The V-Word

Flying out of New Orleans, I am seated next to a gynecologist that I didn’t meet at the ACOG yearly meeting. I share my story about love products and my work about making love sustainable. He shares his story about how limited his time with each patient is and how awkward it is to discuss sexual intimacy. We talk about how little education and language we are given in our childhood and youth to...

“The world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love.” – W.S. Coffin

Telling the truth in relationships is perhaps the most challenging aspect of relating. Not doing it makes relationships impossible. It is difficult because it takes time to know our own truth and often, even as we get it, truth is as changeable as the days we live in. The wise among us know that...

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...

Sustainable love, the kind that we use as a compass to keep us connected to a vital, healthy and happy relationships are now being recognized as skills that might just save our species.

We finally have the scientific equipment to verify what we have always known: our drive to be social, to be connected to each other, is actually hardwired. Our need for connection and drive towards empathy is not a...

Ovidmade this statement about the boldness of love thousands of years ago. I would say that it has never been more true or necessary. Let this year’s celebration of love be a bold statement of love, beginning with yourself. Start by feeling worthy of your own love. Give yourself a break and trust your instincts. Watch your favorite romantic comedy and laugh out loud or cry when the mood strikes...

I have many friends who not only rarely sleep with their husbands, they can’t even talk about it. I would go even further and suggest that most of their conversations probably move them further away from intimacy than towards it. Connecting with our verbal language has it’s limits- especially since men and women, don’t just speak differently, we also hear differently. This is why I urge all of my...

Do you understand the push-pull phenomenon that drives most relationships? Do you even know what side you’re on? This basic principle in the dance of intimacy can sometimes feel like a strategy game, but in long term relationships can also become a dangerous pattern that drives lovers apart. Here are some ideas to begin to relate to the pendulum swings and follow your heart to balance in love.

We...

In this season of giving and receiving, it is a good time to look at how and why that happens with love, or for many of us doesn’t. This is a bit of a Pandora’s box but I am going to simplify if only for the sake of trying to rein in the topic a bit- Sexual desire, is the result of a complex range of internal experiences that includes everything from hormonal stimulation to a prehistoric form of...