Life, Love and Changes

Well, folks, it’s been a while. Again. If you’ve read my blog regularly in the past, you might be wondering why I seem to have dropped off the planet in the past year. Trust me, some days I wonder the same.

Simply put, life has been busy ... But a “simple” answer just won’t do when you’ve been MIA for a year. So let’s look at what’s been happening, and where things are headed ...

Life: I’ve spent most of the last year working on “figuring out my life”. At some point not too long ago I realized I wasn’t happy with the direction my life was taking. So I moped, stewed and worried for a while. That didn’t help (surprise!), so I decided to take a different approach and try actually doing something about it. I made a few changes to the who, what, where, when and why dynamics of my life.

Guess what? It worked! Life is fantastic and, to be honest, I don’t really know how I could possibly feel happier than I do now. I'm sure I will, because things just get better every day, but I feel so good that I'm not sure how it's even possible ....

Career: Despite my dreams of making a full-time career out of all this sex stuff, that’s simply not realistic at the moment. While I could talk about sex ed for hours on end, I have yet to find someone to pay me large sums of money (or at least a liveable salary!) to talk incessantly about sex ed.

If you know someone who fits the above description, please send them my contact info! In the meantime, however, I’ve been putting a lot of work into building my career as a Child and Youth Worker (CYW). The more experience I gain, the more I feel that I made the right choice in becoming a CYW. It’s a skill set that comes naturally to me (much the way educating others about tough topics like sexuality comes naturally!). 
I enjoy working with children and youth, and I definitely like the challenge that comes with working with people.

Love: Yes, it’s true! I am head over heels, hopelessly in love. Not only that, but the man I’m hopelessly in love with is, without any shred of doubt, my life partner and soulmate. Before I met Paul, I had started to wonder if there was actually such thing as an “ideal partner” out there for me. While I was doing a great job of figuring out what I want, need and expect out of a partner, I wasn’t sure all those things could actually exist in one person. That’s until someone introduced me to Paul: his gaze met mine, and that was it ... we had fallen in love. Every day since has been better than the one before it, and we couldn't be more thrilled or excited about having found one another.

(More on this in a later post!)

Direction: Although love, career and home have all come together to create a great deal of happiness for me, there’s one thing I’m desperately lacking right now: direction for my business. I have so many great ideas -- workshops, lessons, programming -- and many great connections -- but I’m lacking a sense of clear direction as to where all of this is headed. Perhaps a simpler way of putting it would be to say that SexEd Central is experiencing growing pains. A big part of the lack of direction is that I simply don’t have time to “do it all” anymore. Establishing a business, creating curriculum and lessons, blogging regularly and updating content on the website are all time and energy consuming activities, and there aren’t enough hours in the day to get it all done AND live the rest of my life.

I would like to grow beyond the sole topic of “sex ed” and into more of a comprehensive, “health-focused” direction. I’ve developed and given workshops on other subjects, and I am sure there’s a way to tie it all together. Mental health, for example, is something that affects all of us but isn’t talked about nearly enough; I’d really like to do something about that.

This has plagued me for months, but there’s no point hiding it anymore. Instead, I’m putting a call out there for other like-minded, health-focused, friendly and outgoing people to reach out and connect with me. I am asking you to share your ideas, feedback, skills and talents with me; let’s collaborate to create something really awesome.

I am seeking people who can help me establish focus and direction for the business. I want to find people who want to get involved in many different ways: writing posts and content; developing workshops; facilitating lessons; establishing community partnerships; branding (establishing a logo and an image), and spreading the word are just a few items on my "to do" list.

If you've read this and are thinking "I could do that!" please let me know. Contact me today and let’s chat about what awesome things we can make happen by working together. This is a great time to get involved in doing something really unique and exciting, with lots of potential for growth and room for creativity.

I’m looking forward to connecting with you.

In the meantime, I'd better get back to that career-establishing stuff. I have to be in Kitchener soon for a physical demands test ... at which point, with any luck, I'll officially be a CYW for another school board. Woo hoo!!

Cheers to a FANTASTIC day!
Candice

Love

Happy Valentine's Day!

I've been "writing" this post in my head for several days, unsure of how to word it or what exactly to say. I know what I want to talk about, but sometimes these things don't go exactly as planned. Take this introduction, for example. How do I adequately introduce such a significant and deep topic as love? I will start with a story ...

A few weeks ago, a friend asked me to contribute to something he is creating for his partner for Valentine's Day. In order to participate, my contribution required me to consider a seemingly simple question: "What does love mean to me?" At the time, I thought "Oh sure, that will be easy!" However,  the more I thought about it, the more I realized that his question was anything but simple.

For one, there are so many varying opinions on what love is, types of love, purposes or functions of love, definitions of love, and so on, that I didn't really know where to start. In his book The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis divides love into four categories based on four Greek words for love: affection, friendship, eros, and charity.

Another theory, which I distinctly remember learning in university, was developed by psychologist Robert Sternberg. Sternberg postulates that there are three components of love, and that these interact with each other to form seven different love experiences (with nonlove being the absence of all three components).

Personally, I really like Sternberg's theory. It incorporates several aspects of what I see as essential to the experience of love. Sternberg acknowledges the wide range of love many of us experience throughout our lives, and his theory also recognizes that there is more to love than simply having feelings for another person.

According to Sternberg, the three components of love are:

[caption id="attachment_3228" align="alignright" width="248"] Sternberg's Triangular Theory of Love[/caption]

1) Intimacy: feelings of attachment, closeness, connectedness and bondedness

2) Passion: encompasses feelings of limerence (adoration with the intense desire to have your feelings reciprocated) and sexual attraction

3) Commitment: the decision to remain with your partner (short term) as well as shared achievements and plans made together (long term)

As you can see, Sternberg's theory places each component at the vertices of a triangle. Each component interacts with the others, leading to seven different kinds of love experiences. The size of the triangle represents the "amount" of love, while the shape represents the style of love. Both of these tend to vary over the course of a relationship.

"The amount of love one experiences depends on the absolute strength of these three components, and the type of love one experiences depends on their strengths relative to each other."^[2] Different stages and types of love can be explained as different combinations of these three elements; for example, the relative emphasis of each component changes over time as an adult romantic relationship develops. A relationship based on a single element is less likely to survive than one based on two or three elements. Source: Wikipedia - Triangular Theory of Love

Now that we've established what scholars/writers/psychologists consider "love" to be, what about my contribution to my friend's project? When it came time to share my thoughts on love, I didn't refer to any theories or statements from scholars, writers or other brilliant minds. Instead, I reflected on my own experiences with love - romantic and otherwise. I quickly realized my own definition of love is centered on my understanding of how people connect -- at the level of our basic energy.

For me, real love is an intense and soul-deep connection; it's about understanding, accepting and supporting your loved one(s) for who they truly are and not who someone else wants them to be.

The happy ending to my story is the video below. It wasn't easy, but I finally managed to put into words what had been going through my head every time I thought about the question "what does love mean to me?". I'll leave you with my own thoughts, and I would love to hear your answer to the same question: "What does love mean to you?"



Wishing you a Happy Valentine's Day, and more love than you could ever need, today and every day.

- Candice :)

Monogamish Week!

You've probably gathered that I'm currently quite interested in the topic of monogamy, and more specifically, monogamish. This is partly due to the fact that Dan Savage is having a monogamish week with the Savage Love Letter of the Day app (which I read every day), as well as the weekly Savage Love column (which I read every Wednesday ... or Tuesday if it's posted early :)).

It's also partly because I think that close, intimate, interpersonal relationships are a really interesting topic. I enjoy learning about, reading about, thinking about and writing about relationships.

Just think about it for a few moments:

We humans are typically creatures of habit; we go along with what we're used to, stick to what feels comfortable, and generally expect others to do the same.

Yet relationships themselves are such dynamic, ever-evolving entities. Heck, we humans are ever-evolving ... we find new interests and hobbies, make new friends, develop new habits ... you get the picture.

So what do we do when we or our partner wants/needs/wishes for the relationship to change?

Say, for example, you have a married/common-law/committed couple (of any orientation) who have a house and three kids. Something happens and, for one reason or another, one partner loses interest in (or becomes unable or unwilling to have) sex. The other partner, however, has a high libido and enjoys having sex several times a week (i.e. sex is a necessary aspect of this person's life). Aside from this particular issue, the couple has a good relationship and a solid partnership. They're in love with each other, they are great parents and their kids are happy and doing as well as kids can be expected to do.

What do they do?

Split up - traumatize the kids, lose the support of each other, divide up the family and call it quits on the love and happiness they've enjoyed together?

I sometimes wonder if we, as a society, are so focused on monogamy and sexual exclusivity -- (examples: "OMG, he cheated on her!" "Did you hear? They're swingers!" "If I have feelings for/am attracted to him/her/them then I must not be happy in my relationship/there must be something wrong with me/I don't love my partner") -- that we lose sight of all the other parts - good, important parts - that make up a relationship.

Anyway, that was the long journey to the points I want to make:

1. This post was inspired by an interesting post by FruitTaster. An excerpt I particularly enjoyed:

[box]

"We tend to assume an open relationship is about sex, and maybe affection, or love even. Not about laundry, cooking, and bills. However, countless marriages have come to an end because of differences over laundry, cooking and bills, so they are certainly part of the crucial elements in a relationship."

Source: Fruits of Libido Blog, written by FruitTaster

[/box]

2. Relationships, like people, are special and unique. I believe that we should be able to make them what we want them to be, not what others expect them to be.

3. Now that I think about it, I've never been very good at conforming to the little boxes we are pegged into. Maybe that has something to do with my interest in getting others to think outside of the little boxes as well.

Introspection for another day ...

Thanks for reading!

Candice :)