sex

Once, in a sleepless night of Netflix marathoning, someone said something on a show that stuck with me, despite the rest of the night being an unmemorable haze of insomnia. That was, “What’s so wonderful about being young is that there are no mistakes, only research.” As someone who works with young…

Assuming that you’re engaging in manual sex – hands or fingers engaged with your genitals, fingering being one term for that – to express or explore your sexual feelings or desires, fingering IS sex. Just like intercourse can be sex, just like oral sex can be sex, just like full-body massage can…

Many men – and people of all genders – will not and do not wait until marriage to engage in various kinds of sex with partners. That’s as true now as it was 20 or 50 years ago. For at least the last 100 years in the west, most people do engage in some kind of genital sexual activities with…

I want to first tell you a few things you should know are true. Whatever it turns out your sexuality and relationships are like, whatever it turns out you want from them, they’re about much, much more than your abuse. Because we’ve been abused doesn’t mean either or both of those things will be all…

Before anything else, one very important thing for you to know is that if you’re underage, making and/or sending nude or sexually explicit pictures could be a felony for both of you. In the United States, those images of legal minors are considered child pornography, and his asking you for them…

We talk about this a lot here at Scarleteen: virginity isn’t physical or anything that can be universally proven or disproven with body parts. It’s an intellectual concept, an idea, a belief, and perhaps most accurately, a word for identity some people use, usually to identify when they or others…

The excitement of everything early in a relationship can be one of the most amazing feelings ever. Everything is perfect! Your partner is adorable! Everything about this person is endearing! You always get along! Everything feels so easy and natural! You both have permanent goofy grins pasted on…

I’m always so glad when I hear from someone clearly thinking ahead, who wants to establish sexual communication and boundaries early on, rather than after boundaries have been crossed or well after communication was needed. Well done! Kudos to you for planning to take the initiative yourself, rather…

The core of what you’re asking about is a biggie, one whole books have been written about. As someone who tends to be verbose, I could certainly write you a book, but I’ll spare you an encyclopedia, aim for a summary and will probably land somewhere in between. Based on what you posted, I don’t see…

It’s up to you to decide if this was sex and if this had anything to do with virginity. What I can do to help you with that is give you some definitions, backgrounds and perspective on those terms, some advice on making sexual choices in alignment with what you really want and feel ready for and…