Rocky Romance Tip #1

Whether you're alone cruising for passion, or careening through an exciting new relationship, there's bound to come a time when your love machine hits the proverbial rocky road. Most of us aren't too proactive about these things. We let the little irritations in a relationship slide until we're really miserable. By then, the negative sludge (resentment, for example) could bury a house. Though the scale and the duration may vary, the way we let this sludge build up is the same for short relationships as it is for marriage.

Our Rocky Romance tips can be practiced to enrich a relationship now or can be saved for a rainy day, to shed light on problems in the future.

And here's Tip #1. The Interface Moment.

Let's take any average couple: they know each other pretty well. For a day or a week they've been apart, working, living separate lives. Maybe he's been thinking, "Damn, my co-worker is trying to pass my work off as his own." And she's been thinking, "Damn, my presentation seemed flat and no one gave me any feedback afterward, was it really that bad?" If they live together, he may be thinking, "I'll get home, take a shower, and we'll have a quickie before dinner . . ." while she's thinking, "He'll get home, I'll let him watch junior while I catch a quick shower. . ." You get the picture. Each person has a different expectation for how things will go when they meet up.
We've already heard that men are from Mars and women are from Venus. We forget that when these two planets first get together, they're also coming from completely different galaxies. And they still have a good bit of momentum going in their respective galaxies when they meet up.
She may be tense and angry and processing backwards through what happened that day, while he may be upbeat and enthusiastic, imagining forward to what they might do that evening. They meet. Their different trajectories slam together. Ouch.

This is the fatal moment of interface.

After living separate lives for eight hours or two days or three weeks, the way this couple spends those interface moments could be the most important part of their time together. But few people take the time to stand back, open up, and slowly blend, in order to ease the process of two worlds becoming one. This process can make the difference between an easy waterbirth and suspension from your heels with a rough slap to the ass. Couples usually work this out all unconsciously. One person emerges as the receiver, the listener, the one to put on the heavy brakes at the interface as they try to sync up with their partner's orbit. But when a major change occurs in this automatic lifestyle, the couple may not be prepared to handle it. This happens in marriages, for example, when a child is born. It happens in relationships when one of the partners becomes either more or less invested in their job -- say a promotion, requiring more time, or a job loss, requiring encouragement. It can happen around a loss, around grief, around a disability.

Whatever the cause for the change, the couple continues on, expecting their old lifestyle patterns to hold up, patterns that were never planned in the first place. Suddenly, aspects of the relationship that used to function on automatic get tested. Some of them fail. They were not strategies; they were conveniences. And conveniences don't hold up well under stress.

This brings us back to the moment of interface. Say he's unemployed, spends the day looking at want ads and sees lists of valuable skills he doesn't have. Meanwhile, she's had a hard day at the office. Right away, their moment of interface has great potential for conflagration. Let's not go there.

The way to avoid this mine field is for the couple to:
--be very sensitive to and aware of this moment of interface
--have a stress-busting strategy in place for that moment before the stress hits the structure

This two-step program might just help a couple avoid bad feelings that could spiral into layers of resentment. So what is the stress-busting strategy to keep relationship rifts from creeping up on you?

Easy. Do something together.
--It should be something neutral, not sexually or emotionally demanding.
--It should be something of mutual importance or of shared interest.
--It should be treated almost as a ritual, so that it serves to mark your interface moment as something special.
--It should also give partners something in the mutual environment they can expect or count on as they re-orient to each other.
--The right ritual should ease the partners out of their isolated worlds and into the mutual world of the couple.
--Men especially relate to doing, not speaking. And speaking is not always the best strategy for bonding.

It is up to each couple to design their own interface ritual. One couple jogs together or takes a brisk walk together. Another meets at the gym. In the process, each partner is doing something that benefits him or herself while celebrating togetherness. Exercise gets the blood pumping and endorphins flowing -- it's a mood elevator. And finally, the time spent alone together helps the two to reconnect with the mutual world they've created. Other couples may have a hot tub ritual; a mutual hobby; put on the music and take a few romantic dance tours around the home. For new couples, it may be going out to dinner; for married couples it may be a small home improvement project or changing the baby's diapers. Or why not folding the laundry together -- simply save that laundry for your special time! (Think of all the movies and TV ads where two lovers meet over small conversation at the Laundromat.) Even doing dishes can be pleasant, if you make it so. The only requirement is that the project or activity be of mutual importance, or of shared interest. Neither partner should think, "I'm doing this for him/her." Both should be committed to the fact that they're doing it for the relationship.
Your interface ritual also serves as a relationship barometer. When a couple finds this ritual falling by the wayside, it often signals some trouble within the relationship. But just as easily, committing yourselves to getting back to your ritual can be the first step on the path back to relationship bliss.
It can be fun to make up your own private ritual. Try it. Be creative with it. Invent a ritual that is flexible, while able to evolve over time and withstand the life changes you'll share together. And have fun.

A Case of Date Rape (Part 1)

She had a lot of rape fantasies. OK, not rape exactly. More like forcefulness against ... More like wild animal power overtaking delicate shyness. Taking it by force. It should go like this: "Please, could we go a little more slowly?" Or "I've never done this before." But there would be no waiting. She dreamed about breaking into a place where emotions were soft and unprotected. He'd just slowly put his hand over hers and hold it with a tentative strength. She would try to unbutton his shirt -- no, his fly. He'd hesitate, as if he had an embarrassing mark on his chest, right near his left nipple, or just under his pubic hair that he wouldn't want her to see right away. A scarlet letter; a yellow arm band. He'd give her a kind of frightened look. No, a vulnerable look ... like, if she did what she was planning -- reached into his pants, slid her hand down his moist belly, followed the hairline and felt around, softly, and took hold -- his whole inner planet might go meteor and disintegrate.
Yeah, right.
Guys are not coy; "can't rape a guy, bla, bla," she thought as she smoothed her hands across her stomach. She was wet. The stretchy band of her lace-patterned underwear made a firm bridge across her navel. She pulled up her nylons. And as she rose, the band of her undies slid down to where her pubic line would have been -- before she shaved it into a neat little triangle. Oh, she knew how to play the vixen, the hot tart, the ripened fruit ready for picking. She was planning to be all that for Marco. Of course, he would take the lead. She did think he was the bomb -- otherwise she wouldn't be going through this contorted dressing ritual. Painting her toe nails; smoothing oils up and down her long legs and feeling ever so carefully for any missed stub of hair that might spoil the silky feel of her legs against his skin when they wrapped around him. Still, sometimes she just wished she could feel like the brute instead of the doll; like the occupier instead of the oil-rich territory.

The wining and dining of her first date with Marco was all she'd expected from the way he had wooed her -- confident, forward. They worked together at the magazine. He was in layout; she in editing. When he spoke to her, he had the air of a recording artist speaking to his band. She didn't mind it. She knew --they were equals. They spoke two different dialects in the land of Magazine, but they had each earned the same degree of respect and position in their departments. So though he could have talked to her as one artist to another, the fact that he didn't, that he came at her all cock-sure, didn't bother her. She knew deep down that he felt out of place in editorial. That was enough. No need to rub his nose in it. Never need to rub anyone's nose in their weaknesses.

He asked her out just after he'd told her she'd have to cut the cumulative word count of her columns down by about a thousand words. Not good news. The order had come from Advertising; he was just the messenger, not the ax weilder. And he could simply have forwarded the email from Advertising. But he was giving her the heads up, as a favor. When he showed her the mock-ups, he stood very close over her shoulder, pointing. She wished she'd been wearing a silky low cut blouse in which every slight movement of her body came across as a shimmer of breasts. She smelled his cologne -- very subtle. She liked subtlety.

"I did everything I could do to save your space," he said, pointing at she-cared-not-what in layout symbols.

"What was that again?" she asked. No. She hadn't decided to care about the layout symbols. She just wanted to watch the veins in his brown fingers as he pointed. They flickered when a finger moved. And she liked the line of his fingers.

"Does that mean I take your breath away?" he was in the middle of saying.

"What?" she tried to remember what he was saying. Who gets that distracted over fingers?

"Did the idea of having dinner at La Paz with me take your breath away or are you trying to think of a way out of it?" he said.

Some part of her had heard it, dinner at LaPaz. Marco's expression was open, warm, and he wasn't doing the rejection shuffle -- looking away or busying himself.

"Dinner at LaPaz?" she repeated, dumbly. How do you miss a babe asking you to dinner? Uh, dumb blonde, she scolded herself. But really, it was that she'd always just known he'd get around to asking her out.

"You and me," she clarified, not meaning for it to come out sounding like a challenge -- but it did.

"Uh, yeah. You do eat dinner on occasion?"

A nasty comeback popped into her head and she thought how easy it would be for her to throw him off balance, him and his cockiness. But that was only because she'd spied his underbelly once or twice and knew he wasn't as cocky as all that. She didn't want to make him feel off-balance, but she did want to yank his head back by the sandy brown hair of his quasi-Euro hair cut, and force his mouth open with her tongue, and pry and lick the soft, parts as they recoiled reflexively.

"C'mon. My treat," he said. He hadn't lost the cockiness. She was glad. He could probably smell her hunger. And that hunger wasn't about dinner, either.

"Yeah, sure," she said. "Dinner sounds good to me."

And that was it. Simple. Like they'd both already known.

When he picked her up, he wasn't dressed for the office. The suit was Italian, pants all about fluid movement. The jacket fell, swirled, and swooned over his chest and hips, but under it a gray broad-necked sweater said, I'm not a stuffed shirt; I'm so, so warm.

He ordered the wine; he knew the waiter, asked for special seats, made recommendations. All the stuff the urbane guide, "the man" would do.
Of course, she was enjoying all that. She knew he approved of her bare shoulders, the amount of exposed leg, the extra glimpse of thigh peeking from a slight slit up the side of her black dress, which hugged her breasts so that if the air grew chill he could see her nipples.

She tried to stay with the enjoyment of it all, but her mind slipped off to where she would unbuckle his belt, whip it dramatically through the loops and drop it on the floor. She would push him back, then, against the wall, one hand firmly cupping him between the legs, the other pressed against his chest.
Nah, she thought. How it would really go: He would push her dress up and pull her panties down. She'd be exposed, but also free. He'd stand back for just a click to take it all in, the pale, nude skin where she had shaved, the small triangle of fur, the patient slit. He would put his fingers there. Heat would be coming from his neck; desire would blanch his face. And cool air would tickle her where she was wet and a little opened by his touch.

To be continued...

Sex up the back stairs

She's the historical woman people most love to tell dirty jokes about. Catherine the Great. We've heard she had an insatiable -- gobble, gobble -- appetite for sex. We've even heard she was into animals -- huge, hefty long-dong animals of the equine sort, and it has made for some nice puns on "a good ride." We've probably also heard that she died legs astraddle, crushed by a horse. The most graphic version has a hoist in it. As in, the hoist was designed to lower the horse onto her awaiting loins and it broke. Smoosh.
Ah, well, so much for the fantasies of Victorian preachers. It was Samuel Schmucker, an American Lutheran preacher who in 1855 cited Catherine the Great as "one of the most corrupt, sensual, and licentious of women." I guess he meant sensual in a bad way. Let's face it, very few of your "colorful" historical figures made it through the 19th century's gauntlet of moralizers without picking up a few nasty epithets.
So just how debauched was Russia's Catherine II after all? In some ways we moderns may be disappointed. Well, yes, she did in fact have 12 lovers that historians can prove. And it's likely the real number is much higher and includes the odd foreign dignitary like "Prince Charming," France's Prince de Ligne. But wait. Twelve lovers? Check the results of any purity poll to find that 12 is the average number of lovers the American woman will have over the course of a lifetime. Catherine lived in a different time. The bulk of her affairs happened between 1762 when her husband mysteriously died (OK, most certainly at the hands her then-lover -- a minor detail) and 1796. In other words, Catherine hanky pankied her way through palace favorites as George Washington froze his butt off along the Potomac and aristocratic heads rolled along the streets of Paris. The best of times, the worst of times, and also a time when the weaker sex, it was believed, would drive the world to wrack and ruin if their "nature" wasn't kept in check. In that context, Catherine may have seemed quite loose.
A lot of the saucy details of Catherine's "depravities" come from the writings of foreign ambassadors in the days when an ambassador didn't just come for a day and a dinner; he planted himself and grew roots. So we have to think of Catherine as the old-world equivalent of a movie star entertaining international paparazzi as house guests -- for months. But even though our sources are often no more reliable than the 18th century's version of the National Enquirer, historians have clung to these accounts. 300 year-old information is hard to come by. Besides, Catherine meticulously burned every letter she received from her lovers as she went along.
How she managed to carry on a love life at all is something many a modern day star might like to know. Not that anyone who was anyone at court was unaware of her affairs.
Still Catherine's sexual behavior around the palace was nothing we'd call daring. No orgies, no infamously lewd companions -- though she did have a bastard or two who lived quite openly at court. But even while entertaining guests in her private rooms or in her private carriage, Catherine would not tolerate off-color jokes. And yet there are visitors and courtiers on record calling her behavior with her lovers disgraceful. Why? Was she playing footsie under the table at state dinners? Copping a quick feel from alover behind the throne? No. The problem seems to have been those wayward glances. During a state affair, she might cast a quick glance at her paramour across the room, and guests recorded this "scandalous" behavior in their letters home. She was under strict laws of decorum.
What we can say of Catherine is that she needed the companionship of a man, companionship in a large sense. She preferred affairs of the heart. She once explained that the heart had a mind of its own and that she had given up on controlling it. However, she did admit to her lover and ever-after friend Potemkin that she'd had casual affairs -- out of desperation and loneliness. It seems also true that in the bedroom, she was, well, OK, rather robust. She liked it hard and hardy. "My head is like that of a cat in heat," she once wrote Potemkin. Some say she actually married him, and if she did, it was done in secret. She called him "husband" and "master" in her letters. Pet names, perhaps. At any rate, Potemkin became her most trusted minister; he became prince of the Crimea (after securing that region for her). And long after the relationship cooled -- they had two torrid years of passion -- he continued to execute her royal plans, she calmed his moods, she relied on his advice, he fostered and procured her ever-fresh supply of stud meat -- oops. Uh, yes, this is also true.
Catherine was at her best as a stateswoman and overall power-person when she had a warm bed to retreat to at night. So most people close to her knew it was in their best interests to keep her passions supplied. Potemkin, the amicable ex-lover, took charge of this duty. He hand-picked young (most always twenty-something) men, guardsmen (that is, the soldiered elite), dashing, bright, promising in statecraft. And with nice bods. Well, and, it appears, staying power. There is some evidence to suggest that Catherine's closest ladies in waiting actually gave the potential suitors a trial run to test their, well, whatever aspects of their virility Catherine wanted tested. "Vigor," according to the reports, was most certainly one of them.
A rather long line of young lovers followed Potemkin.
And Catherine was always good to her men in many ways. Even when one of her lovers betrayed her by getting engaged behind Catherine's back, she offered him the palace for his wedding and to boot, gave him a castle of his own. Henry VIII she was not.
Catherine's paramours, politely called "favorites," became official when they were installed in the "favorite's" quarters, a luxury suite right below her own. The suite came with a spiral staircase that quite coincidentally led from his to hers. Ah, discreet and easy access. No sooner was the gentleman installed in that room, when he underwent a meteoric rise at court. He suddenly found himself as a top minister, a general, or other position involving great national responsibility. If he lacked education, Catherine saw to it that he had the best tutors (Catherine liked them smart, cultured, and able to discourse in French literature). And when the thrill was gone, the lover vacated the favorite's room, often given an estate or castle, but with gobs of money and peasants (yes, they gave away peasants like livestock). Many of Catherine's lovers remained competent and devoted servants at the posts she'd groomed them for.
Of course, there is one aspect of Catherine's appetite that even we moderns may have trouble getting our sexual mores around -- and it's not about beasts. It's the fact that all Catherine's lovers from Potemkin's time on were 32 or younger. When she took on her last lover, Plato Zubov, she was a woman of 60. He was 22. They still had some form of intimacy at her death when she was 67 to his 29 -- a veritable Harold and Maude romance. The fact that we can think of only one such film in a 50 year film history, suggests that we may not be any more progressive regarding this taboo than Catherine's contemporary critics.
Only slightly less acceptable in those days than her penchant for young things would be the idea of a young man sleeping his way to the top. Even in our time, it might be cause for ridicule or embarrassment. In Catherine's time, it was truly scandalous. In one case, the young man's family disowned him in absolute disgust over his position as the Czarina's lover. The fact that he earned his titles and power through her was even more despicable. This was the 23 year-old Alexander (Sasha) Lanskoi. It was perhaps Catherine's most bittersweet relationship of all. She was settling happily into grand-motherhood and Sasha completed her intimate circle. In fact, he seems to have loved her. He offered Catherine family and political advice that smoothed out sticky situations, as opposed to advice that merely advanced himself. Other factions at court tried to buy him off -- he wouldn't be bought. Historians have combed the personal letters of the time for information or mention of Sasha Lanskoi, and despite the many mentions of his name, none had a bad word to say about him. Well, there was a doctor who cast aspersions on certain of the young man's qualities, hinting that Sasha regularly took an herbal sort of "Viagra" in order to satisfy Catherine in bed. Dr. Wickard was not a regular palace doctor, but a specialist called in when Sasha took fatally ill. Wickard's theory was that the prolonged use of this "Viagra" weakened Sasha's constitution. Whatever the case, Sasha died of the sudden illness at the age of 26. Other hostile members of the court suggested he may have been poisoned. More objective modern conjectures say that -- since reports told of his throat closing up until he had trouble breathing -- Sasha caught diphtheria. It is also said that Catherine sat with Sasha, nursing him right up to his death. Catherine was crushed, remained in bed for weeks and depressed for months. She had a church built where Sasha could be buried along with his entire family. Even after death, his family remained so hostile they refused to be buried in that church, leaving his body in the church alone.
That was in June. By September, Potemkin had selected another young man to introduce to the queen. Though this and successive relationships never reached the pitch and passion as that with Sasha, Catherine the Great continued on with her line of young men until her death in 1796. No, it really doesn't seem Catherine was very sluttish by our standards. Her sexual practices, other than the odd job of cradle-robbing, were not particularly off the map. But she drew heated criticism down through the centuries. Lucky for us, a lot changes in 250 years.

To Swing or not to Swing?

So you're thinking about swinging. Should you or shouldn't you?

Number 1: Can you say communication?

In one sense, any couple can swing. Just get out there and take the leap. But the stopper is that even when you’ve got a decent relationship going, swinging can bring up an untold morass of interpersonal issues. Not only does swinging give a couple lots more to communicate about, but it adds more people into the mix to communicate with. So if you're looking for a "smooth entry" into the swinging lifestyle, the place to start is establishing good communication habits.

Talk it through thoroughly, over weeks (or months even) of careful deliberation, before acting. One good thing about all this communication is that a couple can often clear the air of any sticky issues that have been lurking in the shadows of their love life.

While you and your partner are talking it over, you'll find some food for discussion below, based on what happy swingers and unhappy experimenters alike have to say about their experiences.

Read and respond to the questions separately (some are multiple choices and some are write-ins). Then get together as a couple to compare and discuss your responses. The 1 - 10 scale questions can be of great use when you're planning limits and boundaries because they give you a clearer idea of which things are going to be compromises and which are worth compromising for.

The first set of questions is under "why do I want to do this?"

1) If you're having sex with the swinging partner of the opposite sex, where do you want your partner to be?
a. In there with you
b. Doing their own thing with your partner's spouse
c. Watching
d. A mixture of all of these

2) How do you feel about
a. having sex with a swinger of the opposite sex?
b. Having sex with a swinger of the same sex?
c. Your partner having sex with a swinger of the opposite sex (opposite to your partner)?
d. Your partner having sex with a swinger of the same sex (same sex as your partner)?

3) On a scale from 1 - 10, how much of a turn-on would it be to watch:
a. your partner getting it on with another couple
b. your partner getting it on with a member of the opposite sex
c. your partner getting it on with a member of the same sex

4) On a scale from 1 - 10, how much of a turn-on would it be to:
a. have sex with another couple, both male and female
b. have sex with a member of the opposite sex (other than your partner)
c. have sex with a member of the same sex

5) On a scale from 1 - 10, if you knew it was one of your partner's hottest fantasies, how strongly would you be motivated to do the following:
a. Have sex with a couple, both male and female
b. have sex with a member of the opposite sex
c. have sex with a member of the same sex

When you and your partner go over your responses to the five questions above, there should be a nice mix between your turn-ons and your partner's. In other words, if there's a great imbalance and it starts to look as though the swinging activities benefit one partner way more than another, you'll need to do some serious talking. There are two things to consider:
• Your relationship might actually need some foundational work before you step into the swinging lifestyle.
• If you go into swinging with this lop-sided set of motivations, the road of your relationship could get bumpy rather quickly.

Sometimes couples consider the swinging lifestyle when they feel like their relationship is sinking fast. Although anything's worth a try when a couple really wants to stay together, swinging probably shouldn't be the first thing on your list. It may force all sorts of seething resentments out into the open. And it brings other people into the fray. Swinging can easily bring up issues of jealousy even for the most seasoned swinging couple. And jealousy's not the most practical lifeline to throw a drowning relationship.

The other area for concern is communication. The number one qualification for couples who want to swing is the ability to communicate honestly and candidly. And couples who are having troubles with their relationship are often couples who are, for whatever reason, no longer communicating well.

Test your communication status:
• Did you have trouble filling in the answers on the above questions?
• Did you think, "oh, this is silly" or "s/he already knows all this?"
• When you and your partner got together to discuss your responses, were you negatively surprised or disappointed in some of your partner's answers?
• Were there some answers in your partner's responses that really took you by surprise, whether in a good way or a bad way?
A yes to any of these means you may need help with communication.

Swinging requires a game plan that sets boundaries both partners in a couple can be comfortable with. This means the couple must consider all angles and talk them through before they go off to play. There's nothing worse than being asked as a couple if you do certain things, only to hear your partner and yourself giving opposite answers. The more possibilities you discuss beforehand, the less likely this is to happen.

Now if you passed that little test with flying colors, you can move on to the part about how swinging might be good for the relationship.

Again, the best way to work with these questions would be to go into separate rooms, think them over carefully on your own, then answer truthfully. When you've completed all five, get back together, compare notes and discuss.

The second set of questions is under "why do we want to do this?"

1) How well do we communicate?
a. We tell each other everything and trust each other with everything.
b. We can talk about most things, though there are certain sticky areas
c. We don’t talk about a lot of things, but when there's something big or important, we're OK.
d. We live separate lives and don't really talk much. But we're thinking that swinging will give us something mutually exciting to communicate about.

2) How healthy is our present sex life?
a) It's almost too hot to handle. We're a regular passion pair.
b) We have a pretty good sex life, especially when we get going.
c) Not as frequent as it used to be, and we've got issues, but we can still have a good tumble.
d) It's not really happening, at least in a very fulfilling way.

3) How experimental are we within our own sexual relationship?
a) We've tried just about everything, or we'll try anything.
b) He's more experimental; she's more reserved.
c) She's more experimental; he's more reserved.
d) We're stuck in a bit of a rut, but we're hoping some new faces and approaches will help us out of it.

4) How well do I know my partner's likes, fantasies, uncomfortable areas?
a) I know just about every little detail.
b) I know most of the important stuff -- I think.
c) I know some things, but I'm sure there are a lot of things I don't know.
d) I don't know much about my partner's fantasies, but hopefully that'll change.

5) How well does my partner know my likes, fantasies, uncomfortable areas?
a) I'm not squeamish about my fantasies. S/he pretty much knows it all.
b) Oh, there are a few things I'm keeping close to the vest.
c) I've told my partner the things I think s/he can handle. There's quite a bit s/he doesn't know yet.
d) I've never gotten around to telling my partner most of that stuff.


The couples who are most likely to swing successfully are those in which both partners have answered #1 to all the questions above. Consistent #2 responses are also promising, but you may want to discuss the reasons you didn't choose #1 and decide if the issues that come up are important enough for you to work them out before taking them with you into the destabilizing presence of one or two new people.

If your answers often go into the #3 range, you should probably work on strengthening these areas of the relationship before bringing in other people. And if you've got a lot of #4 responses, you could well be in a sinking relationship, hoping that swinging might keep you afloat. Just remember that jealousy, resentment, and pain may be the only products of swinging done without the proper foundation.

No matter where your relationship rests now, you can still set your sites on swinging. But you will make life so much easier for yourselves if you secure the warm relationship, mutual trust, and open, honest communication before you set out on the swinging path. Let swinging be your goal or reward once you've established a relationship that's as rock solid as it can be. This way, you approach swinging under the optimum circumstances.

Having said all this, it's often true that if you wait for everything to be perfect you never make a move. And some people enjoy a little risk or the excitement of feeling in over their heads, sorting things out as they go along. So take all this into account as you and your partner decide where to go from here. Good luck.