Sex Talks: The Five Conversations That Will Transform Your Love Life

by Vanessa Marin

Neither one of us wanted to acknowledge the problems we were having in our relationship, and the $200 price tag didn’t help. I quickly calculated that every minute I spent stumbling over my words in front of a stranger in her cramped San Francisco office cost four dollars, and I mentally lambasted myself for not figuring out what I wanted to say before the session had started.

Instead, sex always seems like something that “just happens.”

But even as an awkward twelve-year-old, I knew what my parents were actually saying in that moment was, “Please, for the love of God, do not ask us anything about sex!” I could feel their shame and embarrassment, and I absorbed it into my own body.

am I just supposed to resign myself to a lifetime of boring sex? Or no sex at all? On the one

intimacy is—letting our partner see our internal world, even when it’s not a pretty picture. Not keeping our guard up, like we do with strangers.

thought being in a relationship would mean I’d never have to be alone again, but now I feel even lonelier in my marriage than I did on my own.” My friend Emmy is going through an especially

There’s so little physical contact between the two of them that a casual observer might mistake them for good friends.