stop loving them," she said. "We have you kids and a history together. I couldn't throw all that away because of some meaningless affairs. He still loves me, and that's all that matters." 

This made no sense to me, and I vowed never to let any man treat me like a doormat, as my mother had. I also believed I was too smart to be fooled by infidelity. My husband was a good, exceptionally loving man, so I was sure I had nothing to worry about. 

Or so I thought. 

Our early years of marriage were smooth enough; I was a stay-at-home mom with four children, and my husband had a dream job that he loved. But over time, we became so busy running the kids back and forth to school and their extra activities that there was little time for just the two of us. I prioritized our children's needs over Jerry's, and he resented it. We started drinking on the weekends in a feeble attempt to spend relaxing, one-on-one time together. 

We'd been married too long to throw it all away; the desire to keep my family intact was more important than my hurt pride.

However, one bottle of wine would quickly turn into four, and suddenly we were arguing about everything from money to housework to who was doing a better job at parenting. Jerry complained bitterly over carrying the entire financial load for the family. Yet, he insisted I stay home because he didn't want to put our kids in daycare. He also had issues with his new boss and no longer enjoyed his job. The constant bickering and negativity wore me down to the point that I eventually tuned him out. Of course, this only frustrated him, and he accused me of being unsupportive and dispassionate.

Many years later, when Jerry and I celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary, we'd already been through so much—the deaths of our parents and several siblings; my youngest teen's drug addiction; unemployment and bankruptcy; finding new jobs and new friends; watching our children graduate from college and marry. We were rounding the final lap to becoming empty nesters. We loved our quiet lives and dreamt of retiring and buying an RV to travel around the country together.

Those dreams were shattered the day my daughter overheard a sordid story about her father and came to me in tears. Ten years earlier, Jerry had had a one-night stand with a neighbor who, at the time, was a close friend of mine. She was in an abusive marriage, heading for a tumultuous divorce, when she turned to Jerry for advice and emotional support. He was always kind and helpful with Allison; it never crossed my mind that they were anything but friends. 

I was blindsided by the betrayal. When I confronted Jerry, he seemed relieved that the secret was finally out. Even though I was disgusted by their brief affair, I needed to know the details of what led to their tryst. Jerry tearfully admitted everything and answered all my questions. For him, it had been an act of comfort that unexpectedly turned sexual. Once it was over, he and Allison felt ashamed and agreed it would never happen again.

I realized his infidelity with Allison had occurred during the height of our bankruptcy, when he was being treated for anxiety and depression. Although his eyes showed deep remorse, my knee-jerk reaction was to "punish" him by leaving. I didn't feel as forgiving as my mother had been with Dad. I was convinced that once my trust was gone, my love would also disappear. 

But it was my mother who convinced me to stay in the marriage. She reminded me that Jerry was a good husband and father in all the ways that counted—always attentive, loving, and kind. I also thought of how it would affect our children and our family's dependence on Jerry. When I envisioned being a single mom of four kids and trying to hold down a full-time job, it was a sobering moment. I couldn't stomach the thought of entering the dating scene again or, worse, watching Jerry date other women. 

To salvage our marriage, I needed to unearth the emotional connection we once shared. But I knew it wouldn't be easy since my love was buried under a thick layer of mistrust. 

After days of weighing the pros and cons, I decided Jerry and I had been married too long to throw it all away in a snap decision; the desire to keep my family intact was more important than my hurt pride. And just as my mother had done with my dad, I also felt that the years of hard work we'd put into our marriage deserved another chance, so I agreed to attend couples therapy.

Oddly, infidelity and counseling brought us closer in our relationship. We were so open and vulnerable with each other that, at times, it felt like it was just us against the world—and I couldn't imagine not having Jerry in my life. 

Counseling also taught me that our marital mistakes were just as much my fault as Jerry's. He had always put me first, but I hadn't done the same for him. It was startling to discover that for years, he'd felt like nothing more than the family's cash cow and assumed that I'd stopped loving him since I rarely made time for sexual intimacy. Once I realized how I'd subconsciously been taking him for granted, I understood why he turned to another source for comfort. And with that understanding came healing, forgiveness, and the knowledge that we both needed to work harder on our commitment. It was a process that would be ongoing as long as we stayed married.

We were truthful with our kids about our marital problems, and when they criticized Jerry, I was quick to defend him. That's when I knew I still loved my husband and would never leave him. 

Jerry vowed to change, and his efforts paid off. We recently celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary by buying an RV to fulfill our lifelong dream of traveling together. Yes, tiny twinges of mistrust pop up, but I believe they're just ashes from the past stirred by the occasional wind gust.

I realize now that my mother wasn't weak for staying with Dad; she was strong enough to remain and repair their marriage. By following in her footsteps, I know I made the right decision to stick with my vows, "for better or worse," because Jerry and I are better people when we're together rather than apart.

This story is Part One of a three-part series about people who got diagnosed with autism late in life, a group experts have dubbed "The Lost Generation." Read Part Two here.

“Test results indicate that you meet the criteria for a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder.” 

It was a few weeks after my 47th birthday. I had been working with my therapist after persistent struggles in some of my relationships. She recommended I consider being assessed for autism. Following her recommendation, I endured months of tests, questionnaires, and interviews that led to this determination. The diagnosis shook my world. 

My initial reaction was one of relief. Suddenly, decades of struggles and awkward moments made sense. I wasn’t stupid or incapable, as I’d often told myself. I was just autistic. I felt validated and seen in a way I’d never been previously. I thought, “Now I can explain myself to others and they will understand me.” I was unprepared for the rollercoaster of emotions that would follow, including frustration with a world that doesn’t understand autism.

While reviewing my life through this new lens, I realized I had made all of my most important life decisions without knowing myself or how my brain functioned. I’d been following a script that others wrote. Decisions about my education, career, relationships, and parenting were based on what everyone else was doing. My inability to make decisions effectively meant that life often made them for me. I chose a major that wasn’t compatible with my needs. I spent 12 years in a relationship that wasn’t working. I struggled with the social aspect of raising kids; having two sons involved in sports meant anxiety-ridden fundraisers, concession booth shifts, and banquets.

I always had trouble adapting to adult life. I struggled to pay my bills on time even though I had the money. I had days when I couldn’t bring myself to go to work because I was too overwhelmed to talk to people. I was told, “You just have anxiety like most other women.” I was given prescriptions for sleep aids and anti-anxiety meds. Therapists suggested typical techniques. None of them helped, because autistic brains require different methods.

Had I known I was autistic, I would have made different choices in every area of life. It feels like the “what if”s are eating me alive.

Had I known I was autistic, I would have made different choices in every area of life. That realization was—and still is—hard to grapple with. Some days, it feels like the “what if”s are eating me alive. Yet, I have a beautiful life. I am blessed with a wonderfully supportive husband. I have three amazing kids. I have friends I adore, a family I can rely on, and a job that uses my strengths and interests. I feel immense guilt over wishing I had made different choices because if I had, I wouldn’t have this life. Harboring regret feels like I am erasing my loved ones and the many treasured experiences I’ve had.

My family and friends are accepting and supportive and the online community of autistic women has been a life raft. But for the most part, other people don’t know what autism looks like. It seems many people don’t even realize that autistic kids become autistic adults. We have devised a system of support for autistic kids and their parents, but support for autistic adults is almost non-existent. Even simple accommodation requests are often denied by employers, resulting in 85% of autistic people being unemployed. Autistic women have been missed for generations by those tasked with understanding autism—and they still are even now.

Most people see autistic adults as Dustin Hoffman’s “Rainman” or Sheldon Cooper from “The Big Bang Theory”—or else they’ll say,  “Everyone’s on the spectrum!” Please don’t say that to an autistic person; it invalidates our experience. You are only “on the spectrum” if you have autism. Autistic traits like sensory sensitivities can be experienced by non-autistic people, but it doesn’t make everyone autistic. It isn’t only what we experience, but the intensity, frequency, and severity of the impact that these traits have on our lives.

Recently, I was reminded just how detrimental that impact can be. I attended a publishing workshop where one of the speakers said that to be considered for a book proposal, you must submit a video. The point of the video is to show that you are engaging and can market yourself. This expectation is based on common social norms, but they are norms with which autistic people often struggle. 

Displaying proper expressions, understanding what the audience is thinking, making eye contact, and smiling at the right time—I struggle with all of these things. My voice is too loud and my facial expressions don’t always match my words. I can make eye contact while listening, but when speaking, I have to look away. I must consciously focus on making eye contact, but I also have to focus on speaking so that the right words come out with the right tone. I write better than I speak, so it’s ironic that to publish a book, I have to prove my worth by speaking. Effectiveness in communication shouldn’t be limited to verbal expression.

The same challenges extend to job interviews, work meetings, and presentations. In these situations, autistic people – women in particular, due to gender expectations – often “mask,” meaning that internally, we are expending tremendous energy attempting to appear normal. Masking for me entails forcing eye contact, consciously smiling at the right time, and suppressing fidgeting. I need an entire day to prepare for and recover from a 30-minute meeting, during which I'm faking who I am for the benefit of others. Masking for an extended period has a detrimental impact on my mental health. Autistic people frequently suffer from depression and anxiety, and their suicide rate is much higher than average. The world needs to learn what autistic presence looks like and to value us as we are. It is truly a matter of life and death. 

Despite these hurdles, the past year has also brought joy and a newfound sense of freedom. I can’t go back in time, but I can move forward with determination. The way I experience the world is unique and my perspective just might change yours if you can learn to see beyond my loud voice and lack of eye contact. 

This is true for the entire autistic community. If an autistic person shares themselves with you, it is a gift. Please listen. No matter how bizarre their experience might seem, they are trusting you with the most vulnerable part of themselves. Our experience has taught us that the world isn’t safe for autistic people. As a society, we can change that by listening and believing. 

In 2008, a chance Google search changed the trajectory of my life. I had just moved from Texas to New York City for college, andI found myself wrestling with separating my own political and religious beliefs from my parents’. After being homeschooled in a conservative Christian family, I relished the experience of learning diverse viewpoints in a secular environment, one that seemed to assume “feminist” as a default state for all women. But after a semester of reading Judith Butler and Betty Friedan, I started to wonder about women who rejected the concept of gender equality – women like the ones I knew growing up. 

While procrastinating on a midterm paper for my women’s studies class, I typed “anti-feminist woman” into the search bar. The search brought me to page after page of blogs promoting “traditional womanhood,” the belief that women and girls belonged under the authority of men.  A decade before the “tradwives” of TikTok, these writers used platforms like Wordpress and Blogspot to promote their (mostly) fundamentalist Christian ideology. I clicked through a few, seeing familiar Bible verses like Ephesians 5:25 (“Wives submit to your husbands as to the Lord”) and pictures of smiling, tow-headed kids eating home-cooked meals at spotlessly clean kitchen tables. Several blogs were written by girls my age who were self-professed “stay-at-home daughters”—adult women who believe in living at home under their father’s “authority” until marriage rather than pursuing work or higher education. 

At first, I read out of pure fascination. It felt like a peek into what my life would have been like if I were raised in an even more conservative household. My parents were Reagan Republicans who listened to Rush Limbaugh and watched Fox News, but they’d always encouraged me to get an education and think for myself. I was taught it was a sin to have sex outside of a heterosexual marriage, but I was allowed to date as a teenager and wear whatever I wanted. 

The girls whose blogs hooked me wore long denim skirts and spent their days caring for younger siblings, baking bread, and volunteering at church. They didn’t date; they “courted” men selected for them by their fathers. They saved their first kisses for their wedding days.

I pretended to love the chance to garden, hang laundry outside, and breathe the fresh air—but I hated it.

I kept reading these blogs and discovering new ones as my freshman year came to a close. College felt more and more like an echo chamber of progressivism; I was getting defensive and frustrated by what I felt was a mischaracterization of conservative beliefs by everyone around me. I retreated to the world of these proto-tradwives. I sympathized with them. I understood them. Before long, I started to agree with them. 

I swapped my skinny jeans for long, flowing skirts. I grew my hair long and carried a Bible with me everywhere. I stayed enrolled in college but kept myself isolated socially out of a desire to stay “pure” and “set apart for the Lord.” I didn’t have to work too hard at that part; artsy NYC college kids weren’t lining up to hang out with a girl who spent her Friday nights listening to hymns and memorizing entire chapters of the New Testament. 

Except one. 

Over the summer, I met Matthew through mutual friends on social media. We shared a sense of humor, a love of reading, and a religious belief system. We fell in love – the reckless, giddy kind of teenage love that replaces all the reasoning cells in your brain with glittering infatuation confetti. The career goals and ambition that brought me to New York no longer seemed important. All I wanted now was to be Matt’s wife. 

We got engaged on my 19th birthday, six weeks after meeting in person for the first time. I spent my sophomore year planning our wedding and deflecting the concerns of friends and professors who encouraged me to “wait a few years.”  Because we believed pre-marital sex was a sin, we were eager to marry as soon as possible. In an outdoor ceremony next to Matt’s childhood church the next summer, I vowed to be an “obedient, faithful, and submissive wife.” Matt pledged to “have authority over me” as my headship. 

At the start of our marriage, I tried desperately to follow a traditional path. Matt worked a minimum-wage job as a barista. I did the housework, managed his schedule, and cooked cheap meals of dollar-store beans and rice. At school, I enjoyed that my marriage and my extreme beliefs made me “different.”

Matt hated New York City so, the second I handed in my graduation capstone assignment, we moved to a rural farming community upstate. Our new town was full of conservative Christians, homeschoolers, and homesteaders. It couldn’t have been more different than the city. I pretended to love the chance to garden, hang laundry outside, and breathe the fresh air—but I hated it.

The harder I worked at being a good wife, the more distant Matt became. He started spending all of his time playing video games and watching YouTube. He missed hours and days of work and struggled to keep a job. Via social media, I watched my friends from New York start their post-college careers, adopt dogs, and go out to brunch. Meanwhile, I got pregnant and hoped that motherhood would fix me. After our son’s birth, Matt became even more distant. Postpartum depression consumed me as I attempted to care for not only an infant on my own, but my checked-out husband, too.

Motherhood didn’t fix me, but it did snap me back to reality.

Motherhood didn’t fix me, but it did snap me back to reality. One bleary-eyed midnight, I nursed the baby back to sleep, listening to the click-click of Matt’s mouse at the desktop in the corner. I wondered what happened to the ambitious, driven girl I used to be. I wondered if she’d ever get the chance to live again. 

I started untangling myself from the cult of traditional womanhood during that sleepless first year of my son’s life. I opened up my own business, started wearing pants in public again (oh leggings, how I’d missed you) and embraced the reality that I don’t have the patience or dirt tolerance to grow my own vegetables. Soon after, Matt and I began distancing ourselves from  evangelical Christianity. Eventually, we left the church altogether. I thought maybe leaving our traditional beliefs behind would mean a magical transformation of our relationship. The reality was much grimmer. Matt’s emotional neglect and irresponsibility spiraled downward; my bitterness and frustration increased.

It took a few more years before I’d work up the nerve to walk away from my marriage. The beliefs I’d clung to during those formative years of early adulthood made me believe divorce would be the ultimate shame. Instead, divorce turned out to be my ticket to a second chance. 

Now in my mid-30s, I’m happy with the life I’ve built in spite of my early poor decisions. My son is the greatest gift I could imagine and I’d do it all over again just to have him. Yet, I’m still haunted with regret. Friends tell stories about their adventures in their early 20s, their bad boyfriends and career mishaps and spontaneous backpacking trips. I jumped right into marriage and motherhood without ever getting a chance to experience adulthood on my own terms. 

I wonder what would have happened if I’d never fallen down the rabbit hole of those blogs, if I’d listened to everyone who told me to delay getting married. Now, with the growing popularity of tradwife accounts on social media, I worry about the power they have to affect teen girls like me. If a self-identified “feminist” with access to resources and an education could be persuaded by them, how much more powerful could their message be for girls in other circumstances? Tradwife content isn’t harmless. It has the power to derail your life.

The following story is an oral history of a marriage, based on two separate interviews with the husband and wife. Neither has seen the other’s interview prior to publication.

Sarah: I came from a family that was very, very traditional. My mom designated her entire life to being a mother and a wife. RJ was one of five kids and had the same type of upbringing.

RJ: I went on a Mormon mission for two years, and afterwards, they tell you, “Now your mission is to go home and find a wife.” I was celibate, too, and sorry to be crass, but I was 21 and horny and the only way to get some action was to get married. 

Sarah: RJ and I met at church. I had already graduated college and was the leader of the women’s organization. We both wanted to build something similar to what our parents had built. 

RJ: She was so well-spoken and ticked a lot of boxes—the definition of a good Mormon wife. One time she invited me to dinner with her family. Her mom cooked and her dad showed up just in time for the evening prayer, and it was all really pleasant. After dinner, everyone hopped up and started doing the dishes together and within minutes, leftovers were put away and the kitchen was sparkly clean and the dishwasher was running. I was enamored with that whole experience. We met in October, we were married in March, and we were pregnant in December. Sarah quit her job to take care of the baby and was home fulltime.

Sarah: When I had my first baby, my full-time job at an industrial filtration company turned into a more flexible part-time role. Then we moved up north so my husband could continue his education. I got another job managing an apartment complex, so we were able to live there. We had a second baby 16 months after the first one. RJ was in school full-time, working in a lab on campus, and studying at the library at night. I had my third baby right around the time he graduated, and that’s when I quit my jobs and was fully stay-at-home.

Throughout all this, I did not have any help. My family was a few hours away, and I didn't even have babysitters. I was bred to believe that I was going to be a supermom. I had to juggle a lot. When I was still working part-time, I would sit at my computer, with my kids right by me playing. When they were small babies I would carry them on my body, or I’d have a baby in a Bumbo seat next to me. I would hide marshmallows behind my back while I was nursing to try to get another kid to come to me. I would ask my three-year-old to hand me the baby. They were almost raised as triplets. 

I spent a lot of time feeling like I was failing at the most important role in the world.

Sarah

RJ: I didn't do much parenting during that time, although we did spend time as a family when we could. Sarah would sometimes come up on campus with a triple stroller to bring me a sandwich. On Sundays after church, we would go down to the marina and watch the sunset. And whenever I was around, I would help keep the conveyer belt moving. But there was never any expectation that I would have particular duties at home.

That felt fine. It felt like this is exactly how it was supposed to be: My kids are cute, they're well taken care of, and my wife knows what she's doing. I can focus on manly things like building my career and serving in the church. I thought we were right on track.

Sarah: I remember saying to myself, “This is not fine.” But I just internalized it as something wrong with me. I look back now and see that I had very serious postpartum depression. I was mad at RJ a lot. I would tell my mother-in-law, “This feels so hard, and he's not aware, and he doesn't understand it.” I was really overwhelmed and spent quite a lot of time feeling like I was failing at the most important role in the world. But I felt like it was my duty to keep having babies. I was like a soldier. I just got up in the morning and went to battle every day, all day. It was a dark time, honestly. 

RJ's first job after college was the craziest job. It was an oilfield job, so he was out in the field leaving at 4am every day, six days a week, and then back super-late. I didn’t really feel like it was appropriate to talk to RJ about my anger, because he was trying as hard as he could, too. But the fact is he was gone a lot, and he had this opportunity to leave and come back and be fresh. There was the idea that what we did was equally hard, and it just wasn’t. 

He did make a lot of money at this job and that was what I wanted. Providing money isn't nothing for a struggling young mom. I was glad that I could have a house with a yard and go to Target and buy whatever I needed. 

RJ: Eventually my career got to a stable point and I was a senior level engineer, working more like 40 hours a week. By that time I was in my early thirties, and I just felt like something was off. I was reading a lot of behavioral economics and listening to podcasts and broadening my thinking. The whole church thing started to not sit right with me. It became obvious that I had been brainwashed since the day I was born. 

I thought Sarah and I might get divorced over it because the whole premise of our marriage was in context of the church. I kept it to myself for probably a year, but at some point I finally said, “Sarah, there’s a lot of things about religion that just don't make sense to me anymore.” She took it really well. I gave her a stack of things to read. When she was done, she said, “You’re totally right. Let's quit Mormonism together.”

Sarah: My family didn't handle my faith change well, which also cast doubt about the way they raised us and set up their lives. RJ kept his relationship with his family, but I know that both of us were really disenchanted with the way women had been treated in the church. Leaving the faith led us to take stock of what had been handed to us, what we wanted to keep, and what we wanted to leave. We had already broken down so many walls that had previously seemed so solid—what was one more thing?

I focused on my career and she picked up the slack, and I wasn't ready to give that up.

RJ

RJ: We started to examine the roles within our family. I said to Sarah, “Well, now there's no God, and we got a bunch of free time back, and our kids are getting older and we want more money, and you don’t have this divine responsibility to be a homemaker. So why don't you go get a job?” 

Sarah: I remember feeling like I wouldn't even know where to begin getting a job. Like, I gave it all up and I've been in the trenches for all these years! But RJ's sort of flippant question also got my wheels spinning, like, Okay, if I did get a job, what would I do? It wouldn’t be until my fourth baby was in kindergarten that I finally applied for a marketing job and got hired for 20 hours a week.

RJ: The idea of splitting up the household duties didn’t come up right then. Since the day we've known each other, Sarah and I have been working our asses off. I never took one day of paternity leave through all four kids. Any time I wasn’t working, there was something else that needed to be done. I knew she kinda thought, “He should be doing more.” But I don't think either of us knew exactly how. I had a good gig going where I focused on my career and she picked up the slack, and I wasn't ready to give that up.

Sarah: At some point I got a new job, which RJ actually helped me get, so he did support me. It started at 10 hours a week and ramped up until I was working 40 hours a week. Once I really felt like I had confidence in my value at work, I started noticing and putting to words what was bothering me. I started researching about women and patriarchy: What is fair? How do we start doing this? How can we balance this? 

RJ: I do remember that when I was in my mid-thirties, I wanted a hobby. I bought a mountain bike and took it out once or twice a week for an hour. It was amazing to get outdoors and have some time to myself and exercise. I needed that or else life didn't feel worth living. I remember her looking sideways at that, like “Okay, I guess I'll just stay here with the kids.” I would have loved it if she also had a hobby, like, “You support me in this way, I'll support you in that way.” But I didn’t say that, because it's harder for moms—at least for Sarah—to leave all her perceived motherly responsibilities, even for an hour on a Saturday.

Sarah: I started reading feminist blogger Zawn Villines, and I remember her making the point that men buy leisure time with women’s unpaid work. Once I saw that, I was furious. I was sad for myself. I was recalling how, even when we were working hard alongside each other in the early days, he was always reading books, getting exercise, going on vacations with his family. When we all would go away together, he’d be sleeping at 8 p.m. the night before, and I'd be up until 2 a.m. packing everybody's bags, folding laundry.

RJ: Sarah started mentioning feminism a lot, so I went to the library and I got some books about feminism and I couldn’t make heads or tails out of them. It didn't seem like any of it was very actionable, and some of it seemed completely wrong, like the male-bashing. Some of it was inspiring, but also a little bit pie-in-the-sky.

Sarah gave me a stack of printouts from the internet, and it was a feminist-oriented blog that was so mean about men. And I just couldn't understand why she wanted me to read it, because it didn’t apply to me. I've never sat and watched a football game while my wife cooked. 

"Men buy leisure time with women’s unpaid work." Once I saw that, I was furious.

SARAH

Sarah: I was just enraged. And once I was enraged, that's when the needle started moving. I stopped taking accountability for everything. At first he took over the dentist appointments. I would say to him and the kids, “You guys need to fold the laundry.” He got himself a “man vacuum”—the kind you wear on your back. But there was still the emotional labor of everything, and I was still drowning.

RJ: Sarah started to travel more for her job, and during those times, I got to run the household the way I wanted. It wasn't the same way she would do things, but it worked. I would get up early, eat breakfast, bring my laptop to the table and answer messages while I watched the kids get ready and sort of directed them. If I had to go to a school play or something at 4 p.m., I blocked it off on my work calendar. We did a lot of chicken nuggets and spaghetti. It was peaceful.

Sarah: This past summer was the breaking point. I had been buried in work, and I missed the whole last week of the kids’ school for a work event. Before I left, RJ and I had a fight. I was like, “You seem to manage all these obligations at your job, but not in our house. You’re doing this on purpose. You’re taking advantage of me and my free work.” I was really mad and I was just done. I didn't leave any lists. I didn’t leave any food. I didn’t do anything. 

On the plane, I sat next to a lady who started talking about her life after her divorce, and I just wept. She hugged me and said, "You’re going to be fine, whatever it is you’re dealing with.” I was thinking, “Dang, I might have to go back and do what this lady did.” But then I came home and I hugged him. Because I did miss him, and I love him. While I was gone, he reported that it all went great. A couple of days later, I said, “I don't think I'm going to cook anymore.” And he was like, “Good. I'm glad.”

RJ: It dawned on me that fully taking over a whole task was key to solving the implicit friction in the household. When she got back from that trip, I finally said, “I’m taking over all the food.” That meant the grocery shopping and meal planning and lunch making. It was just time. Pretty much all the food our family has eaten since then has been purchased and planned by me. Last night we had meatball subs with wedge salads. I put a lasagna in the freezer yesterday so I can cook it on Tuesday.

Cooking is really rewarding, and it’s made me a little more vulnerable to the family dynamic.

RJ

Sarah: We had bumps in the road; the kids were mad. They’d say, “He didn’t buy this or he doesn't do this right.” My oldest daughter would say, “You chose your work over your family and you don't even care that we are hungry.” I tried so hard to just stay out of it, but I couldn’t help it sometimes. I would go to the grocery store with him, and if I tried to put anything in the cart, he would say “no” to me. I even secretly bought groceries at first. 

RJ: There have been some disappointments, like when I plan and cook a meal and my kid drinks a giant Slurpee before dinner and they’re not hungry—that’s heartbreaking. Or when I made a big Thanksgiving dinner and some of the kids skipped it to be with their friends. In some ways it's really rewarding and in other ways it’s made me a little more vulnerable to the family dynamic. But I like that, and I think Sarah likes it, too.

Sarah: My anger towards him has dissipated. He still enjoys the privileges of what he earned when I took all those years off to raise our family, and he gets the benefit and notoriety that comes with being a father of four. Sometimes, I still feel angry about that. But I don't have to think about groceries anymore. I don’t have to stop my day right at 4:30 p.m. to figure out what we're going to have for dinner. It’s a relief to me. I have finally started to feel peace in my marriage. 

I’m not sure if it felt the same for him. He had some really crazy outbursts afterwards, and I believe that they were related to the added load he’s taken on. It was a step back for him in terms of time. He was taking on a task that many in his level of career have fully outsourced at this point. I don't think he was aware of all it entailed. And since I was hiding it from him for all those years, how would he have known?

RJ: Now, when I see Sarah doing a huge pile of laundry, I have no sense of guilt. There’s a little more ease between us and fewer sideways glances. But there's so many male expectations that I still feel. There’s never any thought about who’s going to build a fence or fix the garbage disposal—it’s obviously going to be me. Sometimes it feels unfair that the conversation centers around the women’s implicit burdens, and not so much men’s. 

Sarah: It’s the first time, out of all the years I’d taught my kids about empowerment and feminism, that they’ve actually lived it and seen a man do something a woman usually does. I think we’ve all learned a lot from this process, and I’m proud as a woman that we’ve shown them for real what it’s like for a man to be involved in the household.

RJ: Back when I read those feminist printouts from Sarah, I remember thinking that it was so extreme. It was about absentee fathers who weren’t helping with parenting or the kids. But looking back, I think she was just trying to signal to me with that packet that she needed a little more help, and I think I got the message.

This story is based on an interview with the editors of The Doe.

The year before I met my husband, my parents got a divorce. They were typical immigrant Indian parents who’d always told me and my brother that we should marry somebody responsible and within our culture. I never wanted that; I thought I was so rebellious. But then my father left my mother for someone who worked in his office. It was deeply unsettling.

I’d moved to San Francisco after college, where I had explored messily with non-monogamy—that is to say, I usually ended up cheating on the person I was dating. I was always pushing against the confines of monogamy. By the time I graduated, I was like, “I’m not having a partner ever again.” I had three people I was exploring with, not using any proper rules of polyamory, and those relationships imploded all at once. So I was really single for the first time and my parents were breaking up—all in the mood of post-9/11 America. I was feeling very out of sorts.

Then I met Raj, and we had so much in common. We were both creative people, we both came from Indian families. After just six weeks, I wanted to take him home to my mom. I was 26, and I had never taken a partner home before.

Six months into dating, he moved to L.A. for graduate school, and I let him know, "I don’t know if I believe in monogamy. I'm so happy to be in this relationship, but this is who I am.” He responded by saying, “I don't know what I think about that, but I just love you.” So we put it to the side. I continued seeing other people on a “don’t ask, don’t tell” basis. But two years later, we reached a crossroads of whether we wanted to move forward. We decided to live together in San Francisco, and I decided to try monogamy. For real.

A couple of years passed. We got engaged. We had a fun, artist-driven wedding that we got to plan. It was exciting to be together and start building a life, and it also made my mother happy. She was so depressed after the divorce, but at least her daughter was marrying a good Indian boy. 

Still, those years felt uncomfortable and not great. The wedding rituals were beautiful, but I felt a little distant from it. And I felt dissatisfied sexually. Our sexual backgrounds are hugely different: When we met, Raj had had sex with just one other person. He lost his virginity when he was 23. He had trouble lasting during sex. The first few years of our relationship, I was cheating a lot and it was easier to not focus on it. But once we moved in together and got married, I felt this disconnect in our sexualities. 

I was turning 40 and I said to myself, I deserve pleasure.

Eventually, I got to a place where I had been monogamous for five years, feeling so frustrated and really ravenous. I was 33 or 34, learning more about female anatomy. I was starting to wonder whether I could have a vaginal orgasm. I was a very sexual person, whereas there was so much shame around sexuality in Raj’s family. I would bring it up, and he would say, “I don’t really have any answers.” He was kind of frozen around it. 

Then, without trying, I got pregnant, and then had a miscarriage that took a while to clear up. Going through that is when I felt sure I wanted to have a kid. So a year later, we got pregnant again on purpose. After many years of anxiety about not knowing how I would fit a child into my life and creative practices, I had an incredible natural birth and spent two years nursing my son. I was actually enjoying being a mother of a young child, something I had never heard any cool feminist say. My conception of early motherhood was that it was going to be onerous and terrible, but I found it really empowering. I went back to work and found that I was able to balance it all. It was challenging, but doable. 

During that time, I wasn't interested in having sex outside of my marriage. But when I finally weaned my baby, I felt my libido coming back. I’d believed all the myths that you have to change yourself when you have kids, but not only was I still the same person, I felt super-powerful in my sexuality and strong in my body. And yet Raj and I were still really not connecting. By that time we had started trying for a second kid. Raj was working full-time, and it was just not fun trying to have sex at 11:30pm on a Wednesday, worried that our three-year-old would barge in with middle-of-the-night waking. It felt painful to me, and lonely. 

At this point, I was turning 40 and I said to myself, I deserve pleasure. I just need something for myself. I had tried to ask Raj for what I needed, and he shut me down every time. He said he just wasn’t interested in investing so much time and energy in his sexuality. I didn’t know about the apps at the time, so I just made a list of people I knew who I had felt connections with. I reached out to Sam, someone I saw occasionally at writing conferences. I could tell we had an energy between us. He was also married, and his wife was disabled, so at first he hesitated. But then he reconsidered because he figured he also owed it to himself to have some space just for him. And so, around 2018, we started a relationship.

Pretty quickly, we started falling in love and having this long-distance affair. Honestly, it was amazing. I felt like all those questions I had about my sexuality and my pleasure were answered, and I was having the best sex of my life. I was finally having multiple vaginal orgasms. Because his wife is disabled, Sam spent a lot of time doing exactly what I always told Raj to do, like edging and learning about his body and figuring things out on his own. We had so much chemistry and I felt so turned on all the time. I also was able to be present with Raj. It felt like the affair drilled a hole in the roof of my marriage and let out all this pressure. 

A year into it, I finally got pregnant again with Raj. Sam and I both wondered, What does this mean? Is this going to change everything? 

When we saw each other for the first time after I got pregnant, I realized that my emotions and ideas and physical feelings were not going to change because I have this zygote inside me. It’s still just me. We continued seeing each other throughout my early pregnancy and it was so, so amazing. I was hormonal and the sex was so good. I felt really cared for. Even when I didn't see him at the end of my pregnancy, we would talk on Skype. 

The affair was just for me—not work, not child stuff, not connecting with family.

In September, I had the baby. Those first few days, I felt an intense emotional love for my family, and I felt guilty—almost for the first time. I was coming out of this spell of nearly two years of love and hormones. I didn’t have the mental space to talk to Sam those first four months. 

But then at that same yearly conference, I saw him again. We had dinner, and then we had sex. At first I was kind of forcing myself to have sex postpartum, but one of the last nights at the conference, I told him to come over. This hotel room I was staying at had this weird, long hallway that almost separated the room into two. I made this little floor bed on it, and we made out and he went down on me so tenderly and slowly. 

That was March 2020, right before COVID. Suddenly I was marooned at home with a baby and a kid. And Sam was my lifeline. I was sleeping alone at night with the baby, and we started chatting again, and it was so erotic. We would talk once or twice or three nights a week. It felt like such a refuge from the isolation of COVID. It was this thing that was just for me—not work, not child stuff, not trying to connect with family. Sam referred to it as our “pocket universe.” 

Our relationship ended shortly after that because of the distance and because both of us wanted to recommit to our marriages. I never talked to anyone about us being together when I was pregnant and postpartum, not even friends I’ve talked to about my affairs. It feels really taboo. But I was so grateful for all of it. It was so important to my survival during that time.

Eventually, years later, I told Raj all about Sam. The secrecy started to feel toxic, but I was so afraid of coming down off Raj’s pedestal and reminding him of who I always said I was. It was bumpy: At first it was a relief, but then Raj was really hurt, and we did a bunch of therapy, and then I needed space from therapy. 

Then, finally, for the first time, Raj said he would be interested in exploring non-monogamy and also dating other people alongside me. It has been amazing. Raj, with the help of some awesome women he is dating, is finally exploring his sexuality and we’re having the best sex of our whole relationship. I am proud that we got here after so much hardship. And even though we are no longer seeing each other, I know I owe a lot of this to Sam.

For the past year, I’ve been having regular sex with a gay man I'll call Oliver. We were best friends for years, attending many Pride parades and taking weekend hiking trips. But last year, after a very drunken night, we slept together—and we still are today. He maintains that he still is, and always has been, a gay man.

After the first time, we were predictably awkward and British about it. We laughed a bit that it had happened, and then we agreed we shouldn’t do it again.

That lasted maybe three days. The first few months had all the expected exciting parts of sleeping with your best bud, but they were also tinged with this brand new fresh thing. Oliver had never been with a woman before, and he was completely unaware of what a vulva or a clitoris was. Fortunately, Oliver had the benefit of my feminist Orgasm Gap rants over the past five years, and took to the task of making me come with admirable tenacity. One of the sweetest moments of that year was finding the book She Comes First on his bedside table.

Men I’ve slept with before often have this false bravado around sex, like they need to prove how good they are at it. Sleeping with Oliver was the complete opposite. We both knew that he was doing something new, and our sex felt more like a comradic tutoring session. I would guide his hand around me, telling him which parts were which, and he would enthusiastically ask a lot of questions. What a treat.

While our sex lives have improved from being together, a year later I still feel nervous talking to my queer friends about our relationship. Even though sexual fluidity is now more accepted, I feel like I only hear it talked about in terms of straight people becoming bisexual or gay. I’ve never seen a representation of what Oliver and I have. I understand why: The only people who talk about gays “becoming straight” are extreme right-wingers. Evidence that gay men can want sex with women could be weaponized to suggest that being gay is just a phase, or that conversion therapy could actually work. People could take my story and use it to invalidate the experiences of queer folk. 

So I’m nervous to inadvertently fan the flames of scary anti-queer rhetoric. I haven’t told any other queers I know about me and Oliver, because I’m worried they’re going to say that I’m invalidating gay identities, and that I’m endangering queer people. Maybe they’re right.

Even though sexual fluidity is now more accepted, I’ve never seen a representation of what Oliver and I have.

But it also feels wrong to hide what Oliver and I have. The queer community is famous for their refusal to conform to traditional ideas of what sex, gender, and relationships “should” look like—and that’s exactly what Oliver and I are doing. Maybe other people have this arrangement, too? I would never know, because I’m too chickenshit to bring it up. Talking about it becomes harder when I don’t know how to label what we have. It’s so unusual that there isn’t even a term for it. Oliver and I love each other, and we say it all the time. We have a house and a cat together. We sleep in the same bed almost every night. He probably knows me better than anyone else, and I him. But he’s gay and I’m a woman—what do you even call that?

Over the last year I’ve pondered over how Oliver can be gay and still be attracted to me. He explains it by arguing that being a straight man is defined as loving women, plural. Being a bisexual man is defined as loving men and women. Again, both plural. Therefore, if a gay man were to be attracted to men, but only ever one woman, then he would still be gay. The woman he loves would be more like an asterisk. An exception.

I found this compelling, and it made me think about sexuality in a fresh way. His explanation also makes me feel extra-very special, so obviously I’m on board.  

The straight friends we tell about us ask: Are we going out? Are we fuckbuddies? Is it a situationship? Is he bisexual now? We respond that we’re just really, really good friends. Presumably the second “really” comes from having seen each other’s genitals. Our label mocks the traditional hierarchy of romantic love in a way that pleases me, while also allowing me to never feel the terror and discomfort of trying to figure out what we have. 

This situation is further complicated by our newfangled approach to monogamy. Oliver and I are polyamorous. Way before Oliver, it struck me that demonstrating your love for somebody by dictating who they’re allowed to have sex with seems at best really fucking weird and at worst controlling and quite scary. Despite this, I haven’t slept with anyone else while I’ve been with Oliver. Oliver, however, loves to see other people. 

I feel conflicted about him sleeping with other men (and it is only men). I often feel like I’m missing some crucial part of myself because I don’t feel very jealous—at least, not the type of jealousy portrayed in the movies. Instead, I feel a mixture of genuine happiness for Oliver and a quasi-rational fear that he will stop loving me, and then never speak to me again. 

I say “quasi-rational” because I’m pretty sure that’s exactly how our “really, really good friendship” will end. Or at least, the sex part. I am polyamorous with whomever I date. But Oliver, when dating men, is monogamous. Whatever we have will end either when one of us starts to hate the sound of the other one eating, or when Oliver meets a man he wants to monogamize.

This fills me with an odd sense of calm. In “proper” relationships, there’s the underlying idea that if your love is strong enough, then maybe you will be together forever. In the dating game, you are searching for The One. But Oliver and I are not each other’s Ones. Or at least, not in the sense of getting-married-having-babies-with-side-by-side-burial-plots type of Ones. I think that whatever we have will ebb and flow throughout our lives. Sometimes just friends, sometimes more.

I know that we’ll always know each other, and that seems more hopeful than anything I’ve had in my past relationships. For the time being, I feel lucky to have a really, really good friend.

Let me warn you right now: This story is disgusting.

I was 16 years old and had just gotten a new and exciting older boyfriend.

One day, in my bedroom at my mum's house, we were doing what a teenage girl and her new 20-something-year-old boyfriend do best. As I was merrily bouncing around on top of him, I felt a strange sensation around the back end. There was no sound, so I knew I couldn't have passed wind. Then, I started to smell it: the unmistakably sour tang of human feces.

I had no idea what had happened or how—a surprise poop mid-sex was a new one for me.

You Never Know When Your Chambermaid Skills Will Come in Handy

Praise Satan that my 16-year-old self had already developed a robust set of problem-solving and project management skills. Being working class comes with some notable disadvantages to be sure, but I had been in the paid workforce since I was 13 years old and learned a lot along the way. Chambermaiding is not a glamorous job, but it is an ancient and august line of work that had equipped me with the ability to project a false sense of happiness, smile passively in the face of abrasive and entitled hotel guests and, most importantly, to remain unfazed when dealing with human excretions.

Having registered the smell, I am sure that the terror in my eyes was only very thinly veiled. Nevertheless, I put on my best gravelly seductress voice and informed my boyfriend that I was going to do something to him that he would really like.

“Oh yeah?” he responded. “What’s that then?”

Now, I will grant you that a blow job is not the pinnacle of sexual innovation, but it served my immediate purposes, which was to distract my boyfriend so that I could begin my real quest of removing the evidence. With a grim finality, I descended to his groin, and my worst fears were confirmed: His balls were covered in poop. My poop. Since I had accidentally relinquished the little fecal nugget from my body whilst I was still galloping away on top of him, all that bouncing around had mashed the little brown medallion into a thick paste that had matted into his hair.

His balls were covered in poop. My poop.

It Wasn’t Pleasant, but I Persevered

I was mere millimeters away from the human canape I had just produced, and the smell was truly overpowering. Dedicated to my mission, I wrapped my mouth around him and got on with the real work: the cleanup. My strategy was that whilst using my mouth to distract his attention, I would sacrifice my discarded knickers to scoop off the nuttiest clumps and generally sort of wipe up the rest of him.

Of course, I couldn’t distract him with my fellating wiles without also coming into close contact with the unhappy product of my afternoon misadventure. That is to say, I got my poop on my bottom lip. I didn’t dare stop the performance, though, in case the respite gave him pause to consider what in the room smelled so sour or why his balls felt so sticky, so I just heroically continued, despite the nubbin of excreta that was clinging to my lip.

It inevitably, inexorably made its way into my mouth. It is a taste I will never forget. Incredibly pungent, unspeakably sour, exactly like you imagine swallowing a fart would be. But with texture. Even so, I persevered with the cleanup.

Once my knickers had become so soiled that they were no longer effective as a cleaning device, I had to change tack. A particularly stubborn driblet had adhered itself right to the bottom of his shaft. I was reminded of the halcyon days of my childhood when my grandma would spit clean chocolate or jam from my face using a moistened hanky. I would usually be horrified by thinking about my dear old grandma whilst in the full throes of coitus, but the ordeal of the day was such that I didn’t even register the thought—aside from the helpful strategy it gave me.

I detached myself from him momentarily.

“Yeah, you like that?” I goaded in my most sultry manner, taking the opportunity to wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. “How about this?” I rhetorically asked and spat a huge gob of saliva right onto the offending patch of ballsack. I proceeded to rub at the unwelcome morsel with the corner of my duvet cover, heedless of his reaction.

“Um,” I heard from above my head. “Yeah, I’m not so sure?”

I had succeeded in my mission and felt a true sense of jubilance and triumph over very unfavorably stacked odds.

Mission Accomplished

I wasn’t paying a great deal of attention to him so can’t say for sure whether he had noticed that anything untoward was going on or not. Consummate professional that I am, I was completely absorbed in the cleanup act.

But no matter—it was done. I had succeeded in my mission and felt a true sense of jubilance and triumph over very unfavorably stacked odds. I, a mere 16-year-old girl, had shat all over my boyfriend's balls and cleaned it all up nicely whilst providing at least a 5/10 blow job and, to the best of my knowledge, he was none the wiser.

Looking back now, I feel deservedly proud for my swift and pragmatic handling of what could have been an utterly mortifying experience. I gleefully regale my pals with this tale whenever I think they have really earned it by being very sad and in need of cheering up or when they have done something embarrassing and they need reminding that they are not the only revolting person on the planet. After all, a poo-roblem shared is a problem halved.

Last November, I was trying to get out of a bad breakup when I came across a post on The Doe’s Instagram for an article entitled, “I Date Sugar Daddies; Everybody Should.” The essay concluded, “Dating sugar daddies helped me stop dating dudes and start dating men.” I was intrigued. I was morbidly curious but also interested in dating men after a long history of dating dudes. I registered an account on Seeking immediately after reading the article.

I definitely had to work through a bit of a psychological hurdle to even go on the website. I am a college student without an income, but I’m on a scholarship that pays for what I need. I left home early and prided myself on not relying on anyone, not even taking money from my parents. It matters a lot to me that I’m independent and the fact that I can sustain this independence. On top of that, as a college student who has definitely read too much normative ethics, I believe in Kant’s categorical imperative—I think a lot about how to discern what is the right motive, and I care a lot about doing what’s morally right instead of what is pleasurable. Still, I’m a sucker for social experiments. I am always wildly excited by the possibility of spinning yet another exhilarating story, of peeking a little more into the shadows of the human heart. Perhaps precisely because of that, I have always taken a casual interest in different dating apps and why they fail or succeed. I was so curious to see what the demographic would look like on a sugar daddy-sugar baby site and what that kind of relationship would be like. I told myself I was just there to survey the landscape.

Seeking—its slogan: “Start Dating Up”—was much more explicit about the transactional aspect of relationships than other dating websites. A standard “daddy” or “mommy” profile includes annual income, net worth and relationship status. You’d be surprised by how many people are “married but looking.” One profile I encountered stated outright, “Attached but bored. Looking to bring some discreet excitement back to my life.” Most profiles mention “looking for a genuine, deep connection.” Some mention wanting to offer mentorship, saying something like, “I’m looking for someone who wants to change her life.” Others say things like “looking for a cute submissive.” Almost all the profiles mention “generous compensation for your time.” I put up a few pictures of me in school, and playing into the spirit of straightforwardness on Seeking, on my profile I wrote, “Nerdy, curious and driven. Literature and philosophy student looking for a good hug and a good debate. Learning about NFTs.”

A few interactions later, I found it very hard to keep pretending that I was just there to “check things out.” When people flirted with me and I flirted back, my facade of make-believe began to crack. A lot of people seemed genuinely attractive. Some texted me to offer an arrangement of some kind and ask me what I was looking for. I found myself in a conflicted headspace, between wanting to lean in and have fun for the ride and morally condemning myself for taking a weird shortcut when I shouldn’t. I couldn’t quell the questions in my head: Am I selling myself? Is this bad? If I don’t really need cash right now, then what am I doing this for? It was hard to keep pretending that I was there looking around, yet I couldn’t pin down if and what I was looking for either. Feeling confused, I ghosted most of the messages I received.

I care a lot about doing what’s morally right instead of what is pleasurable.

When I Met a Sexy Architect, My Experiment Went off the Rails

That all changed when one person asked for my number and I didn’t ghost. He was 30, an architect, spoke a few languages and was obviously well-read. He casually mentioned Álvaro Siza—one of my favorite architects—in a text. We got on a call when he was driving. He was just getting off a meeting with a client. He told me his name was Jay. He had a soft, gentle voice and a mixed accent—mostly British, but definitely a lot of other things that I couldn’t quite make out at that time. He asked me to tell him about my life, which made me feel like he was coaxing a story out of me but in a way that I was happy to comply with. Somehow, he made me want to tell him about myself, to expose myself to his gaze, to open myself up to him, to be seen. He was every bit my type. We joked about work and COVID politics. After our hour-long phone call, I was blushing and my heart was fluttering in my chest.

I told my friend I had called a stranger from a dating app. “Okay,” they said. “Which one?” I smiled and didn’t answer.

On my second call with Jay, I joked with him that we had met on the worst dating app ever. He laughed. “Yeah,” he agreed. “It’s a cesspool.” Then he casually asked me why I was on Seeking and if there was anything he could help me with.

“No,” I said, “absolutely not.” I felt my pride growing in front of someone I actually liked.

After about a month of texting, we met up when I was on winter break. He picked me up from wandering all around Chelsea. We got dinner and cocktails and talked about the galleries in the neighborhood. I had most of the cocktails since he needed to drive. Four drinks in, I was a little drunk and tried to make out with him in the corner of the bar. I snuggled near him and buried my face in his neck. He wanted to get me a cab, but I argued with him that I wanted to take the train.

Before he drove me back to the station, we made out in his car. I really liked him and begged for him to touch me. I was definitely drunk. I took his hands and put them on my chest. I wanted him to touch me, badly, because I wanted him to take things from me. I wanted him to touch me just so that I could be reassured that he was interested in me. I had all of that in my head. “This is so high school,” he laughed.

I kept begging him, and he put his jacket over my lap. He fingered me and edged me in the front seat of his car. He was good—of course he was. He stared deep and steady into my eyes when I moaned into his mouth and begged him for more. I was drunk, and he was sober. I was a mess, and he was in control, tidy, clean. He tasted me on his fingers and wiped his hands on an alcohol pad. After I got home, I texted him that I thought I was falling in love with him.

He Took Control, and I Caught Feelings

And I was. Even if it was just infatuation, love came easy for me this time. He texted back: “I’m overwhelmed…floored by how real you are, how vulnerable you are toward me, and I stand speechless.” If I think about it now, I don’t remember the first time we said “I love you” to each other, but it must have been easy, and it must have felt right. Soon, I was telling my friends that I was falling in love and lying about how we met. “Oh, he’s a friend’s friend, you know.”

Perhaps falling in love with him was easy because it felt guided. He always seems to know exactly where we are—where I am—and where we’re headed. The first time we met, I told him about the person I had just broken up with. “He was too protective of himself,” I said. I told him how my ex said I had put too much effort into our relationship and how my ex felt so bad about the imbalance that he felt guilty and needed more space.

My architect patted my head. “I’m sorry, baby,” he said. “What kind of bullshit is that?” He laughed a little. “I don’t want you to be protective of yourself with me,” he said. “I want you to love me fully.” I felt grateful and comforted. Even in sex, I begged him to take more of me, push me more, show me new things. He said, “No, we’ll get there someday, but now I want to meet you exactly where you are. I’m right here.”

Loving Jay feels comforting because it feels like he’s seen and done everything. I appreciate that sense of psychological security. I like that I can yield control to him and trust myself to him, knowing he’ll take care of me.

The first time we met, before we headed to the bar, I was jacketless and underdressed in a tank top. It was nippy out, but I didn’t mind. He picked me up in his white Tesla. I got in and smiled at him, looking at him timidly through the fourth wall of my little social experiment that was wearing very thin. He smiled warmly and took my hands, then took me into his arms.

“You’re cold,” he said. “That’s not okay. I can’t let my baby be cold.”

I protested. I was genuinely uncomfortable, but he took me to a clothing store and bought me a down jacket anyway. “That’s much better,” he said.

I didn’t know how to feel. I didn’t like that him buying me something was the first thing we did together. It made the sugar daddy thing feel too real. In one of our arguments a month later, I screamed at him that that made me feel like a prostitute. I could tell from the look in his eyes and his shaking hands that I had hurt him. I couldn’t be angry anymore. I sighed and took his hand and placed it over my heart. “Feel me,” I said. I snuggled close to him and said I was sorry. He held me close to him and told me he was sorry for ever making me feel that way.

I screamed at him that that made me feel like a prostitute.

Am I a Sugar Baby?

The truth is, I still don’t exactly know what to make of this. Are we in a relationship? If so, is it a sugar relationship? Is it a “normal” relationship? Can it be?

I still have moments of getting angry at him that feel silly, like when I insisted on paying for a box of strawberries and he wouldn’t let me. He bought all of my plane tickets so that I can come over to see him on weekends. There are moments when I get uncomfortable with money, when I, for a fleeting moment, think that all of what we have is bought and sold and is doomed and could not be otherwise. Despite all of this, I know I’m still falling more in love with him every passing day.

I’ve started to flinch a little less, trust him a little more. There are still “fourth wall” moments that remind me of how we met, like when his personal assistant emailed me that “Mr. __ said he had a memorable time with you and asked for me to make time for you soon. Please let me know your availability.” But now it’s something I can smile about.

When I was 10 years old, in the middle of playing a computer game, I clicked on an advertisement that led me to a porn site. I was quickly thrust into a world beyond my comprehension, unable to find the vocabulary to describe what I was scrolling through. The deeper I searched, the more entranced I became. My eyes locked onto these images, previously unknown to my imagination, and I was hooked. What started as a childhood infatuation shortly became a harrowing addiction.

My experience with pornography started as an occasional glance when my parents were out of the house, but it gradually became a daily ritual—sneaking a minute of a video here or a glance of an image there. Because I couldn’t understand what I was witnessing, I couldn’t seek any support around my new fascination. I had incredibly strong emotions about what I was watching, but I couldn’t differentiate what was good and bad. I only delved deeper and deeper.

Over time, I began spending more and more time browsing the internet for what would satisfy my constantly evolving sexual desires. What looked like extra-long bathroom breaks and showers were the start of something I would struggle with for half my life. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have had such unrestricted access to the internet when parental control settings didn’t exist. But at that time, no one knew the full scope of the internet’s damaging capabilities.

I hold an unpopular opinion that porn is harmful and should be excluded from people’s lives and relationships.

I Couldn't Stop Seeing Women as Sexual Objects

Some people will say that porn is healthy and non-problematic in moderation. While I disagree, I won’t spend time trying to argue the contrary. Some people may also believe I have religious motives to be writing this article. I will admit my religious beliefs played a part in wanting to quit viewing porn, but they were not the paramount reason.

By the time I was 18, I was spending upwards of one to two hours a day viewing explicit material. Regardless of my intention to masturbate or not, I would spend time just staring at it to feel connected to something intimately. This not only had immense impacts on my time but it affected my mental health and my relationships with other people.

As a straight male, I couldn’t keep eye contact with women without sexualizing them. I've had a few female friends throughout my life, but I was never able to feel too close to them—I always felt a sense of shame for not being able to just be their friend. My greatest desire was to be with a friend without viewing them as an object, but I couldn't quell those parts of me.  Relationships were out of the question, since I had no capacity for a healthy one outside of having sex. When I tried to get close to a woman, I would push the sexual boundaries and keep all my emotional components to myself.

Eventually, I became more isolated, recognized my problem and tried to reduce and quit my porn consumption. Easier said than done. A friend had advised me to shorten the amount of time I spent on porn websites, and I learned to wean myself down to a few minutes per day. The largest hurdle I faced was that the addiction was tied to feelings of shame and guilt. When I watched porn, I would spiral into more and more consumption as a way to cope.

I had to rewire my brain.

My Decision to Quit Porn Has Changed My Perception of Sex and Intimacy

It took a new mindset to start pushing me away from this addiction. I started to imagine what I wanted in a lifelong partner and how it would make them feel to know that I would see them as an object. I recognized the paradigm I had created, and I began to imagine that I could change, that despite my unrealistic cravings for sex, I could desire to be intimate with an individual beyond having sex. To really know someone. I was no longer searching for my perfect sexual experience; I was working toward having a positive connection, not with someone that could fulfill my desires but with someone I could grow with as a person. I had to rewire my brain. I wasn’t a bad person for having a porn addiction; rather, I had been seeking intimacy in the wrong way.

I hold an unpopular opinion that porn is harmful and should be excluded from people’s lives and relationships. This comes from experience, knowing how it can lead people to treat others as objects for their sexual desires and in the way it's also damaged my friendships and relationship with my now-fiancee. Because of my deep-rooted exposure to porn, I still have doubts and insecurities that if my partner doesn't want to have sex, I’m not wanted or have done something wrong. I’ve had to work on completely rewiring my brain to combat these thoughts.

For the last three years, I haven't consumed porn. I would recommend it to anyone, as it allows you to improve your view of sex and relationships. It taught me that I could be selfless in love and sex and that the end goal didn't have to be my pleasure. While my experience isn’t widely recognized as an issue or a problem at all, I hope others can examine their porn use to determine its impact on their sex life and relationships with others. Porn may not affect some people as negatively as others, but it does affect our attitude about sex. Three years later, I don’t regret my decision to quit. I can be open and free to love my partner without the worry that I’m thinking about an idealized sexual image of her. I can focus on loving her.

Quitting porn changed my life for the better. To the skeptics out there: It’s worth a try.