I recently had a friend ask me if I thought an emotional affair was dangerous. She asked me this question because she has been having some difficulty in her marriage and she found herself being drawn to a close family friend. They had a lot of shared history and she felt comfortable talking to him. …
Continue ReadingMonogamy and desire.
Author Esther Perel wrote the book, Mating in Captivity, in 2006. This is a great book for looking at the complicated relationship between long term monogamy and ongoing desire. Perel articulately explores how often our longing for stability and comfort can annihilate passion and desire. Perel furthered her research by traveling the world and asking …
Continue ReadingWhat IS a girl to do?
I found Caitlin Flanagan’s January 22, 2012 essay, “What’s A Girl To Do”, both intriguing and moving, and although my initial reaction was enthusiastic because what she wrote aligned so well with my personal values , I found I was challenging myself on her very thesis. Basically, she made the case that the book Forever …
Continue ReadingAdversity and desire.
It happens all the time. A tearful, distraught woman sits down and informs us that: Her husband is leaving her/has left her. Her husband is having/was having an affair. She believes this is due to the fact that they haven’t had sex in (you fill in the blank: 6 months, 1 year, 2 years, 5 …
Continue ReadingOnline dating in “The New Yorker.”
The recent article on online dating in The New Yorker by Nick Paumgarten was most interesting for its research. I had never heard about the history of online dating, and I was certainly not aware of the complicated algorithms that underpin the search process. He explained it all in a really interesting and accessible way. …
Continue ReadingMonogamy.
So we’re back to monogamy again…someone said to me recently that they are afraid of committing to one person for the rest of their life and I got to thinking about all the studies that say that people with one steady partner overall rate their sexual satisfaction higher than those who don’t have one. So …
Continue ReadingMonogamy or why do we need to look in other people’s bedrooms?
Hey did you see yesterday’s Times article — “In Most Species, Faithfulness Is a Fantasy“? Basically, in order to find a species that was always faithful, Natalie Angier had to resort to citing the “flatworm that lives in the gills of freshwater fish.” So who are we kidding and why are we all so prurient …
Continue ReadingIs hiring a prostitute really worse than driving 91mph in a 60 mph zone?
I know it’s an unpopular position, but somehow I can’t help feeling that Eliot Spitzer is being attacked in a way that is not commensurate with his crime. And, as always, I feel like the rather puritanical society we live in, has a double standard when it comes to sex. Yes, what he did (which …
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