Internet friendships can change the world.

And no, they don't all have to talk about orgasms, but this one sure does.

We’re coming up on four years since Covid rampaged the world. Four years!!

I think for all of us, it feels both like a lifetime, and like the blink of an eye. We remember life before, but it also feels like a dream. There’s a clear “before Covid” and “after Covid” in all of our lives, bringing about grief and fear that we hadn’t known before.

But for me (Rachel), Covid brought a dramatically positive life-change that led me to writing this and you reading it, here on the Internet.

The lockdown and isolation of Covid sparked in me a hunger for relationships that led me to seek them out online. And the best relationship to come out of that lonely season was one of the greatest friends I’ve come to know as an adult - Caitlin.

Caitlin and I met through an online course all about changing our own sex lives. Yeah, it was a pretty strange setting to meet people, I’ll give you that. But the vulnerability that came with this topic meant it wasn’t a far jump to us developing our own conversation, outside of the course.

We hopped on Voxer (a voice messaging app) and talked about our dreams and utopian visions for what the world could be. We discussed power, gender, religion, and change - and we also talked a lot about genitals, orgasms, and our husbands.

We got to know each other outside of our children, our family responsibilities, and our everyday lives. We got to hear the soul of the other, without the title of “mom” or “wife” or “sister”. We were our most authentic selves, without the layers of life coating over the depths of our hearts.

We spent hours and HOURS listening to each other while folding laundry, driving, chopping vegetables, and waiting in pickup lines. We made the thousands of miles between Seattle, Washington and Winston-Salem, North Carolina feel less far apart.

(And we also discovered that yes, you can share your most authentic self while simultaneously scrubbing a toilet!)

As we poured out our hearts, we discovered that we not only wanted to never stop talking to each other, but we wanted to bring these conversations to the world around us.

We wanted to shine a light on dark places.

In December of 2021, Caitlin sent me a message saying that she had a vision of creating a production company that produced a documentary spotlighting the challenges that women face with sex in long-term relationships. At the time, she didn’t even know that my lifelong dream was to direct films that changed the world.

She longed to produce, I longed to direct. We were both hungry to share what we’d learned.

It was a perfect creative match.

The conversations that followed were a frenzy of excitement - we felt divinely put together in this world to create culture change through media, and we were chomping at the bit to get started.

We flew to Austin, Texas in the spring of 2022 and dreamed together as we walked among scrubby desert trees. We first spoke the words “Not Tonight Project” as we hemmed and hawed over our vision in person.

And we left each other with a fire burning even brighter than before.

Here we are in front of the Austin mural in February 2022!

Only one problem - neither of us had actually made a documentary before, and we also had zero connections to the world of women’s sexuality.

So we backed the truck up, took a breath, and started a podcast to further our research.

By interviewing women and spotlighting their real stories, as well as connecting with other professionals in the world of sexual wellness, we slowly gained knowledge and credibility.

Each interview that we released further connected us to women we’d only dreamed of chatting with, and as we listened, we were validated and reassured that what we’d learned in our own sex lives was exactly what more women needed to hear about.

Three seasons and 40 episodes later, we realized that the most powerful element of Caitlin’s and my connection wasn’t in the ways we were similarly passionate…

…it was in the ways we were wildly different.

Our greatest accomplishment with The Not Tonight Project so far has been our ability to connect with and learn from women on all sides of the proverbial Table. We have listened to women with a vast array of religious and cultural backgrounds, and found unity and connection with all of them.

Everyone we’ve listened to wants the same thing - joyful and pleasurable connection for all women. And you don’t have to believe in the same God to want that, or come from the same country, or have the same economical background, or have children (or not), or be the same race, or even read the same books.

You just have to be for women.

So more than anything else, The Not Tonight Project is for women.

For the past three years, Caitlin and I have sought out women to build bridges with. To find commonalities with. And to further our research as we walk toward creating media that leads to culture change for women, for relationships, and for generations to come.

Because when women have really great sex, so do their partners. And when we all have great sex, we make the world a little brighter.

Heck, a whole LOT brighter.

Because good sex echoes the healthy connection of an intimate relationship.

And connected relationships - whether they may live next door to you, in your own house, or all the way across the country - change the world.