..for your advice and support after my strange flip-out yesterday. I’ve had a good think about everything you all said, and talked it through with someone close to me, and I feel better today. I’m not such a freak for not wanting to go for the all-out “hearts and chocolates and flowers and poetry in front of 500 close friends” romance. Love and affection can be expressed privately and in different ways. I was thinking of myself as cold and unromantic, till my friend pointed out to me several ways in which I had recently demonstrated myself, in my own way, to be an indisputable ball of mush. So that’s alright then.

As for defining my relationships with sexuality, I’m in a similar situation to where I was with my “man without issues” goal. I can’t deny my sexuality or its importance to me, but writing about it and the way I use it has encouraged me to think hard about ways I can keep my tendency to exploit it in check so as to avoid falling into the same traps I have time and time again. The problem is partly that I have been filtering my thoughts, blinding myself to my affectionate actions, maybe because they aren’t as traditional as many people’s, and by comparison the filth loomed large. So I’m not doing that any more. I’m gaining clear sight, and I’m going to put into practice what I have learned and express my affection fearlessly and in my own way. That’ll sort the men from the boys, and anyone who can’t handle it shouldn’t be in my life anyway.