Insight

I recently read, with some dismay, a letter from a woman married for two years who said that she and her husband have never had sex. While this is not the first time I’ve come across this type of peculiarity, it does boggle the mind that some couples seem to get along just fine with minimal or zero sex. There are a few couples that actually claim to be quite happy with diminished sex while still enjoying other forms of intimacy. Still, others admit to seasonal low points, which understandably may be attributed to issues like stress, ill health or hormonal changes. But are couples really all right with this prolonged state of affairs or is it a case of the naiveté of ignorance?

"Life is full of beauty. Notice it. Notice the bumble bee, the small child, and the smiling faces. Smell the rain, and feel the wind. Live your life to the fullest potential, and fight for your dreams." ~ Ashley Smith

Sensory perception is a use it or lose it capacity; the less you employ your five senses, the smaller your related awareness and language becomes, effectively shrinking the known world.

In ways we often don’t consider, we know our selves most directly by what we perceive through our senses. Yet, many of us just don’t use our senses to explore much

It’s difficult to relax on the Internet, especially social media—Twitter and Facebook are like open microphones where everyone is simultaneously speaking their opinions about everything, all the time. The pressure to have an opinion and to share it in new, cleverer and louder ways can be quickly exhausting. I find myself forgetting what I really care about, losing track of my own feelings, and becoming numb to my body.

"This is the body that engages in sex, a body with so much soul that any attempt to deny its layers of meaning will come back to haunt us."  ~Thomas Moore

  Maybe the smartest book I have ever read about how sexual attraction happens and why it is such a powerfully transformative healing response came from Stanley Siegel’s book, "Your Brain on Sex."

Now that the dust has settled on the popular movie Fifty Shades of Grey, the time might be ripe for some honest introspection, in terms of how we perceive some of the issues raised by the film. Why, for example, are we so riveted by the idea of sexual submission?

Although we may each experience sex differently, what remains common, perhaps, is the understanding that a sexual relationship involves at some level the surrendering of personal power. Inherent in our ability to experience sexual pleasure is the reality of lowered barriers and a certain sense of vulnerability, no matter what role we think we may be playing in the sex act.

I love food. I am a food blogger, among other things. I got to thinking about how I too often see, in my own life and in the lives of those around me, that we as a society are so much more comfortable talking about food than sex. As a result, we often confuse the two.

Women, especially, I think, use food as a way to communicate our desires, and when that doesn’t work, we use food to submerge them. We attempt to fill our desire for intimacy, connection, love and, yes, sex with food.

"Just because we don’t understand doesn’t mean that the explanation doesn’t exist." ~ Madeleine L’engle

My favorite thing to do is teach, and last weekend I was lucky to have the chance to give a presentation to 50 physicians about working with their patients’ sexual dysfunction issues.

I thought it would be easy—like falling off a log as I spend so much of my days thinking, researching and talking about ways to become more sexually healthy—but, in fact, I was surprised how much I still had to learn as I was obliged to organize my rambling knowledge into a cohesive 90 minute talk.