Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In and Listen

What Women REALLY Need . . .

Sheryl Sandberg's book, Lean In . . .misses some valid points.  It might be a good read for those of us who have social supports but not for the 50% who have only themselves to rely on.  Lean In and ask for more work, for a raise, for more responsibility?    

            Last night, my youngest of six, Matthew, saw me working on the computer.  "Mom," he said. "Can I make dinner for you?"  I smiled.  But I'm grinning wider now—he's part of a new generation of men and women who have taken on nontraditional roles without balking and squawking.  He's part of the solution, groomed by my desire to earn a PhD in Psychology and have a career.  Remember that old TV show, Queen For a Day?  For you younger ones, women would compete for the crown and the ermine cape.  One winner was woman whose house burned to the ground. She moved her entire family into the backyard shed, wove beds out of pine boughs, gathered dandelion greens, and fed them small game caught in a noose, fashioned out of an electrical cord.  She won a barbecue grill for her glorious of multitasking.  They took that show off the air, deeming it too indignant to women.  Well, they ought to bring it back because I deserve that title—and I'm not alone. I want Martha Stewart herself to crown me.

            As I wrote this and had a good laugh, my husband David poked his head out of my computer and said, "What we really need is King for a Day."  I looked at my king, the poor guy whose mother garnished his plate and needed to be reprogrammed by his wife-who-wanted- a-career, and knew there was a grain of truth in what he said.  There is our first quandary—we need men or partners just as much as we need to meet our aspirations.      

            Our second dilemma is what women want and need may not be the same thing.  While my oxytocin-wired brain summoned babies (I'm a mom to six), my intellectual side needed stimulation.  Perhaps if I were back some 10,000 years ago with my cave sisters I might have had some female company.  I might have been debating, inventing some new method of weaving rushes, or leaving my babes with a friend while I dug up some fresh roots.  Sadly in today's world, sisters, mothers, grannies or friends are not there to reinforce our social needs—which are different from men's.  We're wired for comradery and cooperation rather than competition and contest. 

            Our folly might be discarding  those needs and attempting to circumvent them.  We're also wired to worry.  It might have served our cave-sisters well but not us.  Thinking about raises and job opportunity when you have babies in daycare?  Ha!  It's made all the more terrible by the fact that we have little choice in the matter; we live in an economy where not working is some sort of shame.  Most of us come home to waiting laundry piles, and hungry men—not necessarily hungry for food.  To add insult to injury, we're expected to Martha-Stewart our lives in our spare time.  One year I carved twenty five tiny pumpkins to hold the Thanksgiving soup, and that was before I collected flora and fauna for the centerpieces.   No Betty-Croker-in-the-box for our generation.  Had Martha been born in the late sixties, we might have been embroidering our bras, not burning them.

            Have a laugh now because the rest of it is poignantly sad.  American women are among the most depressed and stressed in the world. "Role-strain" is what we call it—and we need to admit it before we try to tackle the problem.  In the 1990's, a PhD student, teaching for pennies, I was accused of breastfeeding my newborn in the classroom—by the male chairman of the Psychology Department!  It was untrue, but such sentiments have hardly gone away.  The pull to "mother" will not wane until the pull to "father" meets it with equal force.  With men earning at least 20% more than us, the tradeoffs are not in our favor.  While many European countries provide stipends to parents who need to parent, today's woman faces a quandary; leave and parent, or stay and hold on to one's position.  Yes, while that job might still be waiting, chances are you'll lose seniority, accumulated six time, raises, and respect.  Women who leave for more than a few weeks are castigated as the Benedict Arnolds of the workplace, their minds thought lost in the world of diapers, bottles and teddy bears.  I've had friends who've been on that cliff, holding onto their positions with their fingernails as their eggs rotted.  "I don't know when the right time is to get pregnant," said my thirty- nine- year old executive friend. 

            No wonder we take the crumbs we're offered, and don't lean in.  We're caught between thinking we don't deserve it or worrying that any added responsibilities to our pile might just Jenga that tower.  The male patriarchy (yes, it's alive) is not going to fess up to its complicity.  And it also means that most of our life-partners have to take on additional responsibilities.  Ours was a balancing act, dividing up the chores, yet reserving time for one another, no matter what.  This brings this conversation to a happy note.  When men take on that task, they raise children who understand those roles.  Those children will one day be executives, CEO's, and wield the power to shift our strain, equally.  

            I looked at my husband, the man who let that screaming baby suck on his nipple until it was purple while I was taking my doctoral qualifying exams.  I'm going to crown him King For a Day—tonight.    

Dawn Marlena Hopper, PhD 

The Love Lost Generation: The Problem with On-line dating and all that Choice.

The Love Lost Generation:  The Problem with On-line Dating and Choice.   

Love-lost genration?  Sadly we are more confused than ever.  Our cave life made it all much simpler. A hundred possbile dates?  Are you kidding?

 GF Becca calls.  Disgusted with on-line dating- too much time, too much work, too little results.  Is she alone?  Hardly. The industry calls it "one of the best tools," but unfortunately our cave brains see it as a massive stimulus overload.  You just have too many choices!  It might seem great to have hundreds of potential matches but then again our mind plays some tricks with all that information.  First, it gives us a false sense of confidence that we are in more control than we are.  Then we make the next mistake, thinking we have control we maximize our pay-off.  So when Becca saw Tom, a heart surgeon who took a liking to her pic, she chose him—Not for nothing but Becca is a cocktail waitress and wouldn't know an artery from an arterial. 

What she doesn’t know is that our brains get irritated when we are faced with too much choice.  Oh how we hate to be wrong, indecisive and leave tings to chance.  So she makes her contact.   Now her brain decides to screw her over again—she becomes convinced they are destined.  She goes back to his profile and works over all the reasons they are a couple.  We call it post-decision dissonance and without all the science gab, it's a way that we make ourselves feel better after we make a choice.  We feel more confident.  Those dating sites know this.  They know you might do all the things that Becca did and that's why they give you certain information and then smack it with a percentage.  He was 97% her match.  For the next day she read, reread and presumed that they had everything in common.   Now effort- justification kicks in.  What's that?  It's when we amp up our confidence that our efforts are well-justified.  After all, she spent two solid days filling our questionnaires and another weekend responding to questions and queries.  Our minds don't like to think our efforts are worthless and Becca was absolutely convinced that there was a pay-off in there for her.  Of course her mind filled in all the gaping pot-holes in her path—after all with hundreds of choices and a 97% match, what could go wrong? Plenty. 

The date was a disaster.  He, like 67% of men use on-line dating as a hook-up tool.  After plying her with gin he proceeded to tell her about his other vein—She bolted from the restaurant. 

But even if that last scenario didn't happen all that choice lends us to experience some big disappointment. So what can you do?  First you just learned something about how thinking can undermine our efforts.  However in the next weeks  I'll set out some great rules that can help in maximizing on-line dating efforts. 

 For more information:   Online Dating: A Critical Analysis From the  Perspective of Psychological Science, by Eli J. Finkel, Paul W. Eastwick, Benjamin R. Karney, Harry T. Reis, and Susan Sprecher

When Men Touch

The sign of love- touch.  He reaches for her hand, he traces his finger through her hair, she slides her arms around him. It's MUCH more telling for men.  Women have evolved to use touch to nurture our young and for them touch comes easier.  But not for men.  While men will touch to obtain sexual pleasure when satisfied, and that man feels nothing for the woman, he will withdraw.   But that is separate from a man's touch of love.  Men don't kiss the freckles on the back of the prostitute they have just satisfied themselves with.  They won't ask her to cuddle with him.  However when men love, they want to touch after sexual satisfaction.   Touch revs up their calm nature with a neurochemical that relaxes, promotes health, connection and attachment and gives us that warm and fuzzy feeling- vasopressin in men and oxytocin in  women. 
So important is touch that infants will not thrive without it, it can lower blood pressure, raise immunity, and of course signal that you are cared for.  Touch is necessary but there are rules: personal space is the cultural applied area between what is fine and what is invasive. 
Are you in love?  Don't forget to touch...

Do men love? Giving Men a Bad Rap

            Recently, a comment swayed my thinking about love and sex towards a different direction.  “I don’t have bad men stories to tell,” was the comment I made, which might be defined as “I don’t have man-hate.”   For sure I do have some really bad stories to tell that have involved a man.  I have been that one in four statistics often quoted; it was a relative and I was a mere three when it began.  In my younger years it did shape some perceptions of trust but bad things happen to all of us.   It really is what we do with the bad that truly shapes us. 

            When I began my research on men and love I discovered (it was easy) that many of us hate men.  Really hate men; and we love to hate men.  Sure, we find one here and there we exempt from the man-hate rule.  We brand them different, exceptional or worthy for some reason.  “He’s not like the rest of them,” I heard my girlfriend tell me. 

            Man bashing is a sport.  I have spent a lot of time around women and a lot of time they get on the male bashing rant.  I remember many years ago  the conversation in college that turned to the bad sex we had experienced with men and dialogue went on to the about the strangeness, uniqueness of their body parts or techniques.   This poor guy Rob was discussed by two of the women.  He was my Physics study partner and every time I looked at him in the face I could only think about the fact his penis turned to the left and he had one testicle.  Okay- that might be funny but here is the real point- How often do men get together and degrade vaginas?  Tell me if you are a guy out there and you and your buddies have sat around degrading and discussing the bad sex you’ve had.  And it’s not all about sex.  I’ve been privy to all the faults of men for my 25 year history as a therapist.  In couples therapy I hear it all, what a louse he is, his sexual follies, fetishes, hygiene habits but when I meet this guy he only mutters “I don’t know what is going on.”  Nothing about fat ass that say in my chair the hour before.  Men have a really difficult time ranting about us.  And God forbid they do- I cannot image a male college professor entering a class and talking about women and the power tactics they use. 

            But we are entitled to do this.  Yes!  Somehow our enslavement has given us a sort of permission to sling the mud right back and in a way, we are set up for us to do this.  We can hate men politically and historically for enslaving us and taking away our freedoms.  Show me a time in history where women were on equal footing, when double standards did not exist—yes there are a handful of examples out there, but it’s child-sized.  I’ve had women heckle me—yell out in lecture centers, “ female circumcision…rape…divorce laws….”  Yes I agree.  They also kill us!  Murder us!  I have a theory about why men have done this, why some men do this and why society and social forces were culpable.   It might be a strange idea but I believe that men love women far more than women may realize.  Controlling women is the cultural or societal method to do so- bind them in marriages they can’t leave, sew their vagina’s shut, stone them for adultery.   What religion is not guilty of setting up rules to make women obey men?  Yeah, I know we’ve come a long way.  But really, women are second class citizens in most of the faith realms. 

            Aside for culture, religion and history, on a personal level men will go to great lengths for their love objects; they take the physically most demanding jobs, they take the riskiest jobs, they die on the job ten times more than women do, and engage in the most dangerous activities to support their families or women in their lives.  And they die much earlier than we do.  My poor father-in-law built his own house out of wood crates, worked 60 hours a week as a meat cutter to support his 10 children and dropped dead days after he retired.   Yes, my poor mother-in-law was delegated to her role of cooking, cleaning, making him happy and reading her bible which told her to never complain. 

            I know I’m getting philosophical on you.  but I want you to think of all the things we have come to associated with mans’ hate and control a little differently—It  is driven by fear of abandonment or the fear of losing the object of love.  Men might love us so much they enslave us, and sometimes themselves in the process.  And there is evidence in the brain and the neurochemical make up- but that will have to wait.   

What do you think? 

The Naked Truth

     OMG- this topic sooo deserves to be front and center and I credit my gf Laurie for the idea.  Some of us hate our nakedness.  I mean HATE!  Body dysmorphia - the idea that we do not have the correct perception of what we look like, is epidemic- most especially in the US.  Most women rate themselves heavier and less attractive.  When it comes to getting nude, unless we do porn for a living, nude modeling or spend weekends in a nudist camp, we are nervous.  By the way, you can blame it on those bitches who bleach their sphincters, rip out their body hair and inflate their boobs like basketballs and the media that shoves such ideals down our throats.  I like my bod but I have to admit even I have moments.  If you say you don't you are a liar. 
       But I will share this- last year my very close friends and I decided to get to our naked flaws and show each other what we hated about our bodies the most.  So there we were, seven of us topless, bottomless, stomachs out, bent over, OMG did we look like a sight. But the strangest thing was none of us thought any of the others were offensive, ugly or strange.   And we all felt that way about one another.  So we went around the room and talked.  In one of those powerful sisterly moments I felt so beautiful....  We all did.  It was truely a lesson, or reality check.  But not everyone lives in Woodstock and has friends that will do this.
      I will admit my favorite shopping moment is when I see that STAR magazine at the register covered with horrendous celebrity pics in bikinis; this one emaciated and that one with rolls but the best are the saggy, baggy and flabby ones.  I gloat because Demi Moore has cellulite all over her ass.  "Ha Ha Ha," I  say to myself.  If I could have turned to kiss my own ass at that moment I would have.   I stand at the longest line and tear through the pages to see those fat bitches, dimpled and sagging and then I say to myself;  wow self, wow sister-women we are not the only SHAR-PEI females!!!!  Why do I feel so good? Because someone tells the truth and somewhere in east BumF--k there is this woman, who is down on her self,  who sees that STAR magazine and realizes there is no such thing as prefect. 
Alas, I have not really let it get to me. 
     But here is what one of my Girl friends told me:  I figure that my poor husband has not seen me totally naked in 20 years.  He only thinks he has.  I told him the topic of my blog and he laughed.  "I've seen you naked every day."  But he doesn't know that it is an optical illusion.  It's like the fan dance the old strippers did.  First I uncover myself on the bed.  Everyone looks good horizontally.  That is the reason we go into the ground on our backs not standing straight up and down.  They lay us out this way because all the flesh seems to stay put- like Jello.  Using gravity and a forced suck of air, I flatten my stomach, raise my floppy thighs up so they look thinner and reach for the robe.  Then I slide out of bed with the robe.  I let it grace my had-too-many-babies-belly.  Expertly I allow some peeking and then I turn fast, the robe is on and I make my way to the bathroom. 
     Women, we all know the tricks to give us confidence.   Then there is candlelight.  OMG if ever there was every a cheap aid for sex (besides olive oil) it's candle light.  Light them up!  Then there is lingerie.  Preferably the kind that gives you a lift here and there.  If that doesn't work make sure you use your upper arms to prop your poor old girls up and out of your arm pits.
     Finally there is wine.  Everything looks better through rosé colored glasses.  A few later and you won't care what he thinks! 
     If you are young and reading this I'm only telling you what you have to look forward to.  Hard to believe but younger women are MORE bothered by their physical appearance than older women.  We have confidence on our side.  Actually when I think about it I really don't think I have seen my own self in the mirror too recently.  But the truth is we shouldn't worry at all.  Why?  Men really don't care, they are really not that critical!
     Think about it for a minute.  Imagine this: have you ever heard of a guy stopping sex and saying "Wow, I can't get into it now that I see you have cellulite on your thighs."  Are you kidding!    I know I've told you some funny things and my husband is reading over my shoulder at this very moment.  He just said "passion is an airbrush."  Yes it is.  In those moments you don't notice the flaws or what we think are flaws.  In reality there are NO FLAWS.  What we need is confidence in who we are and what we bring to the relationship-   You are beautiful and deserving.  Say it again- YOU ARE DESERVING-  Dr.  Dawn Marlena Hopper
What do you think????

Faking Orgasms- Enter at your own risk!

     Research tells us that 50% of all women fake orgasms.   Personally, I think these women are lying- there isn’t a woman alive who has not faked it.  No one wants to admit they are not ‘in touch’ with their vagina’s.  There is a sure way to drive a man away; stop having sex with him or make him feel you don’t want it.  Men love hot and horny women, who want them.  Do you think there is market for porn where women just lay there, then tell the guy how bad he was in the sack?
     Research tells us women fake for a variety of reasons.  The most popular is to end it, preserve his self-esteem, or because we were not aiming for the big O anyway.   We fake it because we have sex for many different motives  (I’ll blog about this later).  We fake it, because we can.  Men can’t.  There is only one time when women do not fake it- when they are doing it alone.
     There is hardly any research on women and orgasms because no one cares whether you have one or not.  If 50% of men missed their ‘O’ we’d declare a national crises--level red. Wait!  I know what we’d really do.  We would come up with a medicine he could take.  He could take a pill when he’s not in the mood, has limp-willy syndrome; which usually happens when men are old, tired, under stress or medically unfit.  The pill would cause his penis to swell and accompany an urge to rupture like a volcano.  He'll  feel 15 again, only without the pimples. He will need a partner.  I see him now, searching the house for poor wifey; he finds her either in the laundry room folding  or scrubbing dishes in the kitchen sink.  “Look what I have for you!” he exclaims. She looks and realizes she has her third chore of the night.
     Okay, I’m exaggerating.  When I see that Viagra commercial I want to vomit.  All I can think of is the elderly women with hip issues, rivaling what my German Shepard went through, spread eagle, or worse, on all fours, in service.  When I’m eighty with brittle bone disease the last thing I want is a few extra hundred pounds laying on me.  Don’t people know that the sex urge needs to decline?  At that time when your spine has stenosis or that shoulder is frozen, nature knows that the penis or vagina should get a rest too.  Maybe rocking back and forth might be best accomplished on the front porch.
     I remember a recent night of passion.  My husband began howling.  I looked up at him, grimacing.     “Oh my God,”  he yelled.  “My leg has a charley horse.”  My ride was over. Now for TMI but you can skip this (or know that maybe it's just humor.)
     Oh sure, I still love sex. But not every day.  I figure that for the first 15 years of blissful union Hubby had 5,250 orgasms (that I knew about).   I was a winner too, at least three fourths of the time.  But for the last five years he’s gotten at least 875 frequent  flyer miles to my 434.5.  There is a half orgasm in there, probably from the time I couldn’t concentrate because the headboard decided to detach from the bedframe and I had to hold it steady for fifteen minutes.  Or maybe it’s from when my grandson appeared at the bed asking, “can I have a horsey ride too?”  Anyhow, that’s 50% of the time which makes me part of the female statistic.  At this rate, which I have calculated, at 70  I can expect to run out of orgasms.  Two weeks ago my gynecologist told me my ovaries felt like raisins.  He did not give me hope.
     But my husband did.  “What would you do if I couldn’t preform anymore,” he asks me one evening after one of those pill commercials.  This is the commercial where they tell the couple that the pill works any moment he desires it to take effect.  I think, "How about never?  Is that a prefect time?"  I decided to answer him.  I tell him that his perfect, wonderful, satisfying buddy,  will never stop working.  I had to say that;  because I love him, and I'm not hopeful. 
“You’d go and find someone else to get satisfaction,” he mutters. 
“No honey, that would never happen.”  Then I think to myself, what planet is he on?  When my husband’s dick dies I am going to bury it.  Yes I’ll put up a tombstone and memorialize it, but there wouldn’t be a prayer in hell that I would give it mouth to mouth recessitation even, if it were taking its last breath.
     Then, I decide to make him feel good about our accomplishments. “Honey, we have broken the Guinness World Book of records for screwing.”  I’ve never met anyone else who had sex in the hospital after their caesarean section.  Well, maybe the Duggars have us beat.  I owe it to him to inflate his worth. “You are the Jack LaLane of machismo, of bravado, and you are just going to be fine.”
He sighs. “It’s just that you are such a highly sexual woman, so responsive and sexy….you are every mans dream…so  I wonder how I could every satisfy you forever.”
     The poor man is worried.  All because my vagina had been speaking in double talk!  I brought it on myself.  The academy award winning performances, in prefect character,  vocalizing impeccably; those words, sounds and movements, had bitten me back.  I had convinced him that I was the perfect partner; a $5000 hooker who could cook, clean and stay faithful to one John.  Should I tell him about my counterfeit orgasms?
     Instead I demurely inquire,  “Am I really the prefect partner?”
He says just the right thing.  “Sweetheart, I can’t stop thinking about you...sometimes.. .and I just love to touch you…” He cupped my hand and brought it to his lips.  I couldn’t help looking into his deep blue eyes or reaching for his arm.  He does have the strongest arms.  He kisses so perfectly, light kisses that begin on my lips and go up my face.  Thank God, those raisins must have has some juice left.
      Like most women I could have been perfectly happy to be adored that night.  Men don’t get the fact that we don’t need the orgasm fairy every time our heads hit the pillow.  But that night she didn’t have to pull any teeth…    Dr. Dawn M. Hopper

Worth the Wait- miniblog

A tiny tip- (miniblog)
Playing hard to get works, for both men and women. "Easy" implies a lot: you are not discreet, not choosy, got one thing on your mind, you do not require work, you do not require anyone puts effort into your needs. . . It takes weeks to get the most beautiful flowers in my garden to grow, but the weeds shoot up in 24 hours; the more effort we put into something, the more we tend to value it- it's called effort justification (a psychological principle).  We want what we can't have (the forbidden toy), another principle.  Last, the double standard will always exist; men don't look for wives in strip clubs. Make a "so many date" rule. 

Dr. Dawn Marlena Hopper

Who do we pick: Attractiveness

      Why is attractiveness important?

     Love can be sometimes, logical.  Science has been able to give us some trends that may predict who we pick. Of course all our behavior is influenced by our lens of culture, family values, religion and social backdrop but the following truths have emerged. 

     Both men and women pick attractiveness as the number one criteria.  Numerous studies point to a social perception we might have when looking at attractive face.  It’s most likely built into us, honed by thousands of years of evolution.  Think about it this way, when you meet someone you have no clue about them.  Our ancestors relied on physical cues.  If he had a face full of sores and was emaciated you might think that this person was sick, unhealthy.  Do you want to sit next to the guy sneezing and coughing on the train?  No.  We avoid people who do not look fit or healthy. The sale of acne medications relies on this very assumption...

Sex Education

     What do you know and from whom do you know it?  Most new adults do not want to hear about sex from parents, religious figures or even experts, like me.  You prefer, at your own rate to discover the area, using the information that comes your way.  That, I might add is hardly reliable.  Do you know that about 90% of you learned about sex from someone other than your parent?  A sister, brother or friend told you the facts of life.  One of the most important areas of your life may have been learned from your Cousin Vinny.   If your parents did manage to reach you in time did you bolster that knowledge through scientific reading or inquiry.  Of course you didn’t. 

Is Virginity a Dirty Word?

12/7   Sitting with my 85 year old mother in a coffee shop one afternoon and she spies an old classmate from high school.  They chat and conjure memories. The woman wobbles, cane in hand away.  Mom strains her neck towards my face opposite her.  “She wasn’t a virgin”.  

     “What?” I say confused. 

      “You know…She was loose.”

     My mind reeled, after all those years that was all my mother could say!? 

     Let me assure you that the double standard (what men can do vs. what women can do) still exists.  I doubt it will ever disappear.  But the value placed on virginity has shifted dramatically since even I was in college.

Men and Sex? The Evidence...

     Consider this- women will not rape for sex nor pay for it. Do you know of any woman prowling the street corners looking for able men to have sex with them?  She needs to have her head examined. Ask any female what she would rather have- a new pair of designer shoes or a night with a good looking sexually able man.  Hands down, I know the answer.   In looking for fundamental differences between men and women researchers have found the differences staggering.  For the benefit of my more research orientated audience I’ve included some reference aids in parentheses next to the statements I deliver.    

     Come to Pornatopia! The research on men and sex is plentiful.  Excuse me, I should qualify this statement; the research is usually conducted using college students, usually freshman.  Sex drive might be considered the motivation to engage in sex and men do possess much more.  Men think about sex more than women (Oliver and Hyde, 1993).  Males experience more unwanted and intrusive sexual thoughts (Byers, Purdon, and Clark, 1998; see Baumeister, 2010) report more sexual compulsive thinking and need to control it (Vanwesenbeeck, Bekker, and van Lenning, 1998), have more spontaneous events of desire; sometimes several times a day while females report only a few times a week (Beck, Bozman, and Qualtrough,1991;  Knoth, Boyd, and Singer, 1988).  Men also report much more fantasy having over twice as many sexual fantasies per day (4.75 vs. 2.00)  than do females (Jones and Barlow 1990) and they masterbate more.   

How this began- Professor Sexmachine

     Some years ago (disco days) I was sitting in a human sexuality class taught by a psychologist that thought he was an expert on the topic.  It was a time when college professors actually did sleep with their students!  Professor sexmachine fortified his lectures with his own powess and experiences.  Aside from this rather disgusting self-disclosure I had some immediate and profound thoughts;  first of which was that from his appearance I doubted there was a line of women waiting to tackle his bones.  Something about tight hip- huggers which pushed out a ring of stomach flesh, the open neck shirt with neck chains tangled with profuse  chest hair turned me off.  But I was already a mother of two and hardly susceptible to horny older men.