Despite living in a time of unprecedented sexual freedom in America, the practice of policing sexuality has continued unabated since the days of the Puritans.
The ability to go anywhere in our imagination is a pure expression of individual freedom. It is a creative force that can help us transcend reality.
Excitement is interwoven with uncertainty, and with our willingness to embrace the unknown rather than to shield ourselves from it. But this very tension leaves us feeling vulnerable. I caution my pat...
We are afraid that our adult sexuality will somehow damage our kids, that it’s inappropriate or dangerous. But whom are we protecting? Children who see their primary caregivers at ease expressing thei...
The swiping culture lures us with infinite possibilities, but it also exerts a subtle tyranny. The constant awareness of ready alternatives invites unfavorable comparisons, weakens commitment, and pre...
Rather than looking at sex as an exclusive outgrowth of the emotional relationship, I’ve come to see it as a separate entity. Sexuality is more than a metaphor for the relationship—it stands on its ow...
Our partner's sexuality does not belong to us. It isn't just for and about us, and we should not assume that it rightfully falls within our jurisdiction.
Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. —Anaïs Nin
Eroticism. Though I doubt that they ever used this word, they embodied its mystical meaning as a quality of aliveness, a pathway to freedom
We expect one person to give us what once an entire village used to provide, and we live twice as long.
This litany of disenchantment notwithstanding, I believe there’s an additional layer to our libidinal demise that has to do with our culture’s deep ambivalence around sexuality. While we recognize the...
Swinging is a form of consensual adultery. It also accords equal freedom to both partners.
When two become one—connection can no longer happen. There is no one to connect with. Thus separateness is a precondition for connection: this is the essential paradox of intimacy and sex.
When we select a partner, we commit to a story. Yet we remain forever curious: what other stories could we have been part of? Affairs offer us a window into those other lives, a peek at the stranger w...
We used to moralize; today we normalize, and performance anxiety is the secular version of our old religious guilt.
We don't like to be intimate alone. Some couples take this one step further, confusing intimacy with control. What passes for care is actually convert surveillance. ..When the impulse to share becomes...
Until now monogamy has been the default setting, and it sits on the premise (however unrealistic) that if you truly love, you should no longer be attracted to others.
The extended family, the community, and religion may indeed have limited our freedom, sexual and otherwise, but in return they offered us a much-needed sense of belonging. For generations, these tradi...
Ours is a culture that reveres the ethos of absolute frankness and elevates truth-telling to moral perfection. Other cultures believe that when everything is out in the open and ambiguity is done away...
Despite a 50 percent divorce rate for first marriages and 65 percent the second time around; despite the staggering frequency of affairs; despite the fact that monogamy is a ship sinking faster than a...