Books I recommend reading
The descriptions below are from the Amazon listing for the book. The books are in NO particular order (but I will add new books at the top):
Big Big Love: A Sex and Relationships Guide for People of Size (and Those Who Love Them)
Big Big Love is the only one-stop-shopping handbook on relationships, sexuality, and big sexy confidence for people of all genders, sizes, and sexual orientations who know that a fantastic love life doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the number on the bathroom scale. Covering everything from dating to sex toys to getting on top, this guide also features tips on navigating tricky topics like making peace with your belly, coping with weight-related prejudice, and creating a happy, satisfying sex life in a culture where no body is ever perfect enough.
This freshly illustrated update of the 2000 cult classic features new interviews with body-acceptance activists, health coaches, psychologists, and more, plus hundreds of quotes from fat folks and those who love them selected from a survey conducted exclusively for the book. From taking your clothes off to BDSM to fat admiration to tips for successful long-term relationships, Big Big Love’s savvy, sane advice can help you tackle every hot-button issue you may confront in the bedroom and in love.
Getting It: A Guide to Hot, Healthy Hookups and Shame-Free
A comprehensive and fun-to-read guidebook for people of all sexual identities and experience levels, Getting It covers all the bases of hook-up culture from first moves and sex etiquette to navigating nonmonogamy and sexual health. In an era of endless crossed signals and heightened awareness of consent and respect, award-winning author and sex educator Allison Moon shows you how to achieve safe and enjoyable encounters by practicing clear communication and consideration of all parties involved--yourself included. Getting It helps you understand what casual sex means for you and offers an instructive and empowering deep dive into how to get it, do it well, and feel great about it every step of the way. And since we're all imperfect, Moon offers guidance for how to gracefully recover when you screw up--or get screwed over.
Refreshingly intersectional and respectful, Getting It is an honest guide to understanding the basics of hook-up culture and how to partake.
Polywise: A Deeper Dive Into Navigating Open Relationships
As polyamory continues to make its way into the mainstream, more and more people are exploring consensual nonmonogamy in the hope of experiencing more love, connection, sex, freedom and support. While for many, the move expands personal horizons, for others, the transition can be challenging, leaving them blindsided and overwhelmed. Beyond the initial transition to nonmonogamy, many struggle with the root issues beneath the symptoms of broken agreements, communication challenges, increased fighting and persistent jealousy. Polyamorous psychotherapist Jessica Fern and restorative justice facilitator David Cooley share the insights they have gained through thousands of hours working with clients in consensually nonmonogamous relationships. Using a grounded theory approach, they explore the underlying challenges that nonmonogamous individuals and partners can experience after their first steps, offering practical strategies for transforming them into opportunities for new levels of clarity and intimacy. Polywise provides both the conceptual framework to better understand the shift from monogamy to nonmonogamy and the tools to navigate the next steps.
The Polyamory Paradox: Finding Your Confidence in Consensual Non-Monogamy
Changing your relationship structure can feel overwhelming and scary. It can trigger major anxieties and insecurities, throwing you into an utterly depleting emotional tornado. What you hoped would be liberating feels more like torture.
No matter how badly you think you want non-monogamy, your body might have something else to say. The surprising intensity of your triggers can leave you wondering if you have what it takes and questioning whether your existing relationship will survive.
What if you’re interested in opening up, but taking steps in that direction is causing unmanageable turmoil? While it may not be easy, it is possible to alchemize polyamorous pain points into secure intimacy, boundless pleasure, and deeper healing.
That’s what happened for coach and sexual health counselor Irene Morning, who found healing for her own complex-PTSD through the practice of non-monogamy.
In The Polyamory Paradox, she combines the science behind trauma healing and human intimacy with personal narrative, client stories, and doable exercises to help you root out what’s not working.
First, you’ll learn what is causing such chaos in your non-monogamous relationship, as well as the body-based tools to stabilize it. Using her holistic pleasure framework, she then introduces you to a new way of thinking about your relationships. Finally, Irene shares how to specifically apply these new tools to the communication, conflict, and collaboration unique to non-monogamous contexts, empowering you to create the relationships that feel like your liberation
The Erotic Mind: Unlocking the Inner Sources of Passion and Fulfillment
Challenging accepted theories about what makes for terrific sex, The Erotic Mind is a breakthrough exploration of the least understood dimensions of human sexuality—the psychology of desire, arousal, and fulfillment. Nationally known sex therapist Dr. Jack Morin offers a bold new perspective that celebrates the joys of Eros without denying its risks.
Based on an in-depth analysis of over 1,000 provocative stories of peak sexual experiences, The Erotic Mind offers clear, accessible guidance on how anyone can utilize his or her own peak encounters and fantasies as powerful tools of self-discovery.
The Erotic Mind explains the many paradoxes of erotic life, such as: why we're most excited when we must overcome obstacles; how anxiety, guilt, and anger—generally thought to have a negative impact on sexual arousal—often turn out to be aphrodisiacs; how we use unresolved issues from our early lives to intensify passion; and why the best sex is dynamic and unpredictable, rather than static and safe.
These and other insights, combined with concrete suggestions for increasing our enjoyment, overcoming our problems, and revitalizing our relationships, will change forever the way we think about our eroticism.
More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory (More Than Two Essentials)
Can you love more than one person? Have multiple romantic partners, without jealousy or cheating? Absolutely! Polyamorous people have been paving the way, through trial and painful error. Now there's the new book More Than Two: A practical guide to ethical polyamory to help you find your own way.
The classic guide to love, sex, and intimacy beyond the limits of conventional monogamy has been fully updated to reflect today’s modern attitudes and the latest information on nontraditional relationships.
“One of the most useful relationship books you could ever read, no matter what your lifestyle choices. It’s chock-full of great information about communication, jealousy, asking for what you want, and maintaining a relationship with integrity.”—Annie Sprinkle, PhD, sexologist and author of Dr. Sprinkle’s Spectacular Sex
For 20 years The Ethical Slut—widely known as the “Poly Bible”—has dispelled myths and showed curious readers how to maintain a successful polyamorous lifestyle through open communication, emotional honesty, and safer sex practices. The third edition of this timeless guide to the ethics of relationships, communication, and sex has been revised to include:
• Interviews with poly millennials (young people who have grown up without the prejudices their elders encountered regarding gender, orientation, sexuality, and relationships)
• Tributes to polyamory pioneers
• Tools for conflict resolution and instructions on how to improve interpersonal dynamics
• New sidebars on topics such as asexuality, sex workers, LGBTQ terminology, and ways polys can connect and thrive
The authors also include new content addressing nontraditional relationships beyond the polyamorous paradigm of “more than two”: couples who don't live together, couples who don't have sex with each other, nonparallel arrangements, couples with widely divergent sex styles, power disparities, and cross-orientation relationships, while utilizing nonbinary gender language and new terms that have come into common usage since the last edition.
The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level
“Gay Hendricks is a great role model for true success. He enjoys abundance and a deep connection with his own spiritual essence, and at the same time has lived for three decades in a thriving marriage. Now, he shows us how to do it for ourselves.”
— Mark Victor Hansen, co-author of Cracking the Millionaire Code
In The Big Leap, Gay Hendricks, the New York Times bestselling author of Five Wishes, demonstrates how to eliminate the barriers to success by overcoming false fears and beliefs. Fans of Wayne Dyer, Eckhart Tolle, Marianne Williamson, and The Secret will find useful, effective tips for breaking down the walls to a better life in The Big Leap.
The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity
"A fresh look at infidelity, broadening the focus from the havoc it wreaks within a committed relationship to consider also why people do it, what it means to them, and why breaking up is the expected response to duplicity — but not necessarily the wisest one.” — LA Review of Books
From iconic couples’ therapist and bestselling author of Mating in Captivity comes a provocative and controversial look at infidelity with practical, honest, and empathetic advice for how to move beyond it.
An affair: it can rob a couple of their relationship, their happiness, their very identity. And yet, this extremely common human experience is so poorly understood. What are we to make of this time-honored taboo—universally forbidden yet universally practiced? Why do people cheat—even those in happy marriages? Why does an affair hurt so much? When we say infidelity, what exactly do we mean? Do our romantic expectations of marriage set us up for betrayal? Is there such a thing as an affair-proof marriage? Is it possible to love more than one person at once? Can an affair ever help a marriage? Perel weaves real-life case stories with incisive psychological and cultural analysis in this fast-paced and compelling book.
For the past ten years, Perel has traveled the globe and worked with hundreds of couples who have grappled with infidelity. Betrayal hurts, she writes, but it can be healed. An affair can even be the doorway to a new marriage—with the same person. With the right approach, couples can grow and learn from these tumultuous experiences, together or apart.
Affairs, she argues, have a lot to teach us about modern relationships—what we expect, what we think we want, and what we feel entitled to. They offer a unique window into our personal and cultural attitudes about love, lust, and commitment. Through examining illicit love from multiple angles, Perel invites readers into an honest, enlightened, and entertaining exploration of modern marriage in its many variations.
Fiercely intelligent, The State of Affairs provides a daring framework for understanding the intricacies of love and desire. As Perel observes, “Love is messy; infidelity more so. But it is also a window, like no other, into the crevices of the human heart.”
Conscious Loving Ever After: How to Create Thriving Relationships at Midlife and Beyond
Are you passionately dedicated to experiencing your full capacity for love? If so, you are in for a thrilling ride on the greatest journey imaginable.
If that sounds like a tempting invitation, keep reading, and prepare to take in some life-altering truths: That as you get older, your love life can get better. That instead of fading, your relationships can flourish. That you can have more exquisite love and more passionate sex in the second half of life than you ever had before. Kathlyn and Gay Hendricks, the pioneering authors of the original best-selling book Conscious Loving, show you how in this guide to creating vibrant and joyful connections from your mid-40s onward. Midlife is a time when we all face a choice: to settle into fixed routines and beliefs or to expand toward new horizons.
With candor, compassion, and plenty of humor, drawing on experiments in the "living laboratory" of their own marriage as well as stories from their clients and colleagues, Katie and Gay offer insights and practices to help you:
• Expand and enrich love by making your own creative essence your top priority
• Take blame and criticism out of your communication with those you love
• Attract new love into your life
• Enjoy the best sex ever
Whether you’re partnered or single, Conscious Loving Ever After can light your way through the layers of unconscious relating that so many of us get caught in. From a Ten-Minute Stuff Talk and a Ten-Minute Heart Talk to a range of whole-body learning processes designed to translate ideas into action, here are the tools you need to transform your romantic life so you can thrive in your full capacity for love.
Positive Masculinity Now takes a deep dive into gender expectations, socialization, and messaging. Through this guide, you will discover different ways to create deep meaningful connections, free from masks and restrictive thinking. You will also learn the importance of breaking free from traditional gender models to create healthy relationships, careers, friendships, and self-images. Once practiced, these strategies will reinforce a fulfilling life full of growth, curiosity, and expansion in all of your interactions.
Understanding how the narrow molds of gender socialization have limited everyone is critical for people to be true to themselves and live responsibly in the world. Through conscious exploration, all can learn to make empowering decisions that create a more inclusive model of masculinity that supports communication, intimacy, and authenticity within.
Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To
A paradigm-shifting book from an acclaimed Harvard Medical School scientist and one of Time’s most influential people.
It’s a seemingly undeniable truth that aging is inevitable. But what if everything we’ve been taught to believe about aging is wrong? What if we could choose our lifespan?
In this groundbreaking book, Dr. David Sinclair, leading world authority on genetics and longevity, reveals a bold new theory for why we age. As he writes: “Aging is a disease, and that disease is treatable.”
This eye-opening and provocative work takes us to the frontlines of research that is pushing the boundaries on our perceived scientific limitations, revealing incredible breakthroughs—many from Dr. David Sinclair’s own lab at Harvard—that demonstrate how we can slow down, or even reverse, aging. The key is activating newly discovered vitality genes, the descendants of an ancient genetic survival circuit that is both the cause of aging and the key to reversing it. Recent experiments in genetic reprogramming suggest that in the near future we may not just be able to feel younger, but actually become younger.
Through a page-turning narrative, Dr. Sinclair invites you into the process of scientific discovery and reveals the emerging technologies and simple lifestyle changes—such as intermittent fasting, cold exposure, exercising with the right intensity, and eating less meat—that have been shown to help us live younger and healthier for longer. At once a roadmap for taking charge of our own health destiny and a bold new vision for the future of humankind, Lifespan will forever change the way we think about why we age and what we can do about it.
A smart, sexy guide to embracing the repressed, tabooed, and often unwanted aspects of ourselves so we can discover our inner power and finally live the life we deserve.
“We always get exactly what we want; but often, though we may not be aware of it, what we most want is dark—very dark.”
Each of us has a dual nature: we are light (conscious) and dark (unconscious). The dark side of our personality—the “other,” the shadow side—is made up of what we think is our primitive, primal, negative impulses—our “existential kink.” Our existential kink also drives the dark or negative repeating patterns in our life: always choosing the abusive partner or boss, settling for less, thinking that we’re undeserving, not worthy. But it also is the source of our greatest power.
In Existential Kink, Carolyn Elliott, PhD, offers a truth-telling guide for bringing our shadow into the light. Inviting us to make conscious the unconscious, Elliott asks us to own the subconscious pleasure we get from the stuck, painful patterns of our existence.
Existential Kink provides practical advice and meditations so we truly see our shadow side’s “guilty pleasures,” love and accept them, and integrate them into our whole being. By doing so, Elliott shows, we bring to life the raw, hot, glorious power we all have to get what we really want in our lives.
In the wake of #MeToo, heterosexual men are clamoring to understand how to reconcile their sexual desires with the awareness of the prevalence of harassment, oppression and abuse of women. Conscious Cock offers a crash course in up-leveling our awareness and sensitivities, communication and relational skills and understanding of how women work and experience arousal with modern sex education and perspectives so that we can achieve true relationship and love-life satisfaction.
It gives men tools to honor their sexual nature and connect deeply with their female partner while deconstructing oppressive patterns that are toxic to relationship success. By course-correcting with the tools presented here, men are able to get more of what they really want sexually while simultaneously improving their relationship through authenticity, transparency and integrity. Conscious Cock gives men a tangible roadmap that fosters harmony and equality in their relationship and engenders healing and equality between the sexes.
Two maverick neuroscientists use the world's largest psychology experiment-the Internet-to study the private activities of millions of men and women around the world, unveiling a revolutionary and shocking new vision of human desire that overturns conventional thinking.
For his groundbreaking sexual research, Alfred Kinsey and his team interviewed 18,000 people, relying on them to honestly report their most intimate experiences. Using the Internet, the neuroscientists Ogas and Gaddam quietly observed the raw sexual behaviors of half a billion people. By combining their observations with neuroscience and animal research, these two young neuroscientists finally answer the long-disputed question: what do people really like? Ogas and Gaddam's findings are transforming the way scientists and therapists think about sexual desire.
In their startling book, Ogas and Gaddam analyze a "billion wicked thoughts" on the Internet: a billion Web searches, a million individual search histories, a million erotic stories, a half-million erotic videos, a million Web sites, millions of online personal ads, and many other enormous sources of sexual data in order to understand the true differences between male and female desires, including:
Men and women have hardwired sexual cues analogous to our hardwired tastes-there are sexual versions of sweet, sour, salty, savory, and bitter. But men and women are wired with different sets of cues.
The male sexual brain resembles a reckless hunter, while the female sexual brain resembles a cautious detective agency.
Men form their sexual interests during adolescence and rarely change. Women's sexual interests are plastic and change frequently.
The male sexual brain is an "or gate": A single stimulus can arouse it. The female sexual brain is an "and gate": It requires many simultaneous stimuli to arouse it.
When it comes to sexual arousal, men prefer overweight women to underweight women, and a significant number of men seek out erotic images of women in their 40s, 50s, and 60s.
Women enjoy writing and sharing erotic stories with other women. The fastest growing genre of erotic stories for women are stories about two heterosexual men having sex.
Though the male sexual brain is much more different from the female sexual brain than is commonly believed, the sexual brain of gay men is virtually identical to that of straight men.
Featuring cutting-edge, jaw-dropping science, this wildly entertaining and controversial book helps readers understand their partner's sexual desires with a depth of knowledge unavailable from any other source. Its fascinating and occasionally disturbing findings will rock our modern understanding of sexuality, just as Kinsey's reports did sixty years ago.
It just may be the most pejorative word in the English language. It’s the ultimate salacious smack to a woman’s dignity, used to hurt, humiliate, and dehumanize. No one calls you a “pussy” when they want to tell you how radiant you look, how capably you work, or what an inspiring life you lead.
That’s about to change. In this remarkable book, Regena Thomashauer, founder of Mama Gena’s School of Womanly Arts, reclaims the word for what it rightly is: the highest of all possible compliments, a sacred living prayer.
Pussy has been written to reacquaint you with your own power source —both figuratively and literally. Drawing on Mama Gena’s 25 years of research into women’s history, experience, and potential, you’ll ramp up your “cliteracy” and learn to awaken a part of yourself you’ve been taught to repress or even despise. You’ll see that pussy is anything but pornographic —it’s actually the seat of all feminine power and pleasure. And you’ll discover how a woman’s sensual awareness is critical for her spiritual, intellectual, and emotional health.
In these pages, Mama Gena reveals:
• The secret ingredient every woman is missing
• How to crack the confidence code
• Why sex appeal is an inside job
• What’s ahead on the next frontier of feminism —and how you can help make it happen
• And much more
When you open this book, you’re being handed the keys to a turned-on life —which simply means authentic, radiant, and open to pleasure and joy. By turns earthy and erudite, passionately argued and laugh-out-loud funny, Pussy is your call to tune in, turn on, and live more richly and fully than you ever thought you could.
Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence
A New York City therapist examines the paradoxical relationship between domesticity and sexual desire and explains what it takes to bring lust home.
One of the world’s most respected voices on erotic intelligence, Esther Perel offers a bold, provocative new take on intimacy and sex. Mating in Captivity invites us to explore the paradoxical union of domesticity and sexual desire, and explains what it takes to bring lust home.
Drawing on more than twenty years of experience as a couples therapist, Perel examines the complexities of sustaining desire. Through case studies and lively discussion, Perel demonstrates how more exciting, playful, and even poetic sex is possible in long-term relationships. Wise, witty, and as revelatory as it is straightforward, Mating in Captivity is a sensational book that will transform the way you live and love.
Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy
Attachment theory has entered the mainstream, but most discussions focus on how we can cultivate secure monogamous relationships. What if, like many people, you're striving for secure, happy attachments with more than one partner? Polyamorous psychotherapist Jessica Fern breaks new ground by extending attachment theory into the realm of consensual nonmonogamy. Using her nested model of attachment and trauma, she expands our understanding of how emotional experiences can influence our relationships. Then, she sets out six specific strategies to help you move toward secure attachments in your multiple relationships. Polysecure is both a trailblazing theoretical treatise and a practical guide. It is also a great resource for people in a monogamous relationship (or single for that matter).
How well do you know yourself, really?
Do you know:
- why you react emotionally the way you do?
- why you think and behave the way you do?
- what is really running your life?
This book will open your eyes to your own inner world like nothing else has.
In reality, most of your suffering is not necessary. It's created by old safety strategies that helped you survive your childhood, but then got stuck in your body and covered up your true self. Today they're an invisible prison, shaping your world, your relationships, and even who you think you are.
Have you begun to figure out that something deeper than your conscious awareness is shaping your life? Deciding where your attention goes and what you think and feel? How you make decisions? Even who you love? Here is a map to that inner terrain -- a simple, clear, true-to-life map that gives you the key to understanding everyone, including yourself. If you like the Enneagram, the MBTI, or any other inner map, you'll love this book.
The Sexual Practices of Quodoushka: Teachings from the Nagual Tradition
Practical exercises to reach higher levels of orgasm, renew relationships, and discover the healing power of sex
• Illustrates how to identify and best please the nine male and female genital anatomy types--such as Coyote Man or Buffalo Woman
• Provides exercises for greater sexual pleasure and orgasmic intensity, including the Firebreath exercise for full-body orgasm
• Explains how to perform powerful healing sexual energetic work with the chakras and light body
Based on ancient Mayan, Olmec, and Toltec teachings passed down through the generations by the Twisted Hair Nagual Elders of the Sweet Medicine Sundance Path, the practice of Quodoushka offers practical guidance on sex, intimacy, and relationships as well as how to reach higher levels of orgasm and sexual ecstasy. Working with the healing power of sexual union and orgasm, this practice offers a path to repair emotional wounds and sexual insecurities, revive monotonous relationships, and discover the sweet medicine of sex.
Revealing these once-secret teachings for the first time, initiated Quodoushka instructor Amara Charles explains the physical, energetic, and sexual qualities of the nine male and female genital anatomy types--such as Coyote Man or Buffalo Woman--and how to identify and best please each type as well as take pride in your own unique anatomy. Describing the nine variations of orgasmic expression--from avalanche to forest fire--she provides exercises for greater sexual pleasure and increased orgasmic intensity, including the Firebreath exercise, a method for reaching a full-body orgasm through breathwork. Covering role playing and sexual energetic work with the chakras and the light body as well as ceremonies to bring the sacred back into your lovemaking, the practice of Quodoushka reveals how we can--through pleasure--become more sensitive, creative lovers.
Tantra: The Art of Conscious Loving
A provocative and timely work, based on Charles and Caroline Muir's popular Seminars, offers modern couples ancient Tantric secrets for deepening relationships, intimacy, and passion.
Tantra: The Art of Conscious Loving book is arranged in two parts:
1. An initiation into Tantra, its goals and philosophy of life, the science upon which its practice is based, and how it works specifically for couples.
2. Sexual rituals, the Yoga or "union" couples practice, to achieve an ecstatic connection in loving.
This groundbreaking book on Tantra is an easy read, which will introduce you to all aspects of Tantra, from history to life-renewing practices.
If you are looking for a book that is just about the sex aspect, this is not it. This book is deep, and approaches intimacy from all perspectives, not just a purely sexual one. The thing that I like best about it is that it has enabled my husband and me to talk about things in our relationship in a non-confrontational way, and it gives us a vocabulary to discuss things that are sometimes hard to say. I think everyone can benefit from this perspective on learning to connect with another person, no matter what your relationship status or sexual preference.
Decoding Your Kink: Guide to Explore Share and Enjoy Your Wildest Sexual Desires
Decoding Your Kink (soon to be in paperback) by leading Fetish Sex educator, researcher and sex-positive therapist Galen Fous MTP, offers ground-breaking insight into the emerging global renaissance of sexual exploration, particularly in the realm of Kink.
The book includes guidelines to decode an array of Kink fantasies and access the ecstatic sexual depths inherent in your wildest sexual desires. You will learn techniques to negotiate honestly for what you desire, create profound trust and intimacy between partners, and resolve old shame, trauma and fear about your authentic sexuality.
Decoding Your Kink provides easy to follow practices for both you and your partners to share the deepest intimacies and achieve the mind shattering orgasmic states offered by conscious expression of your most taboo Kinky yearnings. Also included are revealing and provocative details about people's kinkiest fantasies gleaned from over 2000 participants compiled in Fous's groundbreaking, anonymous Discover Your Personal Erotic Myth Survey, The survey is still available at Fous's site.