boundaries

What do or might you want to do, not want to do or aren’t sure about when it comes to sex with a partner? Take stock with this awesomely in-depth list.

What someone likes or doesn’t like, both in general and more specifically as it relates to pleasure, is an intensely personal thing. As much as we sometimes like to pretend this isn’t true, there just aren’t universals about certain activities that Every Single Person Ever absolutely loves, or…

You know people really are all very different, and usually when we try to compare one partner with those of our past we miss the mark by a long shot because of those differences. So lets break your question down into a few different parts and take things one at a time. Let’s take the big question…

Anna, I’m sorry to hear that you’re in this tough situation right now. You really like having your friend as just a friend and want to keep it that way whereas she would prefer a more sexual relationship. You don’t want to hurt her feelings but you also don’t want to keep having sex! While we…

From both our personal experiences of our own varied sex lives, and in our work in sexuality with many other people, it seems pretty clear that really letting someone into an internal space in your body, or going into someone else’s insides – which we know might sound a little gross, but that is what’s going on with this stuff – is a fairly big deal for many people. So, what might make sexual entry different from other sexual activities?

I’d like to focus this on the three primary issues you brought up here: your need for basic physical affection, your problem with upholding your own boundaries, and your ideas about how without intercourse, the sex you or anyone else are having cannot possibly satisfy either of you. On all of those…

Frankly, if I had a partner – at any age – who, from the onset, was trying to talk his way out of cooperating with managing risks, risks that I would bear the greatest burden of, I wouldn’t just insist on a condom. I would insist on not being sexual with that person at all. I – and you – deserve…

Unfortunately, some women don’t know or understand when they’re carrying around double-standards when it comes to being ready for sex. You’re not the first guy to ask this question or be in this situation. Just like it is for women, guys are not somehow automatically ready for sex any time their…

As always with a question such as this, I find myself wishing that I could throw out the cliché phrase “You just know.” The problem with cliché’s of course being that they don’t often really answer anything. So let’s take a minute to break things down together. Readiness is a very loaded term, and…

It sounds to me like your best bet would just be getting away from this dope. You’re noticing changes in his behavior: he doesn’t seem to be as sweet and nice anymore. Despite making clear that you’re just not comfortable having any kind of sex with him, he’s pushing it and also seems to be trying…