I once read an article by a meditation teacher from Thailand. One of the practices he taught was meditating on compassion, in which you learn to sit with compassion for yourself, then your partner, then your family, your friends, your community, and eventually, the world. The idea is that you start in the center and
Relationships are tricky, sometimes. OK, so that isn’t news. But I think there’s a way of looking at the complexities of our relationships that makes them a little easier to understand. When I ask people to describe how relationships work, they often describe them as a connection between two people. It looks something like this:
There are lots of paths to sexual healing. Coaching, therapy, journaling, sexual experimentation, learning about sex and pleasure, reading- all of these can help you understand your unique relationship to sex. But there’s one approach that you might not have considered that has the potential to help you create the sex life you deserve. Embodied
Have you ever noticed how often people talk about sex in terms of the “active partner” and the “passive partner?” It’s a fascinating euphemism, and of course, what they’re referring to is who’s giving and receiving penetration. But separate from the fact that sex doesn’t have to mean penetration, I don’t see any reason to
I have a question for you and I want you to take a moment to sit with it before you answer. Are you ready? What are you afraid to feel? I’m not asking you what physical sensations you dislike. I’m asking you which of your emotions you avoid noticing. What feelings do you find uncomfortable,
How do you know what you really want in bed? When you’re in a sexual situation, what tells you what you want to do, from moment to moment? This is a really important question to think about because that internal sense of your own wants and attractions is where it all begins. It’s the first
Here’s a question that showed up in my in-box today: Sometimes, when my boyfriend and I have anal sex, it’s really fun. But other times, it just doesn’t work. That doesn’t happen when we have regular intercourse. What are we doing wrong? It’s sort of hard to give you a specific answer since there are
One of the themes running through discussions of sex, relationships, and gender is the notion of consent: what it means, what it looks like, how to recognize it, and how to respond to it. I’m really glad to see more conversations about it because consent is the foundation of a happy, thriving sex life. But
I recently received this from a reader: My boyfriend did something that hurt me deeply, and while he has apologized many times and we have talked about it a lot, I can’t seem to let it go. I know this is in no small part because I have a pretty low tolerance for hurt in
I don’t usually use the word foreplay because I think that it reinforces the idea that penis-in-vagina intercourse is the goal of sex and that everything else is there to lead up to it. In my experience, those beliefs encourage male-female couples to get so focused on intercourse as the definition of successful sex that
I get a lot of questions from men who want to be able to approach women and aren’t sure how to do it. Whether they’re interested in socializing, dating, or a sexual connection (not that those are mutually exclusive), there are plenty of guys who would like to do engage with women without being creepy,
Did you know that August is Anal Sex Month? Of course, you don’t need to wait until then to explore anal pleasure. But if you’ve been curious about it or if you’ve tried it and had it not work, this is a great time to get the tips you need to make it hot, safe,
