Good Clean Reads

“There is no life as complete as the life that is lived by choice.”  -Unknown

 

The problem with many relationships is that we don’t trust our own choices. For many couples this lack of trust starts early in the relationship, when we first encounter the difficulties of the relationship or, more challenging still, the foibles of our chosen partner. We question whether we have made a mistake in...

“There are times when the actual experience of leaving something makes you wish desperately that you could stay, and then there are times when the leaving reminds you a hundred times over why exactly you had to leave in the first place.”  -Shauna Niequist

 

Leaving is bittersweet. Knowing when to leave is not always a simple equation. Even the departing itself is rarely an experience of simple...

“If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep on walking.”  ~Buddhist Proverb

 

Working as I have for decades on learning how to sustain and nourish lasting relationships has brought me continuously back to the same question of how to learn to stay both in my own relationships as well as in many others that I have counseled. Usually the question is a reflection of the...

"Boredom is nothing but the experience of a paralysis of our productive powers. "-Erich FrommBoredom is defined as the "state of being weary and restless through lack of interest. " Apply this definition to your sex life and you are suddenly in a crowd. In fact, sexual boredom is one of the most often cited reasons for cheating. The drive forces of this weariness and restlessness usually have less to do with you or your partner than it does with the nature of your partnership.

It has become exceedingly clear that the only way I will ever make progress in turning my 500-plus pages of Positivity Quest blog into a book is to do it everyday, just like I wrote the blog. It must be like a new resolution that at least five days a week,  something is adjusted to fit into the new manuscript.

Unfortunately, when you are looking at a mountain of paper it is hard to know where to...

“Penetration has a spice of divination in it, which tickles our vanity more than any other quality of the mind.” –Francois de la Rochefoucauld

Penetration is a word that is often used to describe the culminating act of sexuality. It’s a word I often use when describing the best use of good lubricant. But recently, after using the word in conjunction with the act, I began to wonder what I was...

“The way to know life is to love many things.” – Vincent Van Gogh

It is safe to say that Valentines Day is a loaded gun. For as many people truly get to celebrate the love they share with their intimate relations, there are at least as many who struggle with feeling unloved and, worse still, unlovable. Our collective sense of being unlovable might well be the single most toxic belief our culture...

“For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.”  -Rilke

Imagine if we began our relationships with the vow, “I take you as my burden, to have and to hold from this day forward.” Call me jaded, but I think if people understood that committing to love someone over...

“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” -George Bernard Shaw

 

Most of us take ourselves way too seriously, especially when it comes to our relationships. The more our heart is bared and the deeper we grow in our commitments, the more we have riding on the outcome. Ironically, instead of helping us to lighten up, our most intimate relationships often push...