It was a cool night with a storm approaching and I wanted to curl up in my favorite chair, throw on my favorite blanket, and savor a good movie. I watched “Unfaithful,” a movie I’d seen last year and enjoyed so much that I bought it. It was still sitting on the bookshelf shrink-wrapped, so I decided it was time for a repeat-viewing.

I love that it is a quiet film. It allows the viewer to absorb each glance, each touch, each whisper.

It’s all gorgeous. The house is gorgeous, the men are gorgeous, the sex is gorgeous…

and Diane Lane is GORGEOUS!

She totally deserved all of the acclaim she received for this role. The train scene alone is Oscar-worthy. She’s riding home after her first sexual tryst with her lover and just by her facial expressions and posture she communicates the intense eroticism of the encounter, but also the guilt and shame of her betrayal. I could feel, literally, both her awakened passion and her deep, deep sorrow.

Even though she is to blame for ultimately destroying several lives, we can’t ever really be angry at her. Perhaps, it is because we sense a part of ourselves in her story. Even though we might “have it all” there is still some place in us that is vulnerable.

Early on, the lover says “There’s no such thing as a mistake. There is only what you do and what you don’t do.”

But it’s clear by the end of this film that there are such things as mistakes.

“Women’s favourite fictional icon is a dominant patriarchal male. No wonder modern men are confused.”

Why do we still fall for Mr Darcy?
This is an article from a few years back, but I think it is an excellent question. When the modern woman wants a man who is sensitive, who listens, and who can change dirty diapers — why do we still swoon over Mr. Darcy? Granted, Colin Firth’s incarnation had delicious sex appeal, but even when Mr. Darcy is merely words on the page, we still envision him as the ideal date/lover/husband.

When Firth starred in Andrew Davies’s 1995 TV adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, he became forever identified in the eyes of multitudes of adoring women (probably owing to the scene when he clambered out of the lake after an early morning swim) with the character of a man who may be repressed and difficult but, at the same time, is morally upright and devastatingly sexy.

Of course, Austen’s novel betrays nothing of Darcy’s actual sexuality or lack of it. Apart from being subject to the obvious restrictions of a female writer in Regency times, she may also have realised that the best sex scenes reside in the secret imagination of her readers. But what she does provide is a perfect blank screen on to which Darcy’s admirers, by identifying with Elizabeth Bennet, can project that most archetypal of all female fantasies – that they will be the one and only woman to discover the key to unlocking a man’s tortured soul, thus setting free his hidden passions.

“…that they will be the one and only woman to discover the key to unlocking a man’s tortured soul, thus setting free his hidden passions” —- that is the reason right there. Isn’t that the secret longing of every woman, or at least every girl with a crush on the totally unattainable guy? That somehow our love will melt a cold heart?

This is what crushes and infatuations are made of, but not healthy relationships.

Here is the rub – Austen leaves us to assume that her heroine’s marriages are happy despite portraying very few idyllic marriages in the rest of her texts. Also, Austen’s deification as a novelist is such that one hardly dares to point out that when it comes to marriage and what goes on behind the bedroom door, she herself had no first-hand experience. But as modern women with our wealth of relationship experience and all the benefits brought about by feminism, we should know better. The fact is that dark, smouldering, moody, charismatic, arrogant Darcy types, whom we hate at first sight and then later find ourselves falling in love with, often – particularly after we have married them – turn out to be rigid, dominating and controlling.

One-third of people report that they have better and more frequent sex on vacation, according to the 2004 National Leisure Travel Monitor, a random survey of 1,350 people.

These are obviously people who are vacationing WITHOUT children.

So upon returning from a vacation to the homeland (that would be Wisconsin), these are my sole sexy stories:

1) My “Roadtripp’n” mix-CD included the Maroon 5 hit “Makes Me Wonder” which got everyone dancing (as much as can be done squeezed into a station wagon). My daughter had seen a performance of this song on “Ellen” several weeks back, and at one point she said “The singer is SEXY!” I agree, but why is a six-year old saying that?

Also, now that I’ve read the lyrics, I am not so sure the kids should be listening to that song!

2) I read What the Bible Really Says About Homosexuality by Daniel Helminiak for one of my 25 book reports I need to do as part of my Master’s studies. It was good for me to read an alternative interpretation to the perspective I grew up with. I feel like I now have a good understanding of both sides of the issue.

3) While the kids were sculpting Play-Doh with the Great-Aunties, one of the Aunts made a screw and asked the kiddos what it was…. “A Penis” my daughter said matter-of-factly. When the Aunts asked how she knows what a penis looks like, she replied “I take a bath with my brothers (duh!)” My Aunts grew up in a family of five sisters in the 1950s – I imagine they had no idea what a penis was at six-years-old!
(For a story on some Penis Play-Doh controversy, go HERE)

4) Somewhere in Indiana, the six-year-old and four-year-old were discussing pee and poop – as they often do. My daughter asked where her pee comes out. I told her the urethra, and she said “No, he’s got a penis – what do I have?” I tried to explain the female anatomy while we were stopped for gas, but I finally had to tell her to wait until we got home and could look it up in a book and she could see the pictures. Poor girls — their bodies are such a mystery!
(The book she loves to page through is THIS ONE and it is Fantastic!)
But FYI – here’s an old-fashioned diagram:

5) Driving through Bloomington, Indiana I did have a sudden urge to visit the Kinsey Institute. Maybe on another trip.

6) We went on a brief excursion to Minneapolis (a truly fabulous city!) to catch sight of the new Guthrie Theater (I thought it was a very evocative building!), new downtown Library and new Walker Art Center — and to visit some friends of course. This is one of the Walker’s posters for the current “Picasso and American Art” exhibit (it’s a Roy Lichtenstein). Sexy?

As we traversed Kentucky today on our way to Wisconsin, I read Loopy Lopic (Psychology Today). It’s the evolutionary psychologists’ take on dating and mating.

Here’s the premise:

“Our sexual calculations and character reconnaissance, it turns out, call for smart, but not always accurate, judgments. That’s because mating intelligence is as oxymoronic as the term suggests. We routinely bring both cold reason and outsized misconceptions to a relationship. Both serve a purpose.”

Here’s the “loopy logic” part:

Glenn Geher, an associate professor of psychology at SUNY at New Paltz, who … edited a forthcoming volume on mating intelligence found that if a woman cannot accurately judge a man’s romantic designs at least 90 percent of the time, she’s better off being biased. “Women using a ‘men are always pigs’ decision-making rule may be more likely to actually end up with honest, committed, and long-term-seeking males,” insists Geher.

Interestingly, “For some women, the skepticism that comes so naturally during courtship switches off once a commitment’s been made, and they may overestimate a man’s investment in the relationship or the odds that he’s being faithful.”

Why is that?

“Self-deception is an equal opportunity bias. It’s a core feature of mating intelligence both for males and females.”

“The emotional benefits of giving men a pass also explain why females are so quick to blame the “other woman” for a partner’s infidelity. “If a man is susceptible to the flirtations of another woman, it’s economically and emotionally easier to think that this other woman is a slut than that your husband’s a slimeball,” notes O’Sullivan.”

“Infidelity highlights the ultimate challenge to mating intelligence: staying sexually engaged in a long-term relationship. People differ greatly in the degree to which they can dazzle during courtship or retain a plum mate. But the Hollywood glitterati struggle as epically as your local minister and postman to keep a long-term union romantically vibrant. No one is immune to habituation. This is not to say that everyone simply lusts after new partners. Humans are a moderately monogamous species: We treasure our mates and guard them assiduously. At the same time, we’ve inherited the tendency to have a roving eye.”

If no one is already doing it, I may need to start a Fan Club for sexologist extraordinaire, Ian Kerner. I am re-reading She Comes First for a book report for school (if only middle school book reports were this fun!) and I get a google alert whenever Ian pops up on the web. Sadly, I usually get the alerts AFTER he’s been on TV, but at least this little snippet can be watched online: WATCH

Here’s a fine nugget from my reading this morning:

Irony, bitter and cruel, seems to be embedded into our respective processes of arousal: that a woman, so unique in her sexuality, possessing both a clitoris – an organ designed solely for the production of pleasure – as well as the ability to experience multiple orgasms during a single session of sexual activity, should so often find this vast potential for blazing ecstasy smoldered – a magnificent conflagration left unlit – all for lack of a match that can hold its flame.
– Ian Kerner, She Comes First

And of course, this book takes on added significance now that it is signed by the author!

Being married to Marge, says Homer, “is like being married to my best friend—and he lets me feel his boobs.”

I absolutely ADORE this article from Psychology Today that explores what the Simpsons teaches us about gender roles:

She cooks, she cleans, she nags; she takes her humiliated, reeking, semipenitent husband to her bosom with a tube-lipped smooch and a gravelly, “Aw, Homie!”

feminism:

we love Lisa for demonstrating that women don’t need to hide their ambitions to be loved

Marge’s flirtations with empowerment always land her back in the kitchen, leaving the potential for real rebellion to Lisa—the character female viewers are most likely to identify with.

and married sex:

The couple, it turns out, have a strong exhibitionist streak. “The fear of getting caught is kind of a turn on,” Marge tells Homer when a chambermaid walks in on their 11th anniversary celebration at a bed-and-breakfast. “There’s the dirty girl I married!” coos Homer.

Now just for fun, here is the avatar my hubby made at the Simpsons Movie site:

Ain’t he cute?

The French have a lot of sex (120 times per year) but only 25% of them rate the sex they’re having as satisfactory says a British survey.

So now all those fantasies of a tryst in Paris with some “Luc” or “Pierre” are not as alluring. From the looks of the results below, our new fantasies may need to take place on a Greek Island with some hunk with a last name 17 letter long (the Greek are amorous 164 times a year). Better yet, the Nigerian men take their time in bed and have the most satisfied lovers as proof that haste makes waste.

67%: Nigerians are the world’s most satisfied lovers

63%: Mexicans are not far behind

61%: Lovers in India clearly know something their rivals do not

54%: The Poles are the happiest Europeans in the bedroom

38%: Sexual satisfaction in Germany is below average

25%: Alors! French lovers are asking what went wrong

15%: Japanese lovers are the world’s least satisfied . . . but their cars are very reliable

**********

So thinking about Greek men, I was reminded of Steven Delopoulos, formerly of Burlap to Cashmere and now solo. Sooo sorry I missed him at The Muse in May.

The Closing Plenary featured Elizabeth Schroeder and Bill Taverner. They were so energetic and passionate about their work. The title was “State of the (Sex Ed) Nation” and they are well-equipped to speak to that issue. They are both sexuality education consultants, or as Elizabeth said her business card once misspelled it: conSLUTant! Their main point was that sexual education in America needs to be comprehensive. We need to make our opinions heard and we need to keep the heat on our policy-makers.

Workshop 1: “Sex Therapy 101″ with Chris Fariello. There were no Education workshops that day, so I thought it would be wise to take a “101.” Since I’ve been working with/for a Sex Therapist for a year, most of the material was familiar.

Workshop 2: “Attachment Style, Pleasure Attunement, and Adult Sexuality: Clinical Application of Attachment Research” led by Stella Resnick. Stella was a thoughtful and engaging presenter. Again, this was geared more towards therapists.

Next year’s conference is in New Orleans!!! I really look forward to attending.

First workshop: “What’s Good?: Sexuality Education and Youth Cultural Competence” by Monica Rodriguez. I know I enjoyed the class, but I can’t remember a thing about it!! uh-oh…

Second workshop: “Difficult Dialogues: Sexologists Talking about Race and Ethnicity” with Donald Dyson and LaToya Brooks. This workshop I do remember because we did some interesting small group exercises where we wrote out stereotypes about certain groups (ours was Black Men). Then someone had to represent our group by standing at the front of the room while everyone read the list at them. It was sad and disturbing to hear aloud the horrible things that people think about each other.

Another portion of the workshop addressed historical issues in the field of sexology. They mentioned Margaret Sanger who is a hero to many in the sexual health field, but as I alluded to in a previous post, was quite racist. Her support for birth control was out of a desire to see less babies born to poor immigrant women who she saw as “…human weeds,’ ‘reckless breeders,’ ‘spawning… human beings who never should have been born.” Yes. She had some serious flaws. Very serious flaws. I wonder what Planned Parenthood says, or doesn’t say about that part of their history.

Most interesting to me was learning about the The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. For the history, go HERE– basically it was a 40-year experiment on poor black men who suffered from syphilis. They were given “free medical care” which amounted to placebos so that the government could study the effects of the disease, ultimately wanting the men to die so that they could be autopsied.

The result is this:

In 1990, a survey found that 10 percent of African Americans believed that the U.S. government created AIDS as a plot to exterminate blacks, and another 20 percent could not rule out the possibility that this might be true. As preposterous and paranoid as this may sound, at one time the Tuskegee experiment must have seemed equally farfetched.

Third workshop: “Deeply Held Beliefs: Inviting the Faithful to Healthy Sexuality” by Mike McGee. McGee admitted he is agnostic, but said that we all have deeply held beliefs about sexuality and morality. The goal is to find common ground.

Fourth workshop: “The Spiritual Dimension of Sexual Experience: A Non-Theological Model” by Daniel Helminiak. I got the impression that Helminiak is probably brilliant, but I could not figure out what he was talking about! Perhaps I was just getting tired. But I did by his book:

And then the fam came for dinner and to hang out at the hotel. I was missing my babies.

Day 3 (Friday) began early. I can never sleep well amidst stress – even the good stress of attending a conference. My body just never winds down. But thanks to a good friend, I at least had a comfortable hotel suite to stay at.

Friday’s first workshop was “Effective Strategies for Online Human Sexuality Courses” taught by Karen Hicks. It was helpful in forming some thoughts about future work online. One recurring theme of conversations at the conference was how uninformed people remain in light of the fact that there are millions of sexual websites (and many educational websites as well). When a twenty-year old woman still doesn’t know “how many holes she has down there” — we’ve got problems.

The second workshop was “Wired Teens, Wild World: Helping Young People Avoid Sexual Dangers Online” taught by the lively and lovely Ms. Elizabeth Schroeder *PHD* — She made a point of reminding us that as of very recently she is officially, “Dr. Schroeder!” This workshop won the Schiller Prize – named after AASECTs founder, Ms. Patricia Schiller. I was already familiar with Second Life, MySpace and Facebook so the new “take-away” for me was how predators use sites like MySpace to gain information and access. And I realize how most teens may think they are being safe and not giving out personal information, but how they are. Also, we need to educate young people about private vs. public information. What goes on YouTube, stays on YouTube. Meaning… the little stunt you think is funny now may haunt you for years to come. Kids today all want their 15 minutes of fame. Even my 6-year-old today in the car told me that she wants to be “famous” when she grows up.

The Plenary Session featured the popular Rev. Debra Haffner (pictured above) whom I have grown to admire. I don’t agree with her on all the issues but I appreciate her desire to integrate sexuality with religion. As Director of the Religious Institute on Sexual Morality, Justice, and Healing she does an amazing job of uniting various church leaders to sign on to “Open Letters” addressing issues of sexual justice.

Two sections of her speech made particularly strong impressions on me. The first is when she talked about doing away with the concept of “original sin” and replacing it with “original blessing.” After all, we were (hopefully) conceived out of passion and love. Let’s focus on the beauty of sexual union that brings forth life. The second section was when she mentioned groups like Sojourners and other “emergent groups” (like those my husband is associated with) who speak about justice, but do not address sexual justice. As Haffner stated, it is not enough to talk about all the other justice issues (poverty, etc) and not deal with the very real and very pervasive injustices related to sexuality. Amen.

Many people were raving about Debra and several said that hers are the only sermons they’ve heard in recent years. Who would have thought that an AASECT plenary at 11am on a Friday would feel so much like church? But there were good critical comments made by two Jewish sex therapists later that day.

The first afternoon workshop I attended was “Rediscovering Eros, Passion & The Sacred: Exploring and Celebrating the Pleasure Bond” which was led by Rev. Richard A Dannenfelser. He was a neat guy, a prof at Yale, and was heading back to Iraq to work with soldiers with PTSD. However, the workshop wasn’t all that the title had promised. I left feeling confused about exactly what he was trying to communicate.

Next was “The Religious Sex Therapist: Faith and Professionalism in the 21st Century” with David Ribner and Talli Rosenbaum, two Orthodox Jews. They had some insightful critiques of Debra’s plenary talk. They reminded us that although we may strongly disagree with someone’s religious views, our place as a therapist or educator is not to try to change their beliefs, but to help them align their actions with those beliefs. For instance, some Jewish couples believe that in order to obey rules of modesty, they must have intercourse through a hole in the bedsheet. As a therapist/educator, it is not our role to convince them to change their religious convictions (although they may do that on their own as they process their views of sexuality), but it is our role to help our clients/patients/students to find ways to find pleasure and satisfaction in ways that are acceptable to them.

A second Plenary featured Stanton Honig MD who spoke on “Genito-Urological Impediments to Sexual Desire, Pleasure and Healthy Sexual Function.” Honig went rapid-fire through dozens of powerpoint slides and most of the medical information was a bit beyond my interest or application. Great stuff though.

Finally, MOVIE NIGHT! Four movies were shown simultaneously. I was the CE Monitor for “Inside a XXX Marriage: Eric & Wendy” —

Read my first-ever Amazon review of it HERE

Can’t forget to mention that I added two of Debra Haffner’s books to my library:
From Diapers to Dating: A Parent’s Guide to Raising Sexually Healthy Children–From Infancy to Middle School
Beyond the Big Talk: Every Parent’s Guide to Raising Sexually Healthy Teens From Middle School to High School and Beyond