And you thought we’d never ask.

We know that sex, at its most basic function, perpetuates us—or at least, creatures that sort of look like us. Aside from peopling, we enjoy sex for other reasons, none more popular of course than the fact that it feels, really, really good. Whether alone, with a loved one, or with several people, a healthy sexual encounter makes us feel instantly better—even somewhat renewed and more confident. It’s a soul reset button. And the big question some are asking: can it also save the human race?

There have been many credible scientific studies done on sex and its effects on the human brain and body. We know it can improve immune function, improve sleep, help keep weight off, boost mood, make us happier and nicer. It can even make us look younger, too. During the intensity of orgasm, we experience complete opulence, freedom from pain, and a temporary loss of awareness of our ego. These are important things, not just for our own personal health and relationships, but they also effect how we interact with the world around us.

Bonobos, those lesser-known chimpanzee-looking distant cousins of ours are renowned for their use of sex to reduce tension and conflict. They explore homosexuality with reckless abandon. Vanessa Woods, author of “Bonobo Handshake” says the animals “hold the key to a world without war.”

While humans are more frequently compared to the more violent chimpanzee, Woods says we also share nearly 99 percent of the same DNA with bonobos. “Their physiology, biochemistry, and psychology is set up to avoid violence. The fact that sex is their mechanism to reduce tension is irrelevant. We need to study the hell out of bonobos and use our big fat brains to find our own mechanism so we can live peacefully,” says Woods.

So, why don’t we?

In our fast-moving modern world, many seekers are eschewing the “old” paradigm of relationships: one man, one woman, until death. They’re exploring multiple partners, regardless of gender or sexual preference. Author and philosopher Daniel Pinchbeck writes, “Doesn’t it seem, sometimes, that we have not yet explored even a fraction of our erotic potential? It still feels that life as we live it today continues under tremendous constraint and suppression of instinct.” And he’s not alone. The polyamorous movement is growing. (Don’t confuse polyamory with polygamy. It’s not, like the television show “Big Love” portrays, one man with several wives. That’s still patriarchal–where the man may be free to have multiple partners, but women are more or less, subservient. )

Polyamory, also known as “open relationships,” allows for open sexual exploration, without jealousy and possessiveness. In theory, anyway. How that differs from, say, your college partying years is that adult polyamorous relationships are a bit more transparent, and may overlap. And regardless of whether or not having multiple partners seems to be too cumbersome, it’s what’s beyond that layer of judgement that’s getting the most attention. Pinchbeck asks: “What if loving someone meant you trusted them completely and wanted them to have any non-harmful experience they truly desired, without any judgment at all? Is there a way to explore this authentically and vulnerably, without setting off society’s alarm bells so immediately, without setting one’s self up for personal attacks?”

Pinchbeck cites visits to Portugal’s Tamera community and books written by the founders that focus on the importance of the tribe rather than the isolated family, “a sharing-based and non-possessive model of love and sexuality is possible within a community that is exploring this as a spiritual practice and with a deeper intention to create peace on earth.”

We live in a country where homosexuality is still seen as a defect (or worse, a “sin”) by millions. That gay marriage is an issue speaks to an even bigger issue with regard to our fears and judgments about sex. And heaven forbid someone brings up transgender…Like Pinchbeck says, what if we loved and trusted each other enough to allow each other to have whatever non-harmful erotic experiences we desired?

If our sexual suppression and misguided exploitations (I’m talking to you, beer commercials and Republicans who think women can “auto-abort”) were to be replaced by healthy encouragement and support, what kind of world would we be living in? This is not an invitation to lewd and outlandish orgies where disrespect and force play dominant roles. But it can involve multiple partners and homosexual encounters. Healthy sexual encouragement can also happen in monogamous relationships, too (my personal preference). Regular intimacy between two people can be deeply satisfying. But as a culture, there’s clearly a disconnect from our  sexuality, and an opportunity for us to heal through shared intimacy. Which may be why Pinchbeck and others are so curious about exploring open relationships. It’s panacea to the depraved and deeply unsatisfying sexual culture we’ve cultivated both in private and in public.

We’re at our most vulnerable and empowered during sex—naked, letting go, giving in to pure feeling and connection. It’s scary and thrilling, and the deeper we go without judging, the better it feels. And perhaps, the faster we can heal our wounds around sexuality. Says Pinchbeck, “this can only be done on an authentic and transparent basis where our desires are not repressed or hidden… they can be mastered, rather than controlled.” Perhaps it’s clarified best by someone who doesn’t even have sex, Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, who said: “You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free.”

Find Jill on Twitter and Instagram

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ColumnHow do we tease apart the fundamental differences between jealousy and desire, when they are often literally and figuratively in bed together? It may seem impossible to avoid jealousy in relationships, but the polyamory community may be able to teach you a thing or two about the green monster.

A thread of fear, rage, humiliation, and abandonment: jealousy is a many-headed hydra that wells up in us from what feels like the primordial seat of our soul. It’s that dread rising up from your belly into your chest. It can make you feel like you’re going to disappear.

It’s easy to assume our jealousy in relationships comes from elsewhere – specifically from our partner’s behavior. After all, advice columns about jealousy tend to rehash the same tired territory. They’re often about an unusually jealous boyfriend who thinks his partner is cheating whenever she’s five minutes late, or accidentally glances at the waiter too long. (Note: that man is dangerous and you should probably leave him at the salad bar.) Can other people “make us” feel jealous? Or is this solely a projection of our own insecurities – relics of patterns that echo our relationship with our parents? What’s really beneath that terrible, if familiar sensation?

How we respond to jealousy says much about its essential source. Sometimes, if we’re with our partner, we say something cutting. If we’re alone, scanning through an exes’ flirty Facebook communiqués with “some girl” we might ask our friend to read them, seeking validation in our growing insecurity cum rage. Post-coitally, we might wonder if we performed well enough with a new or regular lover – is he/she thinking about someone else right now? Did they fantasize while we were making love?

There’s even the jealousy in relationships born of being with a partner who claims not to be jealous. (I have an ex who always said he wasn’t jealous, and it drove me nuts.)

In a culture (now a global culture) in which advertising drives our self-worth, and the concept of ownership informs every waking moment of our lives – is it such a surprise that we’d think we “own” our lovers, too? Compulsory monogamy is a product of capitalism, much the way that sneakers are a product of Nike. Your bare feet may not really need them, but boy oh boy – you believe you do in every cell of your body. Same for monogamous relationships – there’s a growing body of literature about why the marriage industrial complex was born.

You know who has a really sophisticated take on the subject of jealousy? The polyamory community. I’m not poly, but I’m intellectually with them 100 percent – they are incredibly evolved on the subject of sexuality. Think of their stance as the Paleo version of dating, mating, and relating. But even if you can’t imagine yourself ever experimenting with juggling multiple lovers at once, there’s much that these pioneers can teach you about feeling less jealous of your one and only. If anyone knows how to tame jealousy in relationships, it’s those who have multiple partners.

The best way to wrap your brain around the poly jealousy tutorial is to understand a concept that seems to have been invented by them – it’s called compersion. Compersion is defined by modernpoly.com as: “the experience of taking pleasure in the knowledge that one’s partner is experiencing pleasure, even if the source of their pleasure is other than yourself. The feeling may or may not be sexual.”

Ever felt it? There is definitely a learning curve here. Experiment – next time jealousy wells up in you, try flipping the script – what if you could feel joy instead of resentment? Much like meditation, when your mantra gets lost in a tangle of to-do lists and daily worries, you gently come back to it. Try that with compersion. Is there something your partner says or does that makes you smile? A gesture or sound or shows his/her pleasure? Now imagine yourself tasting that sweetness when he is talking to a pretty woman, and potentially enjoying it.

Here is what my poly friends have taught me about taming jealousy:

COMMUNICATE. That’s the key to everything. Don’t stew in your insecurity – talk about it, even if you feel silly. But don’t rage about it – wait until you can bring it up in a sensitive, non-accusatory way. After all – it’s probably about you, not about your partner. Remember that your feelings are rational – because they are your feelings. Don’t be mean to yourself about them. You’re working through them now and getting to the root of the dynamic.

Jealousy shouldn’t evoke guilt, but it often loops back on itself and makes you feel worse than you would if you were simply feeling jealous. Be gentle with yourself – this is a vulnerable moment. And then, when it comes back, as it inevitably will — just try it again. This ain’t your first rodeo (with jealousy) but it can be the beginning of a healthy, human, loving practice. It may do more than just heal your relationship – it could end up healing your relationship with yourself.

Got a question for Stefanie? Email  stefanie at ecosalon dot com and she’ll answer it in the next Sexual Healing column.

Keep in touch with Stefanie on Twitter: @ecosexuality

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ColumnI enjoy a good laugh at the expense of GOOP and Gwyneth Paltrow as much as the next person; it’s fairly irresistible material. After GP announced her breakup with Chris Martin this week, terming it “conscious uncoupling,” there was a viral pile-on of inevitable Paltrow-bashing  — but this is one bandwagon I’m not hopping on.

The now-infamous GOOP post about Martin and Paltrow’s impending divorce is embarrassingly New Age-y and steeped in various Chopra-isms, but before we throw “conscious uncoupling” out with the Italian Sparkling Mineral Water, let’s unpack what it really means. Of course, all the talk of insects and exoskeletons in the post made my exoskeleton crawl. Question for another day: Why do people insist on trying to fit everything they feel, do, see and experience into a version of the Paleo diet?

I know its hard, but let’s stop cracking jokes at Paltrow’s expense and look at our own messy lives for a moment. In many ways “conscious uncoupling” is simply shorthand for breaking up without completely breaking down (or breaking your ex-partner’s head, window, or stereo system – take your pick). It’s separating your lives without including all the ugliness we associate with divorce. It may seem nearly impossible to uncouple with grace, perhaps because we all watched “Kramer vs. Kramer” one too many times. Yet breaking up with a partner doesn’t require a war footing – even if you have good reasons to be angry at your ex.

To me, the root of “conscious uncoupling” is less about endings than it is about beginnings. If there is consciousness at the start, there is likely to be more groundedness and wisdom at the (inexorable) end. To me, conscious uncoupling is a doorway to unlearning everything you’ve ever been taught about love, romance, sex and the way relationships are forged. It’s about disentangling yourself from the complete rom-com-ification of your psyche — knowing that your life is not a fairy tale, and that finding your “one and only” is not your life’s purpose. Most of all, it’s about becoming less binary, and truly understanding why we’re not really built for monogamy. (Note to Gwyneth: this has little to do with grasshoppers.)

Perhaps our addiction to the dramatic, angry, vengeful breakup stems from our deeply misguided conception of love itself. Marriage, that sacred institution, will continue in an endless loop toward the inevitable fifty percent divorce rate if we continue to seek mates the way our ancestors did (and I don’t mean our Paleolithic ones). After all, marriage is a merely a convention – an apparatus birthed by capitalism that indicates ownership of property. We’re choosing our own partners now (at least we think we are – I’d argue that consumerism plays a huge role in our mating dance) but we’re still enmeshed in the constructs and contracts of the Victorian Age.

And as much as we’ve advanced since the first sexual revolution of the 1960s, relationships are one arena in which we’ve made much less progress than we think we have. Sure, women aren’t chattel anymore, but we continue to announce betrothals with engagement rings, a blingy down payment on a future sex partner. Considering the way we treat sex workers, it’s rather interesting that few balk at the idea of men symbolically buying their future brides with diamonds. Just sayin’.

These are institutionalized conventions that we haven’t shed yet, and it may be a while before we do. Before we can leave the antiquated concept of marriage to the annals of history, we have to first make it legal for all humans – we’re at least working towards that. Besides, it’s helpful for filing taxes.

I know I mention “Sex at Dawn” ad naseum in this column, but the poly community has a lot to teach us about jealousy, ego, and co-dependence – the downfall of many a short and long-term relationship. There’s a term often used in the poly community called “compersion” defined on Wikipedia as: “… an empathetic state of happiness and joy experienced when another individual experiences happiness and joy.” So instead of feeling jealous when our partner experiences pleasure from a source other than us, we feel pleasure derived from their pleasure.

Think about that for a moment. Do you feel joy when your partner does? Or does the idea of your lover experiencing happiness unrelated to your body, your ideas or thoughts or worldview, make you a little bit uncomfortable? What all of this really comes down to is that in an ideally balanced world, one where “consciousness” is not just a buzzword, we’d embark on relationships already whole. It is when we take our broken selves and try to solder them back together via a relationship that we fail. Not that we need to be whole before experiencing love — that would mean that very few of us would get the chance to be in relationships, as wholeness is a lifelong project.

The issue here, and the one embedded in the concept of “conscious uncoupling,” is that wholeness can only come from within. No partner can make you whole, even if you temporarily believe that to be the case. If you seek validation (sexual or otherwise) from others — you’ll always come crashing back to down to Earth, utterly defeated. Instead, the life-project, the bucket-list item, should not be “finding love” unless it starts with finding authentic self-love first.

We are fixated on forever, and we need to loosen our grip. Some of us will find and partner with people who will be our life-long loves. Some will even manage to have a thriving sex life for decades, even though this is quite rare. Some will be intentional serial monogamists (like me). Some would rather be alone, either after a long marriage, or no marriage at all. So let us go forward consciously coupling, uncoupling, and whatever comes in between. As long as we know that nothing is, or should be, forever.

Got a question for Stefanie? Email stefanie at ecosalon dot com and she’ll answer it in the next Sexual Healing column.

Keep in touch with Stefanie on Twitter: @ecosexuality

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Got a burning question for Stefanie, Ecosalon’s resident sex expert? Once a month, she’ll be posting a Sexual Healing Q & A in these pages, so whatever’s on your mind — bring it on. Today we discuss variations in sexual identity. Email your questions to: stefanie at ecosalon dot com. Or tweet your question to @ecosexuality.

Hello Stefanie,

Throughout my life I’ve had a wide range of sexual experiences. Looking back, it might have been so that I could figure out in which niche I belonged.

When I was 14 I was obsessed with losing my virginity. When I did, I regretted it but proceeded to use sex as a tool to hopefully get my classmates interested in me (they weren’t). In college I jumped from one long-term relationship to the next and was often quite bored with having sex with these men. So I tried to spice it up by becoming interested in BDSM. I realized that I wasn’t even getting off to the sexuality of it, but something else entirely. I had one summer where I flirted with the idea of being lesbian. I had a couple drunken nights of exciting gay sex, but it never went anywhere and I didn’t ever seek it again.

Almost all my relationships (save one) I felt that sex was just something that you do, and in a way I owed it to them because they desired me, so it was unfair if I didn’t desire them. There was one person where it was innocent and delightful and absolutely pleasurable sex. But just one person.

However, I like to kiss and cuddle with friends who I love and respect as a way to show my affection/connect with them on a deeper level. In my ideal world, I would be trapped by no one person, but have love for everyone and just keep it at kissing and cuddling.

Here’s where it gets even weirder- when I masturbate, I think of nature. I imagine zooming through dappled-sun canopies of dripping wet rainforests, tumbling down a waterfall as a drop of water, laying in tall grass as a thunderstorm pounded down around me. I imagine flowers blooming and the sun sparkling. I have never been able to orgasm at the thought of sex, even when I tried to trick myself.

So what would I identify as…a polyamorous asexual ecosexual? Or just a damn wood nymph?

– Lost in the Woods

Dear Lost,

Thank you for letter — I want to start by saying there is NOTHING weird about what you’ve revealed here. It’s all perfectly normal – but I understand that you’re vexed by not knowing where you fit in.

We humans are so fond of labels – they help us figure out where (and to whom) we belong. Finding one’s tribe is incredibly important – it’s hard to be the only star-bellied Sneetch on the beach, just to Dr. Suessify things for a moment. But sometimes getting caught up in labels stops us from knowing who we truly are.

Categories of sexual identity serve an important function in a hetero-normative world – especially for those people who don’t fit perfectly into the most accepted category for gender and orientation. You know that you’re not a typical woman with typical needs, so you’ve gone down a list of possible “isms” you might be or desire.

You say that when you were 14 your were obsessed with losing your virginity, then tried some (uninteresting) long-term relationships, then BDSM, then dabbled in lesbianism briefly. It seems like you’ve been trying on sexual identities like people try out different styles – from boho to goth to punk. This is incredibly common – and not at all weird. But you didn’t identify with any of them – none came from your pure desire, just from your interest in pleasing others or fitting in. Many women have sex for years to please others, and only come to the idea of pleasing themselves later in life.

Finding our sexual identity can take time — it’s a journey, and honestly it never ends. You may stop at a certain spot on the road for a while because it pleases you — but it won’t necessarily feel good or right forever. Women tend to be sexually fluid — most people think of “fluidity” in terms of sleeping with both genders, but I argue that it can mean more than that. We are quite stuck, culturally, in a construct that allows for only binary gender and thus, a limited understanding of the great variety of orientations we might have.

Eroticizing the Earth — trees, rain, grass, waterfalls — this is as normal as nature itself, even if it’s not the kind of thing you see on the latest episode of Scandal. My friends Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens are pioneers of the Ecosex movement. Trust me when I tell you that there are many, many people who are turned on by the sensuality of the outdoors. Some might call it a fetish, but as we find ourselves living on a warming planet with a daily routine that revolves around smartphones and computers — wanting to make love to the Earth sounds just about right.

Polyamory is gaining wider and wider acceptance – there are even television shows and Marie Claire articles about the poly lifestyle these days – it’s almost mainstream. Poly types tend to be so open-minded sexually that a nature fetish wouldn’t surprise them at all. The same goes for asexuality — that’s why there is now an A in LGBTQIA.

But still I wonder if there’s something you’re not facing. You said there was that one person with whom you had “innocent, delightful, and absolutely pleasurable sex” – what was it about this individual? I’m very interested in the word “innocent” here – and wonder why you chose it – were the other sexual relationships somehow less than innocent for you? Maybe this is why you couldn’t connect sexually with your other lovers. Is there something deeper in your sexual history – before you lost your virginity, that speaks to this idea of innocence?

You may end up in a polyamorous relationship with a group of people who respect your affection for cuddling, ones that will never expect you to perform unwanted sexual acts for or with them. And you can always bring yourself to orgasm in your own way. You don’t need to trick yourself into a sexual indentity- you just need to be okay with who you are. So it’s not about where you fit on the spectrum of labels, from LGBTQIA to poly to wood nymph. How you label yourself matters little — as long as you find a tribe that embraces you for who you are, and never shames you for what you want.

xo Stefanie

Got a question for Stefanie? Email stefanie@ecosalon.com and she’ll answer it in the next Sexual Healing column.

Keep in touch with Stefanie on Twitter: @ecosexuality

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The post The Many Layers of Sexual Identity – Your Burning Questions Answered: Sexual Healing appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnGot a burning question for Stefanie, Ecosalon’s resident sex expert? Once a month, she’ll be doing a Sexual Healing Q & A in these pages, so whatever’s on your mind — bring it on. Today we discuss polyamory, fetishes, and what “normal” means. Email your questions to: stefanie at ecosalon dot com. Or tweet your question to @ecosexuality.

Dear Stefanie,

I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about the “polyamory” lifestyle from my hippie-dippie, kale-obsessed, yoga freak friends. God love them – they’ll try anything. I’ve been in a relationship with my boyfriend for three years – approaching four this winter. I’m not open to sharing him with anyone else – I’m pretty jealous even when a chick looks at him on the street.

The thing is, I can’t seem to get excited about having sex with him anymore – this started happening like a year and a half ago. I’ll still do it (twice a week usually) but it makes me sad that I’m not as into it as I used to be. I can still orgasm, but I miss the butterflies that I used to get when he touched me — it’s just routine now. The other thing that’s weirding me out is that I’m attracted – like really attracted — to this guy at my office, and I often fantasize about him. So if my boyfriend, whom I love and probably want to marry, wanted to share ME through polyamory– I’d be all over it. Am I actually a polyamory girl in a prudish girl’s guise? Is this preoccupation with polyamory normal? What do I do?

Signed,

Poly(anna)

Hi Poly,

First – it’s absolutely, positively normal. In our sex lives, most everything is “normal” – except activities that take place beyond consent. As I’ve written about previously, monogamy, though  it’s deeply embedded in our culture as a norm, is probably not biologically “normal” anyway. Losing your initial desire for a guy that you were once mad for is perfectly normal – and very common. Despite the fact that polyamory is trending right now (there are even TV shows about it) doesn’t mean that it’s for you, personally. The good news for all of us is that we are in the middle of what feels like a second Sexual Revolution right now – led by the LGBTQIA community, who have shown the rest of us how to live beyond the bounds of hetero-normative cultural rules. No matter how much your sexual trajectory has thus far been dictated by notions of finding the “the one” and commencing your own little happily ever after, you can find space in the new world that’s being created. This should be a healthy, happy, guilt-free space where you get to experience maximum pleasure without hurting anyone.

Typical answers for your question would go something like this: “Get a sex toy,” “try bondage,” “create space for intimacy,” etc. But you’re smart – you’ve already thought of all that. The better answer for your questions about polyamory is that communication fixes everything, even if it breaks you up. Fess up to your feelings – at least tell him that you need more in bed, to start. You don’t have to go into total confessional mode and tell him about the dude from work, especially if he’s sensitive about this sort of thing. But if you’ve been living a lie in bed with your man – faking it to please him – you’re denying yourself the pleasure that is your birthright. Don’t live your life that way for one more second.

xoStefanie

Dear Stefanie,

The guy I’m dating (dating may be too strong a word – sleeping with is more apt) is all over the map. When we first met, he was so hot (and hot for me) that I slept with him the first night. I have no shame about this – I hate those stupid “don’t give away the milk for free” types – it’s my milk and I’ll do whatever I want with it. Anyway, we’ve been seeing each other about two months, and the sex continues to be awesome. But lately in post-coital conversation he’s been saying stuff that makes me super uncomfortable. He asked me how many guys I’ve been with and I told him with no qualms. I’m thirty-four and I’ve never thought for a second that there was anything untoward about my “number.”

I have to admit that I’m kind of sexually addicted to this guy (like, I’ll always show up when he texts me because I can’t say no). Since he first asked me the question, it’s given me some pause about my history, for the first time in adult sexual life. If it were just one question I wouldn’t have thought about it again, but he’s been harping on it, and I don’t like the way his voice sounds when he talks about me and other men. He’s also into some very porn-y things, which I don’t really take issue with, but I wonder if they’re related to where he’s going with his line of questioning, because his preference is for scenes where a girl is cheating and her husband walks in. He also likes me to talk about other men while we’re having sex sometimes. It boils down to him wanting me to tell him that he’s the best I’ve ever had, I get that part of the psychology. Fine, I can do that (he’s actually kind of up there) but it’s weird. Does he have a fetish, and if so, should I be concerned?

Thanks,

Can’t Say No

Hi Can’t,

There’s a lot going on here, so you should prepare to do some thinking about what it means for not just this relationship, but your sex/love life in general. He may indeed have a fetish, which is “normal” (see above question/answer about polyamory) but can still be hard for his lovers (you, in this case) to accept. This fetish is called cuckolding. He may not realize this is an actual fetish, but it’s still worth having a conversation about – gently and lovingly. It may be best not to have this talk in your usual sexual context — try opening the dialogue about cuckolding out of bed, over a meal, fully clothed. There is often something that needs to be psychologically unpacked where a cuckolding fetish exists, but again, that doesn’t mean it’s not “normal.” If he accommodates your needs in bed, too — you may be able to live with this as long as the two of you remain lovers.

The other thing that I’d like you to look more closely at here is the way you describe yourself as “kind of sexually addicted to this guy.” It’s all well and good to be totally smitten by someone so much that you can’t get enough, but here’s an important question for you — do you have a pattern of getting addicted to new lovers that don’t quite show up for you in the same way? You say he texts, you arrive — that’s the bit that I want you to explore. If you text — will he arrive? Or will he only show up when it’s convenient for him? You are clearly sexually liberated and get a gold star for your feminism (even if you don’t call it that). But sometimes our core issues with self-esteem interfere with our sex lives, no matter how strongly we identify with what’s right, fair, just, and appropriate. That’s what you’re working on, Can’t, and I trust that you’re going to get all your needs met.

xoStefanie

Got a question for Stefanie? Email stefanie@ecosalon.com and she’ll answer it in the next Sexual Healing column.

Keep in touch with Stefanie on Twitter: @ecosexuality

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