When I think of summer, I have this picture of long lazy days by the water, listening for the distant voices of my children while I wander off into a great book, quietly stepping into some new ways of thinking or sharing in the stories of life that change us just by hearing them. Ana Freud said “Sex is something we do, sexuality is who we are.” What better time than the brief interludes of warm sunny days to ponder the mystery of intimacy, with fresh insights and revelations to bring increased clarity to how we live our sexuality as well as fun and passion to what we do with the people we love most.

Understanding ourselves as sexual beings and building a language to explore who we are in these mysterious places is a large task. For some people, the taboo of adding language to sexual acts keeps them silent and unfulfilled. Even for me, the loveologist that sells love products and can say the words “oral sex” to perfect strangers, I can often find myself silent with my husband, lacking the know how and the courage to describe my fantasies or describe the kind of touch that most moves me.

When I received my copy of “Getting the Sex You Want” by my friend Tammy Nelson, the director of the Center for Healing and Recovery and Passionate Partnerships I was both curious and a little skeptical. Based on the couples therapy work she has been doing at her office in Connecticut, Tammy offers up some well known techniques and strategies for building the communication skills to connect with your partner. The communications method, which is based on the work of Harville Hendrix’s work “Getting the Love You Want” felt a bit contrived at first, but she quickly demonstrates how basic communication skills applied to our intimate lives has the power to revolutionize what you are doing in the bedroom and quickly spills over into the rest of your relationship.

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I was in our local hospital emergency room the other night. I was comforting my 10 year old daughter awaiting a surgical repair to her broken and dislocated arm. All the rooms were full with some degree of trauma and pain. This is not exceptional, emergency room visits occur over 114 million times a year in the United States alone. We live in a world with gravity, as my ten year old experienced with her recent bad landing on an unfortunate trampoline bounce. At some time or another we all miss and fall, and the force of gravity bears on us all equally, where we hit the ground- but we’re not running.

The other gravity of life takes hold at these moments that often usher in serious injury and grave tragedy. We are never prepared for the end of anything, even if we are fully aware of the statistics and uncertainty that qualify life. How could we go about the fullness of life’s activities and challenges expecting tragedy to fall with the even handedness that the universal law of gravity metes out? In order to keep it all going, we move forward with the naive expectation that the difficult and challenging experiences in life only happen to other people, not to us. Sooner or later, even the luckiest among us joins the ranks of survivors.

I had just started reading I Will Not Be Broken by Jerry White, the day before I spent the night in the emergency room. I have suffered illnesses and diseases with my children before, some that seemed like they would define life forever. I remembered his words about how when people suffer a major loss of any kind, they all carry a date. This is the moment when tragedy, loss and surviving transforms their lives. As I sat in the ICU waiting room, hearing hushed conversations around me, I knew that some of that date setting was going on right there. I felt so grateful that all I had in front of me in the middle of the night is getting a girl through summer without the pool.

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Looking for a Christmas gift that will give you hours of enjoyment? I can heartily recommend this big picture book by Susan Crain Bakos, The Sex Bible. (Yes, you can get them on Good Clean Love). Besides the tasteful full page photographs, the messaging throughout the book supports my belief that sex and love are meant to be the best of friends and that both are greatly enhanced by each other.

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Lubrication is a fact of life. In any relationship where working parts are at play, whether it be an engine, a dinner party or an evening of love, everything works better when it is well oiled. Lubrication allows for glide, ease and effectiveness. When lubrication is working well, it is invisible, a thought we don’t have. When it isn’t working, we know it immediately, although not always by its name. An engine without oil locks up in minutes, awkward silence and uncomfortable gazing down into the lap is immediately recognizable.

Lacking lubrication in intimacy can take on multiple forms and occur for a myriad of reasons. Age, childbearing and nursing and some medications are often the cause of vaginal dryness and its associated pain in sex. Often this physiological issue is accompanied by a lack of sexual drive because our natural lubrication also acts as a sign that we are aroused. I remember in my teens and twenties when vaginal wetness was a fact of life and arousal happened sometimes without even noticing it. Those body memories are stored deep in our psyche, and the good news is that triggering them can be as easy as finding the right lubrication.

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I have been studying the vibrator through history this weekend. A friend of a friend gave me the DVD she has been working on called “Passion and Power- The Technology of Orgasm”. A historian, Dr. Rachel Maines uncovered ads in old catalogs and magazines featuring the origins of this electrical appliance that beat out the iron and the electric skillet by ten years. Sears and Roebuck catalog featured them for some 40 years or more. Some had attachments for butter churning- talk about all-purpose. It wasn’t until the late 1920′s that the social camouflage was blown on these handy household devices when they began appearing in early pornography or blue movies as they were called.

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Here is the book that so many women that I meet and that long for a sex life that works for them must read. Gina Ogden, conducted a survey with close to 4000 women on aspects of sexuality, spirituality and their meeting place. In addition to insightful and fascinating quotes from many of these women, the book explores in depth the emotional, mental and spiritual connections that mean the most in our sexuality.

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I really enjoy reading books for men by men about relationships. It totally confirms for me what I learned when I read my first book about boys while trying to raise my eldest son. The Wonder of Boys was a total revelation for me, and it taught me more about what had been trying and difficult in my marriage than years of therapy. I remember reading the part about how boys express themselves ( and don’t ) and realizing after years of arguing that my guy wasn’t punishing me- this was really just how he was. I urge you to take a look at it if you have any boys in your life…

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