Karley Sciortino

In trying to better our boyfriends, are we being generous or taking on the world’s most Sisyphean task?

Revisiting the series 25 years on, I couldn’t help but wonder...

Love Stories is a series about love in all its forms, with new essays appearing until Valentine’s Day.

What are the “numbers” we’re supposed to hit in order to achieve sexual adequacy?

About a year ago, my boyfriend and I adopted a puppy named Romy. He hates when we have sex. Or, more specifically, he hates when we touch at all. This—according to a series of exorbitantly priced animal behaviorists—is called “possessive aggression.” Put simply, Romy is possessive of my boyfriend, so when I get physically close to him, the dog growls and snaps at me like I’m Yoko coming to break up the band. As you can imagine, this has done wonders for our sex life. Last week we were staying in…

Since turning 30, I’ve been in fake-orgasm recovery.

When relationships with significant age gaps work in your favor.

You can either smile uncomfortably and pretend to need the bathroom, or you can lean in so far that your nipple slips out and you pretend not to notice. Read each other right, and you get to enjoy the bizarre, dangerous, incredible intimacy of it all.

It turns out love really is a battlefield, and the first casualty is your entire personality.

If you’re a sexually curious woman, along with being called a slut, another unfortunate refrain is: “Are you sure you want to do that?” Some of my greatest hits include: Are you sure you want to fuck that married couple? Are you sure you want to go to that sex party? Are you sure you want to be suspended upside down from the ceiling by a guy with a low-hanging man bun? Are you sure you want to pee into that lawyer’s mouth for $200? The implication, of course, always being: because you might not…

Look, I’m a feminist or whatever, but I still like it when a guy picks up the check on a date. I understand that in our post-gender, social-justice millennial era, the idea of subscribing to traditional gender roles in a relationship makes you an honorary fascist, and yet, I can’t help getting wet whenever a willowy, beaked artiste pulls out his wallet and says, “Babe, I got this one.” Now, I’m not saying that I’m looking for a sugar daddy to bankroll my leisurely life of masturbation and bloggi…

It’s not just that being single suddenly feels alienating in your 30s. It’s also that dating itself becomes more difficult.

It’s the time of year when we’ve made it through the hellish winter and can finally crawl out of our asexual Seamless caves, slather on the St. Tropez, and let loose.

When what you admire in a partner and a what you desire in them don’t exactly match up.

I often find myself doing things because it’ll make funny dinner-party conversation later. That’s normal, right?

I obviously couldn’t date a Republican. But could I have sex with a particularly hot one?

The exclusive dating app Raya, aka “Illuminati Tinder,” is high school all over again.

I personally am willing to put up with the bad things about apps because what I gain is more valuable to me: freedom, autonomy, and a multitude of choices.

One can’t deny that strap-ons have a lot of advantages. And there are women out there who love them.

As it turns out, our actions do actually affect other people.