A point of clarification: people who don’t want to see you anymore don’t need to provide an explanation. They are not required to hear you out, or “just meet for a quick coffee” or give you a phone call. But they do owe you human decency. If you have had sexual intercourse or spent hours getting to know each other one-on-one, your relationship is not “chill.” It is extremely personal, and each of you need to communicate directly about your plans to never see the other person again.

After weeks of no contact, I called Jesse and left a mysterious, “Hey, there’s something I really need to talk about with you…” message, channeling my gynecologist when she leaves me foreboding voicemails that turn out to be about yeast infections. He texted back immediately. I said it would be better to talk in person. He arranged to come over right away.

Jesse materialized in my apartment, winding a beautiful scarf around his beautiful neck. I felt wild, witchy—he had ghosted me, but here he was now in the flesh. He had discarded me, but I had brought him back. “I am the necromancer!” I thought to myself, feeling crazed with power. My hair looked bad. Jesse looked at me with fear and with pity—I was no longer an object of his sexual interest, just an emotional woman.

“You ghosted me,” I said. “We went out too many times for that to be okay. If you knew you didn’t want to see me anymore, you should have just said so.”

Jesse squirmed. He had been planning to get back to me, he said. It was a busy time, he said.

“No, you ghosted me,” I said.

“I’m sorry you feel that way.”

“You don’t have to be sorry you feel that way,” I said. “Just be sorry you did it.”

“I’m sorry you feel like I did it,” he said. We continued on like this, a game of cat and other, more annoying, cat. I asked—if, as he claimed, he had been meaning to text, me, what would he have texted?

He looked pale.

“Say it,” I said. He was silent.

“Say it!” I hissed. “Say it now!” He looked up, spooked, like a peasant child waylaid in the woods by a witch woman.

“I felt like maybe we were moving more towards being friends,” he stammered.

I am the witch queen, I thought, as his steps echoed down the hall. I am the resurrector. I am she who turns ghosts to men and men to dust! I was still sad. I did not want to be rejected. But I did want my rejection to feel humane.

Since Jesse, I have refined my process for breaking up with myself when the person I’m dating refuses to. It’s important to remember that people are allowed to break up with us at any time, and they do not need a reason. To save time, I usually go with a text. I try to stick to the facts— “We went on four dates and you kept asking me to sleep over and watch you play ‘SexyBack’ on acoustic guitar. I think that our relationship merited a more respectful ending than you gave it by trying to just taper off texts to me. It hurt my feelings and I wish you would have been more direct.” No matter what they reply, I don’t get into a conversation. (In the early days I let an in-person self-dump get out of hand, and he ended up crying and saying he needed therapy, which was kind of thrilling but ultimately beyond my capacity.)

Every time I do this, I feel a little better. It’s as if I’m writing a letter to myself that says “You are too substantial to melt gently away when someone is done with you.” Part of why I insist upon behavior that other people would find embarrassing is that I want to remind myself that I have worth. There’s an older school of thought around sex and dating that sometimes makes me think, “Well, you went out with this man and had sex with him without getting a commitment, so what did you think would happen?” And the answer is—having sex and intimacy outside of a monogamous commitment still entitles me to basic decency. And if I don’t get basic decency, I will ask for it nicely.

I often hear a kind of nostalgia for the “old ways” of dating. People lament the days of men knocking on the doors for dates, and bringing flowers, and calling on the phone. But we would never, ever want to go back to those days. Those small kindnesses were given in exchange for women staying in a kind of straightjacket of femininity—female pleasure was unmentionable, queerness was forbidden, and there was almost no recourse for rape and harassment. I can buy myself flowers, I can open my own door, and when I make the mistake of dating a person who doesn’t value me enough to be direct, I can even dump myself.

It’s nice to take back control, to demand respect, even if it makes me seem crazy. It reminds me that I am real, worthwhile, and alive. It’s okay with me if afterwards, the person I was dating goes back to being weightless, formless, imaginary.

He should be nothing but a ghost.

*Name changed, but you know what you did, Jesse. 

When the pandemic hit, I hadn’t dated anyone since the previous October, when my blink-and-you-miss-it “relationship” with a woman in an open marriage ended in my being dumped via Facebook Messenger on their wedding anniversary. I had been living in Thailand, and by the time March rolled around, I was completely over my life there. But mass lockdowns and travel bans put a stop to any repatriation plans I might have conjured up.

Staying in Thailand during those beginning months of COVID-19 turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Holed up in a traditional house in the backwoods of Chiang Mai, I set out to put all my newfound universe-imposed free time to good use. I taught myself how to ride a motorbike, whipped up viral TikTok recipes (Dalgona coffee anyone?), and took on other quirky alone-time hobbies like bullet journaling. I made good use of my time, if I do say so myself, but when I lay down at night, I couldn’t shake this feeling that seemed to be growing steadily inside of me: I wanted some dick.

So I set out to find some.

Date 1

With Operation Get Some Dick underway, I headed to the one place I knew I’d find a sea of men, eager to stick their dicks in a new vagina: Tinder.

My aggressive swiping resulted in a first for me: a virtual date. I scheduled a Zoom coffee meet-up with Steven,* an older white guy from Edinburgh who had been in Thailand for however many years teaching English. As I sat on my porch sipping my Dalgona coffee, we exchanged pleasantries and typical first-date questions and had a pleasant enough conversation, but I knew he would not be the one to break my four-year penis fast. For one thing, he gave off major #mediocrewhiteman vibes. Hardly asking me anything about myself, he boasted about how his students describe him as the “best teacher they’ve ever had.” Ultimately, I just wasn’t attracted to him.

Date 2

I met a few other guys off Tinder, like Dwayne,* an early 40s, divorced Black Brit who was—you guessed it—teaching high school at an international school just outside Chiang Mai. We met for lunch at a local vegetarian restaurant. I knew right away that I didn’t care for the place he’d chosen, but not wanting to come across as difficult or picky, I agreed to meet him anyway the following weekend.

Right away I was a bit disappointed. Well, maybe disappointed is the wrong word; rather, my date with Dwayne was a reminder of the antiquated gender rules that govern the heterosexual dating game. I wore a full face of makeup and a cute J.Crew sundress, while Dwayne showed up in a T-shirt and some gym shorts. As I picked at my flavorless cashew nut rice, I made a silent mental note to speak up the next time someone suggests a restaurant I’m not into.

Date 3

He’s cute, right? I typed to my friend Isaiah as I sent him a screenshot of Danny,* the guy I was going on a second date with. “Ooooh, he is. And he looks just like your type, only in guy form. LOL.”

Danny, another Tinder find, is closer to my age and originally from the Midwest too.

He is tall, thin, and lanky, just like I like, with a head full of Afro-kinky curls and a pretty fit body from years of training in Muay Thai. We video-chat for close to an hour, talking about our favorite music, what our Midwestern parents make of our wanderlust, and how hard it is to find products for our hair in Thailand. We met up for coffee—at a place of my choosing—in the city center. All these months later, I don’t remember much about our conversation, but I do recall enjoying it.

Crystal*, a 21-year-old in Ohio, has lived with her parents throughout the pandemic and snuck out a few times to hook up with people. “To be honest, I don’t feel they were worth it,” she says. “It was nice to get out, but I also felt like, Why am I risking this for people I don’t even like or resonate with?”

Mya*, a 30-year-old in Los Angeles, is also rethinking the way she wants to date. “I’ve learned that it’s really important for me to have some power and control in my relationships, and it’s really okay if that means that a lot of dudes are not going to be into it,” she says. She lasted through a 14-month pandemic completely alone—not getting a text back from some guy she met on Tinder is not going to end her world.

Regardless of sexual identity or relationship status, women have had a year to be in our own bodies with little input from the outside world. Maybe you got dressed more this year without worrying about how your boss or the parents at school drop-off would judge. Maybe you faced less catcalling, took a break from the mental workout of having to invent a fictional boyfriend when aggressive men won’t leave you alone. Maybe in the absence of regular dating, you had more time and space to think about what really feels good to you, what you like, what you want. Maybe the governmental mishandling of the pandemic has felt like such a profound waste of your time that you’re simply not willing to have any more time wasted. Whatever the past year of reflection has meant to you, women will be setting new rules this summer.

“No vaccine, no vag-een,” says Tara*, a 28-year-old in Wisconsin. “That’ll be my new rule.” (Turns out, that’s actually an old idea: Activists in the 1950s promoted polio vaccines with similar slogans—they proclaimed, “No shots, no dates.”) For Tara, the proliferation of vaccines doesn’t necessarily mean that safe(r) sex feels in reach. She watched, throughout the pandemic, as people in her conservative community proudly rejected masks and ignored scientists. About half of Republican men, an NPR-Marist poll found, say they will not take the vaccine when it becomes available. Only 6% of Democrats who are men say the same. “I feel like I’m going to have to interrogate people to make sure that they’re being safe so I don’t feel like I’m risking my life just to get some ass,” Tara says. “I’m going to quit having sex with Republicans.”

Of course, all sex carries risk. And after more than a year of feeling screwed over by the pandemic, there will likely be a rise in selfish sex. “I think fuckboys are definitely going to lie about getting the vaccine,” says Alice, who feels anxious when she contemplates sex and dating even after mass vaccination. She is one of the more than 30 million Americans who fell sick with COVID, and it changed her perspective on being single. “I remember my chest closing up, and I was having such a hard time taking a full breath that I couldn’t stand up without falling over,” she says. She became scared that she would die alone in her apartment, and nobody would even know. “As lame as it sounds, I’ve learned how important it is for humans to be close to each other,” she says.

Will we emerge transformed by an earnest appreciation for each other’s bodies, craving pure connection? Or simply out for all we can steal? “I hope dating is better now, cause before coronavirus, it wasn’t exactly the greatest thing,” says Jax. She dreams of “going to a bar, getting drunk with my friends, and just making out with a stranger. Having someone spit in your mouth, and not worrying about dying.”

Our culture is not designed to help women claim our own pleasure or get commitment without giving up some essential freedom. But after more than a year away from mainstream sex and dating culture, more women have gained a better sense of what they want, and deserve. Jax wants a messy makeout. Mya wants agency. Abbie wants more sex, hotter sex, and more experimental sex. Crystal wants better ~vibrations~. Tara wants respect and honesty. And Alice wants to feel the exquisite preciousness of human connection, without losing herself.

It’s going to be a long, hot, horny summer. When it’s safe for you, don’t forget sunscreen, a mask, and a condom if applicable. And don’t forget that you survived a major tragedy and a really, really tough year. You don’t have time to be slut-shamed, or play by sexist rules, or have bad sex. Welcome to your sweaty, sexy, self-finding summer. 

*Name has been changed. 

Jenny Singer is a staff writer for Glamour. You can follow her on Twitter. 

Up until the pandemic, I was living the life of a single woman bouncing all over the globe, having a fine time for myself. New York City is my home base but I’ve long prioritized travel—pre-pandemic I spent more than half the year traveling. A solo trip to Asia or Latin America in the spring, Europe through the summer and fall. My friends used to joke that I had a lover in every port and, although funny, it wasn’t completely untrue.

Whether it’s because I’ve been burnt so many times or because I just have a thing for people who don’t share my native tongue, I find that dating in other countries isn’t just more fun, but a good way to keep men at arm’s length. It’s hard to get too deeply involved with someone who only understands 50% of what you’re saying.

When my trip to Sri Lanka and a few other Southeastern Asian countries was canceled last year, I assumed (hoped) it would only be a temporary delay. It was March and I couldn’t conceive of what 2020 had in store for us. I was confident I’d be back in a flat in Barcelona by the summer, happily going forward with trips to Paris and Rome. I was so confident, I put my travel plans in my Tinder bio, alerting all potential international lovers I was coming for them.

A year later, I’m still stuck at my parent’s house in New Hampshire. But I decided not to let my lack of mobility keep me from meeting the matches I’d hoped to encounter all over the globe. 

Date 1

I wasn’t willing to give up my international lovers, so I set my Tinder location to Rome where I’d planned to be last summer. I got a “super like” from a guy named Francisco. After a few days of messaging, we decided to take it to the next level which, in a pandemic, means a Zoom date. Frankly, I couldn’t believe that this is what the world had come to, but I did my hair, applied some red lipstick, and tossed on a pajama top that could easily pass for an “Oh, what a fancy shirt for a fancy date,” top.

Francisco was born and raised in Rome and had traveled a lot. He was passionate about animals and before the pandemic, he was supposed to head to Zimbabwe to work at an animal sanctuary. Instead, he was living with his sister teaching English to Italians online. He was cute, interesting, and when he slipped into Italian to think of the English word equivalent of what he wanted to say, was sexy as hell.

Things got pretty dirty and naked in our virtual romance, with him even using a We-Vibe vibrator that he could control from Rome. 

But in November, I had a fall and broke my right leg, right ankle, and sprained my left ankle leaving me bed bound and unable to engage in our relationship as online sex buddies—he bailed. 

Francisco popped up occasionally after that with dick pic via Instagram, claiming he’d lost my number. But each time it was aggressive and unsolicited—and when you’re trying to heal from your waist down, the last thing you want is the one-eyed monster in your face.  

Date 2 

Jordi, a match from Barcelona, was sweet—too sweet. Too understanding, too patient, too positive, too complimentary, too everything that I think many people would eat up with a spoon, but I just couldn’t. We talked over Zoom and FaceTime and he was so attentive and so kind, that I actually started to think there was something wrong with him. Was he the Catalan version of Ted Bundy? 

Stuck in a missionary position rut? Allow me to introduce you to the Coital Alignment Technique (CAT).

In the summer of 1988, a research study clearly demonstrated that making some simple adjustments to the classic missionary man-on-top position could significantly increase the likelihood that women would experience orgasm during intercourse and also increase the chances of partners “coming together” (pun intended) with simultaneous orgasms. The technique was even hyped as the “cure” for female sexual dysfunction.

This version of the missionary position, known as the Coital Alignment Technique, or CAT for short, is surprisingly easy to learn and uber effective, yet in my experience, most women (and their partners) have yet to be introduced to its pleasures.

Before I get into how to do it, an important caveat: As a sex therapist turned neuroscientist, I encourage people not to make sex all about the orgasm. Being goal directed in the bedroom is a great way to inhibit the natural pleasures of being in the experience as is—and that’s where all the fun is.

The best missionary position

The good old fashioned missionary position has been shown to be a good way to stimulate the anterior wall of the vagina (the territory of the G-spot) which provides stimulation to the internal clitoris as well as the female prostate gland (AKA Skene’s glands or the paraurethral sponge).

The Coital Alignment Technique can do an even better job of stimulating the external clitoris than the regular missionary position. (But remember, the goal of the CAT is not creating an orgasm, but rather changing the way we align our bodies and move for maximum pleasure).

How to Do the Coital Alignment Technique

In the CAT, just like the standard missionary position, the penetrating partner lies on top. (For two partners with vaginas, this position can be adapted by getting creative and using sex toys or dildos for penetration.)

The penetrating partner then shifts their body position by moving upward on the receiving partner’s body (which is different from missionary). This is called “riding high.” The top partner’s chest should align with the bottom partner’s shoulders.

Once in position, the top partner rests their weight on the bottom partner, rather than using their arms to hold themselves up—this pressure is key for maximizing stimulation of the clitoris.

From this position, when the penetrating partner inserts a penis or sex toy, it will point more downward into the vagina rather than pointing upward as in the standard missionary position. This way, the base of the penis or sex toy makes more direct and sustained contact with the external clitoris, which results in more consistent clitoral contact and stimulation.

Now this is key: The penetrating partner doesn’t thrust in and out of the vagina, as in the missionary position. Genital contact is maintained by a rhythmic, coordinated rocking, which creates constant pressure on the clitoris. The receiving partner leads on rocking with the upstroke and the penetrating partner leads on the downstroke. Pelvic mobility is a critical factor that increases the likelihood of female orgasm—the more the receiving partner rocks their pelvis, the more blood flow will increase to the genitals and the more the sensations will ramp up.

Don’t just focus on the technique, focus on connecting with your partner. Use words, sounds, touches, to communicate what you want, what you like, or what feels the best. Don’t be afraid to let your partner know what’s not working, or what could work even better. Remember when it comes to sex, feedback is our friend.

And have fun. As I write in my book, Why Good Sex Matters, partners who remember that the bedroom can be a playground for grown-ups end up overall having more fun and pleasure—which is not a luxury, but a necessity for a well-balanced emotional brain and overall well-being.

Nan Wise, Ph.D., is an AASECT-certified sex therapist, neuroscientist, certified relationship expert, and author of Why Good Sex Matters: Understanding the Neuroscience of Pleasure for a Smarter, Happier, and More Purpose-Filled Life. Follow her @AskDoctorNan.

I was 11 when my parents signed me up for karate.

I wasn’t particularly interested in martial arts, but a schoolmate had called me a “chink” and kicked me, so they decided I needed to learn how to protect myself. I was the only Asian in the class and the only girl. I had just started wearing a training bra and I was very uncomfortable with my changing body, especially with the way it elicited leering glances from boys. One boy in my class, who was a couple of years older than me, always found a way to land kicks between my legs when sparring. I told myself it wasn’t intentional, until the day he winked at me, his foot resting against my vagina, and asked, “Does it really slant sideways?”

I punched him in the face.

At school I experienced the usual barrage of insults and racial slurs, especially after September 11 when the patriotic fervor of my classmates extended to telling me to go back to my own country. In spite of the fact that they clearly didn’t view me as American—or perhaps because of it—many of them fetishized me. Maybe viewing me as foreign made it easier for them to dehumanize me. Boys called me “Mulan” and “Shelby Woo” and “Lucy Liu” because to them, all Asian women looked alike, were interchangeable and equally objectifiable.

As I grew older the harassment grew more graphic. Men assumed that I was docile, subservient, eager to please. They told me what they wanted to do with my body. “I’ve never been with an Asian,” they’d say. “I hear you’re really tight.” Some of them offered me money for sex. “Filipinos are poor, right? You’ll probably do anything for money.” Others assumed that I would be so flattered by their attention that I would beg them to jump into bed with me. More than once I had to use the self-defense skills my parents had been so adamant about me learning.

I wasn’t surprised when the news broke that a white man had shot and killed eight people—six of them Asian women—at three spas in Georgia on March 16. I was devastated. I was angry. But I was not surprised, because the threat of violence based on my gender and my race has loomed over me my entire life.

The hypersexualization of Asian women is rooted in many things, from the historical romanticization of the East to the West’s history of colonialism to the depiction of Asian women in Hollywood. Three years before I was born, Full Metal Jacket brought us the phrases “me love you long time,” “me so horny,” and “me sucky sucky,” which are still used to objectify and harass Asian women today. I was a sophomore in high school when Memoirs of a Geisha was released, and men saw it as license to cast any Asian woman in their own geisha fantasies. There are many more examples, of course, and the problem goes back much further. Asian representation in Western pop culture has long been plagued by stereotypes. One of the most pervasive tropes, that of the mystically sensual Dragon Lady, has been used over and over again in media dating back to the 1930s when Anna May Wong starred in Daughter of the Dragon and other films that employed the damaging archetype.

Many people don’t see these depictions as racist. Some of them even think Asian women should be flattered by them. But how can I be flattered when they lead to violence against Asian women like me? Make no mistake that this hypersexualization is at the root of violence against Asian women. The recent killings were horrifying but by no means isolated; 21% to 55% of Asian American women report being victims of physical or sexual assault.

More and more people are receiving the COVID-19 vaccine these days, with 21.4% of the U.S. population covered since distribution began on December 14. Still, rollouts look different in various parts of the country, with comorbidities like asthma or a BMI in the obese range qualifying residents of states like New York and Texas for vaccines while others continue to wait—and in many cases, this has led to a situation in which one half of a couple is vaccinated while the other is not.

Being vaccinated when your partner isn’t presents a unique set of challenges; for example, it often means that the vaccinated person doesn’t get to enjoy the full range of activities the CDC has extended to them, as we still don’t know precisely how likely a vaccinated person is to spread COVID-19 to unvaccinated people. “I imagined the vaccine would be a lot more life-changing,” says Emily, 27, a writer in eastern Massachusetts who recently got her first dose, adding, “I would of course be elated if they discovered vaccinated people cannot be carriers, but until then, I don’t want to endanger my partner.”

For Spencer, 29, an attorney in Washington, D.C., the primary feeling surfacing now that his fiancée has received the vaccine is confusion. “I catch myself thinking about all the stuff we can do now, and reading those CDC guidelines about what’s okay, and then remembering that that’s potentially a ways off for me, and I then go back to being unsure of what we as a couple can do now,” he says.

For the moment, many people are learning to balance happiness about their partner’s vaccine eligibility with personal disappointment. “I teared up when my husband received his first dose, as we had waited almost three months for the call from his primary care physician to schedule the appointment [that never came],” says Donna, 56, a food bank employee in south-central Pennsylvania. “We were fortunate to schedule his vaccine appointment at a pharmacy in Scranton, a two-hour drive from our house, but truthfully, I would have driven anywhere to get him protected.” Donna still doesn’t qualify for her own vaccine despite her history of health issues, and while her joy at seeing her husband receive the vaccine is still there, she’s tired of waiting. “I suppose frustrated would be the best word,” she says.

For other couples, happiness shares space not just with frustration, but with the fear of being a burden. Kate, 27, a writer in New York City, saw her boyfriend get vaccinated this winter due to his job as a teacher and was thrilled: “People might imagine it would be frustrating to live with someone who now has access to this thing everyone wants, but I’ve only felt excited and relieved by proxy, because I now know he goes in to school every day and is way less likely to bring the virus home,” she says.

Still, there have been moments when Kate’s unvaccinated status has made the relationship feel less equal. “We went to a coffee shop recently to pick up breakfast, and it was almost totally empty, [so] we thought about maybe dining indoors,” says Kate. “If I was vaccinated like him, I would have been comfortable, but ultimately we took it out to the car. I felt a little guilty that I was this baggage that meant he couldn’t fully enjoy being vaccinated.”

Vaccine envy is becoming increasingly prevalent, and it’s especially intense when the object of your envy is lying next to you in bed, or dropping the kids off at school. “How are those of us still at risk supposed to grapple with that twinge of discontented longing that comes from contemplating the vaccinated state of our loved ones?” mused writer Constance Sommer in a recent Vogue article. That said, it’s important for people still awaiting their first dose to remember that their time will come soon; President Joe Biden has said publicly that the U.S. would have enough vaccine doses for all adults by the end of May.

After a long year of waiting for something—anything—to get better, it’s undoubtedly difficult to see the people closest to us move through the world with a new sense of freedom, no matter how happy we are for them. Perhaps the best thing that the unvaccinated halves of couples can do is muster up those last scraps of patience, which their vaccinated counterparts should meet with empathy; hopefully, this time next year we’ll look back on the time of half-vaccinated households as a phenomenon distinct to the winter and spring of 2021—before we all began to rebuild our lives again.

This article was originally published by Vogue. 

Before he can say another word, my mouth is searching for him. I’ve forgotten that we’re in a pandemic, and at that moment I don’t give a fuck about the coronavirus. My hands grip his unruly brown hair, his hands cup my face. Before long he’s ravenously exploring my body, pulling my housedress down, and taking me into his mouth. I remove his faded T-shirt to reveal tanned skin and a meticulously sculpted six-pack. It’s not long before we’re in bed consuming each other. His one hand grips my hair, the other my hips as he continuously pushes into my depth from behind. He’s dominant, deeply passionate, and well-endowed. My sexual trifecta.

I fight off thoughts of Robert and try to enjoy the pleasure. Despite being broken up for weeks, somehow, it feels like I’m being unfaithful. Pat completely unaware, throws his head back and groans. I feel him pulsate inside of me before he laughs and withdraws. “I’m so sorry, it’s been a while—just give me a minute and we can go again.” I laugh with him. “It’s been a while for me too.” I press my back to his chest, and we lie in bed, covered in his sweat. I think of the first time Robert said “I love you” and how he used to hold me this way. I begin to silently cry.

What the hell is wrong with me? I’m naked, with a hot man. Why am I crying? Pat is smiling and completely unaware as tightens his grip around me. I feel like a sponge being pressed of its liquid as my few tears quickly turn to steady streams. Embarrassed, I use the pillow to quickly wipe them away. And before they can return, I roll over and ask, “Are you ready to go again?” His eyes light up, he pulls me on top of him. “Careful what you ask for, girl.” His next release isn’t so quick.

Pat and I never have another date. Crying after is was a new experience for me. It is startling enough to make me realize that no matter his résumé, I simply am not ready.

Date 4

It’s October before I decide to try again. I still think about Robert every day, but I’m horny and hope maybe enough time has passed. Plus, predictions of a second wave loom, and the thought of repeating another quarantine alone is terrifying. I meet Victor* on Tinder, and after a few weeks of half-hearted back and forth, we finally make a plan to meet. He assures me that he’s recently been COVID tested and proposes watching the newly released Savage x Fenty show together at my place. Only two people have entered my apartment this year, and one of them is the monthly exterminator. But I can’t think of a sexier first date, so I clean for the first time in weeks, light my candles, and cook a vegan dinner.

We sit together on the couch and within the first two minutes, we’re screaming and cheering at the screen. When the show ends, we spend hours talking and laughing. It’s simultaneously so normal and so foreign. After all these months in solitude, I hadn’t been sure if I still knew how to be with someone new. But with Victor, it isn’t hard. We discuss divorce, military life, and living abroad. He is handsome, charming, and effortless. I find his ease intoxicating. 

Our conversation pauses but doesn’t feel awkward. We let the tension build as we stare at one another. Smiling, he leans in and kisses me, and I kiss back. Then, gripping my hips, he pulls me onto him. His tongue fills my mouth, and my hands are lost in his dark curly brown hair. We furiously undress each other on our way to my bedroom. I pull away only to use my tongue to trace invisible paths along his body. I want to drink his deeply tanned skin. His fingers fill my mouth as he crawls on top and enters me in one fluid motion. I shut my eyes, willingly receiving him in every space he fills. His hands quickly grip my face, forcing me to look deeply into his eyes as he takes me. He moves inside of me with deep, rhythmic intensity. When he senses I’m close to climax, he lowers his lips to my ear and speaks to me in Spanish. I erupt under his control, but we don’t stop. I lose track of how many times we have sex that night. We fall asleep sometime around 5 a.m.

I cried through Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s interview with Oprah. I’ve lived my life in white institutions, starting with my family, often the only person of color in any given room. My childhood bedroom, shared with my blonde and blue-eyed half-sister. At college in Virginia and then graduate school in Cincinnati, when I was praised for being so “articulate” and “surprisingly well-spoken.” In meetings as a magazine editor in New York City, where I learned how to explain Black pain to white colleagues or, and more often, learned how to bite my tongue.

So much of what the Duchess of Sussex shared rang true for me and many others. (Just check Black Twitter, we all done popped off.) But for me, the waterworks started when Meghan began talking about the specific pain of being a Black, biracial woman working overtime to please her white partner’s family and failing—not because of her actions, but the color of her skin.

I’m biracial. White on my mother’s side, Trinidadian on my father’s. I was raised by my mother’s family and brought up believing, mistakenly, that my Blackness was a non-issue for white people. That I wasn’t Black or white, but just me. I grew up told that being “me” would not cause discomfort in white folks who have a problem with Black women existing in traditionally white spaces, achieving traditionally white successes, or dating white men. I wasn’t aware the one-drop rule applied to me. I wasn’t aware it existed. I also live with mental illness, and it’s only been recently that I’ve learned not to tie myself in knots trying to convince white folks I am harmless, polite, and likable to the detriment of myself and my mental health.

I learned the hard way that some institutions, some matriarchs, some families will never accept me. I learned the way Meghan did—I learned by failing.

When Meghan shared that she didn’t want to bring her fears of self-harm to her husband, I related. When she told Oprah, our one true queen, that she didn’t want to bring her problems to him, she wanted to bring solutions, I flashed back to the times I’ve cried in bathrooms in other people’s homes—more than one home, more than one partner—because of racist comments aimed if not directly at me, then around me. When Harry, her husband, gave his own wholly supportive, but also flawed, account of the vitriol Meghan endured, I was reminded of how hard it is to explain to a white man that his love of a non-white woman is going to be a problem.

Before Covid-19 put all of our social calendars on hold, my dates were extravagant. In a normal year, I’d split my time between four major cities in Canada and the US, which gave me a vast dating pool. But even with options, I still moved in ways that honored what I wanted: a healthy relationship.

I approach my dating-life the same way I approach my career—with purpose and clear intentions. Let’s face it, a lot of us have been given bad relationship advice over the years. We’ve been told to pretend we aren’t interested, or to play hard to get to find love. But I have never understood saying things that contradict what you actually want. So I’m strategic. I’ve been paying for the premium version of dating apps for years, able to see who swipes on my profile first so I can narrow down options and avoid swiping forever. I’m also clear in my bio—I’m dating to meet my person, not just to pass my time. And it’s been amazing.

Date 1

Let’s call him Adam. We met on Hinge. He was funny and insightful. The kind of person you could have endless conversations with. For our first date, he rented out an entire restaurant for me tucked away in the Distillery District in Toronto, so that it was just him and I. This gave us the opportunity to get to know one another, in an intimate but public setting. Plus, a crowded restaurant on a first date can be overwhelming and make conversation that much more difficult.

Date 2

On my next date (with a new guy), I actually rented a helicopter and took him out on a tour of the city—he had just moved and I love an extravagant date. Again, this gave us alone time together in ways that gave us privacy, without losing the wow-factor I love so much. When you’re trying to get to know someone it can be so tempting to invite them over to just hangout, but I love to see effort. It’s how I know a person is interested and it gives me a signal to respond accordingly.

Date 3

Then there was NY-bae. We broke up right when the pandemic started because I knew there was no way I was getting on a flight anytime soon. And it was hard. This was a person that I loved spending time with but couldn’t anymore without putting the people that I loved at risk. But something that I learned in my ten years of online dating is to adopt an abundance mindset. There are so many people out there looking for someone exactly like you. Holding onto something that no longer works is a disservice to yourself, that person and the moments you shared together.

Date(s) 4

In lockdown, things changed. Only, they really didn’t—at least not in the ways I had anticipated. Sure, my dates changed. I wasn’t flying across the country anymore or being whisked away on extravagant first dates. But the quality of conversations made where we were irrelevant.

Covid-19 shifted how we connect. It created space for us to slow down and hear each other at a personal level, without the background noise we’ve become accustomed to. I’ve spent hours having soul-nourishing conversations with people that would normally take months to cultivate. I have had remarkable dates, even while following strict social distancing guidelines. One person I was talking to consistently went out of his way to care for me in my love language. He would drop off “date-night” packages, arrange to have my car picked up and cleaned, and spend hours on the phone with me.

Date 5

And then, I met my current partner.