Laid and Confused: Why We Tolerate Bad Sex and How to Stop

intimacy

• I count down from one hundred while his tongue scrambles back and forth, offering small moans of pleasure I do not feel.

  LC-001

• Communicating with a human person requires effort that doesn't always feel worth it when the alternative is reclining and waiting for him to finish.

  LC-009

shame

• My visceral reaction was disappointment—that my vagina was not enough—and this triggered shame in me, a self-described sex-positive sex writer.

  LC-002

• I woke to hundreds of Facebook requests from men asking to fuck me or telling me to die, slut.

  LC-005

embodiment

• Trauma removes the capacity for interoception; the body shuts down as protection, and the reflex remains long after the threat is gone.

  LC-010

• Start on my knee and push down with pressure, then slowly work your way up—a negotiated map back into her own body.

  LC-008