Hello and welcome back to The Overthinker’s Guide To Sex, a sex and relationships newsletter by journalist Franki Cookney.
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New year, newsletter
Hello and happy new year to all those who recognise the Gregorian calendar. I must say I don’t really feel that the new year has begun until I’ve had my Twelfth Night Burn. This is a tradition I invented in about 2018/19, basically because my husband got a fire pit in the Boxing Day sales. I’ve always loved January because it’s my birthday month but it gets a lot of flack, so in some ways this was a PR campaign to put it back on the map in a positive way. Plus, it’s so hard to get friends together in the run-up to Christmas but virtually nobody has plans for the first weekend of Jan. And finally, I’ve always been drawn to Twelfth Night as an occasion. I like the idea of rounding off the festive season with a more low-key event. We’ve powered through Christmas, we’ve welcomed in the new year, set our intentions, all that fanfare, we have a week cooling off period, then on or around Jan 6th (whichever weekend is closest) we have a party, not so much to embrace the new year as to reflect on and release the old one. So it’s part-new year celebration, part-End Of [Festive] Season closing ceremony, part-ritual burning. For that latter part what we do is we encourage people to write down, or bring something that symbolises, something they want to let go of and then cast it into the fire. We held the first one at the start of 2020 which means we’ve done this four times now, plus once in lockdown where I set fire to my note on the hob, then chucked it in the sink and turned the tap on (distinctly less satisfying as rituals go). I think this year was the first year it really felt solidified as a tradition. Everyone understood the assignment, the vibes were excellent, and it felt like a really lovely way to begin the year. I recommend it.
Anyway, not everything I burnt is something I want to share publicly but here are the things that are relevant, perhaps, to readers of this newsletter:
Wondering if I’m queer enough
Performing vulnerability
Dating men
I mentioned “wondering if I’m queer enough” in the last Links and Overthinks! so I’m happy to say that’s now gone. Done. No more of that.
Performing vulnerability is something I am intending to return to in more detail at some point so for now let me just say that I have, over the last few years, noticed myself sometimes using my fluency in the language of vulnerability to cover up actual vulnerability. And that habit needed to get in the fire so it has.
And finally, yeah… dating men. Sounds a bit extreme, possibly? I suppose I probably don’t mean that I will never date a man ever again, it’s more that I no longer wish to focus my attention and energy on that particular pastime. It’s draining, the returns are disappointing, and honestly, I have better things to do. Obviously, I will be continuing any existing relationships I have with men (such as my husband lol) but I’m not looking to start anything new.
How about you? What are you letting go of?
Sex trends to love and hate in 2024
Back in September I turned down a commission to write a trend predictions piece for a magazine because the fee was too low, but of course that hasn’t stopped me being inundated with supposed sex and relationships “trends” for the coming year. It’s such an interesting phenomenon, I think. On the one hand, yes, certainly, cultural trends occur. We do see shifts in attitudes, behaviours, and it’s interesting to document and analyse those. But the idea that we will witness tangible change from one year to the next is just silly.
Still, brands love them because even when they can’t sell us the thing itself (fingering, by very definition, does not require us to buy products) they can sell us the idea that they are tapped into the zeitgeist, that they are relevant. They can position themselves as in touch with people’s needs and desires. So then when we are on the hunt for a new toy, or lube, or condom, or dating app, our minds will turn to them, the brand that “gets it”.
Needless to say, that’s not the kind of paragraph you can generally include when you write a trends piece for a glossy mag, which is why it’s such a delight (and, I think, important) to write about it here, for you, unfiltered.