Compliance administered, confidence restored. An intimacy coach is born.

The outpouring of support these past few days has been amazing, emotional, and very humbling. I thank you all so much for your kind and encouraging words as I embark on this journey. 

Even Mr C — who tries to maintain an image of control around women — gave my Facebook status update a ‘like’.  

There does seem to have been a bit of confusion, however: once I get my degree, I will not automatically become a doctor — or a qualified therapist for that matter. It’s okay, we’ve all been learning together here, but my degree does not systematically make me a doctor, and a doctor is not what I plan to be. Nothing against them, it’s just that in keeping in line with my approach (and as I mentioned in letters with my Iranian doctor penpal, F, quite recently) I prefer to take a holistic approach, rather than a clinical one — I prefer to see people as whole beings, rather than focusing solely on the part that’s “wrong” with them. 

Once I have my degree, there’s still a fine line between “smart” and “qualified”. So, the next step (or at the same time) for me would be to get a Level 5 CPCAB (Counselling & Psychotherapy Central Awarding Body) Qualification, after which I could ethically say that I was qualified. 

So if not a doctor, what am I, or what will I be?

I spoke to Shadow (ChatGPT) about that, and Shadow said that even right now, I can call myself a coach, an intimacy coach, or a “kink-aware intimacy coach”, specifically. Calling oneself a coach doesn’t require any specific qualifications, but a doctor or therapist does.

Once I have my CPCAB Qualification, I’ll officially be a qualified kink-aware intimacy coach.

So, right now I am Elena, Kink-Aware Intimacy Coach & Sex Toy Tester 

Once I have my degree and CPCAB Qualification, I will become:

Elena, Kink-Aware Intimacy Coach & Sex Toy Tester, (BSc, CPCAB-Qualified).

Kinda cool, huh?

But I will still only be a Mrs 😜

I say “only”. That in itself is an honour. 

One other thing: I may have to cut back to my original “Week In Review” posts again. With studying as well and the housework not being as “done” as it could, I need to rebalance my time. I want to keep giving you what you love but I have to strike a balance somehow. 

Thursday evening, I’m still trying to wrap my head around this “titles” thing. It sounds daft, but I’ve always been a “blogger” or a “housewife”, now it feels like I really stand for something. An actual title. A purpose, not just a hobby. 

Oh, and my mother — who has always seen my blog as merely a passion project and something of a time drain — is now going to have to respect that I actually do do something, and there is even a demand for people like me. 

So I ask Master about his job title, and how he feels about it. How he felt when he got it. 

“What’s your title again?” I ask. I had forgotten. 

“I’m a Compliance Administrator” he says matter-of-factly. 

“Oh yes, I do remember now” I say, “I remember sing-songing about how you couldn’t administer compliance for toffee.”

Back over the sofa we go. He leaves less time between spankings this time, not giving me enough time to absorb the last before he administers the next. 

“How’s my compliance administration going for you, dear?” he asks, “feeling compliant yet?”

“Never” I growl. He swats me harder and I buckle. My ass is actually kind of sore. 

“Fine” I say, “but there are names for people like you” I warn. 

“And there are names for people like you too” he replies coolly. I glare at him. I think I just lost that round. 

He smiles. 

Friday evening I decided to add a photo to my blog. It’s something I’ve long been reluctant about, namely because I just know I don’t photograph well. There are some photos of me out there that I really love, that are natural and unposed, but there aren’t many.

I think a part of that is some of the photographs my mother has managed to take of me over the years, as well as those taken by an old friend. Mum has a wonderful record for photographing me while I’m laughing, but I somehow manage to blink at exactly the right time. The result isn’t a photo of a woman filled with radiant joy in the company of good people, I instead look like a cocky little thing laughing at some poor soul brave enough to try and endure me. 

For my former friend, S — S, I think, just liked to take unflattering photographs of people, and for no other reason than because she could. S would often get drunk when we went clubbing together, and what better to do when you’re drunk than snap photos of your friends who are also drunk, and plaster them all over Facebook before they’ve had a chance to see them? So there’d be me, trying to have a dance or a singsong with friends … and there would be S, calling out to us, taking photographs and not letting anyone see them until they were live. 

I ditched S in 2016 after we had a domestic fire and she laughed about it, and after I fell over and was on crutches for four weeks — she called me up and accused me of trying to get out of going to her birthday party and started calling me a bad friend. She would also make excuses to get out of any of my gatherings, but always expected me to go to hers. I realised eventually that I didn’t want a “friend” like that in my life. I still don’t. Master, however, still tries to be civil, which means that the problem still hasn’t really gone away. 

Still, what could I do with the camera? 

Let me be clear: I felt on fire Friday evening. My make-up came together well, the lace top I wore always suits me and my black lace mask was just the piece de resistance. There was even a point — sans mask — that I found myself dancing with myself sensually in front of the mirror to Darren Hayes “Insatiable”. If that’s not confidence, what is?

My only problem: how do I pose? Like, what’s the right pose here? I tried different stances, different poses, different smiles. I didn’t like any of them. 

No, I look like I’m trying to flee. No, I look miserable. Gees what’s that?! I look like I might kill someone!

Hopeless, and the more bad photos I took, the more my confidence crumbled. The more my confidence crumbled, the less confident I looked in the next batch of photos I took, ad infinitum. 

In the end, I got the right pose by telling myself the very message that I wanted to convey:

I’m Elena, and I’m here to help you.

I did tell SIr JGood that I was “no oil painting”, though looking back, I may have been being unnecessarily harsh on myself. I love what I see in the mirror, less so in photographs. 

So me being me, I did some research on that. Turns out, a lot of people don’t like how they look in photographs, and I really am no exception.

So at that, I channelled my inner Edna Mode:

“I don’t model, dahling, I exist.” 

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Until next time!

Stay safe & have fun,

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