Pleasure, Intimacy & Relationships Advice

Why Sex Feels Empty Even When Nothing Went Wrong You put enormous energy into becoming someone worth wanting. Almost none into learning how to actually be with someone once they want you. And that gap, more than anything else, is why so many people are having sex and still feeling like something is just out…

Why So Many Women Don’t Know What They Want in Bed: and The Question That Actually HelpsYou know what car you want.You know what neighbourhood you want to live in, what you want from your career, where you want to eat, how you want your hair cut.Ask what you want in bed, and something shuts…

How To Build Intimacy Most of us have had the same exchange so many times it barely registers anymore. Someone asks how you are. You already know what you’re going to say before they finish the sentence. Fine. Good. Busy. They nod. You move on. The conversation finds its groove — work, logistics, whatever’s happening…

Why Fantasy Love Feels Better Than the Real Thing (And What That’s Actually Telling You) The deliciousness of longing is what romance novels are made of. The fantasy is all-encompassing. You are, after all, in charge of the entore story. It feels like certainty. Like finally. Like this is the person who will make everything…

Sex Won’t Fix Your Sexless Relationship. But It Might Show You What Will. There’s a special kind of hope that lives inside the notion that if we could just have more sex, things would get better. It feels logical enough. Something is wrong. Sex has been absent, or rare, or perfunctory. Surely that’s the problem…

What If You’ve Never Seen A Relationship Built On Love? Most of us arrive at midlife carrying relationships like old luggage — overpacked, worn at the seams, and full of things we don’t remember choosing. We’ve learned what relationships look like from people who were also just figuring it out, passing down habits shaped more…

What Actually Keeps a Relationship Running Relationship advice is everywhere, and most of it is either painfully obvious or built on the quiet assumption that if you just do the right things and say the right words, you’ll get the relationship you want. But unfortunately, that’s not how it works. What actually keeps a relationship…

The Capacity Gap: Why Willingness Isn’t Enough to Sustain Your Relationship Sarah sat in my office, watching Mike fumble through another question about his feelings. “I don’t know,” he said for the third time that session. “I guess I just… shut down?” She felt the familiar tightness in her chest. Mike wanted their relationship to…

The Foundation You Can’t Skip: Why Great Relationships Start With Yourself There’s a romantic idea most of us grew up with — that the right person will complete us. That love is something that arrives from the outside and fills in whatever is missing. It’s a beautiful thought. It’s also, quietly, one of the most…

The Unspoken Work: Emotional Labor in Sex and Why It’s Quietly Killing Desire There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that doesn’t show up in any self-help article about low libido. It’s not hormonal. It’s not about scheduling or stress management or taking bubble baths. It’s the exhaustion of always being the one who manages the…

Why You Can Orgasm Alone But Not With a Partner (And why this isn’t a mystery — it’s a pattern.) If you can climax easily on your own but hit a wall the second someone else is in the room, nothing is “wrong” with you. This is one of the most common dynamics I see…

Pleasure, Grief, and Nervous System Regulation It’s easy to think that grief and pleasure are mutually exclusive. In hard times, many of us try to “push down” desire to survive emotionally. But grief is not a cage; it’s a signal. Pleasure doesn’t erase it—it coexists, creating space for clarity and resilience. I remember one afternoon…

Pleasure as Ethical Action and Resistance (Community and Connection Focus) When the world feels like it’s falling apart, joy can feel frivolous—or even ethically complicated. Many of us carry the assumption that prioritizing our own pleasure is self-indulgent. But Audre Lorde reframes pleasure as radical, ethical, and sustaining. She writes, “We have been taught to…

Thinking About Pleasure While the World Is Falling Apart Last night, I found myself on my couch, watching the sky turn shades of pink,  orange and red, scrolling through headlines and IG posts I didn’t want to read, but knew all too well the gravitas of the news unfolding on my little device. My chest…

Mismatched Libido: What Desire in Long-Term Relationships Is Really Asking of Us “Mismatched libido” is one of the most common reasons couples feel stuck, ashamed, or quietly resentful. It’s also one of the most misunderstood. We tend to talk about desire as if it were a fixed personal trait—something you either have or don’t—rather than…

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, Queering 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…