Whenever I’m on the freeway I notice them.  I see them on and around University Avenue, especially near the restaurants.  Many of my friends have them.  Mine is just government issue, dull, boring, and not expressive of me or my beliefs (sigh).

I guess you figured out I’m talking about license plates (number plates for my non-US readers).  Stan Dale’s was SEX IS OK.  Janet’s used to be PURELOV.  Helen’s was QT PI.  Others I see around include: LOV IS IT, LOV IS ALL, and SNUGLEE.  One Jewish friend had SHAFFAH (Hebrew for bunny) on her VW Rabbit.  Mine is 5SHE372.  Don’t try to figure it out, its just the plate after 5SHE371 and before 5SHE373.

I had a “vanity plate” for awhile - WEDSRV(Heart).  I meant it to say “We Deserve Love” but people mostly thought it was something about Wedding Services (which I do, in fact, perform).  So I let it go.

Lately I’ve been experiencing symptoms of male “menoporsche” -a sudden lack of energy, crankiness and the overpowering urge to buy a Porsche.  So I’ve been thinking about getting a special plate.  A Friend suggested IDONTNO and I’m liking it a lot.

“IDONTNO”  I don’t no.  Oh sure, I think negative thoughts all the time, just like you.  It’s my life’s work to learn to not give those thoughts power over me.  My life used to be filled with “no.”  I couldn’t…I shouldn’t…I’m not the kind of person who… I’d never…”No” was a regular refrain in my conversations, beliefs and thoughts.  Not surprisingly, I was unhappy.

One day, I discovered the power of “yes.”  Through hypnosis, I quit my several-pack-a-day cigarette habit, by affirming my YES to life.  I became a hynotherapist and personal growth coach, and am constantly discovering a whole world of YES.  From where I stand, it often seems like a life well-lived is predicated on ones ability to say YES and see the YES all around.

“IDONTNO”  I don’t know.  Another source of my unhappiness has something to do with using “knowing” to hide from feeling.  My unhappiness has, at times, feels like a hole I try to fill with knowing.  I read.  I study.  I memorize and learn dates, quotes, facts, information, theories.  I’ve learned how to seem knowledgeable even when I’m totally lost, baffled, confused.  I behave as if “knowing” is the key to happiness, which, of course, is not true.  Werner Erhard (creator of est - a 70’s era workshop) once said “Understanding is the booby prize” - the prize they give to the losers.  As Erhard’s trainers liked to say, the only thing you really need to know is “What is, is, and what ain’t, ain’t.”

Now my life’s work is about being with people, present to their feelings and mine, my heart and mind open.  I don’t know.  I don’t need to know.  I don’t no.  I don’t want to no.

I was listening to “This American Life” on NPR today and they repeated a segment from show they titled “Somewhere Out There” (first aired Feb. 13, 2009).   These were stories from people who know they’ve beaten the odds against any two people finding they are a real match.

The segment that caught my interest was about 2 eight-year-olds, Lilly and Thomasina, who each believed that there was no one like her in the whole world, until they met each other, and instantly became best friends for life.   Lilly and Thomasina are both girls who were born into male bodies, i.e., they are transgendered children.   They live as girls, wearing girls clothes, playing girls games.  But they are girls with a secret.  It’s a secret that, if known by their peers, teachers, or other parents, could make their lives hellish.  Listening to them is an extraordinary experience.

There is a moment when one of the eight-year-olds asks her parents to please only refer to her as “she” and “her”, never  again to be called “he” or “him.”  Mom quickly agrees.  Dad repeats back to the child what he heard, but does not actually agree or disagree.  And I feel my heart crack.

I feel the pain of Dad feeling he’s “losing” a son and not knowing what to do with those feelings.  I feel the weight of thousands of years of ignorance and fear blocking from Dad what is so obvious to me, the listener.  I feel angry at our culture, that supposedly values individual freedoms, yet tries to enforce rigid, archaic, ignorant beliefs and behaviors, using the weapons of disapproval, shunning, and shaming.

And mostly I feel the delight if these children discovering that they are not alone.

During the past couple of weeks, several different clients and workshoppers have talked to me about their discomfort with causing pain to their beloved. “I want to ‘open’ our marriage.  How can I do it without hurting my husband?”  “How can I tell my wife about my dissatisfaction with our sexlife without hurting her?”  “Everytime we talk about our financial situation he gets defensive.  How can we talk about this without hurting his feelings?”

The bad news is, we can not take responsibility for our beloveds’ feelings.  We can be empathetic, accepting and compassionate about those feelings.  It is useful and loving to allow those feelings “a voice”, an influence, in our decision-making, but not a vote.  I think this is the distinction between love and co-dependency.  A co-dependent lacks an “internal compass” to guide behavior, so your feelings become the compass.  My duty is make you happy.  If you are sad, hurt, angry, then I have failed at my duty.  It becomes my fault.  In such a relationship, it is not safe for either party to feel anything but happy and content.

In a healthy relationship each person’s behavior is guided from within, taking into account the thoughts and feelings of the beloved but not ruled by those feelings and thoughts.  When my partner is sad, unhappy, or upset,  I am genuinely moved by her feelings.  I want to be supportive and understanding, and accept her feelings as valid and real for her, but not my “fault”.  Her “problem” is not me or what I said or did.  Something I said or did may very well have triggered emotions in her, and I want to be sensitive to my role in that triggering.  But in the end, we each must take responsibility for our own feelings.  As I like to say in parenting classes “the person who has the problem is the only person who can solve that problem.”

All this leads me to the importance of telling the truth, the whole truth, in a healthy relationship.  Yes, sometimes my words or behavior are going to elicit my partners’ pain.  The sad truth is that sometimes life is painful.  That is one of the realities of being human.

Talking to Jason Weston, (HAI Facilitator, philosopher of love) on my podcast, he said “In my relationship, we have an agreement to tell all the truth, all the time…What I’ve learned is, even though all the truth all the time has a certain kind of risk to it, it also has an incredible possibility built into it.”

“A man [or woman] can doubt, can nurse great misgivings, and yet uphold his vow, though his heart is no longer in it.  This, I believe, is the spirit’s highest consummation - holding fast to faith by dint of will alone when the fire of certainty has grown cold…When the fire dies…the real test of a soul’s worth begins”  -Stephen R. Lawhead, “Pendragon”

This passage was written about ancient warriors and their vow to militarily support their High King, but it speaks to me of relationships.  There are times, in many long-term relationships, when it feels to one person as if “the fire of certainty has grown cold.”  Perhaps, the fire has died.  And one finds oneself questioning the wisdom of keeping the relationship vow, though one’s heart is no longer in it.  Is it better to stay or go?  Is a vow I made a long time ago reason enough to stay?

I don’t want to suggest that there is one right or wrong answer to these questions - that one should honor their vows, or that all vows are renegotiable.  Rather, I find myself, in whatever maturity I’ve developed over the 5 and a half decades I’ve been here in this life, newly experiencing the power and beauty of holding to the vow and trusting that fire is not dead, merely banked, awaiting and trusting that something will fan the embers back into flame.

Sexting (Sex + Texting) is the new rage.  Sexting is the name people are using to describe sending nude pictures via text message, and, according to “the media,” it’s all the rage among teens.  In a nationwide poll conducted by the National Campaign to Support Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, about 20% of teens admitted to participating in some form of sexting.  Sadly, because these kids are underage, law enforcement people consider this to be a form of felony “kiddie porn”, and arrests of some of these teenagers are happening.

Everything about this story upsets me.  It upsets me that typically horny teens, acting in the fog of typically horny teen stupidity, are being treated as pedophiles.  What could be more “normal” than teens wanting to look at naked teens?  How can this be compared to an adult who is sexually attracted to children or who sexually abuses a child or who purchases or collects material that exploits children?

Teens need information.  Teens need sex education, at home and in school.  Teens need to have their nascent sexuality welcomed and their self-esteem supported.  When they behave in foolish ways (and what human being has never behaved foolishly?), they need open, non-shaming conversation, not felony arrests.
It upsets me that these teens don’t realize that photos of this sort have a way of hanging around forever (digital images don’t wear out or fade out) and are likely to wind up in the hands of people who have no business looking at them, like middle-aged adults who purchase and collect material that exploits children.

It upsets me that western culture seems to promote the idea that nudity equals pornography.  We rate movies and games that include scenes of murder and mayhem as suitable for teens, while movies that show a penis or vagina, or even pubic hair, are typically rated NC-17 or X.  In other words, we behave as if a penis or a vagina is more dangerous than a machine gun or a car bomb!

Make no mistake, I abhor “child pornography”.  I totally support law enforcement officials doing everything in their power to keep children from being exploited by adults.  Sadly, in this case, in the name of protecting children, we seem to be criminalizing sexual behavior, something with which our country has a long history.  Want to learn more about America’s “war on sex” have a listen to an interview I had with Dr. Marty Klein, author of “America’s War On Sex.”

Do some relationships have a “use-by” date? Is some love ever-lasting?  Is a divorce or a break up an example of a “failed relationship.”  If I have one date with someone and then realize that person is never willing to have a second date - they don’t call, they are evasive, they give me a fake phone number at the end of the date - have I failed?

I was talking to Wendy Strgar, CEO of Good Clean Love, a line of earth-friendly, all natural, love and intimacy products.  Wendy’s interest extends well beyond making earth-sustainable products to making love sustainable. Wendy has a lot of great ideas to revitalize relationships, to spice-up relationships, to help people make their relationship sweet and sexy and successful.

At the other end of the relationship spectrum, I interviewed Ian Coburn about his failures to find relationship. Ian has some great insights into the attitudes and behaviors that increase the likelihood of getting a date and of getting a second date.  He’s a funny guy and his advice all comes from his personal failures, which makes the advice feel more “real” than some other dating experts I’ve encountered.
And on next week’s show I talk to Julia Allison and Mary Rambin, hosts of TMI Weekly, a lifestyle video-cast, about dating and sex in the world of upwardly mobile, successful twenty-somethings.  They’re two beautiful, successful women, both looking for love, but finding dates, and often not even finding dates.

I’m wondering, is all love some version of the same basic thing, like all light is fundamentally the same.  And like light, sometimes when we love it’s a candle - beautiful, romantic, but temporary.  And sometimes when we love, it’s a star - also beautiful and romantic - maybe not everlasting, but certainly lasting beyond our human experience of time.

Last year I interviewed Brian Swimme, cosmologist and author.  He talked about the attraction found throughout the known universe - gravity, electricity, atomic strong and weak bonds.  Swimme talked about love as that fundamental universal attraction made conscious.  If I understood him correctly, he speculated that perhaps that was our human “purpose”, to turn this fundamental attractive force into love.

I was interviewing Ian Coburn, author of “God is a Woman: Dating Disasters“, and he suggested that perhaps men and women often have so much trouble understanding each other is because men are, in general, more literal, and women, in general, more behavioral.

Ian is a “recovering” stand-up comic who has written a pretty good handbook about dating.  Instead of talking about his “successes”, Ian writes about his “failures” with women, and what lessons he learned.  Ian’s observations come from his experiences in the dating world. He’s a funny guy, so it’s a funny book, and it gave me a lot to think about.

Ian suggested that men need to pay attention to a woman’s behavior more than her words.  He’s not suggesting that men ignore women’s boundaries.  He understands that “no” must mean “no”.  He just notices how often, while on a date, a woman will say something like “I’m taking a break from dating.”  In the past, he would believe her words and not pursue more dates.  Weeks later he’d see the same woman now happily dating some other guy.  His “aha”?  He would have been better served to pay attention to the woman’s behavior, the fact that she was actually on a date while saying she wasn’t interested in dating.

On the other hand, Ian finds himself consoling female friends when, while on a nice date, the guy says something like “I’m taking a break from dating,” and then drops out of sight after the date.  His advice to women?  Believe the guy’s words, not his actions.

What do you think, is it a gender thing?  Do you believe the words or the behavior?

A dear friend just passed along a video clip that brought a lump to my throat and a tear to my eye.  It’s titled “Are You Going To Finish Strong?“  It’s about perseverance and believing in yourself.  Watching the video reminds of the Confucian saying:  “It does not matter how slowly you go, as long as you do not stop.”

I am ever amazed at the strength of our human spirit.  Watching toddlers learning to walk, they fall down onto their diapers 10 or 20 times a day for months - hundreds, maybe thousands of times.  And yet, after all that failure, somehow, most of us eventually walk, run, jump, skip.  At one of my workshops I watched a participant, unaided, gracefully sit on the floor, and just as gracefully, unaided, stand and move about the room sharing hugs.  No big deal, right?  Well maybe no big deal for me, but this participant had only one leg (his left leg having been amputated).  I asked how he ever learned to sit, stand and move so fluidly.  “Because I had to,” he replied.

We have our heart broken, yet we love again.  We re-marry, knowing the uncertainty of love in this uncertain age, and the pain of divorce.  We raise children, even as we try to heal the wounds inflicted on us from our own childhood.  We start new careers, even though our last career wasn’t so very fulfilling.  We risk intimate connection knowing full well that our vulnerability is sometimes the path to feeling strong and whole, and sometimes the path to feeling like a doormat.

Somehow, with just a little encouragement, so many of us learn to “finish strong”.  Will you?

I interviewed a courtesan for my podcast, Rebecca Deos, and it got me thinking about why people hire courtesans, escorts, and the like.  What could be worth so much money (hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars)?  I know some of it is about sex without fear of rejection, yet every escort I know, and I happen to know more than a few, tell me stories about customers who were hiring something much more than uncomplicated coupling.

My friend and mentor, the late Stan Dale lived in a geisha house for the better part of a year about 50 years ago.  He told me: “Living in the geisha house was the single most important event in my [then] twenty-seven years.  [Before I lived there ] I thought I knew everything about sex. [But at the Geisha house] there was no ’sex,’ intercourse…What I learned was sense and reverence…when I got back from Japan, I had learned to look at life in a whole new way, and had learned about reverence, which is how a high geisha treats her clients.”

I dream of a world where every human being was trained in the arts of the Geisha, the courtesan, the high-priced escort. A world where we would learn to look at each other with eyes that see each others’ wisdom, beauty, sexiness, creativity.  A world where we could learn about our bodies and our sexuality, learn to celebrate our senses, free ourselves from shame and fear, and learn to integrate love and intimacy into our sexuality.

As Stan once said “When people get a chance to touch heart, body, and soul, it’s an opening to feel the magic of their humanity.”

Deborah Anna Luepnitz, in her book “Schopenhauer’s Porcupines”, writes:

“I (mention) Arthur Schopenhauer’s well known fable, a story Freud liked enough to cite in his book on group psychology (and) I paraphrase the fable as follows:

“A troop of porcupines is milling about on a cold winter’s day. In order to keep from freezing, the animals move closer together. Just as they are close enough to huddle, however, they start to poke each other with their quills. In order to stop the pain, they spread out, lose the advantage of commingling, and begin to shiver. This sends them back in search of each other, and the cycle repeats as they struggle to find a comfortable distance between entanglement and freezing.”

“The story spoke to Freud as a lesson about boundaries. (”No one can tolerate a too intimate approach to his neighbor.”) It also spoke to his belief that love is everywhere a thorny affair. Freud wrote: ‘The evidence … shows that almost every intimate emotional relation between two people which lasts for some time–marriage, friendship, the relations between parents and children–contains a sediment of feelings of aversion and hostility, which only escapes perception as a result of repression‘.

“All relationships … require us to contain contradictory feelings for the same person. As the poet Molly Peacock observed: “There must be room in love for hate.”