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Category Archives: Fantasies & Role Playing

Graduating To A Better You

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POSTED ON: May 13 2013  • 
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CATEGORIES:  Adult Toys & Games, Aphrodisiacs, Better Sex, Boundaries & Taboos, Communication, Couples Enrichment, Dating, Disabilities & Intimacy, Erotic Talk, Fantasies & Role Playing, Flirting, Foreplay, Intimacy, Love, Loveology University, Pleasing a Man, Pleasing a Woman
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Here we are in the middle of graduation season! As you watch these young men and women embark on the next chapter of their lives, you have the opportunity to utilize the same symbolism for yourself. While it may have been years since you’ve been in a cap and gown, education never stops and this time of year is a reminder to look back on what has been accomplished while taking the necessary steps to move forward.

A relationship is certainly an education. One with a series of tests, extensive research, the roles of teacher and student, unexpected courses in math, science, biology, chemistry, history, speech, writing, sex ed and, hopefully, a bit of recess! You may not be able to march across a stage to receive a diploma and the applause of an audience acknowledging the accomplishments of relationships, but you are still able to incorporate some of the key elements of graduation into your personal growth.

REFLECTION

We are a world built on momentum that is constantly reaching forward. We rarely take the time to examine the past and the amazing things we have accomplished so far. Take some time to look at the life you have created for yourself. Really see it. Don’t focus on the things that you want to change but allow yourself instead to see what you have done that is incredible. Think about your life’s story and imagine that you are hearing it as if it belongs to someone else. What parts of the story excite you, thrill you, astonish you with their bravery, leave you in awe of our hero? Well, the hero of this story is you. Embrace that.

GRATITUDE

While reflecting, extend gratitude to those that have given your life its color. Maybe this will inspire you to reach out to an old friend. Maybe you will do something unexpected and kind for a neighbor or colleague. Maybe you will sit down with your partner, take their hands and express your gratitude for all the gifts they have brought into your life. Or maybe you will just sit with their image in your mind and love in your heart. Genuine gratitude is an incredible thing to give to another person but it is equally important to give it to ourselves. Take a moment to look in the mirror and see yourself fully and without apology. The person you see is the single most important relationship in your life. Say “thank you.”

FORGIVENESS

One of the single hardest things in life to do is to forgive. It is also one of the single most important things you can do for your own well-being. Forgiveness does not let those that have hurt us off the hook as much as it lets us off our own hook. As Lewis B. Smedes says, “To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.” And perhaps even more challenging than trying to forgive another is making the choice to forgive yourself. Yes, you have made mistakes. That is one of the prices of living. But that is also one of life’s gifts because our mistakes give us character, give us humility, and they give us humor. You are not your mistakes, you are how you let your errors define you. Without mistakes there can be no forgiveness and without forgiveness there can be no love!

NEW GOALS

This is the time to think about what you would like to do next. How do you want to live your life and how do you want your relationships to evolve? A graduating senior must choose whether to continue their education, join the work force, take a sabbatical, settle down or party on. As a student of life, what would you next like to do or learn? Make some new goals. Sure, you can make them epic “bucket list” goals like visit Bora Bora, learn to speak Mandarin, or compete in a triathlon. But find some simple goals as well. Get out of bed 30 minutes earlier. Put down the TV remote and read a book. Learn about one of your partner’s hobbies and surprise them with a gift that shows you support their own goals.

One of the great gifts to give a graduating senior of any age is the Dr. Seuss classic “Oh The Places You’ll Go.” It’s a sweet and whimsical tale filled with reminders of what a great adventure living can be. So as you journey on into the next chapter of your life, I give this great quote from the book, “You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who’ll decide where to go…”

The Power of “Me, Too”

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POSTED ON: Mar 08 2013  • 
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CATEGORIES:  Adult Toys & Games, Aphrodisiacs, Back Door Play, Better Sex, Boundaries & Taboos, Communication, Erotic Talk, Eroticism, Fantasies & Role Playing, Group Erotica
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There’s nothing quite like the power of revealing a secret and then hearing the magic words “Me, too” from another person to let your know that you are less alone than you think.

We are what we think we are and many times we live with the fear that if someone knew the truth that lives in our mind, we would prove ourselves to be unlovable.

The reality is, that we all carry just as much darkness as light because yin and yang is necessary in order to create balance. As mindful creatures, we have the ability to internalize emotions, thoughts, fears and desires that we have been taught are not normal by the influences of family, community, religion and the world at large. But whatever secret you think makes you an outcast, someone else is holding it, too. So, even if you find yourself standing outside the circle of the norm, if you take a moment to pause inside the courage of admission, you will always find that someone else will always join you, and that is the incredible power of “Me Too.”

If you doubt the reality of this, we live in a day and age where the proof is within a few clicks on a keyboard. Go to the Internet and type your darkest deepest secret into a search engine. I’m willing to bet you will find pages and pages of conversation, images, blogs and videos dedicated to the exact secret you might be forced to believe only lived within you.

This is most easy to prove in the realm of fetishes and taboos. While porn is obviously rampant on the Internet, it is just as easy to find intelligent, thought-provoking conversations, support groups, community posts, articles and research on literally anything you could possible imagine. For instance, typing the words “balloon fetish” in Google returns 3,890,000 results. That’s a lot of hot air!

Of course, I’m not suggesting that you live out your secret truths on cyberspace alone. It is important to bring the reality of who are into your breathing life and the people with whom you share it. What the Internet can do is give you the tools, information and confidence to take that step. And only in taking these steps to embrace all the colors of our individual rainbows can we find our way to the pot of gold that is discovered when we stand in spite of our wobbly knees and say “This is who I am” and experience the joy of seeing someone else raise a shaky hand with a nervous smile to say “Me, too.”

NeuroLoveology

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POSTED ON: Jan 03 2013  • 
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CATEGORIES:  Better Sex, Communication, Couples Enrichment, Dating, Disabilities & Intimacy, Eroticism, Fantasies & Role Playing, Female Anatomy & Arousal, Intimacy, Love, Loveology University, Male Anatomy & Arousal, Pleasing a Man, Pleasing a Woman
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NeuroLoveology, I have decided is the blending of neuroscience and love, which offers practical applications of brain functioning to heighten intimacy. After all, love should be a priority in our lives, even with so many daily distractions which can prevent us from connecting. We must find ways to get our mind and body ready, willing and able to give and receive love.

One study showed that people on average hold a thought for only 10 seconds before flitting off to something else. Trey Hedden and John Gabrieli, two neuroscientists from MIT studied what happens in the brain when people are distracted by internal thoughts and found that lapses in attention impair performance. I’m sure that would include sexual performance. But there is a way to reshape our brain according to Daniel Goleman, author of Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships, who writes that  whenever we connect face-to-face, voice-to-voice or skin-to-skin with someone else, our social brains interlock.

A study by research psychiatrist Dr. Jeffrey Schwarz showed that changing the way you pay attention can change the circuitry of the brain not just over months, but even within a few weeks, enough to show up on a brain scan.

Attention itself changes the brain. The power is on the focus. Cells that fire together wire together. It’s called Neuroplasticity and in a bestselling book, The Brain That Changes Itself, author Professor Norman Doidge wrote that learning a new language for example is relatively easy; its just that you have to stop paying attention to your current language to create the new circuits. That’s why moving to France is the fastest way of learning to speak French – your attention is forced there all day long.

Let’s use the same analogy with our intimate relationship…

There are 3 key components to facilitate such change in the brain:

  1. Create a safe non-judgmental environment (with reward for the brain, such as improving communication, positive reward of praise, compliments, appreciation, recognition, more romance and sex)
  2. Focus attention in the right way to create new connections (an effective way to focus attention is simply to ask your partner the right question, to give them a gap to close. The brain is quite happy closing any gap as long as it doesn’t take too much effort. For example, “What is one thing that I have done that has satisfied you in the past?” or “How would you like me to express my love to you?” or “What would it take for us to have more intimacy?” These questions can help couples to arrive at their own insights. Alternatively, you can set goals by focusing on the positive emotions you want to feel when you have reached them, such as being loved, appreciated, validated, cherished, admired and desired.
  3. Keep any new circuits alive by coming back to pay attention over and over again. Real change requires repetition and even though attention changes the brain, the brain pays attention to a lot of things. When you make a promise to another person to do something, it comes into your mind more often, when you write it down, you pay more attention to it than speaking about it casually. David Rock who wrote Your Brain At Work has a great metaphor for making changes to your brain. Think of the brain as a garden, where it’s sunny all the time and rains naturally once in a while. If you want to grow some nice tomatoes, you first plant seeds, which need careful daily watering. Once the plants are a bit hardy, to keep them growing, you should water them regularly. How often is the right amount? If you water once a year, it will probably wash everything away. Once a quarter won’t do much. Once a month will help, maybe. Once a week does make a difference to some plants, but watering twice a week seems to make a sustainable and noticeable difference. It seems the best technique for growing plants is to water them each day. I propose that creating healthy new circuits in the brain is not dissimilar. You need to pay regular attention to your plants and to your relationship if you want it to thrive.