Dating diaries: "I was lying there, naked in his bed, feeling furious and embarrassed."

I was lying there naked in his bed, freezing cold, mouthing to myself in the darkness: ‘How did I get here?’

I’m not sure who I was more angry at, him or myself.

I’d let it get to this point. I’d decided to overlook all the warning signs and wish for something I knew I wouldn’t get.

We’d met at a friend’s birthday one night. It was dark, we were both single, it was somewhat inevitable before we ever arrived.

At first, I’m not even sure I liked him that much.

He was tall and good looking. He wasn’t exceptionally interesting. But he was someone who girls liked, and for some reason, there was something magnetic about that.

I spent the night with him, talking about nothing in particular, and eventually he asked me back to his house.

Sometimes when you’re lonely, you just do things to feel something. I think that’s how I can explain that night.

We had sex. It’s difficult to determine whether it was exceptional or abominable, because nothing about it was real. I wasn’t there, really. I was watching myself from above, trying to make the right sounds, imitating the person I imagined he would want to sleep with.

It should have ended there. It was clear he wasn’t particularly interested in me, but part of me believed that sex would magically breed the intimacy I actually wanted.

The next Friday night he invited me out to dinner. That’s what I wanted. To be taken out on a proper date, by a person who wanted to impress me. I did my hair and my make up and ran through multiple conversations in my head. He suggested we meet at his house, and then we’d decide where to eat.

When I arrived, he wasn’t hungry. It had been a long day, he grunted.

We laid in his bed, and it became painstakingly clear what I was there for.

After kissing for a few minutes, things escalated, and it appeared we were going to have sub par sex all over again. But it didn’t quite get that far.

He pushed my head down, insinuating he wanted me to do something I didn’t particularly want to do. I went along with it anyway, thinking yet again that this was a bizarre means to an end.

In less than 10 minutes he finished.

And that’s when I found myself completely naked, lying in bed next to someone who had not so much as touched me.

It was cold. I was hungry. He fell asleep and rolled over. I wanted to disappear.

I put my clothes back on, and escaped out the back door.

Sex, I realised, is not a means to anything. For some, it is an end in itself. And if I wanted more, it was time I started demanding it.