My daughter when she was 5

I have SPRING FEVER!

So, I’m reposting my daughter’s super sweet list of date ideas, from 6 years ago.

Aren’t they so charming?
Mayhaps, swoonworthy?

…..

When my daughter was 7 years old, a boy kissed her hand on a dare. She confided to me, “It was the most enjoyable moment of my life.”

Now she is 17, and identifies as asexual. She doesn’t feel sexually attracted to other people, but she yearns for romance. She wants to hold hands, cuddle, and be intimate with someone special.

I’m thrilled to tell you she went on her first date the other night! They held hands!

I asked how their date went, and she gushed to me, “It was AMAZING. Not only were the events we attended awesome, but he was super sweet. He put his arm around me during the movie, and we held hands twice and he is so very kind all the time. Gosh, I adore him, he made it so amazing.”

He’s like a young George RR Martin, they’re so cute and nerdy together.

I’m SO happy with this new development. She tends to brim over with teenage angst and melancholy, so it’s wonderful picking her up from school and she’s smiling so hard, her face hurts. The rush of happy hormones and feeling connected to someone special to her is better than any pill she could take!

I asked if he is her boyfriend, and she said she didn’t know, but she would ask him. She has ups and downs, and frets over being too direct with him.

King and Queen of Love!

I reminded her that she is probably advanced in the realm of communication, and needs to be patient with others and teach them how to be open and honest. I also let her know that the wonder is part of the fun of the early stages of a relationship – infatuation is a trip, and you should let it last as long as you can! After that, you get into attachment, feeling the person is a safe haven, then anxious when they are not around, then finally, secure (if the relationship is healthy.)

That’s where I’ve been with my partner Matthew for the past six years or so. We can’t go back to the infatuated stage with each other, but since we are polyamorous, we can feel secure while flirting with other people and enjoying novel experiences.

Anyway, my daughter shared her list of curated date ideas with me and gave me permission to share them with you. I think they’re so cute! She made most of them up, and collected some from the internet. I want to do a lot of them, how about you?

(more…)

Below is a list of relationship values. Which ones are important to you? Are you getting your emotional and physical needs met? What about your partner(s)?

Ah, the bliss of connection!

Loyalty
Stability
Feeling safe
Unconditional acceptance
Being appreciated
Commitment
Honesty
Respect
Reliability
Sharing resources
Acts of service
Trust
Vulnerability
Companionship
Quality time
Emotional intimacy
Open communication
Feeling heard. Do they listen? If they get distracted, do they follow up with what you were saying?
Authenticity
Privacy
Shared interests
Common values
Accommodating
Willingness to compromise
Flexibility
Appreciation
Independence
Alone time
Partner enjoys spending quality time with your loved ones/chosen family
Maintaining friendships
Supporting each other’s personal growth/mission: reading what you write, listening to your music, your podcasts, supporting your continuing ed

Red, white, and blue! We’re doing it for our country!

Physical intimacy
Being desired
Frequent sex
Experimentation/Adventure
Humor
Playfulness
Versatility within sex life
Sex with different people
Challenge
Stimulation
Change

Ed Note: This was originally published Sept 23, 2012.

Last Saturday was the night of the Super Moon, the one time of year when the full moon would be closest to Earth.

Full moon

We had spent the day hopping from friend to party to friend to parade, drinking and being merry – it was a full day. It was a LOT of day!

It was a great day.

After the craziness of a busy festival in Soulard, we chilled at our friend Shine’s house. It was a stark contrast to the packed street party that was jammed with people, bright lights, and HEAT – Shine’s house was cool, dim, and surrounded by resting plants. It was just the four of us.

Monks Mound – the largest human-made mound in the United States

She mentioned that the night before, she had been to Monks Mound to celebrate the moon. Monks Mound is in Cahokia Mounds, across the river in Collinsville, IL. Monks Mound is the largest human-made mound in the country. She spoke of how powerful it was to be so close to the moon, fog in the valleys, the energy of all the people who had once been there…. 20,000 people lived there, making it larger than London in 1250 AD.

After a raucous family dinner, we made our way over to Illinois. The surrounding area was a little eerie – rundown homes, race track, landfill, liquor stores, ghost towns – a lot of buried dreams.

It was dark. We parked near the mound. Technically the place was closed, but it felt like a free country and we meant no harm, so we ventured out into the moon-drenched surrounding meadowscape.

I was barefoot, wearing a soft, flowing moon dress. We held hands and walked toward the looming mound. No one was around.

Up the first level we went, then the second. Finally, we were at the top. (more…)

Kendra Holliday will help you work the kinks out!

I offer sex and relationship consulting, and I’m happy to say that I’ve been getting more women, LGBT folks, and couples these days. Historically, most of the people who have sought me out for my unique services have been men who crave female energy.

The Top 5 reasons why people contact me are, in this order:

1. He’s a married man in his 50’s or 60’s whose wife is not interested in sex (mismatched libido)

2. He/she/they have some sort of sexual issue they want to work through, such as inexperience, adult virginity, anxiety, trauma, disabilities, or orgasm/genital problems (Erectile Dysfunction is a common complaint – it can get complex when you heap social conditioning and anxiety on top of the natural aging process.)

3. He/she/they are interested in branching out sexually, either because they are in transition, in between relationships, single/divorced/widowed, not getting laid, or curious about alternative lifestyle options (non-monogamy, kink/BDSM, sex work, etc.)

4. He has a fetish and is ashamed/seeking understanding and validation (“Am I normal?!”) or an outlet

5. They want to meet me, and possibly rub me for good luck

———

My goal is to offer tools, connections, and non-traditional options so that the people seeking me out can reach their goal of becoming happier and healthier. My approach is unconventional, and I get referrals from licensed sex therapists. I’m pretty well connected and have a strong network. Sex is my specialty, which ties into work, family, personal – everything!

Here is a list of resources I most often recommend to my clients:

(more…)

Ed Note: From the archives. I look forward to working with clients again in a more normal way later this year!

Kyle took the train from Chicago.

All day he traveled, portable oxygen tank in tow.

He didn’t listen to podcasts or music. His mind was too occupied with thoughts of what was to come –

me.

Sexy bitch in burgundy!

You see, Kyle was overcoming great obstacles in order to find answers and rediscover intimacy with another person through surrogate sessions with me. It had been seven years since he was last with a partner, and he was missing human touch terribly.

Why? Life took an unexpected turn from him.

I’m always fascinated by my client’s life stories, and his was especially interesting.

As a forensic anthropologist, Kyle traveled the world working on ancient civilizations and gravesites. He was fit, had a passport, and worked outdoors a lot, in all kinds of conditions. Destinations included South America, Australia. He was next scheduled for a project in Europe, and had his sights set on Asia.

Then one day, at a church in Mexico, disaster struck – literally. The team was digging in trenches, excavating an old sacred graveyard for relocation. Despite wearing a Hazmat suit and respirator, something went wrong when a 400 yr-old-bone was hit with a pickax. Bacteria exploded in the air, and invaded his lungs. He suffered serious pulmonary damage, and has been on oxygen 24/7 ever since.

A couple years after that, he was hit in the ass with colon cancer, and had to undergo risky surgery to remove 1/3 of his colon. The doctors warned him he might not survive the operation, due to his lung condition. They had to give him an epidural and twilight meds instead of general anesthesia!

Incredibly, he survived this double whammy.

Nowadays, Kyle is the same age as me (43) and lives with his parents on disability. He can no longer drive. He’s overweight and in poor health. His lifestyle went from adventurous globetrotting to being tethered to a tank in his bedroom, more or less homebound, living vicariously through the internet. He is an odd combination of extremely worldly and intelligent, and emotionally stunted and childlike.

We had our initial consult over Skype. I found out he’s quite kinky like me – into stockings, men and women, incest and rape fantasies, pegging… all that fun stuff! His sensitivity and shyness put me at ease, and we clicked.

(more…)

Decoding Your Kink, by Galen Fous MTP

My friend Joan Price introduced me to Galen Fous MTP, the author of this book, and right away I could see why – he’s a Dominant father in his 60’s living on the west coast, and I am a submissive mother in my 40’s living in the Midwest, but we have SO much in common!

We’re both completely out and open about our kinky and creative sexualities. We both went through hell and almost lost everything when we came out with our stories (his outing was forced by his ex; mine was more my choice). We both persevered and are now fully integrated and have a career in the field of sexuality.

Galen’s book is called Decoding Your Kink: Guide to Explore Share and Enjoy Your Wildest Sexual Desires.

As I read his book, I was amazed at how much it mirrored my thoughts on sex and our unhealthy society.

We both subscribe to the King and Queen archetype, and to the beauty of rituals. Galen points out that rituals are tools that help us focus our attention. Natural and innate, rituals are all around us – seasons, rhythms, holidays…

(more…)

Ed Note: This is a guest post by Jem.

I was married for twelve years. For almost all the time we were together, everything was good. Almost.

About eight years after we got married, my husband forced himself on me. We were getting into bed, we were both sober, I had no idea what he was going to do. He held me face down. We’d played at this sort of thing before.

This wasn’t playing.

I shouted at him to stop. He’d never done anything like that before. Not even close.

I got dressed, left and went straight over to see a friend. He was a lawyer. It was about eleven at night, he could see I’d been crying. I told him what had happened, and at first he thought I wanted him to report a rape. I just wanted a place to stay and a friend to talk to.

My husband didn’t rape me. He betrayed my trust, didn’t respect my wishes, was clearly on some sort of power trip. He never did anything like it before or since. He was deeply ashamed by what he did, and had a harder time forgiving himself than I did.

My friend and I talked for hours. We ended up talking about sex and the law. At some point he said that adultery was when a man and a woman had consensual, penetrative sex. Nothing else counts. We had fun coming up with things that weren’t adultery: blowjobs, gay sex, buggering a sheep, being tied up and having five guys come over you … not adultery. Grounds for divorce, but not adultery.

I stayed the night in his spare room. He gave me a T-shirt to sleep in. It was about three in the morning by this point. I lay in bed, and decided about a dozen times that I would go next door. I didn’t.

We met up at a coffee shop about a week later because he wanted to know how I was. We didn’t buy coffee, we decided to go back to my place and drink coffee there. We sat on my sofa, talked, I told him how grateful I was for his support. How everything was better with my husband, now. It was, we’d talked and he was guilty and sorry. At some point, my friend put his hand on my leg. He had to get back to work, he said.

I’ve just got no idea who made the first move. We kissed, we stopped kissing and looked at each other and I said ‘oh no’. We joked about this later. We both knew at the coffee shop that this would happen. We didn’t plan it, but put it this way: I was wearing matching underwear. Then we were kissing again and I think I was the one who lifted up my top, but that might have been him. He pulled up my bra and sucked on my nipple so hard it probably should have hurt. It didn’t. Then he really, really had to get back to work.

The first time we didn’t commit adultery was three days later.

(more…)

X-Art features women like this

A friend of mine is not a fan of hardcore porn. I asked him to tell me what kind of porn he enjoyed, and he wrote me this letter. Enjoy!

Kendra —

I realized, after a lifetime of looking at porn, that I don’t like almost all of it. It’s grotty, unpleasant, populated by people I don’t want to talk to, let alone fuck, and the more extreme the porn makers become,  to stand out from their competitors,  the more they turn me off, both because of the scenario presented (I don’t want to rage-fuck someone in a basement) and because of the tragedies inherent in the production.

Young women with too much makeup and plastic surgery don’t turn me on, they make me sad and wonder about where their parents are.

But I recently came across some porn that seems designed specifically to appeal to people like me — which I would define as oversexed, heterosexual white males.  It’s made by X-Art, and is the Platonic Ideal of Vanilla Porn. Looking at it (which I’ve done a lot) made me think a lot about the kind of porn-fantasy it presents, and why its so appealing.

A typical X-Art vid features a young woman, with a body unaugmented by wear,  surgery or (too much) makeup. The setting is a high end apartment (many of the vids seem to be shot in the same LA loft) that might be the home of a protagonist in a Hollywood film. The man is attractive, but not the focus at all… there are a number of videos in which you rarely even see the man’s head.  Everybody is young and perfect; hairless, both metaphorically and literally.

The music is different than typical porn. Many vids start with a cool, indie sounding pop song, the kind of thing attractive people might listen to in their excellent apartments, and then they fade out in favor of “natural” sounds. No wocka-wocka bass line to constantly say PORN. (more…)