The Breakup Wasn’t About Toys. It Was About Honesty

I spent a while after the breakup trying to work out where it had all gone wrong.

Not in a dramatic, staring-out-of-the-window-while-it-rains sort of way.

Mostly on the commute.

There’s a lot of thinking time between traffic lights.

And for a bit, I kept coming back to the toy.

I bought one.

I hid it.

We had awkward conversations.

Then, later, we split up.

Put those things in a neat little list and it’s tempting to make the toy the problem.

It wasn’t.

Not gonna lie, blaming an object would have been easier.

The harder answer was that I’d got very good at avoiding conversations until they became much bigger than they needed to be.

And the toy was just one example of it.

The Sock Drawer Was Never Really About the Sock Drawer:

I’ve written before about hiding my first male sex toy in the sock drawer.

Behind the socks.

Like a criminal mastermind with an extremely limited imagination.

At the time, I thought the ridiculous bit was where I’d hidden it.

Looking back, that wasn’t really the point.

The point was that I’d decided hiding it was easier than having a conversation with someone I loved.

Charlie and I had been together a long time. We knew each other well.

But there were still things I found difficult to say.

Especially around sex.

Especially if saying them meant admitting I didn’t have everything figured out.

That was the bit I struggled with.

I’d grown up with the usual bloke stuff.

Men want sex.

Men know what they’re doing.

Men don’t need to sit down and discuss how they feel about any of it.

Obviously, none of that is particularly useful when you’re in an actual adult relationship.

But knowing something is nonsense and completely unlearning it are two different things.

So I kept quiet.

And every time I kept quiet, keeping quiet got easier.

I Was More Worried About Looking Unsure Than Being Honest:

Buying my first toy should probably have been the warning sign.

I’ve already admitted that my first male sex toy sat in my basket for three weeks.

Three weeks.

I’ve made quicker decisions about sofas.

The problem wasn’t whether I wanted to try it.

I did.

The problem was everything I thought that curiosity might say about me.

Would she think I was bored?

Would I look needy?

Would I look strange?

And underneath all of that was probably the biggest one:

Would I have to admit I didn’t actually know exactly what I wanted?

That bothered me more than it should have.

I think I’d confused confidence with certainty.

As if being comfortable in myself meant already having every answer.

So instead of saying, “I saw this and I’m curious about it,” I researched things privately.

I bought privately.

I tried things privately.

Then I hid the evidence.

Very mature.

Here’s what I know now.

Being curious wasn’t the problem.

The Breakup Was About More Than Sex:

I want to be careful here because relationships rarely end because of one thing.

Ours certainly didn’t.

I’m not going to pretend there was one dramatic argument where someone pointed at a sex toy and the credits rolled.

It was more ordinary than that.

Which, in some ways, is harder.

We’d got into habits.

I avoided difficult conversations.

She had her own ways of dealing with things.

Sometimes we’d both know something needed talking about and somehow spend an entire evening discussing what to have for tea instead.

Very efficient.

The problem was that I started recognising my behaviour around the toy in other parts of our relationship.

Something bothered me.

I’d say I was fine.

I wanted something.

I’d wait for her to guess.

I felt unsure.

I’d make a joke.

Then enough time would pass that bringing it up felt awkward, so I’d leave it a bit longer.

That works brilliantly until it doesn’t.

At some point, I stopped asking myself whether buying the toy had been wrong.

It clearly hadn’t.

I started asking a more uncomfortable question.

Why had I found it so difficult to tell the person I loved what was going on in my head?

That one took longer.

What I’d Do Differently Now:

I’m not suddenly brilliant at difficult conversations.

That would be an impressive turnaround.

I still occasionally rehearse a sentence in my head twelve times before saying something fairly normal.

But there are a few things I’d do differently.

I’d say it while it was still small

I wouldn’t wait until something had become A Conversation.

I’d just say it.

“I saw this and wondered what you thought.”

That’s it.

No PowerPoint.

No dramatic announcement.

No waiting for the perfect moment that mysteriously never arrives.

I wouldn’t treat curiosity like criticism

This was a big one for me.

I thought suggesting something new automatically meant saying what we already had wasn’t good enough.

I don’t think that anymore.

Wanting to try something together doesn’t have to mean there’s a problem.

Sometimes curiosity is just curiosity.

I’d leave room for a no

This matters.

If I brought something up with a partner now, I’d want it to be a conversation rather than a sales pitch.

They might like the idea.

They might be unsure.

They might not fancy it at all.

All three are reasonable answers.

Nobody owes enthusiasm just because the other person has finally found the courage to mention something.

I’d stop treating awkwardness like failure

Some conversations are awkward.

There we are.

I spent years trying to avoid that feeling as if thirty seconds of embarrassment was going to finish me off.

It didn’t.

Usually the build-up was worse than the conversation itself.

If I Was Trying Something With a Partner Now:

One thing I definitely wouldn’t do is buy a load of stuff and present it as a solution to relationship problems.

A sex toy isn’t couples counselling.

But if we’d talked and both wanted to try something together, I’d keep the first choice fairly simple.

There are loads of sex toys for couples, and I think I’d approach them very differently now.

I’d browse together.

That sounds obvious.

It apparently wasn’t obvious to 38-year-old me.

Toys to Consider:

Something like the Cupio Remote Controlled Adjustable Love Ring would make sense to me because it feels like a shared choice rather than something that belongs to one person.

A vibrating ring is also the sort of category I’d have found much less intimidating when I was starting out.

If we both wanted to try something a bit more purpose-built for sharing, I’d look at something like the Partner Up – Triple Motor Couple’s Toy.

Again, the product isn’t really the important bit here.

The important bit is being able to look at something together and say: “What do you reckon?”

That tiny question is probably healthier than all the private Googling I used to do.

Water-based lube helped more than I expected when I first started trying toys.

Possibly the least exciting sentence I’ve ever written on a sex shop website.

But there we are.

It makes things more comfortable, and I’d rather say that plainly than pretend every recommendation needs to be exciting.

Five Things I Know Now That I Didn’t Then:

1. Buying a sex toy wasn’t betraying my relationship.

Being curious about my own pleasure didn’t mean Charlie had failed somehow.

2. Hiding something because I was embarrassed didn’t remove the embarrassment.

It just delayed the conversation.

3. Suggesting something new didn’t automatically mean something was wrong.

That was a story I’d invented in my own head.

4. My partner was allowed her own reaction.

Interested, uncertain, not interested at all.

Consent isn’t somebody agreeing because they can see how nervous I was asking.

5. Talking earlier would usually have been easier.

Not always comfortable.

Just easier.

I wish I’d understood that distinction sooner.

I Don’t Regret the Toy:

I don’t regret buying my first toy.

Oddly enough, that little purchase taught me quite a lot.

I regret acting like my curiosity had to be kept separate from the person I was sharing my life with.

And I regret assuming that silence was somehow kinder than honesty.

Would one better conversation have saved our relationship?

I don’t know.

Probably too neat, that.

Relationships are more complicated than one sock drawer and one bloke who wasn’t very good at saying what he meant.

But I do know what I’d change now.

I’d rather say something slightly awkward while it’s still small than explain six months later why I never said it at all.

That feels a bit more grown up.

Still awkward.

Just less hidden.