Relationships

How to Make New Relationships, Add New People to Pods and Have Sex More Safely During the Pandemic

It really sucks that during something that can make us feel lonelier than ever, the most dangerous thing is being close to other people. It is still safest to limit our up-close-and-personal contact, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still safely seek out and experience intimacy with new people, nor that there aren’t things you can do to make it safer if you do decide to get physically close to someone. Here are some basics to get you started.

The Scarleteen Safety Plan

If you're in an abusive relationship, to make abuse stop you've got to get away and stay away. Here's help to do that safely, and to be as safe as you can before leaving.

Quintimacy: An Interview with Beck Thom

Britain’s Quintimacy is a space that intends to cultivate queer intimacy through trauma-informed and embodied connection. In an interview with Scarleteen, founder Beck Thom talks about their working frameworks, sex ed in the UK, what they do at Quintimacy and the need to better educate people, including children and teenagers, about trauma and consent.

How to Support A Friend or Partner Who’s Dealing With Gender Dysphoria

Gender dysphoria can create a lot of tough mental health days. Our friends and partners play an important role in our mutual support systems, and for people who are dealing with gender dysphoria, having supportive friends and partners can make a big difference. If you have a friend or partner who lives with gender dysphoria, here’s how you can support them.

It’s All Right: There Is No One Right Time to Start Dating

Many social norms, macro or micro, can make it seem like the ideal — or even only! — time to start having dating experiences is in high school. You may get the message that doing it any other time, even just waiting until you’re in college, puts you at  some kind of disadvantage. To go against that grain may inspire some social judgement of you and, at least in my case, leave you wondering if you’re just fulfilling a harmful stereotype about what autistic people are capable and incapable of doing. Even if it’s impossible to remember amidst the din of outside messaging world, there is no one right time for dating. That’s as true for neurodivergent folks, including those of us on the autism spectrum, as it is for neurotypical members of the world.

No Grey Area: A Journey Identifying and Healing from Sexual Assault

Sexual assault and abuse can take so many forms that some people don’t recognize right away or ever. I didn’t initially recognize it. The most simple legal definition of sexual assault is “forcing a victim to participate in sexual acts,” but this definition isn’t always helpful when you’re trying to figure out if you’ve been assaulted. It's so much more complicated and unique than a one-sentence definition.

From Erasure to Ownership: A Bisexuality Journey

I experienced bisexual erasure when I was a teenager. The first crushes I remember having were on boys, but I’ll never forget the first time I met a girl and felt weak in the knees. I was thirteen years old. A year later I heard the term bisexual for the first time and felt like it described me.

Can You Be Yourself On Dates?

If you’re like me, there are lots of questions that race through your mind when you prepare to go out on a date. Do I look polished enough? Am I going to click with this person? Did we pick the right venue to go out to? And then there’s the one question always gnawing at the back of my skull about my autism: can I be myself?

Heavy Metal Heartbreak: Dating with a Brain Injury

The author of the new book Heavy Metal Headbang shares some of how dating went for her while recovering from a traumatic brain injury (TBI) and has a little advice for those with TBI who are dating, and those dating anyone with a TBI.