It’s hard enough to talk body parts and their intricacies with a fellow adult; discussing them with a teenager who’d rather have his spleen removed by tiny gnawing rodents than hear you say « penis » is a feat like no other.

Online dating didn’t exist

I’m normally not a fan of the just-hand-‘em-a-book approach to parenting, but a new guide by licensed therapist and masculinity researcher Andrew Smiler strikes me as must-read material for teen boys grappling with questions about relationships and sexuality.

« Dating and Sex: A Guide for the 21st Century Teen Boy » (Magination Press) is written for 13- to 16-year-old boys who are, as Smiler writes, « possibly, maybe, sort of interested in starting to date or kiss people sometime in the not-too-distant future, as well as for guys who have dated or been sexual with lots of people. »

It’s for boys who are interested in girls, boys or both. It’s for boys who need answers to questions they don’t even know they have.

« We put a lot of pressure on boys in the United States to look like they’re competent and to not show any kind of weakness or deficiency, » Smiler told me. « It’s even worse with sex. « 

The book is informed by Smiler’s academic background (he has a dental psychology and has written dozens of journal articles on masculinity and sexual development), but it’s also shaped by his interactions with teens who are living the very topics he writes about.Continue Reading..

All kinds of people, from all areas, all ages, and all kinds of life happenings. One of the biggest blind spots of anyone who is suffering, is the feeling that you are alone, that no one understands. But if you are having deep troubles, and you read an interview, or a dozen interviews, with people who are going through similar things, you no longer feel so isolated. And you can learn, be helped, by hearing about how others have coped, even survived and thrived, through circumstances similar to what you are going through. They may not be able to listen to you in person, but by the way they share their own words here you’ll know that they would hear you if you were talking to them right now.

You don’t have to learn any new spiritual words, there are no exercises, you don’t have to learn or remember anything here

To read more about these interviews and how I conduct them, please read ‘The Interviews‘ page. Or you can go directly to any category under ‘THE INTERVIEWS’ heading at right, and select an interview whose title resonates with your own circumstances. I try to loosely categorize each interview, but each one includes wider events.

I will add to these interviews constantly, so please check in at a later date, if you do not see an interview that helps you at the moment.

3. ClearYourMind Usually it is a wide collection of events and decisions that bring you down a road that eventually tightens and bottlenecks into your finally asking ‘help me please’. It is invariably a combination of external happenings, and your reactions and responses to them, that brings you to either success or suffering. This is not a matter of ‘fault’ or blame, of intelligence or strength; the smartest and strongest people can still end up in a place of despair and destitution.

But your mind can evolve into something better; not every difficult circumstance in your life can be thwarted or escaped, https://hookupdate.net/seekingarrangement-review/ however there are mind-tools you can use to better cope with problems, and then to deal with enough parts of a problem so that the whole is reduced in severity and becomes something manageable.Continue Reading..