self-esteem

As anyone who works in sex education or sexuality can tell you, when it comes to the questions people ask us, variations on the theme of “Am I normal?” reign supreme. I just spent a half hour going through our advice question queue, doing a search on each page for the word “normal.” At the moment…

Your boyfriend sounds awesome. And how quickly he ejaculates right now really doesn’t have to present any problems if neither of you treat it like a problem. Just so you know, a lot of sex educators and therapists have big problems with the term and concept of “premature ejaculation” (PE) as it’s…

(Porte’s question continued) I’m ashamed of my body. I’m scared of showing him. All my life I’ve been made fun of for being ‘fat’ my whole life basically. I don’t care what people say about me anymore (usually) and I like myself. Kinda. I don’t think of myself as like…this huge chick who stuffs…

I don’t think that how we feel emotionally is ever about a matter of rights. We cannot control what we feel, after all: we can only control how we process, hold, express and manage our feelings. You feel upset: whether or not you or anyone else thinks you have a right to have those feelings, there…

Libido – the desire for sex of any given kind – is a very complex thing, much like sex and sexuality are complex. It’s emotional, it’s intellectual, it’s chemical and physiological, it’s both personal and interpersonal, it’s spiritual, it’s metaphysical, it’s historical, it’s aspirational. Our…

It’s normal for a woman’s body to respond to anything she finds pleasurable, and every woman’s body responds in similar yet different ways. What you’re really talking about here is arousal. What we know about sexual response is that there is a basic cycle – generally referred to as the sexual…

I think the easiest way for the two of you to get out of the cycle about arguing about this is to take it off the table for right now. Here’s what I hear: • I hear that he is feeling conflicted about whether or not he is ready, in many ways. However, it sounds like most of what he is saying is that…

Erin’s question continued And I said it wasn’t that I didn’t want to, but that I should at least wait until I get on birth control or something. And he started begging, so I said we could do anything except for that. And then he told me nothing else would be good enough, and got really angry and…

Bravo to you for loving the way your girlfriend looks and seeing her beauty, both inner and outer! The truth of the matter is that many women are uncomfortable with their bodies and this starts at an amazingly young age. We (of all genders, though women are often targeted) are bombarded with media…

(CMH’s question continued) He likes petite girls, as do most guys. I am tall (for a woman) and big. I weigh over 200 pounds, though I carry it well. I do not have a pretty face, though I would not call it ugly. It is also not particularly interesting. He told me that even though I have a good…