Comments you’ll hear on Thanksgiving day. Swingers?

“Whew, that’s one terrific spread!”
“I’m in the mood for a little dark meat.”
“Tying the legs together keeps the inside moist.”
“Talk about a huge breast!”
“It’s Cool Whip time!”
“If I don’t undo my pants, I’ll burst!”
“Are you ready for seconds yet?”
“Are you going to come again next time?”
“It’s a little dry, do you still want to eat it?”
“Just wait your turn, you’ll get some!”
“Don’t play with your meat.”
“Just spread the legs open &stuff it in.”
“Do you think you’ll be able to handle all these people at once?”
“I didn’t expect everyone to come at once!”
“You still have a little bit on your chin.”
“Use a nice smooth stroke when you whip it.”
“How long will it take after you stick it in?”
“You’ll know it’s ready when it pops up.”
“Wow, I didn’t think I could handle all of that!”
“How many are coming?”
“That’s the biggest one I’ve ever seen!”
“Just lay back &take it easy…I’ll do the rest.”
“How long do I beat it before it’s ready?”
“Let’s do it in the Dining Room”

I was perusing some blogs over the weekend and I found one that in my opinion is laughable. This bird believes that anyone who views porn is guilty of cheating on their partner or spouse. Really. I wonder how she feels about people who have real sex with someone else. I bet they have to wear shirts painted with scarlet letters and hang tin cans off their asses.

Let me be clear on this, I disagree with nearly all this woman has to say. If you think your partner, husband or wife is viewing too much porn and you need to know for sure, answering these questions with a yes means you’re in deep shit, relationshipwise. OR, you can think like I do and if your mate is watching too much porn, you talk about it. Find out what is causing that need in them. I suspect people surf the net, watch porn or chat online because they’re filling a need, whether it’s to waste time, feel titillated or feel noticed. Here’s a bit about what she had to say.

• Your partner is not as social as he used to be.

I can’t believe that porn is the biggest reason someone isn’t social any more. Maybe the job is shit or the kid got picked up for driving without a license or their parent died or a gazillion other reasons.

• Your partner lacks interest in sex or is sexually unresponsive.

She said, “You’re noticing a decrease in physical affection and non-sexual touch. If you have sex, it’s because you are the one initiating it. Your partner is having trouble becoming sexually aroused (for example, achieving erection or having an orgasm).

Let’s see, how about they gained weight and don’t feel sexy any more, or you’ve put on weight and you’re not so attractive any more, or sex has become boring or they asked so many times and were refused that they don’t ask so much any more. Geez.

• Your partner is being uncharacteristically demanding or rough during sex.

Ok, maybe, and I mean a huge maybe, watching rough porn might make some guy want to try it out. Rough porn is not the most popular porn by a long shot, so let’s talk about the person who’s drunk off his ass and can’t tell whether he’s rough or not? How about watching too many cop shows where physical force is used to convince someone that their point of view is the only right one?

• Your partner does not seem “present.”

My hubby is a programmer and I’ll be damned if I didn’t think for years he was off with the fairies dreaming up new code but I must be wrong.. he’s watching too much porn! We’re together 24/7 and have been for years, so I think I’d have noticed. To blame this lack of being “in the moment” on porn is really grasping for straws, don’t you think?

• Your partner has started to nit-pick your appearance.

Well, when my man started talking about how I looked, he was right. I was overweight and because of that I didn’t feel sexy and I didn’t wear makeup or do the things I should have done to look my best. I didn’t watch porn. No, instead I lost the weight.

• You feel like you’re no longer getting straight answers from your lover.

Maybe they’re embezzling at work or maybe they have an online girlfriend or maybe a real one, or maybe they’re gambling it all away or maybe they’re drinking too much or addicted to drugs – all reasons for not telling the truth.

• Your partner is practically wed to the Internet.

Yep, all the people who are online hours and hours a day are all watching porn? I don thin so, Lucy. All those people who spend hours writing their blogs are secretly watching porn and stealing their content. I check out I can has cheezburger every day… I wonder if I’m wed to the internet.

• You’ve noticed a change in your partner’s demeanor.

She went on to say, “Feeling like a “sex pervert” can lead him to negative emotional outbursts such as picking fights and holding grudges in order to justify his secret porn use.”

Oh come on. What about people who work too much and are always tired and when they get home they’re blasted with problems with the kids, the lawn needs mowing, the kids need attention, and nobody can see that they’re drowning so they get bitchy. It happens to all of us at some point.

All of these problems could be sorted out by talking together. Stop the finger pointing and scolding and find out what’s really going on. You love this person, so help them out just as you’d hope they’d help you if the shoe was on the other foot.

While one person’s Don Juan is another person’s Frankenstein, surely there must be some sort of standard that we can all agree on? Helen Gurley Brown, author of Sex and the Single Girl, reckons the definition is simple: “She is a woman who likes sex.”

Yet when I asked friends to define what they thought was sexy, I got such a bevy of mixed responses, you’d wonder how the heck a man’s magazine would ever get it right.

“It’s personality as much as appearance,” said one woman.

“It’s having a killer body and knowing how to carry it off well,” chirped said one of my male friends.

“It’s all in the attitude,” my husband says.

If those pages of the mens’ mags are to be believed, sexiness can be described by the four B’s: boobs, butts, bikinis and Brazilians.

The guys in the group say that’s not so at all. What’s sexy is a woman, regardless of looks, who feels sexy herself.

As for the women? Sex appeal runs the gamut of someone intelligent, someone who can make you smile, someone who thinks of you as human, (opposed to a sex object) and finally, I have one friend who said a man with good shoes was sexy because it meant he paid attention to detail. (She IS a bit of a list maker.)

When the the ex-Miss Universe was asked what she thought was sexy she said, “High-heeled shoes for women, casual jeans for men, and being natural, not too pushy and oozing confidence.”

I’m not sure about the high-heeled shoes but she’s absolutely right about being natural and confident!

You know…there’s something about you I like. I can’t put my finger on it…but there’s something about you that makes you attractive.

You’ve got charisma!

How do I know? — You’ve got charisma because you’re open to the world around you and ready to learn new things that the universe has to offer. And if there’s one characteristic you always find in charismatic people, it’s openness.

You might not know that you have it but I can sense it.

Charisma is easy to spot. You could probably name a dozen “charismatic” people you know in politics, the entertainment industry, or your personal life. But even though it’s easy to spot, charisma isn’t so easy to break down into its key components.

The “It” Factor

It’s not so easy to identify exactly what it is about a person that makes him or her charismatic. You know when someone’s got “it;” you just can’t quite define what “it” is.

Charisma is an attractiveness that goes beyond good looks
– an appeal that can’t be labelled
– captivating quality that isn’t the result of simple intellectual brilliance or a terrific sense of humor.

Most people see charisma as something elusive and unachievable—a kind of magical, mysterious magnetism that you’re either born with or not. Nothing could be further from the truth!

You can develop your own charisma.

Charisma is defined as “a certain presence.” When a charismatic person enters a room, their mere presence draws attention and their energy may radiate to enliven the entire gathering. They have self-confidence and the ability to pass that on to others.

It does take some work to improve your charisma.
(Don’t worry…the work is actually fun)

1. You’ll get far more respect than the average person.
2. People will be drawn to you without any effort on your part.
3. You’ll exude self-confidence.
4. You’ll seem powerful without being intimidating.
5. You’ll put people at ease and make them feel understood.
6. And you’ll be able to easily get what you want, because people will instinctively want to help you.

Everyone in your surroundings will be influenced by you. People will seem happier when they’re around you. They’ll feel better about themselves as they try to emulate you.

Honestly, your charisma makes you irresistible.

Charismatic when speaking
We tend to equate charisma with a type of sex appeal or charm, but you can find charismatic leaders who were pretty darn unattractive. Look at British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, unarguably tremendously charismatic, but you wouldn’t choose him for a one-night-stand.

One ability of a charismatic person is eliciting images in the mind of a follower or acquaintance. Words that make it easy to “see” the message that someone is trying to get across.

Speak from within
You’re probably like most people; you don’t involve your body in your speaking. You take shallow breaths and when you speak, the resonance of your voice probably comes mainly out of your throat, neck and head. Practice deep breathing and let the sound come from deeper in your body.

Exercise: Open Up and Say Ahhhhh. Try breathing deeply and saying “ahhhh, ahhhh, ahhhh” with each breath, letting the sound come out of a lower place in your body. Then try speaking. You’ll find that your voice is more resonant and easier to listen to. Practice every day and after a while your habit of breathing will change, and your vocal tone will change along with it.

Speak with enthusiasm
Many people who have been told that they lack charisma have usually gotten into the habit of never showing any real excitement or emotion about anything.

Charismatic, attractive people, on the other hand, are good at conveying their enthusiasm about things in their lives by the way that they speak. You can learn to do this by practicing speaking excitedly about things.

Again, it’s by practice. Choose a topic and practice speaking about that topic with enthusiasm. Really let yourself go, and get excited about it! It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about sex, a recipe for brownies, baseball, your business, or world politics. The subject doesn’t matter nearly as much as your ability to convey your excitement about it.

Charismatic people know what they want
Many people who come across as boring and un-focused were not rewarded during their formative years for speaking with certainly or decisiveness. As a result, they’ve come to believe that the best way to get along in life was to stay “under the radar,” and to never appear too committed to anything

That’s okay if you just want to “get along” and you don’t mind being completely devoid of charisma, plus all the benefits that charisma brings.

If you’d rather do more than just get along, if you’d like to really be charismatic in your personal and business life, it’s time to start experimenting with speaking with certainty.

Things to do

I was chatting with a guy in one of the chatrooms yesterday and he was telling me that he’d been at SexyAds for nearly 4 years and had never been what he’d call successful in dating women. I’m always up for a challenge like that, and I had seen him in the chatroom on quite a few occasions so I knew he was truthful when he said he’d been around for a while. I looked up his details and then ran a scan of the mail logs for his nick. Sure enough in 4 years he had never sent ONE initial email. He’d answered a few but he’d never sent one. So I asked why.

He told me he’d have to be a VIP member to send an email so he just waited around til someone wrote to him. So I asked why again? Was the cost of the membership so much that he couldn’t afford it and if so, how did he plan to entertain a woman if he found one. He said that he felt that all sites were ripoffs and that he stayed at SexyAds because all the people seemed real and he could talk to them for nothing.

I had to bite my fingers or say something I’d regret, so I said that if the people seemed real and he got so much for free, why wouldn’t he consider upgrading to move things from the computer to real life? He said maybe he should think about that but he always hoped that the women would find his ad and write to him – somehow that would make them more sincere. Women don’t peruse the profiles as much as men hope they do. They don’t have to because the hunter in a man gets there first.

I asked him how many times had he been to a bar or club and had had tons of women try to pick him up? How about at parties? He had to admit that it had never happened that way, that he’d always had to make the first move.

Then he said what I was waiting for, “Ok, Maureen, I get it.” He joined and wrote to about 30 women that interested him and he got 5 replies within 5 hours and just had to tell me. I did give him some tips on that first email but he did it all on his own.

The moral of the story is that regardless of women’s liberation and assertive women – the majority of women wait for a man to take that first step.