#intimacy

#intimacy

The Kivin method is an oral sex technique that relies on a perpendicular position: Instead of facing the receiver head-on, the giver lies across their body, aligning their lips side-to-side.

The bed becomes a site of creation, desire, and condemnation, exploring the shift of procreation to hedonism that exposed deep cultural anxieties surrounding female sexual agency and autonomy.

DTF St. Louis traces ground covered by Luca Guadagnino's 2024 film Challengers, but in more exacting detail. DTF, named after a fictional sex app, draws a similar conclusion—that strong intimacy among men may look what is broadly and stereotypically referred to as 'gay,' but it's much more nuanced than that.

I admired their simplicity and generosity and thought of the pictures I made as agreements. I wanted to pay attention to the body and personality that had agreed out of love to reveal itself.

Soft swapping sits in the gray area between monogamy and full partner exchange. Unlike traditional swinging, soft swappers set rules around what acts they can engage in with others.

This isn't your average pandemic thriller; here, the infected meld with inorganic material in their surroundings, until their outward contours and their personhood are gone. Thibault Emin's film starts with a little whiff of Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro's Delicatessen. After their one-night stand, hypochondriac Anx (Matthieu Sampeur) and impertinent Cass (Edith Proust) find themselves bunkered up in one corner of a madcap apartment block.

"Radical honesty" has become a cultural badge of honor. Across social media, couples proudly declare that they do that without filters, without private corners, seeing honesty as a black-or-white concept—full honesty or no honesty. The promise is appealing that "if we are completely transparent, our relationship will be strong and unshakable." But is total disclosure really intimacy? Does honesty contradict other values? Does radical honesty come at a cost, with other negative implications?

Many people come to therapy with a goal to work on communication, especially with a partner. The problem, as many see it, is "poor communication," and the goal is to have "better communication." Poor communication can mean a lot of things, including ongoing and repeated conflicts, trouble expressing what we want or need, and avoidant tendencies. Therapy can work out a number of these issues. Understanding our cycle of conflict can create quicker off-ramps to repair.

Dating advice often casts intimacy as a tightrope pull back too much, or push for more. Either move is read as a red flag. Between discussions of incompatible attachment styles, the importance of boundaries and the dangers of love-bombing, it's easy to get the impression there's a correct level of closeness to aim for. In truth, intimacy isn't one-size-fits-all and comfort levels vary not just between individuals, but across their relationships.

What they say instead is something softer, more nuanced: " I just want space." They describe feeling overwhelmed when their partner asks for physical affection, quality time, or emotional closeness. Not because those requests are unreasonable, but because they feel they have nothing left to give. What can look like withdrawal from love in fact often seems more like emotional exhaustion.