The Sexual Education of a Beauty Queen

by Taylor Marsh

  It’s why nature has become the choice of more and more people searching for solitude and a place to think and convene with whatever might be there in the beyond. For those of us who know that God is outdoors, not just inside a church, nature offers Holy Communion, if of a different sense.

  “As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth,” Henry David Thoreau wrote in one of his journals, “so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.”

  The reason our environment has fallen apart from neglect, man’s arrogance and marauding self-indulgence and corporate greed, is that we have taken God inside a building and forgotten our connection to the beauty that was created so we might live. That we are part of God, the Force that creates all of life, that moves the seas, that allows our precious earth to house us and sustain our lives, has been all but forgotten. Supporting the church has replaced protecting that which actually sustains us. This natural connection to the earth doesn’t require a church or a religious man or woman, it only requires our attention back to the fundamental life of nature all around us.

  As the fourteenth Dalai Lama said, “The earth is not only the common heritage of all humankind but also the ultimate source of life.”

  Aligning with something greater than ourselves, believing there is something else, even if we can’t define it, is the majority view of Americans. This belief, the notion of faith itself, can’t always be understood. It certainly doesn’t require separate rules for men and women that are different, or roles that are pre-defined. It also doesn’t originate from inside a church.

  For the moderns, we all define our own beliefs well outside of organized religion, which includes our own roles that will fit our relationships and our families, as well as how children should be introduced to the modern world in which they will live. Definitions get filled in as life is experienced.

  In this context of living your life, finding that person you are at your core, as well as finding a life partner, the notion of waiting three seconds or thirty before you reply to a text message from someone you’re interested in seems silly. The idea that you should ever choose to reduce a potential romantic connection to such trivial communication sounds absurd. The games we choose to play through our daily lives with one another reveal how far from our own heart centers we have strayed. That we can’t trust ourselves on any road we choose unless we’re playing by someone else’s rules, or a societal role from another era, puts us in a box we chose to construct around ourselves.

  Being the individual you know you are at your core in every moment is the only way you’ll ever find your own place in the world, let alone someone to share it with. This takes you beyond a post-dating construct, or waiting thirty seconds to text, or believing you have to limit yourself and your own enjoyment because the man needs to have space to play protector. It gives each individual the opportunity to fulfill his or her own personal adventure, while honoring the person’s private journey inside a relationship that in the modern era must have more elastic boundaries to thrive.

  To fulfill your own dreams of being the individual you can be, you must above all things find that thing inside you that makes you who you are. We must each find inside ourselves that thing that inspires us. You may want a relationship and children, but there are years before that time manifests when you owe it to yourself, as well as your potential mate, not to mention the children you dream of creating, to find your personal uniqueness.

  Creating a life together means many things. The philosophy of life you both bring to the relationship is foundational to its possibility of working long-term. Perhaps the dreams you both have for what lies beyond working to pay the bills can weave into a relationship of mutual support in helping each other reach personal goals.

  If neither of you are religiously affiliated, which is happening increasingly today, what is that cohesive philosophy that helps you make sense of life and the partnership you hope to create? What are you here to do, experience and share with the world, as well as each other? What’s your contribution? What type of life will you build together, and what effect do you hope to have in your little corner of the world? If children are in the picture or you hope they will be, what will you teach them about the world and how it works?

  A belief in God today has a wider, freer meaning. Liberated individuals have the opportunity to redefine what it means to be spiritual and believe in some sort of connection, beyond what religious institutions used to force down on people, who had little choice but to embrace the societal fence of structured faith or be cast out and branded unfit.

  Holy books and texts will always remain a guide for people. However, as has been proven through Deepak Chopra, as well as Wayne Dyer, Gary Zukav, Marianne Williamson and even the Dalai Lama, there is much more to be explored beyond organized religion.

  No one has been more influential in the New Age spirituality revolution than Oprah Winfrey. Her influence, backing and promotion, including her Soul Series webcast, as she has offered introductions to alternatives to organized religion, cannot be overstated. Ms. Winfrey’s independent thought and curiosity are an American tradition.

  “How many ages and generations have brooded and wept and agonized over this book!” wrote Walt Whitman in The Bible as Poetry, which is online through the University of Chicago website.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson took that thought a step further: “Make your own Bible,” he wrote. “Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”

  Women can certainly relate to Emerson’s suggestion. Thomas Jefferson obliged, while anyone having studied or even passed time through reading the Bible can agree with Whitman. To ponder the words attributed to the man called Jesus of Nazareth, quoted by Dr. Wayne Dyer in The Power of Intention, is to be on the threshold of changing your life and the possibilities of your relationship, because of the attention to your own purpose.

  If you bring forth what is inside you,

  what you bring forth will save you.

  If you don’t bring forth what is inside you,

  what you don’t bring forth will destroy you.

  If that is true of self, it is surely true of our most important relationship, which can’t possibly thrive unless the choices we make resonate with our most profound selves, which we are on this planet to know first, above all. Whatever we find in life, including God, is found through this self-discovery.

  Carlos Castaneda said, “In the universe there is an immeasurable, indescribable force which shamans call intent, and absolutely everything that exists in the entire cosmos is attached to intent by a connecting link.”

  “May the force be with you” had such power in the legacy of Star Wars that the cult status the film attained could be appreciated even by those who simply enjoyed the film. Yoda says to Luke Skywalker, “You must feel the force around you,” and to anyone who has ever connected in a moment of life, or endeavored to, we can understand the intent here, the manifestation of purpose through these words.

  The intent we each have to manifest the life we want has nothing to do with calculated rules for dating, the notion that a relationship can be forged through traditional roles alone. In a modern era, where we’re mining human potential through New Age thinking, study and application, the thought that any connection can manifest through manipulation, fakery and role-playing makes no sense. It certainly won’t lead to happiness.

  Isn’t that what this is all about?

  Dr. Howard Cutler writes extensively on “the art of happiness,” including in a book of the same title he co-authored with the Dalai Lama. Sharing his views on Huffington Post, he talked about the benefits of happiness, but also about the notion that being happy is selfish or frivolous: “One of the fundamental principles of The Art of Happiness is that cultivating greater happiness not only b
enefits oneself but also one’s family, community and society. There is new scientific evidence supporting this principle as well. Such evidence helps dispel our common cultural biases and myths, such as perceiving happiness as a somewhat ‘soft’ or frivolous subject, or considering the pursuit of happiness to be self-centered or self-indulgent.”

  Cutler, a psychiatrist, goes on to emphasize the importance for us to recognize the value of happiness in our lives, and how people in the harsh economic times since the great recession of 2007-2009 are finding paths back to what’s really important in life.

  Nothing is more underrated than happiness and what it can do for your life, but I want to stress here the importance of happiness to finding a partner and building a relationship that will last.

  We experience many challenges throughout life, sometimes falling into the dark despair of self-destruction that can threaten your very life. Sometimes choosing happiness in a single moment is a way of navigating and surviving, a profound tool on which life can depend. Your relationship cannot survive without happiness. Dr. Wayne Dyer says that when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. Even in bad times, one thought that emphasizes that you want to feel good can make the difference.

  We feel it in a fleeting moment, but often don’t take the time to nurture it. That pure lift of joy we get when we experience something, an event, a task or a person that sparks that energy pulse from inside ourselves that breaks out into physical reaction, joy. The contagion felt as a result of that moment, a lift in life that can wipe out whatever calamity you’ve experienced for a split second. To feel happiness, let alone sustain it, you have to be doing the excavating of your own life’s purpose as well.

  Where do you go to feel happy, what do you do to replicate the feeling? Can you manifest happiness in your daily life? Who makes you happy? Are you authentically happy when you’re on an adventure such as a date? If you believe we’re in a post-dating era, also choosing group events, is it a happy experience?

  There has to be time in your life for laughter and having a blast with the one you love, with whom you hope to share a lifetime. This is made possible through living your own version of happiness in your own life, no matter what’s going on around you.

  Life’s too short to do a job you hate. To live somewhere that doesn’t fit your nature. To kowtow to other peoples’ rules to make them happy. To wish you looked like someone else or had your girlfriend’s talent or body, while disrespecting the unique person you are and the talent you have inside that no one else can match.

  Again, if you don’t know who you are and what makes you happy, you’ll never be able to have a great relationship with someone else. Finding that thing that makes life sing for you, that you’re good at and love to do, is a start, the happiness it brings you is the beginning.

  Every day you must find time to disconnect from the noise, unplug from technology, and invest in something that thrills you and takes you away from all the negative energy around you. Take a yoga class or learn to meditate. Walk in God’s outdoors to remind yourself of the beauty outside your office cubicle. Choose to be happy for a little while each day. Find something that inspires this feeling inside yourself. It may only last for five minutes the first time, but eventually it will expand.

  Stop depending on other people’s guidelines that follow along a path that puts the power outside of yourself.

  Stop the tape in your head. When the words come blathering through, push the off button, then mentally throw the tape out of your psychic window. More enlightened people than myself have written this many times before, but the words you’re listening to in your head are the quotes you’ve picked up, for bad and for worse, that hit you hard and likely stopped you cold. Some may have lodged in your mind that are worth keeping, so edit the tape, which should only have those things that inspire you on it and make you feel good.

  What makes you happy? What in your life right now gives you joy? If you don’t have an answer, it’s the first place you need to start. Because if you don’t know what makes you happy and how to experience it for yourself, on your own, no one else can give it to you or make you happy. Your own life, as well as any relationship you hope to sustain, not to mention your children’s lives, depend on your involvement in your own happiness.

  If you can’t find it, take a walk. The answer might not be found in God’s outdoors, but the path to it could be.

  8

  The Perfect Relationship

  Is there such a thing as the perfect relationship? Absolutely, it’s just that it doesn’t come in one-size-fits-all. It’s something each woman designs for herself. Smooth sailing is not part of the package. Just be careful what you ask for, because you most certainly can attract it.

  There are components that put any relationship on the road to perfection. But in the end you get the relationship you set up and inspire the man to deliver, because believe me, that’s exactly what men want to do.

  The sole goal of a man ready for a relationship is to make a woman happy. He lives for it and feeds off of it. The world will be yours if you let him know when he’s done it. But in order for him to have a chance of delivering you have to know what will make you happy, which begins with being happy by yourself.

  If you don’t know who you are and what you want from your life as you stand there a solitary person, no man can give you what you can’t find yourself. If you don’t know what makes you happy in the confines of your own life, a relationship, family, or children aren’t the answers or the solutions.

  No man can complete you.

  No man can make you happy.

  A man can add to your life. He can widen your experiences. He can be a magnificent co-adventurer in escapades of personal and professional grandeur, as well as a playmate in life. One thing he most surely must be is an erotic adventurer who delights in thrilling you sexually.

  Intimacy is the beginning of it all, which is emotional, intellectual and physical. It’s a connection with someone that you can sense with your heart. It’s not brain-centered. Hopefully, you know yourself well enough to judge the difference between lust and what happens in that mystical instant when someone potentially important has crossed your path. But we’re often fooled more than once before we learn the difference.

  The first thing a smart woman accepts when constructing a perfect relationship is that having sex with the man before you decide “he’s the one” is something you owe yourself. Waiting until you’re married to have sex is not only an antiquated notion, but should be seen by any smart man as a warning that you’re not remotely ready for marriage. Having sex with a man before you decide to marry him is mandatory.

  Slut-shaming women into believing that abstinence before marriage will make your union last is counterproductive, worse still is telling a woman that if she has sex with a man before marriage, he’ll leave. A virgin wedding night was rarely anything but a bragging right, which in the twenty-first century just sounds stupid. How can you marry and pledge to spend the rest of your life with a man you haven’t had sex with?

  We’re not living in a magical fairy tale, with women tied to a make-believe world where the princess bride has to hold out or her prince will think she’s a slut. Once bedded, the conquest done, he’d be forever bored. Sex is an elemental part of modern marriage, which is why you have it with your husband and no one else. If you didn’t, you’d just be friends. Friendship is another critical component in any relationship meant to last a lifetime, one that gets you through the worst of all possible moments in life that sometimes hit like a nor’easter without a warning. However, what sets a romantic relationship apart from friendship is sex.

  Only 5% of unintended pregnancies are represented by those who used contraception correctly (and every time). That’s me. So, yes, it happens, but very rarely, and today there’s also the morning-after pill. Responsibility is important for women and men who are having sex but don’t want to get pregnant. But the fear of pregnancy is no ex
cuse for waiting until you’re married to have sex. The abstinence message usually comes from traditionally rigid people, whose strict rules have absolutely nothing to do with what actually makes a successful modern marriage and a happy, healthy life.

  According to the Guttmacher Institute, the “U.S. unintended pregnancy rate is significantly higher than the rate in many other developed countries.” When broken down into ethnic groups, a 2006 study relied on by Guttmacher reported that “black women had the highest unintended pregnancy rate of any racial or ethnic groups. At 91 per 1000 women aged 15-44, it was more than double that of non-Hispanic white women (36 per 1,000).”

  One thing premarital sex might also do is slow down marriages, because the longer you wait to marry, the more likely it is you’ll find the right partner, and have a better chance of making your relationship work.

  Creating the perfect relationship requires that, from the beginning, you never surrender what it is you want for yourself. You only get one chance to set this up. So, if you don’t know the details of the relationship you want, simply consider having fun and enjoying yourself, postponing anything serious. Being single is delectable, as long as you take maximum precautions, so until you’re sure, have fun and learn.

  The perfect relationship is an equal-power prospect. The only control over you a man has is the power you give him. In that surrendered power is the failure of most relationships.

  Sharing power in a relationship is what has a better chance of making you and your partner happy. Then he can step up to do what he does best and that is to add to your happiness by delivering the part of life that’s possible for him to offer. It may consist of working every day and delivering a paycheck that, added to yours, amounts to a step up for you both. It could mean lobster dinners and champagne, or a truck ride to a campground. But if you make clear what you want and is required of him by setting it up in a way that he can understand, the world that’s his to give will be yours.