Improper Instructions: Looking For Love

This is dedicated to my spartner and lovemate

I’m a married man and I thought I’d give some honest advice as a legitimately successful sex hound to help you - an unloveable romantic - stop being a sad loner. Yes, it is your fault. We can fix it (you).

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Stop Trying to Find Love

Know instead that love will find you, sit on your face, and refuse to apologise. If it’s true that you only find things in the last place you look, you need to look in unusual places - badly, without preparation, and with no understanding of what you’re looking for. Dating apps - whichever vowel-averse cattle markets you happen to dabble in - are full of monsters and should be the last place you go searching. True love must be found behind the back of the sofa.

Think Instead About Being Found

If lost children spent their time marching through the woods with their Elsa-from-Frozen torch and backpack, they’d never be found - they’d just keep missing the search party. You need to think more rationally: to catch a seeker, you must give them the best chance of finding you. My advice would be to doll yourself up and lie in a prominent ditch or alleyway and leave clues to your location like a wounded stag. As ever, be sexy in everything you do (especially the way your body loses hope in the mud).

Don’t Be Yourself

Look, you are no doubt in the depths of despair and know that you are an intrinsically unlovable romantic, catastrophically mistaken - even if no one else is brave enough to reflect your truth. You need to change yourself. From the way you stand, to what you eat, to the laugh you save for things you know you shouldn’t find funny - ignore every instinct; they have only led you astray so far. This is an exercise in discovering who you are - and then abandoning you like a burned-out joyride.

Be Sexy In Everything You Do

You don’t know who is looking at you and when, so just in case, play sexy at every moment you can. On the train? Make erotic noises while you read. Sitting in a library? Make erotic noises while you play with the trains. Filling up your car on a long trip to your great aunt’s funeral? Pretend to fellate the petrol nozzle like any of this has consequences.

Optimise For Fertility

Ultimately, we are all looking for love for one thing: to produce an army of small people that replicate our best features while correcting your most regrettable mistakes. The only way we can do that is to have the strongest swimmers or the most hospitable vaginas - or at least appear that way. Never let a conversation pass without offering an update on your latest PB, and make sure to ask people to touch parts of your body while saying things like, “check out how firm these things are” (it does add to the effect significantly if these things are in any way firm).

Wear Revealing Clothing

Everyone likes to see a bit of flesh, but you don’t have to break the bank or buy the most modern, fashionable cuts of cloth to appeal. Why not try a more DIY look? Just take some scissors and cut holes into every pair of trousers you own, or trim the legs of your jeans to rise higher and show a bit more calf. Turn all your trousers into short shorts in summer, and make space for your nipples to take centre stage for a special night out. Sexy is as sexy does - wield haphazardly, and free your skin.

Slide Into As Many DMs As Internet Throttling Technology Will Allow

Ultimately, it’s a numbers game, and frankly you are struggling to get the digits. What you do have is the World Wide Web at your fingertips, with a convenient button that looks like a little envelope on every profile. Find anyone you would possibly be interested in and slide away. It doesn’t matter what you say - in fact, the odder the better. A casual “hey” just won’t cut it these days. Be vulgar. Don’t hesitate.

…because hesitation is the anathema to romance.

Conduct Market Research

Unless you want to die alone, it is imperative that you drench yourself in the culture of dick pics - they are the modern language of love (or, as the French would call it, la lingua du lingerie). You need to send around 3–20 nude-adjacent images of yourself per day, while receiving double that - at a bare minimum, and double again for bare maximum. Make sure your face is visible in every shot and leave nothing to the imagination, lest they fill in the gaps with a frumpy, unfuckable shadow of who you are lying about being. With so many tools available, you shouldn’t consider sending a potential lover an image without asking a well-trained lovebot for fifty refined drafts. It’s your body, and it deserves to be consumed - so let the chef cook.

Stink Like Hell

Sex boffins (probably virgins) have discovered pherognomes: small, sexy bearded gents who live in your sweaty crevices advertising your suitability to mate. Exploit this. After the gym, before you shower, rub your clean clothes all over yourself so you reek all day and night. Even if you fail to attract a partner, you are festering your own brand of probiotics as a side hustle.

Exercise Your Digestive Tract

Nothing is sexier than regimented, efficient trips to the loo. Optimising your nutritional workflow means bringing gusto to the dinner plate and abandoning the child inside who farts the house down. Gobble down every podcast-endorsed supplement thrown at you; keep on top of cruciferous vegetables (Brussels sprouts, beans, broccoli); stretch meaningfully before every attempted passage renovation; don’t be trapped by the pelvic ceiling, and work for a supple but strong pelvic floor. Finally, know your triggers - and keep your finger on theirs.

Make Sure You Know Everyone’s Preferences Before You Meet Them

The pursuit of love means the pursuit of progeny, and you must ask explicitly at the earliest opportunity - even in small talk between strangers with no romantic intentions - for clarification on this and many more of your own preferences. Be confident and ask early and often about favourite sexual positions, noticeable blemishes, or problems with their genitals. Wonder out loud about someone you do not know well: are they a juicy lover? If you notice symptoms, make enquiries - could an active STD be lingering? It is your duty to filter out unnecessary interactions as soon as you can. Your resources are limited, and it is a waste of everyone’s time to exhaust them on someone who won’t be suitable in five years’ time when it comes to consuming their body for reproductive ends.

Prepare Yourself For The Language

If you follow this advice, love will happen - but you need to know that language has evolved. A “relationship” is so archaic it may as well be painted on a broken vase in silhouette. You are no longer single but “unattached”, an “open vessel”, seeking a “love-chum” or “shag-mate”. Couples are a thing of the past and must be at least a thruple, if not a quadruple, all of whom accrue interest through a shared “quick-access sexual joint account”. The acts of love themselves have updated: the conventional base system (first base, second base, etc.) has been replaced by a flat, non-hierarchical structure of meaningless intimate activities that can be performed in any order. “Holding hands” now means a hand job, while “vaginal sex” is a “non-anal palate cleanser”, and “oral” simply means “a peck on the cheek” (while both partners strangle each other erogenously).

Have You Considered Bringing Up Sexual Acts With People You Already Know?

Sometimes it’s not about finding someone new, but repurposing someone you previously passed over when you weren’t as desperate as you are now. If nothing else, bringing up your passions may spark conversations with people who might recommend you to a friend - or simply give you a well-intentioned pep talk you can, at a push, deposit in the wank bank for withdrawal later.

Dabble In Voodoo

It can’t hurt to give it a go, can it? Or a love potion? Don’t even look one up - just get a lock of hair from someone you fancy and pop it in a smoothie. At the very least, your bowels will thank you, and the experience will give you something to chat about on your next date.

Emulate Your Married Friends

Clearly, they were successful somehow - do exactly as they do. I’d even go so far as to suggest shadowing them. Wear what they wear. Order what they order. Worst comes to worst, you could end up in an accidental threesome.

Lower Your Expectations

If you had zero standards, you could be married next week to your choice of bin. Obviously, we all hope to aim slightly higher. Would you consider a murderer in prison? Someone well past their prime? Or try to shag a politician?

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I hope you can take this advice with a grain of salt - or at least a heaped teaspoon of sweetener if it feels unhelpful because of how painfully apt it is. Remember: you don’t have to be happy - you just have to be realistic.