Want hot sex with your partner?
Take separate vacations.
The word on the streets is that Eros needs a little space.
I shared a link in a recent post to a New York Times article by Daniel Bergner about female sexual desire and the search for a drug to stimulate it.
In that article, Esther Perel, a couples therapist and author of “Mating in Captivity,” writes:
“Many couples confuse love with merging. This mix-up is a bad omen for sex. To sustain élan toward the other, there must be a synapse to cross. Eroticism requires distance.”
Daniel Bergner popped up again in Salon Magazine where he was interviewed about his recently published book, “What Do Women Want? Adventure in the Science of Female Desire.” (You have got to love a man who dedicates his research to women’s sexuality.)
In the interview Bergner is asked if there are any lessons in his research for couples attempting long-term monogamous partnerships. He states:
“I think there’s real wisdom in what I discuss in the book, which is finding ways to, not only acknowledge, but reinstall the kind of distance in relationships. Our culture has somehow absorbed, or idealized, the merging, the “you complete me” line from “Jerry Maguire.” The idea of unconditional love within couples. And I think we’ve probably way overdone that.”
“I do think that candor and caring are important and then signing up to welcome distance back into relationships might well be the root to maintaining passion.”
So true! This winter my man and I were consumed with building two businesses. We completed each other’s chores.
But now I haven’t seen or touched him since April 30. And I have nine days (five hours, thirteen minutes) until I do.
I'm fascinated by how our time apart weaves us more passionately together.
I feel like the clock has been turned back to when this whole erotic memoir journey started, to the first spring of our marriage when he left me for six weeks for his annual pilgrimage to Northern California to teach whitewater kayaking. I started writing erotic essays to channel all my sexual energy and longing.
And last week, eight years later, I wrote a new one.
Sexy Tip: If you are in a relationship, plan a sexy solo adventure.
Sexy Link: Daniel Bergner’s book.
Me. Alone. At the cabin.
It’s become a spring ritual.
Last year I had a spring run off. This year I’m having a spring meltdown.
I’m not having one of those emotional meltdowns where I feel like I’m losing it and desperately dialing sisters and girlfriends for insight. (I got that out of the way this winter.)
Quite the contrary.
This spring I’m melting myself down like the white gold of my first wedding ring.(One man for the rest of my life? No problem. One ring? No way.)
I’m heating myself up here …
…and as I sit in our wood-fired hot tub and watch the snowy peaks morph into rivers, I too am softening and tapping into flow.
I’m ready, like molten gold, for a new design.
Watch for it.
Sexy prods:
Share your wedding/commitment ring stories. I have a few of them so I'll go first. I sold an engagement ring that never worked and that same afternoon used the money to buy my sage-green lingerie wedding dress. Great redesign.
Or
Any redesign going on in your life? Home, career, relationship? Do share.
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