“At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.”-Albert Schweitzer

A long holiday weekend is a great time to consider staying in to create your own fireworks. For as much exhibitionist sexuality that floods our media sources, many couples are hard pressed to find the time and attention that a healthy and vital intimate life demands. The sad truth is that many people do not know how to have sex. We presume that it is an innate skill like love, but the truth is that both of these capacities that define our humanity and our lives are skill based, which means that they respond to education and practice. It is no wonder, really when you consider that on the one hand, we are inundated by an exhibitionist, “anything-goes” sexuality in our pornographic laden culture, and on the other hand there is nothing. This is an empty and lonely place where most of us live with our questions about sexuality and wonder what is normal. Even most “Better Sex” videos are so graphic that integrating the images into practice is a far reach for many. The fiction of pornography is for many the only educations available.

As a purveyor of love products and a loveologist, I spend my days educating about products and relationships, which can enhance the real connection between people. One thing that I have learned over and over is that even though I am completely confident in my product formulations as tools for a longer and more satisfying sex life, 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…
Read the rest of this entry »

“Women’s desire for sexual emancipation is very worthy. I fear that it’s being hijacked by a profit-oriented industry that doesn’t really try to understand women and their sexuality.” –Leonore Tiefer

The race towards a pill to cure female sexual dysfunction continues as the major pharmaceutical players vie to create a pill that can cure the symptoms that keep women from the desire and arousal that characterize a vital intimate life. The market for such a remedy is estimated to be worth close to $2 billion; but of those who have already tried and failed, the prevailing sentiment was that female sexuality and its corollary dysfunction is the result of a subtle and complex combination of behaviors, attitudes and emotions. Not easily treatable with a single pill.

In fact, FSD, or female sexual dysfunction is a reality that visits the majority of women on the planet at some point in their lives. On any given day, most clinical studies cite the statistic of 43% of women being affected by a range of symptoms that include vaginal dryness, pain with intimacy and loss of libido. It is difficult to decipher which symptom begets the other and even harder to unravel the emotional, mental and spiritual impacts that this extremely common, yet rarely discussed condition that impacts millions of women and couples.

The most recent application to the FDA came from Boehringer Ingelheim, who actually discovered their recent entry into the field of sexual healing by way of a failed anti-depressant, Flibanserin. The manufacturers themselves are not entirely sure why changing the levels of seratonin, dopamine and norepinephrin work to affect a woman’s libido. Many of those on the review committee felt that the company had not made its case and that the benefits of the daily pill did not outweigh its side effects, which included dizziness, nausea and fatigue.

Read the rest of this entry »

“Most people give up just when they’re about to achieve success. They quit on the one yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game, one foot from a winning touchdown.” –Ross Perot

This week’s announcement about the end of the 40-year marriage of Al and Tipper Gore caught me off guard. I am sure I wasn’t the only one surprised by them calling it quits. They were one political couple whose mutual respect and admiration stabilized all of us through some difficult times. Despite the pressures and public viewing, their marriage seemed vital and authentic. Admittedly, any marriage always runs deeper and includes much more than what is available to its witnesses, so I have been reflecting on what happens when people quit on each other.

In part this has been on my mind as I have been experiencing my own relationship dissolution lately with a dear friend. For reasons that I don’t understand and can’t even name, she has pulled away from the relationship, clear and articulate only that the reflections I provide are not what she is wanting in her life. Ever the loveologist, I tried leaving messages of all kinds, until suddenly I stopped. I quit because the pain of rejection and all of the internal messages it triggered was too intense. It took up too much space in my heart that I couldn’t resolve. It was easier to bear the pain of loss.

Often when a relationship dissolves we look for a single event that caused the end. The truth is that even when there is a precipitating event, it is almost always the result of a long chain of minor exchanges where one partner feels dismissed or disrespected. While these moments may often go by unacknowledged, they are nonetheless recorded in the body of the relationship. It is in the smallest day to day interactions that we experience the love in our relationships, or become habitually defended to injury. It is easy to imagine in the high profile public life of the Gores, how defended, yet cordially you learn to co-exist.
Read the rest of this entry »

“The only thing about masturbation to be ashamed of is doing it badly.” –Sigmund Freud

Whatever else the holiday weekend may offer, don’t forget to honor the fact that May has long been declared national Masturbation Month. Good Vibrations launched the annual celebration of self-pleasure in 1995 to protest the firing of Clinton appointed U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jocelyn Elders. Conservative members of the administration blasted Elders when she responded to questions regarding safe sex by saying that, “Masturbation is something that perhaps should be taught.” This was a remarkably bold statement at the time, and although masturbation is considered one of the most common sexual acts on the planet, the silence and shame that shadow masturbation have long and deep roots.

Beyond the religious condemnation that has long been associated with self-pleasure, the practice was not long ago considered an affliction for which medical doctors used the cruelest of instruments and techniques to control young boys from experiencing any pleasure at all. So it is not surprising that the self-reporting of this behavior still hovers between 30- 70% depending on gender and age. Even with all of the benefits that this practice can bring to a couple’s sex life; this is still a behavior that many people are not comfortable sharing with their partners.

Read the rest of this entry »

“The power of love to change bodies is legendary, built into folklore, common sense, and everyday experience. Love moves the flesh, it pushes matter around… Throughout history, “tender loving care” has uniformly been recognized as a valuable element in healing.” ~Larry Dossey

Does mental health enhance sexual wellness? Does sexual wellness enhance mental health? Yes and yes. Creating your own equation to find where the two meet and enhance each other is what I call the dance of intimacy. Feeling desirable to yourself defines the beginning of libido and our curiosity about our sexuality. Not having this experience is a primary early death of passion in many a relationship.

Learning and practicing methods of calm, peace or acceptance about the moment I am in helps my demeanor, which in turn helps my relationships. Mostly it helps my relationship to myself, which makes me feel more desirable in life. In this sense, working towards mental health is definitely creating an opening to sexual wellness in my life.

Read the rest of this entry »

“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow.’” -Mary Anne Radmacher

I am totally out of hormones. Grateful that my cyclical clock is still ticking, but the down turn hits hard. Multi-tasking is out of the question and just finding a neutral place to wait it out feels like a victory. It is easy to dwell in the place of what is wrong on these days of little hormones. The gaps in my abilities widen and I can see no clear path out, even if I am on it.

Pema Chodron, a Buddhist teacher, says that if you can stay in your feelings without going off on the storylines that surrounds them, on the other side of the feelings what ever they may be, there lies the bodhichitta, the enlightened heart. This is the soft spot, where compassion is born. It is the part of us that keeps us from hardening in life and has a lot to do with our ability to love- ourselves and others. I had some practice in staying with this wounded place in me today.

Read the rest of this entry »

‘An inordinate passion for pleasure is the secret of remaining young.” -Oscar Wilde

One of my best memories of the recent sex therapy conference that I recently attended was when I met the 84 year old grandmother of one of the PhD students attending the conference. Actually, she was accompanied by both her mom and sister too and the whole family was being interviewed about the ‘hottest thing’ they saw in Phoenix at this AASEC T conference. The grandmother said in her slow and steady Midwestern accent, that ‘she must be the hottest thing there, as she has been loving sex for most of her 84 years.’ When I asked her if her if she thought her sex life kept her young, she responded, ‘Well, maybe when I am having it.’

Read the rest of this entry »

What to do…If medication and relationship issues are ruled-out, I recommend you try the below.

As we age, our sexual response changes. It’s not unusual to need more sexual stimulation to achieve erections and/or ejaculation. Try focusing more on pleasure than “performance”. After all, orgasm is what is reached at the peak of sexual arousal. So, make sure you are sufficiently aroused BEFORE you begin intercourse. In other words, spend more time in outercourse activities, such as kissing, manual and oral sex. Also, multiple stimulation can be an effective way to amp your arousal level. For example, kissing and/or having your wife touch multiple erogenous areas of your body (nipples, anus, balls) at the same time. Whether or not you ejaculate or have intercourse…your level of sexual pleasure is sure to increase.

Remember, sex does not always have to conclude with an orgasm. Change things up a bit, relax, and enjoy.

“To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.” -Emily Dickenson

If life on earth can be reduced to anything, it is the time we are given to inhabit it. Time is the one resource that is doled out to all of us equally and yet what we do with the hours of our lives determines not only the quality of our daily existence, but whether in the end we have left behind anything that makes life more beautiful, more bearable, more true for those who remember us. Yet, time is also an elusive resource. Everything takes longer than we think, except for life itself – which the deeper you get into it, the faster it seems to go by. I recognize this in my own life by the way a new season still catches me off guard, letting go of summer takes me clear to the end of October. Every time I unpack the holiday ornaments, I am dumbfounded by the spin of another year gone by.

Celebrating my silver anniversary this spring is yet another poignant reminder of the time of our lives. I can’t even believe that I am old enough to have a silver anniversary, let alone take stock of the thousands of days that I have spent alongside another person, who, even after all this time, remains a mystery. Mark Twain once said, “Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.” Still, even after all this time, I am not sure I would claim to know a perfect love, just one that I can keep turning to.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the thing about loving people: They are annoying. I tell people this regularly and they laugh, sometimes a nervous laugh, but more often a knowing laugh. We laugh together out of relief too, it’s not just you, or me, but lets face it, collectively we are all pretty annoying. A recent study of thousands of couples sited the most frequent cause of breakups and divorces were rarely about big issues, but rather the build up of small gestures or lack of them that caused people to leave their relationships. Certainly a look back through our collective human history is nothing if not a testimony to how incredibly annoying we all are- and how little things can turn bad and ugly on a big scale.

Even within our own tribes and families, our similarities and genetic ties are challenging to grasp and hang onto. With both partners and children, appreciating how we are related is something that we have to learn and re-learn. It takes separating the essential loveliness of the people around us from all of the incredibly annoying traits that fill the din. Overwhelming our sense of connection are the small things- how people chew too loudly, or swing their knees in their sleep, or drip food from the corner of their mouth, or talk while they are chewing—the noises we make when we brush our teeth, or the crumbs we leave on the counter, or the socks we can’t turn right side out. In my house these lists are infinite and trivial and weighty. Learning to sustain our relationships and choosing to stay happens in all the small moments of the everyday mess of life.

Read the rest of this entry »