Pleasure, Intimacy & Relationships Advice

What Happens After You Name The Edge? This is part 2 of the article called At The Edge of Wanting; Women, Queer Desire and the Courage To Look Read that first then come back to this. Once you’ve noticed the edge—the questions you haven’t let yourself ask—the world changes immediately, even if nothing outwardly shifts.…

At The Edge Of Wanting: Women, Queer Desire, And The Courage To Look There’s a moment many women and queer people recognize but rarely say out loud. You’re brushing up against something you want—or something you don’t want anymore—and a quiet alarm goes off inside. Not fear of physical danger. Not recklessness. Something subtler. A…

The Unspoken Challenges: Understanding Men’s Struggles in Modern Relationships, Friendships and Dating Dating has never been simple, but today’s landscape presents unique challenges that often go unacknowledged. While everyone faces obstacles in their romantic lives, men encounter specific struggles that deserve honest discussion. Understanding these challenges isn’t about comparing difficulties or dismissing anyone else’s experiences—it’s…

The Vital Importance of Friendship: Why Strong Bonds Beyond Romance Matter In a culture that often elevates romantic love above all other relationships, we’ve developed a tendency to measure the worthiness of our entire lives by the presence and duration only of intimate partnerships. We celebrate engagements, weddings, and anniversaries with grand gestures, while the…

Sex and Grief: Navigating Intimacy After Loss When we talk about grief, we often focus on tears, anger, and the hollow ache of absence. What we rarely discuss is what happens to our bodies, our desires, and our intimate lives when we’re grieving. The intersection of sex and grief remains one of the most taboo…

Starting Over: Dating After Divorce in NYC So you’re divorced and thinking about dating again in New York City (or any other place for that matter) . Before you jump back in, let’s talk about the stuff that really matters—not where to go or which app to use, but what’s going on inside your head…

When Desire Fades: A Common Story of Sexual Disconnection Let me tell you about someone I’ll call Sarah, though her story could be anyone’s story. She came to my office struggling with something many people experience but few talk about openly: she had lost interest in sex, and the guilt was consuming her. If you’re…

I don’t like sex. What’s wrong with me? Hi Cyndi, I don’t like sex. I would like to want to have to have sex but as soon as I start I can’t think about anything else but stopping. I am not in a relationship but have dated a few guys in the last year. Friends…

Maybe it started small. A few extra hours on dating apps. Porn that went from occasional to daily. Hookups that left you feeling emptier than before. And somewhere along the way, you started wondering: Am I a sex addict? You’ve seen the talk show confessions, read the articles about celebrities in treatment, scrolled through forums…

Addyi vs. Vyleesi: Pros, Cons, and What to Know Before Trying Medication for Low Desire Low sexual desire is one of the most common reasons people seek help for their sex lives — and one of the most misunderstood. For some, medication can be part of the conversation. Two FDA-approved options that often come up…

The Art of Connection: Great Questions to Ask on a Date First dates can feel like a high-wire act. You want to be interesting without being overwhelming, curious without being intrusive, and engaging without interrogating. The secret? Asking the right questions. Good questions do more than fill silence—they reveal compatibility, spark genuine conversation, and help…

How Patriachy Conquered Desire, And How To Get It Back If your body says no but your mind says you should, that’s not desire. That’s conditioning. If you feel guilty for wanting too much — or for not wanting at all — that’s not your libido speaking. That’s a script you inherited. Patriarchy teaches us…

Unlearning Patriarchy and Desire Here’s what nobody tells you: your desire was never meant to be yours. From the moment we’re conscious enough to understand the world around us, we’re handed scripts about what desire should look like. Who should want whom. When. How much. In what ways. These scripts arrive wrapped in Disney fairy…

Why We Keep Dating the Same Type of Person (And How to Break the Cycle) There’s a peculiar moment of recognition that strikes many daters: sitting across from yet another partner who feels oddly familiar, realizing you’ve somehow ended up in the same relationship dynamic you swore you’d avoid. The names and faces change, but…

The Silent Treatment: Understanding Ghosting and Breadcrumbing in Modern Dating In the age of dating apps and instant messaging, finding connection has never been easier—or more confusing. Two phenomena have emerged as defining features of contemporary romance: ghosting and breadcrumbing. If you’ve ever wondered why someone suddenly vanished without explanation or kept you hanging on…

How to Express Your Needs in a Relationship Without Conflict Expressing your needs clearly and respectfully is one of the most important skills in any relationship. When done well, it strengthens connection and understanding. When avoided or handled poorly, unmet needs can lead to resentment, distance, and recurring conflict. The good news is that with…

The Bedroom Battlefield: How Anger Transforms Intimacy In the quiet moments after a fight, when bodies that once moved toward each other now lie rigid at opposite edges of the bed, couples often discover a truth that therapists see every day: anger doesn’t just affect how we talk to each other—it fundamentally changes how we…

Understanding Rage: Ruth King’s Path to Emotional Healing In a world that often tells us to suppress difficult emotions, Buddhist meditation teacher Ruth King offers a radically different approach: what if our rage is trying to teach us something? Through decades of work as an Insight Meditation teacher, clinical psychologist, and founder of the Mindful…

The Paradox of Closeness: How to Be Yourself While Being Connected There’s a peculiar tension at the heart of every meaningful relationship: we long to be close to others, yet we need to remain ourselves. We want to merge with someone we love, but we also need our own space, our own thoughts, our own…

The Quiet Ache: Understanding Loneliness and Shame in Relationships One of the most disorienting experiences in life is feeling profoundly lonely while lying next to someone who loves you. Or feeling waves of shame crash over you just as your partner reaches for your hand. These moments contradict everything we’ve been told about relationships—that they’re…

Navigating Romantic Breakups: The Architecture of Disillusion. The end of a romantic relationship constitutes one of life’s most profound psychological disruptions. Unlike other forms of loss, a breakup involves the simultaneous death of a shared future, the revision of personal narrative, and the untangling of intertwined identities. It is both an ending and a forced…

The Hollow Pursuit: When Emptiness Drives Our Sexual Lives There’s a particular kind of loneliness that doesn’t announce itself with tears or obvious despair. It’s quieter than that—a persistent sense that something fundamental is missing, that you’re going through the motions of life without feeling fully present in it. Existential emptiness, philosophers and psychologists call…

The Role of Attunement in Sex, Intimacy and Other Human RelationshipsAttunement is the process of being emotionally present and responsive to another person – reading their emotional state and adjusting your responses accordingly. It’s like an ongoing emotional conversation where you’re continuously sensing and responding to what someone needs in the moment. It’s the ability to…

Practical Steps: How to Develop Relational IntelligenceSo after reading this article about relational intelligence, many of you were curious about the HOW of this. It’s one ting to know it all intellectually, but how do we do it? How does it feel in our bodies? What happens when we take this work from thoughts to…