LOVE AND LUST Part II: Long Term Love

I love the chemistry of this couple.

I got married in 1971, and back then, I didn't understand what I do now about long term relationships. As I've said so many times before, I got lucky. I stumbled along the path of hearts and flowers, probably because my head has always been safely tucked in a rich fantasy life. I remember things as no one else does and I've stopped second-guessing this and just accepted this fantasy world as being every bit as real as anything else I've actually experienced.

The topic of love is fascinating to me and I've been a student of the effects of love on brain function. People meditate for lots of reasons--for clarity, peace, to calm their anxiety--why not for love?

Did you know that married people are five times more likely to have sex two or three times a week than are singles? A Vanderbilt study said, "While people get older and busier, as a relationship proceeds they also get more skillful--in and out of the bedroom." There are the seasons of the heart, too: when we're close, when we're in our separate worlds, when we fight, when we make up. We aren't one thing all the time. I didn't understand this when I was young. Yes, I write younger women as perhaps a fantasy ideal to fit in with the genre or characters I'm using, but I'd much prefer to be the age I currently am, compared to the care-free 20-something. And to be that woman, all I have to do is close my eyes or pick up my favorite book. I have learned we can actually physically change our brain and that this change is now being studied in psychology today as totally healthy. Yes, I said reading love stories, fantasizing and meditating on love, lust, sex and all parts in between, is actually life sustaining. It's good for you!

A recent study of long term marriages and passion says this: "One thing you learn over time is that no matter how log you live together, two people always inhabit separate worlds. Some part of your partner is deeply unknowable." Who besides me thinks this is sexy? Sara Ban Breathnach calls it "the search for the undiscovered other." Like an explorer of old, searching for love, for the adventure of love and being loved, is one of the sexiest things we can do. And it doesn't mean you have to sleep around. In fact, I'll wager sleeping around actually ruins it. One study calls it sexual mystery. I laugh when mystery writers tell me they can't write romance--the biggest mystery of the ages!

In a long term relationship my experience is that you wander around the halls of the heart, not knowing when the encounter will stop and start, but you know the potential is always there, might happen when you least expect it, but you have certainty that it is there, ready to surprise and thrill you.  "The familiarity of a partner is soothing. Is it too calming for couples to get it on? Or does it open the door for intense sexual arousal?" Quite different than being out on the prowl, looking for something else when the perfect love is right at your side. 

I allow myself to be conquered and captured, and all the sexy implications that that brings. I willingly submit to one man only, and turn that submission into a creative exploration of passion. That keeps sex fresh and new, ever-changing. It isn't dependent on frequency or some other arbitrary criteria. We are for each other what we want to be for each other. I will feel this way still even if he precedes me in death. The fantasies and the memories will never leave me while I live and breathe. 

I guess I would have to say that perfect love is what you dream it to be. That place I take with me everywhere. Always.

And is there anything more sexy than the picture of a bed with tussled sheets?

Sharon Hamilton

Life is one fool thing after another.

Love is two fool things after each other.

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LOVE AND LUST: Becoming Your Own Courtesan

Not to worry. This will be very PG in words, but hopefully a little X in the fantasy of our minds. I'm a collector of ideas, especially about love and lust. Partly it's my job, and partly it's because it interests me more now than at any other time in my life. I used to wonder what it would feel like (and yes, I might have dreaded it a bit) being over a certain age (a lady never reveals her age but she will get nekked with the right guy). I distinctly remember being in my twenties and knowing my life would be over at 29. Anything after that didn't look interesting to me at all. And boy was I wrong.

In fact, I think love, romance, sex, lust and all things in between, either practiced, dreamt about, read or listened to is even more important the more mature we become. Nice thing that happens and a little secret to aging: we don't get old. We just enjoy all those fantasies in our head more than the reality of what's really going on as we climb the ladder of life.

I've read a lot of Sarah Ban Breathnach and find her writing touches me deeply. Her discussion of the word Casanova, that mythical great lover every woman wants to meet, literally means new house. She suggests a woman cannot be in love with herself or life if she is living in the wrong place. I think men are the same way.

I have Romancing The Ordinary by my bed and often read a chapter before I fall asleep. Here's a little quote: 'The true courtesan was traditionally more than a beautiful prostitute. Many of the most successful courtesans in history were cultured and sophisticated, enjoying considerable power and prestige. Courtesans were accomplished women of great beauty and intelligence. Highly sought companions of royalty, prime ministers, and wealthy gentlemen, they were expertly skilled in the elegant arts, which, besides lovemaking, included conversing, flirtation, entertaining, music, poetry, art, sports, politics and intrigue. The courtesan might seem at first to represent the antithesis of love, but in many ways her history is spectacularly romantic...These women often commanded intense love and prompted great works of art.'

Is there anything more exciting than sharing our passion?

She also talks about falling in love with love, how, she smiles more, expects to see her lover, whether real or fantasy, around every corner. She possesses more of the 2 extra senses SB says woman have: knowing and a sense of curiosity and exploration. Food tastes better. Drinking wine is a sensual ancient act. Shower gel and bubble baths are more important. Intimate tucked away places and soft music, tuscan orange hand lotion and bright fabric clothes and smooth Egyptian Cotton sheets that are way more expensive than we can afford -- all these things come into our lives.

Why do we do these things? Does our lover make us do them? No. We do them because we want to enhance our own lives, because it feels good to be in love, especially to love intensely, deeply. She calls it the practice of the sacred self-nurture. We listen to or write poetry, paint, sew, garden, listen to music, AND WE READ LOVE STORIES!

In short, we become the courtesan of our own bodies, our thoughts and dreams. We seek to create the environment where love is not only something that feels good, it sustains us, and alters everything around us.

SB calls it the place of belonging. And isn't the state of love, bliss, lust and excitement where we all belong? Is there any wonder why so many men and women read/write and enjoy romance? As I've said before, when we love deeply our truest, most generous and miraculous selves are revealed, unfolded like the shedding of our clothes. When there isn't anything separating us.

Nothing at all.