Last summer, my friend Heather and I were on a bike ride and met up with her friend, Todd. It was a beautiful day and we decided to sit and have a beer together on the outdoor patio of a restaurant. I had recently separated from my husband and during our conversation, Todd asked what […]
Sex matters. Not simply how we have sex, but how and what we think about sex. Figuring all of this out is seldom simple because the extremes views—represented by contemporary hook-up culture and purity movement—dominate the conversation even as they mislead us. The former advocates that we divorce the emotional/relational component from sex and use […]
Scene from a popular television show: Two characters, having previously flirted for several seasons with will-they-or-won’t-they tension, figure out they are sexually attracted to each other. They grab each other, bodies grinding against each other, hands tearing off clothes, mouths practically consuming the other’s face. Cue moaning and grunting. He pushes her up against the […]
Keep the lights off. Cover yourself up. Sex is for the girls that look like they just walked off the cover of a magazine. Be grateful for anyone who wants to touch you. Accept what you are given. These are all the lies that are told to me by the media, by people in passing […]
I wish it wasn’t so easy to be sexually broken. For so many reasons we struggle to embrace our sexuality, don’t we? To give and receive fully. To engage our whole physical, emotional, and spiritual selves—and our partners do as well. On every level, sex gets messy. So there’s no better place to talk about […]
Scene from a popular television show: Two characters, having previously flirted for several seasons with will-they-or-won’t-they tension, figure out they are sexually attracted to each other. They grab each other, bodies grinding against each other, hands tearing off clothes, mouths practically consuming the other’s face. Cue moaning and grunting. He pushes her up against the […]
Sex, we were told, was bad. We weren’t to have sex and we weren’t to express ourselves sexually. We weren’t to wear clothes that would make others think about sex, and we certainly weren’t supposed to think about sex ourselves. For sex, they told us over and over again, was a sacred act, a covenant […]
Dear Portia, I grew up in the heart of evangelical purity culture. When I was 13, my parents took me out to dinner and gave me a promise ring. Throughout high school and college, I heard boys would ask me to compromise my sexual standards. I was ready to tell them no, but no one ever […]
The Mudroom is excited to be joining the likes of The Rumpus, the Chicago Tribune, and the Washington Post. We’re starting our very own advice column, “Dear Portia.” Every month, we’ll cover questions related to our monthly theme. First up is sex, sexuality, and singleness. Do you have questions about your sex life, about singleness, […]