It dawned on me that I had been raised to be pretty and passive.

I also finally admitted just how much I hated, truly hated, my body, the very vessel I wanted to give me pleasure. I looked back on my sexual experiences to date and realised I was incapable of asking for what I wanted in bed (and not so great out of it, to be fair). I was able to make some pretty exciting stuff happen in my working life, yet when it came to men I was insecure, drunk and frequently hysterical. I struggled with taking the lead and, after a few more attempts, he “dumped” me. A few days later he came over and we had a go, but I needed a lot of alcohol for courage and found it hard to give a handjob while holding a book. I bought us both a copy of the Complete Idiot’s Guide to Tantric Sex. It wasn’t my most articulate moment, and I was wearing a cagoule and a woolly hat. One night, I asked a friend if he might like to do some tantric sex with me.

It wasn’t as glamorous as it sounds: I was off on a mission, but I didn’t know how to go about it, or have anyone to practise on. One night, I asked an actor friend if he might like to do some tantric sex with me. Also, I finally admitted to myself that I didn’t just want to have sex with men. If this was true, I’d been seriously underperforming. I read somewhere that women are capable of 14 different types of orgasm. And I wanted to really explore my own pleasure. I was a bit terrified of the penis, not really sure what I was supposed to do with it. I wanted to break sex down to put it back together again, learn how and where I liked to be touched, and similarly how to touch a man. I felt that for a long time sex had been caught up in speedy routines, me often being moved around like an Ikea sofa. The first thing that came to mind was slow sex. I’d never actually asked myself this before, so I wrote a list. I didn’t want to get what I’d always got when it came to sex. My friend has a saying: if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got. I was willing, keen even, but an actor in it, rather than a writer or director of the show. It occurred to me that sex was something that was done to me. I had probably only skimmed the top of how amazing it could be.

In my 35 years, I felt I’d never really got to grips with sex. I was hardly raising sex to some divine art form, sat there alone with my laptop in bed.

Getting in touch with your sexuality