All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,

And to die is different from what any one supposed,

and luckier…

They are alive and well somewhere,

The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,

And if there ever was, it led forward to life,

And does not wait at the end to arrest it,

And ceas’d the moment life appear’d. Walt Whitman

Summer days slow down time. The sun hangs high in the sky for hours and the midday heat stretches to dusk. Summer is as close to timeless as most of us get in our busy schedules and it is a relief to lose track of what time or even what day it is. We are just here, right now, warm.

This week, time stood still for many of us in our small community when the lazy afternoon heat invited tragedy. We knew this young man who jumped into a cold river and drowned. Many people knew him, he was a star high school athlete and shined with all the glare of our beloved Duck football heroes. In a moment, the unthinkable, the unimaginable destiny that awaits us all suddenly changed the world. Possibility extinguished.

The very next day, the impossible struck again, when a very dear friend, too young to think of the end, didn’t wake up. A lover of all that was bigger than life, he filled up a room by walking in, and laughed heartily at himself and all the wondrous and strange parts of being human. I can’t actually believe that he will never show up again at my door, exclaiming and strangely costumed. It seems impossible.

The unfathomable losses of life that crack your heart wide open and leave you looking at the world broken hearted are a gift. We get in those moments that all the petty and small disputes that can dominate our life and relationships are nothing. We are awake and realize we have another day to tell someone I am sorry or better still, I love you. With a broken heart we come to life wanting to figure out how to love it all, the loveable and the irritating, the easy and the difficult, the happy and the sad.

We never know the last day. So act like today is it. And say the “I love you’s” that have been waiting to fall from your mouth. Give in, give up all that matters least and take this time to do what we are put here to do- love everyone you can.

The relationship between pain and pleasure in human sexuality is as profound as it is complex. Each time I have sex I am struck by the ecstatic release of deep pleasure which ignites an equal experience of intense pain. I have long wondered what begets what, if it is actually the intensity of the pain that arouses the pleasure or the other way around. I have come to believe that the pain/pleasure of the sexual act is one in the same. The tunnel of orgasmic faces at the Amora London exhibit (www.amoralondon.com) bears out this connection in what the French have long called “le petit mort” or little death of orgasm. Orgasmic release exists in a place that is solely its own and I know I am not alone in identifying it as both pain and pleasure.

Love, sex, pain and violence all stimulate the release of similar chemicals and hormones in the human body. Endorphins that are released in painful experiences are often perceived as pleasurable. Stress and pain can also stimulate the serotonin and melatonin production in the brain which transforms painful experiences into pleasure. The release of epinephrine and nor epinephrine in pain can also cause a pleasurable ‘rush’. Normal human biological response actually supports the complex and mysterious link between pain and pleasure.

So it is not surprising that the practice of combining painful techniques with sexuality is ancient. Roman poets, ancient tribal drawings and even the Kama Sutra all refer to safe practices of what has become known as BDSM. This acronym refers to Bondage, Domination, Sadism and Masochism which reflect the ancient sexual rituals of sexual dominance and submission that has qualified sex throughout history. For more reading on this see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BDSM#Origins.

The medical analysis of this form of sexual behavior is as checkered as the practice itself. Never fully understanding the human urge towards giving and receiving pain in the context of sexuality, it has been thought of as both disease and mental illness through most of the development of psychiatric practice and even dating back to the early 1800’s. Although these kinds of sexual practices were taken out of the diagnostic mental health codes in the mid 1990’s, there are still many people who struggle with their own relationship to the urge to explore and experience pain with sex.

Sexual studies in both the US and Europe have estimated that the overall percentage of BDSM related sexual behavior in the general population ranges somewhere between 5 and 25 percent depending on sexual orientation, age and nationality of the study demographics. There is a significant subculture of BDSM practitioners throughout the world and clubs or “dungeons” are established in most large cities in the world. BDSM practitioners make an important distinction between their sexual choices and sexual abuse, as everyone involved must agree to be safe, sane and consensual. This includes the use of “Safe words” and other boundaries of consent and safety.

The connection of pain/pleasure has existed for most of recorded humanity and there are many people for whom this form of sexual behavior exclusively defines sexuality. Getting a glimpse of both the history and current sexual practices helps me understand the yin/yang of my own sexual response. Feeling like our sexual arousal mechanism and desires are normal is a big concern for most of us. In fact, it is usually the first question people will ask when they go to see a sex therapist. Finding a language to talk about your sexuality and desire is not always easy, but it is the first step to meeting your physical desires and creating the emotional intimacy that makes sex meaningful.

Much of the sexual language available feels awkward and inadequate because it is used and overused in pornographic contexts that distance instead of approach my sexual experiences. Still, once over the discomfort of sharing the limited vocabulary, the discussion about the lines between pain and pleasure are worth exploring.

For many couples, just giving themselves permission to have the discussion can be simultaneously liberating and shaming. It all adds up to taking responsibility for our sexual selves and building relationships that allow them to thrive.

Recognizing how our sexual experience is mirrored in the emotions and soul of our relationship is illuminating. Here’s my hypothesis: loving someone emotionally creates the same pain/pleasure experience that physically making love to them does. There are moments of deep connection and intimacy, vulnerability and nakedness. And with them comes an open door to the opposite experience: feeling deeply hurt by your lover, by what was said, or, just as often, what went unsaid.

The act of loving – in whatever form – requires a willingness to experience both the pain and pleasure. This is the piece of sustaining loving relationships that is easy to miss, or at least misunderstand, and tragically the place where we walk away from the heart of what we want most.

A lot of people do not know how to have sex. On the one side, we are inundated by an exhibitionist; anything goes sexuality in our pornographic laden culture and on the other side, there is nothing, an empty and lonely place where most of us live with our questions about sexuality and wondering what is normative. Even most “Better Sex” videos are so graphic that integrating the images into practice is a far reach. I sell products which I assure will provide the tools for a longer and more satisfying sex life, but the longer I do it, the more I recognize that even the best lube in the world is not going to work if you don’t know how to use it. So here’s a little guide to the steps of making a spark turn into flame in your bedroom….

Step one- Desire and Arousal or Arousal and Desire….

Desire does not always precede arousal. Often times if you give yourself a chance to explore the purely physical sensations of scent and touch, the body itself will open up by itself to desire. Many a night, we have a pre-set agreement for an intimate rendez- vous and I arrive exhausted with no desire in sight. This is where love oil comes in. Scent is experienced by the olfactory and registered in the limbic part of the brain- where memory, emotion and sexuality is waiting to be stirred. Discovering desire is about waking up arousal, it is lighting the fuse. For me it feels like a process of falling deep into my body, a journey that awakens feelings of a thousand tiny fireworks just under the skin. Each and every time, I take this journey of arousal, I realize again how cutoff I am from really feeling my body through most of my day. Good sex should always begin with this journey, where the goal is learning to feel everything.

Step two- Exploring fantasy

The body is now awake, so whether you have private fantasies that you would never repeat or enjoy visual candy in books or video together, or actually plan out and try on roles together, healthy sexuality lets us abandon our normal reasoning self for brief moments to let the bodies cravings lead the mind. Whether orgasm is easy or challenging to achieve has a lot to do with your ability to let go and experience the odd and fascinating part of being a sexual human. Experiencing the pleasure of intimate touch without any fear of being somehow abnormal (which pretty much most people fear about their sexual selves at some point…) is how you move towards orgasm. You can’t demand it, you can only make room for it. This is the place to experiment, see how different tactile surfaces and vibrations change and enhance your experience…. the flame builds.

Step three- Penetration and Lubrication

I never pull out the lubricant until I can’t stand it anymore, until I can’t wait another minute. It wouldn’t do its job in step one or step two, it wasn’t made for those places- it relies on your imagination and your willingness to do its job. Accepting anyone into you as deeply as intercourse provides for is a sacred and life changing moment. Lubrication eases the entry and creates a dynamic smooth gliding of tissue against tissue. Healthy lubricant ingredients not only soothe and heal during their use, but also build the elasticity and integrity of the tissue over time. There is nothing more explosive and deeply satisfying than sharing the fireworks of deep intimacy and connection of our most private selves. So take the holiday to make your own fireworks and don’t hurry to the explosion- lighting the spark and fanning the flame are what makes the light in the sky so exciting. To help you celebrate, take advantage of our annual 4^th of July sale for 15% off of the entire website. Sign up for our newsletter and use coupon code “Spark It Up.”

When I think of summer, I have this picture of long lazy days by the water,  listening for the distant voices of my children while I wander off into a great book,  quietly stepping into some new ways of thinking or sharing in the stories of life that change us just by hearing them.   Ana Freud said  “Sex is something we do, sexuality is who we are.”  What better time than the brief interludes of warm sunny days to ponder the mystery of intimacy,  with fresh insights and revelations to bring increased clarity to how we live our sexuality as well as fun and passion to what we do with the people we love most. 

Understanding ourselves as sexual beings and building a language to explore who we are in these mysterious places is a large task.  For some people, the taboo of adding language to sexual acts keeps them silent and unfulfilled.   Even for me,  the loveologist that sells love products and can say the words “oral sex” to perfect strangers,  I can often find myself silent with my husband,  lacking the know how and the courage to describe my fantasies or describe the kind of touch that most moves me.   

When I received my copy of “Getting the Sex You Want”  by my friend Tammy Nelson, the director of the Center for Healing and Recovery and Passionate Partnerships  I was both  curious and a little skeptical.     Based on the couples therapy work she has been doing at her office in Connecticut, Tammy offers up some well known techniques and strategies for building the communication skills to connect with your partner.   The communications method, which is based on the work of Harville Hendrix’s work “Getting the Love You Want”  felt a bit contrived at first, but she quickly demonstrates how basic communication skills applied to our intimate lives has the power to revolutionize what you are doing in the bedroom and quickly spills over into the rest of your relationship. 

One example she shared of a husband who had so much shame about masturbation (and don’t we all share a bit of that…) experienced such a huge relief when he was finally able to talk about his needs of sharing the experience in their sex life together   The book was full of examples  and exercises to try by yourself or with your partner that demonstrated how a shared and agreed upon method of communicating about sex could easily turn into inspiring new found abilities to express sexual needs and desires.  I was so impressed with the book that I tried the technique myself later that week.   Things that I had never thought of saying to my husband suddenly seemed possible.  

The first question that anyone going to a sex therapist asks is “Am I normal?”  This question and the fear of what it might mean if we deviate from normal in our sexuality can control our lives and our relationships.  Another book that has recently come across my desk ,  Tantra for Erotic Empowerment (by Michaels and Johnson) is an active workbook of sexual self discovery.  The books premise that giving and extending permission to experience ourselves as sexual beings without fear of shame or rejection is truly the ground work for profound change and acceptance in the entire relationship. 

While I don’t have that much personal experience with Tantra practices,  I would say that anyone who is learning to love their partner in a long term relationship is bound  to encounter where the physical and spiritual worlds meet in lovemaking.   Understanding  our sexuality in the context of our human nature normalizes as well as sanctify this most mysterious form of human communication.  Unlike many books written about tantric practices, which can get really esoteric,  this one provides a clear map for the beginner as well as deeper insights for the tantric practioner.   Even if all the content is not for you, there are enough thought provoking exercises to keep the book interesting long after the sun sets.  

If you haven’t already read a review about Bonk by Mary Roach, let me say that there is nothing quite like actual sex history to wake you up to the wide and and amazing world of human sexuality.   She is a meticulous researcher and has a genuine sense of humor that alleviates any embarrassment you might be feeling about reading about the extremely checkered history that our discomfort with our sexuality has created through the centuries.  It will probably help you feel better about the places you are still stuck, and if you ever wondered where some of the far out porn fantasies came from- read sex history.   Even if you don’t want to own this book, reserve it at your local library.  Some fun fact from the book will spur some exciting discussion at your next barbeque. 

Here’s to a summer memorable for how we all learn to love more and show it in ways that will keep you connected long into winter. 

I was in our local hospital emergency room the other night.  I was comforting my 10 year old daughter awaiting a surgical repair to her broken and dislocated arm.   All the rooms were full with some degree of trauma and pain.   This is not exceptional, emergency room visits occur over 114 million times a year in the United States alone.  We live in a world with gravity, as my ten year old experienced with her recent bad landing on an unfortunate trampoline bounce.  At some time or another we all miss and fall,  and the force of gravity bears on us all equally,  where we hit the ground-  but we’re not running. 

The other gravity of life takes hold at these moments that often usher in serious injury and grave tragedy.  We are never prepared for the end of anything, even if we are fully aware of the statistics and uncertainty that qualify life.   How could we go about the fullness of life’s activities and challenges expecting tragedy to fall with the even handed ness that the universal law of gravity metes out?    In order to keep it all going, we  move forward with the naïve expectation that the difficult and challenging experiences in life only happen to other people, not to us.   Sooner or later, even the luckiest among us joins the ranks of survivors.    

I had just started reading I Will Not Be Broken by Jerry White, the day before I spent the night in the emergency room.   I have suffered illnesses and diseases with my children before, some that seemed like they would define life forever.   I remembered his words about how when people suffer a major loss of any kind, they all carry  a date.  This is the moment when tragedy, loss and surviving transforms their lives.   As I sat in the  ICU waiting room, hearing hushed conversations around me,  I knew that some of that date setting was going on right there.  I felt so grateful that all I had in front of me in the middle of the night is getting a girl through summer without the pool.   

That is another phenomenon of tragedy that happens for most of us.  We often end up comparing our loss to those of others we know or have heard of.   Even in the most dire of circumstances,   survivors find gratitude;  their problem is manageable compared to people they know.   Jerry White, himself was the victim of life changing loss when early in his twenties, he lost his lower leg in a minefield outside of Jerusalem.  His book is an account of the years he has spent founding the Survivors Corp and shares the gravity and grief of daily life on planet earth along with  remarkable stories of resiliency.  

Tragedy and loss is not limited to bodily events,  the emotional wreckage that can result from dysfunctional relationships is no less an issue of survivorship than losing a limb as I was recently reminded from one of my readers.   She asked me to write of the loss and trauma of reinventing a life after being left and abandoned in her long term relationship. I hear these kinds of stories everyday,  where the heart can become so bruised that we become unable to feel, unable to risk expressing love,  isolated with our fears and loneliness.   Finding the courage and the heart to rebuild a life that has meaning and brings joy requires the same skills of survivorship which begin by giving up being a victim and choosing life. 

The universal law of gravity is based on the fundamental force of attraction between bodies (objects of mass) which is what gravity in life should teach us.   We are all in this together and reacting to the losses that we sustain with the ability to reach out and give back is the basis on which we not only survive, but thrive.   Often it is not until the world seems to be coming apart that we begin to feel both compassion and connectedness to people, both that we know and that are strangers who have experienced a loss like ours. 

Early stages of recovery from tragedy happen as we lose our sense of being a victim and realize that we belong.  Joining groups of people who share similar experiences is a profoundly healthy response to finding meaning in your own experience.   Settling into a new and different life experience is heightened and more rewarding when we risk offering our help to others just beginning their journey.  

Experiencing our brokenness is where we get a heart that is cracked wide open.   A heart that has the both the strength to grieve,  the courage to forgive,  the tenacity to live in gravity.   

There are many days that being married, or rather staying married is the most challenging thing that I do. This is still true after 24 years of marriage, no less so than it had been in the early years of my marriage. What is most interesting is that the conflicts we have revolve around the same issues and although we often succeed in living them differently, when the wounds are opened again, and usually with just a single thought, the thorns cut a bit deeper each time and the climb up after the fall is a bit further each time.

Recently, I took a leap again and tried to get my husband to see the places where he is unable to connect and extend himself for our kids. There is almost no language available to us in this discussion that does not provoke his defensiveness. Any way I broach the topic, all he can hear is a shrill pitch in my voice; his guardedness setting my tone a notch higher. Before our four children, we had the same arguments of my incessant planning around his availability and his distancing, internal focus which for so many years felt personal. I couldn’t get for decades that it had nothing to do with me.

As we birthed and raised our children, my need for connection to him was replaced with the demands of caring for them and over time the needs I had seemed to become saturated with the intensity of raising four kids. We stopped arguing over his participation and I planned and carried out our family activities and he would be present as he chose. Over time, the arguments about his showing up to basketball and soccer games, the school plays and science presentations waned. It was an argument that never shifted anyone’s ground and only dug the ditch deeper between us.

So I was caught off guard when it came up again around my eldest son’s state tennis match. I am used to dropping my own plans for my kids’ events and even re-arranging a list of activities for the other kids, but something about the importance of this event that didn’t even strike him, sent me off over the precipice, the one that only takes one thought to slide into a deep abyss. It is a dark hole that deepens over time, requiring more effort each time to shake the old resentments that harden my heart into a hateful place.

If you have ever seen the Star Trek series with Jean Luc Picard’s struggle to become human after he is taken over by the Borgs, which is what the emotional precipice of life is for most of us. In almost no time, our own heart is unrecognizable and the easy advice that I give all the time of holding what is most loveable and what is most un-loveable side by side feels impossible. Worse still is that I can barely discern my feelings of the moment for the truth of my life. The darkest parts of how I feel can seamlessly turn into “the truth” I have been hiding from myself.

Even as I gain glimpses of balance and my better sense of all that works in my life tries to regain control, the dust and grime from that nasty slide hang on. I feel ashamed at the capacity for meanness and unkindness that I hold. I re-learn how much work it takes to love and that the only way to find balance comes at the moment you realize that your unkindness has nothing to do with anyone else. It is yours alone.

Claiming my darkness and letting the other person off the hook is in fact the only way back to recapturing your heart. The act of self-loathing transformed into self forgiveness is the key that makes forgiveness of others possible. My husband will never be a strong communicator/connector and yet the only way he will ever get better at it is from a place of being loveable and acceptable in how he can connect and communicate right now.

We are almost back on solid ground again. At least we can see each other eye to eye. It is a relief, as I ponder how steep is the precipice that can come up between us with a single thought.

Here is the link to one of the best recaps of sex today in America and abroad…http://nymag.com/relationships/sex/4705
Author Philip Weiss makes the case for the genetically predisposed male needs for sexual diversity and covers everything from the new form of communal living in polyamory, old issues of prostitution and infidelity and the seemingly unanswerable question about finding the junction between sexuality and long term committed relationships.

“There is no more unnatural principle of social organization than sexual exclusivity.”  says one of the author’s friends who declined to be identified.   After a  lengthy comparison of the social mores of the more sexually relaxed European countries and our own puritanical American morality was said and done,  the Europeans may have more regular and discreet affairs that are more readily accepted within the context of marriage- which is to say that the affairs are less likely to end in divorce than here in the US, but the emotional damage that the marital relationship sustains is not so different.  European women endure their suffering silently, but they suffer from infidelity just the same.  To say that an affair doesn’t mean anything trivializes the act and the people directly involved and the people who are left out.

The truth about sex is that what men and women both want is the freedom to deeply experience the erotic parts of ourselves.   Most couples can’t even find a language to talk about their desires or fantasies, how could they ever think that the daily relationship of marriage could afford the possibility of exploring them.   Our sexual lives if they have any chance of keeping us interested require a leap.   The woman I am while shopping at the grocery store and preparing dinner is not the same woman who has amazing sex later that night.   In my daily reasoning space, I sometimes wonder where that sexy woman lives and I know that it is a journey to find her and to let her out of the confines of the tedium and responsibilities that dominate my daily life.

Great sex is first the abandonment of reason which is why so many men find it safer to do with a stranger,  even in Eliot Spitzer’s case, where he had a beautiful wife and where he risked his public life every time he picked up the phone to make another date.    You have to be living in a daily relationship that loves you with all of your imperfections to feel safe enough to experience the kind of release that ecstatic orgasms bring.   Sex workers of all kinds first credo is the mandate of  distancing themselves from pleasure so completely that they feel nothing, even as their client is writhing with release.   A brief interview with a high payed courtesan who described herself as a “highly sexual woman with a highly compartmentalized life,” hits that point home.  In the book “Brothel”  the single act which completely ostracizes  one hooker from all the others is having an orgasm on the job.

“Studies provided to me by Kinsey researchers suggest that over the last 50 years, sex and marriage have become increasingly, well, decoupled. ”   It doesn’t have to be that way,  learning to love someone over time, which is different than being a companion to someone can include an amazing sex life for decades.   It requires real and daily effort, but so does all that cavorting around.    Really amazing sex happens when you make love.  It doesn’t make you feel guilty in life, it makes you feel whole.

It is where making love is totally sustainable.

Vol. 47 The Real Conversation

Flying out of New Orleans, I am seated next to a gynecologist that I didn’t meet at the ACOG yearly meeting.   I share my story about love products and my work about making love sustainable.   He shares his story about how limited his time with each patient is and how awkward it is to discuss sexual intimacy.   We talk about how little education and language we are given in our childhood and youth to understand our sexual nature and honor this part of ourselves.  We even talk about masturbation and its dirty history of torture and shame and how difficult it is for so many women to touch themselves or in turn, to allow themselves to feel pleasure when someone else does.   We talk about how important it is to honor your partnership as the center of your family and not to let your children’s needs overtake your marriage.    He shares the pain of the early divorce he lived through in medical school.   I share how much I struggled in my own marriage while my husband was in medical school.  We talk about the incredibly high statistics of failed marriages in medicine- and then in life in general.   I share my dreams of making a chair of loveology at a university.  We have a real conversation.

Then we start talking about the recent election.  We are in opposite parties about everything.  He thinks global warming is propaganda-   “Al Gore, the Nobel prize winner is just trying to make money” he says.  He thinks that welfare destroys black families.   He believes that increased CO2 will help grow more plants.   This guy is a doctor and the longer I talk to him, the more I realize that even if I had every fact in the world at my disposal, I wouldn’t convince him of anything.   He is a product of his culture and I mine-and even as we fully agreed about everything essential to loving and intimacy, we couldn’t agree about anything else in the world.  

If we’d begun with the political we would never have arrived at the personal, which is how we are different.   We even discussed at the beginning how easy it is to profile someone, to believe you know who someone is by how they look or speak.   Certainly if he had told me the propaganda thing about global warming to begin with, he would have been this other southern republican who I wish would make their own country and leave mine.   Instead, he was a guy who had his heart in the right place, but only got information from one source, which I am sure he would say about my own progressive leanings.

I am trying to hold onto the first conversation as the real one,   but I watch myself waiver to disbelief and judgment about how he could possibly be so stubbornly misinformed.   It is easy to become partisan and separate ourselves with our differences.  It is harder to do that with someone who has shared their real story with you.   Connecting to the real story is our only hope of building a bridge to each other- not because we will or could ever change each other’s mind, but because there has to be enough room for both to exist simultaneously.  

I have been thinking about self love lately, and not just the emotional kind. I just recently learned that the month of May was recently named National Masturbation month. Certainly it is a topic that could do with a little airing out, if based only on its checkered history alone. It wasn’t all that long ago that boys were tortured with all kinds of strange contraptions to stop them from experiencing the terrible act of masturbation that was sure to make them blind or insane. Hard to believe, but the most educated people around perpetrated these myths in the form of medicine for years. It has been ugly indeed, and the church damning anyone who ever thought of self-pleasure to eternal hell didn’t help.

Cultural myths die hard and the history of abuse that has long been attached to the practice of physical self love still carries a heavy doses of guilt, shame and anxiety with it for many people. Even without much religiosity in your life, the act of self pleasuring carries an enormous silence. As I have been studying the topic, I can tell you it only takes saying the word out loud to silence a crowd.

Feeling isolated and alone with our sexuality is standard in this country. The little sex education that is provided through adolescence, is an exercise in naming body parts at best and in some institutions is a drawn out diatribe of abstinence theory and the sinfulness of sexuality in general. Historians have suggested, that “the forbidden fruit” that is referenced from Adam and Eve is the experience of orgasm, so it is not surprising that this first gate of knowing and loving ourselves through masturbation has been continuously affirmed in most religions as sinful.

Yet, this is not the state we are born into- if you have ever watched a small child explore their own body and the look of happy surprise when they discover the highly enervated erogenous zones that have no other meaning than pleasurable sensation, it is clear that the shame and discomfort that replaces this healthy curiosity is part of our collective education, to which we are all subjected, even as it ranges in severity depending on your own family’s reaction to sexuality in general.

Anna Freud famously wrote that “sex is something you do, sexuality is something you are.” Imagine the dinner time discussions in her home. This distillation of her father’s lifelong inquiry into sexuality is meaningful in this conversation about masturbation because it recognizes the essential truth, that we are all sexual beings. The degree to which we are driven by this part of our nature is as variable as is the way each of us interprets and acts on this part of our human nature. But between the recent scandals in the church between priests and kids, and the damaging sexual relationships that so many people live victim to, I think it is fair to say that we have come to the point where we might rethink and embrace the idea and practice of healthy self pleasuring.

Indeed, there are many sexual educators and therapists that consider the ability to self pleasure as the cornerstone of sexual health. It’s not really a stretch to consider that a large percentage of the sexual dysfunction that so many people suffer from might easily has begun with the shame and anxiety about touching oneself. There is a clear correlation between the degree of guilt that early physical curiosity met and the ability to experience sexual pleasure in adult life. Finding comfort with our sexual selves is one of the most genuine, intimate and life affirming ways we can know ourselves. It is the first gate of understanding for both the raw experience of pleasure and the root of our primary sexual identity which is so basic as to be prerequisite to a fulfilling sexual relationship with others.

Just for the record, masturbation is the most common sexual practice on the planet. It is not just for lonely people either. Survey research shows that people of all ages masturbate both in and out of relationships. Kinsey’s survey found that almost 40% of men and 30% of women in relationships masturbated. A study of Playboy readers found that 72% of married men masturbated, and a study of Redbook readers found that 68% of married women masturbated. Even given those statistics, many people feel they have to hide this behavior from their partner.

One of the best reasons to let go of all the judgment and history surrounding this normal sexual behavior is because having access to your own pleasure and orgasm teaches a profound inner lesson, which is that your orgasm is your own. No one else gives it to you or has power over you having it. Having the knowledge and confidence to know what feels good to you allows you the space and courage to share that most intimate information about yourself with someone else. Accepting the full responsibility of our own sexual nature, needs and preferences is the gift you bring to a healthy sexual relationship with someone else.

So take the time this month to love yourself, feel your body and be grateful for all the sensations that you experience. Just for this one month, see what it feels like to call this part of yourself normal and welcome in the comfort of being a sexual human being.

To learn more about this topic, take a look at http://sexuality.about.com/b/2006/05/01/may-is-national-masturbation-month.htm.

Also, check out Wendy’s Pick’s - Pleasure Objects, for some excellent information on LELO

Another great resource which outlines the origin of vibrators and women’s orgasm is a video we sell called Passion and Power, an amazing chapter in the history of women’s sexuality and search for a relationship to their own right to pleasure.

Not long ago, after agreeing to review another book on greening the fashion world, the publisher sent me a note saying that after reviewing my site www.goodcleanlove.com, she was also going to send another  new release that she thought I would be interested in; “Sex Secrets of Porn Stars”.    I wondered if she had actually read anything on my site, because after years of attending the big Vegas “Sex Shows”, it became increasingly clear that my corporate mission, brand identity and personal beliefs about the connection between love and sex was a universe removed from both the intent and content of the adult industry.   Giving into curiosity, I opened the book to the first page, where the author compares women we emulate like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Margaret Mead with the famous women of the silver screen, who bare it all, the stars of pornography.  She suggests that if we would emulate these women (instead of great women’s rights leaders???) , we could all enjoy the pleasures of the flesh.  The plot thickens with the essentials on everything from the hair, make up and costume choices of porn stars to the borrowed positions and scripts to spice up one’s own love life.  

 Ironically on the same day, I got a lengthy email from a New York literary agent that I had been corresponding with about publishing my work in book form.  Having made contact with her through a possible editor at a large publishing house I was anxious to hear her thoughts on how best to format the work.  She said although she liked my work, the relationship angle on the work involved in building and maintaining a sustainable relationships just wouldn’t sell nearly as well as a cute book about discovering and enjoying a more passionate life.  “Couldn’t you just write a book about finding more passion?  After all, you have this cute company that sells sex products…. Just downplay   all the hard work in relationships, people don’t really want to read about that.”

It occurred to me to send her “Sex Secrets of the Porn Stars”.  

 I do sometimes feel like promoting my tag line of  “Making Love Sustainable” is a little like pushing a big rock up a steep hill.   We aren’t really a culture that applies the wisdom of sustainability to our most important relationships.  Often when I say it,  there is a thoughtful pause, as though the idea were completely new.  It isn’t just about promoting green and healthy products although the adult industry could certainly do with a green washing of it’s standard ingredients.   The deeper recognition is the idea that we might be willing to give up momentary happiness or the ease we expect our relationships to provide and actually commit to the work of making our relationships sustainable and lasting, with the same effort we would put into our homes, businesses and health. 

How far our collective reality is from this sustainable love model is evidenced in all of our society’s demographics from rising divorce statistics to the trends of young people who choose to “hook up” or be “friends with benefits” rather than engage in a committed relationship, to how common place pornography has become in our lives.   The percentages of people who participate in the on-line pornographic universe is startling- One in four adults spend four or more hours per week in sexual experiences that are cut off from the relationships that define their lives.  Many actually prefer these virtual relationships to the real live ones that fill their homes.  In a time when there has never been more opportunity and technology to connect to each other, we have never seen the incidence of this many people living alone.  

That we don’t choose and stay in real love relationships is not that surprising as loving people is one of the most challenging and elevated skills that we are demanded to  develop as human beings.  Most of us come from families which gave us little useful information on the topic and if you are graduated from any public institution in the land,  then you know how little relationship skills are provided in the standard k-12 curriculum.  Even skills as basic as conflict resolution are not nearly as standard for children as geometry.  Given our collective history of war and pillage, you would think it might occur that loving each other is not ingrained in the human model, and that like other coveted skill groups we would set this as our highest level of mastery. 

Still, as complicated and messy as loving relationships can be, they are also the only avenue available to us that can provide the kind of mind blowing, “Wow- that was amazing”  sex that we all long for most.  Making love with someone that you deeply love is a singular experience that so unites the intimates involved that it transforms them. It is the proverbial glue that keeps the rest of the mess intact and inspires people to compassion and kindness that they may not even know they are capable of.   It is the truest part of what it means to be human and the act of love that accompanies it has the power to change the world.  

And change the world it does.    Loving someone is the largest single predictor or health and longevity.  As Dr. Dean Ornish said  “Love and intimacy are at the root of what makes us sick and what makes us well, what causes sadness and what brings happiness, what makes us suffer and what leads to healing…I am not aware of any other factor in medicine- not diet, not smoking, not exercise, not stress, not genetics, not drugs, not surgery- that has a greater impact on our quality of life, incidence of illness and premature death from all causes.”   Love is the cure as well as the illness in our world, and evolving our ability to love, increases not only our chances of survival but creates a depth and meaning in life that only happens in relationships.

The healing affects of intimacy and connection extend deeply into the physical act of lovemaking. Hundreds of major medical studies have shown that an active sex life leads to a longer life, better heart health, a healthier immune response, reduction in chronic pain symptoms, lower rates of depression and even protection against some cancers. Men who have regular sex (only twice per week) have half as many heart attacks as men who only have sex once per month. In fact, a regular garden variety sex life has been shown to extend life by as much as ten years. People who enjoy a meaningful sex life are less anxious, fearful and inhibited.

So now that you are sold on the benefits of  love and intimacy,  lets also reveal the unspoken truth  about sustaining love over time, which  is that loving someone else and allowing yourself to be deeply loved is an act of heroic patience, intention and commitment.   After the honeymoon wears off, (and I promise it always will)  we humans  are all as annoying as we are loveable.   Accepting that as fact and then building the skills to undertake the daily problem solving of loving,  is not only wise, but a prerequisite for enjoying the kind of sex that can change your world.  Stay tuned here as we continue to explore new regions of the heart and the delights of sustainable love.  Please Share your stories of keeping your love vital and healthy too.

 A seriously lively discussion has been going on at
http://www.realitysandwich.com/sustainable_love, where this was first posted.  Truly fascinating to hear the range of experience and belief about love.