Bihar-born Pallavi Barnwal is an intimacy coach and sex educator. But her journey to achieving this feat was not an easy one. Barnwal was raised in a traditional Indian family, where talking about sexual desires was taboo. When she came of age, she was in a relationship with a man. But when she was to marry a man her parents had found for her, she was told to lie that she was a virgin.

Barnwal didn’t understand why this was so important, but went with the flow at the time. A few years later, when she realised there was an intimacy problem with her husband, she wanted to leave the marriage. “I had no other option. I couldn’t discuss my sexual desires with my husband. And so, I stopped enjoying having sex with him. I didn’t want to do it anymore. Eventually, we got separated,” Barnwal tells us.