“I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can’t see from the center.” -Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

In my twenties I bought a poster of some guy hanging off the side of a cliff with Jayne Howard’s quote, “If you are not living on the edge, you are taking up too much room.” I always liked to think of myself as someone who pushes life to the edge. It was a way for me to create a relationship to the part of me that defied societal conventions. It was a comforting way to explain the many times that I found myself on the fringes of social groups, unable to connect.

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“If you want to take your mission in life to the next level, if you’re stuck and you don’t know how to rise, don’t look outside yourself. Look inside. Don’t let your fears keep you mired in the crowd. Abolish your fears and raise your commitment level to the point of no return, and I guarantee you that the Champion within will burst forth to propel you toward victory.” Bruce Jenner

Watching the opening ceremony for the winter Olympics tonight and learning of the tragic death of one of the athletes on a practice run brings the whole event into sharp focus. The athletes make it all look so easy and the television coverage usually turns their struggles into something that looks like a movie script. The truth of it, I think is deeply reflected in the fearless effort and the relentless persistence towards excellence that is the lives of these champions.

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What is it about the southern half of the United States that makes their citizens more sexually satisfied than anywhere else in the country? According to Trojan’s 2009 Pleasure Survey, Houston, Atlanta and Washington D.C. are having the most sex, while cities up north like Chicago and San Francisco are having the least amount of sex. Could it be people feel sexier in warmer weather? What’s even more interesting is that many of those cities that have the most sex also have the most satisfying sex, with Atlanta coming in as the most sexually satisfied city and New York following up as a close second. On the contrary, Boston and San Francisco had the lowest frequency of sexual satisfaction with ratings of 63 and 60%, respectively.

What do these results tell us? Should the 2/3 of the American populace that is desiring of more sex simply move to Houston or Atlanta? Well, maybe not, but the survey claimed that 76% of Americans are continuously striving to find ways to make their sex more exciting and pleasurable. The survey also explained that 59% of us believe that pleasure aids such as vibrators and dildos can spice up sex.

Besides moving south where the weather and the sex, at least according to this survey, is hotter, what can we do to bring some of that lovin’ to us? The answer’s rather simple. 84% of us agree that sex is essential to a healthy lifestyle, but it’s obviously not fun if it’s boring. Try something new. Buy a new sex toy and experiment with some Good Clean Love… It can only get hotter from there.

Everyone wants to orgasm. This is just a fact of life and nature. Long ago, before pornography was everywhere, desire and lust still held a formative place in our human sexuality makeup, but we all had a little more room to imagine orgasmic experience and less to compare ourselves to. With the advent of internet pornography, you can witness orgasm on demand, but that doesn’t mean you can make yourself, or anyone else have one. There in lies the conundrum of orgasm.

Of all the coveted human experiences, what makes orgasm so elusive is that it cannot be forced. Even many methods of cajoling seem to backfire. Desperation and orgasm are strange bedfellows. Here we only need to unleash our imagination for a moment and it is clear how much sexual behavior lives in this odd coupling- faking, purchasing, role playing, submitting, dominating, what we will not do for an orgasm is somewhat astounding. Several great sex therapists that I know, tell me that the quest can cost many people their relationship. Orgasm almost becomes the oxymoron in this situation when it is the relationship itself which is given as the fertile ground to grow and nurture the comfort with our sexuality which opens the door to orgasm.

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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.

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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.

When I teach about the Ecology of Love and talk about the water that lives between people I often use the term “showing up” to describe the flow that happens in relationships. In relationships, like the ocean, there is an ebb and tide to how we are present for each other, but if the water in the relationship is always out, then both people feel alone more often than they feel like there is someone at their back. Many people go through years in partnerships where the experience of loneliness is profound. It is something that I struggle with in my own marriage, each of us having a different sense of what togetherness means and how much of it we need.

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Our feelings are like weather patterns. They are changeable and act on the environment with great power. They inform and distract with their intensity. They reflect the nature of the moment with great accuracy.

Just as our changing weather patterns are shifting and changing the world we live in, our ability to experience and share our feelings in meaningful ways has the power to shift the emotional landscape of our lives.

Yet feelings are for many people a locked box: an experience that overwhelms and is difficult to express. We are taught in a variety of circumstances and for a variety of reasons to suppress our feelings. We learn to silence our feelings so well that the messages in our bodies are not even discernible. Suppressed feelings are not as invisible as you might think. They take on a life in our dreams and eventually become diseases in our bodies. Our inability to express our feelings cuts us off not only from our own experience but limits the connection we feel with the people we love most.

In the same way that we live in denial of the extreme weather patterns that are threatening life as we know it, we disconnect from our emotional life because we are afraid we will be overtaken by our feelings. Small children are frequently shaken by the enormity of their emotional experience. When was the last time you witnessed a temper tantrum in the grocery store- what better metaphor for a giant storm raging inside a little body? What happened when your feelings were too big to hold when you were a child? What happens now?

Jim Carrey was quoted in a Playboy magazine interview last year saying that “Heaven is on the other side of that feeling you get when you’re sitting on the couch and you get up to make a triple-decker sandwich. It’s on the other side of that, when you don’t make the sandwich” .It is about giving up the things that basically keep you from feeling. I am always asking myself ‘What am I going to give up next?’ Because I want to feel.” Learning to feel begins with a choice and the realization that authentic living demands the maturity to open up to your full experience, as messy as it might be.

This is, in fact, the do or die work of relationships; to have the courage to feel the full range of emotions that comes with intimate connections. It is literally the fuel for the fire of passion, the air that keeps a relationship breathing, the stuff of transformation and growing up. Just as our weaknesses and frailties are wedded to our virtues and strengths- the ability to express uncomfortable emotions creates the possibilities of discovering the love and passion that we want most.

How then do we make this choice to live a feeling life, to physically experience the internal storms of growing up and growing old? It is a practice, no different than learning a new musical instrument. Some days you hit the right notes, other days there is no melody at all. In agreeing to the practice, something opens and each moment gives you an opportunity to try again. Slowly you become comfortable with the weather systems of your emotions. Some days it is even comforting to know they are there.

Avoiding emotional escalation with your partner is an excellent and often successful way to invite a loving passionate response. It is so easy to get caught up in each other’s bad moods that not doing it takes real effort and clarity. Habitual patterns of negative communication feed on each other. One person makes a sniping comment, volley and return with the other person’s pent up rage. Throw a few over-scheduled children in the mix and its a wonder that anyone is every getting what they need.

Here are a few techniques that help to stop this pattern and open the way for the more preferable and healthier method of relieving tension in relationships- sex.

First – Soften your tone of voice before you open your mouth. Take a deep breath and use a tone of voice that has love and understanding in it. Think of it as a meditation practice. A harsh tone will not get your message across any better and will only serve to distance your partner.

Second- Look for anything you can agree on. When you start with agreement about any aspect of a problem, it is easier to create a problem solving team approach that doesn’t separate you. Even when there isn’t a satisfactory solution, at least you both feel like you are on the same side rather than building the problem into a you vs. me situation.

Third- Try to stay upbeat. More often than not, details get in the way of the best laid plans and even with the best of intentions, life does not always work out with our desires in mind. Getting negative and angry in these moments not only kills the moment and whatever else you might be able to do with it- but it cuts you off from your partner when you need each other most. Find the humor in it. It is better for your heart.

Fourth- Don’t believe that just because you feel something you should say it. While honesty and transparency is essential to healthy relationships, expressing your feelings that will only fuel an argument or hurt someone’s feelings is not the answer. Giving difficult emotions breathing room gives you and your relationship a chance to transform them into something that can get you more of what you want.

These might seem like common sense responses, but often these are key deterrents to feeding the passion in your relationship. Sex is a great way to relieve life tensions and create a bond of togetherness. It is accessible if you think about every interaction as a means to pull you closer to the bedroom or further away. Kindness and respect, laughter and listening- very sexy.

Researchers around the world are looking for the keys to sexual functioning and some recent studies from the University of Amsterdam are demonstrating that contrary to popular belief, arousal is not a product of desire, but rather a result of it.

Neurobiologists have found that in many areas of life, including sexual response, the brain regions required to perform a specific act are ablaze prior to our thought to act. While this definitely sets in motion all kinds of philosophical questions about being the decider and planner of one’s life, when it comes to our sex lives, it might be a breath of fresh air.

Mountains of writing has been produced in the last twenty years about reclaiming sexual desire for women. Yet, these new studies suggest that the best approach for treating low sex drive may be to focus on enhancing arousability rather than desire. Forget about sexy thoughts and focus on sexy feelings and the physical cues that wake up one’s sexual circuitry.

I have been saying this for quite some time, actually, every time I sell a bottle of love oil. Our sense of smell is directly connected to the limbic part of the brain, the same area of the brain which registers sexuality, emotion and memory. Try as I might sometimes to get myself in a mood with my mind, usually a little love oil scent rubbed around my nose will do the trick in minutes.

So do an experiment next time you are searching for the desire to have sex. Forget it, instead try a flash of visual stimuli which according to the study primes the body for sex before we are even aware of it, whether or not our opinion of the stimuli is sexy…

Better still, dive into an experience of scent- fresh flowers, scented oils, spices…. Instead of thinking about sex, wake up your senses and feel something. After all it was reported in the New York Times Science section, and it doesn’t get any more serious than that… if you wake up the sexual circuitry sitting in the center of your brain, the rest will unwind from there, with the ease of a weighted shade.

See the full New York Times article