by SG’s Team Agony feat. Clio

Let us answer life’s questions – because great advice is even better when it comes from SuicideGirls.

Q: I’ve been in a relationship with my girlfriend for 5 years and love her more then anything, but we don’t have sex anymore. Sex at the start of the relationship was frequent, as is usually the case in new relationships. As time has gone on, we continued to have regular sex, which has always been fantastic, with both of us reaching orgasm, but it has been a long time now.

Any ideas?????

A: Sorry to hear about your lacking sex life. I can imagine your frustration. Physical intimacy is of vital importance to a relationship, so this is definitely something you want to address. Even though your lady doesn’t want to discuss it, you should talk to her about the issue if you want to relieve your blue balls anytime soon.

Is there something going on in her life that might be causing her disinterest in sex? Stress, depression, medication, anemia, hormone imbalance, and various other factors can contribute to a low libido. Communicate with her to understand what could be the problem and tell her how you feel and that it’s affecting your relationship. Consider getting counseling if you think you would benefit from it. If you’ve been drifting apart try taking her out on a romantic date to reconnect with her mentally so you can start connecting again sexually.

Good luck!

Clio
xoxo

Got Problems? Let SuicideGirls’ team of Agony Aunts provide solutions. Email questions to: gotproblems@suicidegirls.com

by Laurelin

Change over time is a strange thing; it’s so gradual and so fast at the same time. One day you open your eyes and you’re like, wow, where did the time go? How did I get here in this apartment with all this stuff, with this job and this… life.

That’s how I felt high school and college were, and then all the years after that –– a montage of years blending, flickering in my memory like old movies, set to the most beautiful music. It all seemed to be only an exhale in a series of breaths, and all the breaths gone with only the slightest breeze before I’m even aware I’ve drawn another. It was forever and no time at all at the same time, and when it was finally over I couldn’t place how I had changed, or when; I just knew that somehow, I had. Looking back on the past month of my life I am finally able to look at something and know that without a doubt, this instance was when everything changed. This moment was mine.

I have always coasted though life with minimal responsibilities. At almost 30 I have to say I have the best and worst of it all: I have worked hard for every penny I’ve earned. I’ve always paid my own way. I fell into bartending because it paid my bills and still allowed me to party. This was a community where I could drink and stay up late and have a family, and a home away from home. I watched every friend I ever had in high school and then college settle and get married, start families, buy houses. And I stayed the same. I don’t think I ever had a problem, but I certainly never had any solutions. I never thought of it as a career, but it all of a sudden was mine, and while others turned up their noses I decided to make it my own. I never thought that anyone else would imagine me as being able to run a bar on my own; it was always someone else’s job. But then all of a sudden, there it was. An offer for this place to be mine –– really, actually mine.

Being offered a management position in an industry that has always allowed me to coast through life with minimal responsibilities seemed at first frightening. I can’t do this! Other people do this! It was scary, knowing that someone saw something in me, someone thinks I could run the show. What if I’m not good at it? What if I let everyone down? A chance to shine is also a chance to fail, and I always ran from responsibility in fear of failing. Mulling over my fate clutching my usual pint of beer, I consciously make a choice. This job I’ve chosen might not be what “everyone else” is doing, but it can be a career, it’s always been mine. I took a week to think about it and when I was finally ready to say “yes,” I knew that my life would never be the same. This was one of those moments where you take control and literally steer your life down one path. Mentally, I strap on my seatbelt and brace for impact.

My new manager pants seem to be fitting alright, but at the same time I am still so lost; working amongst friends and ex-boyfriends, trying to find my voice of authority while also trying to remain one of the gang. I have no idea who this person is who is supposed to be in charge. I feel like I haven’t found my voice. I can’t even control the color of my cheeks around my ex, how can I control the bar? I may not feel like I can find that voice of authority, but I have always had MY voice, and sometimes I hear that person I want to be stepping forward and speaking, as though someone else is finally accepting a role, and it takes a minute to realize that that person really is me.

I’m settling in in my own way, piece by piece. I’ve come to the conclusion that for me, there really isn’t a life beyond the bar scene. Some people were created just for this; born of late nights, shaken cocktails, of phone numbers and thoughts scribbled on cocktail napkins and spilt beer. I like to think that I didn’t just fall into this because it was easy. That’s how it started, sure. But it’s not how it’s going to end.

[..]

by Andrew Shaffer

“There’s a very fine line between pleasure and pain, Anastasia. They are two sides of the same coin, one not existing without the other. I can show you how pleasurable pain can be.”

– Christian Grey, the hero of E.L. James’ 50 Shades of Grey

“Patrons at my library are freaking out over 50 Shades of Grey,” Chicago librarian Leah White told me. Since the BDSM erotic romance novel (and its two sequels) is available only as “print-on-demand” through a small Australian publisher (TheWritersCoffeeShop.com), libraries and bookstores have had trouble keeping it in stock. Still, its popularity has steadily grown in the US over the past year, fueled in part by ebooks, which account for more than 90% of the trilogy’s 100,000-plus sales.

According to one Huffington Post blogger in January, the book is so engrossing that “moms are forgetting to pick their kids up from school.” And on March 1, following a salacious story in the New York Post, 50 Shades of Grey finally hit the top spot on Amazon’s Kindle books bestseller list. Today Show host Hoda Kotb even jumped on the bandwagon. “Hello steamy!” she tweeted after downloading the ebook. (This was particularly alarming to me, since my mother watches Hoda and her co-host Kathie Lee Gifford religiously.) Has BDSM gone mainstream?

First, let’s look at the plot of 50 Shades of Grey. Anastasia Steele, a college-age virgin who has never been kissed, meets Christian Grey, the 27-year-old billionaire CEO of Grey’s Enterprises Holdings. Christian is unbelievably handsome with his “tousled hair” and “expensive body wash.” He is also unbelievably kinky. He lost his virginity to a dominatrix when he was fifteen, and, after five years as her submissive, became a dom himself. He used his vast wealth to turn a room in his penthouse apartment into a virtual dungeon, nicknamed the “Red Room of Pain.” And he wants to share his love of BDSM (and fine wine, classical music, and Bruce Springsteen) with Anastasia.

The sex is well-written and James’ portrayal of BDSM is, for the most part, accurate. While Christian and Anastasia start out with “vanilla” sex acts, they gradually add spanking, bondage, riding crops, and object insertion into their repertoire. While such activities are old hat in the erotic fiction genre, they are shockingly explicit for a book being discussed by mainstream media. James teases the reader with an exhaustive list of sex acts and scenarios by way of a D/S contract. “No fisting, you say. Anything else you object to?” Christian asks Anastasia. “Anal intercourse doesn’t exactly float my boat,” she says. He responds, “I’ll agree to [remove] the fisting, but I’d really like to claim your ass, Anastasia.” The author takes the D/S relationship to extremes, however, as Christian attempts to prohibit Anastasia from snacking between meals and dictate how many times a week she works out (four, if you must know). As many readers have wondered, Is this BDSM or Weight Watchers?

The one problem I had with James’ portrayal of BDSM is the use of the lifestyle as “evidence” for how “dark” the hero is. “I’m fifty shades of fucked up, baby,” he tells Anastasia, a reference to both his abusive past and his love of BDSM.

“It wants us to think of Christian’s BDSM as something that’s wrong with him, a symptom of his inner, childhood demons,” Angela Toscano writes on the romance blog Dear Author. “But it also wants us to get off on it. Like teenage girls giggling over pictures of penises, it seems to say of BDSM, ‘Tee he he he! That’s so gross,’ but secretly loving the titillation that comes from viewing the forbidden.” It’s in sharp contrast to the sex-positive portrayal of BDSM as healthy and normal that one finds in most erotic fiction.

Some media outlets have dubbed 50 Shades of Grey “mommy porn” for the book’s almost singular appeal to middle-aged mothers, most of whom have never read an erotic book (let alone one featuring BDSM). “I am not in the habit of reading erotica, but this trilogy makes it seem okay, even for Westchester county,” one reader wrote.

Why this book? If you’re looking for erotic women’s fiction, there’s no shortage of better books out there, something even the most rabid E.L. James fans admit. But part of the book’s appeal is that “everybody is reading it.” A quick glance at Amazon reveals that customers who bought 50 Shades of Grey also bought the Hunger Games trilogy, Heaven is for Real, Steve Jobs’ biography, and novels by Nicholas Sparks and Jodi Picoult. In other words, big, popular books and authors.

Regardless of why it’s popular, 50 Shades of Grey‘s very existence is leading to some interesting, sex-positive discussions. “I found myself explaining what BDSM was to some of the moms at Saturday morning basketball,” publicist Alison Brod told The New York Post. Whether or not this signifies that BDSM (or even erotica) has gone mainstream is up in the air at this point, but it’s not inconceivable that 50 Shades of Grey could potentially do for BDSM what Twilight did for vampires.

Andrew Shaffer is the author of Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love, a book which takes a humorous look at the disastrous love lives of history’s smartest men and women. His writing has appeared in Mental Floss and Maxim. Stephen Colbert, with tongue planted firmly in cheek, once called Shaffer’s atheist Christmas cards “un-American.” Visit him online at EvilReads.com/.

He is currently serializing a Fifty Shades of Grey parody (Fifty-One Shades, because it’s one better) at: EvilReads.com/Fifty-One-Shades

by SG’s Team Agony feat. Morgan

Let us answer life’s questions – because great advice is even better when it comes from SuicideGirls.

Q: I’m the girlfriend of a fella who is has always been a big PS3 fan, but lately I feel like it’s replacing me. Like I swear I think it hurts him to leave it for long enough to have sex. And when were done, he’s running back to it. What can I do? Really wanting to smash it with a bat 🙁

A: Even as someone who is a pretty dedicated gamer myself, I sympathize. No matter what your significant other is busy with, it can feel hurtful to feel that they are more interested in a hobby than they are in you. The best advice I can give you is to talk directly to your boyfriend about this. When you do, try to avoid sounding accusatory or implying that you want him to give up PS3 completely.

Use “I” statements to tell him in more detail about your reactions when he spends too much time gaming and not enough time with you: “I feel like I don’t get to spend enough time with you when you game all evening,” for example. A good partner should be able to make a compromise with you so that he feels like he still gets to enjoy his hobby, but you don’t feel ignored because of it.

Morgan

Got Problems? Let SuicideGirls’ team of Agony Aunts provide solutions. Email questions to: gotproblems@suicidegirls.com

by Blogbot

Yes, Mistress: Exploring Sexual Rebellion And Power With Snow Mercy, Koko and Brad Warner…This Sunday (March 11) on SuicideGirls Radio we’ll have our whips and chains handy as we head down into our dungeon to explore BDSM. Professionally curious co-hosts, Nicole Powers (SG’s Managing Editor) and Darrah de jour (SG’s Red, White and Femme columnist and resident sensuality expert), will be joined by dominatrix Snow Mercy and submissive Koko Kitten. SG’s Hardcore Zen columnist Brad Warner will also be on hand to join in the spanking good fun and offer a spiritual perspective on this taboo topic. We’ll cover everything from rope-play to role-play, forced feminization to tease and withhold, and light-pain to something a little more hardcore.

Tune in to the world’s leading naked radio show for two hours of totally awesome tunes and extreme conversation – and don’t let yo momma listen in!

Listen to SG Radio live Sunday night from 10 PM til Midnight on suicidegirlsradio.indie1031.com/

Images: Nena Suicide in Fetish Kitty.

by Brad Warner

I follow Thich Nhat Hanh on Twitter. But, whereas I write my own Twitter posts, I doubt that Mr. Hanh sits in front of his Macbook and types his out for the world to see. My guess is that some minion of his scans his books for pithy statements that fit the Twitter mold and then uploads them. The Thichster probably never even sees them. I rarely see them either. But yesterday this one popped up:

“When you contemplate the big, full sunrise, the more mindful & concentrated you are, the more the beauty of the sunrise is revealed to you.”

So I Tweeted the following back at him:

“@thichnhathanh Sounds to me like mindfulness would get in the way of the sunrise.”

I’ve said here a few times how much I hate the word “mindfulness.” This quote seems to embody everything I don’t like about that word.

To be fair to Mr. Hanh, there are many ways to take this statement. There are a lot of things he might have meant by it. For example, he might have meant it as a sort of advertising for meditation. Yardley Aftershave Lotion might tell you, “You’ll get lots of chicks if you douse yourself with Yardley” as an incentive to get you to buy more Yardley Aftershave Lotion. Perhaps Mr. Hanh wants you to know that you’ll appreciate the sunrise lots more if you do meditation practice. Which is fine, I guess.

But there’s another way to take this statement. And I honestly believe it’s the way most people would take it. They’d look at it and say, “Gosh. I’m not mindful enough. I’m not concentrated enough. Because when I look at a sunrise, I just shade my eyes so that I can get through this traffic jam on West Market Street without running over any of the kids from Our Lady of the Elms. Sunrises kind of annoy me. They give me a headache. I better get more concentrated and more mindful so that I can be more like Thich Nhat Hanh and let the beauty of the sunrise be revealed to me.”

In other words, the concept of “mindfulness” gets in the way of the sunrise. It becomes a big obstacle between what we think of as our self and what we think of as the sunrise. And we make our efforts to try to overcome the obstacle we’ve placed in our own way. Most of the time I hear or read the word “mindfulness” it sounds to me like an obstacle.

Pretty much all of our religions and our various self-help practices are based on the idea that what we are right now is not good enough. We then envision what “good enough” must be like and we make efforts to transform what we are right now into this image of ourselves as “good enough.” We invent in our minds an imaginary “mindful me” and then try to make ourselves into that.

The problem with this kind of effort is right at its very root. We are setting up a habit of always judging ourselves as being not whatever it is we want to be. Whether you’re poor and want to be rich or whether you’re dull and want to be mindful, it’s pretty much the same thing. Of course we’d probably have a better world if more people were ambitious to be mindful than were ambitious to be rich. Probably. But maybe not. Because the effort to be something you’re not always seems to go wrong no matter what it is you want to be — even if you want to be super terrifically nice.

People who are working on fulfilling some image they have of a “nice person” are usually a pain in the ass. Their efforts to be like the “nice person” they’ve invented in their heads almost always get in the way of actually doing what needs to be done. Most of the time I’d rather be around someone who is honestly selfish than someone who is forever trying to be helpful. That kind of forced helpfulness is almost never helpful at all. It’s annoying. Sometimes it’s even harmful.

But those of us who realize that we actually aren’t as good as we could be have a real dilemma. What do you do when you recognize that you really are greedy, envious, jealous, angry, pessimistic and so on and on and on?

To me, it seems like the recognition of such things is itself good enough. It’s not necessary to envision a better you and try to remake yourself in that image. Just notice yourself being greedy and very simply stop being greedy. Not for all time in all cases. Just in whatever instance you discover yourself being greedy. If you’re greedy on Tuesday for more ice cream, don’t envision a better you somewhere down the line who is never greedy for more ice cream. Just forgo that last scoop of ice cream right now. See how much better you feel. This kind of action, when repeated enough, becomes a new habit. Problem solved.

As far as mindfulness and concentration are concerned, it works the same way. At the moment you notice yourself drifting off, come back. You might start drifting off again a nanosecond later. But that’s OK. When you notice it again, come back again. Repeat as necessary.

Trying to be more mindful and concentrated is just gonna put you right to where you were drifting away from the sunrise in the first place.

Brad Warner is the author of Sex, Sin and Zen: A Buddhist Exploration of Sex from Celibacy to Polyamory and Everything in Between as well as Hardcore Zen, Sit Down and Shut Up! and Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate. He maintains a blog about Buddhist stuff that you can click here to see.

Brad Warner will be speaking in Los Angeles soon.

March 10, 2012
10 AM – 3:30 PM
Hill Street Center
237 Hill St.
Santa Monica, CA 90405

March 15, 2012
7:30 PM – 9:00 PM
Against the Stream
4300 Melrose Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90029

You can also buy T-shirts and hoodies based on his books, and the new CD by his band Zero Defex now!

[..]

by Jen Friel

Hi friends,

We haven’t met yet, but I’d like to introduce myself…I’m @JenFriel. I am a lifecaster and corporate sponsored minimalist that went out on over 103 dates in 9 months while I was couch surfing for a year building my website (TalkNerdyToMeLover.com) and bartering social media to live. I’m an accidental expert in dating, and am here to share with you some tips and tricks that I learned during the course of my ongoing OKCupid project.

What is OKCupid, you may ask? Well, it’s only the nerdiest of nerdy dating websites! They use math to get you dates, and created an algorithm for compatibility that I can attest is pretty darn accurate!

Algorithms aside though, the one thing that I have noticed is that guys don’t understand how to actually set up a profile. I mean, they get the very basics – but they don’t understand what a female is looking for in a profile, or WHY some profiles work over others. This is where I would like to help. Here, pull up a chair…

1. Choose your username wisely.

I can’t begin to tell you how important choosing a username is – it’s one of the FIRST things a chick will notice.

A good username will consist of something that reflects your personality, and shows off who you are (while still remaining anonymous if that’s your cup of tea). Example: JohnLuvsGiants

A username such as that might tell me that one, your name is John, and two that you either love the football team The Giants, or you have a Paul Bunyan fetish. Either is kosher for Passover, but does tell me a bit about who you are.

A less than desirable username is anything that includes and of the following words: crazy, horny, mofo, bad, 69, fyckr, humpyoulikedogandyoulllikeit.

Chicks notice this, man – be true to you, and keep it real.

2. Answer the questions

I know that that sounds weird and straight forward since that is what the site is about – but I can’t begin to tell you how many guys have said to me, “I just wanted to wait for the date before getting to know the person.” The problem with that statement is the fact that you are NEVER going to get to know the girl, because she won’t reply back to your message because you had a 0% compatibility because you didn’t answer any friggen questions! Yes, dating has an ebb and flow, and yes, first dates are about discovery – however, to get that first date you have to get her attention. How are you going to do that? Be the guy that answers questions and show her how compatible you are by commenting on one single detail from her profile, and asking her to elaborate on it in the email.

3. Select a default that is a clear shot of a face with you genuinely smiling, and then have the rest of the pictures in your profile tell the story of your life.

I can’t begin to tell you how many guys mess this part up. They put a picture of themselves at a bbq with a sunglasses and hat on. I even had one friend have himself in a field with flags as his default picture. When I inquired as to why he selected that for his default his response was, chicks love flags!

*facepalm*

Dude, chicks don’t like flags. A chick wants to see your FACE!!! A clear shot, with a genuine “this is me actually being happy and not forced” smile. Let the female judge your attractiveness; it is your job in the default to be as neutral as possible.

Then, in all of the additional photos uploaded to the album (up to 10), you tell the story of your life. Like hiking? Show off some pics of you on various trails. Have you gone skydiving? Or like something equally cool and rad? Show it off!!! Post those pics, be you – have fun with it, tell the female your story.

4. Keep your profile brief and to the point.

I heart twitter. The microblogging site has conditioned me to get CRAZY good at finding ways to say things in as short of characters as possible. Do this with your profile!! Spit it out, get it out, but keep it brief. No one wants to be reading a novel when it comes to a dating profile. Keep things light and funny, while showcasing your personality. (Unless of course you are a horribly boring human being that enjoys watching paint dry and counting the holes in your ceiling; in that case, maybe online dating isn’t for you.)

Best of luck out there guys, and if you have any questions please hit me up on twitter: @JenFriel. I’d love to hear from you! xoxo

Like what you’ve read? You can also join Jen and her friends in the Talk Nerdy To Me, Lover live stage show called the Dirty Truth About Nerdy Girls on March 23 at 9:30 PM at The Little Modern Theater in Hollywood, CA. For more info visit TalkNerdyToMeLover.com/stage-show/