Shakespeare Joins the Celebration

In honor of yesterday's landmark Supere Court decision here are a few words from William

Shakespeare on love and marriage:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wand'ring bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me prov'd,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

---------Sonnet 116--William Shakespeare      

The Normal Bar as a Book for Two

It’s President’s Day weekend, and I am so grateful to have this long weekend with John. We have both been so busy with work, family, sports and community. We have not had much “couple time” in the last month, so this weekend we went to our favorite B&B in the Berkshires to read, sleep and make love.

For fun we took the new book, “The Normal Bar” with us and we took turns reading it and asking each other the questions about our relationship. One of the things that works well with this book is that it is well documented and based on thorough research so it seems to work for both men and women. There are enough facts to assure the suggestions are valid, and there are enough stories and anecdotes to engage a less literal reader. Hence both boys and girls can enjoy!

The tagline on the book says, “Surprising secrets of happy couples…” and there are some big surprises. Like what men want more of is: communication. And the authors mean hands-free communicationJ. Really. Of course they also document the correlation between better communication and better sex so bring on the talking!

But there is more than juicy sex tips in this book. Of course, sex sells so you have to mention sex and romance to sell a book, But how about this tip for a great marriage: comb your hair, put on a nice shirt and lose five pounds. Yes, according to the authors’ research with thousands of couples, letting yourself go--which starts in years six to 9—does big damage to marriages. And the remedies are simple; no plastic surgery needed: change clothes, add lipstick and shave on weekends.

Rest assured that there is plenty of good stuff on sex in this book. Want to know if your fantasies are normal? If his are? How important is oral sex? And how important is it to your partner if you have an orgasm? That’s here too. Just reading the book together turned up the heat on our winter weekend. Let’s just say we were a little bit normal and a little bit not.

As usual, we came away from the weekend touching more and laughing more and yes, reading together a whole lot more.