Lateral coital (side face-to-face)

M/F · Vaginal penetration · Side-lying

Posed figure

Keypoint template

ReceivingPenetratingCOCO-17 template · schematic, not to scale

Attributes

Position family
One-on-one
Primary act
Vaginal penetration
Partner arrangement
Side-lying
Penetration type
Vaginal
Facing
Face to face
Dynamics
Grinding
Support / surface
Flat surface / bed
Participant count
Two
Composition code
M/F
Source medium
Both
Physical difficulty
Low
Prevalence in adult media
Occasional
Intensity tier (compliance)
Explicit

Common camera framing

Side profileOverhead

Description: Face to face on their sides: the partners lie turned toward each other with legs interleaved, the mutual counterpart to spooning's nested rear entry. Neither body bears the other's weight, since the mattress supports each along the flank, and the pose has been studied and named as a low-effort mutual position, with motion arriving as a shared grind rather than deep thrusting.

Variations: The receiving partner's upper leg may hook over the partner's hip, or both pairs of legs weave into the classic scissored interleave.

On camera: Overhead framing reads the interleaved legs most clearly; side profile shows the mutual embrace.

AI design considerations: Two side-lying figures meet front to front, and the woven legs carry the read. Keep the interlock explicit, each shin traceable to its owner, because ambiguous leg attribution is the dominant failure mode here.

Historical provenance

Where this position appears in historical sex manuals, erotic art & literature · full timeline →

Also known asside-by-side face-to-facefacing spoonsside embrace
Kama Sutra: Parshva samputa (side clasp)Wikidata Q3543399

Related positions

Part of the Erotic Pose Catalog open dataset · CC BY 4.0 · keypoints are idealised COCO-17 templates.