KR | Under The Covers Newsletter - January 2026

Welcome to Under The Covers, a monthly newsletter that aims to expand your sensual sphere with cultural recommendations.

The new year brings with it the itch to try something risky or different, to strip yourself off any inhibitions, and to tear apart that version of you that won’t act on your urges. It’s time to feed that hunger. Here are this month’s recos. 

1. The Duke of Burgundy — Film.

   Peter Strickland’s 2014 film, The Duke of Burgundy, is a complicated portrayal of long-term erotic engagement and probably one of the most honest depictions of BDSM relationships I’ve seen. What strikes me with this film is how it shows the labor of keeping desire alive, especially with the nature of a dom-and-sub dynamic of Cynthia and Evelyn’s partnership. It’s the part of kink nobody talks about: the negotiation, the eventual fatigue, and quiet sacrifice of performing to fulfill your significant other’s fantasies. 

   Strickland captures this incredible tension that hinges on the pair’s romantic affection and lust for each other. It also shows a different side to dominant and submissive stereotypes: Evelyn’s insistence on fulfilling her fantasy actually wears down her ‘dom,’ Cynthia. The film shows that people really get to a truly vulnerable place when engaging sexually with someone. You can fall deeply in love or you can remain a mere object of desire.

    

2. Acts of Service by Lillian Fishman — Book.

   Lillian Fishman's debut novel isn’t for everyone (and certainly it’s getting a full spectrum of reactions online) and that's exactly why I'm recommending it today. The book follows Eve, a queer woman who, by all accounts, is pretty content in her relationship with her girlfriend. But when she posts her nudes online, she tumbles into an affair with a sultry and wealthy couple, Olivia and Nathan. What follows is a relentless examination of female desire, the kind of desire that will raise a lot of eyebrows. Eve wants to be wanted by Nathan in ways that can feel regressive, and she knows it. She wrestles with this constantly. Has she internalized patriarchy? Is her arousal a betrayal of her feminism? Or is desire simply its own animal, unconcerned with ideology?

   Fishman writes: "I was not entirely at the mercy of what I wanted, but neither was I in control of it." This line struck me. So many clients come to me ashamed of what turns them on, and they want permission to want what they want. This book doesn't offer easy answers, but it does offer company in dealing with your turmoil. If you're curious about trying something new in your erotic life this year, this novel might loosen some of the mental knots that are holding you back.

    

3. The Women Quietly Quitting Their Husbands by Monica Corcoran Harel for The Cut — Article.

   “I can watch old episodes of Broad City. He can look at porn. Or whatever he does.” This sort of indifference is tough to hear, but that’s what surfaced in Monica Corcoran Harel’s piece for The Cut: women who stay married but emotionally and physically tune out.They move into separate bedrooms. They stop engaging in conversation. They plan vacations alone. They don't divorce. They just…stop trying.

   When you neglect what you want and refuse to advocate for your desires, you get frustrated and eventually burned out. If it sounds doom and gloom, it’s because it is. Imagine waking up years into your marriage and realizing that you’ve put your sexual self asleep for years. Read Harel’s full article on The Cut here.

    

4. The Pursuer-Distancer Pattern — Session.

   This pattern is so common in couples therapy it has its own name. Coined by renowned psychologist Harriet Lerner as the Pursuer-Distancer Pattern, this type of behavior is flagged as one of the most reliable predictors of divorce.

   Here's how it works: One partner — the pursuer — responds to stress by moving toward the other. They want to talk. They’re starved of connection. They want to resolve things right now. Meanwhile, the other partner — the distancer — responds to that same stress by pulling away. They need space. They shut down. They retreat into work, screens, silence. The more the pursuer chases, the more the distancer withdraws. The more the distancer withdraws, the more desperate the pursuer becomes. It's a vicious loop that feeds itself. 

   What's even less discussed is how this pattern shows up in the bedroom. The pursuer initiates sex, gets rejected, initiates again, gets rejected again. Eventually, they stop trying entirely, wounded and withdrawn. The distancer, who may have genuinely wanted sex but felt pressured, now faces a partner who won't even come near them.

   Breaking this cycle requires both people to do something counterintuitive. The pursuer should learn to back off without completely abandoning their partner, and the distancer must learn to move toward their partner even when it feels threatening. Neither move feels natural, but they are necessary.

    

5. Portishead, "Glory Box." Released: September 26, 1994 — Song.

   A "glory box" is an Australian term for a chest where young women store their linens and clothes in preparation for marriage. It's a quaint, almost embarrassing tradition. And Portishead named one of their most sexually charged songs of the 1990s after it.

   I love how Beth Gibbons’ voice floats over the smoky instrumentation. She sings about being tired of playing temptress: “Give me a reason to love you,” she pleads. “Give me a reason to be a woman.” Although often misread as a woman longing for traditional romance, the song reads to me as someone tired of exercising their femininity as a seductive performance. She wants to be yearned for as a full person. It’s a song about a woman whose desires need to be acknowledged without latching too much onto her desirability.

   "So don't you stop being a man / Just take a little look from outside when you can / Sow a little tenderness / No matter if you cry." She's asking her partner to be vulnerable too, to meet her where they’re stripped bare of what it means to be women and men. "For this is the beginning of forever and ever,” Gibbons concludes the song with a vow.

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