For good or bad, given how intertwined we are with our digital devices, sexting has become relatively common especially among the more digitally inclined natives. For some it’s merely flirting; for others, it can be a form of harassment. People who sext probably view it as harmless, fun, even akin to foreplay. Non-sexters will probably think the opposite. One thing is certain: like sex, sexting is here to stay.
‘In case you hadn’t guessed, we did not go on to have sex’
Like picking up after your dog or being attracted to men, sexting is inherently undignified. It is an admission of vulnerability. You are so desperately horny that you are prepared to risk being screen-grabbed and becoming a meme. So horny that you are putting your fate in the hands of a stranger with a username like “sane, sorted and hung”.
A few years ago I was in the bath when a series of Instagram DMs became heated. Inevitably, the man I was messaging asked if I had any videos to share. The bath’s steam had dulled my phone screen’s responsiveness, and in my jabbing I somehow failed to select anything titillating from my archive, instead alighting upon a video I’d recently taken minutes after experimenting with budget Botox on the advice of a so-called friend.
The aesthetician had applied her needle with all the care and precision of someone stabbing the film lid of a microwave meal with a fork. Unnerved, I’d run to her bathroom and discovered five raised pustules of Botox on my forehead, bleeding slightly at each wound. Concerned that she may have immobilised my face, I’d taken a video in selfie mode, attempting a variety of expressions: scrunching my eyes, baring my teeth, performing a dead-eyed grimace. The result was so abjectly terrifying that it could have launched a new horror genre. Instead I had sent it in response to the question: “Got any hot vids?”
I had a vague sense that you could unsend an Instagram DM, but no idea how, so started jabbing at my steamy screen. Nothing happened so I then wasted precious seconds Googling it. When I returned to Instagram my disgrace was complete. Under the video was displayed the most terrifying word in the English language: “Seen”. After all, is there anything more devastating than being truly seen?
In case you hadn’t guessed, we did not go on to have sex. I don’t know what the moral of #mystruggle is. Don’t get cheap Botox? Don’t sext in the bath? Don’t admit to the whole disaster in a newspaper? No, you’re right. Definitely the last one. Joe Stone
‘Faking it has never been easier than over sext, but does that make it wrong?’
It was 6pm on a Sunday night, and I was hanging out my laundry when the man I had just starting dating started sexting me. I didn’t want to offend him but it was my first free moment of the day and, well, I really needed to hang it up. So because I’m a good multitasker, it seemed fine to do both.
At first he started listing everything he wanted to do to me, while I was simply wondering why I had so few matching socks. “Something something, he was hard” he wrote. “Something something f*** me”. My radiator was now lined with socks and knickers.
He was moving deeper, he said. I was moving to the towel rail in my bathroom. He was picturing me on top of him, and I told him to put his hands on my breasts while I hung up one of my few matching pairs – pink, covered in hamburgers – trying to remember why I ever bought them.
He was close, he said. As was I, realising I only had a few bits left in my basket. Then he sent me a photo. Barely looking at it, I responded with an old one I must have sent to someone else a few years ago. Gibberish followed then his final message: “I came.” I hung up my final sock and, in the spirit of honesty, replied: “I’ve finished too.”
Sexting is tricky but it’s also worryingly not. He had been in the mood but although I was busy, and tired, I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I wasn’t. I needn’t have worried – it transpires none of this matters. Faking it has never been easier than over sext. But does that make it wrong? In all honesty, I don’t think it does. His libido needed tending to, and so did my wet knickers – just not in the way he wanted. Olivia Petter
‘It was time to unleash my secret weapon in the war against getting ditched …’
You can always tell when a situationship is on the skids, as your most-messaged WhatsApp contact slowly becomes someone who says they’ll “catch up with you soon!”. I knew it was the case with Liz when she got a new tattoo and didn’t tell me until it was already half-healed.
I met Liz online during the weird post-lockdown months when I decided to embrace the queerdom I’d been suppressing since I first encountered Tatu and H&M flannel shirts. In short: I was done with chasing emotionally unavailable men ... it was time to chase emotionally unavailable women! Liz was gorgeous, self-absorbed, and messed me around just enough to keep me on the hook for months. Then, when I felt her pulling away, I decided it was time to unleash my secret iPhone weapon in the war against getting ditched: a triptych of semi-nude pics, apparently to show her my own tattoos but, well, I was in a bra.
Liz said I looked hot (hello serotonin!), but conversation quickly turned back to assorted millennial malaise. The problem is, when you get that sense that something’s over, you’re usually right. A few weeks later, it was.
Over the past few years, though, other dating dramas have wiped the Liz situation away – and when I think about Liz now, I feel far less embarrassed: not only was she a hoot, I remembered that I had been indoors for two years and just wanted to connect with people again. The main thing is she said I looked hot, even if she was just being nice. Chloe Davies
‘I took one of me in the bath – can’t go wrong with the bath, right?’
I’ve tried sexting twice. The first time, my girlfriend and I were staying in separate houses during the first Covid lockdown and we were at that early stage in the relationship when we were still pretending to be open-minded. She suggested we exchange nude photos, though she phrased it better than that, and I said OK.
I took one of me in the bath – you can’t go wrong with the bath, right? You’re supposed to be naked there anyway, so it felt plausible. The refraction of the water also helped disguise some of the lockdown weight I’d gained. The main issue I had was my facial expression. What face do you pull in a nude? I went for a slight smile. It was an expression that said: “This is the best I can do.”
My girlfriend was better at it than me. She didn’t include her face in the shot – very smart. But she did add a timer so that the images disappeared after only a few seconds, which wasn’t so helpful. Not that I blamed her at all; in our social isolation we had both become paranoid about online privacy. I think we both imagined some kind of Isabel Oakeshott figure leaking it all to the public and ruining our lives.
So then we agreed to try doing it text-based – ye olde sexting – which sounded better to me. I am technically a writer by trade. Trouble is, I have never found this process to be erotic. Also, you get one draft. “You’re not into this, are you?” my girlfriend said. “To be honest, no,” I replied. And so we went for plan C – waiting for the lockdown to end. Alfie Packham
‘I wrote out a paragraph detailing “our first time”, no details spared’
In college, it seemed starting driving lessons was the done thing. Whether you wanted to drive or not, it was a sign you were moving into adulthood.
So when my parents gifted me my first driving lesson for my 17th birthday, I forced myself to be ecstatic. Chris seemed like a nice enough instructor. We didn’t talk much during lessons except for formalities.
Around the same time, I got into my first relationship. In school I’d always dreamed of having a boyfriend so when the day finally came I was over the moon.
What this meant too, of course, was intimacy. Being one of the last in my friendship group to have sex, I knew they’d be waiting to hear the good news, so when it happened my first instinct was to text them all. I wrote out a paragraph detailing our first time, no details spared. Then I copied and pasted the paragraph and sent it to the most recent iMessage threads with my girl friends. It wasn’t so much a sext message as a text focused on sex. Except my most recent chat was actually with my driving instructor, and I had sent him my sex story as well.
Obviously I panicked – the worst thing you can do in these situations – and instead of playing it cool, I immediately sent him another text claiming that I didn’t write that text, and I don’t know how it had appeared in our thread. A minute went by. And another. Then 10. I couldn’t take the radio silence from him any longer.
“Hi Chris, I’ve decided I’ll no longer be continuing with driving lessons, thank you. Best wishes, Adele.” He replied immediately: “OK no worries.” Needless to say, I didn’t learn to drive for another three years. Adele Walton
‘I had to manually rotate my phone to understand his artistic vision’
It was not the view that I had been expecting, when I started following the signs to “punto panoramico”. My friend and I were on a day trip to the seaside town of Cefalù, towards the end of a month in Sicily. Being freelance means I can work remotely, and we both thought that our post-pandemic soul-searching might be more fruitful with some sunshine.
My friend and I could not believe our luck, crowing to one other every day about our “summer of Eat, Pray, Love”. But by week three, the “love” part was ranking even lower than “pray”.
On arrival in Palermo, I had promptly downloaded Bumble. I changed my profile from “looking for a relationship” to “looking for a tour guide” and waited for the offers of swordfish dinners and Vespa rides to come rolling in.
Sicily proved as lacklustre as London; I just got ghosted by much hotter men. A man with movie-star looks sent me pictures of the figs that grew at his beach house. When I suggested meeting in person, he vanished. One student with whom I’d had a brief chat about Gramsci had just left for the other side of the island. Another was crewing a yacht that wouldn’t be back in Palermo before my departure.
If my matches were hard to pin down, requests for nudes came thick and fast. With 10 days to go before my return to London, I resolved to concentrate my energies on eating, and a bit of praying. In Cefalù, my friend and I checked out the cathedral – a triumph of Arab-Norman Palermo – then set out towards the lookout, offering a panoramic view over the Tyrrhenian sea.
Looking out, I reflected on how grateful I was to have had this month with my old friend – before I was rudely interrupted by a notification from Bumble. It was the yachtsman getting in touch with not a dick pic, but a dick clip, filmed at an 180-degree angle so that I had to manually rotate my phone to understand his artistic vision. From what I could see of his quarters on board the boat, it looked less than luxurious. I told my friend, and her face contorted in horror. “Don’t you just love Italian cinema,” I said. We hiked back down the hill, to get a spritz. Elle Hunt