Feature image of Venus Selenite in Crash Pad Series episode 292. All of the photographs in this NSFW Sunday are from the Crash Pad. The inclusion of a visual here should not be interpreted as an assertion of the model’s gender identity or sexual orientation. If you’re a photographer or model and think your work would be a good fit for NSFW Sunday, please email carolyn at autostraddle dot com.
Welcome to NSFW Sunday!
Check out your Mars, a part of your astrological chart that relates to sexuality. And here are some astrological compatibility notes for Leos.
Here’s how to not get sick when a partner is sick.
“Here’s how Google knows everything about the porn you’re watching.”
Is online dating an existential nightmare?
Check out these pervy patents. My fave? An urn dildo housed in a memory box that conveniently doubles as iPhone speakers.
A new Tinder feature will alert queer users who turn on the app in a country where homosexuality is still illegal.
Sometimes you just need some pubic hair oil.
Is dating a friend a good idea?:
“‘Dating a friend comes with risks, such as the possibility of breaking up and losing a good friend, or even your social group falling apart if both parties hang out with the same friends,’ says Maria Sullivan, Dating Expert and VP of Dating.com. ‘However, dating a friend can also lead to true love, so it is always a good idea to give it a try if you believe it will lead to something great.’
Keep in mind that even if the romantic relationship doesn’t work out, the friendship doesn’t have to end. ‘Just because a relationship didn’t work out doesn’t mean the ex-couple can’t try and go back to the way things were before they started dating,’ Sullivan points out. ‘Hanging out with mutual friends in a group setting will help to maintain a friendship, and as time goes on it will begin to go back to normal.'”
If you haven’t already read C.J. Hauser’s “The Crane Wife” at the Paris Review, I politely recommend that you do so and then that you remember to never convince yourself your needs aren’t real ever again:
Even now I hear the words as shameful: Thirsty. Needy. The worst things a woman can be. Some days I still tell myself to take what is offered, because if it isn’t enough, it is I who wants too much. I am ashamed to be writing about this instead of writing about the whooping cranes, or literal famines, or any of the truer needs of the world.
But what I want to tell you is that I left my fiancé when it was almost too late. And I tell people the story of being cheated on because that story is simple. People know how it goes. But it’s harder to tell the story of how I convinced myself I didn’t need what was necessary to survive. How I convinced myself it was my lack of needs that made me worthy of love.
Don’t think links in working order
Did we break the Internet?
Thanks for flagging that! They should be working now.
Wow, sometimes you’re going along thinking everything is alright and then you hear there are people who don’t give their lover water on a hike.
This whole article gave me very Taurus anxiety for poor CJ
The Crane-Wife struck some real feelings with me. With my family-of-origin I’m accustomed to being made to feel bad about my emotions to the point where I often decline to be vulnerable to them at all because it’s such an unrewarding experience. I hope to not repeat that pattern with my romantic relationships.