I’d been talking to David online for a while. He’d caught my eye with his funny, slightly arch OkCupid profile and the sexy way in which he hadn’t included his Meyers-Briggs personality type or star sign. Admittedly, he was also super-hot, and the more we chatted, the more I wanted to see him naked.

"So shall we have a drink then?" he suggested after a few days of back-and-forth.

"Absolutely. Would it be okay if I sent you my sex menu beforehand?" I fired back. I watched the three little dots rising and falling for what felt like an eternity, undulating in a moment of indecision.

"Sorry, your what?" he replied, eventually.

"My sex menu. It’s a guide to how I like to get down. I send it to people I might like to have sex with."

"Yes," replied David promptly. "Send away."

It was my very wise friend Toni who introduced me to the sex menu. She created hers to avoid the tricky, mood-killer conversation about what she didn’t enjoy in bed. The menu, she reasoned, could be a way of sidestepping the underwhelming sex we too often have to endure with new partners.

Her menu is broken down into three categories: "Things I Love," "Things I Don’t," and "Things I’m Curious About." There are stars next to the things that make her orgasm, and she also has a little introduction characterizing her general sexual outlook — because, well, she’s just that much of a badass. As a lover of both thoroughly well-organized Google Docs and freaky sex things, I decided to write my own menu.

The sex menu is a simple idea, but it's pretty revolutionary. When was the last time you did a thorough inventory of all your kinks and desires and really focused on the kind of sex you’d like to be having? We routinely evaluate our feelings and goals relating to, say, work or physical fitness, but we rarely afford the same level of analysis to our sex lives. Writing a sex menu gives your desires the headspace they deserve and puts the emphasis firmly on what actually works for you.