There’s a question you can ask during sex that can lead to a communication trainwreck, despite your best intentions. “What do you like?” On the surface, it seems like a great way to find out what brings a smile to your partner’s face and show consideration for their preferences and needs. And in some situations,
One of the biggest relationship challenges that people struggle with is emotional flooding. It’s something that happens to everyone sometimes, and if you don’t know how to respond to it, it can escalate conflict and create disconnection. Fortunately, many of the steps you can take to resolve it are pretty simple. Not necessarily easy, but
1 in 3 cisgender women in the US will have an abortion at some point in their lifetime. For such a widely-shared experience, the stigma associated with it keeps most people silent about it. Instead, we get polarized political fights that don’t leave much room for individual stories. That comes from both sides of the
Let’s start by acknowledging one thing. Talking about emotions can be hard. It takes practice to be able to tune into them, to describe them in ways that other people can understand, to listen to them and figure out what they need, and to hold onto the complexity of multiple simultaneous (and sometimes, contradictory) feelings.
Have you ever woken up the morning after an amazing night and just felt terrible? Maybe you felt emotionally tender or raw. Maybe it seemed like everything was just a little bit off. Or maybe you were irritable, cranky, or withdrawn. However it showed up for you, there’s a chance that you were dealing with
Here’s a question I got in my inbox: I am a guy in a polyamorous relationship with a woman who is rather more experienced than I am in the poly world, and in terms of threesomes, group sex, etc. We’re planning on having a threesome soon, and potentially a foursome with another couple. I know
All relationships are going to have friction and conflict. There’s no way to avoid that. But one of the ways that relationships get stuck is when we try to avoid the disagreements and conflicts. It happens all the time: “I don’t want to say anything and make my partner angry.” “It’s not a big deal.
The title of this post comes from the book Hold Tight Gently: Michael Callen, Essex Hemphill, and the Battlefield of AIDS. One of the tricky skills you need to create satisfying romantic/sexual relationships is being able to balance the need for connection and the need for individuality. Each of them is essential, though every person
One of the things I’ve learned as a sexuality educator and coach is that it’s really easy to spend a lot of time talking about sex, pleasure, consent, and communication without actually changing anything. You can say something like, “It’s important to tell your partner when they do something you don’t enjoy,” but let’s be
I have something I need to admit to you. I make mistakes. Yes, I know that’s hardly a revelation. After all, everyone does. But it’s something I need to start with because when I make mistakes, I want to be called in. Defining Calling In You’re probably familiar with the concept of being “called out.”
Do you want to know the key to sexual empowerment? It’s learning to step out of compliance and into consent. The Roots of Sexual Compliance The reason that sexual compliance is such a challenge for almost everyone is that compliance is woven into us from our very beginnings. When we’re infants, people need to do
As part of my accountability process, I have taken down my post Consent Accidents and Consent Violations. I used this post to gaslight a former partner and my communities, and to control the narrative around a consent violation my former partner experienced with someone else. As requested by some of the people who contacted my
