Sex is for your body, not your mind.

I’m reading Pleasurable Weight Loss by Jena La Flamme and in it, she talks about increasing your threshold for pleasure.

I had that chapter on my mind when I had this mind blowing thought the other day:

Sex is for the body, not the mind.

I mean, duh. Men, if you’re reading this, you’re probably like what is she talking about? No shit. Why is there a blog post about this?

But women, you might get it.

If you’ve ever experienced a racing mind during sex, you know how life changing this thought is.

Sex is for the body, not the mind.

It’s not so you can be more loved. It’s not to check a box.

It’s for you to feel pleasure and your partner to feel pleasure, and in the process of this experience build your connection.

But first and foremost, pleasure.

So, the next time you’re in bed and your mind starts going going going worrying about is this good and should I do this or what about that or wow, I’m a good significant other for this, or when will this be over….STOP.

Remember that sex is for your body, not your mind.

And just like meditation, when your mind starts to wander (like it inevitably will…), bring your mind and attention back to your breath.

But in this case, bring it right back between your legs.

Your body knows exactly what to do.

 

Together while apart: how we stay in touch while traveling

While Mike is in Florida, we’re communicating primarily through email. It started when I went to St. Lucia and knew I wouldn’t have cell service.  It didn’t even cross my mind to find a way to be able to use my phone while there. My sisters got calling cards, texting plans, and an app to call through wi-fi but I just assumed we’d have wi-fi at the resort and Mike and I agreed to email back and forth through the week. We liked it so much that even though we can chat on the phone or through text while Mike is in Florida we decided we’d primarily chat through email.

While it was weird not speaking or texting when I was away, we realized that we really enjoyed emailing back and forth. I liked taking time to sit and write an email to him–it allowed me time to reflect on the trip, to think about my response before responding. In writing to each other, I think we gave each other more quality time than we would have if we’d be calling and texting.

When we’re apart, phone calls are usually short at the end of the day when I’m tired and/or distracted and therefore they’re not very substantive, and filled with lots of  “i miss you.” While texts are nice, text conversations can be the worst.

But, when I sat down to write Mike an email (in the morning, my favorite time of day), I wanted to fill him in on what I’d been up to, what things were on my mind. I’d think consciously about what I wanted him to know, what I wanted to talk to him about. When you’re emailing, you can’t just be on the other end of the line, you have to write and you have to think about it. I’d be sure to ask him thoughtful questions, to follow up on things he’d told me to keep the conversation going. It is a different way of a communicating but a nice change of pace.

It was fun to look forward to the emails. When did I think he’d write? What would he say? I felt like I did back in middle school waiting for a note from a boy I liked and the giddiness and excitement that went along with that.

If I looked forward to emails from him every day this week, you can imagine my excitement that he’s coming home TODAY!

I’d love to know:

How do you keep in touch with your sig-o when traveling apart? (see above)

Do you remember exchanging notes in middle school? I remember getting notes from Mike in middle school.  I can still remember how he folded them–differently than I did.  

Our "first" Valentine's Day

Our first Valentine’s Day as a married couple was probably our best yet.  Ok, definitely our best yet.  Considering I asked Mike to brainstorm some past Valentine’s Days for a post on 2/14 and neither of us could remember what we did last year.

This Valentine’s Day, Mike had a sweet idea: to try to replicate the dessert pizza from one of our favorite DC restaurants and have dinner at home.  I’d been wanting to recreate Matchbox‘s dessert pizza since we started making our own pizza months ago so I loved this thoughtful idea.

Mike let me choose what we had for dinner so we made this amazing lasagna. We made this lasagna over a year ago and hadn’t been able to find the recipe since. But with a little searching, Mike was able to find it. (Click here for the recipe.)

I had the sauce for the lasagna working when Mike got home from work. And he quickly got to work on the dough for the pizza. We had the Pandora love songs station going and were totally in our element.

After the lasagna was in, the dough was rising, and we had some dishes done, we sat down at the island for a little appetizer.  (I can get grumpy when I’m hungry so I this was a precautionary measure that turned out sweet.) We had the rest of that delicious bread leftover from dinner on Sunday, dipped in a little olive oil, salt, and pepper, and some wine.

I was so happy. We were chatting, reminiscing about past Valentine’s Days, and kissing and I got really emotional and started to cry happy tears.

The lasagna turned out delicious and we ate on the couch while watching an episode of our new show Modern Family. I later thought that it was odd that we ate in front of the TV instead of at the table on Valentine’s Day but we were in the kitchen for so long prepping the meal and washing the dishes that we probably both just wanted to relax on the couch.

Then it was time for the dessert pizza.  We did a little “recon” on Friday night by going to Matchbox and ordering dessert pizza.  OK, we planned to go out to dinner that night to catch up and we hadn’t been to Matchbox in quite a while and chalked it up as “research.” But I’m so glad we did.  Our server was able to shed some light into the icing which we would’ve never gotten close otherwise. We were also able to focus in on some of the flavors to make sure we didn’t forget anything.

Well, the pizza was a success! All the flavors were there: cinnamon, sugar, blackberry, raspberry, strawberry, mint, and balsamic reduction.  The dough was very chewy and we’ll probably make some changes to that next time but overall the dessert hit the spot. We were so proud of ourselves. We ate our pizza on the couch while watching another episode of Modern Family.

Honestly, this was a perfect evening. We talked, we laughed, we cooked, we ate delicious food.  We were really connected and really enjoyed each other’s company.  It was different than a normal night because we were technically on a date and neither one of us was expecting to do anything else other than be with each other.

Neither of us wanted the night to end. When I woke up on Wednesday morning, I was bummed that it was all over.  I wanted to stretch the date and stay in our happy, relaxed, connected state. You know, like a long weekend that you just don’t want to end.

Definitely the best Valentine’s Day yet.