I received the most amusing email from a friend who met someone on our site. He needed a bit of encouragement at first and now he keeps me informed as to how the relationship is moving along.

Dear FeelingFlirty,

The love of my life (I hope) invited me to her place last Sunday night for dinner. She was going to cook veal with pasta - some Greek dish. The way she described it, I was going to be in foodie heaven and I couldn’t wait.

I got all cleaned up and headed over to her place and then remembered your advice, and stopped off for just one red rose. (Thanks for that, it was a winner!)

When I got to her apartment I could smell something wonderful and I could feel saliva filling my mouth like a bucketful of water in an empty hole. There she was all cute and wearing an apron and I had stars in my eyes. Ahhh…

We had a drinkie or two and she made some appetizers that she bought frozen and popped in the oven. Nothing exciting about any of these. I’m not impressed by anything foodwise that I can do for myself.

Then the main course was on the table and it looked impressive. The meat was in big chunks and the sauce was thick and red and the pasta looked perfectly cooked.

I took a bite. I needed a fucking fire hose.

“What did you put in the sauce, gunpowder?”

I thought I had melted my lips off, I swear to God.

“Does that mean you won’t eat it after I spent all day cooking?” she asked.

I took a second or two to answer because I had huge expectations of getting laid later but even that wasn’t worth losing my lips, gums and stomach. (Not to mention my asshole tomorrow.)

“Sweetheart, I think I’m just not made for Greek food. It must be my American heritage or something, it just doesn’t set well with me,” I said quietly.

“Oh, what can I get for you instead?”

I told her I could probably whip up some scrambled eggs for myself because I wasn’t really hungry. I couldn’t let her do it. Scrambled eggs a la bonfire coming right up.

I think I’m really falling for her but I can’t go through life not eating, so any suggestions?

Megaman

According to Pala and Al at 4 Freedoms Relationship Tantra, more and more couples are going back to the ancient arts of sacred sexuality. Since 1987 they’ve been sexual mentors to more people than you can count with a calculator to help them:

• Develop communication that satisfies you both.
• Become a skillful, sexy lover
• Bring sensual-spiritual pleasure to every aspect of your lives.
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• Become the best you can be, together.

They offer weekend retreats at their place in Canada where they teach all this and they also offer Caribbean cruises (that’s the one for me!). This is not an orgy in a different dress, they say on their site that you don’t undress in front of other people. It’s all for you and it’s all good.

Al and Pala have written four books and five e-books and to get you started they offer a free e-book of Kama Sutra sex positions. It’s ancient knowledge in a modern manual. If you want to get that free book for yourself while you’re checking out their site, Tantra-sex.com.

If any of my wonderful readers have been to one of these seminars I would LOVE some comments.

That’s what my best friend Christine says when she talks about the available men in our city. She should know - she’s the flirtiest person I know, outside of myself, of course. So what does that say about the available men - why aren’t any of them “good ones”?

I think there are still good ones out there, folks. My mother (and everyone else’s mother) always said there were more fish in the sea. She never said that the only fish left were the bottom feeders.

So what gives Christine and so many others the idea that all the good ones are taken? I suspect it’s all tied up in our genetic makeup. That and maybe the grass is always greener on someone else’s lawn.

I see women having affairs with married men and I wonder if there is a perception that since his wife chose him, he must have been really ok at some point and if she’d treated him better he wouldn’t be looking around. This is something I disagree with. Maybe his wife chose badly.

What do the available men have to do in order to be considered a good one? If you take the question, Are all the good ones taken, and stretch your mind around it a bit, what it says is we want something we can’t have. So with that in mind, check to see if any of these hit home.

• Don’t hover. Not even a little bit.
• Have a life of your own without her and you won’t need her to be with you constantly, nor will you need to know what she’s doing every moment. If it works between you, you won’t need to consume her.
• Treat her as an equal human being with respect and enjoy being with her. (Women love this.)
• Put in 50% of the effort when dating. Don’t make her decide where to go, when to go, what to do, what to eat, nor should you make all the decisions. It’s fun to share and by sharing you learn what each of you enjoys.
• Let her know you value her opinion on everything, even if you don’t agree with her.
• Be her friend. Listen to her while she talks out her problems. No need to give a solution, just listen.

It also wouldn’t hurt if you could take care of bugs and spiders.

A close friend of mine has been in what I call a disolving relationship for over a year. They no longer communicate much and when they do it’s barely civil. Why do they stay together? It’s for the children, they say. Of course it is.

I look at these kids who seem to be crying out for peace and happiness. The kids are teenagers so they are pretty cluey as to what’s going on. So what IS the best time to end it? How do you know for sure that there isn’t a chance to save it all?

There is not one best time I don’t think. If you are involved in an unhealthy relationship and that could be a romantic relationship like my friends or a work situation or a bust-up with a family member, don’t wait til you are so negative that you hurt people you love. You might find yourself nitpicking at your kids, no patience with your husband or wife or snappy at work. This is just going to add to the misery that’s your life right now. If you’re in a shit situation, it’s time to remove yourself.

I know when I left home, my kids were teenagers and the week after we left my son said, “Have you noticed how peaceful it is now?” Poor kid felt like he was walking on egg shells for months. I felt terribly guilty.

When you’re in an abusive or unhealthy relationship every day seems a month long. You find yourself on the brink of despair and can’t imagine reaching your goals. Don’t wait til you start believing all the negative words spoken against you because then you’ll need superhuman energy to leave.

If you’re staying for the kids, make sure that it’s what’s best for your kids. It’s not better for them to live in strife and confusion day in and day out. Having them happy with you and happy with their other parent can be much better in the long run. They can’t learn what a loving relationship is where they are.

There is no job worth being unhappy about long term. Every job is pretty crap in some way, that’s why they call it work. If you find that you don’t feel good about yourself or you find you’re forcing yourself to get up and go to work, start looking for another job.

Family is very important but if a family member is causing pain for you, make the split and separate yourself from this person. You can always come back and sort it out down the road, but you’ve given yourself some breathing (and healing) room.

Remember, you are the most important person in your life. Always. When you’re ok, then you have the time, energy and love to give to others and they will be a zillion times happier. There is no joy in being a martyr.

Peace. Love. Out.

So much is written about women who get married and then lose all desire for sex. I hear it day in and day out from men as the biggest reason they are looking for a new relationship or for a bit of sex on the side. Is it true? DO women lose all desire for sex the month after they say, “I do”?

I don’t think so.

I read a blog the other day that said “researchers say that womens’ libido plummets rapidly when they are in a secure relationship.” Hamburg-Eppendorf University interviewed 530 men and women in Germany. They say that mens’ libido “rarely flagged in over 40 years of marriage.”

I don’t believe it.

Every person’s sexuality and desire for sex waxes and wanes just like our appetite for everything else. We’re always changing. In my personal experience my partners have all gone through times when they could hump like rabbits without stopping to times when once or twice a week was fine.

They found that 1/2 of women over 30 who’d been married about 4 years didn’t want regular sex. Ok, if they’ve been married 4 years there’s a big likelihood that there are new babies involved. Who wants sex (or anything else that requires physical effort) when you’re totally exhausted?

You’re up half the night and can’t rest during the day. Your husband assumes since you’re home all day that you have plenty of time to do the shopping, cleaning, laundry, cooking, caring for the baby AND look like a million dollars full of sexual desire when he walks through the door after a day at work. If someone had asked me how much I liked sex during my first year as a mother I’d have said, “no thanks, I’d prefer a nap.”

Then you have the older woman who seems not to want sex. I say seems because that’s what I think it is. She’s probably got older kids and she’s got a full time job. She gets up in the morning, feeds the kids, cleans up the breakfast dishes, fixes the lunches, gets everyone to the school bus and she gets to her job without a minute to spare. She works all day, rushes to the market to get fixings for dinner and goes home. Rarely does her husband help. Not because he is lazy but he just never thinks of offering to help. His dad never helped.

After dinner she does the cleaning up while he watches the news. She helps the kids with homework while he surfs the net and then she puts in a load of washing and gets the kids bathed and in bed. Clothes into the dryer and then she sorts out what everyone will wear the next day. Finally she runs a quick vacuum over the carpet and heads to bed.

Does this woman feel sexy?

Probably not. She feels tired and taken for granted.

Do all women have this experience? Absolutely not. There are MANY men who realize that a marriage is a partnership and they work together to get everything done so they both have time for themselves. They also realize that caring for and about the children is their job too. Bathing, reading, kissing owies, changing diapers, walks in the park are things they do. They don’t consider it babysitting - it’s parenting. Men like this are most always adored by their wives. I’ve said it heaps of times but a man emptying the dishwasher is the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen. He validates me and says everything I do is as important as the work he does.

What’s your experience?