Ask Anahit: A Different Time

Dear Skinny. Since leaving me, my girlfriend goes to all the regular haunts I do. It is devastating to watch her gallivant with other men. I loathe every single man who talks to her now. My problem is that every time I try to masturbate, the only images that come into my head are of her having sex with one of those boys she gets chatted up by. What can I do about this? - Richard Johnson

Christ, the noughties were a different time. Worse, you could say. Ethically, politically, ontologically. I don’t think Blair’s Britain has had enough laid at its doorstep to be honest and having sat with this letter for all of about three minutes, I really think we ought to add it to the pile because Fucking Hell. There was an illegal war happening, Richard! They were selling the NHS off from right under you! White people were wearing cornrows!!! No wonder we’re where we are now, when our first line of defence was preoccupied with wanking not just over his ex-girlfriend, but also her imaginary boyfriends.

I think probably at the core of this letter is an actual problem, obscured by genuinely one of the most bewildering scenarios a person could ever admit to in print. I don’t even doubt this is a common and quite distressing issue; I just think most people have enough shame not to spell it out quite like this, and with quite so much vindictiveness behind their words. Still, eh, breakups are a bitch and love makes fools of us all and all that. And this was before the days of Instagram; now at least you can passive-aggressively thirst trap and pretend you have some kind of power before retreating to your bed to cry-wank.

So, all that being said and my sympathies summoned from deep within me, in answer to your weird, weird question: there is nothing you can do. Breakups really hurt and they fuck with your capacity for intimacy and sex and they can make those things feel really bad for a while. Especially if you can’t get distance from your ex. You just… have to accept you’re going to have a bit of a shit sex life for a bit, even with yourself, try and recalibrate your relationship to desire, and maybe find some new haunts. I realise you have far more limited access to listicles and the Top 10 Bars You’ve Never Heard of In Your Home Town in the noughties, but I swear there are analogue methods you can call upon to free you from this prison. Get on a bus, get off at a random stop, and go get drunk somewhere else. You will thank yourself, I promise. And I’m sure your ex and the poor clueless shmucks trying to talk to her would too.