zfortadmin, Author at Love TV - Page 21 of 50

Author: zfortadmin

“Ethical Cheating”: What Is It?

by zfortadminin RELATIONSHIPS

There is a growing movement of people who are able to be honest with their mate that the traditional model isn’t working.

When the news broke recently that hackers had breached Ashley Madison, the dating website that helps married people find out-of-wedlock romance, the Internet responded with a lot of snark and not much sympathy.

We read Twitter so you don’t have to, and the take-away is this: If you cheat and get caught, you are getting what you deserve; and, if you cheat and get caught because you entered your personal information into a cheaters’ dating website whose marketing tagline is “Life is short. Have an affair,” you really are getting what you deserve.

But married daters looking for someone to defend their honor have at last found a spokesman: Brandon Wade, 45, the founder of the new website OpenMinded.com, which caters to individuals and couples looking for others with whom to engage in what Mr. Wade calls “ethical cheating.” This involves telling a spouse that you are going to be unfaithful, or including the spouse in new, outside-the-marriage relationships, he said.

OpenMinded.com started in May and, Mr. Wade said, now has 150,000 users, with more than half of the members identifying as couples who are in open relationships. The site’s members are more likely to be men than women, 68 percent of members have earned a bachelor’s degree, 40 percent are 18 to 35.

To get started on a journey toward polyamorous partnering, OpenMinded.com users fill out a form with questions that reflect, it must be said, a certain open-mindedness. The “Orientation” section asks users to define themselves by “romantic orientation” (“biromantic” and “sapiomantic” are among the options) and other attributes, while the “Life Choices” section dives into issues like tolerance to marijuana-smoking (“420 friendly nonconsumer,” “recreational heavy consumer”).

Under the “Looking to Meet” heading, users designate the type of relationship they are seeking (“monogamish,” “poly dating,” “swinging”) and the identity of those they would like to meet (there are dozens of different options, including “pangender,” “two-spirit,” “woman” and “intersex”).

Also provided are primers to help newbies, including an essay entitled, “How to Cheat on Your Wife.” It advises that men disclose their intent to their wives before they begin to date.

Mr. Wade said he was raised in Singapore with what he deemed a “Tiger Mom type of upbringing.” He studied electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and then, he said, earned an M.B.A. at the Sloan School of Management at M.I.T. in 1995. He worked at Booz Allen and General Electric, he added. But corporate life wasn’t a good match for him.

He decided to take an entrepreneurial route. In 2006, he introduced SeekingArrangement.com, which is, according to promotional material, “the leading sugar daddy dating website.” In 2011, he unveiled WhatsYourPrice.com, a site on which users can auction off dates.

“Most of my dating websites have been created out of personal need,” he said. “OpenMinded is my next evolution in my relationships.”

Before marrying his current wife, he said, she and he discussed his progressive views about monogamy. “I told my wife, ‘If this relationship doesn’t work out, I’m never going to get married again,’ ” he said.

Curated by Erbe
Original Article

Does This Smell Good to You? Hawaiian Mushroom That Makes Women Orgasm

by zfortadminin Sex

I have good news and bad news. Let’s start with the good news:

Scientists have discovered an orange mushroom in recent Hawaiian lava flows that can induce instantaneous orgasms in women just from the odor it gives off. That’s right, fellas. You can get your girl to bust nuts all over the place just by having her sniff this thing.

This orgasm triggered by fungus, or “fungasm,” is due in part from hormones in the mushroom that are close in similarity to the same ones picked up by our own neurotransmitters. Basically, the smell of this shroom makes the female body think it’s having sex. Imagine walking into a sorority house with your pockets filled with these mushrooms.

Screen Shot 2015-10-09 at 3.57.14 PM

Take your time, I’ll wait. Really let your mind paint that picture, and enjoy it while you can. Because here comes the bad news:

The orange mushroom smells orgasmic to women and literally caused nearly half of the volunteers for the study to climax. Unfortunately, it smells like week old horse shit to men. In the International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms, the discoverers of the orange fungus, John C. Holliday and Noah Soule, concluded that all the male test subjects were repulsed by the fetid smell.

So if you’re bad in bed and need a little bit of help, go find these mushrooms and hide a bunch of them under your bed. Then grab a clothes pin for yourself. Thank me later.

Curated by Erbe
Original Article
Photo Credit: Deviant Art

Call it Secondary Sex

by zfortadminin Sex

I have never stopped desiring sex and I have never identified as asexual. In fact, I frequently want to have sex with people, but I simply do not.

When I called my health clinic last month to refill the birth-control pill prescription I have had for 10 years, I was put on the line with a doctor — not my normal gynecologist — who began asking questions about my health.

“It says on your form that you’re interested in both men and women but that you do not use alternative forms of birth control outside of the pill,” he said.

“That’s correct,” I said. To pre-empt a safe-sex lecture, I told him I hadn’t had sex in two years, so it was really a moot point.

“So you’re secondary abstaining then,” he said, surely making note of this somewhere in my records.

“Well, I think ‘accidental abstaining’ is more appropriate,” I said jokingly, attempting to maintain some dignity in this conversation with a man I likely would never meet who seemed to view me as some kind of morally reformed or seriously disturbed woman in my mid-20s.

After we hung up, I Googled “secondary abstaining” and learned that it refers to someone who is sexually experienced but has chosen to no longer be sexually active, usually for reasons relating to religious faith, unwanted pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases.

I am without faith in almost all respects, I have never been pregnant, nor have I had any STD’s. I have never stopped desiring sex and I have never identified as asexual. In fact, I frequently want to have sex with people, but I simply do not.

I’m “secondary” in a lot of things these days: secondary vegetarian, secondary sober, secondary nonsmoker. But here is how my secondary abstaining departs from my secondary everything else.

I quit eating meat because I developed a deeper concern for the environment. I quit smoking because it’s bad for you. I quit drinking because I have a problem with alcohol. But I never actually quit having sex. Sex just stopped being a thing that happened in my life.

My most recent sexual experience was two years ago in a barn in Kentucky with a photographer I had met in Ohio eight days before. I was temporarily living on a farm in Independence the day he drove from Columbus to spend the afternoon with me.

I bought a bottle of Larceny bourbon the night before in preparation and had consumed half before he arrived. I had never had sober sex with a new partner, and I wasn’t about to start with a guy I barely knew.

I know many people are adept at this sleeping-with-strangers thing. I have never known how to do this. I have never known how to go from, “So what’s your name?” to having you in my bed or me in your bed or us in the back of a car in the parking lot of a Target.

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Tips for Couples to Achieve a Long-Lasting Intimate Relationship

by zfortadminin DATING ADVICE, RELATIONSHIPS

“We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.” -~Sam Keen

Before I married my wonderful husband, I dated a lot of men. For most of my 20s (and even my early 30s) I had a perfect fairy-ideal of what romantic love was, probably because I was an actress and loved drama back then.

It took years for me to realize a relationship is not a romance movie.

At some point in our lives, we may believe that love should be like the kind of romance we see portrayed in films, television, and novels.

For some reason, I always thought my romantic relationships were less if I did not experience this kind of fairy-tale relationship. Maybe this is why I kept meeting frogs.

At times, I bought into the belief that if I had a relationship with the perfect prince, then all would be well in my life. I thought, Now, I will be safe forever.

In truth, I did marry a prince—but a prince who is also human, who has faults and issues just like every person, no matter how wonderful he is.

At some point I grew up and learned to let go of the crazy metaphor of romantic love in order to find true happiness. Yes, I was disappointed to realize that the knight riding through the night to save the damsel in distress is a fallacy. It’s a bummer.

But, let’s look at it in this light: We all saw Romeo and Juliet and Titanic. Why stories like these make our hearts sing is that the love is unrequited. Unavailability fuels the romantic expression.

This kind of romantic story can only work when there is an absence of the lover. Sometimes, they have to die in the end in order for their love to fit into this romantic view. Or, we eat handfuls of popcorn, waiting to see if they live happily ever after, and we rarely find out if they really do.

The romantic love fantasy is really a substitute for intimacy—real, connected, vulnerable intimacy.

So then, how do we make relationships work and stay happy?

We begin with the understanding of what pure love is, and then redefine and update the romantic fairytale into a healthier type of love.

Here are 10 ways to create true intimacy, find pure love, and be truly happy in your relationship:

1. Use relationships to teach you how to be whole within.

Relationships aren’t about having another person complete you, but coming to the relationship whole and sharing your life interdependently. By letting go of the romantic ideal of merging and becoming “one,” you learn as Rainer Maria Rilke says, to love the distances in relationship as much as the togetherness.

2. See your partner for who he or she really is.

The romantic tragedy occurs when you view the person you are in love with as a symbol of what they have come to represent, the idea of them. When you realize that more often than not you don’t really know your partner, you begin to discover who they are and how they change and evolve.

3. Be willing to learn from each other.

The key is to see the other as a mirror and learn from the reflection how you can be a better person. When you feel upset, rather than blame your partner and point fingers, remain awake to what has yet to be healed in yourself.

4. Get comfortable being alone.

In order to accept that love can’t rescue you from being alone, learn to spend time being with yourself. By feeling safe and secure to be on your own within the framework of relationship, you will feel more complete, happy, and whole.

5. Look closely at why a fight may begin.

Some couples create separateness by fighting and then making up over and over again. This allows you to continue the romantic trance, creating drama and avoiding real intimacy. If you become aware of what you fear about intimacy, you’ll have a better sense of why you’re fighting—and likely will fight far less.

6. Own who you are.

We generally grasp at romantic love because we’re yearning for something that is out of reach, something in another person that we don’t think we possess in ourselves. Unfortunately, when we finally get love, we discover that we didn’t get what we were looking for.

True love only exists by loving yourself first. You can only get from another person what you’re willing to give yourself.

7. Embrace ordinariness.

After the fairy-dust start of a relationship ends, we discover ordinariness, and we often do everything we can to avoid it. The trick is to see that ordinariness can become the real “juice” of intimacy. The day-to-day loveliness of sharing life with a partner can, and does, become extraordinary.

8. Expand your heart.

One thing that unites us is that we all long to be happy. This happiness usually includes the desire to be close to someone in a loving way. To create real intimacy, get in touch with the spaciousness of your heart and bring awareness to what is good within you.

It’s easier to recognize the good in your partner when you’re connected to the good in yourself.

9. Focus on giving love.

Genuine happiness is not about feeling good about ourselves because other people love us; it’s more about how well we have loved ourselves and others. The unintentional outcome of loving others more deeply is that we are loved more deeply.

10. Let go of expectations.

You may look to things such as romance and constant togetherness to fill a void in yourself. This will immediately cause suffering. If you unconsciously expect to receive love in certain ways to avoid giving that love to yourself, you put your sense of security in someone else.

Draw upon your own inner-resources to offer love, attention, and nurturance to yourself when you need it. Then you can let love come to you instead of putting expectations on what it needs to look like.

These are only a few ways to explore real intimacy. How do you create a loving connection in your relationship?

Curated by Erbe
Original Article

Couples Advice: How to Avoid the Worst Fights

by zfortadminin Mind

What’s the worst fight couples have?

Depending on your history with fights in relationships, the question might send a shiver up your spine. I solicited relationship experts of all stripes to reveal the most harrowing fight they commonly hear couples have — that argument that ends the relationship, or at least damages it nearly beyond repair. One conclusion: People say horrible things to each other in fights. Another: There are ways to avoid ever having such destructive fights to begin with. In terms of subject matter, the experts didn’t cite one particular awful fight as most typical, but rather each expert related a different spat they’d heard over and over that clients wish they’d never had. However, though the topic may have varied, the theme was the same: These brawls were down-and-dirty, rough, inconsiderate — and brutal.

None of these squabbles were of the ilk I’d file under “healthy fights,” but rather came from places of mutual disrespect, anger, fear, resentment and genuine lack of support for one another, rife with insults, judgment and attempts to control one’s partner. It doesn’t take a brain scientist to know that a quarrel like that isn’t going to end well.

The fights couples have that they wish they could go back in time and take back — the doozies, the ones that cause near-irrevocable fissures or linger in the relationship indefinitely — are the ones we’d all like to avoid in our romantic relationships. The good news: They are avoidable, as long as you stay on top of issues and don’t let your relationship spiral out of control to begin with.

My favorite response was short and sweet, from Joan Fradella, a Florida Supreme Court certified family mediator: “The one fight couples wish they never had is the one that preceded the appointment with either an attorney or with me.” Preach.

1. The Sex Fight

This one should be a no-brainer, but it turns out that couples who fight during or immediately after sex come to regret it (and yes, as usual, pun intended). “Avoid all arguments, and never say anything even vaguely critical during or immediately after lovemaking,” say authors Patricia Johnson and Mark Michaels. The married couple have written several books about sex and love, including Designer Relationships: A Guide to Happy Monogamy, Positive Polyamory, and Optimistic Open Relationships, and are adamant about barring fights from the bedroom. “Most people are in a highly vulnerable state when they’re turned on and after a sexual encounter,” they say. As such, a little tact and gentleness go a long way.

“If something is not working for you in the moment, and certainly if an activity is causing you any discomfort, it is good to speak out,” they advise. That said, steer clear from any language that implies blame or judgment. Don’t say, “Why are you doing that? It feels awful,” Michaels and Johnson recommend. Instead, try something more effective, such as, “I’m not sure I love that. Could you try this instead?” Unless there is an immediate need to say something, though, it’s best to put a pin in it and address your concern at a later date. “If something happens during sex and you feel the need to discuss it, kindness (not to mention enlightened self-interest) often dictates that you should save the conversation for later,” Johnson and Michaels say. It’s kind to bring up hard things, especially sex-related issues, outside of the bedroom; and it’s in one’s own best interest to do so, as there’s a better chance it’ll lead to a rational discussion — not a fight.

Michaels and Johnson put a spin on the old adage of “Don’t go to bed angry”: They suggest that you take it literally, and never have an argument in bed. Putting fights to sleep before you put yourself to sleep “is a somewhat controversial bit of conventional wisdom, though some recent research tends to support the idea,” they say. If you have to have a difficult conversation with your partner, try to do so at a time and in a place that “will minimize their potential for disrupting your connection” — not just before it’s time to snuggle. “While it may not be humanly possible to avoid ever going to bed angry, doing your best to minimize conflict in advance of sleep is kindness in action,” they say. So try not to have a fight just before bedtime, and “dedicate a space for your disagreements,” they say.

How To Avoid It:

I’m just going to quote Johnson and Michaels here, because what they have to say on this is so brilliant.

“If you’re getting ready for bed and are having an argument or feel one brewing, choose to take the discussion into that dedicated space and wait until things have cooled down before calling it a night. Most couples have most of their sex in bed, and it’s difficult enough to eroticize your shared sleeping space. Thus, it’s a good idea to refrain from creating an association between your bed and conflict. Being kind is not an abstraction; it’s all about making choices that demonstrate your esteem for your partner and send the message that, even if you’re furious about something, your anger in no way diminishes your regard.”

Mic down, Michaels and Johnson.

2. The Fiscal Infidelity Fight

“Money is … the number one topic that couples fight over (with sex coming in second),” says relationship coach and psychic medium Cindi Sansone-Braff, author of Why Good People Can’t Leave Bad Relationships. Money fights, or what Sansone-Braff calls “fiscal infidelity,” happens when “one partner learns the other partner has cheated on them in monetary matters.” The cause changes, but the problem is always the same: “Whether this person is guilty of lying about how much money he or she makes, claiming he or she can’t find work, gambling, spending too much, abusing drugs or helping out other family members without his or her partner’s consent doesn’t matter,” says Sansone-Braff. “The bottom line is that fiscal infidelity causes people to feel that they have been deceived and betrayed.”

How To Avoid It:

It all depends on how deep the fiscal betrayal goes. “The extent of financial ruin, and the amount of lying and manipulation employed to cover up the financial sinkhole, can and will determine whether these actions become a deal breaker,” Sansone-Braff says. “Additionally, If money had been a major issue in either or both of the partners’ parents’ marriages or relationships, then this can really trigger a ‘War of the Roses’ scenario that can either destroy a relationship — or rebuild it back up from a more honest and stable foundation of pecuniary transparency and trust.”

In other words, this fight offers a chance for healing if it’s played right. If it’s an ongoing fight that gets dragged out for a ride every month or two, it’s obviously not healthy and will lead nowhere. But if you and your partner see this conflict as an opportunity to work on fundamental financial issues and invite each other to have more truthful conversations as a result, the fight could lead to harmony in the end.

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Why Men Fear Intimacy

by zfortadminin Mind

But here’s the important part: Not all men are terrified of relationships! When it comes to the subset of men who are, what makes them different? In other words, why are they so afraid of relationships?

Generalization caveat: Not all men are afraid of relationships, but many men are terrified of them. Before I get into the reasons why they’re so afraid, let me first address the question of whether men are more afraid of relationships than women.

The debate about whether men and women are extremely similar or extremely different doesn’t seem to go away, and it’s largely because we have little way of proving much within the psychological arena. Who knows, maybe one day we’ll learn so much about the brain that we can definitively answer the question. Odds are, however, that the day may never come: Perhaps the social influences shaping males and females are so powerful that it’s primarily the social part, and not the biological part, that makes men and women who are they are.

Do men fear relationships more than women? The truth is that it’s hard to tell. Measuring fear of intimacy among men and women in a research sense is tricky, but one study (Thelen et al., 2000) attempted it and found that men scored higher on a Fear-of-Intimacy Scale. To women who have known men terrified of relationships, this research will come as no surprise.

Anecdotally, my fifteen years as a therapist have shown me that men are often more afraid of letting their guards down and being vulnerable than women, so it would make sense if they fear relationships more than women. To give some context, the media is always reporting about the different ways boys and girls are socialized, and many of us see such gender-restrictive parenting among folks within our social circles. Because it does appear that boys and girls, at least historically, have been socialized differently, it would make sense that girls who were socialized to engage in cooperative play grow up to be women who are better at handling emotions and relationships than boys who were socialized to engage in competitive and physical play and grow up to be men who are less comfortable with vulnerability and emotional intimacy in relationships.

But here’s the important part: Not all men are terrified of relationships! When it comes to the subset of men who are, what makes them different? In other words, why are they so afraid of relationships?

Previous Relationship Trauma

A man may not be able to function well in a relationship if he has extensive issues that stem from a previous relationship trauma. The relationship trauma may have occurred when the man was a child or when he was an adult.

Men who, as children, had an absent parent, a parent they lost, or a parent who abused them in any way are going to have an awfully difficult time seeking out and maintaining a healthy relationship. The wake of trauma can make romantic relationships almost unbearable and undoable if the man has not processed the trauma and worked through all the associated thoughts and feelings.

In addition, men who are afraid of relationships may have had a previous relationship as an adult that was traumatic. Having a previous partner who abused them in any way, cheated on them, left them or died can cause these men later to avoid emotional intimacy and relationships altogether. Though some or all of these men may still have a desire for closeness, the emotional pain from the previous trauma is too great for these men to take the risk and jump into a relationship again.

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10 Sheet Grabbing Foreplays

by zfortadminin Sex

Finding foreplay repetitive? When it comes to getting in the mood, foreplay is by far the most important aspect of sex. But don’t worry there’s always something for you and your partner to enjoy. We butted heads with top sexperts and rounded up the 10 best foreplay tips guaranteed to make you and your partner go wild. Here’s what you need to know…

Sex should be fun, playful and anything but boring so why not invest some time and effort into your foreplay techniques? Trust us, it CAN go a long way!

Author of Sex Academy, Dr Pam Spurr says, “For no holds barred pleasure the best foreplay really teases your partner increasing their desire meaning they’re far more likely to climax.”

There’s always a time and a place for a tease and when you’re warming up before getting down, there’s no better time to use your foreplay skills to your advantage. Remember, it’s all about the anticipation.

So to help you make sex exciting again we got together with the best sex and relationships experts out there to share their advice on mind blowing foreplay. Ladies, here’s how to fire him up…

1. Eastern swirl and poke

Dr Pam suggests a little trick that your man can use to make you go wild.

“When you’ve started foreplay and you’re kissing and caressing, he should move on down your body and use the ‘Eastern Swirl and Poke’ kissing technique,” she explains.

“He relaxes his lips and allows his tongue to swirl around the tips of your nipples. Then he alternates this sensation with a gentle poking action from the tip of his tongue. He can also move down your body to use on you for oral-sex pleasure.” Show him how you like.

2. Go for the grind

Founder of Cliterati.co.uk, Emily Dubberly says it’s all about grinding to get you worked up.

“Rather than going purely for penetration or clitoral stimulation, try grinding against your man’s thigh or opt for some good old-fashioned dry humping,” she suggests.” That way, you can stimulate your pubic mound and way more of your clitoris than usual – it can work just as well with your clothes on as off.”

One thing for your man to consider is paying more attention to your breasts. Sexpert and owner of online sex retailer Jo Divine, Samantha Evans says, “Most men love boobs but don’t give them much attention during foreplay, rushing to your more obvious body parts. Get your man to devote more time, lavishly massaging oil into your gorgeous breasts and concentrating on your nipples with both his fingers and mouth”. You’ll both enjoy it!

3. Moves like a movie star

Being a bit of a tease is a good thing when it comes to foreplay so when you’re getting down to it, why not try and keep up the anticipation for an entire film?

“If you want to really turn your guy on try lubing your hand thoroughly then gripping and releasing your man rather than sliding your hand up and down – this will make it easier for you to keep going for longer.

Position your thumb on the frenulum (the stringy bit that runs from the head to the shaft) as it tends to be the most sensitive. Try teasing him for an ENTIRE film, stopping just before climax then starting again for a truly explosive finish.” Works every time. Massage him with YES Organic Lube and watch him go wild.

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Do You Want This More Than Sex?

by zfortadminin RELATIONSHIPS, Sex

The majority of women have told me that they want more intimacy in their relationships. Women want to feel connected with their partner and genuinely loved.

When referring to the complex area of sex, making blanket statements such as men want………..and women want………… is difficult to do because it oversimplifies an extremely personal and individualistic issue.

Clearly there is a wide variety of kinds of sexual relationships and experiences that people can share and enjoy.

To be more precise, what men and women each want in the area of sex needs to be defined on an individual basis. Thus, whatever a person is missing or longs for with regards to the subject of sex is simply what that person needs at that time in their life. For example, some women enjoy having a lot of tenderness and affection but crave a little intensity in the bedroom. Other women may experience their share of intense, physical sex but desire more affection, consideration, and gentleness for balance.

Yet when looking at the population as a whole and talking with a great number of people, some conclusions can be drawn based upon the majority.

Over the years what women have told me they want spans quite a diverse range. Yet the majority of women have told me that they want more intimacy in their relationships. Women want to feel connected with their partner and genuinely loved. They usually want to be told why their man loves them, and what it is about her that he recognizes as special. Women have often said they want to be held more, kissed more, caressed more, touched more, and talked to more. If they were to have more sex, they want it to be more passionate love-making. They want more intimacy in and out of the bedroom.

Women also need to be acknowledged for what they contribute to the family and their man’s life. They need to be respected as intelligent and capable, and appreciated for all of their wonderful attributes and special features. The average woman wants more hugs, more affection, more intimacy regularly. They want to be told often that they are beautiful, that their partner enjoys them, and that their man wants to be with them.

Often men can get along without reinforcement and intimacy for long periods of time, and so they assume the same is true for women. Unfortunately quite a few men still think they can sustain a woman with occasional bursts of intimacy, such as a nice gift, or a rare verbal acknowledgment. But most women need and want more than just sporadic maintenance intimacy. They need daily attentionto keep them running smoothly and happily.

After couples marry, many men only put forth the effort to show what they think is the necessary amount of romance. They sometimes base their conclusions on how much they need, and then give just a little more.

It’s not the flowers, chocolates, poems or gifts that women really want. What they really want are the gestures that show that their partner loves them and cares enough to expend some energy showing it!

Women typically expect and appreciate much more involvement from their relationships. They usually want more consistant and enthusiastic expressions of love and affection. They want to know, regularly, that they aren’t being taken for granted.

Many marriages eventually end because men never really take their partner’s needs seriously.

Many of the married women that I’ve talked with who have had extramarital affairs said they fell for men who were interested in them, who talked with and listened to them. The men they were drawn to were enthused about them and showed it. The feelings of respect, appreciation, and passion were missing in their marriage. It is my belief that missing those feelings of intimacy has led more women to have affairs than a mere sexual attraction.

Women who have high self-esteem and believe in equality aren’t satisfied with just being a sexual object. They want to be seen as much more than that, and rightfully resent some men’s attempts to have them be just a sex toy. Many women resent a man’s ability to, or interest in having uninvolved sex. Many expect more from their partner than just sex.

Most women aren’t satisfied if the physical sex is all they have. Even if they regularly experience orgasms, most women will get bored if that’s all their sex life consists of. They must feel love and connection with their partner as well. While this may not be news to women, quite a few men either don’t know this or don’t really take it seriously.

For many women, even though they may enjoy orgasms and the physical sensations, sex is more of a vehicle for making love and sharing affection and intimacy with their partner. The more a man understands and respects this the better off he’ll be in the long run. Since women often say they need to feel more loved, if they did, they may feel more inclined to have more sex, which is what many men say they would like.

Thankfully, for both genders, an increasing number of women today feel free to take more initiative and allow themselves to experience sex for pleasure and intimacy. Today more women are able to ask for more of what they want and need from their partner. Successful relationships usually include a man who respects this quality in his female counterpart.

Curated Article
Original Article

Hands on Sexual Healing from a Man

by zfortadminin Sex

When you get paid to perform sexual healing on women with intimacy issues, you need patience, sensitivity, and a willingness to put her pleasure before yours. And also condoms. Lots of them.

If surrogate partner therapy (SPT) sounds like something straight out of Masters of Sex, it is: In 1970, William Masters and Virginia Johnson published their findings on an innovative treatment in which a surrogate partner makes clinical appearances in the office—and the bedroom. Working as a member of a three-part therapeutic team, the surrogate partner helps construct a series of experiences to introduce the client to healthy forms emotional and physical intimacy. Yes, that can mean sex.

SPT rode a wave of popularity through the seventies that came to an abrupt end with the AIDS epidemic. Maybe it’s because of shifting attitudes toward sex, maybe it’s because sexually transmitted infections don’t carry the same fatal stamp they used to, but SPT is starting to make a comeback. In particular, therapists are finding more and more women are seeking the services of male surrogates.

Enter Shai Rotem, a forty-something Israeli who has lived and worked in Los Angeles for the past decade. He is one of a small (but growing) handful of male surrogates left to satisfy this rising demand. Here, Rotem shares the naked truth about his unusual job.

“I knew early on I wanted to work with people. Starting at the age of 20, I realized that nearly all the girls I had dated had some issues around sexuality, intimacy, and relationships. They either never had a boyfriend, were virgins, or had some history of sexual trauma. I got used to it. One of my best friends said, ‘Hey, Shai, what’s going on with your dating life? It’s not normal.’ He was referring to the fact that I had had six relationships, and five out of the six women had a history of sexual abuse, sexual trauma, had been raped, or molested by a family member. I just saw it as ‘This is life. I’m honored to help these women.’ That’s the day I called a center in Tel Aviv that offers surrogate partner therapy. I was accepted for the training, graduated, and I’ve been doing this ever since.

“Many clients are very, very shy, embarrassed or closed-off. If it’s a woman who’s a virgin or who has had sexual trauma or sexual problems, she doesn’t feel safe with guys. And I’m a man, so on one hand, she wants to contact me; on the other, the emotional feelings and fears are starting to surface. Many times it will start with an e-mail. I’ll respond, and then we’ll start writing back and forth to each other. Clients need to gain trust. Each client goes at her own pace. Eventually, I’ll refer them to a therapist and we’ll move to a three-way meeting. That’s when the process really starts. The client sees the therapist once a week, she sees me once a week, and the therapist and I as a team will talk in between sessions.

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Crying Couples—Did they pass the LOVE TEST?

by zfortadminin Mind

How would you and your partner fare at this test?

Get your tissues ready, people.

What if you could love yourself as much as your significant other loved you?

Tatia Pilieva sought to answer that question with “Love Test,” in which she talks to couples about their relationships — and each woman’s insecurities.

For “Love Test,” Pilieva filmed the couples in two different sessions: In the first, the couples are on screen together, describing their love stories. After that, Pilieva prompts them to indulge in treating themselves to a ritual created by Dr. Timothy de Waal Malefyt, a clinical associate professor at Fordham University​. In the second session, the women are on screen alone, describing how the ritual helped them and their relationships.

The short film helps illuminate Revlon’s findings, in a recent study conducted by Dr. de Waal Malefyt, ​that ​97 percent of women reported a significant change in themselves within the first week of adopting the aforementioned beauty ritual.

​​”I wanted to create a film that celebrates women. All women,” Pilieva said. “I wanted to show that our love runs deeper than our doubts or insecurities.”

Did they pass the LOVE TEST?

Curated by Erbe
Original Article

What’s Your Ideal Age Gap for a Long Term Relationship?

by zfortadminin LOVE

It’s widely believed age doesn’t matter when it comes to relationships, but a new study from Emory University says otherwise.

While we can think of a few couples making the age-gap relationship work (Catherine Zeta Jones and Michael Douglas for instance), others such as Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher are apparently a common statistic.

“A five-year age gap statistically means you’re 18 percent more likely to divorce (versus just 3 percent with a 1-year age difference), and that rate rises to 39 percent for a 10-year age difference and 95 percent for a 20-year age gap,” reports Andrew Francis and Hugo Mialon, professors in the Department of Economics. (So that explains Hugh Hefner’s many marriages then…).

The reason these relationships don’t work out is purely down to generational differences according to the study.

“Partners from different generations may have different cultural reference points and values, and polar opposite tastes in music and film, and even friends, and also have different approaches to their sex life, says Fran Walfish, Beverly Hills psychotherapist and panelist on “Sex Box,” a forthcoming We TV relationship therapy show. “Sex drive goes up for women in middle age, but sexual function decreases for men.”

Apparently though, staying power is a big factor when it comes to divorce: if you can make it to the two-year marriage mark, you’re 43 per cent less likely to divorce, and if you reach 10 years, you’re practically guaranteed to be together for life, with a 94 per cent success rate.

Whatever the stats might be though, we think it comes down to the individual couple – and there’s no measure of success for that.

What is your age preference in relationship, older, younger, same?

Curated by Erbe
Original Article

Body Positive… Big Girls Can Wear a Bikini

by zfortadminin Body, Wellness

“Bikinis don’t look good on bigger girls,” is the statement she’s addressing here, and her response is perfect: “I’m going to have to disagree,” Lane notes.

Loey Lane has become one of the most influential plus size fashion vloggers on YouTube in the past two years. And there’s no doubt that Loey Lane swimsuit videos are among some of her most popular uploads via her channel, which — ICYMI — has 359,000+ subscribers to date.

Lane’s fashion and beauty repertoire on YouTube is quite extensive as she covers everything from skincare to makeup to shopping to fashion to, of course, outfit posts. Weaved within her videos is a body positive theme that’s hard to deny. Though the comment section on many of her videos is often littered with haters and people who try to discourage her outlook on her own body image, there is also a ton of solidarity — making it obvious that viewers the world over have found her encouraging viewpoints on being a curvier, fuller-figured woman enlightening.

Last month, Lane shared a video to address some of the grief she had been receiving for wearing swimsuits in photographs and videos. The four and a half minute reaction, entitled “Why Fat Girls Shouldn’t Wear Bikinis,” has come to media attention this week, leading to her thoughts on the so-called reasons that plus size women shouldn’t wear bikinis garnering over one million views.

Here are just seven body positive points Loey Lane makes in the video, all while wearing a killer bikini.

1. No one human or entity can decide what’s attractive or what’s not.

loey lane

“Bikinis don’t look good on bigger girls,” is the statement she’s addressing here, and her response is perfect: “I’m going to have to disagree,” Lane notes.

She pokes fun at the fact that some people act like the general consensus from YouTube commenters is the “be all and end all” when it comes to a fashion verdict. But trolls’ words mean nothing, and they just never will.

2. No one can dictate what you put on your body

loey lane

Even though the thought of seeing a bikini on a plus size woman might still make someone bigoted individuals uncomfortable, it doesn’t mean you have to live by their standards. Basically, Loey Lane reiterates that what you want to wear and what you feel comfortable in are no one’s choice but yours.

Lane also makes the point that most of the time, thinner women are never asked to not wear a bikini or revealing clothes, even if some people’s aesthetic preferences lean towards fuller figures. So why should plus women be treated any differently?

3. Wearing a bikini as a larger woman is not an effort to make people believe they should be bigger, too.

loey lane

I love how Loey Lane puts this into perspective. In her video, she notes that it’s not like she’s laying out on the beach stuffing her face with junk food as a way of “promoting obesity,” (although it’d be her choice and her choice only to do so), as some critics suggest she and other plus women wearing a bikini are doing.

It’s as simple as this: Plus size women are only promoting self confidence regardless of size. That’s it.

4. Plus-size women are often misunderstood when they do “healthy” things.

Lane makes an excellent point here by reenacting a hypothetical scene of her with a bowl of fruit. A voice says in the background, “Look at her trying to pretend to be healthy. Go get on a treadmill.”

Plus women are criticized when they don’t “embrace a healthy lifestyle,” (“healthy” as defined by the mainstream, because there are many different ways of being/looking heathy, of course), but then they are equally criticized all the same when they share gym selfies or pictures of a banana. This type of standard is absurd and unnecessarily cruel.

5. Plus-size women in bikinis are NOT asking for your feedback.

loey lane

Lane also addresses the idiocy behind the comment that “if a plus size woman wears anything revealing, she’s just asking for someone to shame her.”

Here’s the thing: Most people don’t actually want Internet trolls or IRL bullies to say negative things about them. And the way women dress is by no means an open call for others to vocalize their opinions. Loey Lane basically says that if you don’t have anything good to say, why say it at all?

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When You Haven’t Had Sex with Your Partner in a Long Time

by zfortadminin Sex

I’m attracted to him, but I haven’t been able to get closer.

My husband and I have not had sex in a year and a half. We’ve had sex maybe 10 times in the last five years. I am a sexual trauma survivor. These two things are directly related, but it’s taken me years to make the connection.

Our sex life wasn’t always like this. For the first six months of our relationship, we had sex all the time. Passionate, mind-blowing sex, in fact. Knock-your-socks off sex. So you can imagine my husband’s confusion when I suddenly seemed to lose interest.

It was around the time we moved in together, and I didn’t know what was wrong. We thought it was hormonal, and I switched birth control. We thought it was related to some major life changes, so we waited it out. We thought it was a difference in libido, so we tried things like taking sex off the table for a month. We tried hooking up but not having intercourse. I started going to therapy. The problem only got worse.

My husband began to feel like I wasn’t attracted to him anymore. He stopped trying to initiate things. He grew resentful. We talked about options like opening our marriage. We had a lot of conversations about the fact that this wasn’t fair or what he wanted in a relationship. Since I have also been interested in women, he questioned whether I was attracted to men at all.

Meanwhile, I felt despondent. I felt detached and numb. I knew I was attracted to my husband, because I felt it. But I didn’t want to have sex. I wanted to kiss and cuddle without it leading to anything else. Sometimes I’d give into some form of sexual activity, but I always felt empty and used afterwards. There was always an elephant in the room. It felt like it was between us when we got into bed at night.

What’s funny is that I’m a certified rape crisis counselor. I can talk about the effects of sexual trauma on sex until I’m blue in the face. But I couldn’t internalize it and apply it to my own life. I was sure that there was a different problem. I swore that my trauma hadn’t affected me to that level. And for years, I used sex as a coping mechanism.

In the years leading up to meeting my husband, I found myself joining the “sex positive” movement. I wore it like a badge of liberation. I was determined to take back my body. I found BDSM and kink, and I jumped in with abandon. I thought I was free. It’s only now, with clear vision, that I can look back and see that I was not in an emotionally healthy place to be making these kinds of decisions. At the time, I viewed a lot of these activities as consensual but I recognize now that I was not emotionally healthy enough to be consenting. It is absolutely possible to participate in fully consensual BDSM. But for me, at that time, I wasn’t capable of it and I didn’t realize it. And the result of this is that it traumatized me more.

That all came to a head for me when my husband and I moved in. What I know now, that I didn’t know then, is that all of this is normal. What I know now, that I couldn’t internalize then, is that I was coping in the best way I knew how. And it’s because of the safety that I finally felt with my husband and in our relationship that the symptoms of my trauma finally shone through. And now I’m left undoing not only the harm that other people have done to me, but the harm I caused myself under the guise of sexual liberation.

Today, my husband and I are seeing a wonderful counselor. What we’ve learned, together, is that it’s normal for sex to be great at the beginning and to taper off when the survivor begins to feel “safe.” My dissociation and numbness around sex are also normal. It was hard for him to understand at first, because dissociation doesn’t look traumatic to someone witnessing it; it just looks like lack of enthusiasm. Which is why, for so long, my husband thought I just wasn’t into sex with him. As we, and I, start to work through this stuff, I get triggered. It gets hard. It gets uncomfortable. But I choose to think of it as progress, as a sign that I’m beginning to move through the numbing phase and onto the healing phase.

We both know that we have a long road ahead of us. We know that we won’t go back to having wonderful, consistent sex tomorrow, or even next week. But now that we’re both on the same page and the problem is clear, we feel a freedom and a closeness that we haven’t felt in a long time. The fact that we’re tackling this together brings us an intimacy that we lost when we stopped having sex. And while having regular date nights and finding activities to do together doesn’t bring quite the same intimacy that sex does, we’re taking steps in the direction of healing and we both finally feel hopeful that one day, we’ll have sex again.

Curated by Erbe
Original Article