A few weeks ago we apprised you of the ridiculous and offensive comments made by Nobel laureate and jackass VS Naipaul — basically that all women writers are ‘sentimental’ and ‘unequal to me’. There have been some great reactions to that old-fashioned fart’s blatant sexism. The latest is writer Joanne Elizabeth Valin’s new blog, Love Letters to VS Naipal: “On the occasion of his declaration that no woman writer is, has been, or ever could be his equal.” She’s currently collecting and curating “intelligent letters with intelligent content. Be they spiked with vitriol, awash with sentiment, amused to the point of disbelief, or simply bored with the same old argument, your love letters should both inform and entertain.” The first just went up by author Edie Meidav (whose new novel Lola, California we’ll be excerpting here in the next few weeks) and more will be added soon.

Read the full post on SUNfiltered

In an interview at the Royal Geographic Society last week, during which Nobel laureate and jackass VS Naipaul idiotically suggested that women writers are ‘sentimental’ and ‘unequal to me’, he also claimed that ‘I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not.’ So the Guardian UK put together a little quiz to see how well people could guess the sex of various passages’ authors. If you skip the quiz and just hit “submit” to see the answers (like we did), you’ll score a 0 out of a possible 10, eliciting the response “Awful. What are you, a girl or something?” Ha ha! (We’ll give you a bit of an edge: the above passage is from The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison.)

• This post is a part of Sundance Channel’s Naked Love Blog
• Get the Naked Love RSS feed

Pamela Haag‘s new book “Marriage Confidential” has one of the best subtitles we’ve seen in a long time: “The Post-Romantic Age of Workhorse Wives, Royal Children, Undersexed Spouses, and Rebel Couples Who Are Rewriting the Rules.” That’s a lot to live up to, but the book delivers. And it’s getting good buzz. Below is an excerpt from the section “New Twists on Old Infidelities, Or, The Way We Stray Today”:

….We used to practice a default fidelity in marriage simply because of the expense and inconvenience of an affair (though even with these default obstacles, so many of us still cheated). Now the alignment of access and opportunity on the Web invites an almost default infidelity once you permit yourself that first exploration. Instant messaging, for example, is custom-designed for sexual rogue elements: teenagers and restless married people.

The conventional affair pushes like a tumor against the real life of a marriage. It encroaches on the marriage’s finite, discrete terrain. The new infidelity metaphysic has no boundaries in space or time.

On the one hand, the cheating wife or husband can always be called, always be tracked down through their electronic LoJacks[CE1] . You can actually buy an iPhone “Spouse Tracker” app, for $4.99. The icon shows two gold wedding bands, entwined, and asks, “Is your spouse really at work? At the office party? Where they said they would be? Be 100% sure of your spouse’s location.” The app uses GPS technology to “pinpoint your spouse’s exact location, and sends you an email map of it.” On the other hand, technology creates privacy and possibility across space and on multiple fronts simultaneously; many of us are no longer tethered to the office during the day and the home at night, and we have more potentially free, unaccounted-for time.

The Second Life simulation game, although not at all the exclusive domain of restless married people, allows players to simulate entire identities and relationships through avatars online. “Second life” is an apt term. It’s not an “other” life in a marriage but an added, unobtrusive one, a layer more than a secret. And if one life is added without rippling the surface of the marriage, then why not three, four, or five coexisting lives? It requires only a neophyte’s skills at prevarication, multitasking, compartmentalization, and a few free Yahoo accounts.

Read the rest of this post on SUNfiltered

The nameless narrator of David Levithan’s novel The Lover’s Dictionary narrates his relationship in the form of dictionary definitions of words, from aberrant to zenith. Some definitions are a page long, others just a sentence. Which makes it sound gimmicky and cute and Twitterific, but this book is anything but. It’s moving, hilarious, heartbreaking and smart. It’s also something of a guessing game, because the definitions leap back and forth across the span of the relationship. This book is a poignant reminder that words can say everything and nothing — and the same goes for the spaces and the pauses between them. Levithan’s is a spare tale and yet it feels universal, especially because the narrator addresses his partner as a nameless, gender-less “you.” But enough with all this wordiness, let’s just show you what we mean with a few of our favorite entries:

arduous, adj.

Sometimes during sex, I wish there was a button on the small of your back that I could press and cause you to be done with it already.

arrears, n.

My faithfulness was as unthinking as your lapse. Of all the things I thought could go wrong, I never thought it would be that.

“It was a mistake,” you said. But the cruel thing was, it felt like the mistake was mine, for trusting you.

basis, n.

There has to be a moment at the beginning when you wonder whether you’re in love with the person or in love with the feeling of love itself. If the moment doesn’t pass, that’s it — you’re done. And if the moment does pass, it never goes that far. It stands in the distance, ready for whenever you want it back. Sometimes it’s even there when you thought you were searching for something else, like an escape route, or your lover’s face.

catharsis, n.

I took it out on the wall.

I LOVE YOU. I LOVE YOU. YOU FUCKER, I LOVE YOU.

exacerbate, v.

I believe your exact words were: “You’re getting too emotional.”

Read the rest of this post on SUNfiltered

photo (not of the author, for the record) by MShades

Mike Sacks is one fifth of the hilarious Association for the Betterment of Sex, the cabal behind the book Our Bodies, Our Junk, which we wrote about last year. So we weren’t surprised in the least to discover how much funny there is in Sacks’ own book, Your Wildest Dreams, Within Reason. It’s a collection of 54 short humor pieces, many of them written in collaboration with the other members of the ABS, amongst others. The essays include everything from “Rules for My Cuddle Party” (“#1: Please do not give birth in the hot tub.”) to a bridegroom on Twitter (“Attempting to fist-bump rabbi”) and icebreakers to avoid (“This party reminds me of 9/11″). To give you a taste, we’re excerpting one of the essays here in full…

Reasons You’re Still Single

You . . .

Own a 60-inch flat-screen Plasma television, but sleep on a broken futon

Have a ferret on your shoulder, and you’re at the mall

Own tie-dyed gym clothes

Once took a night course on improving your oral sex technique

Only feel truly alive in the Renaissance Faire jousting area

Have your “lucky” anal beads hanging from your rear-view mirror

List “Dungeonmaster” on your business card

Hug amusement park mascots

Own a “It’s Not Going to Suck Itself” T-shirt and the “Not” Has Faded Away

Will do anything for “shits and giggles”

Display with pride your framed degree from bartending school

Have a “Peeing Calvin” decal on your electric car

Perform yoga in parks

Have a dangerously high Thetan count

Bring your camera to Happy Hour

Sleep with only a shirt, Porky Pig style

Refuse to drink any beer that has not been “beach-wood aged”

Have had something on your face since the late ’90s

Use the word “scrumptious”

Can only make love while blasting “Orinoco Flow” by Enya

Favorite pickup line: “Hi, I once beat to death an elderly deaf man.”

Have ever taken a date to a restaurant with license plates and antique rakes on the walls

Consider yo-yo tricks a wonderful way to break the ice

Define wearing an umbrella hat as your “calling card”

Carry an NPR “Fresh Air” tote bag

Read the rest of this post on SUNfiltered

photo by Daniel Sandoval

We met Wendy Strgar, founder of the company Good Clean Love, at a conference in Vegas (as one does) a few years back and were instant fans. Good Clean Love makes organic love products — for example, lubes that actually smell good, and aren’t packed with nasty artificial sugars (which can lead to yeast infections). She’s all about sustainability, from the environment to your relationship. So we were excited to check out her new book, Love That Works. One of our favorite sections of the book focuses on how mindfulness can improve your sex life. And while some mindfulness advocates drive us crazy with these vague notions of what it means to truly focus, Wendy’s approach is practical and straightforward.

The basic idea is this: mindfulness can help you cut out all the noise that tells you your sex life is not “normal” enough or “experimental” enough. It can help you forget about unsexy distractions like work stress or family dysfunction or body image issues. Mindfulness helps you turn off your overworked mind so you can focus on the physical sensations in your body. “Sensuality is really nothing more than connecting to your senses deeply,” Wendy writes. “It is in the smallest of sensations that this practice comes alive. For instance, actually feel the different textures of skin on your partner’s body, or feel the weight of his or her hands on your lower abdomen, run your fingers through his hair, trace her face with your lips. … Being consumed by your sense of smell with someone you love carries the intrinsic power of presence.”

Of course, mindfulness takes practice, as anyone who sat through two and a half excruciating hours of Julia Roberts in Eat, Pray, Love can tell you. So we asked Wendy to share with us five tips from her book on ways to incorporate mindfulness into your day-to-day love life:

1.  Make it a game. One of everyone’s favorite childhood games, Hot and Cold, is a great way to playfully lead your mate to exactly the places that you most enjoy being touched. Any time you turn your communication into a game, you build up suspense and anticipation because the game opens your exchange to the unexpected. For example, if your partner is kissing your neck and you say, “you’re getting warmer,” you might be pleasantly surprised by the many unexplored erogenous zones they discover on their way down to your preferred spot. Playfulness and laughter are the hors d’oeuvres of passion.

2. Use fantasy to your advantage. I can always pique my husband’s curiosity when I start any conversation with “I had this fantasy about us, and you were doing  ______with me.” Opening up your lover’s imagination both lets him/her know that you are thinking about him in sexy ways and gives him/her permission to try out new things that they might have otherwise been too timid to approach. Sharing fantasies is a playful and effective way to move your love life into new territory.

3. Let someone else do the talking. Both men’s and women’s magazines offer monthly advice for improving your love life. Sometimes giving someone a good idea can be as simple as leaving the magazine open to the right page on your bed. If that doesn’t work, a simple conversation starter like, “ I just read this interesting, crazy, cool (pick your adjective) article in this magazine. What do you think about….?” Books and television shows can also be used like this, so just find good sources to get your conversation started.

Read the rest of this post on SUNfiltered

Ariel Sabar’s new book, Heart of the City: Nine Stories of Love and Serendipity on the Streets of New York, follows couples from the 1940s to the present whose matchmaker was New York City. We chatted with him about location-location-location — and what it means for love.

EM & LO: What got you first interested in how place interacts with the way strangers meet and fall in love?

ARIEL SABAR: The spark for me was my parents’ love story. My mom, Stephanie, and dad, Yona, were these really different people. Stephanie was the daughter of a well-off Manhattan businessman and his sophisticated wife, the kind of folks who held season tickets to the Metropolitan Opera. Yona was born to an illiterate teenage mother and peddler father in a mud hut in northern Iraq. But one fall day in 1966, they both somehow find themselves in Washington Square Park, that wonderful gathering place in the heart of Greenwich Village. Through a series of circumstances I describe in the book, Yona, lonely and homesick, strikes up a conversation this interesting woman — thinking mistakenly that she is also a “tourist.” Four months later they are married. The more I quizzed them about their story, the more convinced I became that the park itself had played a kind of matchmaking role. Forty-four years, two kids, and four grandkids later, they’re still happily married.

What is it about New York City that makes it so conducive — or more conducive than other cities, at least — to strangers meeting and falling in love?

One of the most consistent findings over decades of studies is that the closer any two strangers are — whether in a classroom, an office, an apartment building or a neighborhood street — the more likely they are to think well of one another and become friends (or more). It’s hard to think of a much denser urban environment than New York. People are pressed up against each other all the time. Crowded places produce more of the kinds of serendipitous exchanges that can ultimately lead to love. Adrenaline plays cupid, too. The physical demands of life in New York City keep people in a kind of heightened physiological state. And psychologists have found that, well, adrenaline makes the heart grow fonder. When we’re in places that get our pulse racing and our adrenaline flowing, we’re more apt to feel attraction toward strangers — and to act on those feelings. Ultimately, someone has to decide to make that first move. But exciting places can give our systems a push.

Do you think that two strangers are less likely to randomly meet and fall in love in public today, as compared to, say, 20 or 50 years ago?

In my search for couples for Heart of the City, I called priests, rabbis and wedding photographers in Manhattan and begged for leads on people who’d met there in public. Several told me that 20 years ago, they’d have dozens of names. These days, though, because of the explosion in internet dating, more and more people were meeting online. For better or worse, the internet has permitted people to be more calculating. People seem willing to give up a measure of romance for a sense (real or not) of security. Interestingly, one of the youngest women in my book had gone on dozens of really bad dates with guys she’d met online, before tripping on the sidewalk on West 57th Street late one night and literally falling into a stranger she’d eventually marry.

So are you for or against online dating? What about NYC Missed Connection ads? Is there romance in either of those?

It’s hard to be against anything that brings two people together, even if all that screening and vetting comes at the cost of some romance. Still, what is romance if not the nerve-wracking uncertainty, the mystery that makes a relationship’s early days so exciting? Do we really need to send would-be lovers through virtual metal detectors before their first kiss? Possibly, but there’s no doubt something is lost.

I think the Missed Connections ads are proof of how ready people are for love that roots in real soil. They reflect the millions of everyday public moments where something clicked. And it clicked because you were physically near somebody, even if just for a second. You saw them. You heard them. Gosh, maybe you even smelled them. And you just knew. I’m just not sure how often that happens online. The last time I checked, you couldn’t send pheromones through email.

Read the rest of this post on SUNfiltered

available on Amazon

Freud, Schmroid. If you’re looking for a good book on the interpretation of dreams, check out the brand new one by our very own Lauri Loewenberg, dream interpreter extraordinaire! Dream On It: Unlock Your Dreams, Change Your Life (published by St. Martin’s Press) features hundreds of real dream interpretations and a comprehensive dream symbol dictionary to help you understand and make the most of your nocturnal visions, especially the sexy ones. There’s an entire chapter dedicated to sex dreams, which Lauri says are often “not about a physical union you want, but rather a psychological union you need!” There are 10 kinds of sex dreams; below are 5 of them; check out Dream On It for the other five archetypes (The Friend, The Same Gender, Oral Sex, Family Members, and Masturbation):

1. The Mystery Lover – This is the most common of all sex dreams. Many of us wonder if this dream is actually a glimpse of our soul mate who might be out there somewhere waiting for us.  Alas, t’is not so.  But what is so is that the unknown, faceless man or woman that often appears in our dreams does indeed hold significance….Our dreams have a cool way of showing us the different parts of our personality in the form of a person so we can gain a deeper understanding of ourselves and what makes us tick. That being said, the mystery lover in your dreams is the embodiment, the personification of the qualities we tend to associate with that gender….Throughout life we struggle to incorporate the right balance of each [gender] into our personalities and behavior.  A man wants to be caring and understanding, yet he doesn’t want to be a sissy.  A woman wants to assert herself, yet she doesn’t want to be labeled the B word!  Our mystery lover dreams are guiding us towards that perfect balance of firm and gentle, bold and caring, yin and yang.
2. Cheating — These dreams can be infuriating, worrisome and the cause of many a slap across the face first thing in the morning.  In fact, in a recent survey I conducted with over 5000 participants, the cheating dream came in as the #1 most common dream! As upsetting as these dreams can be, the good news is that they rarely indicate that your mate is getting his or her pleasures elsewhere.  They do suggest, however, that something rather than someone is taking the time and attention from your mate that you feel you deserve.
…[If] you are the one straying in your dreams you need to ask yourself what you may be doing that is taking your attention away from your mate.  The guilt you feel in the dream is a tell tale sign that, deep down, you are aware that this may not be sitting well with your significant other….Once you can pinpoint what it is your mate is “cheating on you” with, or what you may be guilty of giving too much time to, it’s time to compromise.  Offer to give up or cut back on something your mate isn’t a big fan of if he or she promises to cut back on the activity that is causing you to feel left out. If you both stick to the compromise, you’ll find that the dreams will stop.
3. The Ex — Past lovers are very popular characters in our naughty dreams. Even though it may be light years since you were with this person, he or she STILL continues to appear in your dreams, bringing those old feelings back to the surface that leave you wondering if you still may be holding a flame.  

Most often, the ex we dream about the most is our first love.  Strangely enough, we continue to dream of our first loves, even if we’ve moved on into a happy marriage.  Don’t worry, it’s not that you want the ex back, it’s that you want what he or she represents back: excitement, bubbles, passion!  You are likely to get these dreams when you are in a dry spell or when your marriage or current relationship gets a little too routine and humdrum, as all relationships do from time to time.  Your dream is using your ex to remind you of the passion that is still alive inside of you.  These dreams are actually good for you and are alerting you to the fact that the passion department doesn’t want to become a thing of the past.
4. The Co-Worker – This dream can make work a very uncomfortable place to be. Unless your co-worker causes your heart to skip a beat and your mind to wander into naughty, naughty land, then your sex dream(s) about him or her are nothing to cause you concern.  However, understanding the dream is well worth your while because odds are, that dream is actually trying to help you improve yourself at work.  Your dreaming mind may be telling you that you need to “come together” on some level with your co-worker, for the sake of work, that you need to have a meeting of the minds in order to make co-existing and co-working more efficient.  

But what if you don’t really have much to do with a particular co-worker during the day but you find yourself knocking boots at night?  All you need to do is ask yourself what stands out about that person.  Is he really good with computers?  Does the boss seem to favor her?   Maybe he’s easy going and doesn’t seem to have a care in the world.  There is very likely a quality he or she possesses that your dreaming mind feels you would do well to take on as your own.
5. The Boss – Shagging your employer at night can sure make it difficult to come into work the next day.  If this is the case with you, remember, sex dreams are not necessarily about the person but rather about what he or she represents.  In the case of your boss it is most likely power, authority, management skills, decision making, et cetera that you need to merge into your own life.
 Do you need to take on the role of boss at home and better manage those unruly kids?  Are you facing a tough decision?  Do you need to fire or get rid of a certain element, person or behavior in your life?  Or perhaps you simply need to merge with your boss psychologically in order to deal with a client or project. Whatever the case may be, your boss dream is telling you that it’s time to take charge! Being decisive and authoritative would suit you well now.

For more on the 5 sex dreams above and to discover the meaning behind the other 5 most common sex dreams — The Friend, The Same Gender, Oral Sex, Family Members, and Masturbation — check out Lauri’s new book Dream On It, available everywhere!

photo by Stephanie Sinclair for the New York Times Magazine

There seems to be Mormonism and polygamy in the air lately (at least for us), so we wanted to spread the love to you and you and you and…:

• Escape — Just finished this crazy page-turner of a memoir from Carolyn Jessop, one of the few women to escape The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints or FLDS (of Warren Jeffs infamy) with her 8 kids (and 8 is a low number for this radical polygamist sect). She recounts how the cult basically imprisons women as sex/baby-making slaves — you’ll boggle over how something like this could exist in America in the 21st century. Katherine Heigl is slated to make the movie version of the book (which, we hate to admit, we’re morbidly excited about).
• Sister Wives — This TLC TV series is in the middle of its second season. With only 4 sister wives (who seem allowed to express their opinion) and their mere 16 kids, the Browns look like the Cleavers compared to the FLDS clans. Still, we really wish the show would delve a little deeper into the religious justification for the double standard of multiple wives but not multiple husbands (in Season 1, when his first wife of 20 years asked him to imagine her taking another husband, husband Kody admitted the thought sickened him — hmmm, funny how that works).
• The Book of Mormon — Everyone’s raving about this new Broadway musical by the dudes behind South Park, including Jon Stewart, who said it’s “so fucking good it makes me angry.” Think Urinetown and Jerry Springer: The Musical rather than Wicked or Brigadoon.

Read the rest of this post on SUNfiltered

photo by Carlos Madrigal

In a world of Facebook “likes” and online dating questionnaires that seem to narrow down the soul-mate search to a simple (and yet oh so witty!) checklist of wants and needs, it’s easy to focus on the superficial ways in which we do or don’t connect with each other. And granted, that stuff can make or break a first date, and can be indicative of a long-term connection. We both love darts! He’s got a flat butt too! Another unabashed Miley Cyrus fan?! Still, superficial connections have a tendency to mask bedsheet-sized red flags. Like, oh, say, the fact that your date is a raging narcissist. So we turned to Gordon Livingston, M.D., author of the book How to Love: Choosing Well at Every Stage of Life, and asked him to weigh on the, well, weightier issues. Specifically, seven personality types that you should avoid in your search for Mr./Ms. Right. Even if said Mr./Ms. performs the best damn air guitar solo you’ve ever seen.

1. The Self-Absorbed Hysteric

These so-called “histrionic” people often describe themselves as “passionate and emotional.” Their primary drive is to be the center of attention. Their self-absorption and superficiality make it hard for them to engage in the give and take of healthy relationships. Danger signals that one is in the presence of a self-absorbed “hysteric” include shallowness and a more or less constant need to be the focus of attention. It is just very hard for them to get beyond their own needs to consider their obligations to others, even their own children.

2. The Narcissist

It should not be hard to recognize people who manifest a grandiose sense of self-importance, and yet they cause untold heartache. In a culture where physical attractiveness and self-confidence are highly valued, their glibness and stories of success are initially appealing. Commonly intelligent, they are able to feign interest in others so that their lack of empathy may take time to become apparent. Think of those people you know who exhibit a sense that they are so special that they are outraged when anyone places constraints upon them, who have difficulty participating in conversations that do not center on them, and who convey in ways large and small the fact that everyone else exists primarily to meet their needs and desires. Not good candidates for a lasting relationship, that’s for sure.

3. The Sociopath

If we see others only as objects to be manipulated for our own pleasure or gain, we are sociopaths and operating outside our culture’s laws and norms. Sociopaths are unconstrained by feelings of attachment or loyalty, see life as a game, and are motivated only by a need for power and control. Unfortunately, such people are usually glib, charming, and able to draw others to them. Their defining characteristic is a capacity for deceit. Once it begins to dawn on you that they are so self-centered that no concept such as the rights and needs of others ever crosses their mind, they begin to seem like people from another planet.

4. The Clinging Dependent

Here we have people whose primary need is to be taken care of. They have trouble making decisions; they require constant reassurance from others. In return they are self-sacrificing to a fault. They are prepared to tolerate all manner of mistreatment, emotional and physical. They fear abandonment and cling to those they see as reliable sources of strength and support. Are you prepared to be the sole emotional refuge of another?

Read the rest of this list on SUNfiltered