Janelle Toussaint-Rawlins, known as The SexTechnologist, brings together technology, sexuality, and relationship wellness in a way that feels both deeply personal and practical. A somatic sexologist, ethical non-monogamy coach, and founder of Laketi, she began exploring sexuality while working in tech, gradually turning a personal interest into a career centred on intimacy, pleasure, and connection.

After nearly a decade of practising non-monogamy and training in somatic sexology and sexual health, Janelle noticed a recurring gap in how people approached relationships: couples and individuals were often making agreements before understanding their own needs. Laketi grew from that insight, helping people build foundational relationships and sexual skills before navigating more complex experiences such as consent and compersion.

Her work also extends into in-person coaching and Haus of Bliss, a lifestyle event and kinkBnb community created for Black professionals. Across these spaces, her approach is rooted in curiosity, education, and a willingness to question assumptions around intimacy.

In this conversation, Janelle explores what embodied consent really looks like, the emotional complexity behind compersion, the place of pleasure in wellbeing, and the often-overlooked effort involved in sustaining loving relationships. Rather than offering easy answers, she invites us to look more honestly at how we communicate, connect, and choose to show up for one another.

The Moment Everything Changed 

You spent years working in tech before stepping fully into sexuality and relationship wellness. What personal experience or realization made you see sexual well-being as something you couldn’t keep treating as a side passion?

Janelle: I started actively learning about sexuality and relationships while working in tech as a way to understand my own sexual experiences and experience agency by building a part-time business around it. I’ve always wanted to have a business of my own but never quite came across a passion that lit me up before sexual wellness.

Fast forward to when I was laid off from my tech role; I knew it was the push I needed to jump into this work full-time. I’ve been enjoying the ride ever since!

The Turning Point Between Tech 

Consent is often reduced to a simple “yes” or “no,” yet you describe it as a deeper relationship skill. What does genuinely embodied consent look and feel like in real life?

Janelle: In real-life, embodied consent feels like warmth, joy, ease, and contentment as you move through life experiences. General society treats consent as a static, one-time agreement as opposed to a fluid, living entity that can change moment-to-moment.

That means real, embodied consent is a practice of consistently checking in for your inner yes/no and communicating your inner experience to others around you.

Can an App Teach Us to Love Better?

As the founder of Laketi, you’re bringing technology into conversations that are deeply human and emotional. What can a digital platform teach people about intimacy, and where do you believe technology can never replace human connection?

Janelle: A digital platform such as Laketi is designed to give people evidence-based, culturally relevant knowledge about intimacy, influencing them away from the harmful, inaccurate, and stereotypical information that is commonly found on the internet. Intentionally designed digital platforms like Laketi also provide information that is free from censorship and can go into richer detail than social media does. Intimacy is incredibly complex and deserves more depth and nuance than social media has trained us to accept.

That is where Laketi lives. Now, where technology can never replace human connection is in action! The information provided by Laketi is meant to be actioned within and towards relationships. That is the hard work that people want to avoid but simply cannot if they wish to be connected with others. Laketi and other digital platforms like it are meant to be guides, not replacements for human connection.

More Than Just Being “Okay” With It 

The word “compersion” is often romanticised online. What does compersion actually feel like in real relationships, and what emotional work is required before someone can experience it authentically? 

Janelle: It’s easy to simplify the definition of compersion to “feeling joy when witnessing someone else’s joy” or “the opposite of jealousy,” as the internet does; however, the lived experience of compersion is more complex. In relationships, compersion functions more as a scale than a binary, ranging from jealousy to neutrality to attitudinal compersion to embodied compersion. Embodied compersion is considered the “automatic emergence of comparison,” whereas attitudinal compersion is “choosing to feel compersion.” In non-monogamy, embodied compersion is pedestalized, causing newcomers to often judge themselves and their lovers on how well it shows up in their relationships.

Yet the reality is that jealousy is natural and normal and will show up more often than compersion ever will in the beginning. As someone stabilizes their attachment style and learns how to process jealousy, they will likely enter into the neutrality or attitudinal phase. Over time, attitudinal compassion can later become embodied compassion. Compersion doesn’t always “just happen.” It takes communication skills, somatic awareness, practice, and most importantly, time.

Sexuality as Wellness

You recently spoke at the Somatics and Sex as Medicine conference. What excites you most about the growing recognition of sexuality as a legitimate component of overall health and healing? 

Janelle: I’m most excited that as the recognition of sexual wellness grows, people will begin to seek the support they need to experience pleasure in this lifetime. Too often we are sold the dream that the more we accomplish and consume and do, the more pleasurable our lives will be, but that is simply not true. Pleasure is always at our fingertips and can be accessed without having to prove ourselves.

It is a key component of our overall wellbeing as individuals and as a society. As recognition of this grows, more people will get to experience sexual wellness than ever before.

The One Belief I’d Rewrite

If you could challenge one widely accepted belief about sex, relationships, or “being a good partner,” what would you challenge, and what would you want readers to believe instead?

Janelle: The belief I would challenge is that “with the right person, the relationship just works. “I’m here to say that is not true. Sustaining a loving, healthy, sexual relationship over time takes dedicated intention and effort to experience. The belief that “good” relationships are easy is a way we scapegoat our responsibility for creating the relationships we desire to have in our lives.

There is a negative connotation with the idea of “work,” so people do not want to associate it with love. Instead, I would want readers to believe that “with the right person(s), the work is worth it.”That whoever you choose to spend this life with, it’s someone (or multiple someones) who creates immense value and joy so that the effort it takes to sustain that loving relationship is worthwhile.

Editor Note 

That intimacy is less about having all the right answers and more about developing the skills to stay curious about ourselves, our desires, our boundaries, and the people we choose to love. Janelle’s perspective gently challenges the fantasy that healthy relationships should simply fall into place. They don’t. They ask us to listen, communicate, regulate, reconsider, and sometimes do the uncomfortable work of becoming more honest with ourselves.

There is something quietly radical about treating pleasure as part of wellbeing rather than a reward for having everything else figured out.  To stop measuring love by how effortless it looks and start asking whether it feels intentional, alive, and worth showing up for.

Because the relationships that shape us aren’t effortless; they’re the ones we choose to keep learning how to love.