With Eat Pray Love hitting theaters, I suspect there’s a lot of soul-searching going on. The movie is based on the book of the same name which focuses on the author Elizabeth Gilbert’s round-the-world journey to seek out enlightenment and peace after her divorce. It’s reported that her publisher paid her an advance which helped to finance the trip and there’s no doubt that would sweeten the pot and help make such a trip doable.

Most of us probably won’t see an advance that enables a trip like that but there are plenty of things you can do to ensure enlightenment and peace without leaving home. And since my area of expertise is relationships, here are a few tips to keep things happy on the home front – and to help ensure the only round-the-world excursion you’ll take is one for fun and relaxation, with your significant other by your side!

Make The Most Out Of Your Relationship

• Don’t over-ride emotion. Sure, it can seem easier to just sweep heated discussions or uncomfortable communications under the rug but sooner or later things will resurface. Opting not to talk about things will likely lead down a road you don’t want to be on; one where you end up in a knock down drag out fight, or one where you’re pushed apart and possibly even enter into an affair.
• Instead, learn to fight fair. The idea is to provide a safe place where each person can feel comfortable talking about their fears and frustrations. These types of habits can be the glue that helps to create passion in a relationship, even during and spite of disagreements and conflict.
• Know your “Imago.” Imago is the imprint that makes you who you are – your background, upbringing, friends, job history, education and so forth. But it’s also the “image” of what your’e looking for in a partner. As you transition through life changes with your significant other, a big part of making that transition successfully comes from the way you deal with stressors as a couple. Being aware of how YOU deal with these things (your imago) and acknowledging your partner’s imago helps to forestall any preconceived notions or assumptions. It all comes back to Sex Honesty to Me?” href=”http://www.askdanandjennifer.com/sex-intimacy/what-is-sex-honesty-to-me/”>being honest with yourself and your partner!
• Have an affair – with your own partner! People are looking for novelty, for that dopamine high we get when we try something new and adventurous. Unfortunately, many people sacrifice a relationship they’ve worked hard to build on the quest for that high. There are ways to recreate these feelings with your partner, eliminating the need to look outside your relationship. You know those feelings you had when you first met? That’s the newness and excitement you’re looking for. Bring new elements into your relationship, and help yourself fall back in love with your partner.

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3. Love, Sex, or Money? The Three Biggest Reasons Couples Fight and How They Can Be Avoided? (Video)
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By Dr. Bonnie Eaker Weil Read More→

The clitoris is known to be elusive to many men, however, finding it and stimulating it is one of the greatest pleasures you can give a girl. Many women aren’t even able to orgasm without clitoral stimulation! Here’s how to find the clitoris, how best to stimulate it and how you can avoid the #1 mistake guys make when they finally find it!

Question: Dear Dan and Jen – How do you find the clitoris? I want to play with my girlfriend, but I do not know where to find it and I don’t want to ask her cause it would make me look like a fool…please help!

–YouTube Viewer

Click here to view the embedded video.

Why The Clitoris Is Important

The clitoris is packed with thousands upon thousands of nerve endings that will send waves of pleasure throughout a woman’s entire body. The clitoris is the only human body part that was designed specifically for pleasure and pleasure alone! Even a man’s penis performes other functions, such as urination and procreation. The clitoris, however, does absolutely nothing except provide female orgasm when stimulated. It serves no other purpose! So it’s safe to say the clitoris is pretty darn important and well worth your time to become acquainted with it.

How To Find The Clitoris

The clitoris is located above the vaginal opening but below the pubic area. The visible area of the clitoris is a small “bud” like formation that gets bigger when a woman is aroused. The clitoris is actually way bigger than what you see on the outside and is hidden underneath the vaginal skin and muscles, but the most sensitive part is the actual “bud” above the vaginal opening. The clitoris is actually tucked underneath hood of skin called the “clitoral hood” and will peek itself out more as a woman becomes aroused. However, right before a woman reaches climax, the clitoris may suddenly shrink in size and go back underneath the hood. Don’t worry though, because if you stimulate the area where the clitoral hood is, you’re going to stimulate the clitoris as well and many women prefer this type of indirect stimulation.

The Best Way To Stimulate The Clitoris

The first rule of thumb when beginning to stimulate the clitoris is to go slow and soft! Many men make the mistake of getting excited once they find it and start pressing, rubbing, licking or sucking too hard at first. This can actually cause a woman discomfort and pain! Instead, start out soft and slow, and gradually build up pressure and speed as your partner becomes more and more aroused. You can also start out using your fingers our tongue on the hood of the clitoris to give your partner indirect clitoral stimulation to get her aroused and allow her clitoris to become engorged and “hard” before you start using any other moves or techniques. Many women will derive great pleasure from stimulating the clitoris from outside the clitoral hood, while mixing in a few strokes directly on the clitoris as well. There are many different techniques you can use to stimulate the clitoris, such as clitoral circles, however, no matter what technique you decide to use, make sure you don’t start off hard and fast.

Related articles:

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2. Female Orgasm Tip #6 – Clitoral Circles (Video)
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5. The C-Spot and G-Spot Orgasm Cocktail

By Dan and Jennifer Read More→

Gender roles are changing, times are tough and no one knows what it means. Nothing is changing more than the institution of marriage. But is it changing or is it just plain dead? How does this affect you and your matrimonial urges? Five minutes from now, we’ll have given you all the answers you need.

What She Said:

Well, as someone who just got married last week, I certainly hope not! I’d also hazard a guess that all the people (rightfully) fighting to legalize gay marriage are also hoping it’s alive and well. Either way, it still seems to be a commitment that’s very important to a lot of people. But how do you make a modern go of an antiquated notion? The idea that two people would enter into a lifelong contract only for the good of procreation seems incredibly absurd. And frankly, I believe it is.

A bond created between two lovers transcends moral constraints; and these days you definitely don’t need a marriage license for the kiddos. The buzzwords for wedded bliss are “unconditional love and friendship.” Getting married is a matter of choice versus necessity these days, so there’s a lot of leeway in making it how you want it. Though I personally have thrown religion out of the mix, there are a lot of questions you shouldcask yourself before making it a legal matter. Are you compatible in the areas of spirituality andcbelief in commitment? Do you want to share finances? Do you want to travel and, if so, do you travel well together? Does this person have your back, no matter what? How is the in-law situation?

Do you have compatible life goals? Are you going to choose to bring children into the mix? Do you agree on child rearing? Really, I can’t stress the basics enough – being each other’s best friend and sharing similar views on how you want to live your lives are absolutely essential to a happy union. I don’t believe marriage is dead; the concept has been around for thousands of years and will be around for a thousand more. What is dead is the old-fashioned notion that marriage can exist only between a man and a woman – and only so those people can have children. It shouldn’t matter what combination of couple stands before the altar – if you’re lucky enough to find true love in this lifetime, I say more power to you.

What He Said:

To quote Austin Powers, marriage “isn’t dead, it’s just very badly burned.” Our entire society has undergone a huge fundamental shift. Things will literally never, ever be the same. Men have lost, women have won, and as such they will be taking things over and running the show very, very soon. No one is sure what any of this mean, but though it’s not all bad, it damn sure ain’t all good, at least for men. Nowhere is this more true than when discussing marriage.

That being said, saying marriage is dead because of the shifts in our society is just as stupid as saying the music industry is dead because of the Internet and iTunes. It’s different, there are now a different set of winners and losers to the game, and the way it’s played is different, but you still can get your “I do” on if you so desire.

I will say that the concept of “affair/cheating-partner-what-does-it-really-mean/”>unconditional love” between adults is absolute bullshit. It doesn’t exist. Sure, it exists between parent and child, but man and wife (or wife and wife or man and man) no. No way. Disagree with me? Go off and have sex with a bunch of people on your anniversary or blow off Valentine’s Day and see how your spouse likes it. See? There are conditions. You can negotiate them to be whatever you want, but there are terms and conditions. Marriage, at the end of the day is a contract. Pure and simple. You dictate the terms of the agreement and you either sign or you don’t. You can’t always get exactly what you want in it, but you should be happy with the deal you signed or you need to cut your losses and walk away.

This is a merger like any other, and it requires you to do just as much due diligence as humanly possible, even if you know the deal is a great one for both of you. You have to be on the same page as much as humanly possible and talk about everything up front. If you don’t it will become a potentially fatal mistake at some point down the road. A pound of prevention is worth a pound of cure in general, but especially in marriage.

Personally, I also recommend a good pre-nup. You plan on staying married to the partner of your dreams forever I know. I’m not saying you wont. To me, it’s like this:

You have a car right?

You have insurance on that car, right?

You don’t plan on getting in an accident, do you?

Then why do you have car insurance?

Because you know as well as I do, that sometimes they happen. And they can be messy, especially if you’re unprepared. You know what pre-nup does in a happy marriage? Collect dust. It’s like the fire extinguisher in the kitchen that you never use because there’s no fire, but there might be. That’s why you have it. You understand, don’t you?

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By Dicks in the City Read More→

A woman’s body goes through several monumental changes when she becomes pregnant and has a baby. Not only does she have mood swings and weird food cravings, she’s also going to have larger breasts and – eek! – a looser vagina if she gives birth naturally. Is this something that is permanent or is everything going to go back to normal?

Question: Is it true that the more babies a woman has had the less pleasure she feels from sex, because she is ‘loose’?

–YouTube Viewer

Click here to view the embedded video.

Does Everything Go Back To Normal?

While some women take longer to “bounce back” after having a baby than others, almost every woman’s body returns back to normal after having a child. The breast size will reduce after she stops breastfeeding, and the vagina will firm back up in the months after she’s given birth. A vagina does stretch a great deal when accomodating a the size of a baby, but the skin and tissue down there is very elastic and most of the time will return to it’s normal size and shape after everything is said and done. This certainly doesn’t happen right away, however, and it may even take several months to a year before her body is fully back to normal.

How She Can Take Care Of Herself

Exercising and eating a healthy diet is one of the best things she can do to help her own body return to normal as quickly as possible. To help her vagina return to normal after birth, she can regularly do kegel exercises. Kegels involve squeezing the PC muscles (the same ones used to stop the flow of urine) and holding them several times in a row. The PC and pelvic floor muscles are what are weakened during pregnancy and the birthing process, so exercising them regularly will help them firm up. Remember to follow all doctor’s orders for exercise, diet and sex after pregnancy. Most doctors recommend waiting at least six weeks after a natural, uncomplicated birth to release a woman for exercise and sex. This time frame may be longer if the birth was complicated or a c-section was performed.

Will Some Changes Be Permanent?

Typically, no. A woman’s body is designed to be with child and to give birth – it’s a completely natural process. The biggest changes you may notice after a woman gives birth are that she carries weight in different places than she did before or is heavier now, but of course, exercise and a healthy diet will help some with that. Her breasts may be a little saggier, but then again, gravity affects most women at some point in their lives! A woman’s vagina may be very different after giving birth if she had an episiotomy or tore during the birthing process. An episiotomy is where the skin between the vagina and anus is cut to make more room for the baby, and the incision is stitched up afterwards. Some doctors will repair vaginal tears and some won’t, depending on the doctor’s preference and the severity of the tear. This may change the way her vagina looks and feels, but it won’t stop her or you from receiving sexual pleasure and more often than not the changes are small and easy to overlook.

By Dan and Jennifer Read More→

Before you let someone diminish the pain of a break up or tell you there’s no such thing as a broken heart, consider this study from the University of New York, and Rutgers University. Scientists tracked brain activity as participants in the study – 15 students who had recently been victims of a break up – did mundane tasks like counting backwards from 8211 by sevens. That’s right – students who had recently been dumped were asked to provide a picture of their former significant other, then look at it while they counted down from upwards of 8000 – all which seems to add insult to injury!

Brain Activity After A Breakup

Aside from the potential painfulness of this exercise, the scientists discovered that “the brain areas associated with the pain of romantic rejection were the same ones involved in reward, motivation, physical pain, craving and addiction. For instance, looking at photos of exes lit up regions that are activated in cocaine addicts’ brains.”

It’s possible that anyone reading a romance novel could tell you that, but it goes deeper in explaining why the feelings of heartbreak are so hard to get over – it’s the same feeling experienced from pain, addiction and a host of other things. Lucy Brown, professor of neuroscience and neurology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, thinks it’s helpful for people to know that breaking up is supposed to hurt. “One guy called back the next day and said he thought the self-knowledge really helped,” she says.

Can You Avoid A Breakup?

It’s true that sometimes relationships just can’t be worked out and that dealing with the pain of a break up, struggling through the loneliness and emerging with new self-awareness is part of a growing process. Especially since the study participants were college-aged, these processes are to be expected. But so often I find that people have given up too easily on significant, meaningful relationships because of a lack of dedication to working through a problem.

There is a fine line between being a sucker for someone who hurts you repeatedly and with no indication that the behavior will change – and of course I’m not advocating staying in a dysfunctional relationship. I discuss finer details and techniques in my book, Make up Don’t Break up, but if both parties admit there are problems before the relationship gets to a dire point, and both people are willing to put effort into putting things back together I believe most relationships are salvageable.

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It’s the question asked ‘round the world, by men and women everywhere, how can I talk to my partner about…(fill in the blank with some sort of open marriage revolving thing.) It’s no wonder, with the near universal yearning for variety, and that often bubbling below the surface desire to see your partner with another man/woman, that this question is so popular.

Those of us who are actually swingers, and have experienced the fun and excitement of threesomes, foursomes, and moresomes are treated as though we may have found the Holy Grail, and are inundated with variants on the above. What follows will be an attempt to give you a “get the ball rolling” sort of path to jump on. A lot here depends on you, and your partner, and you should be ever so cautious here at the beginning, ‘cuz it can easily feel as though you’ve wandered off the map, and thar be monstars in the unknown. Haven’t scared you off, have I?

No? Good. ‘Cuz you want to know a secret? Threesomes and swinging are really awesome.

Communicating With Your Partner About A Threesome

I feel they’re just about the most fun you can have without breaking anything but obscure old blue laws. Before we get to the “getting your partner to do” anything, we need to talk about fundamentally the most important part of this process. Communication. Period. If fantasy isn’t something you’re able to talk to your partner about, you probably need to hold off on the graduate level sexuality and focus on some remedial stuff first. Because the place you want to start with the threesome/swinger talk is with fantasy. Why? Well, if you’ve got a good solid relationship that can share fantasies and new ideas, you’ll probably be able to have the all important “sharing is caring” conversation. You also ought to be somewhat experimental in order to pull this one off. And not just you, the BOTH of you. If it’s missionary with the lights off every night, this might not be the time. (Not that there’s anything wrong with missionary with the lights off, in fact, missionary is one of my favorite positions. I love being able to look my lovers in the eyes.) So, if you feel you have good communication, and you may be more advanced than vanilla folk (you know, maybe vanilla bean, or vanilla with sprinkles) then it’s time to start playing with the fantasy.

Getting The Ball Rolling

Start non-specific, when my wife and I began the discussion, it was as simple as hot sexy talk, during the act, which of our friends would you bave sex with, who do you find hot, what’s your type, etc. These things are rarely discussed in a marriage, or a long term relationship, especially the “what’s your type” conversation, because married people like to assume they’re their partner’s type. (Not always the case, exceptions are often made for the spousal type.) Work this into your sex play, your discussions. Notice reactions when you do so. If your wife blanches at the idea of having another imaginary woman in bed, it’s doubtful she’d be up for having a flesh and blood real live girl lying next to her as well. It’s also important not to take fantasy acceptance as a green light. Really, it’s best to look at these stages as red and yellow lights. When you encounter a red light, you need to step back a bit, and run at it again. If you continually encounter red lights, and swinging or threesomes is extremely important to you, well, you have to decide if it’s a deal breaker or not. Now, if you’re getting yellow lights the whole way down, you’re likely to be sitting pretty before long.

Once the fantasy is out there, it’s likely to come up again. After a particularly hot lovemaking session where you’ve brought your best friend imaginarily into the bedroom to play the old fingercuffs game with your wife, there’s a good chance she’ll come up to you later, (sometimes as soon as in the shower immediately afterwards) and ask “wow, that was hot, where the hell did that come from?” A lot can be judged in the tone of this question. And tone can be the difference between yellow light and red light. If your partner doesn’t ask about it, or bring it up at all, or try to insert it into your NEXT lovemaking session, you shouldn’t read that as stop, just that they may be shy, or conflicted about their feelings on it. In any case, this is where that communication thing comes into play.

Why Communication Is So Important

Remember how EVERYBODY EVER has said that communication is the secret to a good relationship. Well, it’s also the secret to getting anywhere with the swinging conversation. If you can’t ask for something, you can’t do it. If your spouse doesn’t bring up that unique new fantasy or roleplay you guys did, well the onus is on you to do so. So suck it up and talk about it. It’s in this conversation where you need to have “the talk.”

Not the “when a man and a woman love each other very much” talk. The “it would be possible for me to be sexually attracted to another person” talk. And this is often the hardest conversation for people to have these days. Our entire society seems to scream that your relationship is bad if you have any attraction or wanderlust toward anyone other than your spouse for your entire life. (Well, except for all the cheaters, and divorcees, and…well, everybody who just won’t admit it.) So, take your deep breath and jump into the cold water. If you’re gonna be asking the question “do you ever think about being with another person?” know that your partner may think it’s a trap, so be ready with your “cuz I do sometimes, but I think it’d be super hot to do it with you.” (Don’t feel the need to use phrases like that which sound like they come straight from the pages of Dynamite Magazine for teens.)

This is the money point here. Especially with a threesome, it’s REALLY easy for it to appear that you’re just a guy who wants to have sex with two girls. Sorry for the crudity there, but it’s the truth. It’s why I never asked for a threesome. Because I failed to see what might be in it for her. This was before I knew that my wife harbored secret bisexual fantasies (see, lack of communication!) so I wasn’t able to suggest how hot it’d be for me to see her with another girl without risking triggering her defense mechanisms.

What To Talk About And When To Talk About It

In a healthy sexual relationship, we all have the desire to fulfill our partners fantasies, or to at least take them as close to the edge as we’re willing to go. So when your partner comes to you and says “darling, I’d love to see you fuck another person, it’d make me sooo hot!” well you at least consider whether or not you might be able to make that fantasy come true. The key point here is that threesomes and swinging shouldn’t be a “let’s try something new this weekend for my birthday, for our anniversary, for Arbor Day” conversation. It should be an ongoing discussion, with at least a few days between start and finish, but preferably, a couple weeks to allow the idea to really sink in. Especially with all the tertiary issues that can crop up, chief among them being jealousy, but also STI and pregnancy risk, the lunacy that can come from adding another person to a relationship, and so many more things that can broadside you because you hadn’t even considered them.

Now, if you’ve had these conversations and fantasies, and talked about what you’re interested in, well then, that sounds like a green light and permission to launch. Next stop, open relationship town. But that’s a whole other discussion, and that’s for next time.

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By Cooper Beckett Read More→