EROS-Q Journal
Research, resources, and conversation starters for couples who believe there is more to their erotic lives together.
A randomized study of 431 women found that afterplay education improved sexual satisfaction across every measured domain. The mechanism behind that finding is worth understanding.
A new study found that 15 minutes of afterplay education improved sexual satisfaction across every measured domain. The practice itself is even simpler than that.
After 15 years of teaching and reams of data, the lessons are simpler than most of us expect — and more actionable than the culture usually allows.
Saying 'I want to try something' is harder than saying 'I read a story and it surprised me.' Erotic fiction gives you a way into that second conversation.
The distance between what we're told erotic life looks like and what it actually feels like is often enormous. Jess Zakira Wise has spent a decade living in that gap.
Gillian Anderson's bestselling collection of anonymous women's sexual fantasies makes one thing quietly undeniable: the inner life of desire is vast, varied, and utterly ordinary — even when it surprises us.
Esther Perel's landmark book asks a question most people feel but struggle to name: how do you want what you already have? The answer turns out to be more structurally honest than most of us expect.
Emily Nagoski's Come As You Are delivers a simple, research-backed idea that most people have never encountered: your desire is not dysfunctional. It just works differently than you've been told.
Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá's provocative argument isn't really about non-monogamy. It's about where our assumptions regarding human sexuality come from — and whether they deserve the authority we give them.
Brené Brown's research on shame has everything to do with sexual life, even when it never mentions sex directly. Understanding how shame works is prerequisite to understanding why desire gets so complicated.
Esther Perel offers a quietly radical redefinition of sexual fantasy — one that has nothing to do with costumes, elaborate scenarios, or anything that has to actually happen.
A New York Times essay about hedgehogs and foxes turns out to be a surprisingly useful lens for understanding what couples actually need — and why neither pure comfort nor pure novelty is the answer.
Most advice about keeping the spark alive focuses on what happens in the bedroom. The research points somewhere more interesting — and far less intimidating.
Familiarity is the slow enemy of eroticism. This video makes the case — with rare clarity — for why novelty and roleplay are not frivolous additions to a long-term relationship but essential ones.
The science on novelty and sexual desire is more nuanced — and more hopeful — than most couples expect. Here is what peer-reviewed research tells us about keeping eroticism alive over time.