Why Awkward Sex Makes for Good Storytelling

Almost anyone who has been sexually active has a story about a moment that went sideways. It might be a mistimed elbow, an interruption, a mismatch of expectations or a conversation that arrived at the wrong time. Awkwardness is one of the most widely shared parts of sexual life, and one of the least discussed in public.

A small publishing project from the early 2010s shows how that silence can be broken. Two graduate students in the eastern United States, working in the zine tradition, put out a call for women to submit stories of clumsy or uncomfortable encounters for a collection called The Awkward Sex Zine. Their reasoning and what they learned along the way offer a useful window into the topic.

Where the project began

According to the editors, the idea came out of an evening of swapping stories at a bar. Each anecdote prompted another, and friends of friends turned out to have material too. The pattern suggested that nearly everyone had at least one account, yet few people volunteered such accounts in ordinary conversation.

Why only women's stories

The editors limited the first collection to women, and gave a cultural explanation. Women, they noted, have long faced criticism for enjoying sex, discussing it or agreeing to it, and sharing stories was framed as a way of loosening that stigma. Submissions nonetheless came from people who identified as queer, straight, trans, genderqueer and woman-identified.

A version centred on men was described as possible but not planned. Both editors said any such volume would need a clear theme beyond comic tales of conquest, and neither claimed to know whether men's awkward experiences differ from women's in kind.

Emotional, situational and physical awkwardness

Awkward encounters are often sorted into three loose groups.

• Situational: external mishaps such as a parent walking in, a roommate arriving home or an alarm going off at the wrong time.
• Physical: slapstick of bodies and furniture, from cramped positions to falling off the bed.
• Emotional: mismatched feelings, uncertainty about what a encounter meant, or an uncomfortable aftermath.

The editors had expected more comedy of the situational kind. What arrived was weighted toward emotional awkwardness, and some of it read as confessional and painful rather than funny. Few entries dealt with physical mishaps at all.

Does awkwardness fade with age?

A common assumption holds that people grow smoother as they gain experience. The editors offered a more qualified view. One pointed out that insecurity in youth had made encounters more fraught, while also observing that confidence does not automatically arrive with age and that an older partner can be the source of discomfort. The other suggested that awkwardness does not disappear but becomes easier to absorb, with fewer situations feeling mortifying over time.

Responses to awkward moments

Asked whether a single best approach exists, the editors said no. Some people lean toward talking things through, others toward avoiding the subject, and the setting matters too: a one-night encounter differs from one with a friend or long-term lover, and awkwardness can arise when initiating, during sex itself or in the aftermath.

Contributors were allowed to publish under pseudonyms, a detail that reflects how personal such material can be. Even one of the editors described a mix of enjoyment and nerves at the idea of strangers reading a story that had been written down.