Relationship advice

[liv]

Emily Nagoski has an excellent blog, The Dirty Normal, where she talks about sex and relationships from the point of view of a biologist. Really good stuff, and in particular an excellent counter to the people who like to run around the internet justifying mid twentieth century suburban American sexism by telling stupid just-so stories about "evolution". She comes from a fairly mainstream context, mostly discussing heterosexual monogamous couples and mostly vanilla sex and generally normative relationship expectations. I think she's a person of good will, she does make an effort to mention that there are other gender possibilities and relationship configurations out there, but in taking a biologist's view she tends to concentrate on the typical rather than the exceptions.

I think a lot of her information is very applicable even outside the context she's starting from, because it's just about how psychology and bodies work in ways that are still true regardless of gender identity or relationship choices. And she's really non-judgemental about people who don't fit her standard paradigms! She's always good, well worth checking out her blog including the sex tips project (lots of stuff there that would be very easy to repurpose in a more kinky context than where she's coming from!)

I wanted to link to a recent post in particular, though, because I think it's advice that quite a few of my friends could stand to hear. And not in a self-righteous way, either, because what she's discussing here is very much relationship mistakes I've made myself in the past and have no doubt I'm still prone to. I think the idea of "overfunctioning" is probably a more helpful frame than "codependence", which is what this kind of thing usually gets called. So, The Dirty Normal on Am I helping? Am I helping?

Comments

[daharyn]

Thank you. I needed a new word for that phenomenon.

Lots of Thoughts about that posts, which I guess I will put somewhere at some point.

[liv]

Oh cool, really glad this link was useful to you! I would definitely be interested in your thoughts if you're willing to put them in one of the somewheres I have access to.