Texting a Relationship

Texting a Relationship- Pretext

                There once was a time when we tried out relationships by face to face meeting.  Of course there was the obligatory phone call, but eventually we met that someone face to face.  I met my husband by dialing a wrong number.  I suppose if we zipped a few years in the future it could have been a wrong text.  But I thank fate it wasn’t.  I have no less than five friends who are dating in textland.  I call it pretext.  Instead of fingering body parts, they finger keys.  Instead of gazing into another face, they gaze at a Fb pic or a thumbnail.  Instead of actually seeing the nuances that will be deal makers or deal breakers, they are weighing the significance of tweets, tidbits and jargon. “Oh look,”  my friend says , “he’s texting me recipes!”  I look at the screen and see a recipe for Lovers Delight which involves a banana dipped in caramel, sprouting a dollop of whipped cream and then placed between two lady fingers.  “Are you kidding,” I said, never expecting to be answered.  Then I ask her for a review of this relationship which apparently her good friend, had been completely unaware of for the past year.  “Oh it’s been going on a while,” she says.  And then I learned that in the past year, around her other dating experiences, smashed in between the hours at school functions and her job, she’s had a whopping two dates which involved some dry humping on his couch and a lunch at a greasy diner while he waited for them to change his oil in his car.  “What happened to dating?”  She sighs and tells me “It’s complicated, he’s got all kinds of responsibilities.  He’s going through a divorce and we live an hour apart. We can only see each other when my job sends me to his region and that will not be for another week.  Then we only have the afternoon because he has his twin girls half the week, a second job to pay his attorney, and then band  practice.”

Dr. Oz Fails with Sex Dreams

So you have a sex dream- what does it mean?  Is it the result of desires, unresolved issues, anger, secret or unconscious wishes?  Most likely it is nothing! For the most part your dreams are nothing but mental garbage!  You had a slew of dreams last night and your brain is programmed so you don't recall any of them.  But we sometimes recall the last one of the night or the very anxiety provoking ones.  Our anxieties do infiltrate our dreams so those dreams where your boss is sstrangling us might reflect a grain of your reality.  But sex dreams? 

Dr. Oz gave bad information today.  Sex dreams are not only normal but they do not predict anything.  Rarely can you control who the hell you are having sex with.  Ten years ago I had a sex dream about our next door neighbor "Old Bill," who was about 90 and had at least ten cats.  The worst part of the dream is that it was great sex.  I had outrageous fantastic sex with this old man.   My poor husband kept asking me to invite Old Bill over for dinner like we used to do.  This dream was so vivid I could never look at "Old Bill" in the face again.  I was tempted to ask him "if it was as good for him as it was for me" but I ended up ignoring the poor old man until we moved a year later!   Why did I dream about Old Bill?  Was it some secret desire?  Not at all.  I probably went to bed a little amorous and that very night I remember that David was outside cleaning our pool and talking to Old Bill.  It is all normal.  Enjoy them now because as you age you will have less and less of them. 

Wouldn't it be great if we could program ourselves to dream about great looking sexy people and have a happy ending?  Most of the time we wake up before that point!  Thankfully sex dreams mean nothing.  Straight sex, gay sex, sex with strangers and sex with people you know and the worst, sex with someone strange.  A few years back a student told me he had a dream that he had sex with older woman who served him his cafeteria meal each day in high school.  Hundreds of pounds overweight, mole on her face with a billy goat beard, he told the entire class he had crazy-good sex with her.   But this was topped by another students who anxiously waited for my office hour to come and ask me what I thought of his sex dream: he dreamed he had sex with a dog.  "What's wrong with me?" He asked. 

"Nothing," I told him. "The first good thing is that you feel disgusted and the second good thing is that you didn't go to the pound and adopt a dog."   Dr. Dawn Marlena Hopper

The Power of our Words

The single largest predictor of happiness in a relationship comes down to the number of positive acts, affirmations compared to the number of negative actions.  In other words, actions and words can hurt.  The quickest way to rid yourself of a partner is to forget this rule.  So for today try this exercise a practice I live on a daily basis.  Tell the people you love something nice about themselves.  Maybe it is something you appreciate; a quality, a small act they might have done for you....

Why am I telling you this? I've been doing this for almost 2o years.  It came to me one day when I stood at the base of the staircase screaming at the kids and my husband. As my voice echoed up the landing and around the corner a reality hit me: I sounded exactly like the kind of person I did not like.  I sounded like my own mother!  (Sorry mom, I love you  but you really were a huge complainer!)

On that day I tried a new tactic.  Polite asking, calmness and reminding myself to tell my family and those I love something that affirms my feelings.  So often we say nicer things to strangers than the people we love.  We take advantage of the fact that their love is always there - despite what we do.  Unconditional love needs to be rewarded!

I have spent the last three weeks flat on my back from a surgical procedure and while I have had a headache,  been unable to write, have a mental fog,  and I have been depressed.  I cannot take care of any of them.  I can't even bathe.  My kids and husband have rallied around me and when I began crying about how terrible and confused I feel my husband looked at me and said, " We all love you so much and have no problem taking care of you for a while."  Then they made me dinner and after my husband helped me shampoo my hair and painted my toenails.

I lay on the bed laughing while he made polka dots on my nails.  "You are the best husband," I told him.  He smiled back and cuddled up next to me and said, "I know you think so and I hope I can always be that great-man-on-the-pedestal that you put me on."  And he is and was.

Today, for me, tell someone you love something nice.

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...

For everyone on V-Day

Someone is alone today.  A friend may be trailing a broken heart, another might be mourning the loved one that has passed on, and many on this special night have no waiting arms to fall into.  But they are still recognized on this day when we celebrate our profound capacity to connect to others though the unique human gift we all possess: the ability to love. Love is an elixir there is no one true recipe for and all its ingredients are attainable—to anyone at any time.  Love can shape itself into any form, is bottomless, endless, can laugh in the face of time and can be summoned from a simple wisp of thoughtful energy.  So my friends, today remember to send that gift to someone...Dr. Dawn Marlena Hopper

http://www.myspace.com/music/player?sid=50213531&ac=now

Happy Valentines Day- Can you Please Penis and Clitoris up?

What?  What the hell is that about?  My girlfriend told me she wanted one thing for her Valentine's day present.  It was not a ring, a piece of jewelry, flowers or chocolates.  In fact it is free.  She asked me to write this and she is going to set it under his pillow.
First, only 20% of all women can orgasm without clitoral stimulation.  I think is a hell of a lot more but since we are all supposed to be orgasmic and amateur porn stars ready to go for that great guy, few want to fess up to their need for some FOREPLAY.  What is FOREPLAY?  I actually heard this once while giving a sex lecture -" Four minutes of sexual play before penetration." Blame it on porn- the absolutely worst training material- but that will be another blog! 

So what does girlfriend want from her husband?  A warm bath, bubbles, a massage, a bottle of wine, to sit face to face naked and talk about love for a full five minutes, no touching, to kiss for a whole five minutes without tongues, then another five minutes with tongues, and then she wants him to ask her one question.  "What can I do to make you happy? - Show me" 

She tells me this story and I all-of-sudden- get something really big- she cannot bring herself to tell this man!  Is she alone? Hardly.  Many many women stay silent.  Research tells us they do this for many reasons; sex guilt, embarrassment, afraid they are abnormal or will be viewed as abnormal, they don't want to be demanded, hurt his feelings...on and on the list goes. 

Here is my Valentine’s Day suggestions to write on that card.
Actually make a list of all the reasons and qualities you love then for.
Write the lyrics of a song that reminds you of them.
Send that loved-one the song as a message.
Text lover all day with simple words that all add up to a romantic encounter "Tonight...." pause for a few minutes..."I want ...." 
Or text lover with a menu of the dish you might be serving.
And for my shy friends, do what my girlfriend is going to do. She is sending him a card and beginning with the following words "Honey, I found this on the internet in a sex and love blog,  and I thought it would be the best gift we could give each other.  So read this and tell me what you think:

Happy Valentines form your Sex and Love Fairy Godmother.  Here is a special recipe for a great night.  Give this to your lover!

1. Let's take a bath.  Please open a bottle of wine and light a candle. 
2.  Let's sit face to face and let's tell each other what we love about each other. (Tonight it is only about the two of you- no other's, no erotica, no sex toys, it is only the two of you.)  We have to come up with at least 10 qualities or memories.      
2.  Now we need to kiss for five minutes, gentle, no tongues. 
3.  Now we need to kiss for another five minutes, no rules. 
3. Stop.
4. Now we tell each other something that we have never shared before: 
   * Tell me one fantasy that you have had about me and I will tell you one I have had about you.       
   *Tell me one thing you would really find pleasurable that I can do, that involves me that you have not told me before. I will share the same with you.

  * Show me, by taking my hands or describing exactly one thing I can do to give you pleasure - and in return I will show you or teach you something that can give me pleasure. 

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?