Cass Ball

Last summer, when I was half a year into being newly single and telling myself and my friends that I was “just doing me” or “dating myself,” I realized: I wasn’t actually dating myself if I wasn’t putting in the work. Since then, I’ve been working on developing tangible strategies for dating myself. I am sharing these strategies with you, hoping that they may help illuminate the beautiful, confusing, nearsighted path back towards yourself.

Fantasy is an important part of our relationships with ourselves and our sexual desires. But it can also be a source of shame. How can we find ways to reconnect with our sexual fantasies and create a healthy relationship with desire.

It can feel like the world will end if you haven’t had sex or a sexual or romantic relationship by your mid-twenties. There are countless ways in which our culture puts pressure on young people to gain experience in romantic and sexual relationships. But truthfully, if you don’t have much, or even any, experience with dating and sex, you are not doomed to never experience romantic and sexual connection. The world also will not end.