I have a confession to make. You can judge me all you want, but I’m coming clean:

I cheated on my last boyfriend.

No, it wasn’t a long, torrid love affair. It wasn’t kinky sex with a Jeremy Piven lookalike. In fact, there was no sex involved. All I did was make out with a co-worker. But still, cheating is cheating, so tonsil hockey still counts in my book. It also counted in my boyfriend’s book. And it counted in his sister’s book…and she was the one who witnessed the fiasco.

It was innocent enough; I didn’t intend to cheat. I wasn’t emotionally attached to my co-worker. We just got blackout drunk at a bar and swapped saliva for about half an hour.

The next morning, I woke up feeling like I’d done something wrong. Yup, I had. My boyfriend’s sister asked me if I remembered making out with “Frank.” Immediately, my heart sank. I got dizzy. I wanted to throw up. My mind started racing a mile a minute, as is standard anxiety-attack protocol. Why would I do something like that with Frank, a guy I had absolutely no interest in, when I was happy and in love with her brother?

A lot of people will disagree with me for saying this, but cheating can be hard on the cheater. I was ashamed of myself, I cried, and I regretted doing so many shots the night before. What’s a cheater to do when they’ve crossed the line with someone else? Read More »

I just read the beautifully written (but also mortifying) novella by Ian McKewan, On Chesil Beach. It’s a lovely little book, with well-drawn characters, but I think the main reason it’s been pretty famous this year is because of its infamous sex scene, a scene in which two inexperienced virgins get just about everything wrong.

Without giving it away, I couldn’t help laughing even as I blushed. At the same time, I learned a lot about what NOT to do when the realities of our bodies inevitably trip us up.

1. You must talk about sex. On Chesil Beach is set in the early sixties, a time when it was “simply impossible” for anyone to discuss sex. It’s the ultimate taboo subject even when people are married, and as a result, couples who get together barely know what to do with each other or even what to expect.

In the book, Florence is given a brief pamphlet about the bare bones of sex, but she still doesn’t have the first clue of what to do or what will happen on the man’s side of things. Because of this huge taboo of talking about sex, neither of them can talk healthily about it when things go wrong. Times have changed a lot since then, but I still think the taboo stands in a lot of situations. We’re not supposed to say certain words, protest if something hurts, or talk about what we want. But without having these difficult and embarrassing conversations, people will end up being disappointed, hurt, or just plain confused.

2. Don’t feel ashamed. A powerful sense of shame is another reason why Florence and Edward feel paralyzed in McKewan’s book. When things go wrong, Florence immediately assumes it’s her fault, she has done something wrong. Edward similarly feels ashamed for having “failed.” In reality, sex the first time is harder than TV and movies make it out to be. It takes a little finagling to get the jigsaw pieces together, so to speak, and if either girl or guy feels shame about this, it will taint the whole experience. Read More »

I remember the first time I tried it. My close friends were hanging out one afternoon and the topic came up. Masturbation.

The room got eerily silent.

Then one of my more adventurous and experienced friends proclaimed, “I tried it for the first time in middle school.” We all gasped. “What? None of you have ever tried it?” More silence.

“No one?”

I could hear crickets.

She was astonished. Everyone she knew had done it and not just once; weekly, if not daily! We had to try it! It would change our lives!

So, we made a pact. By the end of the semester we would all try it once (and, since most of us were roommates with at least one person in the room, we vowed to let them have the room to themselves at some point to do so). And to kick off the pact, we took a fieldtrip to the campus sex store for some…er….tools.

I tried the very next day. Why not? I was curious….and my roommate had a 2 hour lecture. It didn’t take long (literally) before I realized just how right my friend was. Why had I waited so long to try it? Why did I always feel so ashamed to want to do it? It truly was life changing!

And in more ways than the obvious. Just like the wonderfully unknown benefits of exercise, masturbation comes with a whole slew of added bonuses. (Mind you, I looked these up when trying to convince one of the other pact-makers that it was not only OK to do it, but necessary for a long and fulfilling life.)

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