Strong love for the ages!
In 1959, Charlie B. drove his brand new model-A Ford from North Carolina down to Florida, where a yearbook picture brought him and Penny together. Over fifty years later, the car has fallen derelict but his 50 year marriage with Penny has flourished.
This piece is a love story, told through the revival of an old car; it demonstrates the power of human connection.
Curated by Erbe
Original Source
A MUSEUM
I am a firm believer that no one really likes museums, they just think they should. Ok maybe that’s not true and I’m just culturally ignorant but still… You can’t drink and you have to whisper. It is very challenging to get to know someone when you can barely hear them. Let’s also not forget that all the famous artists like Michaelangelo and Van Gogh were total unstable maniacs; this might not be the most conducive environment for the beginning stages of a relationship with their ghosts floating around. If you have a proclivity for the arts or happen to be dating Fraser or Niles Crane, a gallery opening or an art event might be more suitable.
OUT WITH YOUR FRIENDS
No one wants to meet your friends, they don’t even know if they really want to meet you yet. WAY too much pressure. This can also be a huge insult. You are basically saying you can’t sacrifice one night with your friends to get to know someone. If your date feels like a low priority out the gate, chances are things won’t go much further. You also want to be the one to make the decision about a potential mate, introducing your friends too early gives you too many opinions to mull over before you have the chance to come up with your own. Friends are like family, save this introduction for when you are sure about someone.
COFFEE
Maybe this works for some people, but I just can’t imagine falling in love with someone in broad daylight while I’m getting hopped up on caffeine. It is very important to set the tone and mood in a relaxed environment where people feel like they can have their guard down. Coffee says “Good Morning, what’s on the agenda for today?” It’s the exact opposite of the vibe you want for a date. It can lead to an interview type situation instead of natural flow of conversation. Also, nothing says cheapskate like asking someone out for coffee. If you can’t even invest in a drink, how are you ever going to invest in a life with someone?
What do you like best about falling in love?
Scientific American traces the flow of chemicals in the brain during different phases of romance and describes surprising insights from the science of attraction.
Curated by Erbe
Original Source
For your audience to enjoy you, you must appear to enjoy yourself first. Despite your nerves, you have to convey confidence. It’s harder to pull off insecurity than a few butt zits. I know it sounds a little contrived, but use self-talk, a sexy little pep talk, to get in the right mindset. Tell yourself “prowling tiger” rather than “young Shirley Temple”, because seeing someone with a naked body, but a too-big, unmoving smile and deer-in-a-headlight eyes is very uncomfortable, some might even use the word “boner-killer.” Don’t misunderstand, I’m not telling you not to smile, but it has to be natural. The smile of actual enjoyment. No one is forcing you to be naked, if you truly hate being naked, don’t do it. If you don’t hate it, try not to look like you do. Happiness is attractive; you catch more flies with honey.
If you move, walk, dance, pose with intention and attention, you automatically convey a sense of having your shit together. Your body is a fluid thing of beauty, let it move that way. If you move with doubt, unsure of where to go or what to do, you’re putting off nervous energy, which is hard to make sexy, unless you’re one of those lucky people getting naked with someone who has a fetish for clumsiness…
Sure, there was the initial moment of intense fear and anxiety right before the robe dropped, and right before I went onstage. Both of those moments felt so huge that I thought they might be my last. But really, the worst part about it was just the anticlimactic follow-up to that moment. It was MY first time moment, not theirs. First time modeling, I expected students to laugh and whisper. The truth is, no one cares nearly as much about the flaws we obsess over as you think they will, they are busy worrying about themselves. They assume that because you are naked, you are okay with what you’re showing, that it’s just business as usual. Art students are taught to view bodies as a collection of shapes, not as good or bad. They weren’t upset at having to draw me in my lumpy, bumpy glory, they were excited to have someone new to draw. There was zero attachment between my body and my character. The first time I stripped, I thought the drunk dudes would heckle me with cutting zings about my cellulite, or my rounded belly. Nope, turns out, if they don’t like what they see, they just walk away, because they weren’t there to make me feel bad, they were there to see tits.
Even when I did get my feelings hurt in the strip club, it wasn’t because that was what the guy intended, it was when I made someone else’s personal preferences matter to me. For example, I’ve had men pass me over for private dances because tattoos weren’t their thing. They weren’t saying my tattoos are ugly, or that there’s anything wrong with me for having tattoos, just that they didn’t like them on anyone. And who knows why? Maybe there was a tattooed she-bully in his neighborhood who used to punch him in the nuts and take his lunch money. Maybe his first love was inked up and broke his heart, and now every time he sees a tattooed woman, he cries inside. The most important thing is not how he feels, or why, it’s that I like my tattoos. Trying to change his mind about them would be a waste of everyone’s time, which is better spent seeking out those people who do like them, of which there are plenty. Once, I had one man tell me (in a very apologetic tone of voice) that my ass wasn’t wide enough for his taste, a mere 3 hours after another one tipped me $100 for having, as he so eloquently stated “more cushion’ for the pushin’ back there”. If you have any doubt that you can find someone who loves your body as it is, whatever it’s state, I advise you to go to an adult store and peruse the porn DVDs. Look at the people on the covers in ALL the categories, and take notice of how many different categories there are. There’s literally something for anyone and everyone. With that in mind, when someone asks my body type, I don’t say “athletic” or “curvy,” or “short and squat,” I say “FUCKABLE… just like yours.”
An important institution for the people of Papua New Guinea is the courting ceremonies. This ritual lasts weeks. In Papua New Guinea tribes, incest is not permitted, so they have to look for other villages’ men. Women invite men from other tribes and look for their partner. While men are allowed to take as many wives as they can support, women may only have one husband.
Curated by Erbe
Original Source
Oh, I get it all right. You have a history that maybe you’re not proud of. Maybe you’ve slept with enough guys to make up two football teams — including the practice squads. Maybe you’ve been dumped or left standing at the altar. The point is that all this stuff is in the past and you can’t do anything to change it. What you can do is start spending 5 percent of your time trying to figure out whether you screwed up or got a raw deal, and 95 percent of your time figuring out what you’re going to do about it.
Everything about your message, everything about your aura, everything about you will change. If you are not sure about the contents of your personal truth, now is the time to ask yourself some hard questions:
1. Do I feel that I have to disguise myself?
2. Do I live with shame?
3. Do I live with guilt?
4. Do I believe that I lack intelligence?
5. Is there something fundamentally wrong with me?
6. Do I lack confidence?
7. Do I think my ____ (best friend, sister, etc.) is somehow better than I am?
8. Do I feel like a fraud?
9. Do I think I am a second-class citizen?
10. Do I feel unworthy of love?
11. Do I often feel I have no control over my life and behavior?
12. Am I damaged goods — have I been dumped so many times that there has got to be something wrong with me?
13. Do I feel that I am not as smart, sharp or interesting as other people?
14. Do I believe that I am not going to find happiness?
15. Do I say to myself that I’m not worthy?
16. Do I feel that I am masquerading and just one step ahead of being found out?
17. Do I believe that I am totally clueless in comparison with my peers?
18. Do I play the game constantly afraid of being hurt and humiliated?
I have just taken you through a structured examination of possible negative content in your personal truth. The first thing that should go on your to-do list is to eliminate, heal, change, do whatever you have to do so that it no longer has an impact on you. Hopefully, much of or most of your personal truth is positive. The majority of people have a combo deal.
The reason we are doing this inventory of negative personal truths is that we all generate the results we feel we deserve. So if you can eliminate, minimize and manage the negatives, you will be able to maximize the positives and present the results that are consistent with someone who has positive self-worth. In other words, if you don’t like you, you will not get anyone else to like you. If you love you, then other people will love you. If you believe that you deserve the best relationship, you will attract a healthy, positive, fulfilling relationship into your life.
If any of the answers to the above questions is yes, roll up your sleeves and prepare to do some real work. To truly sell yourself on you, you have to change each one of those self-destructive answers and the perceptions that led you to them into positive, constructive thoughts. Once you have sold yourself on you, you’ll realize that you don’t need a man in your life to be whole. And that’s getting your head in the game — coming at it with the mind-set of a winner, not a loser. Because if you’re telling yourself that you had better find a partner fast or you’ll just curl up and die, then you are playing with sweaty palms, running scared, coming off desperate and turning guys off — and guys sense desperation the way a dog senses an earthquake; and when they do, they take off and never look back. You’ve been doing fine on your own all these years, so just go for it. It’s not so frightening to go out and show the world who you are.
Modified excerpt from Love Smart: Find the One You Want — Fix the One You Gotby Dr. Phil McGraw (Free Press, 2005).
Curated by Tatiana
Original Article
You are now living an autonomous lifestyle! If you want to listen to Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off” thirty times in a row, nobody’s there to tell you that you can’t. You can watch all the movies they didn’t want to watch, eat at restaurants they didn’t care for, and operate as the ruler of your own domain.
Even if all you want to do is wallow in your misery and drink Scotch, it’ll be better for your body and brain if you get up and get moving sometimes. Make some endorphins to flush out the sadness, and feel better about your body!
Take time for yourself. Make plans with girlfriends but you want to stay home and watch a whole season of So You Think You Can Dance? Do it. A recent breakup is one of a few Get Out Of Plans Free cards. Use as needed.
That’s what we do, as humans. Your emotions are just chemicals your brain makes, and as badly as you hurt, next week it will be less, and the next week, even less! The cells in your body are constantly dying and and being replaced by new ones, and those cells didn’t even know that guy! Someday soon you’ll see him buying wine at Von’s and hardly want to spit on him at all. Until then, don’t spit on anyone!
In an effort to revitalize our relationship we went on vacation together, a road trip to the Maritime Provinces. We stayed at a heritage hotel on Prince Edward Island, ate more lobster than we should have, and even though we enjoyed ourselves we were boring each other to death. I wanted to play tennis, he wanted to listen to Dylan and rock out on the beach.
While there, we ran into a friend of mine from work, who was on vacation with a new love. The four of us had dinner together, and as they gazed adoringly into each other’s eyes we sat embarrassed and vainly tried to find something to talk about. I realized that we had mistaken nostalgia and familiarity for romance, and without that spark, all we were was friends.
When we got home we broke his mother’s heart. We sadly divided up our belongings, and decided to “take a break”. We both knew it was permanent, but liked each other enough to want to leave the door open.
We are still good friends to this day, he married someone else and moved to California. I married and stayed in Ottawa. We still love each other as friends, and sometimes we say – “What if?”, but that boat had sailed a while ago, a lovely interlude, and one that helped me adjust to a new life, but not the basis for a life-long commitment. Sometimes friendship is just that, and nothing more.
5. He never talks about having crushes on other women because to him, other women basically don’t exist. You know he’s single, attractive, and cool, and there’s no way there aren’t girls who are into him, but you definitely never hear about them. And if he does mention girls, it’s always with the underlying sentiment that he hasn’t found the right one yet, except he has and it’s you.
6. He’s practically best friends with all your friends now. He met them through you but now he just chills with you and your friends because he wants your friends to like him so they can gently nudge you into falling in love with him if you haven’t already.
7. He constantly tells you how much fun he has with you. My platonic guy friends never really do this. We know we have fun together; that’s why we’re friends. But his casually telling you he has so much fun with you is his way of saying, “You are so great and all I want to do is tell you how great you are but then you’ll know I’m crazy about you and it might scare you off. So, uh, man, it’s fun to hang with you!”
8. He always texts you back. Granted, this is something a good friend should do, but even really good friends can forget about texts, or just get caught up and not reply. But he’s super invested in you seeing how much he cares about you, so he makes damn sure to text you back every time.
9. He makes sure no one messes with you. If you’re in a group, and someone is putting you down or saying something mean to you, he’ll slyly either change the subject or shut it down. He has your back, even if you do not yet realize he should be your guy.
10. If you’re putting an event together, he’s your hype man. If you’re throwing a party or raising money for a company you work for, he’s putting the word out on every social media account and telling the whole world how much fun it is, how important it is, and how they need to be there because he believes in you.
11. He remembers every single thing you’ve ever told him. So when you’re having a rough day, he can remind you of something you said weeks ago that he can recall verbatim because everything you say means something to him because you mean something to him. Seriously, one of you has to say something soon so you can just get together and be super cute already. Do it.
Curated by Erbe
Original Article
People are going to treat you the way you treat yourself. Because of this, the best way to attract a partner who adores you is by adoring yourself. Not just on the surface, but deep inside, too.
Take care of yourself in the best way possible. Love all parts of who you are, trying to accept each aspect of your being. Treat yourself to decadence and the good life. Make it a priority to feel good every day.
Honor yourself the way you want to be honored by a partner. This is one of the biggest secrets to finding a great love.
If you are desiring a relationship that feels fantastic, then your life must feel fantastic before that person comes in.
Too often, people believe that the key to happiness is finding a partner, so they put happiness on hold in search of love. But this isn’t how it works!
Your life is happening now. The more you enjoy it, the more attractive you become to others, and the more likely you will enjoy your next partner when he or she arrives.
If you want to find your true soul mate — a person who authentically compliments your soul — then you must live from your soul.
To me, living from your soul is pretty straightforward. It means being in contact with the deeper part of who you are, your authentic self, and making a commitment to live your life from that place within you.
We all have souls. It is the truest essence of who you are. When you live in a soulful manner, others who match your passion, enthusiasm, grace, and love will make their way to you. A soulful person is impossible to resist.
I’m so excited for you to embark on this journey of attracting the greatest love of your life. Remember that anything is possible if you believe it can be true.
Curated by Erbe
Original Article
Ten minutes later, a security guard for the building calls me. He asks me why I haven’t come down to get my lunch and tells me the delivery guy is getting frustrated. I explain to him that the food is a gift for a friend, that I work in a completely different part of town and am not in the building and that they just need to deliver the food to Katie. He seems to get it and he gets off the phone. At this point I texted Katie to say “There’s a very confused sushi delivery guy wandering your building with food for you.”
A half hour after that I receive another phone call, this time from someone who works in Katie’s office asking me if I worked there and if so, did I order lunch? Apparently in the time after I spoke to the security guard, he’d sent the delivery guy upstairs, but didn’t call them to explain the situation, so it basically rebooted when the delivery guy got upstairs, but like most reboots it got bigger and more obnoxious when that happened. During the time in between my two phone calls, Katie had been called at her desk several times by pretty much anyone who the delivery guy was able to show his bag of food to in order to let her know it was there. Because Katie hadn’t seen my text, she kept having to repeat that she had not ordered food, and that there was some sort of mistake.
By the time Katie saw my text and figured out what was happening, the entire office was wondering about the mysterious sushi, so when she got up and walked over to the front and got her food, she immediately became “the Sushi Girl.” My attempt at being subtle but sweet turned into a giant red arrow pointing at Katie for everyone at the office where she had only recently started working to see. To put it in her words “the largest order of flowers with the brightest balloons would have been less embarrassing.” That day she reassured me that it was still a very ‘sweet’ thing to do, but to please never do it again. Still, while she didn’t outright credit it, I’m sure her new nickname at work made her impending termination of the relationship a whole lot easier.
The “Sushi Incident” was the last time that I tried any sort of overt romantic effort, and it was a stellar way to go out on a career of one hundred percent perfect failure. It’s not that I don’t believe in love now, I still definitely do. Now I just believe in expressing it via things like cooking dinner or binge watching a show on Netflix together. One day I may even just say “I love you.”
You are an individual unique person with your own beliefs, feelings, desires, and habits. Your spouse also is that same unique individual. Everyone has the innate right to be who they are and to feel free with their most intimate partner to express their true selves.
Just because you’ve come together as a couple doesn’t mean you should expect your partner to be someone else, meet all of your needs, or view the world in the exact same way you do. You are two distinct people, two adults, who fell in love and chose to live their lives together.
Your expectations and treatment of each other should reflect this truth. Once you accept and respect the other person for who they are, then you can find a way to work through differences thoughtfully and kindly. When you love Mike (fill in your spouse’s name) simply because he is Mike, then you are offering unconditional love and acknowledgment of his authentic self.
You love and accept him just the way he is.
This is the foundation from which you can handle the differences between you and the difficulties life throws in your path.
I firmly believe the simple act of kindness could save most couples from breaking up. If you begin from the position of always trying to be kind and respectful toward your partner, you’ll resolve conflicts more quickly and less painfully. And you will sew the seeds of joy in your life together.
Small acts of kindness on a daily basis translate into heaping portions of positivity and happiness, which is essential for lasting relationships.
According to marriage expert and psychologist John Gottman, Ph.D., it takes five positive interactions to every one negative interaction for a marriage to last. Through his extensive research on couples, Gottman discovered that marriages are in danger of leading to divorce when the ratio of positive to negative interactions falls below five to one.
Even if you are feeling angry or upset about something, you can still be kind by not being overtly unkind. You don’t have to go for the jugular in disagreements. There’s no need to make disparaging remarks or speak condescendingly.
Kindness is an advanced emotion — one that requires conscious choice. You must choose kindness over winning an argument or making your partner feel worse than you do.
Every couple experiences difficulties they can’t unknot on their own. Sometimes we become so entrenched in our needs or point of view, we can’t see a way toward compromise or resolution. If this happens, don’t allow the issue to fester and cause resentment.
Seek out a professional couples counselor who can help you find the best course of action. Asking for this help doesn’t mean your marriage is bad or you might not get what you want. It’s like bringing in a consultant who’s detached and can help you both see the bigger picture and the way toward resolution.
Dont’ avoid counseling because you think you should be able to work it out on your own. If you haven’t, you likely won’t be able to. So take action.
The foundation of emotional intimacy is trust. You trust your spouse to have your back, accept you as you are, treat you with dignity, and love you unconditionally.
You lose that trust when your partner puts you down, betrays you in some way, tries to control you, or becomes disengaged from the relationship. Real intimacy is impossible without this trust, and emotional intimacy is what keeps marriages thriving.
You express emotional intimacy in a variety of ways.
Emotional intimacy is also expressed in sexual intimacy with eye contact, spoken words, and open communication about how to please one another.
Even when you disagree, you can practice this intimacy through humor, touching, and kindness.
This might be the most difficult change to adopt, but it will be the most life-changing. When you feel angry at your spouse, and you want to yell and scream and say something really hurtful or snarky, walk away instead.
When your anger grows to the point you can’t control it, have a rule with yourself you will step away from your partner until the anger dissipates. Words spoken in anger are poison to your close connection. They might feel good in the moment, but they often cause irreparable harm.
If a disagreement begins to escalate into a full scale fight, tell your spouse you’d like to wait to finish the conversation until cooler heads prevail. If you want to get your angry feelings out, write them down and then tear them up. Or go for a run or a long walk.
Walking away from angry interactions is part of putting the relationship as a priority over your ego.
Life can be so serious and demanding. This is particularly true when you have children at home. Your days are filled with work and child rearing, and in the evenings you’re exhausted and just want to veg out in front of the TV or on the computer.
Prioritize having fun and adventure together over some of the seemingly more important activities of your life. Your house and yard don’t have to be perfect. Your kids don’t have to be in dozens of extracurricular activities. You don’t have to volunteer for every school organization.
Put fun time with your spouse ahead of all of these things. Go on regular date nights. Take weekend excursions. Put up a tent in your back yard, and watch the stars together. Try to reconnect to the feelings you had when you first fell in love, when the world was your oyster and life had a rosy glow to it.
Think about your partner as your boyfriend or girlfriend, and find ways to spend time together just as you did when you first met. Yes, your life is more complicated now. But that will make the fun times all the sweeter.
If your relationship is valuable to you, and you don’t want it to linger in malaise or fall apart completely, then take the initiative to overcome your problems as a couple. Ask your spouse or partner to read this article with you. Discuss together how you can put your intimate connection as the number one priority in your life.
Write down ways you can express more respect, kindness, emotional intimacy, and fun. Talk about strategies for a cooling off period when anger erupts. And decide whether or not you need the support of a counselor with any particular issue.
Take care of your relationship, and fall in love all over again.
Curated by Erbe
Original Article
PASSION. Definition: strong and barely controllable emotion. Is passion a good thing? How much do we want of it in a relationship?
Often times, women feel like they have to make a choice between the hot and heavy/ tumultuous relationship and the boring/stable one. The real question is, why is passion paired with feelings of anger and jealousy and stability paired with feelings of boredom and dissatisfaction. What is it about the reliable man that unconditionally loves and supports us that makes us want to run the other way?
We don’t want to be in a relationship completely void of passion, so we might have to rewire ourselves. Here are 5 things about stable men that we should feel passionate about.
This might seem a little obvious, but any person who gets up every day and goes to work deserves some respect. He’s not “figuring things out.” His employer counts on him to be there, and he’s there. That means he is a reliable person. THAT IS HOT. When you call, he answers. He’s not “so high he fell asleep.”
The stable man is always down for a night out with your friends. He’s not living for himself and his own pleasure. He likes being part of a team. THIS IS HOT. You don’t want the guy who ditches you last minute because “my buddy wants to watch the game.” You want a guy you can MAKE PLANS WITH, who is capable of saying things like “I can’t tonight, maybe another time.”
It’s simple. When you talk, he listens. “Huh?” and “sorry babe, what?” is not something that happens often after you have been talking for an extended amount of time. Not listening is a sign of disrespect. It is NOT HOT. It means they are prioritizing whatever they are doing or thinking over you. Unless of course, you are a total chatterbox, in that case it is you that might have a little work to do.
His place is tidy; he has furniture. He has a box spring, AND A BED FRAME. THESE ITEMS ARE HOT. Who wants to do it on a mattress on the floor whose sheets haven’t been changed in ages? Having your place together means you have your life together and that you aren’t looking for a mother to manage your life, you are looking for a partner to share your life with.
It is shocking to me how many women will put up with this during an argument. It is absolutely unacceptable to use profanity in any way or call your partner names. This is a sign of a person that is not evolved = NOT HOT. Plus, it sets the tone for your relationship. Once you condone this kind of behavior, it is easy to go downhill from there. The balanced man knows how to express his concerns without going to a dark place. His tone may be firm, but he is not disrespectful.
To explain why I’ve chosen these thinkers and stuck mostly to our culture, a digression:
Christine Helliwell, anthropologist, lived in Borneo with the native people of the region, the Dayak. One morning, she heard a group of elderly women laughing outside of her apartment. She found them reenacting a scene from the night before: A man had snuck into a woman’s bedroom through the window, and the woman woke to find him gripping her shoulder.
“Be quiet,” he said to her.
The woman sat up in bed and pushed him away. He fell back and when she started to yelling at him, he escaped back through the window with his sarong falling down.
But why were the Dayak women laughing about it, Helliwell wondered; the woman had almost been raped! This community of Dayak had no word for “rape,” so Helliwell tried to explain, “He was trying to hurt you.”
The woman’s reply stunned the anthropologist.
“It’s only a penis,” she said. “How can a penis hurt anyone?”
Indigenous people, as well as anthropologists like Christine Helliwell have been reporting deep cultural differences like this to us for years. In the case of the Dayak community, sexual assault was so far removed from the understanding of sex and gender roles that it was inconceivable, laughable.
In central Africa, the Aka and Ngandu people have sex two to five times every night, and view sex as work, not recreation. There’s also no known homosexuality among the Aka, belying the commonly held Western truth that homosexuality is universal and inborn. There’s simply no word or concept for it.
In Tibet, some villagers practice fraternal polyandry – brothers will share the same wife.
Many Native American nations have traditions of Two Spirited people who express cultural gender fluidity, living with the other members of the community in one form, but understood as another.
But a list of indigenous sexual practices, or people from non-Western cultures who uproot the foundations of our understanding does not figure into the selection here. There are blog posts, books, internet videos and TV shows that highlight modern-day sexual differences between Western and indigenous cultures. Usually, they have a check-out-these-wacky-natives feeling. Instead of helping us question our own sexual ideas, these news-of-the-weird sound bytes reinforce our prejudices at the expense of indigenous people. It’s cultural appropriation, because it ignores that the entire cultural context of that practice is different.
For example, it’s not uncommon to find non-indigenous LGBT activists evoking Two Spirit people as poster children for LGBT political/cultural messages, since same sex relationships and gender change are not (at least traditionally) frowned upon in cultures with Two Spirit people. But while there are similarities, the differences are deep. It’s not about “gay” or “straight” or “gender fluidity” as we understand it, since the multiple roles — such as iskwehkhan (“fake woman”), ayahkwew (“man dressed/living/accepted as a woman”), and more — are varied, nuanced and more complex than that. They’re embedded in a different understanding of spirituality, cause and effect, communal connection, and more. What’s more, these roles are often chosen for members of the community by elders.
Usually, at best, indigenous sex and relationship traditions are appropriated by well-meaning activists. At worst, they’re dismissed as oddities or demonized as backwards.
There’s a lot to learn from other cultures’ approaches to sex. In fact, some of the thinkers mentioned in this chapter have learned quite a bit from other cultures…or have made the mistakes I’ve just outlined. But learning can’t take the form of cultural cherry-picking. Both brilliant individuals from Western culture and indigenous practices can be inspirational for us, but the former allows for a presumed understanding that the latter does not. The list of who we can learn from and listen to when it comes to sex and culture cannot be complete without the voices of people from other cultures. But this series is in no way meant to be complete. So to avoid appropriation and to create a reasonably understood framework of thinking, I’ve chosen Western thinkers.
So who should we turn to? It can’t be just anyone. The Marquis de Sade, for example, will have to stay in his Chateau; for all the sexual spelunking he did, he came up with too much grime to be desirable. Recognizable faces like Sigmund Freud, Michel Foucault or pop culture reformers like Gloria Steinem aren’t adequate for our current situation precisely because they’ve had their ideas permeate our culture in a such profound way, but we’re still here, needing more.
So the strategy: Seek out thinkers on the margins of Western cultural consciousness (particularly US, since that is my vantage point, which explains Jacques Lacan’s inclusion, even though he is popular in select Western countries) who are leaning all their intellectual weight against our boundaries. Express their radical ideas in an unfortunately incomplete but hopefully useful and understandable form. Recognize that these they all have flaws. Think about how they could intersect with our lives, including my own, so that they’re not just distant or academic.
And most importantly, perhaps, consider their work not as dogma, not as something we cannot be critical of or question,but rather, as a challenge. What happens to our sexual consciousness and culture if we confront these thinkers with our intellect but also sit with a listening ear and open mind?
Curated by Steven
Original Article
“These publicly posted cues likely induced participants to perceive themselves as part of a romantic unit, thus cementing the relationship,” wrote Catalina Toma and Mina Choi, the co-authors of the study. Their theory is that publicly confirming romance in and of itself deepens that romance, partly because people want to live in a way that’s consistent with how they represent themselves to the outside world. Having a lot of mutual friends was not associated with staying in a couple past six months, nor was how often a person’s partner posted on their wall.
Toma and Choi considered the competing idea that the Facebook activity merely reflected couples’ deep commitment to each other, rather than helping deepen that commitment. They tested that hypothesis statistically and found more evidence that Facebook affects relationship commitment than vice-versa.
As the saying goes: first comes Facebook, then comes deep, long-lasting romance.
Curated by Erbe
Original Article
