Valentine's Day Gifts To Buy For Yourself

Silk pillowcases, reusable eye masks and chunky hoop earrings to love on yourself Feb. 14.

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‘It stopped me having sex for a year’: why Generation Z is turning its back on sex-positive feminism

The movement championed the right to enjoy sex and was supposed to free women from guilt or being shamed. But now many are questioning whether it has left them more vulnerable

Lala likes to think of herself as pretty unshockable. On her popular Instagram account @lalalaletmeexplain, she dishes out anonymous sex and dating advice on everything from orgasms to the etiquette of sending nude pictures. Nor is the 40-year-old sex educator and former social worker (Lala is a pseudonym) shy of sharing her own dating experiences as a single woman.

But even she was perturbed by a recent question, from a woman with a seven-year-old daughter who had caught her new partner watching “stepdaughter” porn involving teenage girls. Was that a red flag?

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My boyfriend (26) won't let me (24) have friends.

Throwaway because he knows my main account.

So, my boyfriend and I have been together for four years now and for the majority of it I haven't had any external relationships. I have a couple of friends, however I rarely see them because it visibly upsets him when I do. He doesn't want to have these feelings, but they never get better and I avoid spending time with people to not deal with his mood swings. He has tried clinical help and it has not worked for him. My family has visited me once in the last 4 years and he avoided them the entire time they visited. He can't handle being around my family and has never come with me on a holiday to see them. It's not that he dislikes them, he just can't handle being around people he "knows", strangers are fine though. He doesn't have any friends of his own and refuses to make them. He also has some pretty serious anger issues. I wouldn't call him abusive, but he has broken things and gotten irrationally angry at me over things that don't matter.

I recently asked him to go on a trip with me somewhere and mentioned I wanted to spend a day meeting up with one of my friends and he got mad and shut it down. He said that I would be wasting a day if I did that and it would be pointless to go. He can't handle me being gone for more than a day at a time or he can't be productive.

I have tried countless times to talk with him through his issues (I've glossed over some for the sake of brevity and identifying situations), but to no avail. I've urged him to talk to therapists or go through a program to work through his opinions of friendships and his feelings of other people in his life having friendships, but the times he has tried it doesn't work. I feel so lost, because I love him and I want him to grow as a person; but it feels like I can't do anything else to help him. I am really struggling over this and I hate feeling guilty everytime I start a phone call with my family or a friend. I don't know what to do anymore.

I am so sorry if this is convoluted or poorly written, I'm not in a good headspace at the moment.

TLDR: Boyfriend doesn't let me have friends or make friends of his own and it's damaging our relationship. He doesn't outright tell me not to have friends, but his body language, anger, and actions towards me say it.

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How we met: ‘I was looking for new hair – new me. The salon booked me in with JP’

Iona, 27, and JP, 31, were both recently single when she went to the hairdressers looking for a fresh look in 2019. Now they are married and live in south London

When Iona stepped into the hairdressing salon in 2019, she was hoping for a fresh look after a break-up. “I was going for the new hair, new me thing,” she says. “There was a bit of summer left and I thought I could still be hot and sexy.” She had been going to the same salon for a few years, but usually had her hair cut by a female stylist. “She wasn’t working when I wanted to go, so they booked me in with JP instead as he was the only stylist free,” she says.

When Iona arrived, she was struck by how attractive JP was. They chatted as he cut her hair, bonding over their shared love of music. “I’d seen her around before,” says JP. “I remember thinking she was beautiful. We realised we’d been at the same small festival in France earlier that summer. It turned out we’d been in the same room quite a few times, but never spoken.”

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Boyfriend keeps initiating plans then cancelling the last minute

I(21F) don’t get my boyfriend(22M) or what’s Hes doing. For some reason he’s constantly busy which he’s never been. He has free time and will initiate us to hang out while he has that little time. I get excited all day just for him to cancel last minute. This is like his 5th time this month, he never cancelled plans before. I read so many posts about stuff like this and it’s always the same answer “he’s not into you.” So I do my best to try to end things with him and even friendzone him but it makes him mad. He told me he was busy all week last week, and he was going to a party with family. So there was a lot of videos of the party getting shared on Facebook(he doesn’t have social media) and I looked to see if I could find him. I didn’t se anything sus. He wasnt around any girls are doing anything. He wasn’t doing much just standing there and he was pretty much the only person who didn’t have their phone in his hand. So this week free he told me he was busy, yesterday he called me wanting to hang out. He told me to text him when I’m done. So I got in the shower all excited and got dress then texted him was he ready, he texts me something popped he has to be somewhere. Maybe after? So after he’s done doing whatever he’s doing he says I can come. I don’t get out of bed or do anything cause I had a feeling he would cancel. About 3 minutes low and behold I get a phone call. He calls and says never mind don’t come, he has a lot on his mind he needs to think about. It’s really unfair and I wish he would tell me what’s really going on. I haven’t seen him since two and a half week. The day we finally did hang out, the few days before he had cancelled on me.

TL;DR: boyfriend initiates plans but always cancels the very last minute.

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What can we all learn from watching couples in therapy? | Eva Wiseman

Imagine a world where we could hear what people were really trying to say

Every night my boyfriend and I have been sitting on the sofa and hungrily watching strangers break up. Couples Therapy is a docu-series filmed in the New York office of elegant psychoanalyst Dr Orna Guralnik as she deftly sieves the lumps out of four relationships. Once you have got over the bogglement at the idea that these couples have agreed to be so vulnerable in front of this many cameras, knowing every eye-roll and revelation will be seen by millions (including their dads, bosses and exes), you can relax into the radical entertainment. And some time after that, perhaps in bed, or when flossing your teeth, questions might appear. Questions like, “Do I interrupt like she does?” and, “Could that guy not perhaps take his awful denim cap off inside?” and, “How can any of us hope to understand each other when we can’t even understand ourselves?”

The structure of a couple is one I am familiar with and fascinated by. Why (I ask myself fondly, 18 years into a relationship that could not be more traditional if it wore a blazer and drank real ale) do we choose this partnership, generation after generation, morning after morning? Two strangers leaning against each other like two cards trying to make a shelter. I think often of the tree that grew around a bike, evolving into something monsterish and beautiful that would never ride again. When the bike was left chained there in 1914, the tree treated it like a wound, scarring and scabbing itself around the frame – now the bike is more than 7ft from the ground, and the tree a living metaphor for every long-term relationship on this bended, burning earth. I like it, I suppose. Is that enough?

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Blind date: ‘He looked at me and said, “It’s OK, I only date older women”’

Krissie, 31, pension fund VP, meets Luke, 28, software engineer manager

Krissie on Luke

What were you hoping for?
A good laugh and a story for my friends.

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