For some of us, there is no amount of self-love or body-positive work that will inspire passion and sexual chemistry in our partners. For many of us, our partners simply don’t find touching our bodies desirable and aren’t capable of manufacturing that sensation. It’s not about us, though it unquestionably has a huge impact on us. Dressing provocatively, engaging in … [Read more...]
3 Ways Heterosexual Couples Can Challenge Gender Norms in Their Relationships
Not to brag, but for my wife’s birthday last year, I got her an incredible gift. A month or two prior, she had passively mentioned that she really liked the idea of getting a record player, and that she was tired of our listening to music on our phones while chilling out in our apartment. My solution was acquiring a sweet audio system that included a record player, CD player, … [Read more...]
I’m a Married Christian Woman Who Doesn’t Want Children — And That’s Okay
As a Christian woman who has no desire to procreate, I’ve often felt like an anomaly or a mutant. In the various church communities I’ve called home at one time or another, I haven’t been aware of a significant number of Christian women like me: women who are happily married, without children, and who remain childless intentionally and unapologetically. For a long time, I was … [Read more...]
What I Learned From Never Experiencing “Romantic” Love
When I was very young, I had the same dreams and expectations that many girls of my 1950s generation in my social class had: that I would start dating in high school, go to college and eventually meet “the love of my life,” fall in love, get married, and live happily ever after. It never occurred to me that I wouldn’t have what I always thought of as romantic love in my life, … [Read more...]
Black Girls Cut Too: Self-Harm and Intergenerational Trauma
Content note: detailed references to self-harm methods I started burning myself at 15. A friend and I burned ourselves in an attempt to engrave a symbol on our arms. After going to the local mall and buying a book on witchcraft, we decided we needed a symbol of our commitment to our new two-person coven. We drew up a draft of our symbol containing our initials (S & T) and … [Read more...]
7 Pieces of Advice for Dating While You Are Non-Binary
Let's be real: the vast majority of dating advice is aggressively cisheteronormative. From popular magazines and dating advice books to talk shows and Bachelor Nation, we have a plethora of suggestions on how cishet, white, able-bodied, upper-middle-class folks can date each other within cishet, patriarchal structures. Fighting over the bill only to "let" the man pay, dressing … [Read more...]
