Love

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  Now again, with this new person in mind, slowly repeat the classic LKM phrases, or your own renditions of them. Visualize how this person would appear if each wish were to come true for him or her, pausing just a moment between each phrase to notice how your body responds. As you continue to practice, gradually call to mind all your friends and family, as a group. Wish them all well through your body’s appreciation of the classic LKM phrases. Next, welcome in all the people with whom you share a connection—even remote connections, like the service person you reached on your last call for tech support. Use the phrases to extend your goodwill as far as you can. As you end your meditation, gently remind yourself that you can generate these feelings of kindness and warmth anytime you wish. By taking time with this activity, you’ve begun to condition your emotions to more readily do just that. You’ll now be better prepared to experience true connection with others. Beginning a meditation practice is a very personal project. People differ in the kinds of external support they need to get started and to stay with it. The most important step to take is to allocate time to practice. Keep in mind that our research shows that just sixty minutes a week can make a noticeable difference in your life. You might thus choose to set your alarm for ten minutes earlier each morning to practice with the LKM phrases completely on your own. If you find yourself losing focus, you can follow any number of guided meditations until your focus and follow-through become stronger. I’ve included a few such guided meditations free for you to download at www.PositivityResonance.com. Other great meditation aids are also available, and I point out a few of my favorites under Recommended Reading in the back of this book. I also highly recommend taking a meditation class or workshop. Ask for one at your local hospital, gym, or wellness center. Love 2.0: The View from Here Love is not simply something you stumble or fall into. While love can certainly catch you by surprise, like a sudden rain, unlike the weather, you can also seed and cultivate the conditions for love all on your own. All it takes is that you develop an eye and a feel for love and for the contexts in which you might seed it. Slow down and prepare your own heart and mind to be truly open to others. Reflect on moments of connection, actively seek these moments out, or condition your heart with the time-tested good wishes of loving-kindness meditation.

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  I’ve come up with a visual metaphor for positivity resonance that likens it to a mirror. This seems apt because a moment of positivity resonance, by definition, involves considerable mirroring at three different levels: You and the other person mirror the positivity in each other’s emotional state; you mirror each other’s gestures and biochemistry; and you mirror each other’s impulse to care for one another. So in a moment of positivity resonance, to some extent, you each become the reflection and extension of the other. Sure enough, when you face a conventional mirror, you meet eyes only with yourself. Imagine, though, facing a mirror straight on and seeing this other person. Before this moment of positivity resonance, the two of you were off doing your own thing—feeling your own emotions, making your own moves, and following your own inclinations. But in this particular moment of connection, your respective feelings, actions, and impulses align and come into sync. For just a moment, you each become something larger than yourself. This is no ordinary moment. Within this mirrored reflection and extension of your own state, you see far more. A powerful back-and-forth union of energy springs up between the two of you, like an electric charge. Ordinary positive emotions don’t resonate like this at all. They are not mirrored back to you. Although the warmth of any positive emotion stretches your mind and spurs you to grow in ways that leave you more resourceful and resilient than before, only love creates such a deep interpersonal resonance. That’s because within micro-moments of love, your own positivity, your own warmth and openness, evoke—and is simultaneously evoked by—the warmth and openness emanating from the other person. This shared positivity gets further amplified by the synchronized changes in biochemistry that course through your bodies and the attention you each show the other—the smiles, the leaning in, your verbal and nonverbal expressions of care and concern for each other. These are powerful, energizing moments. Your body was designed to harness this power—to live off it. Your ability to understand and empathize with others depends mightily on having a steady diet of positivity resonance, as do your potentials for wisdom, spirituality, and health. Odds are, if you were raised in a Western culture, you think of emotions as largely private events. You locate them within a person’s boundaries, confined within their mind and skin. When conversing about emotions, your use of singular possessive adjectives betrays this point of view: You refer to “my anxiety,” “his anger,” or “her interest.” Following this logic, love would seem to belong to the person who feels it. Defining love as positivity resonance challenges this view.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  —No podía robar tu vida y tenerte solo para mí, ¿sabes? —explica—. Pero entonces, me di cuenta que no eras feliz y llena de esperanzas, o me hacías sentir bien porque eres joven. Tú eres esas cosas y eres capaz de esas cosas porque eres una buena persona. Es quien eres tú. Una lágrima cae, deslizándose por mi mejilla. —Nena —susurra, sus manos temblando—. Espero que me ames, porque te amo como loco, y voy a quererte por el resto de mi vida. Intenté mantenerme alejado porque pensé que era lo correcto, pero no puedo. Te necesito, y te amo. Esto no va a suceder dos veces, y no volveré a ser estúpido. Lo prometo. Mi barbilla tiembla, y algo se atora en mi garganta, e intento contenerme pero no puedo. Mi rosto se quiebra, y me derrumbo, dándole la espalda. Las lágrimas llegan como una maldita cascada, y lo odio. Lo odio. Sus brazos me envuelven en un segundo y me abraza desde atrás, enterrando su rostro en mi cuello. —Lamento que me tomara tanto tiempo —susurra en mi oreja. —Así fue. —Lloro—. Te tomó demasiado tiempo. —Te compensaré. —Me gira y toma mi rostro, presionando sus labios en mi oreja—. Lo prometo. Me sostiene por un momento, y mi orgullo me dice que no me deje llevar. Que no lo deje entrar y no más segundas oportunidades. Pero no estoy completamente segura de que no haría lo mismo si estuviera en sus zapatos. Cole, Lindsay, Shel, mi hermana, Dutch, todo el vecindario… ellos hablarán. Algunos lo juzgarán por esto. Su temor es justificado. Pero ellos no saben. No saben lo afortunados que somos y lo bueno que es esto. Lo amo. Me aparto y limpio mis lágrimas en su camiseta. —Y no coloqué los marcos en el lugar incorrecto —le digo—. Ahí es donde siempre pertenecían. Se ríe, secando las lágrimas de mi rostro, y acercándome para besarme. Todo regresa a mi memoria —su boca, suave pero fuerte, y su sabor—, y le devuelvo el beso, levantándome de puntillas para profundizarlo. —¿Necesitan una habitación? —interrumpe alguien—. Vinieron al lugar correcto. Me vuelvo a apartar, y Pike se aclara la garganta mientras Danni entra y se sienta en su banco. —Pike, esta es Danni —digo—. Danni, Pike. —Encantada de conocerte —contesta. —Sí, igualmente. —Levanta su mano y la sacuden. —Entonces, ¿quieren una habitación? —pregunta nuevamente—. ¿La casa invita? Saca la última llave del cubículo y la levanta. Pike se mueve hacia adelante, tomándola. —Gracias. De verdad. Eso sería genial. Ella desvía su mirada a mí, y puedo ver que está buscando confirmación de que todo está bien. Asiento, tranquilizándola. —Bueno, tengan una buena noche —nos dice—. Los veré en la mañana. Pike toma mi mano, y caminamos afuera. El húmedo aire de agosto comienza a humedecer mis brazos. Él me toma como si fuera a perderme mientras caminamos a su camioneta y toma su bolsa y un pequeño paquete. Me río, viendo todavía lodo en la puerta y llantas.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  I fell madly, quickly, and completely, forever, the first time he fucked my ass. Now it’s #220 and my love has only deepened—220 times deeper. I adore him, for good and better (it’s never worse), and it is a kind of rapturous indulgence to so unconditionally adore the entire skin surface of another human being’s body. Before I liked men in parts—their lips or eyes, their hands or chest, only occasionally the cock itself. With him I love all those and every nook, cranny, and space in between—and his cock, balls, and asshole most of all. In worship lies freedom. The freedom of withholding nothing, which propels one into the elliptical realm of love. ANAL ORGASM As I learned how to stay in the bliss, I found something else. I have become pure vehicle for his cock, no resistance. I can relinquish all power. I feel such a gravitational pull to this man, who can, and will, disempower me, so willing to give everything away, to bestow it upon him. I never knew how much power I had until I gave it all to him through my ass. My ass is a pipeline for power. I am, I have come to realize, his runway, his launchpad. And after numerous runs to the edge of inevitability, the final one begins. I can tell it’s the one because it coincides, always, with my ability to commit to complete submission, to remain completely open without reserve, without limit. Once he feels this, he aims for the gold. If I show any sign on my face, or inside my ass, of reneging on my submission, he slows down and works me until my ass believes that there is only one choice, only one way. No choice but surrender is surrender. I am his entirely, body, soul, and asshole. I relish my freedom. Molded onto his cock, I feel its urgency. The road to orgasm is a straight line into my ass, into the center of my being, into the center of the world. I don’t know who starts the coming. I do, however, know that he is the only man whose orgasm interests me more than my own—no small feat. On one level, I feel like his cock sets off my contractions and my contractions then set off his . . . but then his set off mine . . . Contractions in my ass, involuntary contractions: anal orgasm. I ride his orgasm like a jockey on a wild stallion, never losing contact but never in control. He explodes. My ass has sucked us together into an airless vacuum and we are one thing. Fused in a timeless space, I experience my destiny directly as being that moment and no other.

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  The range of lifelong benefits that lovingly reared infants extract from the recurrent micro-moments of positivity resonance they share with attentive caregivers shines a spotlight on the immense value of these fleeting and subtle states. Although the typical springboards for the loving moments you share with intimates are surely different from the peekaboo games infants play with their caregivers, this painstaking infant research underscores that a deep or complex understanding of the other is hardly necessary for love. Any moment of positivity resonance that ripples through the brains and bodies of you and another can be health- and life-giving, regardless of whether you share history together. Studies of successful marriages also bear this out. Couples who regularly make time to do new and exciting things together—like hiking, skiing, dancing, or attending concerts and plays—have better- quality marriages. These activities provide a steady stream of shared micro-moments of positivity resonance. Intimacy and shared history are hardly preconditions for taking a hike. Love 2.0: The View from Here Love is different from what you might have thought. It’s certainly different from what I thought. Love springs up anytime any two or more people connect over a shared positive emotion. What does it mean, then, to say that I love my husband, Jeff? It used to mean that eighteen plus years ago, I fell in love with him. So much so that I abandoned my crusty attitude toward marriage and chose to dive right in. I used to uphold love as that constant, steady force that defines my relationship with Jeff. Of course that constant, steady force still exists between us. Yet upgrading my vision of love, I now see that steady force, not as love per se, but as the bond he and I share, and the commitments we two have made to each other, to be loyal and trusting to the end. That bond and these commitments forge a deep and abiding sense of safety within our relationship, a safety that tills the soil for frequent moments of love. Knowing now that, from our bodies’ perspective, love is positivity resonance—nutrient-rich bursts that accrue to make Jeff, me, and the bond we share healthier—shakes us out of any complacency that tempts us to take our love for granted, as a mere attribute of our relationship. Love, this new view tells us with some urgency, is something we should recultivate every morning, every afternoon, and every evening. Seeing love as positivity resonance motivates us to reach out for a hug more often or share an inspiring or silly idea or image over breakfast. In these small ways, we plant additional seeds of love that help our bodies, our well-being, and our marriage to grow stronger.

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  Perhaps counterintuitively, love is far more ubiquitous than you ever thought possible for the simple fact that love is connection. It’s that poignant stretching of your heart that you feel when you gaze into a newborn’s eyes for the first time or share a farewell hug with a dear friend. It’s even the fondness and sense of shared purpose you might unexpectedly feel with a group of strangers who’ve come together to marvel at a hatching of sea turtles or cheer at a football game. The new take on love that I want to share with you is this: Love blossoms virtually anytime two or more people—even strangers—connect over a shared positive emotion, be it mild or strong. To put it in a nutshell, love is the momentary upwelling of three tightly interwoven events: first, a sharing of one or more positive emotions between you and another; second, a synchrony between your and the other person’s biochemistry and behaviors; and third, a reflected motive to invest in each other’s well-being that brings mutual care. My shorthand for this trio is positivity resonance. Within those moments of interpersonal connection that are characterized by this amplifying symphony—of shared positive emotions, biobehavioral synchrony, and mutual care—life-giving positivity resonates between and among people. This back-and-forth reverberation of positive energy sustains itself—and can even grow stronger—until the momentary connection wanes, which is of course inevitable, because that’s how emotions work. I’ve come up with a visual metaphor for positivity resonance that likens it to a mirror. This seems apt because a moment of positivity resonance, by definition, involves considerable mirroring at three different levels: You and the other person mirror the positivity in each other’s emotional state; you mirror each other’s gestures and biochemistry; and you mirror each other’s impulse to care for one another. So in a moment of positivity resonance, to some extent, you each become the reflection and extension of the other. Sure enough, when you face a conventional mirror, you meet eyes only with yourself. Imagine, though, facing a mirror straight on and seeing this other person. Before this moment of positivity resonance, the two of you were off doing your own thing—feeling your own emotions, making your own moves, and following your own inclinations. But in this particular moment of connection, your respective feelings, actions, and impulses align and come into sync. For just a moment, you each become something larger than yourself. This is no ordinary moment. Within this mirrored reflection and extension of your own state, you see far more. A powerful back-and-forth union of energy springs up between the two of you, like an electric charge.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Mis cejas se alzan, teniendo una idea. Lentamente, desabotono la camisa de franela que llevo y veo sus ojos ensancharse cuando ve que no llevo nada debajo. La abro ligeramente, invitando a sus ojos a posarse en mis pechos desnudos. —¿Y qué te gusta? —lo provoco como esa noche en la cocina cuando le puse una tirita en el dedo. Su mirada está posada en mi pecho y dejo que la camisa caiga por mis brazos, mis pezones están duros por el frío de la lluvia en el aire. Dejo caer mi voz a un susurro. —Creo que necesito más práctica. Sus ojos se oscurecen y se llenan de deseo mientras me mira. Impulsándose en el escalón, entra en la camioneta y fuera de la lluvia, bajando su cuerpo sobre el mío. Caigo hacia atrás en el asiento, abriendo mis piernas para él mientras trabajo en desabrochar su cinturón. Nuestros labios se ciernen sobre los del otro. —Lo que sea que la cumpleañera quiera —susurra. Nueve años después Un trueno perfora el silencio y despierto con un parpadeo mientras los rayos destellan en la habitación. Suspiro, frotándome los ojos con mi pulgar e índice. Más lluvia, maldita sea. Nop. No es mi trabajo preocuparme por ello durante las siguientes dos semanas, así que no voy a hacerlo. Dutch puede encargarse, tengo que creer eso. Jordan y yo nos vamos en la mañana y él está a cargo mientras no estoy. Le prometí que ella y los chicos tendrían mi completa atención mientras estamos lejos, siempre y cuando deje su ordenador portátil en casa y tampoco intente trabajar en nada. El problema con ella es que su trabajo también es su afición, así que en parte me siento mal pidiéndole que se aleje de algo que ama. Pero tiene razón. Los niños necesitan vernos sin nuestros ojos enterrados en alguna pantalla. Vuelvo mi cabeza, bajando la mirada a ella junto a mí. Está acurrucada de costado, su nariz y labios enterrados en mi brazo con una mano sobre mi pecho y hombro. Su cabello largo hasta los hombros está extendido por la almohada y bajo la mano y levanto la sábana sobre sus piernas desnudas y bragas blancas. Lleva la camiseta amarilla que compró en nuestra luna de miel en México, y todavía no puedo decir que está embarazada de cuatro meses con nuestro segundo hijo. Nuestro primero, Jake, está dormido en su habitación por el pasillo. Jake Ryan Lawson. Le puso el nombre de algún tipo de una película adolescente de los ochenta, pero eso no se le digo a la gente. Ella puede decirles, pero yo ciertamente no voy a hacerlo. Pongo mi mano en su muslo y miro fijamente al techo. Tengo cuarenta y ocho años. ¿Qué asuntos tengo con un hijo de seis años y otro niño en camino? Pero maldición, soy feliz.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  He watches as I take off my thong, lie back on the bed, and bend my knees up and apart. Looking at my pussy, he says, “Spread it apart.” With a hand on each side I open my little pink pussy lips to him. He kneels before me and sucks on my clit, sings on my clit like a troubadour breaking all the rules. I flowed into his tongue and he murmured, “You like it when I eat your pussy, don’t you?” “I would die for it,” I admitted. I cannot imagine feeling greater love in all my life, nor do I expect to ever feel greater love, except for him. Nor would I ever ask or want greater love than I feel for him. With any others, after him, I will need to rest. OBITUARY After such a stunning start, I prepared, as any bright woman would, for the end. Great love always brings thoughts of death and separation. This was a war—between decency and desire, between convention and pleasure, between me, myself, and I—and that great aphrodisiac fueled my craving. With the assumption, or expectation, of longevity gone, the moat of self-protection and the apathy of safety disappear and passion floods the world. Well, it flooded mine, anyway. Now is all there was, all I had—and I knew it. The aphoristic obituary was especially comforting. My testimony would serve if he died, if I died, or—worst of all—if he flaked on me. He had the biggest, hardest, and most gentle cock I ever knew. He was the one who fucked me in the ass, missionary-style, before he fucked my pussy. He was the one who looked beautiful to me when we fucked, the others all looked like men with contorted faces—best not to look. He didn’t grunt, or groan, or squeak during sex. He beamed and glowed, eyes wide open, shaking his head, saying, “Wow! Wow!” and then he’d fuck me some more. He was the thirty-third man, and the only one I really liked to fuck. The others were just men and I allowed it. Resentfully. Most men fuck in and out, in and out, in and out, on and on. But he fucked like he was actually going somewhere. And he was. He was the only one who took time to be friends with my cat. The others regarded my little fur ball as a hindrance, an obstacle, even a threat. They just didn’t get it: love me, love my pussy. He was my blood. He was the one who never got real. He was the one I never conquered. He was one I had the most fun with. He had the only cock I worshiped.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  The Surrender An Erotic Memoir Toni Bentley Dedication Virginia Woolf believed that no woman had succeeded in writing the truth of the experience of her own body—that women and language both would have to change considerably before anything like that could happen. —Claudia Roth Pierpont Contents Dedication Prologue THE HOLY FUCK BEFORE THE SEARCH MY MIRROR, MY MASTER SEX HISTORY THE MASSEUR NEW YEAR’S EVE MEN SCANTY PANTIES HOUND SEX TRINITY MAN OF GOD THE LAST BOYFRIEND DURING A-MAN WHY THERE? #41 ENTERING THE EXIT #75 THE DOUBLE-SPHINCTER THEORY #98 PROFILE OF AN ASS-FUCKER OBITUARY #101 THE UNWRITTEN RULES #121 K-Y TRACELESS Why him? Four things: STATISTICS PUBLIC INTEREST #145 and #146 GETTING READY New Year’s Arithmetic HIS COCK THE LONG AND SHORT OF IT #156 THE LESSON THE UNFORTUNATE AND BORING PLIGHT OF SO MANY WOMEN #162 DEVOTION RAZING THE BARRE #175 OLD ORGASMS #181 SOUVENIRS #200 FOREPLAY REAR ENTRY #220 ANAL ORGASM #246 THE BOX PARADISE #262 REAR-ENDED HER WAR #276 THE BANANA #291 SAVING FACE AFTER ACCOUNTING RECLAMATION BACKDOOR BUDDHA HEELED Acknowledgments About the Author Praise for The Surrender Also by Toni Bentley Credits Copyright About the Publisher Prologue I once loved a man so much that I no longer existed—all Him, no Me. Now I love myself just enough that no man exists—all Me, no Them. They all used to be God, and I used to be a figment of my own imagination; now men are figments of my imagination. Same game, different positions. I don’t know how to play any other way. Someone must be on top, someone on bottom. Side by side is a bore. I tried it once for a few wildly disorienting minutes. Equality negates progress, prevents action. But a top and a bottom, well, they can get to the moon and back before equals can negotiate who pays, who gets laid, and who gets the blame. My transformation, however, was not from bottom to top, but from bottom to bottom: from my wretched emotional submission to my blessed sexual submission. This is the story of my switch—and of paying its price. Very expensive. Priceless. THE HOLY FUCK This pleasure is such that nothing can interfere with it, and the object that serves it cannot, in savoring it, fail to be transported to the third heaven. No other is as good, no other can satisfy as fully both of the individuals who indulge in it, and those who have experienced it can revert to other things only with difficulty. —DONATIEN DE SADE His was first. In my ass. I don’t know the exact length, but it’s definitely too big—just right. Of medium width, neither too slender nor too thick. Beautiful. My ass, tiny, a teenage boy’s, tight, and tightly wound. Twenty-five years of winding as a ballet dancer. Since age four, the age when I first declared war on my daddy.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  It is my altruism, not my narcissism, that fosters this fantasy. After all, a man can acquire such wisdom at the source of a woman’s orgasm: how to slow down, speed up, be consistent, be nonlinear, be persistent, be unpredictable, be patient, be outrageous, be generous, be witty. There is, in fact, nothing of value, philosophically and practically, that he can’t learn if he can turn the delta of Venus into the site of Vesuvius. Most men will lick and suck and drink a pussy—and I’m not complaining. But it is the rare man who does so with his whole consciousness poised on his tongue. It is this awareness that will move a woman; when her consciousness—on her clit—encounters his, orgasm marks their meeting. Ultimately, it is here—or rather, down there—that a man will learn how to be a winner or a loser, with women as in life. TRINITY If old-fashioned fucking-for-two remained a minefield for me, fucking-for-three continued to be a delight. The Pre-Raphaelite redhead plotted reunions, and we three got together every month or so with unplanned regularity for over a year. I returned to my New Year’s Eve lovers again and again, hungry for love and freedom—a previously impossible duet in my experience. Says Jesus in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas: When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male and the female one and the same . . . then you will enter the kingdom. One day, I ventured down on the Pre-Raphaelite. First time. Terrified. Curious. I wanted to see her pleasure in order to know my own. She was a genuine redhead. Eating pussy when you are a heterosexual woman is overwhelming. To confront a pussy that close for the first time—you can’t ever get that close, at that angle, to your own—is like looking narcissism in the face with a resounding Yes! Profound. Wet. It can sometimes be so hard to be oneself in one’s own sex life. With another woman, a woman’s identity receives a brutal jolt: she is me, I am her, her pleasure is mine, mine is hers. The source, the center, the origin of the human race becomes your only view. I bonded with my own sex and learned to love myself. I also developed a new compassion for the male divers. A pussy is a wild and watery landscape of hills and valleys and ravines and mighty holes that suck one in like quicksand. Once in, you cannot escape. Diving is an act of bravery. The redhead, however, demonstrated less hesitancy, and ate me like a woman who knows how. Naughty, considerate, and relentless. Her fingers felt like tongues, her mouth like a baby’s, sucking. I resist men’s fingers. Too rough, too big, too fast. My shield goes up, my clit hides. My orgasms with her were long, open, and free.

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  Loving is a skill. It takes practice. When you set the goal of learning to love yourself, you’ll find ever-present opportunities to practice this new skill, because you’re never further than arm’s reach, or perhaps better said, heart’s reach. Just like all forms of positivity resonance, however, self-love first requires safety and connection. Beating yourself up with the continual harshness of self-criticism is no way to make yourself feel safe in your own company. Likewise, if your self-assessments are unflappably sunny, unhinged from reality, or otherwise blind to your ingrained bad habits, you can hardly feel safe either. A true friend, after all, is the one who tells you the truth. He or she affirms you realistically and often, and yet does not abandon you or grow silent when a negative assessment is prudent. Creating a sense of safety within your own skin is just the same. To access self-love, disengage from harshness in your self-talk, but not from reality. Affirm your positive qualities, but refrain from delusion and self-deception. Be your own compassionate truth-teller. Love’s second precondition is connection. This is no less true for self-love than for positivity resonance with others. Truly loving yourself requires that you slow down enough to truly meet yourself heart to heart, letting the heart of your I resonate with the heart of your me. Allow time to reflect on your inherent strivings for goodness. Tune in to the messages your body sends you. You can’t simply rush from one activity to the next, attending forever outward, and expect to fall into self-love. Indeed, you might let rushing about serve as your cue to switch gears. Self-love, we’ve seen, is not the same as having an inflated, narcissistic view of yourself or high self-esteem. These often hinge on good outcomes, making you rigidly guard against negative feedback. When bad news crashes through, it sends you into a free fall. Self-love, by contrast, is steadier, more peaceful. This inherent calm arises because it’s not predicated on good outcomes. You can learn to be a friend to yourself through thick and thin, through good times and bad. Indeed, it’s in the toughest times that harboring compassion toward yourself makes the biggest difference. Practice standing by your own side during hard times, with openness and goodwill, and you’ll appreciate the steady security self-love offers you. It safeguards you from plunging into despair. Self-love buys you even more. It’s the currency in which all other forms of positivity resonance trade. When your reserves of self-love are low, you can scarcely meet the gaze of others, seeing yourself as either beneath or above them. A chasm forms between you and others that slashes your odds of forging true connections. Yet when you practice and bank self-love, you become rich with emotional reserves. You’re more able to recognize sources of goodness in others, to see and fulfill others’ yearnings to connect, no matter their circumstances. The next chapter describes how to do just that. CHAPTER 7

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  What the brain images show is that, compared to imagining neutral, nonpainful situations, imagining yourself in these painful situations lights up the well-known network of brain areas associated with pain processing, including the insula, that area linked with conscious feeling states. When you are later asked to imagine these same painful events happening to a loved one—your spouse, your best friend, or your child, for instance—these same brain areas light up. By and large, then, your loved one’s pain is your pain. By contrast, when you imagine these painful events happening to complete strangers, a different pattern of activation emerges altogether, one that shows little activation in the insula and more activation in areas linked with distinguishing and distancing yourself from others, and actively inhibiting or regulating emotions, as if to prevent their pain from becoming your pain. At the level of brain activity during imagined pain, you and your beloved are virtually indistinguishable. Whereas the Taipei research team defined love to be a lasting loving relationship (what, for clarity’s sake, I call a bond), the work from Hasson’s team at Princeton tells me that neural synchrony and overlap can also unfold between you and a complete stranger—if you let it. Positivity resonance between brains, as it turns out, requires only connection, not the intimacy or shared history that comes with a special bond. Even so, the distinctions revealed in the Taipei study, between imagining your loved one’s pain and imagining a stranger’s pain, underscore that stifled emotions and guarded personal boundaries, while at times necessary and fully appropriate, can also function as obstacles to positivity resonance. As we’ll see in the next section, your attunement to various opportunities for positive connection with others is supported not just by neural synchrony, but by the hormone oxytocin as well. Biochemistries in Love Oxytocin, which is nicknamed by some the “cuddle hormone” or the “love hormone,” is actually more properly identified as a neuropeptide because it acts not just within your body but also within your brain. Oxytocin has long been known to play a key role in social bonding and attachment. Clear evidence of this first emerged from experiments with a monogamous breed of prairie voles: Oxytocin, when dripped into one animal’s brain in the presence of the opposite sex, creates in that animal a long-lasting preference to remain together with the other, cuddled up side by side, behavior taken as evidence that oxytocin sparked the formation of a powerful social bond between them.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  He was the one who looked beautiful to me when we fucked, the others all looked like men with contorted faces—best not to look. He didn’t grunt, or groan, or squeak during sex. He beamed and glowed, eyes wide open, shaking his head, saying, “Wow! Wow!” and then he’d fuck me some more. He was the thirty-third man, and the only one I really liked to fuck. The others were just men and I allowed it. Resentfully. Most men fuck in and out, in and out, in and out, on and on. But he fucked like he was actually going somewhere. And he was. He was the only one who took time to be friends with my cat. The others regarded my little fur ball as a hindrance, an obstacle, even a threat. They just didn’t get it: love me, love my pussy. He was my blood. He was the one who never got real. He was the one I never conquered. He was one I had the most fun with. He had the only cock I worshiped. He was the one with whom I couldn’t tell whose pleasure gave me more pleasure. With the others my pleasure was the only pleasure. He was the guy who could fuck for three hours . . . and still not come. He was the one who showed me real physical joy. The others just made me come. With him I came to . . . the Kingdom. He was sweet-sweet-sweet. He was the one who oozed love. Through his fingertips, his movement, his skin, and his cock. He gave me nothing outside of bed. In bed he gave me everything that I, as a woman, could ever desire. He fucked like a rolling ocean. I didn’t have those powerful but so brief and geographically specific outward climaxes with him, it was the building of an inward tidal wave that flooded my body, my brain, and then spilled into my soul. He never, unlike the others, asked me to be “his”—but I was. He was the one who treated me like his—in bed. All the others treated me like theirs out of bed, but in bed I could smell their fear. With him sex was about transcendence, with the others power. He swooped in and out of my pussy, my ass, my life. Others smothered, wishing, foolishly, to colonize what they coveted. Fucking him was like breathing in wide open space. If I never loved again I would die having known a big, big love. There was always that moment when he fucked me when all my thoughts ceased and turned to God: I was entering His territory. He didn’t please me. He possessed me. He, you see, was the one I really loved. Having now imagined its demise, I mustered the courage to proceed with the affair. #101

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  Witness how you experience resistance and even lean in toward it. I can guarantee there’s more to learn by leaning in than from turning away. When you avoid a challenge like this, you forfeit opportunities for experiential learning that yields wisdom. Yet when you approach these areas of resistance, your return on this investment is better awareness and understanding, both of yourself and of love. Knowing that it can be all too easy to zoom past using yourself as your target as you begin your LKM practice, you might decide up front that you’ll focus exclusively on yourself for several weeks. Even mark off this time on your calendar. This is in fact how LKM has been taught to the participants in my team’s research studies. The very first guided meditation our study participants are offered focuses exclusively on the self, and they are instructed to stay working with this particular meditation daily, for the first two weeks. This is not self-indulgence. Rather, many LKM teachers find that exploration of self-love provides a solid foundation from which to later expand love’s reach. You can use this reasoning if you need to justify this level of self-focus to yourself: Self-focus has been part of LKM practice for millennia, and it will help you deepen your skills for extending your experiences of love to many, many others. You can start in small ways simply by becoming aware of your body. Your body has its own pace, your mind another. Simply attending to your body coaxes you to slow down. Once you tune in to your physical sensations, you might discover a need to shift positions, stretch, or give yourself a few minutes of massage. Doing so is a form of self-love that instantly creates more comfort and ease. Just as eye contact is a key channel for making a connection with another person, awareness of your own body sensations is a key channel for self-love. It’s the platform from which you can offer yourself compassionate attention. Try This Meditation Practice: Self-Love Find a comfortable place to sit where you won’t be disturbed. If you’re in a chair, make your way to the back of the chair so that your lower back is well supported. Ground both of your feet flat on the floor. Sit upright, with your spine, neck, and the crown of your head pulled skyward. Gently pull your shoulder blades backward and downward, raising your rib cage slightly. These postural shifts will create a true physical openness for your heart, an openness consistent with the positive emotions you aim to cultivate. Gently lower your gaze to reduce visual distractions. If you’re comfortable, close your eyes. Begin by taking two or three deep breaths, and bring your awareness to your heart. Visualize how each in-breath affects your heart physically.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  —Jordan —susurro contra su piel. No sé por qué digo su nombre, pero creo que tengo miedo de que no esté realmente aquí y todo esto sea un sueño. Sus dedos se enredan en mi cabello, y me deslizo sobre ella. Alejando el sudor de su frente, la miro fijamente, observando sus mejillas sonrojadas y sus ojos brillantes, su pequeña camisa se ha levantado, exponiendo sus hermosos pechos y pezones. Bajo, tomando uno en mi boca, chupando y arrastrándolo como a su clítoris. Gime y sus manos regresan para envolverse alrededor de mi nuca. Cambio al otro, arrastrando una mano por su cuerpo e intentando asimilarla tanto como pueda. Sé que todo lo que hacemos está mal, y no sé cómo voy a explicar esto a alguien, pero aquí mismo —en este momento— no quiero estar en ningún otro lado. Ojalá pudiera morir tan feliz como lo estoy ahora. Aquí, en la oscuridad de la noche, en esta habitación oscura, detrás de una puerta cerrada, no necesitamos explicarle nada a nadie. Porque solo este momento, es nuestro. Me levanto de la cama y me pongo de pie, desabrochando mi cinturón y abriendo mis jeans. Busco en la mesita de noche y saco un condón de la caja, volviendo a levantarme y mirándola. Tiene las piernas cerradas, una rodilla ligeramente arqueada y las manos a los costados, frotando el edredón mientras me mira. —¿Estás segura de esto? —le pregunto. Asiente. Me quito las botas y el resto de la ropa, poniéndome de pie otra vez. Al abrir el paquete, la miro, pero sus ojos se han reducido a otra cosa, su respiración se hace cada vez más superficial. Siento una sonrisa curvar las comisuras de mis labios, preguntándome cuántas otras palabras adultas sabe. Pero no tengo la oportunidad de preguntar. Se sienta, balanceando sus piernas sobre el borde de la cama, y va por mi polla, llevándosela a la boca. Gimo y jadeo al mismo tiempo, su lengua está húmeda y caliente cuando se retira y chupa la punta. —Jordan, por favor. —Agarro la parte posterior de su cabello, tratando de alejarla suavemente—. Eso me pondrá al borde, y quiero que te corras de nuevo. Empujándola hacia atrás en la cama, me poso sobre ella, derritiéndome en su boca y besándola profundamente. Me acurruco entre sus piernas, y dobla sus rodillas mientras desliza sus uñas por mi espalda. Deslizando mi mano debajo de su cuerpo, agarro su culo y presiono nuestros cuerpos, el mundo gira detrás de mis ojos cerrados. Tenerla debajo de mí, piel sobre piel... mi polla está tan dura que no puedo soportarlo. Esto es mío. Recostándome sobre mis talones, me coloco el condón, sin apartar la vista de ella. —Estoy un poco asustada —dice, la preocupación arrugando su frente. Me detengo, tratando de no apretar el puño alrededor de mi polla con demasiada fuerza. ¿Asustada? —¿Qué pasa si hago demasiado ruido? —susurra.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I had friends and cousins, as any girl must have who grows up in a small town in a large, old family. I had my sister Alice - my dearest friend of all - with whom I shared a bedroom and a bed, and who heard all my secrets, and told me all of hers. I even had a kind of beau: a boy named Freddy, who worked a dredging smack beside my brother Davy and my Uncle Joe on Whitstable Bay. And last of all I had a fondness - you might say, a kind of passion - for the music hall; and more particularly for music-hall songs and the singing of them. If you have visited Whitstable you will know that this was a rather inconvenient passion, for the town has neither music hall nor theatre - only a solitary lamp-post before the Duke of Cumberland Hotel, where minstrel troupes occasionally sing, and the Punch-and-Judy man, in August, sets his booth. But Whitstable is only fifteen minutes away by train from Canterbury; and here there was a music hall - the Canterbury Palace of Varieties - where the shows were three hours long, and the tickets cost sixpence, and the acts were the best to be seen, they said, in all of Kent. The Palace was a small and, I suspect, a rather shabby theatre ; but when I see it in my memories I see it still with my oyster-girl’s eyes - I see the mirror-glass which lined the walls, the crimson plush upon the seats, the plaster cupids, painted gold, which swooped above the curtain. Like our oyster-house, it had its own particular scent - the scent, I know now, of music halls everywhere - the scent of wood and grease-paint and spilling beer, of gas and of tobacco and of hair-oil, all combined. It was a scent which as a girl I loved uncritically; later I heard it described, by theatre managers and artistes, as the smell of laughter, the very odour of applause. Later still I came to know it as the essence not of pleasure, but of grief. That, however, is to get ahead of my story. I was more intimate than most girls with the colours and scents of the Canterbury Palace - in the period, at least, of which I am thinking, that final summer in my father’s house, when I became eighteen - because Alice had a beau who worked there, a boy named Tony Reeves, who got us seats at knock-down prices or for free.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  The sex, the ass-fucking, that is the only constant. We never don’t fuck. We are not monogamous. Never have been and never will be. Neither of us has ever asked for it and neither of us has ever offered it. Offering it is the only way it could happen—neither of us would intrude on the other’s free choice. Free choice is at the core of what is hot between us. The subject has been discussed only to establish what is mutually understood. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” is the basic policy. He says, “I don’t need to know.” He pays attention to what is, not what isn’t. Having never done this before, I thought about it plenty. If one has sex with someone other than the Beloved, what happens? Does one risk diminishing one’s affection for the Beloved? Does it contaminate the love? Or does it merely confirm the love in every way, the contrast illuminating the beauty of the Beloved yet again, in yet another way, from yet another angle. And this gift to each other—the freedom to allow for other experiences—only enhances the love. Love without chains is love. The experience of being truly free, without recrimination, without judgment, to choose at any time, on any day, this one or that one, only reinforces love of the Beloved, reinforces the choice of the Beloved as the Beloved. Not being monogamous, and exercising that option, secures the great love—always being tested, it is confirmed, strengthened, reshaped, redefined. If a man can possess a woman sexually—really possess—he won’t need to control her ideas, her opinions, her clothes, her friends, even her other lovers. In my experience of many lovers, only he has truly possessed me and so set me free. He fucks my ass for hours with a dick an inch too big for the job: that is possession. After a round like that he doesn’t need to infiltrate my life, my psyche, my time, or my wardrobe, because he has infiltrated the core of my being—the rest is just peripheral decoration. Domination—total and complete domination of my being—that is where I find freedom . I assumed from the beginning of our affair that he was probably fucking this other woman here or there or somewhere. And he knew that I knew. This was not the Pre-Raphaelite redhead but a pretty, quiet brunette who also exercised at the gym. I was even turned on by the power I assumed he had over her. I knew about her, but she didn’t know about me, and this worked just fine. I even had my own fantasies about her. About seducing her myself, about him telling her to eat my pussy while he watched. I ran into her on occasion at the gym and we were always friendly; she seemed like a nice woman, self-effacing.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  Being sodomized now, by choice, reconciles this injury with a scenario of the dominant male and the obedient little girl. Instead of rejection and criticism, I am told, “Good girl, good girl.” The nastier I am and the better I suck his cock, the better I am, until I’m the goodest little girl in the world. I am finally loved. The relief it brings me is profound. I, with my total submission, in fact wield a great healing power: the more I submit the more excited he gets, until I enter the deepest phase of surrender and he comes. He only comes when I’ve given it up. It takes a lot of surrender, discipline, and love to let a man fuck your ass hard enough, long enough, deep enough, and fast enough to shoot. His orgasm is my victory over my lesser self, over the pain of my anger. It fills the hole; I’m finally whole. #162 Owwww! My dad just left after a lovely friendly visit of a week, and three hours later I was doubled over in literal gut-wrenching pain lasting a solid twenty-four hours. Like I’d been punched in the stomach, like I’d rewound in one hour 161 unwinding ass fucks. So the only logical thing to do was go for #162. Jesus, that hurt. New levels of tolerance, new levels of release, new levels of discipline. As he entered I thought, not so painful, I’m already healed by being naked with my ass on display. I was wrong. By the time he got in five inches and then some, he was pushing into the fist in my gut and rolfing me from the inside. It hurt like hell but I didn’t say a word. I just maintained the pain level just past bearable and adored the challenge all the while thinking, Girl, you really are Daddy’s little masochist. DEVOTION A-Man does not require my devotion, he says, but he has it anyway. Sometimes I give up so much power to him, give up even more than I have, and this leaves me vulnerable just beyond my own capacity to endure. The best antidote for this is not biting the bullet and suffering like some deeply ethical woman—I have, at least, matured beyond that. No, the antidote is another guy. It’s called “The Two-Guy Solution.” Every woman should subscribe when necessary. Many already do without admitting to it. As one friend put it, “If you’re having trouble with one man, just call another man.” For me, A-Man with the occasional Hound form the ideal combination. Someone needs to give to me as I give to him—power, that is. While it is my greatest desire to surrender to him, with anyone else I am dominant. I never fuck anyone else, and no one else goes in my ass with their cock.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Me sonríe, inclina su cabeza juguetonamente, y todavía veo a esa chica arrastrándose por el suelo del cine cada vez que la miro. Me tenía incluso entonces. —Te amo —digo. Bajando, se cierne sobre mí, mirándome a los ojos mientras mi mano va a su pecho. —Oh, espera. —Se incorpora y se inclina para apagar la vela. —No, déjala encendida —gimo, rodando mis caderas contra ella—. Quiero verte. Baja la mirada hacia mí. —¿Bloqueaste la puerta? Hago una mueca. —Mierda. ¿Por qué olvidé eso? Solo he tenido hijos durante la mitad de mi vida. —No podemos dejar que echen un vistazo, ¿no es así? —regaña, pero me sonríe. Inclinándose de nuevo, cierra los ojos, hace una pausa momentánea, pensando, y luego los abre de nuevo, soplando la vela suavemente. La habitación se oscurece excepto por la luz de luna atravesando la lluvia brillando en la pared de nuestro dormitorio, y veo su contorno bajar de nuevo sobre mí. Aprieto sus caderas, sintiéndola frotarse contra mí. —¿Alguna vez vas a decirme lo que deseas? —pregunto. Me besa, susurrando contra mis labios: —Trae mala suerte decirlo. Se mueve a mi cuello, arqueo mi cabeza y cierro los ojos, dejándola entrar. —Pero lo diré —continúa, mordisqueando mi mandíbula—. Siempre deseo la misma cosa, y cada día se vuelve realidad. Penélope Douglas es una escritora y profesora de Las Vegas. Nacida en Dubuque, Iowa, es la mayor de cinco hermanos. Penélope asistió a la Universidad del Norte de Iowa, obteniendo una licenciatura en Administración Pública, porque su padre le dijo: “¡Obtén el maldito grado!” Luego obtuvo una maestría en Ciencias de la Educación de la Universidad de Loyola en Nueva Orleans, porque odiaba la administración pública. Una noche, se emborrachó y le dijo al guardia de seguridad del bar donde trabajaba (sí, estaba borracha en el trabajo) que su hijo era sexy, y tres años después se casó. Con el hijo, no el gorila. Han desovado, pero solo una vez. Una hija llamada Aydan. Penélope ama los dulces, el programa Sons of Anarchy, y va de compras a Target casi a diario. Document Outline 54647a3b1ebfee6c21bab56a646d0e88c4d090426fd93b6fc55b52785a800059.pdf 8f43ac04dd9f1bcaa00484355870d6e5693723eb65396a69187691d16f62045c.pdf 54647a3b1ebfee6c21bab56a646d0e88c4d090426fd93b6fc55b52785a800059.pdf

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  For the first time in my life I understood that lovers could be so foolish as to entwine their initials together. I felt like carving his name on the bark of trees, that the birds seeing it might twitter it from morn till eventide; that the breeze might lisp it to the rustling leaves of the forest. I wished to write it on the shingle of the beach, that the ocean itself might know of my love for him, and murmur it everlastingly." "Still I had thought that on the morrow—the intoxication passed—you would have shuddered at the thought of having a man for a lover?" "Why? Had I committed a crime against nature when my own nature found peace and happiness thereby? If I was thus, surely it was the fault of my blood, not myself. Who had planted nettles in my garden? Not I. They had grown there unawares, from my very childhood. I began to feel their carnal stings long before I could understand what conclusion they imported. When I had tried to bridle my lust, was it my fault if the scale of reason was far too light to balance that of sensuality? Was I to blame if I could not argue down my raging motion? Fate, Iago-like, had clearly shewed me that if I would damn myself, I could do so in a more delicate way than drowning. I yielded to my destiny, and encompassed my joy. "Withal, I never said with Iago,—'Virtue, a fig!' No, virtue is the sweet flavour of the peach: vice, the tiny droplet of prussic-acid—its delicious savour. Life, without either, would be sapidless." "Still, not having, like most of us, been inured to sodomy from your school-days, I should have thought that you would have been loath to have yielded your body to another man's pleasure." "Loath? Ask the virgin if she regrets having given up her maidenhood to the lover she dotes on, and who fully returns her love? She has lost a treasure that all the wealth of Golconda cannot buy again; she is no longer what the world calls a pure, spotless, immaculate lily, and not having had the serpent's guile in her, society—the lilies—will brand her with an infamous name; profligates will leer at her, the pure will turn away in scorn. Still, does the girl regret having yielded her body for love—the only thing worth living for? No. Well, no more did I. Let 'clay-cold heads and lukewarm hearts' scourge me with their wrath if they will. "On the morrow, when we met again, all traces of fatigue had passed away. We rushed into each other's arms and smothered ourselves with kisses, for nothing is more an incentive to love than a short separation.