A woman watches her body uneasily, as though it were an unreliable ally in the battle for love.

- Leonard Cohen

image by Kellya, found on etsy.com

Reading Eat, Pray, Love has got me thinking about pleasure. One of life’s greatest pleasures has got to be sitting down to a big bowl of pasta. Warm and creamy pasta.

I have been trying to find a local place that serves a specific pasta dish I have been craving. Nothing fancy, just cream sauce over tortellini with peas and proscuitto.

God Bless Rachelle Mee-Chapman at her blog Food Hero - where she posted a recipe!!! (She also has a lovely blog, Magpie Girl ).

I will be making this soon, and savoring every bite. I only wish this particular pleasure was less damaging to my waistline.

Yep, you read that right, conservatives are calling for more sex on TV - more *married* sex, that is.

In a study out this month called Happily Never After: How Hollywood Favors Adultery and Promiscuity Over Marital Intimacy on Prime Time Broadcast Television, the Parents Television Council states that “broadcast networks depict sex in the context of marriage as either nonexistent or burdensome.”

I have noticed this myself, though I watch very little television. What I have seen, however, is that sitcoms like “Everybody Loves Raymond” or “King of Queens” consistently show married sex as a chore or as a tool for manipulation. I am hard-pressed to think of more than two or three happily married TV couples that actually enjoy a healthy sexual relationship.

I disagree, however, with the PTC’s assertion that it constitutes a deliberate Hollywood conspiracy to “undermine marriage by consistently showing it in a negative manner.” Instead I think it reflects

• the difficulty people have in being honest about what healthy sexuality looks like
• the reality that a lot of marriages are suffering from sexual boredom and neglect
• that it is easier to laugh at people’s misfortune (ie. a “frigid” wife) than to honestly examine the challenge in keeping monogamy exciting and enjoyable

(But I don’t mean it the way you probably think I mean it!)

I want his body, because I want to know what it feels like to be fast, confident, strong and powerful.

I have never been an athlete, and after three 10-pound babies, my belly is “like a bowl full of jelly” (a la Santa Claus). I am in awe of his sleek, muscular body that seems to be completely under his control. He seems indestructible and unstoppable. He is amazing.

Il bel far niente is Italian for “the beauty of doing nothing” - an ability that most Americans lack. As Elizabeth Gilbert says in Eat, Pray, Love:

“Ours is an entertainment-seeking nation, but not necessarily a pleasure-seeking one. Americans spend billions to keep themselves amused with everything from porn to theme parks to wars, but that’s not exactly the same thing as quiet enjoyment.”

Her difficulty with pleasure sounds familiar:

“A major obstacle in my pursuit of pleasure was my ingrained sense of Puritan guilt. Do I really deserve this pleasure? This is very American too - the insecurity about whether we have earned our happiness.”

How did she change her beliefs about pleasure? Instead of attacking her pursuit of pleasure in Italy as a homework assignment, asking “How is pleasure most efficiently maximized?” and interviewing Italy’s best pleasure seekers, she says:

“When I realized that the only question at hand was, “How do I define pleasure?” and that I was truly in a country where people would permit me to explore that question freely, everything changed. Everything became . . . delicious.”

I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Kiran Dodeja Smith of Little Ones Magazine for an article called “The Big Talk.”

I am so pleased that Little Ones took on this topic, and I have already received positive feedback from people who want more encouragement and insight about how to talk to their kids about sex. For ongoing information, parents can refer to a blog I do for Sensovi, Get Talking.

In October, I will be doing several speaking engagements in support of “Let’s Talk Month” which is a national initiative which aims to get parents to talk to their kids about healthy sexuality. Events will be posted on the blog and I am committed to keeping it updated throughout the year.

But, you don’t have to wait until October to talk to your kids, “Get Talking” today!

I just finished reading “The Dance of Intimacy” by Harriet Lerner - renowned author and lecturer on female psychology.

Here are six excerpts that can change the way you “dance” with others -

“When we take responsibility for another person, in contrast to taking a responsible position in that relationship, we are operating at that person’s expense.”

“The degree to which we can be clear with our first family about who we are, what we believe, and where we stand on important issues will strongly influence the level of “independence” or emotional maturity that we bring to other relationships.”

“Change requires courage, but the failure to change does not signify the lack of it.”

“All of us have deeply ambivalent feelings about change. We seek the wisdom of others when we are not making full use of our own and then we resist applying the wisdom that we do seek even when we’re paying for it. We do this not because we are neurotic or cowardly, but because both the will to change and the desire to maintain sameness coexist for good reason. Both are essential to our emotional well-being and equally deserve our attention and respect.”

“Anxiety continues to be a key concept in understanding how stuck our relationships will get, how resistant we (and others) will be to change, and how much change can actually be tolerated. We have seen how anxiety locks us into polarized positions in relationships, blocking productive communication and problem solving, and making intimacy impossible to achieve. Anxiety hits us from all directions, moving vertically down the generations and horizontally as we pass through life-cycle events and just plain hard times. … A particular subject may itself carry so much anxiety that it is difficult to discuss in an open and respectful way. If a topic feels too hot to handle, we may opt for silence at the expense of authentic connectedness – or we may feel we have to make a choice between having a relationship and being a self.”

“Intimacy requires a clear self, relentless self-focus, open communication, and a profound respect for differences. It requires the capacity to stay emotionally connected to significant others during anxious times, while taking a clear position for self, based on one’s values, beliefs, and principles.”

Looks like I’ve lost all my old posts….

So I’ll be starting fresh and new.