Scientists have claimed that sex and having good communication can have a significant influence on relationships but factors like knowing partner’s favourite pizza topping, being employed and ability to support yourself also matter.
Scientists tested 2,201 participants, head to head, in seven “relationship competencies” that previous researchers had found to vital for promoting happiness in romantic relationships.
The researchers’ idea was to rank them in order of vitality to start building data on the aspects of relationships most important to keep them healthy.
The researchers, in addition to communication and conflict resolution, also looked out for love-making or romance, stress management, life skills, knowledge of partners and self-management to find the best predictors of relationship satisfaction.
Couples were queried about their competency in these areas and then asked how satisfied they were in their relationships; the researchers then correlated each partner’s strengths and weaknesses in each area with the relationship satisfaction of the person.
Couple, reporting communicating effectively, showed highest satisfaction with their relationships.
Study’s lead author Robert Epstein, a professor of psychology at the University of the South Pacific, in Fiji, said that learning more about partner is also important for a successful relationship, Time Magazine reported.
Do people over age 50 need or want erotica about our age group? Personally, at 69, I enjoy sexy writing, but I don’t respond to youth-focused erotica with its quick arousal and inevitable orgasms. When I read about a couple slamming each other against a wall or onto a kitchen counter because their drive is impossibly urgent, my reaction is “ouch,” not “ohhh.” I want to identify with the characters, and I’m most stimulated by writers who write from an older perspective, using characters of our age, experiencing our challenges.
In a freewheeling discussion on love and life over dinner at the residence of the charismatic Gudmundur Eiriksson, Ambassador of Iceland, at least three women categorically stated that they believed in onesided love that could carry on forever, with no hope of being loved back.
The olderthey got and the more erotica they read, the more they wished for erotica that reflected their age, experiences, challenges, sexuality living in an aging body.wanted erotica that acknowledged the challenges, the liveliness, and the creativity of older-age sex.
Many — most? — people don’t feel this way at all. They’re aroused by characters and scenes that fill a fantasy that is unrelated to age and that takes them away from the realities of their own lives. They don’t want to be reminded of arthritic knees or undependable orgasms when they’re reading erotica.
Even among my own Ageless Erotica writers, there was no agreement when I asked them about the importance of “senior erotica.” Here’s a sampling of their comments:
“Good erotica is never about what the characters look like. It’s about sensations, sexy thoughts, hot words, how the partners give each other pleasure,” says Donna George Storey, author of Amorous Woman, a semi-autobiographical tale of an American woman’s erotic adventures in Japan. “For me it was deliciously naughty, a treat for my inner rebel, to write a true story about a juicy afternoon tryst with my husband of 27 years That story was very, very satisfying to tell.”
“I don’t believe we need erotica that emphasizes the challenges of seniors — people read fiction to escape from reality,” says I.G. Frederick, who writes steamy erotic stories and edgy, transgressive fiction. “However, all writers have a responsibility not to marginalize older adults by ignoring them. When they don’t appear in fiction they may succumb to the media myth that only the young get laid.”
“It’s important for my older characters not only to enjoy good, hot, steamy sex, but also to experience physical and emotional changes and deal with real life insecurities,” says Audrienne Roberts Womack, who also writes under the name Lotus Falcon, author of Sugar Dish Mouth Watering Erotic Poetry. “My main objective for writing erotic scenes for older characters is to emphasize that seniors are having and loving sexual relations just as they have always enjoyed it in their youth.”
“America and the world at large are obsessed with youth and beauty being paramount to sex appeal,” says Cheri Crystal, an award-winning erotica writer whose Help Wanted: Clitoris Missing In Action features a woman turning 60. “This preoccupation with staying young often affects how we feel about our sexual selves as we age. We want and need to see ourselves in fiction, particularly, erotica, because it makes us feel good no matter how old or how many limitations and challenges we may have.”
“Erotica from an older perspective is fascinating because within us are the memories of a lifetime: adolescent lust, young adult passions, the settled sexuality of middle age, and the difficulties and rewards of older age sex,” says Susan St. Aubin, whose A Love Drive-By includes erotic tales about people of all ages. “At almost 70, I run into more physical limitations, but my interior fantasies remain the same, and the erotic memories continue to grow!”
“When I write erotica, I’m focused on the erotic aspects of lovemaking so that age doesn’t really factor into it,” says Rae Padilla Francoeur, author of the erotic memoir, Free Fall: A Late-in-Life Memoir (read my review here). “When we do it, we’re not just thinking, hey, watch out for my bad knee. We’re hardly thinking at all.” Francoeur shares her writing with her lover, age 73, on date night. “If he says, ‘This is hot,’ I’ve done my job and I’m about to reap the rewards.”
Is “senior erotica” a trend? We may never know, because we don’t talk much about our erotica appetite or preferences. But we can make it a trend just by buying, reading, and talking about erotica that acknowledges our age group.
You’ll be surprised and, I hope, delighted, to expand your fantasy life to see what is possible at our age!
Along with most of the men present, I too was surprised, because one-sided love sounds more like a punishment than a happy state of being. To love someone who does not love you back seems like an exercise in disaster. I can understand such a love when there is some hope of it being returned in some measure some day, as happens in the movies. Or when you are, at least, admired in return. I can even understand a yearning for something you have shared and lost. But a love that continues with no possibility of return?
What good is a love that cannot be indulged in, celebrated, danced and sung to, a love that cannot enfold you securely with your loved one? A lonely love that finds no outer response is bound to feed on itself, resulting in frustration and emptiness. The Ambassador’s wife, the lovelyThorey Vigdis Olafsdottir, a psychologist and active participant in the discussion, agreed with me that a one-sided love is a sure path to frustration and obsession. It must surely be a very painful emotion, she said. She agrees with experts who opine that the pain is actually both ways – for the one who loves and for the object of that love. For the one who receives such a love, it is often very difficult to let the lover know that his/her feelings are not reciprocated. If the one loving you is someone close or someone you care for, it is not easy to hurt them by declaring your lack of love. Who doesn’t like to be loved or admired? So, more often than not, the receiver allows the situation to continue, giving the lover hope, thus making things worse.
At Ambassador Gudmundur’s dinner were three young, successful women — a poet, an advertising professional and a lawyer, who spoke of their belief in undying, unrequited love.
Shadan Ahmad, poet & theatre artiste… “I can relate to unrequited love. Sometimes you may glimpse your ideal in someone but the situation may not allow you to do anything about this feeling. I cherish such an emotion. It is enough for me if I have found someone worth loving. It may result in something at some point or maybe nothing ever, but the existence of that ideal in my heart is enough for me. For creative people like me, our own sense of self and purpose encourages us to seek divinity in love, and divine love is not likely to be actualised in this life. So it is good enough for me that I am able to live with my kind of love on my own terms, without having to pay the price for it. There was a time when I could not relate to Meera’s one-sided love for Krishna, but today I understand that she lived a divine life. It is better this way…”
Divya Shante (name changed), advertising professional: “Even after a break-up that I brought about, I continue to love this guy because that feeling of love stays with me just as strongly. It was a clean break; I do not even know where he is now. So it’s more about a continued love without the labels and bonds that define the relationship. I live with it without the hope that it will be returned because when things reach such an emotional stalemate that you love and yet are not able to resolve some stuff, then your feelings don’t die; you are just forced to stifle them. I go through phases when I feel sad looking at another couple; another time I feel blessed for living with such a divine love. I wish him well and pray for him. Yes, it does hold me back from loving someone else, but that cannot be helped.”
Shreela Sen (name changed), lawyer: “Once you love someone, the emotion doesn’t die just because some day the other person stops loving you. It can be a very painful emotion to be the only one to love, but I believe that it does exist; how can the chemistry of all that you have shared with a loved one, become nothing?”
What comes through strongly is three women who, having taken risks and made their choices, are unwilling to compromise with their idea of love. Women with strong personalities and a clear idea of the kind of love they seek, who prefer to enshrine the ideal within their hearts when reality or circumstances, as they call it, do not allow them to reach out and indulge. And somewhere, these women do realise that it is only here, in a realm removed from reality that love will not deplete into mundane emotion, where it will thrive, to never fade away. And the fact that they need do nothing about it — there will be no expectations either way — may actually be the best thing about it.
And yet, does it not seem like playing in the shallow waters of the beach, not allowing the waves of life to throw you up to the heavens before you land on ground – only to be thrown up again?
This then would depend on the strength of your personality. Are you strong enough to use the one-sided emotion to your benefit, to allow it to energise you and to feed your creative instincts? Or, do you let it enervate you and leave you to regret and fade away like Devdas? Will you allow the emotion to leave you forlorn or thrilled? That depends on how you allow it to play out in your heart — a lonely love away from love — or a divine love that is beyond all love.
A new survey has revealed that ladies are the most content to bare it all in front of their better halves at 34, as this is the age when they finally accept their body shape.
The survey found that 34 is the magical age when 40 per cent of women admitted that they take a good look at their naked bodies with pride every day, the Daily Express reported.
When the respondents were asked about their favourite part of their bodies, 30 per cent of women said they were proud of their breasts, while 22 per cent chose their legs.
However, over 50 per cent of the ladies wanted a flatter tummy.
The research was commissioned by Sanctuary Spa.
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