Suggestion

[cityofthedead]

Hullo, Scarleteam?

I have a suggestion to help you improve your website. As some of you may know, I've had a long discussion with a few staff members in the Newbieville forums. The discussion is about how I was frustrated with not having someone to express myself to romantically and sexually. I have seen articles similar to the discussions I've had with the staff, but they're all just really long answers to other people's questions, and you give great advice, but I think posting a big article like the Driver's Ed and Ready or Not ones would really show that you actively care for this highly trivialized issue about nonspecific romantic/sexual desire. This is no request. It's simply a suggestion because I think it would have a big impact on Scarleteen.

[Jacob]

Hi cityofthedead,

I was just reading through your thread with Mo, Sam, Karyn, Heather & wintergreen. I hope you're doing ok, you sounded frustrated there. To respond to your suggestion here, I guess I'm not sure what an article like that would contain.

The desire for 'a girlfriend' and frustration of not having one, can't really be remedied without doing dating stuff, risking rejection, being misunderstood, or to end up with a new friendship, and the kind of thing you were saying you were avoiding in your thread.

We do have stuff on dating, on communication, on rejection

• Various pieces on dating
• Be a Blabbermouth! The Whats, Whys and Hows of Talking About Sex With a Partner
• I know consent is awesome but rejection is not!
• Getting Through a Breakup Without Actually Breaking

Another important way to tackle those feelings of loneliness is to expand your relationship with yourself, be it with our many pieces on self-care or self-exploration and masturbation. It also pays to learn how to appreciate the range of ways we can experience intimacy and closeness.

We have pieces on that stuff too.

• Self-Care a La Carte
• Self-Care When It's Scary
• Intimacy: The Whys, Hows, How-Nots, and So-Nots
• With Pleasure: A View of Whole Sexual Anatomy for Every Body

I do think there is something in there about how ways of thinking about sexuality can get in the way. And Issues which may arise when being focussed on reaching goals we think will make us happy rather than ways of engaging in dating/relationships/friendships we are already doing which feel good. About whether your focus is on the Journey or the Destination.

But I think there is still a lot to unpick in your story so we (and you too!) don't yet have the answers yet to formulate in a 'big article' way which would help our users - if there are others which are going through similar problems to you and if writing such an article would be an appropriate way to reach them, compared to engaging with them individually which would be our default.