I don’t want you to hug me in the office. In fact, unless we’re pretty damned close, I don’t want you to hug me at all.

I’ve been called ‘standoffish’ because I’m not the sort of person who responds well to being hugged. I dread that bit at the end of parties, where everyone’s just pissed enough to think they’re better friends than they actually are, and some person I’ve spent about twenty minutes chatting to screeches “Byeeee darling, it was amaaazing to meet you” before forcing me into an awkward cuddle.

Maybe this makes me odd, but I don’t actually care. Whether my aversion to being grabbed by random acquaintances is odd or not, you need to respect that. And I mean respect it properly, not just acknowledge and then ignore it. I’ve lost count of the number of times people have said to me:

“I know you don’t like hugs so I’ll just do it really quickly.” or even “Hey, come on, it’s only me. Gizza hug.”

I don’t want to. I’ll do it if you make me, but I’ll hate it, and I’ll resent you for thinking that our acquaintance counts for nothing if I’m not willing to awkwardly squash my chest against you at the end of a night out.

Back to the office.

The rules about touching your coworkers

You don’t need to be told not to rock up late for an interview to know that being late for an interview is a bad thing. Likewise, you don’t need to be told that stroking a colleague’s thigh, patting them on the arse, or putting your arms around them might make them a tad uncomfortable.

I’m writing this blog as a plea for common sense. Because since the ex-chief-exec of the Lib Dems has been accused of inappropriate workplace touching (an accusation which, for legal reasons, I shall point out he has denied) there’s been a lot of bullshit spoken about how difficult it is to know when a touch is inappropriate. A few guys have plaintively cried for guidance.

“But how do we know?” they say. “How can I possibly tell whether one of my work colleagues wants me to touch her, or whether she’ll be offended?”

The answer to this question is: you don’t, unless she expressly tells you. At no point during the working day can you be 100% certain that a female colleague wants you to touch her. Whether she’s in the middle of an email, chairing a strategy meeting or – like me – trying to inch her way closer to the biscuit plate during a particularly long PowerPoint presentation. It’s not like a green light goes off over her head if she fancies you and is up for a quick squeeze.

But, and I cannot possibly stress this enough, the fact that you don’t know is inconsequential. You hardly know anything, none of us do. The boundaries of our knowledge are tiny and the realm of the unknown is vast. Yet somehow most of us manage to get through every day without sexually harassing random members of the opposite sex. We’re not special, we don’t have knowledge that you don’t, and nor are we telepaths; we’re just not arseholes.

To use the ‘we can’t possibly know’ defence for any kind of inappropriate touching, whether inside or outside the workplace, is the largest pile of bullshit I have ever scrolled angrily past on the internet.

The impenetrable mysteries of how not to be a creep

We don’t go through life understanding exactly what other people want from us at all times. Sometimes we take risks, and do things that might get us into trouble, and other times we are cautious. The key thing is to assess whether a risk is worth taking – not just for you, but for the object of your affection as well.

That girl sitting at the bar might reject you, or burst into tears if you go and chat to her. But the risk of these things is minimal, and you’d be unlikely to offend or harm her by saying ‘hello.’ So you don’t grab her arse. You don’t call her ‘babes’. You don’t shout ‘OI OI!’ from the other side of the room. Because all of these things are high-risk, potentially high-harm situations. So you just say fucking ‘Hi.’

Likewise, you don’t offer to spank a woman on a first date. You try and ease the conversation round to spanking, in a non-threatening way, to see if she might be up for it. You don’t grab a girl’s arse on the tube. You talk to her, try to work out if she fancies you, talk to her some more, and then ask for her number if you get the right signals.

In any of these situations you might fuck up – go in for a kiss at the bar and watch as she leans away and says ‘I’m sorry, I’m not that into you.’ Bring up spanking and have her tell you you’re not her type. And this is fine – these mistakes, while embarrassing, don’t actually cause any harm.

Whereas if you just go up to a girl, grab her tits and then cry ‘how was I supposed to know?!’ when she runs for the hills, then you are a stupid, stupid cunt.

To err is human, but to pretend that women are so complex that you can’t even try to empathise? That’s pathetic.

Work is a non-contact sport

In my ideal world no one ever touches work colleagues. But that’s because I am ‘standoffish’, and would rather find my fun outside a building in which I’m supposed to act like a professional. I wouldn’t ban workplace touching, because I’ve witnessed office romances that have worked. At some point during the blossoming of that relationship someone laid a hand on someone else’s knee, or leant in for a kiss at a Christmas party, and took a small calculated risk.

But you know what? That successful person, who ended up marrying their office sweetheart and living happily ever after? That was almost certainly the person who held back, who waited, who had enough respect for their colleague not to gamble on a fumble before they could be sure the touch was wanted.

The successful person was patient, respectful and empathetic. He certainly wasn’t the kind of twat who’d jump on a woman in the stationery cupboard, get sacked, and then whine about how unfair life is, and how hard things are, and how he’ll never understand just what these fickle women want.

We’re all squeamish about certain things – some people hate the sight of blood, others can’t cope with injections, or the possibility of disease, or unclean kitchen worktops. There’s nothing wrong with a certain amount of squeamishness, but I’m surprised at the number of people I’ve met who are – to one degree or another – squeamish about sex.

Sex, by its nature, is quite messy. Even at the most basic level (quick missionary hump for the purposes of procreation) both of you have to emit certain juices and fluids: sweat, jizz, quim – even saliva, if you’re feeling particularly romantic.

And so, unless you have a lot of equipment and a shedload of wet wipes to hand, when you fuck you’ll get dirty.

Ultra-clean sex and a tip for Dommes

If you want to avoid all possible sexual juices, the only way I can think of is to cover your partner head-to toe in a plastic sheet (ensuring that he has a suitable mouth to breathe through but, crucially, maintains a safe distance so that you can’t kiss each other) then stick his cock through a carefully-cut hole in the middle (protip: cut hole before cock is anywhere nearby), slip a condom on him, and hump away. Not particularly sexy, but it essentially eliminates almost all skin-to-skin contact. Were I a dominant lady I would certainly consider using this during sub play – you can have this idea for free.

However, although it’s excellent for people who have a fetish for sterile sex, it’s not great for those of us who revel in the smells and juices and general slipperiness of the whole scenario. To be honest, it’s not great for any of us if we don’t happen to have plastic sheeting in our sex toy drawer.

The point I’m trying to make is that we have to go to extremes to make sex un-messy, so any squeamishness we have about the exchange of particular fluids necessarily needs to be laid to one side if we want to really get on and enjoy things.

Let’s talk about menstruation

Number one (that number, for new readers, denotes the first guy I slept with) did not like shagging while I was ‘on.’ A couple of tentative attempts while I was bleeding lightly went OK, but an energetic, doggy-style hump during my heavier days proved disastrous.

Once he’d come, he pulled his dick out and made a slightly high-pitched squealing noise.

“What’s wrong with you? Are you OK? Oh Jesus, are you having a miscarriage?”
“I’m fine – what’s up?”
“You’re bleeding!”
“Of course I’m bleeding, I’m on my period.”
“But this is worse than that.”
“No it’s not.”
“It’s… it’s… it’s got chunks in.”

I calmed him down with tea, a cuddle, and a long explanation of the fact that yes, sometimes it has chunks in. We never did it again, and I spent a good few years avoiding sex during my period, worrying that the guys I shagged would react with similar horror upon discovery that menstruation isn’t just the occasional leaking of a thimbleful of blue water, but often a gushing onslaught of not just blood but genuine, honest-to-goodness gore.

It’s totally fine to be utterly disgusting

So what changed my mind? Because, of course, my mind has been changed: I’d no more refuse sex during my period these days than I’d give up wanking for lent. Period horny is the horniest type of horny. About halfway through my red week I’m jiggling my knee and rubbing my thighs together and picking the bumpiest seat on the bus. What changed my mind about relieving this urge the old-fashioned cock-based way (as opposed to the ‘frantic clit-rubbing under a duvet’ way) was a couple of other guys I met.

Poor number one was quite naïve about periods, and a few other things for that matter – he didn’t like the idea of kissing me after a blow job (unless I’d brushed my teeth) or even giving me head.  But his horror at the more slippery aspects of sex was by no means a benchmark for how every guy would feel. Although I have met guys since who aren’t keen on period sex, or oral, or indeed anything that might require a deep clean afterwards, I’ve met far more who could give less than an iota of a fuck.

In fact, for adult men, ‘on’ fucking has proved to be much the same as ‘off’ fucking, only with a towel put down to catch the drippiest bits. One guy went so far as to remove my tampon with his teeth during a particularly feisty session. I appreciate this. I don’t have a particular fetish for sex that’s blood-drenched – apart from anything else I simply don’t have the time or inclination to soak that many bedsheets. But I love the ‘I don’t give a fuck about your menstruation’ attitude that means I can stop panicking that the guy will get his dick covered and run out of the room squealing ‘why can’t you just be clean and sweet-smelling like the girls on telly?’

So if you’re squeamish, especially if you’re a teenage boy with limited knowledge of the mysterious workings of the female uterus – I understand. But I’d love it if you could lay a bit of your squeamishness to one side when you’re stripping down and getting naked with someone. What prompted me to write about this was a bit of browsing on ’embarrassing bodies’ forums, and other related sites. There are a hell of a lot of young girls and boys howling desperately into the online wilderness: ‘am I weird?’ ‘am I wrong?’ ‘am I grotesque and disgusting?’

The answer is almost certainly no, but it can be bloody hard to hear that answer sometimes. The sixteen year old version of me would have given anything to experience the genuine liberation that comes from realising that these juices I leaked and these noises I made and these weird spots that insisted on growing in seemingly random places on my body and subsequently leaking juices of their own: these things were pretty normal. Let’s embrace the leaking, juicy, weird bits of ourselves, love the leaking, juicy bits about other people, and commit to having some thoroughly messy sex.

Addendum, because I know I’ll get emails: if your period is especially painful, or you’re experiencing a significant change in blood loss and/or consistency, speak to a doctor.

Why do women cheat? Well, that’s a bit like asking why they learn to drive – there are lots of different reasons for doing it, and some women prefer not to do it at all.

However, in a valiant step towards reducing all female sexual desire to some bizarre medical condition, a dude called Robert Weiss (who incidentally works at a place that aims to treat people who have a sex addiction – we’ll come onto this later), wrote an article entitled ‘5 reasons for female infidelity.’

That sounds fairly innocuous – I mean, if we’re just talking about 5 general reasons for female infidelity, then we could essentially list any reason whatsoever and as long as one woman is willing to cite that as the primary cause for cheating, it could make our list. But no. As he explains later in the article, these are the ‘most common’ reasons women cheat.

Why I cheated

I’ve cheated on boys before – I’ll leave the sordid details for something a bit more in-depth, where I’ll have a chance to make pathetic and inadequate excuses for all those hearts that I’ve broken. But right at the top of my ‘why I cheated’ list was this:

I was horny.

In the interests of full disclosure, there was another reason pretty high up on that list:

I was drunk.

There were other factors at work as well, depending on the particular cheating episode (and there have been more than a few, because of my aforementioned bastardry) – sometimes I wanted the challenge of sleeping with someone I never thought I’d get. Sometimes I was simply curious about how a particular guy would be. Other times I was planning on ditching my boyfriend but wanted to make sure I’d secured a nice back-up relationship to spring into afterwards. But ultimately my primary motivating factor was physical rather than emotional: lust.

Laying aside for a minute the fact that I am an amoral shit, there was a hell of a lot more sexual motivation going on here than in the list constructed by Weiss, who instead highlights reasons such as ‘women have intimacy disorders’ or ‘feel neglected’. Well, shit a brick. It turns out that rather than just being a horny slag with the willpower of a smack addict at a poppy farm, I am instead a damaged, blameless individual who requires either treatment or a cuddle.

Male vs female infidelity

Look, I’m not saying that women never cheat because they feel insecure – I am 100% sure that they do. I’m not saying that some people don’t have genuine troubles that mean they could do with the help of a relationship counsellor or sex therapist. As mentioned above, there are myriad reasons why women might stray from a relationship, and I expect Robert Weiss has correctly pinpointed some of them. But are these really the most common? Is it really more likely that you have an intimacy disorder than that you like having sex?

And more importantly, where is the research that actually backs up these ‘5 reasons for female infidelity’? Because as far as I can see, none of the links in the article go anywhere more substantial than a blog that’s over a year old which includes a slightly longer but no less speculative list, and a journalistic puff piece advertising a website for married people to have affairs. I cannot stress enough how much I want you to click those links: please do – see just how tenuous the cited ‘evidence’ is.

Is there a similar article in which Weiss dissects the 5 reasons for male infidelity? If it’s based on the same level of research, and skewed just as heavily to reflect society’s bias about gender and sexual drive, I suspect men would be asked to choose between statements such as  ‘my wife didn’t suck me off enough’, ‘I was horny’ and ‘she had really lovely tits. Wahey.’

What’s my motivation?

We all have different needs and desires, and consequently we all do different things for different reasons.

I, for instance, am writing this article because I am a sex blogger, opinionated arsehole, and all-round horny wench. I like having sex and I feel the need to challenge lazy, tired assumptions that women don’t enjoy sex for sex’s sake. Robert Weiss might have his own reasons for writing the original article, like perhaps the fact that he runs a sex addiction clinic. The women he has encountered (who have come to him for what they hope will be a cure) will probably be more likely to put a medical slant on their reasons for cheating. Or, and do stop me if this sounds a bit far-fetched, perhaps it’s because Mr Weiss has a vested interest in encouraging people to medicalise any instance of sexual activity that could be considered ‘excess’, so that they end up visiting his clinic.

You know, I’m just speculating.

But here’s the problem – if the ‘research’ in the article is anything to go by, the author is just speculating too. Weiss’s speculation, which presents women as feeble creatures incapable of having sexual desires that aren’t motivated by a deeper emotional need, is being presented as ‘fact’, when he’s presented no evidence to back that up.

This is exactly the sort of thing we have editors for: to identify facts, and sort them from self-interested waffle. Self-interested waffle: I’ve cheated on partners before but I don’t want you to think I’m an awful person. Facts: women get horny, grass is green, and the Huffington Post can utterly fuck off.