Right now there is someone I am missing. And because of the kind of stories I usually write, I imagine you think the next thousand words are going to describe a kind of urgent, aching desperation for them. Fair enough, I write that stuff so often. The intensity. The horn. The trembling need for somebody that borders occasionally on similar tingles to ‘fight or flight’. I want to fly to him, then fight him naked on a big soft bed before tumbling into sweaty giggles. That sort of thing. I do it so much that my fingers almost instinctively want to type that story, but this one’s different. The way I am missing this person right now is softer and calmer than that.

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Sorry to be blunt, but I don’t need advice on my feelings. I don’t want to be rude or cruel here – I fully understand the desire to give advice, if you think you can be helpful. And I recognise that your desire to help comes from a lovely place. Occasionally I will make very specific requests for advice or input, but the vast majority of the time, I do not write my sex blog in order to gather advice from strangers.

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How do you feel? Part one of this piece talked about emotions, and the value of exploring them in detail. You’re probably best off reading that before coming back to this, because it was originally written as one piece, but here’s a brief summary: articulating your emotions is a skill – one to which we don’t always give enough time or attention. It’s often seen as something you either can do or you can’t. What’s more, some of us are given permission to do it where others are aggressively prevented from trying. This is heavily gendered, of course: men are told not only that they’re innately ‘bad’ at articulating emotions, but also that they shouldn’t be as emotional as women are. Cannot and must not. They’re allowed to show big scary feelings like anger, but punished for showing any that hint at vulnerability, and often discouraged from spending time with their feelings at all. I find this wildly unfair and, if I think on it too long, outright heartbreaking. Spending time with your feelings can help you know yourself better, and articulating your emotional needs is a very valuable skill when it comes to building relationships. Learning how to do it is a gift to yourself, as well as to those who love you.

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How do you feel right now, emotionally? If you came up with something like ‘sad’ or ‘happy’ or ‘angry’, can you drill down a little deeper into that emotion? Is it possible to identify what’s causing it, or is it a vague sense that you can’t explain? Are there other feelings swirling around to keep that first one company? Or even ones that seem to exist in conflict with it? It’s possible, after all, to feel both angry and content – one an immediate flash of something bad, set against a backdrop of a life that’s otherwise giving you all the things you need. How good are you at identifying your emotions? In how much detail could you answer the question: how do you feel right now?

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