Love's Learning Place: Truth as Aphrodisiac in Women's Long-Term Relationships

by Renate Stendhal

Truth telling keeps passion alive This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1931223041
• ISBN13: 9781931223041
• Release Date: February 2002
• Publisher: Edgework Books
• Length: 119 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.8" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

Offers a powerful common sense viewpoint

Love's Learning Place: Truth as Aphrodisiac in Women's Long-Term Relationships by spiritual and psychological women's counselor Renate Stendhal, is a human sexuality self-help guide for lesbian women in long-term relationships. Focusing on openness and truth as the key to keeping sexual desire alive, and enhanced with anecdotes from lesbian couples, Love's Learning Place focuses on the simple yet profound idea that communication matters, and takes the lead in debunking pervasive myths - such as the idea that one should "just know" what feels good in sex, or that sex should come automatically and instinctively. Although written especially for women in lesbian relationships, Love's Learning Place offers a powerful common sense viewpoint applicable to all long-term sexual partnerships.

Not just for women

I found an excerpt in The Advocate sex issue this summer and read that this interesting author lived in Paris "as a boy". Me and my partner of 6 years are reading this book to each other in bed. We love "Love School"! We are learning something amazing every time we read. It is changing our sex life. No, our love life. Men can get a few hot ideas from the women in this book. Not just the talking, also the thinking about truth. Not just in bed. The author has ways to make one aware of lies and false beliefs. It clears the head. Then the doing. Don't miss out.

Stuck in your sexual relationship?

This wise little book belongs on your bookshelf if you treasure your lover but feel stuck in your sexual relationship. The key is to develop the language for erotic truth and find ways to communicate it, says author Renate Stendhal, a psychological counselor in Berkeley and San Francisco. Based on her work with lesbian couples, Stendhal shows through lively anecdotes how partners often fear telling the truth about their most secret fears, afraid of spelling the end of the relationship. They couldn't be more wrong, says the author. "More effective than booze, drugs, pain or separation, truth-telling is a skill that can be learned, and one doesn't have to be a master to reap the erotic benefits." "Telling the truth is an adventure," she says, "a loosening of control in order to do something daring. This is the first element truth has in common with good sex."

A Meditation on Sex and Desire

"Truth as aphrodisiac" - what an irresistible, intoxicating image. I wish I had thought of it. Renate Stendhal writes in an intimate, personal-essay style. She is a therapist as well as a writer, by the way. But her book is not one of those how-to books, though I learned a lot, and certainly I think Stendhal wants her readers to reconsider how they make love, what they want from love and sex, and who they are as lovers. She quotes Adrienne Rich about how, between lovers, lies the amazing capacity to "Do justice to our own complexity." This, says Stendhal, "has the unexpected physical reward of setting love free."Stendhal investigates how love is set free with compassion, determination, originality, and playfulness. She writes about her personal experiences, about the therapeutic process of lesbian couples, whom she counseled, and about the thoughts and ideas that she develops as a result of her counseling work. At times, the book reads like a meditation on sex and desire, which keeps it very interesting. And she comes up with these clever turns of phrase, which I really appreciated. For example: "Sex without penetration is not really sex, as we have learned, thanks to Bill Clinton." And: "Lesbian couples tend to merge and therefore lose their sexual appetite. I doubt that anything could be that simple." Exactly. That is the premise of Stendhal's book, and why it's so appealing.