Robert Weiss, LCSW, CSAT-S
"Bareback Grandpa?
Consciousness & Healing
What role does consciousness play
in health and healing?
in health and healing?
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
Bareback Grandpa? Baby Boomers Gone Wild! Seniors and STDs....
"Bareback Grandpa?
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Some 70-Something Women Having ‘Best Sex Ever’? Really? (Yes.)
Some 70-Something Women Having ‘Best Sex Ever’? Really? (Yes.)
A vintage Fisher Price “grandmother lady.” (Jennie Ivins/Flickr Creative Commons)
By Dr. Aline Zoldbrod
Guest contributor
Guest contributor
Imagine you’re a stereotypical “old lady,” with a lined face and gray hair, walking down the street. Some young guy looks at you and thinks, “How ya doing, grandma, you old coot? Are you wearing your Depends?” Actually, no, you think, you’re wearing nice underwear because you’re going to meet your beloved to see a movie, then go home and have some really delicious sex, replete with leisurely foreplay and plenty of laughter. You pass a juicy 38-year-old walking down the street with her two little kids in tow, and think, “Poor dear. She won’t have really good sex again for a good 20 years.”
This is not tabloid fantasy: “Sexually Active Septuagenarian!” It is possible. Not for everyone — but for a substantial minority, perhaps a fifth of women or more. And I’ll tell you why, based on research and my experience as a sex and couples therapist — but first, what gives? Why are we suddenly talking about this squirmy topic?
It’s because author Iris Krasnow has a new book out, “Sex After…,” subtitled “Women Share How Intimacy Changes As Life Changes.” And it includes women in their 70s and beyond who are having a glorious time, sexually. Some have partners; others have just discovered the joys of solo sex; some are having their first orgasms ever, thank to vibrators and toys now available for anyone to order online.
People have an ‘ick’ reaction to thinking that their parents are being sexual, let alone their grandparents.
Krasnow writes about the 77-year-old who “was inspired to try fellatio for the first time after watching a how-to video on YouTube.” And she shares the story of another woman in her 70s, a recent widow, who met up with a male friend she had not seen for 54 years and who went to bed with him on the first date, staying in bed having sex with him for five hours.
I’m thinking that this book excerpt is going to blow a lot of people’s minds. Even the “Granny Porn” websites have women who are ages 40 to 50. Women in their 70s?? Most of what you’ll find if you look up “sex over fifty” online talks about frail vaginal tissue, lack of lubrication and flagging erections. Those accounts are accurate but psychologically conservative.
In contrast, the denizens of Krasnow’s research don’t talk about any of the physical barriers to erotic pleasures. This is a group of women who are sexual explorers, women who want to have as much sexual pleasure as they can. They are what psychologist Dr. Abraham Maslow would probably call “sexually self-actualized.”
Krasnow’s findings, while based on a very small sample of older women, actually fit with academic research on the sex lives of older people. Surveys repeatedly find that there is a cohort of men and women, ranging in age from their 60s to their 80s and above, who are having active, enjoyable, single or partnered sex lives. They tend to be healthy and active people, and their attitude about what it is to have a sexual relationship and to be a sexual human being has flexed with age, so that standards are less perfectionistic and performance driven, and the physical changes of aging can be taken in stride.
There is a cultural stigma associated with talking about the sex lives of the elderly. People have an “ick” reaction to thinking that their parents are being sexual, let alone their grandparents. But times have changed. The same cultural movements that have given greater permission for sex outside of marriage, beliefs about what kinds of sexual and relational experimentation are acceptable, and trends such as gay rights have affected sexual attitudes in the older age cohorts.
Even the groups of people older than the baby boomers have been affected by the liberalization of society. So while the oldest baby boomers are about 68, the cohort a decade older has seemingly embraced a geriatric sexual revolution as well.
Doing The Math
Just a few statistics:
• The National Social Life, Health and Aging Project (NSHAP) interviewed a nationally representative group of 3,005 individuals between the ages of 57 and 85 in 2005-6. Almost 84 percent of men and 62 percent of women ages 57-64 engaged in sexual activity over the past year. It is true that as the next decade approached, and the one after that, sexual activity diminished. But it by no means went down to a point where people in their 70s and 80s had no sex.
• In 2009, AARP did a survey on sexual satisfaction in midlife and older adults. In answering the question, “How satisfied are you with your sex life?,” among men 60-69 years of age, 13 percent answered extremely satisfied, and 39 percent answered “somewhat satisfied.” Among men age 70+, 5 percent answered “extremely satisfied”, and 21 percent answered “somewhat satisfied.”
• But check out the statistics for women. Among those age 60-69, 18 percent answered extremely satisfied and 23 percent answered somewhat satisfied. But among women aged 70 and up, 17 percent still answered “extremely satisfied,” with another 10 percent saying “somewhat satisfied.”
A few perfectly understandable correlations exist. Health problems and sexual problems tend to go together. And relationship status and relationship quality are important for predicting psychological health and sexual satisfaction. The research is too complicated to summarize in a few sentences, but suffice it to say, Krasnow is not reporting on older women who are out on the teensy, tiny tip of the standard bell curve. We’re not talking about .05 percent of 70-year-old women enjoying sex. We might be talking about roughly a fifth of 70-year-old women.
Breaking Stereotypes
That doesn’t exactly fit the popular images of “over the hill” women as sexually uninterested and uninteresting.
Once past menopause, most straight women who would like to be noticed by men realize that we are invisible. One of my dear friends in her 60s, who has an amazing body from more than four decades of being an athlete, talks about walking down the street in her Southern home town wearing a classy blouse and a slim skirt and bright red lipstick. She reports that guys follow her with their eyes, but as they get closer and see the lines on her face, she sees the disappointment on theirs.
But it looks like if you’re lucky in your 70s and beyond, with more leisure and more time to socialize, someone your age or older (or younger) might still find you interesting, psychologically and sexually.
Dr. Aline Zoldbrod (Courtesy)
Maybe older hetero men are wising up about the joys of older hetero women. I learned a long, long time ago, as a sex therapist, that you cannot tell anything about how a given woman feels about sex — that is, whether she knows its joy — by looking at her. I work with many women who look sexy by societal standards — young, thin, fit, perky breasts, unlined faces — and who come to me because they do not like sex one bit.
After Viagra came out and was such a success for men, Pfizer was doing research to see if it could be marketed to women who were having arousal difficulties. Through The Lahey Center for Sexual Function in Peabody, I was involved in that research. My job was to interview women who were having arousal difficulties and were unhappy about it. They were to be given Viagra to see if it could help. So I had the privilege of interviewing women in their 50s and 60s who loved sex and who were upset by a diminishment in their feelings of arousal.
These were mostly just ordinary-looking 50- and 60-year-old women, the kind of women who actually walk around in the world, shopping at supermarkets and going to the post office. Not “older women” like Susan Sarandon (age 67) or Jane Fonda (age 76).
They did not look sexy to the outside world. But there they they were in my office, giving very specific responses to my research questions, talking with such sadness and passion about the loss of the sexual sensations they had loved. About their sexuality, which was such a treasured part of themselves. They talked about loss of lubrication, about the loss of the pleasant buzzing and warm sensations that were the hallmark of becoming aroused for them. They told me that when they talked to their gynecologists, they were just told that this was a part of aging and it could not be helped. But they loved sex, and what they had lost in terms of their physical functioning was devastating to them.
These women have incorporated most of the suggestions that sex therapists give to people about how to make their sex lives better.
The external, male, heterosexual world’s assessment of who is “sexy” is based on whether that particular man would like to have intercourse with that particular woman. I suspect that this can be true in the medical system, at times; male physicians doing an exam may not explore whether a woman whom they personally do not find sexually attractive needs help functioning better sexually. So older women whose questions about sexual functioning get short shrift might consider changing physicians.
Krasnow’s Older Sexpots
Some of us will find Krasnow’s stories inspirational. Some will find them preposterous and annoying. As a sex therapist, these stories tickle me, but they don’t surprise me. When I read Krasnow’s accounts, they made perfect sense. These women have incorporated most of the suggestions that sex therapists give to people about how to make their sex lives better.
If you cruise around online, most of what’s written on “sex over fifty” is a very male model, focusing on penis-in-vagina sex and then going on to talk about how the penises in question aren’t as firm as they used to be, and the vaginas are getting a tad dry. (One of my older friends described attempts at intercourse as “trying to shoot pool with a noodle.”)
There are several reasons why sex is working for Krasnow’s older women. When the women described are having partnered sex within committed relationships with their equally older partners, they are describing sex that is the model for the kind of sex women enjoy. There is a large component of interpersonal connection and romance between the partners. The women feel valued emotionally and sexually and feel comfortable in their own bodies and with their own sexuality. They give themselves permission to be fully sexual. You may have read the old Erica Jong book, “Fear of Flying,” and may recall how the protagonist used to prepare for sex by bathing and anointing herself with various oils. One of Krasnow’s women talks about scheduling sex with her partner, putting on a wonderful nightgown in which she feels sexy, and throwing in as many toys as she can to keep things hot.
The lack of time pressure is paramount. None of these women is talking about the difficulty of fitting sex in between scheduled times of taking care of of other people — for example, one, two or three grandchildren. Sex is pretty high on the top of their list of things they want to do.
The stress in life has vanished. Neither partner in the relationship is consumed with the pressures of earning a living, dealing with relatives, or taking care of their own, aging parents.
They have broken through the societal rules that prohibit focus on pleasure and play and taking time for oneself. There is always enough time.
These women talk about feeling such joy in touch, and in connection. They have lots of leisure and are having a lot of what I call “belly” time, face to face interactions where the partners focus on each other. The couples are taking their time, spending hours in bed kissing and hugging and enjoying whole-body touch, rather than practicing what I call “homing pigeon foreplay,” where the pre-intercourse touching is not long in duration and focused mainly on the primary erotic zones.
The kind of sexual touching described in these committed couples seems to be less pressured; instead it is tender: intimate, loving, warmhearted, sympathetic, touched, kind, soft. There is ecstasy in getting long periods of this kind of touch. Both bodies are relaxed, melting into each other. Each good sexual interlude creates the desire to have another one.
Hormonal Reality
Just to end by coming back down to earth a bit: The book excerpt does not discuss an important physiological element. This is a group of older women who were committed to keeping their bodies primed for sex. For those older women whose sexuality included intercourse, I assume they had very supportive and engaged gynecologic physicians who helped them keep their vaginal tissues young through hormones. These are locally applied — not systemic — hormones, but they can carry risks and remain somewhat controversial. USA Today offers a helpful look at the range of therapeutic options for post-menopausal sexual problems here.
Mainly, if you’re an older woman reading this now, and you are having pain with intercourse that you would like to address medically, you might want to speak with your gynecologist about it. If you want a second opinion, I’d recommend physicians who are members of the North American Menopause Society or the International Society For the Study of Women’s Sexual Health.
The women Iris Krasnow describes are not the majority, but they are not myths either. You may — if you choose, and if physical and emotional reality allow it — be one of them.
Aline Zoldbrod, Ph.D., is a Boston-based sex therapist and the author of “SexSmart: How Your Childhood Shaped Your Sexual Life and What to Do About It.” You can find her at SexSmart.com Some 70-Something Women Having ‘Best Sex Ever’? Really? (Yes.)
Senior Sex: 5 Health Reasons to Keep Having It | Senior Planet
At 60, 70, even 85 years of age, seniors can enjoy an active sex life. The benefits far outweigh any possible negative effects. As long as you’re using protection, you can safely engage in sexual activity. With a partner or self-pleasuring, having sex can improve the quality of your life.
So, what’s stopping you? ...... CLICK HERE TO READ GOOD STUFF!!
Friday, February 28, 2014
Federal Budget Deficit Falls to Smallest Level Since 2008 - New York Times
“Thanks to the tenacity of the American people and the determination of the private sector we are moving in the right direction,” Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew said in the report. “The United States has recovered faster than any other advanced economy, and our deficit today is less than half of what it was when President Obama first took office.” ~ Jacob Lew, Treasury Secretary
CLICK HERE TO READ!
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/28/business/economy/federal-deficit-falls-to-smallest-level-since-2008.html?_r=0
CLICK HERE TO READ!
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/28/business/economy/federal-deficit-falls-to-smallest-level-since-2008.html?_r=0
Thursday, February 27, 2014
What Could He Be Thinking?: How a Man's Mind Really Works
This is the essential primer for wives, mothers, daughters, and sisters of our men, in my view.
CLICK HERE TO READ!! "What Could He Be Thinking?: How a Man's Mind Really Works"
CLICK HERE TO READ!! "What Could He Be Thinking?: How a Man's Mind Really Works"
Michael Gurian says boys need societal nurturing, too! - USATODAY.com
While this article is a few years old, the statistics regarding the education of our boys, soon to be men, have dropped even more significantly. Thus, this article is even more relevant. It is my privilege to know moms who understand that, and still remain a "protector" of their male child. That protection often requires sacrifice (even more, yes) from these moms..............
CLICK HERE TO READ ABOUT OUR MALE CHILDREN!
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-04-08-gurian-boys_N.htm
CLICK HERE TO READ ABOUT OUR MALE CHILDREN!
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-04-08-gurian-boys_N.htm
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
"If You Want Kids to Fail, Stop Making Failure So Horrible" - The Week
I post this with a caveat to parents. We have all observed the punitive, narcissistic parent who publicly excoriates
their child(ten) at a game, meet, or other competition. It is utterly humiliating and scarring to the child.
This type of parental behavior is NOT being encouraged here. This is a deeper, more reflective look at the reason
why all children need not win a ribbon in the same event (for example).
http://theweek.com/article/index/256927/if-you-want-kids-to-fail-stop-making-failure-so-horrible
Matt Bruenig
U.S.
If you want kids to fail, stop making failure so horrible
Children can't be expected to take risks when the societal consequences are so crushing
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 26, 2014, AT 10:06 AM
Much as we like to pretend otherwise, failure is likely. Photo: (Thinkstock)
It is important that people take risks. Innovation depends on it.
That's the generic sentiment that sloshes around the cult of entrepreneurship and small business, a cult that has managed to seep into so much of our mainstream economic discourse. According to this sentiment, we need people out there doing novel things that will mostly fail but occasionally lead to significant breakthroughs that generate new goods, services, and processes that improve our lives.
In this vein, Megan McArdle has been pushing the importance of failure, and bemoaning cultural shifts away from taking failure-prone risks. In her estimation, children are being drilled into total conformity from a young age, steered by overly concerned parents toward high-success paths that leave little room for creative deviations from the norm. In the long run, McArdle suggests, this is bad for society because it will reduce innovation and the social benefits that flow from it.
But while McArdle somewhat glibly celebrates failure, the reality of deep failure in America is stark. Unlike elsewhere in the developed world, being at or near the bottom of American society entails extraordinary misery. Poverty, food insecurity, homelessness, instability, and a general lack of a livable social floor means that the consequences of truly failing in the U.S. are rather horrific.
Curiously, the problem of failure's harshness gets scarce attention from supposedly risk-loving conservatives. Instead, we are usually treated to lectures about how important it is that we deliver massive rewards to the handful of people who take the failure-prone risk and manage to make it through successfully. Such rewards must be on offer, we are told, to incentivize people to bear such extreme risks.
This policy advice ignores a huge part of the puzzle. To incentivize people to try out a failure-prone innovative path, you can either increase the rewards to doing so or decrease the risks associated with doing so. You can increase the jackpot that winners get, or decrease the misery losers suffer. To the extent that people and parents are reasonably averse to risking the possibility of winding up on the bottom of our society, the solution to the problem of conformist drilling lies in reducing inequality, poverty, and economic insecurity so that the economic bottom is a much more comfortable place to be.
Despite the attractive logic of this pro-innovation argument for egalitarianism, we are often told the exact opposite is true. The most sophisticated version of this argument admits that the relatively egalitarian social democracies of Europe do have respectable levels of economic growth, but insists that it is because they are piggybacking off of the innovation of less egalitarian countries like the U.S. That is, cutthroat capitalism in the U.S. is where the real innovation is, while cuddly capitalism in Scandanavian countries just rides on America's coattails.
As clever as this all sounds, respected indices of competitiveness and innovation do not support it. For instance, as Lane Kenworthy points out, the World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Index ranked Sweden and Finland the two most innovative nations from 2012-2013. Innovation is an extremely difficult thing to perfectly measure, but these studies suggest that innovation is indeed compatible with the kind of egalitarian social systems popular in the Nordic countries.
If fear of failure is causing parents and children to cut out socially necessary doses of innovation-generating risk, then we should act to make that fear less potent. Cajoling parents to sacrifice their kids into the maw of poverty for the greater good won't do. Instead, we should construct high economic floors, low inequality, and iron-clad economic security.
Monday, February 24, 2014
6 Psychological Insights about Solitude | Single at Heart ~ Psych Central
".....People who are single-at-heart love the time they have to themselves. In fact, when thinking about spending time alone, just about all of them react with something like, “Ah, sweet solitude,” and almost none of them react with, “Oh, no, I might be lonely!”......
CLICK HERE TO READ ARTICLE
CLICK HERE TO READ ARTICLE
Sunday, February 23, 2014
"Where Have All the Lobbyists Gone?" (with excellent graphic)| The Nation
On paper, the influence-peddling business is drying up. But lobbying money is flooding Washington, DC like never before. What’s going on?.....
CLICK TO SEE EXCELLENT GRAPHIC: Where Have All the Lobbyists Gone? | The Nation
CLICK TO SEE EXCELLENT GRAPHIC: Where Have All the Lobbyists Gone? | The Nation
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
"Did Cavemen Have it Right? A Dietitian Examines the Paleo Diet"| Fooducate
The Paleo approach to eating offers much to be desired from a health standpoint. Indeed, it would be a very good thing if a few of the fundamentals were to rub off on the American public. CLICK HERE TO READ THE GOOD, BAD AND UGLY FACTS
Friday, February 14, 2014
The Truth About "Macho" Men - Alternet
"Latinos and other men from traditionally “sexist cultures” don't have a monopoly on machismo, so why is it that they're so often scapegoated for backwards attitudes when it comes to gender? How can entire continents and counties be compromised of completely chauvinistic men? And where does this “macho” the media insists on perpetuating come from?".....CLICK TO CONTINUE READING: The Truth About "Macho" Men
"Rand Paul's Deluded Fantasy that Marriage Magically Fixes Poverty" - Alternet
"Conservatives are obsessed with the notion that marriage is solution - here's why that is simplistic and ridiculous..." CLICK HERE TO READ ARTICLE
The Sun Magazine | Learning To Sleep
..."Only eyewitnesses believed me after a while, because everyone who has brought a newborn home has experienced nights in which the baby wakes constantly in need of soothing or feeding. But Henry didn’t wake up, because he didn’t go to sleep. Neither Jon nor I could believe that a human could live with so little rest. It couldn’t be good for him; could it?"... CLICK HERE TO READ MORE
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN: "How to Really Eat Like a Hunter-Gatherer: Why the Paleo Diet Is Half-Baked" [Interactive & Infographic]
The human body is not simply a collection of adaptations to life in the Paleolithic—its legacy is far greater. Each of us is a dynamic assemblage of inherited traits that have been tweaked, transformed, lost and regained since the beginning of life itself. Such changes have not ceased in the past 10,000 years.
Ultimately—regardless of one's intentions—the Paleo diet is founded more on privilege than on logic. Hunter–gatherers in the Paleolithic hunted and gathered because they had to. Paleo dieters attempt to eat like hunter–gatherers because they want to. CLICK HERE TO READ THE SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE!
Why Do Grandmothers Exist? It's an Evolutionary Mystery - A "Paleo" View of Grandmothers...but much healthier! - New Republic
In a happy coincidence, the grandmother hypothesis comes along just as Americans enter what might be called the Age of Old Age. America's biggest generation, the baby-boomers, began retiring in 2011. This gerontocracy is expected to drain our wealth. By 2060, more than 20 percent of all Americans will be 65 or older, up from 13 percent in 2010. More than 92 million oldsters will roam the land, if roaming is within their power. People who fret about the federal budget point out that, by 2011, Social Security and Medicare were already eating up a third of it. Looming in the near future is the prospect that both programs' trust funds will vanish as the number of workers paying into the system goes down.
But are senior citizens really "greedy geezers" (a term made popular by this magazine in 1988) about to bankrupt us? The grandmother hypothesis suggests not......CLICK HERE TO READ!
Institute of Noetic Sciences
Research at IONS
From its inception, the Institute of Noetic Sciences has blazed new trails in exploring big questions: Who are we? What is consciousness, and how does it impact the physical world? What are our human potentials, and how can we achieve those potentials? What leads to personal and societal healing and transformation?
Because limitations in our human consciousness underlie many of the problems we face as a global community, research at IONS focuses on exploring the fundamental nature of consciousness, investigating how it interacts with the physical world, and studying how consciousness can dramatically transform in beneficial ways.
Our research focuses on three primary program areas.
Worldview Transformation
How does consciousness transform?
How can we support individual and
collective transformation?
How can we support individual and
collective transformation?
Extended Human Capacities
The Science of Interconnectedness —
How does consciousness interact
with the physical world?
How does consciousness interact
with the physical world?
CLICK HERE TO READ!
Sunday, February 9, 2014
Noetic Now Journal | Institute of Noetic Sciences
© ELENA RAY | BIGSTOCKPHOTO.COM (ID 4953901)
This is the mysterious journey we all set out upon, whether we know it or not: to remember who we are, to get to the heart of our soul’s story, and to embrace our own process of soul-making.
About the Author
Robert Atkinson, PhD
Atkinson is professor of human development and religious studies and director of the Life Story Center at the University of Southern Maine. An internationally known authority on life storytelling and the author of eight books, this essay was adapted from his most recent book, Mystic Journey: Getting to the Heart of Your Soul’s Story (Cosimo Books, 2012). His website iswww.robertatkinson.net.
What I tell about “me” I tell about you
The walls between us long ago burned down
This voice seizing me is your voice
Burning to speak to us of us.
—Rumi
The walls between us long ago burned down
This voice seizing me is your voice
Burning to speak to us of us.
—Rumi
Mystics have a reputation for being mysterious. In the most basic sense, a mystic is one who seeks union, or unity. But don’t most of us have such a yearning? Whether what we seek is union with ourselves, with others, with creation, with the Creator, or with Reality, maybe we are all mystics at heart. The mystic traditions came into being to help people remember their true origin and destiny. Remembering where we came from and where we are going would certainly change us and transform our relationships into ones of authenticity, respect, and compassion.
Thursday, February 6, 2014
Death threats against a 5-year-old: Our terrifying troll culture - SALON
"....and that apparently is what life, now, is. If you put yourself out there in public even the slightest way, this is what you’ll get. You can be Miss America and they’ll call you a “terrorist” for having dark skin. You can be a football star and they’ll call you a “monkey.” You can be a critic with cancer and they’ll say they “can’t wait for you to die.”You can be an ordinary high school student who’s just come out, and you’ll get a letter that “You don’t deserve to live in this world.” And of course, if you’re a woman and if you’ve ever expressed an opinion anywhere in public, you can be pretty sure someone’s going to let you know you ought to be assaulted and mutilated. In my own past, I’ve had readers volunteer to come to my house to rape me with a knife, and express the wish that my own children smother me to death. Just this morning, because I’ve written about Woody Allen, I got an email from a reader sharing his hope that my two daughters be sexually abused..." CLICK HERE TO READ HORRIFYING FACTS
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"there were no words, but images flooded every cell in her being ...4 and a half decades!"
