I find it so interesting that my memoir "Shameless: How I Ditched The Diet, Got Naked, Found True Pleasure and Somehow Got Home In Time To Cook Dinner" (Rodale) and "Connect to Love" by M. Gary Neuman are both doing media right now.
Neuman's book talks about women who are cheating on their marriages - why they cheat - and my memoir is my story about how I figured out who I was as a woman, explored myself sexually and didn't cheat.
What Neuman said on The Today Show was that 62% of women that took a survey have thought of cheating and that 39% of women cheat! Shocking? Not to me. It's shocking because many men think that their wives are not interested in sex - they don't realize that the sad fact is that their women are just not that interested in sex WITH THEM. They are bored, frustrated, and often in a place of self loathing. They aren't feeling turned on in their own bodies, so how for heaven's sake - are they going to engage in hot sex at home?
So many women just don't know who they are as a sexual being! It's a kind of trap. So many women end up having extra marital affairs because they are looking for something outside of themselves and the familiar - whether it is validation, or for someone else to figure out what it is that may give them pleasure. Maybe the excitement of this shiny new toy will fix things in my life - and perhaps it will for a little while.
I am trying to expand the conversation with women around what turns them on - and what is holding them back. I know the obstacles to pleasure - because I have lived them. I know what it is to want to shake things up in my own life - and not know how to. I couldn't even face myself in the mirror naked - but I also believed that deep inside of me there was a woman who had a sexy inner wildness if I could only find her.
For me - it was about finding a way to get to know myself first - and learn true self acceptance. And like most women who are feeling stuck, bored, sexually unsure - I started out on my journey looking for something outside of myself! It's a great, big, funny story - and I am telling it in Shameless. But the truth was that I ended up on a path that taught me how to use my sexuality as my own healing.
Once I was on the road to self acceptance - I found this amazing sexual pleasure that was just for me! And it opened me up to a place of sexual exploration without cheating on my marriage that I simply didn't think was possible. But I know that it is now.
I also beleive that in so many cases - when we leave our marriages because we think we are going to find what is missing in our next partner we usually end up in the same place again. No one can really open us to pleasure and self acceptance but us! That is why there are so many serial marriages. As the saying goes - in the end - we are still with ourselves.
My path to healing and self acceptance may not be yours - but I encourage you to look to yourself before look at the next door neighbor.
