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Has Your Vajayjay Lost Its Pep?

askdrding | Bad Psychology Fun,Current Events,Sex | Monday, 31 August 2009

sheelanagig

With all the plastic surgery bullshit going on nowadays where women get Botox shot into their coochies, Dr. Ding thinks it’s high time we reclaimed the power of the all-mighty bergina. And not in some kind of groovy, over-solemnified 1970s Our Bodies, Our Selves kind of way. Oh no.

See that impish figure up above? That’s a Sheela na Gig, a holy vulva. They were put on buildings for protection from evil back in ancient Ireland and in other areas of Europe, and were considered pretty strong juju, spiritually-speaking. You can read more about them here.

So, the next time you find yourself worrying about what other people think about your punannie, remember its noble lineage and abilities to ward off demons and such. And the next time you’re about to go in for some ridiculous cooter-tightening, hoohoo-rejuvenating procedure, get yourself a Sheela na Gig instead. Trust. Your spirit will thank you for it.

Dear Dr. Ding

askdrding | Bad Psychology Fun,Dear Dr. Ding,Relationships,Sex | Monday, 08 September 2008

Dear Dr. Ding.

I need your sage advice. I am feeling a little confused about my own feelings. I have a long time friend that I am having trouble communicating honestly with. She started a new relationship a year and a half ago with what appears to be a decent man.

The issue I am having is with their child bearing decisions and living situation. She has two daughters from her prior relationships and he has three daughters. She had told me that he was not ready to get married but she wanted to marry him. She told me that they had talked about having a child together because they both want a son. She went off of her birth control. He had full knowledge of this. She also identified that he had made some statements that she thought indicated he would be ready to marry her if she became pregnant. Now she has announced that she is pregnant. She expects everyone to be excited with this news and gets upset when people don’t have the response of joy and glee at the news.

I would really like to be excited about this news but I can’t seem to work up any enthusiasm about her bringing her 3rd child into the world without a commitment from the father. She is 32 years old and already has two children with two different fathers. She complains about when their fathers don’t take care of their financial responsibility or disappoints her children by canceling time together or making promises not kept. (I also get concerned about people that continue to have these huge families with no thought to the consequences it has on the world. Just because you have ovaries and semen doesn’t mean you have to keep procreating. Not in this world. I feel guilty about thoughts like that even as I am having them.)

Am I getting old and opinionated or I am getting older and more aware of how the choices that one person makes regarding their sexual behavior effects the rest of the world?

There are several other layers of issues I have regarding this person and her choices related to this relationship and parenting. I try very hard to keep my opinions to myself most of the time. I know I don’t get to make choices for anyone else especially when it comes to these types of issues. I also know I don’t have the right to judge the lifestyle others choose that are different from my own. My problem is she has started asking for my opinion on some of these issues and it is getting hard not to share with her those choices that I don’t agree with. I have found myself avoiding spending time with her so I can avoid the entire conversation.

Please share your wisdom.

Old and Opinionated

Dear Old And Opinionated:

Dr. Ding’s first reaction to this missive was “Your friend is a stone hoochie” but then I decided that this perhaps was insensitive and a tad hasty. Let me collect my thoughts, which have scattered like a misdiagnosed ADHD child overdosed on Ritalin because they should have chosen a college major by now or at least scored in the top 2% on their psychometrically invalid Exemplary School exams. What? Exactly.

Congratulations, OldOp-you’re friends with someone with poor judgement. Which you know. And she probably has some clue that her way of going about making major life decisions ain’t so hot, which is why she’s hitting you up for your input and, more accurately, your approval. You’re smart to not fall for it, but it certainly sounds like your efforts to not blurt out “Gah! What the fuck are you fucking thinking!” are putting a strain on the friendship.

Your friend is the kind of person who spends a lot of time worrying about what man is going to leave her next, and has difficulty being available as a friend because of all the drama she stirs up and then expects you to listen to. She probably fears other women will take her man unless she’s staked a babydaddy claim, which means she’s pretty damn insecure and probably is stuck at a pubertal developmental level. She views her role in romantic relationships as that of subordinate, or she may be conflicted about issues of healthy interdependence vs codependence. She spits out babies as a means to an end, which is fundamentally immature, egocentric, stupid, and financially unsound. It’s a way of wielding covert power, power she feels otherwise unable to access or utilize. There are probably some thorny daddy issues mixed up in this somewhere. I could go on, but I gotta charge ya for milkshakes as rich as this one.

It sounds like she’s not someone who shares your value system when it comes to relationship/parenting decisions. And admittedly, her ideas about reproducing herself aren’t exactly in alignment with my life ideals, either.

But.

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Sexy Time Warp

askdrding | Dating,Music,Sex,You Tube | Sunday, 11 May 2008

Random bootknocking is so 1992. But if you find yourself in a dilly of a pickle after a night of boomin’ in ya Jeep, be sure to peep Dr. Ding’s wisdoms here.

Without further ado, Boomin’ In Ya Jeep.

Also: Soul Train. Japanese ideogram captions. Don Cornelius. And Color Me Badd, singing “I Wanna Sex You Up”. Their porn ‘staches and fancy dance moves still really boil me auld potato after all these years. Damn.

Image

Dear Dr. Ding

askdrding | Bad Psychology Fun,Dating,Dear Dr. Ding,Marriage,Relationships,Sex | Monday, 07 April 2008

Dear Dr. Ding,

I’m very interested to hear your response to a particular issue I’ve been dealing with for quite some time. The few people I’ve shared this info with have very little to say after they hear the whole story which might be because there isn’t anything TO say, but still, I’m feeling the need to do something about it. And unfortunately I’m too tangled up inside of it to determine the best way to handle it.

I am a single mom in my thirties. I’ve been divorced for almost 5 years (the divorce was a positive event for me) and my two school aged kids live with me. I haven’t really dated at all in those 5 years - tried the online thing and after countless failures realized that it just isn’t for me. Also, I haven’t ever really gotten too serious about trying to find someone to date - I appreciate the value of being alone and spending my time focusing on other things like my kids and career - so not being hooked up hasn’t really been a huge issue for me. Sure, I get lonely sometimes but it hasn’t ever consumed me.

Three years ago I met a small group of friends that I subsequently ended up spending a large amount of time with. I really loved these guys for many reasons and just couldn’t get enough of being around them. After a year or so I ended up becoming particularly close to one of the guys in this group. He didn’t seem to stand out when I first met him but the more I learned about him, the more I liked him. And that continued to grow and grow and eventually I realized that I had fallen completely in love with him. It was a wonderful realization and a tragic one at the same time. Wonderful because I believe that I’ve never really experienced romantic love before; my marriage was not about love and I certainly didn’t learn anything about it from my parents, so it was a great feeling that felt true and right for the first time in my life. Tragic because … well, because he’s married.

I know at first glance that seems like a no-brainer, “get away as fast as you can, this isn’t going anywhere and you’re only going to get hurt”, right? But it’s everything else about the situation that makes that *not* seem right. Also, everyone I talk to about this suggests the idea that I feel this way about him because it’s “safe”, and I think by that they mean that since there is no chance for a relationship I can experience these feelings without having to deal with relationship issues. That never feels right to me - I do not feel like I have a fear of commitment, I don’t feel like there is anything bad about relationships, as long as you’re with the right person, and now that I feel very confident in my ability to determine the right person, why would I be trying to sabotage my own chances to experience this? I *know* why my marriage failed, it makes perfect sense. I know I needed the past 5 years to learn a lot about myself and I have. I’m there now. So this reasoning never washes with me although I’m in no position to discount it 100%; apparently something is amiss here and since I don’t know what it is I can’t block out any possibilities.

As far as specifics about my relationship with him are concerned, you should know that we are very close. Here are some facts about us:

* It is definitely a two-way thing. The hardest part for me is that I do not understand WHY. I don’t understand why he shares so much of his life with me. I mean although I’d guess there are probably a few sacred issues just between him and his wife, he tells me pretty much every single thing that happens in his day-to-day life. I do not have any other friends that do this.
* We communicate all day long most days of the week.
* It has been this way for over 2 years
* When possible, we get together in person.
* Sometimes we stay out together until the wee hours of the morning just talking.
* We have long, serious talks about life’s big issues.
* We help each other.
* We listen to each other.
* We joke around with each other.
* People accuse us of “acting married” when they are around us.
* We seem to respect each other.
* He is always there for me.
* We have suggestive conversations - never about each other, but we often talk about sexual things and know exactly what it is that turns the other person on. We do this *a lot*.
* He always makes me feel good and important and … loved. He makes me feel loved, but I have no idea if that is what he feels for me or not. Everything else would suggest that this is a ridiculous notion and that I’m just being wishful - maybe I am, but somehow it just doesn’t seem that simple to me.
* We don’t have sex and we’re not having an affair.
* We never acknowledge or discuss the fact that we have an obviously unique relationship.
* He is a huge part of my life.
* When we haven’t talked for a while (relatively speaking), I sense that he missed me
* My kids know and love him.
* My friends know him. I’m sure most people that know me know how I feel about him, I’m not very adept at hiding my feelings. I’d have to say that *he* probably even knows how I feel about him which is just another layer of the issue that adds to my inability to understand it all - if you’re married and you know another woman has strong feelings for you, should you constantly be encouraging her?
* He seems to love his wife (of 9 years) and seems very dedicated to his marriage. As far as I know, she knows everything about our friendship and is fine with it. Most people find that hard to believe but we don’t hide anything or act any differently when we are around her than we do when we aren’t. She and I get along well.
* He and I never talk about this stuff. I’ve never been able to bring this up with him because I’m terrified of losing him.
* Having been through the unbelievable hell that is divorce, I do not want him to get divorced, but at the same time I want to be with him. I guess I keep fantasizing that when his kids are grown, he could leave his wife and grow old with me. And I know that sounds awful but under the veil of anonymity I might as well be truthful about my feelings. I think for now I’d just be happy to know what I really mean to him. Yeah, I *think*, not sure about that.
* One time he almost completely stopped taking to me for like a month (for his own personal reasons) and I became severely depressed. I was very frightened to realize the profound impact that his temporary absence had on me, and pondered the horror of his permanent absence.

I experience this relationship as if it were a romantic relationship without sex. I have no idea what it means to him. Maybe I’ve just never experienced a true friendship before. Is that all this is? Am I just being completely foolish thinking that there is anything out-of-the-norm going on here? What is the difference between friendship and a romantic relationship without sex? Maybe they are the exact same thing. If so how can I continue to be close friends with someone I wish was a romantic partner? How do I lose the feelings of frustration of not ever being able to make love to him? Would it be better to talk to him about this or to just continue to use his actions as cues to assume how he feels about me?

All I know is that I really don’t want to be without him, which is why I’ve been sitting on my feelings so far. Please let me know what you think.

Sincerely,

Clueless And Confused


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15 Tips On How To Have A Breakup

askdrding | Dating,Relationships,Sex | Sunday, 18 November 2007

how to have a break up.gif

Many people do not know how to have a breakup. Being the keen observer of human relationships that she is, Dr. Ding in all her dingish glory is about to unfurl some serious knowledge.

1. Don’t call the other person repeatedly. Even if you think they’re going to really need that $0.69 toothbrush. Even if she left her favorite Hello Kitty thermos. Even if he still has a half-eaten bag of pork rinds sitting on your counter. Just don’t.

2. Trust Dr. Ding. Trust.

3. Don’t stalk. It looks desperate. That, and, well, it’s illegal. Plus, it takes up a LOT of time. Time that you could be spending sitting in a bar, weeping into your overpriced drink. See #7.

4. Don’t do the Drive By. It isn’t as desperate-looking as it is just pure fucking crazy. I mean, what are you going to do if you accidentally run into him? Or over him? “Uh, hi, yeah. Good to see you again. I see you’re still not using weedkiller. Hmmm. Well, I’d better be leaving. I’ll call 911 when my cell signal hits 3 bars at the end of the street, ok? Bye now.” Yeah, that looks normal.

5. Remember one word: dignity. You need to try to refrain from begging, yelling, screaming, cajoling, pleading, and carrying-on in general. No whining “But you said you loved me! We were going to run away to Overland Park, Kansas and open up a Gap store together. Waaaah!” when you see her at Starbucks, moments prior to throwing yourself into a heap by the biscotti.

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Too Often Punched by an Angel: Money. Sex. Drugs. Death.

askdrding | Death,Drugs,Money,Sex | Thursday, 30 August 2007

queen vicky.jpg

What it do, homiez?

The title of this post has to do with the four topics psychotherapists and counselors least like discussing with their patients/clients, yet which are often the sources of a whole rickety raft of emotional pain and behavioral discombobulation. Many mental health practitioners tend to avoid these like the plague.

Not Dr. Ding.

I like to just wade right in, once I’ve got a little rapport going. Some of my best conversational gambits have been:

“Uh, hey, just how much are you liking those two Vicodin 7.5/750s you’re taking every four hours?”

“Ever declared bankruptcy? How good are you at addition and subtraction?”

“Just how horny are you?” or “Exactly how unsatisfying is your sex life?”
and

“Anybody up and died on you lately?”.

I know, I know, it sounds god-awful and you now see me as an insensitive, boorish blah blah blah blah. But, on the upside, driving the mack truck of potentially embarrassing interrogatives gets them over with, and asking them crack-off-the-bat like this tends to make any following questions seem incredibly non-threatening, tame, easy-to-answer, et cetera. I also like to think that being irreverent right up front tends to free up folks to just be who they are with me, and to get to that kind of level of emotional honesty that makes for good psychotherapy progress (eventually).

Dr. Ding does not advocate using these openers willy-nilly, but she does think it very droll to entertain the notion that perhaps the world would be a bit better place if we could talk about all these things with using a frigging shitload of euphemisms and denial, a la “My child would never have premarital relations or consider abusing substances!” Jeebus. Blow out the gaslights and switch to electric. Or: “S/he passed away.” Why not just say they were punched by an angel instead? I love it when people say money’s a little tight right now when the truth is more like “I was seeing a very special lady and spent all my money taking her out for ramantic dinners hired a hooker and did blow off her right asscheek all night.”

It’s good to ask direct questions, but only if you can handle the responses and not run away like a little Victorian girly-mon, pigtails a-flying, shrieking into the night.

Not that Dr. Ding has never done that, particularly not very early in her career, say, circa June 1, 1993 while wearing a large bow in her hair and sporting a long pink floral dress with white tights. Oh never.