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Wanna be happier? Fail more.

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July 3, 2025
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The psychological experience of writing a romance novel

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June 28, 2025
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The #1 reason why sex robots just aren’t sexy (to me)

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June 22, 2025
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Flirting with a sex nerd? Here's 5 fun facts they'll love

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June 15, 2025
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A weepy girl’s guide to recovering from rejection

I got rejected this week. It sucks, but it happens. And fortunately(?), I’ve been on both sides of it enough times to have a toolkit for getting through it, which I’ll share with you here today. Feel free to send this along to someone who needs it!

A note on being the person who does the rejecting: That also fucking sucks! I hate it! Many of these tips can be adapted in some way to suit your needs if you’re struggling emotionally in the aftermath of rejecting someone, especially since I think similar feelings of shame can come up in both scenarios (although my shame, when doing the rejecting, is less “No one will ever love me again” and more “I am a heartless bitch who doesn’t deserve any of the love she receives,” but I digress).

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June 8, 2025
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Crushes show me the way forward

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June 1, 2025
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What happens when a sex toy reviewer can’t get horny?

It’s a tough time to have a job that requires you to be sexually aroused. (To be fair, it’s a tough time to have a lot of jobs, and mine ranks pretty low on the stress scale – but it’s the one I know and am qualified to write about!)

This week alone, I had three – count ‘em, three – dildo reviews on my docket. As you’ve probably heard, dildos are generally designed to penetrate an orifice… and inconveniently enough, my orifices were clenched so tight from life stress and doomscrolling that they could’ve squeezed a lump of coal into some kind of vagina diamond. (Hey, free drag name/burlesque name/band name if ya need one!)

Sure, I could review a sex toy from an unaroused state – but would you want to read a restaurant review written by someone who’d eaten a full meal before going into the joint they were meant to review? Probably not, because the reviewer wouldn’t be physically or mentally equipped at that time (in all likelihood) to give the restaurant a fair shake. Likewise, I need to be sufficiently aroused when I test sex toys; otherwise I just feel like my genitals are being poked and prodded, and that experience would make for a pretty boring and useless review.

So needless to say, my uncharacteristically low libido made it troublesome that I was contractually on the hook to fuck three dildos. As a result, my testing sessions this week were some of the most difficult I’ve ever had – which, let’s face it, it’s masturbating in my own comfy bed, so even at rock-bottom, it’s hardly a gruelling day at the office (or in the mines)! But nonetheless, it was a comedy of errors from start to finish. I’d start to get turned on from reading some hot erotica on my phone, and then suddenly get a stress-spiking notification that drained all my lust in an instant. So I’d put down my phone and switch to fantasizing about my crushes du jour, and I’d quickly get overcome by panicky doubt (“What if they don’t like me?! Or, perhaps even scarier, what if they DO like me?!?”) and have to do some deep breathing to calm down. I’d refocus on hot mental images to get back into the zone, only for my building’s fire alarm to go off (it was a false alarm, but the adrenaline it dumped into my bloodstream was entirely real). And so on and so forth, until eventually I had gathered enough testing notes to write a goddamn review.

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May 24, 2025
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30 questions you can ask on a date if you have no idea what to ask

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May 18, 2025
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You shouldn't have to trick someone into liking you

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May 10, 2025
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Why do I fantasize about dorky virgins sometimes?

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May 4, 2025
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The Cone is a koan

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April 27, 2025
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The way you carry yourself (+ how to do it differently)

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April 20, 2025
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Let's put this age-old sex toy myth to rest

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April 12, 2025
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The world is on fire – DM your crush

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April 6, 2025
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4 life-changing polyamory lessons that would help monogamous people, too

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March 30, 2025
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The moment when time slows down

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March 22, 2025
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“But how did it FEEL?”

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March 16, 2025
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What would it take to prove it?: A brain-hack I’ve been loving lately

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March 9, 2025
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7 things I wonder about how sex works in Severance

As you know if you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while, sometimes I get obsessed with things. Currently I am obsessed with Severance, the sci-fi/thriller/speculative-fiction TV show – because, among numerous other reasons, it makes me think more deeply about sexuality. All my favorite media does.

A brief rundown on the premise of Severance for those unfamiliar: it’s set in a world where a mega-corporation called Lumon has created something called the severance procedure. They implant a chip in your brain, which basically splits you into two selves: your work self, and your personal-life self. These two selves have no memory of each other, and no knowledge of the other one’s activities. When you go to work, your consciousness switches to your work self, referred to as an “innie,” and when you leave work, your consciousness switches back to your personal self, or your “outie.” This creates a situation where the innie is essentially trapped at work forever, since all of their experiences occur at work – while the outie has zero awareness of what they do at work all day, allowing Lumon to get up to some shady shit.

(If you haven’t seen Severance and don’t plan to, you can go ahead and skip this piece, because I think it’ll sound like unhinged gibberish to you and also it’s loooong, but thank you for being here! I appreciate you!)

Anyway, with that being said, sex was barely discussed in season 1 but is becoming more of a thing in season 2, and I’m (obviously) massively nerdy about sex, so I have lots of questions about how it functions in this universe. There are spoilers ahead for all the episodes currently released, so don’t read this yet if you’re not caught up and would like to be. Oh, and (content note:) I will be discussing some dubious-consent-y and non-consent-y stuff, as that is the nature of this show. Let’s dive in.

Free post
March 2, 2025
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"The boyfriend experience" and casual cunnilingus

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February 20, 2025
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