An exclusive EcoSalon playlist that will make you feel a little better post-breakup.

In a state of semi-crisis post breakup? Here’s the perfect playlist for you. And even if you’re not in an upset disarray, these songs are still pretty good.

Check out the music videos below, or instead of clicking play every time one music video ends and you need to start the next, go even further ahead and listen to all of them nonstop on our 10 Songs for the Post Breakup playlist on 8tracks.

1. Better Things To Do – Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings

2. Bite My Tongue – King Khan and the Shrines

3. Go Outside – Cults

4. Leave Everywhere – Toro Y Moi

5. You(th) – Hollow Pigeons

6. A Long Time – Mayer Hawthorne

7. Gronlandic Edit – Of Montreal

8. A Sentence Of Sorts In Kongsvinger – Of Montreal

9. Liar – Built To Spill

10. You’re Breaking My Heart – Harry Nilsson

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Image: CarbonNYC

ColumnInternet dating for the food loving crowd.

It was the usual, Friday afternoon internet surf: half an hour spent scouring blogs, trying to track down some new recipes. As I scrolled down the Eater page a banner ad on the right side caught my attention – impressive, given my usual blindness to anything that looks like advertising – “Eater Dating.”

A site completely devoted to online dating for foodies?

Yes.

I cringe and marvel at the idea all at once. As it turns out, Eater Dating is the brainchild of bar and restaurant site Eater and the online dating site How About We. The difference from regular online matchmaking services? How About We is all based on suggesting an intriguing first date, which fits well if you’re trying to find someone that’s just as food obsessed as you are. Imagine the possibilities:

“How about we try the new food cart?”

“How about we drink bourbon out of mason jars?”

“How about we get wheatgrass smoothies and then hit up the tempeh reuben joint?”

“How about we buy some fennel and make our own sea salt shortbread?”

“How about we cure our own pork in our kitchen pantry and live happily ever after?”

I’ll stop there, since “Pick up Lines for Foodies” is a whole other column waiting to happen.

The crossover between food and love isn’t new. Jamie Oliver has his own dating site, in collaboration with Match.com. Even OkCupid has a foodie test, because god forbid you put “foodie” on your online profile and don’t actually fit the correct description. (The fact that you actually have never purchased artisan cheese at the market would be so disappointing to your future beau.)

A good friend of mine immediately insisted that I join Eater Dating, just so that I could report from the trenches; turn Foodie Underground into Foodie Love Underground. No, thank you. Online dating mixed with self-professed food snobs? That sounds almost worse than cupcakes.

Ultimately, food can be sexy, but dating the foodie crowd? You can only take so many discussions about the merits of sparkling water and urban wineries. As Felicity Cloake of The Guardian put it, “does a foodie really need another foodie to be happy?”

I am not so sure.

George Bernard Shaw once said, “There is no love sincerer than the love of food.” If there are two of you with a love for food, there may not be so much room for the actual love part. And by that same token, if you’re in the business of dating, and you’re schmoozing foodies, you better know what you’re getting yourself into.

There is also the Swedish site Restdejting, which launched last year, that not only aims to find people true love, but ensure that food doesn’t go to waste. An initiative of farmers’ cooperative Lantmännen, it brings together eco-conscious singles who want to share their leftovers, or whatever ingredients they just can’t seem to put in their dish of the night. You enter what five ingredients you have laying around, and with the help of social media, hope some other food lover in the near vicinity is in the mood for the same thing.

Genius, considering the fact that anyone who has pickled herring, lingonberry jam, and an extra bundle of dill and hardtack on hand and ready to offer up is probably soulmate material. Scandinavian food is in, after all. Plus, if you’re breaking it down to simple ingredients, there’s not really any room for food pretentiousness; you just want to make sure that cute guy down the street doesn’t have to eat a fillet of wild-caught salmon alone.

The results speak for themselves:

“I never thought I would find love in the refrigerator. But there it was, hidden all the way in the back behind an egg carton…”

Maybe love is as easy as your favorite ingredient. If it doesn’t lead to love, at least you have delicious food to show for it.

After all, isn’t it better to eat good food alone than bad food together? That may depend on who you’re talking to, but much like Harriet Van Horne wrote in an issue of Vogue in 1956, “cooking is like love, it should be entered into with abandon or not at all.”

Which means no matter where your love life is at, the least you can do is commit to making excellent food.

Maybe then you can at least avoid internet.

Editor’s note: This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’s weekly column at EcoSalon, Foodie Underground, discovering what’s new and different in the underground food movement, from supper clubs to mini markets to the culinary avant garde.

Image: decafeined, Alexis Soon

30 ways to say I love you no matter where you roam.

Ana behibek (to woman) (änä hĕ bēk) / Ana behibak (to man) (änä hĕ bĕk) – Arabic

Obicham te (ō bē′ cham tā) – Bulgarian

Soro lahn nhee ah (sir  län  nē  rock) - Cambodian (Khmer)

Wo ai ni (wō ī nē) - Chinese (Mandarin)

Volim te (vau leem  tĕ) – Croatian

Miluji te (mē lū sēē  chā) - Czech

Jeg elsker dig (yī  el sker  dī) – Danish

Ik hou van jou (ĭk  how  von  yow) - Dutch

Au lomani iko (au  dō mä nē  ēkō) - Fijian

Mahal kita (mä häl  kē tä) - Filipino (Tagalog)

Je t’aime (jĕ  tĕm) - French

Ich liebe dich (ēsh  lē-bĕ  dēsh) - German

Ani ohev otach (to woman) (ä-nē  ōhĕv  ōtäk) / Ani ohevet otcha (to man) (ä-nē  ōhĕ-vĕt  ōt-kä) - Hebrew

Mein tumse pyar karta hoon (to woman) (mĕ  äp-sē  pē-är  kär-tä  hūn) / Mein tumse pyar karti hoon (to man) (mĕ  äp-sē  pē-är  kär-tē  hūn) - Hindi

Gráim thú (graw-im  hoo) - Irish Gaelic

Ti amo (tē  ämō) - Italian

Aishiteru (ī shē tā ē rū) - Japanese

Sarang hae (sä-räng  hĕ) - Korean

Saya cinta pada mu (sä-yä  cheen-tä  pä-dä  mū) - Malay

Doset daram (dū sät  dä räm) - Persian (Farsi)

Eu te amo (eh-oo  tē  ämō) - Portuguese

Te iubesc (tĕ  yū bā-sk) - Romanian

Ya tebya liubliu (yä  tĭb-yä  lū-blū) - Russian

Waan ku jecelahay (ooh wan  koo  chet lä hī) - Somali

Te amo (tā  ämō) - Spanish

Nakupenda (nä kū pĕn dä) - Swahili

Jag älskar dig (yä  ĕlsker  dā) - Swedish

Phom rak khun (to woman) (pŏm  läk  kūn) / Chan rak khun (to man) (chän  läk  kūn) - Thai

Seni seviyorum (sĕn-yē  sā vē your rŭm) - Turkish

‘Rwy’n dy garu di (roo-in  dū  garry  dee) - Welsh

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Images: Jeff Kubina, biphop, riccardo f.m., Hey Filbert

What the world needs now is love letters, sweet love letters.

Before heart emoticons, relationship status updates, and sexting, there was a simple way to express love: the handwritten note. It sounds dated and antiquated now, which is probably a sign that the world desperately needs to bring it back.

Enter, The World Needs More Love Letters project, a worldwide community of “love letter writers” who compose and leave behind anonymous handwritten love notes in places where people who need them may find them. Started by Hannah Brencher, the project has brought more than 1,600 love letters into the world in the four months it’s been in existence.

Brencher is quick to clarify that the intention of the More Love Letters project isn’t to bolster profits for the U.S. Postal Service (though romantic notes are certainly a sexier use of the USPS than paying bills). Instead, it’s to spread love in a world devoid of it, and bring magic to people where they least expect to find it.

The More Love Letters project is as much about loving yourself as it is about loving others. Brencher’s latest initiative asks letter writers to turn their attention and affection inward. Through the entire month of January, writers are encouraged to jot down their hopes and goals for the new year on their very best stationery, and send those letters to the More Love Letters Time Capsule in a self-addressed stamped envelope. In 2013, the time capsule will be opened, and the letters returned to their authors.

“Our plan is to hold these love letters all year long,” Brencher writes on her blog. ”Compile them all into a big ol’ box labeled: DO NOT OPEN UNTIL JANUARY 1, 2013. And, in 365 days from now, we are going to mail those love letters back to you. Sealed and ready to be opened by the very same person who wrote that letter back in 2012, though maybe you’ll be changed. Maybe you’ll see life differently.”

To learn more and get involved, visit the More Love Letters project online.

Image: Sayed Mostafa Zamani

ColumnJane Austen’s tomes on relationships are revisited with 21st century reading glasses.

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

These words mark the opening passage of British author Jane Austen’s 1813 novel, Pride & Prejudice. Although the conclusions she draws about love and intimacy are starkly insufficient for contemporary audiences, Austen continues to be fiercely relevant because of her lightning-hot investigative process and sharp social commentary. With a forked tongue pointed directly at the landed English gentry, it’s not so much her what, but rather the derring-do of her how.

For post-modern women, Austen’s world view – with its codified rules and wax seal of matrimony – isn’t so much suspect, but simply quaint. We welcome and also balk at today’s ever changing guard, asking what will become of us in an era defined by what sociologists herald as the End of Masculinity. Boys and girls both are bereft of a compass for navigating the variegated topography of gender, pair bonding, and progeny.

In our era, plurality reigns – rendering outcomes open-ended and unhinged, rather than foregone.

For Jane Austen, the terrain of dating and desire was not simple. Austen, for instance, spurned a suitor once marriage became the relationship’s only inevitability; consequently, she spent the rest of her life alone, but transformed her solitude into a gift – harnessing her time to author Sense & Sensibility, Mansfield Park and Emma. The socially-sanctioned options at her disposal were few, but she certainly gave the finger.

For many women, it’s the sheer abundance of choices that threatens to paralyze momentum; porous lives with few boundaries have their own attendant shortcomings. The introductory statement to a current-day Pride & Prejudice would require radical revision, not least because the very concept of a “universal truth” is an untenable antiquation. Instead of staking out a man of means in want of a wife, I might re-write the text to read as follows:

“That you are wholly and utterly alone is unavoidable; that everything is causal and that we’re all in this together is also inescapable; the rub, whether it be between boys and girls or whatever relationship between two humans, is to harmonize your ultimately abject triviality with your responsibility to change the world, in ways big and small, on a daily basis.”

Berlin-based Abigail Wick is a New York Times and NPR contributor. From an Ex-Pat…with Love is her weekly EcoSalon column about cultural dislocation, romantic relationships and lifestyle choices – filtered through the lens of an American woman living and working abroad.

Image by Kameron Elisabeth

ColumnI ♥ you.

As I write these words, I’m sitting in a cafe in Pacific Palisades, Calif., a place that in a way is my forever home. My heart is full to breaking with gratitude for the women in my life. And I have to say that here, in the presence of our readers, because while I believe you must know if you’re here in the first place, I want to make certain you do: the women behind the words at EcoSalon are extraordinary. They’re the women you want to know, and should. Some days I can’t believe my luck that I do.

They are a glowing collage of oddball refinement, complexity and consciousness, beauty and such beautiful scars. Color, fire, humor, creativity, verve, style, yes; yet something else distinct runs throughout. That thing is love.

Recently, while in Los Angeles for the EMAs with two of our team, Johanna Bjork and Rowena Ritchie, we were able to meet up with another of our editors based in Los Angeles, Katherine Butler, along with beloved former senior editor Kim Derby. After a chatter-filled brunch, we stopped by Kim’s house to meet her puppy, Blue. Kim and Rowena discussed Byron Katie, marriage, love, and other topics as I sat listening. Back in the car, I told Rowena how blessed I feel to have such wise women in my life, not only as colleagues but as friends. “It’s quite a group you’ve got here, Sara,” she remarked. I practically ran away from her when she dropped me at the cafe moments later so I could burst into tears of happiness in solitude. Sometimes, the good in women is almost too much.

To the one who ordered me that book because I was too busy to get around to ordering it myself; to the one who saved me thousands in therapy in a single Zinfandel-fueled night; to the one I’m only beginning to know, lucky me, who is always up for an adventure, road trip detours included; to the one who got me through more than two years (you know who you are); to the beautiful soul who grows with me year after year; to the brave one who gave it all up to try something new; you amaze me.

When EcoSalon began, I didn’t yet have an idea of just what it would become. I was a driven, imaginative kid with a sponge where a brain usually is. What do I want to do with my life? Ha! It’s nice if you know, but for me? Not my M.O. Instead, I just go do the thing. So I just about wanted to marry Mike Rowe when I read his piece about passion and “following it” as an artist. He says to stop worrying about what “it” is and just show up. Just bring the passion; don’t wait to find the thing, bring your passion to the thing and it becomes your thing. It almost doesn’t matter what it is we’re doing – just that we do it. EcoSalon is a work in progress because we are each a work in progress – editors, readers, writers. We should never forget we are each changing every moment.

At dinner once with one of our investors, we were talking about the future of EcoSalon and what we might be capable of. “The answer’s in you,” he said, matter-of-fact.

But with all due respect, he was wrong.

The answer is in us.

This is the latest installment in your editor’s column, The Insider’s Guide to Life.

ColumnSkip the weight loss centers and the elliptical machines, there are other fun ways to drop unwanted pounds.

Last spring, I set sail from the States to Europe, where I’m now a legal resident. In the intervening months since my arrival, I’ve shed a handy ten pounds – without even realizing it was happening. In fact, it didn’t occur to me that I was slowly slimming down; I only noticed that my energy levels were wicked high, that I loved shopping for new clothes because I liked how I looked in the dressing room mirrors, and that I felt infinitely sexier than before I came to Berlin. What happened?

I definitely don’t hail from one of America’s Fat Capitals; my former home of San Francisco is one of the healthiest, most physically fit populations in all of the U.S., and my long-preferred, mostly active lifestyle seemed to have all the right cards in place for an optimal waistline: I’ve always walked and biked everywhere (I don’t even have a driver’s license), and as a yoga teacher and (mostly) vegan, it seemed I could do no wrong. And yet, some key ingredient kept me hovering at a Marilyn Monroe body type. These days, I’m certainly no buff beauty queen, but I have definitely stopped thinking and caring about my weight. Who needs to worry when you can just have fun?

This week’s Sex by Numbers provides a little toolbox of four incredibly accessible, easily applicable tips for whittling down your frame – European style – with nary a lick of dreadful dieting or fretting about what the scale reads.

Walk It & Work It

Maintaining fitness isn’t some codified, separate activity from the rest of your daily activities, but rather an integrated aspect of life. In the morning, I walk to the market for breakfast ingredients and mosey on over to the office. On my lunch break, I stroll along the canal that cuts through the city or explore nearby graveyards and parks – it refreshes me and keeps me from going mad from sitting at a desk and in front of a computer all day. In the evening, I use my own two legs to get to yoga class and back home again, and instead of taking the subway to meet up with friends later at night, I walk to whatever bar, club, or restaurant where we’ll be hanging out. By incorporating regular bipedal motion into my everyday life, I get to enjoy the city sights, bump into friends on the sidewalk, window shop, and generally approach each day with appreciation and ease. Sure, it might require more time than driving a car, but it endows routine experiences with increased richness and joy. Plus, there’s no better time for strapping on my headphones and listening to music.

DIY Dinner

Nothing is sexier than knowing how to hold your own in the kitchen, and a woman who can whip-up a mean meal at a moment’s notice is a hot commodity in the dating market. (Because, let’s face it, relationships are a cultural and social marketplace.) I’m a proponent of intuitive eating and cooking in conjunction with seasonal, regional foods. As such, I advocate stocking up monthly on staples like legumes, lentils, and nut butters, while making frequent trips to the market several times a week for fresh vegetables, fruits, fresh-baked breads, and ethically-produced dairy products. Culinary art is one of life’s most sensual pleasures and is not only an opportunity to nourish your body but delight in a full-fledged orgy of lush colors, scents, tactile exploration, and even the roundly satisfying thwack of a butcher knife against the chopping block. When you enshrine a daily habit of cooking into your routine, you deepen an appreciation for food and can savor it more richly. And there’s the added benefit of the pounds simply melting away.

Have Sex

You can even have lots of it, if you want. It’s an obviously inventive, expressive workout that provides an endorphine rush in equal measure to running a marathon or getting a promotion, except rather than being an exceptional affair, it’s a sustainable activity in which to engage on a daily basis. Further, a healthy sex life results in a healthier physique. We all want to feel completely free of body-consciousness when we’re with our lovers; it allows us to more deeply engage in intimacy and focus purely on the pleasures of sharing ourselves with another person. Having regular sex is rad, and provides constant incentive to keep your body feeling beautiful and strong to share your best self with a lover (or several).

Balance, not Boundaries

Wine with dinner, nice cocktails as nightcaps, a croissant for breakfast, convivial meals and drinks with friends that span for hours and hours – I could go on. Beauty, at its core, is about savoir faire. It’s vital to celebrate life with other people by coming around the table and enjoying its bounty – and this isn’t just about Thanksgiving and Christmas. Here in Europe, every meal is occasion for festivity and joy, and people are willing to unplug from their laptops and iPhones to come together on a quotidian basis. Indulgence – in sweets, spirits, and fine company – is perhaps the single most important component of creating balance and joy.

Image: Jamie Neely

EcoSalon’s 50 favorite quotes about love. 

If you love someone, the greatest gift you can give them is your presence. – Thich Nhat Hanh

I’m selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best. - Marilyn Monroe

Never love anyone who treats you like you’re ordinary. – Oscar Wilde

Love, the poet said, is woman’s whole existence. – Virginia Woolf

My heart has more rooms in it than a whore house. – Gabriel García Márquez

It was a hubba, hubba, ding dang, baby you are just everythang. – Tom Waits

A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous. - Ingrid Bergman

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. – Mae West

Those that I fight I do not hate, those that I guard I do not love. – William Butler Yeats

Will you love me in December as you do in May? – Jack Kerouac

And in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love you make. – The Beatles

Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired. - Robert Frost

I’ve looked at love from both sides now, from give and take, and still somehow, it’s love’s illusions I recall. I really don’t know love at all. – Joni Mitchell

Fare thee well my nightingale, I lived but to be near you. Tho’ you are singing somewhere still I can no longer hear you. -Leonard Cohen

Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it; let’s do it, let’s fall in love. – Cole Porter

Love is like quicksilver in the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays. Clutch it and it darts away. – Dorothy Parker

Love is not love which alters when it alterations finds, or bends with the remover to remove. Oh no! It is an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken. – William Shakespeare

All discarded lovers should be given a second chance, but with somebody else. – Mae West

Love is a great beautifier. – Louisa May Alcott

The best thing to hold onto life is each other. – Audrey Hepburn

Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky. – Rainer Maria Rilke

Do you love this world? Do you cherish your humble and silky life? Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath? – Mary Oliver

I saw that nothing was permanent. You don’t want to possess anything that is dear to you because you might lose it. – Yoko Ono

How long do you want to be loved? Is forever enough, is forever enough?  – The Dixie Chicks

Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives. – C.S. Lewis

All love shifts and changes. I don’t know if you can be wholeheartedly in love all the time. – Julie Andrews

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage. – Lao Tzu

If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you. – A.A. Milne

It’s useless to hold a person to anything he says while he’s in love, drunk, or running for office. – Shirley MacLaine

You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection. – Buddha

I have learned not to worry about love; But to honor its coming with all my heart. – Alice Walker

Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies. - Aristotle

If you love me, let me know. If not, please gently let me go. – Anonymous

Change everything except your loves. – Voltaire

Love must be as much a light, as it is a flame. – Henry David Thoreau

If you wish to be loved, love! – Seneca

It is wrong to think that love comes from long companionship and persevering courtship. Love is the offspring of spiritual affinity and unless that affinity is created in a moment, it will not be created for years or even generations. – Khalil Gibran

The power of love, as the basis of a State, has never been tried. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking together in the same direction. – Antoine de Saint Exupery

Great love affairs start with Champagne and end with tisane. – Honore de Balzac

Love is space and time measured by the heart. – Marcel Proust

For every beauty there is an eye somewhere to see it. For every truth there is an ear somewhere to hear it. For every love there is a heart somewhere to receive it. – Ivan Panin

Love and desire are the spirit’s wings to great deeds. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me), It’s always our self we find in the sea. – e.e. cummings

Women are made to be loved, not understood. – Oscar Wilde

The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return. – David Bowie

If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliche that must have been left behind in the Sixties, that’s his problem. Love and peace are eternal. – John Lennon

Have you noticed, with whatever quality of love you have experienced, that when true love arises, it opens up both your mind and emotions? It’s an openness to whatever is happening. - Adyashanti

Because the world is round, it turns me on. Because the wind is high, it blows my mind. Because the sky is blue, it makes me weep. – The Beatles

You come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by seeing an imperfect person perfectly. – Sam Keen

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Image: Scarleth White, Jack Zalium, loop_oh, Sara Alfred, Anna Brones

This week’s top reads from our friends at Elephant Journal. 

Elephant Journal loves serving up green with a side of sass as much as we do. To make sure you get a taste of all the good things they’ve got going on over there, every week we bring you a round-up of the best picks. Brew a cup of coffee and enjoy!

Food Is Love: A Story About Vegetables -Susan Simon

Oh the attraction that opposites have for each other! I knew that the love that was blossoming between us was the real deal so I had to cope with his picky eating one, to demonstrate my unconditional love for him and two, if I was ever to win him over to the vegetable side I would have to move slow. And slow it was.

A Song for Broken Hearts

“I don’t make music for eyes. I make music for ears.”

Sleeping with Anger -Nadine McNeil

At some stage of our lives we all face anger – projected, acted[ing] out, victimized by. Some of us may have learned that leaving our anger to fester is counter-productive and self-destructive.

Then there are those who have been angry for so long that the possibility of being otherwise is beyond their scope of reach. I recall reading once somewhere that most cemeteries are filled with angry people. So too are homes, offices, schools, churches, government institutions, brothels, bars, yoga studios, subways, buses, airplanes…anger is everywhere.

Lure the Goddess -Kimberly Johnson

One of the marvels of the feminine is that she is always close, like the spark of a flame waiting for the wind to come and augment the fire. She must be courted. And, like with all women, there are intricacies. The more you listen, the more she will speak. Her voice will become louder and clearer. However the opposite is also true, if you ignore or affront her, she will also speak loudly and sometimes unpredictably to shake you and beg your attention.

Image: Elephant Journal

Getting down sans silly tips from a certain dull glossy.

We may only be at the beginning, but that’s the point. Here’s the part of the article where I inform you that you are absolutely going to make more time in your life for sex. I will accept no arguments except, possibly, “He won’t wax his back.” Now that we have that out of the way, we can completely bypass all your non-sex-having excuses (tired, bills, kids, rinse, repeat) because sex? It’s a wonderful thing.

What’s not wonderful is the usual glib listicle. It’s not sexy to force sex, yet it seems like that’s always the advice we hear. “Schedule it in,” as if it were something to avoid, like your drill-happy dentist. “Do it even if you don’t feel like it.” Great, right next to flossing on the to-do list.

The real key to wanting to do it is feeling sexy, which is not a state that can be bought, drugged (yet!) or conjured up magically. Sexiness come from feeling relaxed, receptive and focused on our partner. Most of all, it comes from setting the mood long before you’re in the mood. Here’s how to get there, so you can get down. Tonight. (Or earlier…).

Setting the mood for sex is about everything but the act of fornication, which is just its inevitable and enjoyable conclusion. It starts early in the day – or preferably, is part of the ongoing banter/communication between you and your lover. During the time you and your partner are apart, use technology to your advantage.

Send:

- Playful texts (remember 9^th grade flirting? Playful doesn’t have to mean dirty, if that’s not your thing)

- Semi-erotic photos (could be of you, could be of a mutually admired Hollywood hottie)

- Sexy articles (ahem!) peppered with your own thoughts

- Crude and/or sexy jokes

- Fantasy scenarios and stories

The key here is no faking it! If you love dirty jokes and pictures (and they do too), go with it. If erotic literature is how you steam it up, share it. If you are both visually stimulated, keep your eyes peeled – the bonus here is that you will get turned on, too.

But that’s just one sense – the visual. Remember when you were a young pup and you heard that something like 90% of massages end in sex? Well, obviously that statistic isn’t true (otherwise massage therapists would be in another line of work), but there is something both thrilling and soothing about being touched in a loving way by the person you care about – whether it leads to sex in that particular instance or not.

After all, not every act to “set the mood” has to end in sex. The relaxation and sensuousness of touching and relaxing might not reap benefits until the next morning or two evenings hence. But they will come.

Here are a few more delicious tips for an eco-minded girl to get her groove on:

Simple, fresh food that encourages the two of you to really savor whatever you’re eating and will get you keyed into your senses. Just sharing a meal that’s made from local, organic ingredients in a no-distractions environment will allow you to connect. This meal shouldn’t be something that requires hours by one of you slaving over stove, and should be something that’s not too filling and hits all the major flavor faves of you and your love. If it’s summer, think of a salad packed with farm-fresh ingredients, including local cheeses, beans and a variety of vegetables. In winter, a warm one-pot stew will fill you up without weighing you down.

Make your bedroom into a clean and dreamy lair for sex, sleep and relaxation. It’s almost impossible to do any of the above (or the below) while things are beeping, distracting and otherwise demanding your attention (this includes children). So, keep the kids out and turn the machines off. Every couple deserves to have a place that’s just for them, and frankly, you’ll be more likely to tune into each other if there isn’t much else going on. Reading is allowed, especially if erotic prose turns you on, but shouldn’t be used as a distraction. Invest in natural, organic, supersoft textures and linens to cozy up in.

Making out is totally underrated. Unlike teenage suck-face sessions, everyone now knows how to kiss. Enjoy your lover’s lips, the way their hands feel on your body and vice versa, the warmth or cool of their skin compared to yours. Noticing these smaller stimulations releases endorphins (and will most likely turn you on). Let it lead to something more. Or not. Sometimes a good make-out session can be incredibly satisfying in and of itself. It’s okay to leave yourself wanting more, but not indulging. That’s fine.

No pressure is the last rule. Anticipation of sex is hot. Expectation is not. Thinking that you failed just because you didn’t have simultaneous mind-blowing orgasms is disappointing. Which means that you’ll be less likely to get caught in the flow the next time around (tomorrow, potentially!). Enjoy yourself, your beloved, and whatever your kink or vanilla may be. The best part about having a partner is that you get to do it again in an hour, in the middle of the night, or tomorrow morning before work. Besides, it’s always fun to be surprised when those head-exploding climaxes happen upon your sex life.

Image: brina_head