In addition to the extensive Cosmophilia audio and written sign readings, we’ve published a full slate of Featured Articles by Planet Waves collaborators that are fully open for everyone to read. Here is the beginning of Rob Moore’s piece about some of his most transformative experiences — including a bout with illness that completely changed his life, and the unique manifestation of his inner guidance. Read the full piece at Cosmophilia. — Amanda P.

Discovering I belong here. Including the part I had overlooked.

by Rob Moore

As I strapped on that masterful studded leather belt, I knew I was headed for yet another transformative experience. I was discovering the power of extending my intentions to all that accompanied me on my journeys. That dark pit sex club was no exception and I now sought a more expansive experience.

What I wasn’t imagining was that I might not strap on that leather gear again anytime in the foreseeable future.

Self-portrait by Rob Moore

You see, for decades I had been deeply unhappy with a career that veered off course and landed me at a computer designing Mickey Mouse t-shirts. I tried numerous ventures to get my life on track but nothing would budge. I knew I did not belong there. But I couldn’t find that doorway to freedom to save my life.

Or at least not my colon. After holding my unhappiness down for so long, Mickey finally gnawed a hole in me. A prolonged struggle with ulcerative colitis ended with the removal of my large intestines in 2011.

Prior to that time I walked into every club half naked. Now an external colostomy bag mars those once-flawless abs. Overcoming this physical abnormality has proven the biggest obstacle of my life.

Years of being ill kept physical intimacy out of the picture. I tried to leave it that way and just focus on other ambitions. The fibers of my being, however, wouldn’t have it. Sex is a vital part of the picture for me. And not just any sex, either.

Continue reading here.

Note: Since Mercury retrogrades often invite (or compel) us to review some aspect of our lives, I offer you this piece from The Guardian in which Erin Cressida Wilson, who wrote the script for the 2002 movie Secretary, recounts her 1970s upbringing by bohemian parents and early introduction to erotica. — Amanda P.

By Erin Cressida Wilson

Growing up in 1970s San Francisco I was often dragged by my parents to explicit foreign films at small cinemas like the Clay or the Vogue, the Balboa or the Castro.

“In 2002, educated film-makers were not supposed to like this sort of thing…” — Erin Cressida Wilson. Promotional photo of Maggie Gyllenhaal in Secretary courtesy of Allstar/Lions Gate

There I’d sit, underage and somehow smuggled in, on a scratchy red chair that smelled of popcorn and sticky floors, surrounded by bohemians and intellectuals watching the same thing that I was watching: sex.

Back then, the entire city felt drenched in sensuality, and so did my home. It was here on sweaty afternoons that I watched Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman on TV, curled up with my mother, drawing constellations and stars and universes from freckle to freckle across her skin.

I was trying to find the secret – the reason that fueled her to grab my hand on Sunday afternoons, take a left turn as far away from the playground as possible, and rush me to the opening weekend of I Am Curious (Yellow) (1969 – age five), Carnal Knowledge (1971 – age seven), Last Tango in Paris (1972 – age eight), A Clockwork Orange (1972 – age eight), The Mother and the Whore (1973 – age nine), and Swept Away … by an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August (1974 – age 10).

I would sit next to my mother on these afternoons and inevitably a tendril of tension would start emanating from the screen, and from her. Suddenly, in a fierce whisper, she would instruct me to look at the floor. And so I would stare at a discarded popcorn box, a spilled drink or simply the darkness that disappeared into the seat ahead of me – listening carefully to quickening breaths – allowing the film’s soundscape to caress me. I learned to peek with my eyes to see bodies in motion, pushing like animals, doing something mysterious that I didn’t understand, but somehow enjoyed.

It was during this era that even the more explicit films like Deep Throat (1972) and The Devil in Miss Jones (1973) managed to cross over into the mainstream. My mother blessedly spared me these films. A confluence of factors – among them the rise of television and a growing counterculture – led film-makers to mine previously taboo topics. The abandonment of the Production Code in 1968 opened the floodgates for sex to migrate from dirty theatres to more legit venues. But it was short-lived thanks to a 1973 Supreme Court decision that once again shunted these features to adult picturehouses. Nevertheless, it was a transformative time to be coming-of-age.

But despite this early education in sexually-explicit cinema, I never quite understood how I came to construct the power dynamics in my script for Secretary (2002 – age 38). It wasn’t until I came across my mother’s diary, a few months before her death, that I started to fully comprehend what was at work in my subconscious. This journal kept a weekly record of what turned out to be my mother’s 20+ year affair with her shrink. One afternoon in 1951, after only a few sessions, he pronounced my mother to be a sadomasochist. Not great shrinkage, but there was a lot of truth there. And reading my mother’s diaries brought me to understand that secrets that fly around a house actually do get absorbed by children in ways that are mysterious.

Ours was a house full of books. Food to eat was scarce but it was packed to the rafters with words to read. It took hours of searching the pages of highbrow literature to find anything naughty. I quickly figured out that in a cinephile’s house, some of the easiest sources of sexy images were film magazines. Curious and dressed in my school uniform, knee socks, and saddle shoes, I would sneak down to the basement and flick through my father’s stashes of magazines. Alongside the mildewed copies of Oui, Hustler and Playboy, were stacks of Film Quarterly whose pages were charged with erotica, drama, and – best of all – a lot of European men.

If the city and our house felt like extensions of all things carnal, then our derelict basement seemed to be the epicentre. Oddly, my parents’ bedroom, with its door always open, seemed to be the one place sex did not inhabit. Philosopher Gaston Bachelard has written much on basements and their psychological connotations. In The Poetics of Space, he posits the attic as the site of rationality and the basement as the site of irrationality – manifestations of the conscious and the unconscious respectively. While the attic provides reassurance, the basement provides mystery.

And mysteries it held. It’s where my father hid not only his porn, but his alcohol. It’s where my mother, a lover of many men, hid her love letters – locked in a metal box buried in the dirt under the house. She would often say to me, “Don’t go under the house.” And just as her order to not look at the sexy films had spurred me on to do so, I would indeed look under the house. When I finally uncovered “the box,” I found on the very top, a note to my father: “Dear heart, if you find these letters, I loved only you.” And then underneath were handwritten and typed letters from the men, often writers. On thin onion skin paper were words of love and sex and longing. But my mother had, like a true self-censor, carefully cut out all the explicit words with scissors. If I held the paper up to the light, it was like lace.

It was also in this basement that my mother would invite the dustbin men in. They were Italian-Americans who collected our trash in large burlap sacks that they’d throw over their shoulders before going back down the 30 or so stairs to their truck. In the same way I imagined my father would linger on the sexy images of his magazines, my mother admired these men, their muscles dancing and backs straining under the weight of our detritus. She would say to me, “Look at his hands. Look at his lips. Look at his back. Listen to his voice.” She was giving me erotic instruction.

It felt natural that in my early adulthood I would start writing plays about sex. Though in the 1980s New York theatre scene, a woman liking men was practically against the natural order. There appeared to be a rulebook thrown at every emerging playwright. If you were gay, an obligatory coming-out play was what was called for. If you were a person of colour, you were told to cash that card in and write with that in mind. If you were a woman? It was advisable to write about how abusive men were. It was not so good to be a thinking woman who was phallus-embracing. At Smith, the all-women’s college I attended in Massachusetts, girls walked around in T-shirts that said, “A Century of Women on Top”. And I remember asking, “What if you don’t like being on top? Does that mean you aren’t a feminist?”

My Women’s Studies professors would say: “You don’t know how hard we fought for you.” And yet, when they told me my sexuality was not correct, I felt embarrassed. I knew I had longings that didn’t line up with the politics, but I refused to repress them, particularly in my writing. I fought to unravel a political correctness that was censoring desire.

By the time I wrote the screenplay for Secretary, I had given up all hope of ever reaching a wider audience. No movie star would accept playing the lead in that film. After all, to portray a submissive and to be spanked onscreen would be a disastrous move for their careers. In addition, there was talk early on that the script was sexist because it ended with Maggie Gyllenhaal’s character making a bed and dropping a cockroach on it – so that her husband would find it and punish her. It was repeatedly suggested to me that – instead – she should “find herself,” and become a lawyer herself. She should be powerful in a way that appeared strong through a traditional feminist lens. There was also a vibe around the film that Gyllenhaal’s character should overcome her problem. Again, I didn’t consider her to have a problem. And so I decided that this was a coming-out film for a masochist.

When the film screened at the Sundance film festival, middle-aged feminists stomped out during the spanking scene. I’d sit on the bus that shuttled us through the snow between screenings and eavesdrop on conversations. When the subject of Secretary came up, film-goers would look sideways. No comment. After all, in 2002, educated film-makers were not supposed to like this sort of thing. They were not supposed to like BDSM. And so we came away from Sundance with an honourable mention and exhaustion. We had not sold the film to a distributor. I had observed other films like Tadpole getting sold to Miramax for $5m. It was not a sexy situation. Perhaps we were the ultimate masochists, attempting to make this film in such a climate.

But Secretary was allowed to sit on the vine for a long time thanks to an eventual distribution deal from Lion’s Gate Entertainment, the advent of home video, DVDs, streaming and the glory of late night airings on the Sundance Channel. Today, it seems that what was pornographic 12 years ago is passé and maybe even clichéd. One generation’s risqué becomes the baseline for the next.

My mother used to tell me – among the many things she told me – that there was nothing sexier than a man whose breath smelled of scotch and cigarettes. I miss cinema and sticky floors and popcorn on an empty stomach. We move forward, but some of us stop sometimes to remember what it was like to fill in the blanks of a dirty letter, to hunt for the naughty film magazine, and to look up between one’s fingers to catch a glimpse.

Note: This week’s sex-and-relationships column comes from the Sexuality.org archives. David Steinberg, a former Planet Waves contributor, wrote it in 1998. In light of Mars and Eros conjoining Nessus in Aquarius this weekend, I’m very curious to hear how readers feel the experience of feminist men has evolved in the 16 years since. — Amanda

By David Steinberg.

Ironically enough, one of the clearest expressions I have heard of the sexual dilemma facing men who define themselves as feminist came from an outspokenly feminist woman. She was speaking about her own difficulty in integrating her feminist beliefs with her sexual desires.

Photo by David Steinberg.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” she said early in the 1980’s, about having intercourse with her male partner. “If he’s on top, he’s dominating me. If I’m on top, I’m servicing him. My feminism and my sexuality are both essential to me. I’m not willing to choose one over the other. I don’t know what to do.”

Subjecting one’s sexual desire to the rigors of ideological political analysis is both important and a tricky piece of work. It’s important because how we think of sex, and how we think of ourselves as sexual people, has real political meaning, especially with regard to how power is distributed among men and women. But it is also tricky because we have such strongly ingrained tendencies to interpret sex negatively, and because once the watchful eyes of the internalized sex police are mounted on your shoulder, passion and spontaneity have a way of going out the window. And, let’s face it, sex, no matter how correctly micromanaged, is nowhere without passion and spontaneity.

I have a lot of sympathy for the sexual dilemmas of men who pay serious attention to feminist issues. I have strongly identified with the feminist movement since the late 1960’s, not only in terms of that movement’s analysis of the unjust power imbalances between men and women in society, but also for its radical redefinition of male and female gender roles.

At the personal level, I have been inspired by feminism not out of guilt over my previously unenlightened consciousness, but because feminism offered me both the opportunity and the insight to become the kind of man that I had always wanted to be but that traditional American culture regards, essentially, as unmanly. Being rough, tough, stoic, able to leap tall buildings at a single bound, fight the good wars, be the main provider of family income, always know how to protect the poor little woman from the nastiness of the world, and die at an early age — well, it wasn’t really my thing.

So I was delighted when a movement came along that called upon both women and men to see through the gender roles handed them by society, and begin to put things together differently. Rather than seeing the empowerment of women as a threat, I saw it as a relief, even if it meant giving up all sorts of male privilege. Even now, when the term feminist is more associated with man-hating than with the struggle for the equal rights of women, I hold on to the notion of myself as a feminist man quite fondly. I would rather work to preserve the original meaning of the word than turn it over to the media wolves to malign. Call me sentimental….

When my wife joined a women’s consciousness-raising group and the light bulbs of seeing things in new ways began going on in her head week after week, I experienced a kind of secondary redefinition of myself by osmosis. Every time she saw through some traditional definition of what it meant to be a woman, I got to see through something about traditional definitions of being a man. It was exciting. I read feminist books one after another. The liberation of women from traditional roles was aligned with, not against, my own liberation

Eventually it dawned on me that, instead of simply envying my wife the support she got from meeting with and talking to other women about mutual concerns, I could myself get together with men who were in many ways like me, and enjoy many of the same benefits. I tried to organize a men’s group for the first time in 1970. After a couple of false starts, I found my way to a group of men who were actually able to talk honestly to each other about big, unresolved issues in our lives: the masculinity bugaboo, career, fathering, relationships with women, a wide range of unacknowledged fears and insecurities, loneliness, loss, competition and fear of being vulnerable with other men, sexual orientation, sex.

Sex for real: what we liked and didn’t like, what we understood and didn’t understand, how we felt good and not so good about ourselves — not simply showing off to convince ourselves we were ok. Being able to talk sincerely with other men about these issues was like taking a new lease on life, as thousands of men were about to discover.

Expanding beyond our immediate group of eight (three of us still have men’s group on Monday nights), I discovered the national Conferences on Men and Masculinity and the California Men’s Gatherings, where these sorts of issues were discussed and explored with a good deal of insight, innovation, caring, generosity, and mutual respect.

Unfortunately, in their early years, both the national conferences and the CMG’s tended to operate in the spirit of men’s auxiliaries to the women’s movement, rather than bringing feminist men together around their own issues and concerns. The idea that (oppressive) men even had the right to have issues separate from those of (oppressed) women was considered controversial. There was a strong ethos that everything women did was inherently good, while everything men did was inherently bad, or at least severely suspect.

Heterosexual men, that is; the struggles of gay men were lauded in much the same spirit as were women’s struggles. (At that time, both the California and the national gatherings were about equally divided between gay and heterosexual men. Bisexual awareness had not yet emerged. Indeed, one of the finer accomplishments of these gatherings was that they brought gay and heterosexual men together in a way that both groups could trust.)

I was stunned when one man tried to persuade me, in all seriousness, that all women’s anger toward men was justified, while all men’s anger toward women constituted misogyny. This was, in fact, an accepted point of view in Changing Men, the main journal of the movement.

One result of this four-legs-good-two-legs-bad attitude about women and men was strong encouragement for men to distance themselves from all things masculine. Masculinity was seen rather simply as the culture of patriarchy, the culture that enforced male dominance and the disempowerment of women. Indeed, one of the first books of essays that came out of the men’s movement was titled Unbecoming Men.

There was no sense of irony, pain, or ambivalence about what it meant to encourage all men to put themselves at odds with such a fundamental, essential aspect of who they were. It remained for Robert Bly, several years later, coming from well outside the culture of feminist men, to point out that what needed to be overthrown was not masculinity itself, but the distortion of vibrant masculinity that traditional, patriarchal gender roles represented.

The double binds created by turning so severely against one’s essential nature have been devastating to feminist men in many ways, but nowhere as powerfully as with regard to their sexuality. Since all things masculine were to be discarded, or at least examined with extreme distrust, it’s hardly surprising that heterosexual male sexual desire was subjected to the most intense, hostile, and devastantingly literal of critiques. If the essential error of fundamentalism, as Joseph Campbell argues, is thinking of religion literally rather than metaphorically, then heterosexual feminist men were engaged in nothing less than a fundamentalist inquisition into every corner of their sexual existence.

Constantly looking over their shoulders for evidence of power imbalance, patriarchal assumptions, male dominance, and objectification of women, how could feminist men ever relax, be spontaneous, and trust what their bodies were telling them? One man confided to me with great anguish that when he and his woman partner were making love, he actually enjoyed looking at her breasts. Was he objectifying her? he wondered. Was he being, essentially, pornographic?

At a workshop on sex addiction, I found myself paired with a man who was convinced he was a sex addict because he thought about sex almost every day. This from a man in his mid-20s who did not have a sexual partner at the time. When I suggested that it seemed quite natural to me that he would be thinking about sex when he didn’t have any regular sexual outlet — that I happily thought about sex every day and I did have a sexual partner — he was both relieved and amazed. The idea that thinking about sex was natural had never occurred to him.

John Stoltenberg, the anti-pornography zealot and one of the most relentless demonizers of male desire (whose worldview may have been set in stone when he was raped as a young man), argued at one conference that male sexual arousal was fundamentally the same biological process as the urge to kill — both being accompanied by rushes of adrenaline, increased heartbeat and respiration rates, and a generally aggressive attitude. Hundreds of well-meaning men nodded their silent agreement.

Flagellating themselves for having any sexual desire at all, constantly on the lookout for impure images and thoughts, using gatherings of the faithful as opportunities to confess their sins, heterosexual feminist men had more in common sexually with born-again Christians than with any group of leftist progressives. Watching these conscientious men who I cared about so much turn against their sexuality was excruciating. Something needed to be done.

Working with a close woman friend who was what we would now call a sexpositive feminist, I began to organize conference workshops where sexual issues and dilemmas could be examined from a more sympathetic, less fearful, less nearsighted — yet still strongly feminist — perspective. One workshop was essentially a guided fantasy in which I asked participants to envision “the most erotic man in the world,” observe him from a distance, then move into his body and take on his movements, his sense of himself, his way of being in the world. It was an exercise which everyone enjoyed, and which gave a clear sense that there was such a thing as an erotic masculinity with which these men could identify.

Another workshop was entitled “Pornography, Eroticism, and Sexual Fantasy,” which we defined as an opportunity to talk to each other about our sexual fantasies without having to worry about being judged or ridiculed. As facilitators, we emphasized the difference between fantasy and reality, reminded people that getting aroused by an imagined sexual act did not mean that you were about to perform that act in the real world, noted that no one gets hurt when someone has a fantasy, no matter how “politically incorrect” that fantasy might be. We pointed out that the most common sexual fantasy among women (even feminist women) was of being raped, but that this didn’t mean that women actually wanted to be raped. We talked about the importance of honoring both our fantasies and our sexual feelings, even when those aspects of our sexuality came up in unexpected ways.

We then went around the circle and asked each man to describe a favorite fantasy, or a favorite image from a sexual film or magazine. One by one the stories came out, cautiously at first, but growing more bold as people saw that they really would not be criticized for their honesty. When we had gone completely around the circle, we asked people to speak again, this time telling something they had been afraid to talk about during the first round.

One man, an exceedingly gentle and well-known member of the gathering’s organizing committee, confessed with considerable agitation that his most intense arousal came from masturbating to photos of women being cut with knives and razor blades. He had never before told this to a single soul. He thought he was really sick and didn’t know what to do with the fact that he was so turned on by these violent images. We assured him that getting off on these pictures did not mean he really wanted to cut women up or see them harmed, and reminded him that no one was hurt by his fantasy. Perhaps there was something he was deeply angry about, something that he would do well to honor and respect. If having these fantasies bothered him, he could look into it further, perhaps with a therapist, to see what was going on.

After he spoke the level of revelation from others jumped noticeably. (I later learned that this man had been severely humiliated by a group of girls in his early adolescence who pretended to be attracted to him sexually only to then publicly reject and ridicule him for imagining that they would ever be interested in someone like him.) The relief of this man, and others in the group, at being able to talk about forbidden sexual feelings was palpable. Word of the workshop spread through the conference immediately.

I began to develop a reputation at the gatherings as an advocate for the possibility of integrating a vibrant, open, expansive sexual existence with a sincere commitment to feminism. Because I had been part of the organizational core of the gatherings for many years, I had some standing from which to express such a controversial point of view. Other conference leaders disagreed with my sexual outlook, but treated me with respect. I began speaking more about my personal sexual explorations that challenged the prevailing antisexual dogma, and generally encouraged people to trust their sexual desires more and not hold their sexual existence ransom to unrealistic notions of political purity.

At one dinner conversation in the large communal dining area, I was talking with friends about consciously exploring power issues during sex as a kind of psychodramatic experiment. I told how my lover and I had played with tying each other down, playing sexual servant to each other, giving complete control of sexual situations over to the other, just to see what feelings were brought up. I talked about how both of us had found these times illuminating and very exciting sexually. This was at a time when information about s/m, bondage, and sexual power play was still limited to a small sexual subculture, and certainly outside the consciousness of these particular men.

By the time I was done, a circle of some thirty men had gathered around and was giving rapt attention to my every word. The idea that power imbalance could be incorporated as an acceptable part of sex play was unheard of in this group, yet all these people were obviously intrigued with the possibility. At least a dozen people later told me they were going to try this with their women partners when they got home — if their partners were willing, of course.

We put together a multimedia performance piece which combined readings of erotic poems and stories with a series of short slide shows, set to music. The readings and the images varied from sensual to sexually explicit, from humorous to passionate, from descriptive to symbolic, from playful to disturbing. The message of the show was that sexuality is politically and ethically acceptable in many different forms, that not all arousing sexual material embodies the sexist assumptions of commercial pornography, that it’s possible to enjoy sexual entertainment collectively and in public, be true to one’s political and ethical beliefs, and also be free of secrecy and shame.

We called the show “Celebration of Eros” and performed it at one of the California gatherings. The response was so overwhelmingly positive that we took the show to men’s conferences in other parts of the country as well. As we performed the show in different contexts, we experienced over and over again the catharsis of men realizing that the core of their sexual desire was not a matter of wanting to harm or subjugate women, that the wish to be sexually empowered as men was not anti-feminist, that there were forms of male empowerment that were not antithetical to women’s empowerment.

The relief and gratitude so many men (and women) felt at being released from the sexual double binds of an overly rigid, literal, fundamentally antisexual political critique was extraordinary. Encouraged by the response to “Celebration of Eros,” I went to work putting the same message into book form, and published Erotic by Nature, a collection of erotic and sexual photography, fiction, poetry and drawings, in 1988.

The struggle of feminist men (and women) to make sense out of their sexual feelings in the context of their politics is ongoing and is also understandably difficult. The sexual imagery of the dominant culture, and that culture’s very concept of sex itself, is as suffused with sexism as are other aspects of society. In many ways, the sexual assumptions we are taught from birth are intended to keep women from respecting their feelings and natures, and also from becoming strong and free from dependency on men. It is equally true, however, that the antisexual assumptions of society are also designed to keep women from realizing the power and independence that full sexual expression offers.

It is important to look at our sexual feelings and desires as men with as much political care as we examine both the other aspects of our lives and society in general. However the erotic world cannot be understood or directed with simpleminded, rational, or dogmatic platitudes that interpret sexual gestures literally and superficially, without addressing their underlying meanings. If the spirit of Eros is to be honored, it must be addressed on its own terms, irrational and untidy as those terms may be.

This column was originally published in Spectator Magazine, and published in the Comes Naturally newsletter in issue #75, Sept. 25, 1998. Copyright (c) 1998 David Steinberg. Sternberg is a photographer, author and journalist whose work focuses on issues of masculinity and sexuality. He was awarded Best Photographer for the Erotic Awards 2010 and is the editor of Photo Sex: Fine Art Sexual Photography Comes of Age and The Erotic Impulse: Honoring the Sensual Self. He writes a column in San Francisco, California’s local newspaper, SFGate; his current website is called Erotic by Nature.

From Madame Zolonga’s Guide to Failing with Astrology

Well, congratulations. Pass the cigars; everyone’s getting Cuba for Christmas. It’s a bouncy diplomatic baby of uncertain gender. Pope Francis will bless and baptize it, surely, this spring, when we find out what it’s meant to be.

Until then you Cold War fans will still have plenty to kick around. In fact, the headlines and my Facebook feed suggest the Cold War is actually quite Warm these days. Putin is not puttin’ out this Christmas, what with his ruble in free-fall. (The theories about why have nothing to do with His Eminence giving everyone shopping discounts in St. Petersberg for the season.) And SONY’s drama with North Korea (or not North Korea, as Anonymous hints with a wink), is sure to warm the hearts and hands of dyed-in-the-wool Commie haters everywhere.

In these post-Glasnost days of inclusiveness and tolerance, however, it’s important to remember that the Cold (or Warm) War isn’t exclusive to Communist aligned countries. The Cold War could be happening anywhere. In your living room, for example. Or at your brother’s house. So I had a look at the astrology to see how I could help celebrate this fact.

And yes, astrology once again comes to our rescue. As I type Venus is making a bee-line toward asteroid Russia! Delightful! How fortuitous.

How chilly.

Is there someone on your gift-giving list who qualifies as a Cold War hero? You know, the person with whom you’ve achieved a cool detente in lieu of actual productive “trade” relations? Let astrology lead you in these suggestions for making the most of bad relations this season.

Continue reading →

Note: For this last full day of the Sun in Sagittarius, this week’s sex-and-relationships column comes from Swedish blogger Andie Nordgren. Even if you’re not into polyamory or “relationship anarchy,” the ideas of personal responsibility for emotions; respect for the autonomy of others; and co-creating unique, living commitments apply to all intimate relationship models. — Amanda

By Andie Nordgren

Love is abundant, and every relationship is unique

Relationship anarchy questions the idea that love is a limited resource that can only be real if restricted to a couple. You have capacity to love more than one person, and one relationship and the love felt for that person does not diminish love felt for another. Don’t rank and compare people and relationships — cherish the individual and your connection to them. One person in your life does not need to be named primary for the relationship to be real. Each relationship is independent, and a relationship between autonomous individuals.

Andie Nordgren

Love and respect instead of entitlement

Deciding to not base a relationship on a foundation of entitlement is about respecting others’ independence and self-determination. Your feelings for a person or your history together does not make you entitled to command and control a partner to comply with what is considered normal to do in a relationship.

Explore how you can engage without stepping over boundaries and personal beliefs. Rather than looking for compromises in every situation, let loved ones choose paths that keep their integrity intact, without letting this mean a crisis for the relationship. Staying away from entitlement and demands is the only way to be sure that you are in a relationship that is truly mutual. Love is not more “real” when people compromise for each other because it’s part of what’s expected.

Find your core set of relationship values

How do you wish to be treated by others? What are your basic boundaries and expectations on all relationships? What kind of people would you like to spend your life with, and how would you like your relationships to work? Find your core set of values and use it for all relationships. Don’t make special rules and exceptions as a way to show people you love them “for real.”

Heterosexism is rampant and out there, but don’t let fear lead you

Remember that there is a very powerful normative system in play that dictates what real love is, and how people should live. Many will question you and the validity of your relationships when you don’t follow these norms. Work with the people you love to find escapes and tricks to counter the worst of the problematic norms. Find positive counter-spells and don’t let fear drive your relationships.

Build for the lovely unexpected

Being free to be spontaneous — to express oneself without fear of punishments or a sense of burdened “shoulds” — is what gives life to relationships based on relationship anarchy. Organize based on a wish to meet and explore each other — not on duties and demands and disappointment when they are not met.

Fake it til’ you make it

Sometimes it can feel like you need to be some complete super human to handle all the norm-breaking involved in choosing relationships that don’t map to the norm. A great trick is the “fake it til’ you make it” strategy — when you are feeling strong and inspired, think about how you would like to see yourself act. Transform that into some simple guidelines, and stick to them when things are rough. Talk to and seek support from others who challenge norms, and never reproach yourself when the norm pressure gets you into behaviour you didn’t wish for.

Trust is better

Choosing to assume that your partner does not wish you harm leads you down a much more positive path than a distrustful approach where you need to be constantly validated by the other person to trust that they are there with you in the relationship. Sometimes people have so much going on inside themselves that there’s just no energy left to reach out and care for others. Create the kind of relationship where withdrawing is both supported and quickly forgiven, and give people lots of chances to talk, explain, see you and be responsible in the relationship. Remember your core values and to take care of yourself though!

Change through communication

For most human activities, there is some form of norm in place for how it is supposed to work. If you want to deviate from this pattern, you need to communicate — otherwise things tend to end up just following the norm, as others behave according to it. Communication and joint actions for change are the only way to break away. Radical relationships must have conversation and communication at the heart — not as a state of emergency only brought out to solve “problems.” Communicate in a context of trust. We are so used to people never really saying what they think and feel — that we have to read between the lines and extrapolate to find what they really mean. But such interpretations can only build on previous experiences — usually based on the norms you want to escape. Ask each other about stuff, and be explicit!

Customize your commitments

Life would not have much structure or meaning without joining together with other people to achieve things — constructing a life together, raising children, owning a house or growing together through thick and thin. Such endeavors usually need lots of trust and commitment between people to work. Relationship anarchy is not about never committing to anything — it’s about designing your own commitments with the people around you, and freeing them from norms dictating that certain types of commitments are a requirement for love to be real, or that some commitments like raising children or moving in together have to be driven by certain kinds of feelings. Start from scratch and be explicit about what kind of commitments you want to make with other people!

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Andie Nordgren is a Senior Producer at CCP Games, which makes Eve Online, Dust 514 and World of Darkness. Some of her other projects include the geek girl revolution at Geek Girl Meetup, relationship anarchy at Dr Andie and accessible talks about amazing larp projects at Nordic Larp Talks. Around 2002-2008 she was active in the change-through-participation art zine/think tank/activist group Interacting Arts and helped make and publish Interacting Arts Magazine.

Note: This week’s relationships-and-sex column comes from couples’ therapist Robyn Vogel, who uses a mix of Eastern and Western philosophies to help partners reconnect (or to separate gently). With philosophy a key theme of Sagittarius, the column felt like a good fit this weekend. — Amanda

By Robyn Vogel

The office doesn’t look quite like a regular therapist office. There are these interesting floor chairs in the corner of the room on a multi-colored tribal-looking rug. I smell something both sweet and musty at the same time; it reminds me of my teenage years.

Robyn Vogel

Brightly colored and beautiful objects line the glass coffee table that looks itself like a piece of ancient art from India. And in the corner of my eye, I can see what looks like a prayer or a blessing framed on the wall. Still, it has all the items you’d expect to see: a grey couch, yellow chair with polka dots for her to sit on, notebooks and pens within reach of her chair, tall mahogany book shelf filled with textbooks, personal growth books, decorative books, and most of all two clocks – one in her view, and one in ours.

“We begin every session with a centering,” she says with a smile. And although I think it’s strange, I also know it’s what I need – to center, or calm down – after all, seeing a therapist to talk about our sex life, or lack thereof, feels like the scariest thing I’ve ever done! So when Robyn smiles at us with her bright blue eyes and says, “Take a nice deep breath and gently close your eyes,” something inside me relaxes… just a little bit.

My therapy office may not look like other, more traditional therapy practices, but to be sure I offer a rich combination of eastern and western philosophy. The unique alchemy of couples therapy and Tantra offers my clients an experience of talk therapy, with special emphasis on Harville Hendrix’s communication style in his acclaimed book Getting The Love You Want, along with opportunities — I call them ‘invitations’ — to drop into a deep space inside themselves and explore their own personal boundaries.

Couples not only listen to guidance on removing the obstacles to intimacy, they are invited into a specific practice that they actually do in my office. Seemingly diverse approaches alchemize. Whether it be an exercise in conscious communication or a guided Tantric meditation, the intention is to support their goals for coming to therapy — often to heal the distance that’s been created during the years of living together.

Intrigued, it led me to dive deeply into a well of ancient philosophy and practice, similar to yoga, that provided spiritual guidance. It was through my study and practice of Tantra that I came to experience the Divine, or God, and the sacredness of all life. I experienced pleasure and passion in a more expansive way and began to wake up to the vast possibilities for self-expression.

Tantra is an ancient philosophy and practice dated back to a long-forgotten culture in the South Pacific known as Lemuria. Although there are no known records of their practices, it is said that their methods were kept alive through their descendants. The Lemurians lived in harmony with body and soul and honored the sacred in every day life. Their practices combined vibrational healing, aromatherapy, spirituality, and more.

One of the oldest preserved forms of sacred healing arts is that of Tantra. The island of Lemuria eventually sank into the sea, and its survivors landed in nearby Tibet. From there, Tantra was introduced to India and reborn into the Hindu and Buddhist traditions.

Tantra is a sanskrit word with two parts. The prefix, tan, means “to expand, weave together, or join,” while the second part, tra, means “tool.” By putting these together we have “tools to expand, weave and join together.” It is true that Tantra practices support our ability to expand into a deeply loving connection (with ourselves and each other) and join together with another in sacred presence.

After the centering exercise, Robyn asks us to share our intentions for our session together. Intentions? I just want to feel better. I’m miserable in this marriage and I’m truly terrified that these sessions are going to clarify that divorce is our next step! Intentions? What’s an ‘intention’ anyway? As if she read my mind, Robyn explains with exquisite gentleness that each time we meet we’re contributing something delicious and juicy to a big pot of soup. Each time we meet we are going to allow an intention to arise from our hearts, and as we stir the soup, adding our individual ingredients, it’ll slowly begin to taste better. I take a deep breath.

After hearing our story, our reason for coming to therapy, a bit about our history — including how we met, what our sex life was like before we had kids and my dad passed away — she asked us to look at each other. That was strange for me. In that moment, I realized I hadn’t looked at my wife in a very long time. When was the last time? Did she color her hair this week? I see beautiful wisps of blonde amongst her soft, curly auburn hair. She’s so pretty all of a sudden and her eyes, red from crying, sparkle just a bit, as she wipes them with a tissue from a perfectly placed box.

“Breathe,” Robyn coaches us. “Look beyond the physical and into your partner’s eyes. You’ve come together for a reason, even though it can be hard to remember sometimes. I know you’ve both been hurting, and for that reason I am glad you’re here. Coming back to a place of love takes only an instant. Truly seeing your partner’s essence is the first step.”

It’s beautiful to witness miracles in my office every day: in person, over the phone, video conferencing. Working with couples combining psychotherapy with Tantra philosophy and practice is magical. Staying connected and loving after a while is hard for couples. For good reasons, our creative, erotic, life-force energy turns from each other towards things like growing children, satisfying work, and aging parents. Resentments build easily when life is moving at such a fast pace. Couples need skills to navigate the rough terrain, and they specifically need intimacy skills. Traditional talk therapy can provide part of what’s needed but not all. Tantric intimacy provides the rest.

Over time I coach my clients in all areas of intimacy from conscious communication, clearing resentments, making genuine apologies, offering appreciations that land in their partner’s heart, acknowledging and speaking their needs respectfully, to eye gazing, connecting through the breath, sensitizing to the patterns of energy between them, moderating their own energy, grounding, maintaining boundaries, raising desire and attraction, creating arousal with intention, and so much more.

Verbal skills are required for a healthy relationship but in the case of working with couples, we actually don’t have to “put the cart before the horse” as many therapists do. As a Tantra teacher and sex educator, I also know that sometimes a non-verbal cue or connection can melt away hurts and reignite the fire that hasn’t been felt in way too many years.

Often the energetic dynamic is what’s blocking intimacy, and using the breath, sound and intention, clears things up between a couple and suddenly they feel more open to having that difficult conversation! Lo and behold, we don’t always need to feel emotionally close in order to share sexual energy. It also works the other way around.

We both cannot believe how much lighter we feel since our session with Robyn this morning. I feel young again! I know we have a lot of work to do — that also became clear today — but I feel hopeful. The wind is beneath my wings again. I said things I didn’t know I wanted to say, and my wife listened intently. Somehow her anger just dissipated and she actually looked like maybe she loved me again. I hope so because I know now that I still love her dearly. Maybe it was the tribal rugs, or the trinkets from India. The incense? Or the candle? I feel like I traveled somewhere far away with my wife and for the first time in many years, she was by my side. I’m looking forward to our session next week.

This blog can also be found at Psychology Tomorrow Magazine.

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Robyn Vogel is a Come Back To Love Coach™, Certified Sex Educator, psychotherapist, mother, entrepreneur, and all around love-adventurer. She is dedicated to guiding couples back to the most deeply loving connection possible; and if needed or desired, through a sacred, and loving separation. Robyn has been a regular featured contributor for Self Growth, Women’s Tool Box. TV appearances include Sex for Her Health and Happiness!