How To Have A Fling With Yourself

As the temperature rises, we're entering Flingwatch, a season of summer dates, self-reflection and sex, sex, sex, baby... 

We're starting with something a little bit different. Where our heads might usually swim with the anticipation of a text back and the dopamine swirl of skin on skin after pandemic years of self-seclusion, we’re turning inwards to focus on our first, true love. It's time to have an affair with yourself. 

Not everyone knows how to enjoy being single. Hardly surprising when being in a relationship is upheld as the ultimate goal for all of us, from Disney movies to auntie inquisitions at family gatherings. The truth is, you don't need to be single to date yourself. Practicing self-love is just that: an act that must be practiced and long lazy evenings, dappled in warm shadows, are the perfect setting to become devoted to ‘me, myself and I’. 

Here are our starting points for falling in love with yourself:

1. Reject the rush. Deliberately miss the first train home from work that you’d usually dash through the station to catch. Sit in the nearest patch of sun, feel its warmth suffuse your cheeks and think of absolutely nothing at all.
   
   
2. Give yourself a hand. Tuck yourself in for an early night and instead stay up late, languorously listening to a Dipsea story or replaying one of your most sensual memories in your head. Discover a new fantasy or slip deep into an old favourite, with no end point in mind. Break out the lube that you usually save for heated moments with the one who makes your heart sing and DMs ping and watch an authentically intimate, fairly produced erotic film on CHEEX.
   
   
3. Fuck idioms (and Amazon). Pick a book entirely based on its cover. Wander your local library and stroke the spines. Swoon for deep blues and gold accents written by names you’ve never heard of and dip into their story.
   
   
4. Be your own simp. When a mate asks how you are, hype yourself as much as you do your mediocre app matches (and mean it).
   
   
5. Run away. Get the cheapest train/coach to the nearest seaside and eat chips for one. Dip your toes in the rippling ocean and feel the tingling cold right to your bones, then hop back squealing. Take a photo of your nicest towel laid flat-ish on the sand or stones, a canned wine or the fanciest fizzy orange the corner shop offered sweating in the haze. Resist sharing to Stories with a pithy caption and send it to your mum instead.
   
   
6. Write a love letter. Test a rainbow of pens in Paperchase on your lunch break, with your own name where you’d usually dreamily scrawl a lover’s.
   
   
7. Decide on ‘your song’. AKA the one that makes you feel wholly, completely yourself. Whenever you hear it from now on, it’ll be a reminder that you are, as Lizzo preached, 100% that bitch.
   
   
8. Take the ultimate relationship test. Go to IKEA alone, have an internal argument over which rug to buy, eat Daim bar cake/meatballs/vegan hot dogs with abandon and return home exhausted. Collapse on the sofa amongst bags of Swedish treats, cuddly toys and homewares that sound like a famous porn star. (No one can convince us Pysslingar isn't a blue movie legend, but a clothing storage system).
   
   
9. Feel it. Move your body, as gently or as wildly as you wish. Stretch up and over your head to the moon, and down to the earth beneath.  

How are you practising self-lust? Tell us over on Instagram...