In a world full of one-size-fits-all sex and dating advice, This Is Supposed to Be Fun is a refreshing guide to understanding, celebrating, and challenging your unique needs and desires. Whether youre on all the apps or just looking to be in a sexier relationship with yourself, this book cuts through the complexity without ever flattening into stereotypes. Its a pleasure!
Ann Friedman, New York Times bestselling coauthor of Big Friendship
Its hard to stick out in the deluge of dating books that exist in the world promising to help you find the one, but This Is Supposed to Be Fun does just that. Full of practical advice and prompts that encourage readers to get to the heart of their most authentic desires, this book is informative, realistic, and, most importantly, fun. This Is Supposed to Be Fun includes an in-depth analysis of how identityespecially race and genderimpacts your experience with dating, which is a welcome perspective shift given most accepted dating wisdom merely suggests the problem is you. I found myself not only enjoying the book but listing in my head all the friends I must send it to.
Samhita Mukhopadhyay, former executive editor, Teen Vogue
Myisha Battle brings deep compassion, true sex positivity, and respect for the role of pleasure-filled growth to the increasingly automated search for love and partnership. In this engaging and wonderfully written guide to dating and relationship-building, youll find everything: a discussion of sexual values and compatibility, real talk about diversity issues and dating racism, and youll learn how to extract the positive messages within rejection (and how to do no harm when you have to reject someone else). If youve regarded dating more as torment than as a personal-growth activity, you must pick up this book.
Carol Queen, PhD, Good Vibrations Staff Sexologist
This Is Supposed to Be Fun offers the first comprehensive, how-to guide for dating in the digital age, a time when the prospect of putting oneself out there can be daunting if not downright scary. Battle puts control back in the hands of daters, teaching them to think about what they want and how to get it, and how to become more connected to each other by first connecting deeply with themselves. There is no subject that goes unexamined, from flirting, to ghosting, and everything in between the sheets. This thoughtful, humane book reminds me, in a good way, of the sex-positive guides I snuck off my parents shelves in the 1970s, but This Is Supposed to Be Fun addresses the sea change that has happened in the ensuing fifty years. Battle is an insightful voice of reason for those who feel lost in the wilderness of modern dating.
Nancy Jo Sales, author of Nothing Personal
Copyright 2023 by Myisha Battle
Cover design by Chin-Yee Lai
Cover image copyright Art Kovalenco/Shutterstock.com
Cover copyright 2023 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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First Edition: January 2023
Published by Seal Press, an imprint of Perseus Books, LLC, a subsidiary of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Seal Press name and logo is a trademark of the Hachette Book Group.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Battle, Myisha, author.
Title: This is supposed to be fun : how to find joy in hooking up, settling down, and everything in between / Myisha Battle.
Description: First edition. | New York : Seal Press, 2023. | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022020439 | ISBN 9781541602212 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781541602137 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Dating (Social customs) | Online dating.
Classification: LCC HQ801 .B3429 2023 | DDC 306.73dc23/eng/20220518
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022020439
ISBNs: 9781541602212 (hardcover), 9781541602137 (ebook)
E3-20221213-JV-NF-ORI
I thought this was supposed to be fun. The words hung heavy as my client Koya described the anxiety she was having about sorting through her matches on Bumble, a popular dating app. Everything felt so confusing and overwhelming. One minute she was chatting with a guy about pizza and the next he had unmatched her, disappearing completely from the chat. One guy asked for her number immediately after they had started chatting because he didnt want to check his messages on the app, and another was flooding her inbox with missives like Good morning, beautiful, every single day, even though they hadnt met in person yet! This wasnt the first time she had attempted to date, but it had been years since she had invested herself in the process of trying to find a partner, or at the very least someone with whom she could have a stimulating conversation and hook up occasionally. And now she was second-guessing whether she should be trying at all.
As a sex and dating coach, I have worked with so many clients, like Koya, who are disillusioned with modern dating and unsure if they have the fortitude to get through all that is now required. The pervasiveness of app-based dating and the cultural shift away from meeting people organically in day-to-day life has set folks up for unique challenges when it comes to finding love, sex, and everything in between. If youre new to dating, figuring out where to start may seem daunting. And if this isnt your first time dating, you know that opting in means dealing with some flat-out fuckery, like ghosting, dead-end dates, and hooking up only to be let down by utterly unsatisfying sex. Maybe your experiences havent been all bad; you just wish there was more of the good stuff, like connection, laughter, amazing sex, feeling seen and heard, and being truly on the same page with the people youre dating.
I can empathize with wherever you are in the process, because, like you, I had to commit to and navigate through what we now call dating to get what I wanted. I had dates that left me wondering, What the fuck just happened?! and I met some amazing people with whom Im still in touch. Ive been ghosted, stood up, slut-shamed, negged, misled, cheated on, emotionally played with, and generally disappointed. And I have to say, Ive done my fair share of these things as well. But Ive also fallen in love multiple times, learned about my sexuality, opened myself up to experiences and people I wouldnt have before, and confronted deeply held beliefs about what a good relationship looks and feels like for me.