Category: relationships

Challenging Relationship Myths: A Sex Reality Check Of Peterson

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The relationship, myths of Jordan Peterson

Jordan Peterson won’t be footing the bill for your wedding or your divorce. He won’t be returning the time lost chasing his dubious ideals. And he certainly won’t recreate missed chances for love, including potential partners you passed up because they didn’t match the playbook he so zealously advocates. Read More

What’s New at NoShameInSex.com

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Burning Man BED map 2023

What’s buzzing at NoShameInSex.com? Curious about what yours truly, Todd Vickers, has been stirring up lately? New Book! My digital presence has been somewhat elusive these past couple of years, yet during this time, I’ve ventured away from nonfiction into the realm of writing fiction, crafting ‘When Men Love.’ In deed it’s a sultry exploration of non-monogamous relationships, and I’m currently in search of a literary agent to represent the book. It seems to me there’s a scarcity of literature about non-monogamous relationships. About 90%… Read More

Unreasonable Respect For Old Relationship Beliefs

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unreasonable respect for old relationship beliefs

Why would I say there is unreasonable respect for old relationship beliefs? At a party, a woman lamented that she had to divide all her assets twice in two divorces. She said the next time she gets married, the man will have more stuff than her. When three people asked why she would get married again, she replied in a circular way, “I’m just the marrying type.” And the conversation ended since there seemed no point. If someone answered the question, why do you repeatedly… Read More

What Are Confused Sexual Ideals?

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Confused Sexual Ideals

A great deal of confused sexual ideals and misunderstanding exists around relationships and what we want. This topic is meaningful to both joy and misery. It’s not that articles about how to achieve ideals are uncommon, it’s understanding and questioning the ideals themselves that is uncommon. What I mean by confused sexual ideals is we use the word ideal in three utterly different ways. If we are clear about how the word is being used, we can avoid costly and painful misunderstandings. The first meaning… Read More

How to compare loving non-monogamy versus codependent monogamy

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loving non-monogamy

The desire to know and share what’s true, to share what’s best in life, to love wholly without restraint, to live intensely! These values did not arise in me out of virtue, oh no! They BEGAN to clarify because of loss. My most beloved, died when I was nine. The tears that I feared would never end washed the dust from a jewel. Why should I fear to tell the truth, or a broken heart? I already know l will lose you, THIS is the… Read More

Boldly Vulnerable Sexual Affection at Burning Man

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Sexual Affection

We live in a highly sexual culture that also idolizes utility (i.e., a means to an end). We tend to value things only based on what they lead to in the future. This commerce morality often mistakes the means for the end and, therefore, misses the end. To judge joy and sexual affection as a means is a degradation. We cannot judge the end by the same standards as the means because ends lead to nothing else. The immediate and transitory nature of Burning Man… Read More

What we think about love, sex and art changes things

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about love

In the west the propaganda of religion is probably not as pervasive as are the songs, representations, and symbolism about love. We know how different religious influences change the interpretation of a fact. Now consider how everyone is a philosopher about love over coffee, but most people, do not want their love philosophies scrutinized. Most love philosophies are not concerned with the truth, but with a means to some other end. Our beliefs change what we see, it is a weakness of the immense conceptual power… Read More

How to question love ideals | By Todd Vickers at Vivriti.org

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Love ideals

Intimate relationships and love ideals are a touchy topic anywhere, but the consequences of marriage, relationship breakups, and vengeance for rejection should make us willing to scrutinize our beliefs.  Ideals should not blind us to facts. In some countries, divorce is almost impossible due to the force of custom, but custom itself does not make any belief true. Love ideals tend to hide when the ideals are merely self-serving and when they, in fact, don’t serve us We forget concepts are mental and treat love… Read More

How to truthfully have intimate relationship | Todd Vickers via Vivriti.org

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intimate relationship

Excerpt: “…To be unaware of how we conceive intimate relationship leads to treating our questionable beliefs as fact. Let’s look at some problems and then solutions. Don’t become cynical in intimate relationship. Find those people who value the truth. On one hand, the hope for something better drives human discovery; meaning trial and error. On the other, unrealistic expectations suck the life out of our love. We can’t ignore the valuable experience of the past. But if we mistake our beliefs as evidence about ourselves,… Read More

Understanding Relationships Nurturing Love | Todd Vickers writes for Vivriti.org

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Understanding Relationships

Understanding relationships means understanding pain. This is vital if we wish to bring relief to useless suffering. To reduce useless pain is nurturing to love.  But what does that actually mean? Understand two sources of suffering. One source is fact based, some event like a toothache, the loss of someone loved, an abuse etc. The other suffering our mind generates, we make stuff up and believe it, like the real fear created when imagining you’ve lost your wallet when you’ve put it in another pocket and… Read More

How to improve our love

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No Shame in Sex

How to improve our love? First let’s begin with a short alagory to set the tone ‘When born into a den of thieves, a Buddha learns to steal.’   We’re born into a Machiavellian world of love songs, stories, religion, ads, movies, half-truths and falsehoods about love. How to improve our love after we’ve tasted so much failure? If there were no creativity in love, we would be loving like our ancestors. When expectations arise from the past, the pain of any flawed beliefs we must… Read More

Love wants to live

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We want love. Many of us will say that it’s one of the most important things in our lives. Love wants to live! When we distinguish what we see in relationships from our sentiment ABOUT relationships, it seems that a great deal of what passes for love rests on fear: practical fears, fear of the unknown, fear of being alone. People confuse agreeable circumstances with love. We like sex, money, amusements, and leisure. Those things are worth having, but they are not love. Sometimes, people… Read More

Renouncing the limits of love | Todd Vickers on Vivriti.org

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Why aren’t we renouncing loves limits? “Who do you know who does not place a boundary around his love? We are afraid others will use us and that our desire for love makes us foolish. In deference to this fear, we try to be smart and use others in the name of love for our own ends. We become what we fear and keep things hidden from our mates, especially the secrets that…”  Read more at Vivriti.org Read More

Lovers in friendship vs. being a player

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I use the phrase ‘friendly sex’ because the term ‘casual sex‘ is cliché, and leads to confusion. I suggest a lovers friendship in consenting pleasure is better when we include higher qualities in the affection. These qualities are not a function of time, they can happen quickly, slowly, or not at all. More on this later. Such love exists outside of what many of us know from past experiences. Lack of experience limits our understanding – but NOT our capacity. We often hear love reduced to an stratagy for… Read More

An allegory applied to relationships

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Imagination is risky when we fill in the unknown. Below is an ancient story I use as a relationship allegory that exposes the mistake of thinking we know when we don’t. “A man awakened before the sunrise. He decided to walk the path to work in the forest along the river in the dark. He walked the same path for years and he believed he knew it well enough to imagine the path in his mind as he walked. He began walking and it was beautiful listening to the river… Read More