Intimacies:

Author Archive

Hello. I hope  you show your love boldly. Please accept as my gift to you a copy of my FREE ebook.

To request a copy please use the special-offer form on http://intimacies.weebly.com. All I ask is that you simply answer the one question on that form and let me send you—not a dozen roses, but “A Dozen Choice Intimacies,” a 38-page eBook, a special collection of twelve essays I’ve written on Intimacies. You’re welcome to share them with anyone you like—or anyone you love.

1.     Ditch Mr. Lonely, you deserve a love that’s better
2.     Meeting eye to eye may seen as invitation to romance
3.     Massage can enhance love if you let your heart be touched
4.     Why do people want to have sex? For reasons varied and complex
5.     How to learn to be a lover? Experiment and communicate
6.     Friends with benefits—just the perks without the ties
7.     It’s a shame, shame, shame how we feel shame about sex
8.     Why eat an apple a day, when sex may keep the doctor away?
9.     Overcome complacency, revolutionize your sexual outlook
10.   Whose duty is it to do what when sexual desire dims?
11.   The mysteries of age meet the mysteries of sexuality’
12.   Singles or doubles, it’s good just to be in the game

The first one, “Ditch Mr. Lonely, you deserve a love that’s better,” has never before been published. It was written for the February 2009  issue of the The Good Life magazine, which never made it to press.

To receive this free farewell gift, please tell me: What is your Number One question about relationships?

I will add you to my new email list to keep you posted about future events and Intimacies-related news. Of course, you can opt out at anytime.

Please visit http://intimacies.weebly.com.

What motivates us to mate?

by Karen Kreps

I didn’t really feel like having sex the other day, but I did anyway. My motivation wasn’t very clear. I had some free time. There was an opportunity to join my husband while he was taking a siesta. I assumed correctly that he’d welcome my initiative, and I said to myself, “Why not?” I thought it would relax me and help me get out of my head. It did.

The reasons we choose to have sex vary from person to person and from time to time. People do it for serious life-affirming reasons, for frivolous debauchery and everything in between.

“Historically, the reasons people have sex have been assumed to be few in number and simple in nature—to reproduce, to experience pleasure or to relieve sexual tension.” So wrote a couple of professors from the University of Texas at Austin. Cindy Meston and David Buss, both PhDs in the Department of Psychology, have published a thorough taxonomy of sexual motivation in the Archives of Sexual Behavior after conducting a scientific study of why people have sex—an extremely important, but surprisingly little-studied topic.

Research in the nineteen-seventies, -eighties and -nineties showed that people had sex for reasons that were varied and psychologically complex. These included a desire for pure pleasure, to express emotional closeness, to please a partner and to make a conquest. Yet most of the reasons documented in those decades, implicitly assumed the context of an ongoing romantic relationship or long-term mate. Humans, however, have a menu of mating strategies, including long-term, short-term and extra curricular mating. There might be reasons for having sex with a casual sex partner such as the desire to experience sexual variety or seeking to improve one’s sexual skills. Sex could be exchanged for favors, special privileges and a preferred job or indeed for any resource.

Sex might be used to reward a partner or as a favor in exchange for something the partner has done. Or sex might be used to retaliate against a partner for some perceived wrongdoing. Also, sex might be used to intensify the relationship, escalate the level of commitment within the relationship or turn a relationship from short- to long-term. Women, in particular, were thought to engage in sexual intercourse for emotional closeness, bonding, commitment, love, affection, acceptance, tolerance and closeness.

In their recent study, Meston and Buss surveyed more than four hundred men and women, ranging in age from seventeen to fifty-two, who responded to the query: ‘‘Please list all the reasons you can think of why you, or someone you have known, has engaged in sexual intercourse in the past.’’ The more than seven hundred answers collected resulted in two hundred thirty-seven distinct reasons.

Once they came up with that long list, Meston and Buss asked more than fifteen hundred college students, in exchange for psychology class credits, to rank the reasons in terms of how they applied to their experiences. Keep in mind that these results reveal the behavior of those who are of an age when, Meston conceded, “Hormones run rampant.” She predicted significant differences when older people are studied.

The research found similar reasons for why these young adults got intimate, and the Number One reason was simply: “I was attracted to the person.” While the primary reason involved lust, rather than amour, expressing love and showing affection still were in the top ten for both men and women.

Gender differences were negligible. Twenty of the top twenty-five reasons given were the same for males and females. “Men were more likely to be opportunistic towards having sex,” Meston said. “So, if sex was…available, they would jump on it—somewhat more so than women. Women were more likely to have sex because they felt they needed to please their partner.” Men, the study revealed, were more apt than women to have sex to get things like a promotion, a raise or a favor. Guys were much more likely than gals to say they’d had sex to “boost my social status” or because the partner was famous or “out of my league.”

The study Meston and Buss completed inspired New York Times science writer John Tierney to provide an on-line forum where the public could add their ideas to the list of reasons to have sex. In just a few days, he got hundreds of responses, which lead the UT researchers to put an additional forty reasons on their list.
Reading the many tawdry reasons why others have sex, I felt more inclined to forgive my own past foibles.

The reasons I found scariest involved revenge: “I wanted to give someone else a sexually transmitted disease (e.g., herpes, AIDS),” “I wanted to get rid of aggression” and ‘‘I thought it would help ‘trap’ a new partner.”
The most inspiring reasons involved celebration: “Because life is short (and a hundred years from now we will all be dust),” “To recover or reaffirm life after the loss of (a) loved one” and “I wanted to become one with another person.”

While we may wish to keep to ourselves the rationalizations for our behavior, the act of reasoning itself has value. By delving into our own feelings, getting honest with ourselves about why we get it on, we’ll gain greater personal understanding of and appreciation for our own sexual natures.

For a full seven years, I have been writing the “Intimacies” column in The Good Life magazine and hosting the group at BookPeople on behalf of the magazine. It has been a great pleasure  to write about love, sex and romance and to exchange confidences with everyone at the discussion group.  So it is with great sadness that I must share with you the news that I received last week from my editor, Ken Martin. His email  began as follows:

“Dear Good Lifers,

The road goes on forever
And the party never ends
But The Good Life must

It is with deep regret that I must inform you that The Good Life is
going out of business.

After publishing 136 editions, we have exhausted our resources….”

This came as a complete surprise for me. Since the magazine had revised its format last year and just last month launched a wonderful new website, it was not what I expected.

The January issue is the last.

The January 21 meeting at BookPeople is still scheduled and will occur, even though The Good Life is no longer sponsoring my efforts there. (I’ll buy the wine; contributions will be welcome.) Ironically, the topic is “Love in the Recession.” My special guest, Claire Miner PhD, and I will  lead a conversation about how financial stress may affect our social lives and what we can do to nurture our relationships in spite of those problems. Claire trained at the Gottman Institute and has  done a lot of career coaching and counseled couples and singles for five years.

Meet Wednesday, January 21, 2009, 7:00pm-8:30pm on the third floor of BookPeople, 603 N. Lamar. Audience members will be encouraged to share their personal experiences. No charge, just bring your sense of humor and an open mind.

BookPeople management said that we can hold the Feb and March meetings since those are already programmed. Please watch for future announcements. To continue the meetings at BookPeople beyond March, however, the store has told me that I must find another well-established publisher for my column on line or in print.

When one door closes, another opens, and I hope that this may enable me to find a new, wider audience. I am seeking another publisher to continue my work. I’m asking for your ideas and support.  Please write to me, Karen@TrueIntimacies.com, with suggestions for another publishing venue or an introduction to anyone who might be helpful in finding a new sponsor for my Intimacies work, writing and hosting.

Last year I published a collection of my columns in the book, Intimacies: Secrets of Love, Sex & Romance. The book is illustrated with photographs of figurative sculpture by my husband and “Intimacies research assistant,” Arye Shapiro. The book can be ordered online at www.TrueIntimacies.com (where I will also continue to blog). BookPeople has the book in stock, and it may be ordered from any bookstore in the country. If you’ve been attending the meetings at BookPeople or enjoying my columns in print, please buy a copy now as a souvenir. The book makes a great, meaningful Valentine’s Day gift that will stimulate conversation about relationships and pleasure. Please consider giving copies to your friends and lovers.

There has been an outpouring of appreciation for The Good Life magazine and letters to the editor have been posted on the magazine’s website. You can add your voice by writing to editor@goodlifemag.com or by commenting with a reply on this blog.

It’s said that “Youth is wasted on the young.” The older I get, the more I tend to agree. I wrote about “Where the mysteries of sex meet the mysteries of age” for the January 09 Good Life Magazine. See my comments at:

Then, I happened upon this interesting short video about a fat woman who turned to porn for survival at age 60 and now is one of the UK’s top grossing porn stars. (Try this preceding link to view the video, since the video share feature below seems to allow a still image on my blog, but not the full video play feature.)

Ageless Sex

If it is not beauty or youth that makes us attractive, what is it?

Whether this is real or fake, it is SO funny. Everyone gets so jittery at weddings. Let’s hope this never happens to you.

We’ve got an exciting lineup planned for programs in the first quarter of 2009. The events are sponsored by The Good Life magazine and all occur on the third Weds of each month, 7 pm at BookPeople.

In January, we’ll be talking about “Love in the Recession” with my special guest, Claire Miner PhD.

In February, we’ll be talking about “Reading Erotica” with author and former lit teacher Hapax Legomenon. (CANCELED)

In March, we’ll be talking about “Playful and Spontaneous Romance” with improv coach and performer Shana Merlin. (CANCELED)

Start sending in your questions for these folks now.

Sitting on my desk in artfully designed shiny foil wrappers are chocolate-, grape- and banana-flavored condoms. They were gifts from the good folk at Planned Parenthood, where I recently met with a group of sex-health educators. Since condoms are the most reliable available and reliable protection against unwanted pregnancy and STDs, Planned Parenthood is running a campaign to change the image of the rubber. It got me thinking…

What are the various was in which people can have fun with contraceptives? Must contraceptives be seen as a turn-off, however necessary, or are the part of the collection of toys in your pleasure chest? I’m collecting real-life anecdotes and suggestions, and I welcome yours. The compiled results will likely show up in a future “Intimacies” column I’ll write in The Good Life (names may be withheld on request). What memorable experiences have you had with any form of contraception?

Join The Good Life columnist Karen Kreps and special guest, Gayle Michaels, for a conversation about how to have more sexual energy and derive more pleasure from it. Gayle founded the Institute of Intimate Wisdom and has much to say about how diet and lifestyle choices can affect one’s sexual prowess.

Meet the second Wednesday (not our normal night), November 12, 2008, 7 pm-8:30 pm on the third floor of BookPeople, 603 N. Lamar.  Audience members will be encouraged to share their personal experiences.  No charge, just   bring your sense of humor and an open mind.

To join the email announcement list for this group, send email to p2paustin-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.
This event is co-sponsored by The Good Life magazine and BookPeople.  For more information, see http://trueintimacies.com.

Frank Butterfield was my special guest at BookPeople, talking about “Attracting Love” with the Law of Attraction.

Some of the crowd that turned out for the event. As the host, I stand in the middle, in front of Frank.

 Ted Fry of the Seattle Times says:

Craigslist has become so deeply rooted in the social fabric of community and relationships that it’s not even product placement when it pops up as a movie’s plot point. We understand implicitly that it’s the place to go when you need a job, a couch or, in the case of “In Search of a Midnight Kiss,” a little companionship.”

At the Frances Moody Newman Distinguished Lecture Series featuring Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist — one of the most-visited sites on the Web in all time–I got to see and talk to Craig at the University of Texas as Austin. Listen to our exchange in which I asked him about the matches made on his list and if he’s ever used his own list to get a date.