You’re Invited To My Deathday Party

Dear Suze, A FB buddy is dying of cancer and sent me an evite for next week with a video communication link. He’s going to be with his wife and kids, and we’re all to have alcohol and snacks for an hour as people give eulogies while he’s alive. Then he’s going to give a short speech, toast us all with his doctor-approved lethal cocktail, and disconnect the call when he gets sleepy. Is this creepy or sacred? 

Dear Invitee, While we can’t always choose what happens (cancer), we can choose how we interpret what happens (celebration or mourning). -SQ

Why Marry?

Dear S.Q. My partner and I have lived happily together for years. In our 30s, he wants to get married. I don’t see the point. We work and play hard and don’t need kids to “complete” us. Maybe someday but not for several years. 

Dear Unmarried, Marriage is no longer viewed as a rite of passage into “acceptable society” as previously dictated by religious and cultural standards. Many want to avoid the “sins” of their divorced parents, although it’s doubtfully that easy. Marriage or exclusive commitment have much in common, including constant work to make the relationship strong and thrive. Previously, one perk of marriage was your child(ren) had the same last name as the parents, but that’s been solved with hyphenation or deemed irrelevant. Childbirth while mom was in her 20’s has been replaced by women in their 40s or even 50s (with a surrogate). Unmarried is another swing of the societal change pendulum. What’s right for you is the best path. -SQ

Should Dads Give Their Wife A Mother’s Day Gift?

Dear S.Q. Just want to vent a minute. My adult kids joke that I should give my wife a Mother’s Day gift.  When our sons were babies, toddlers, young children, -whose money bought those Mother’s Day cards and gifts, those celebratory meals out, and helped with “homemade gifts” until the kids were mature enough to do it on their own?

Dear Dad, You are so right! And behind Father’s Day gifts there is often his wife, and a mother joining her children's love for Dad on his day of celebration. Love and fun makes the world a happier place. -SQ

Cyber Frogs And Princes: A Sex Manual For On-Line Dating After 50 Has Launched!

https://a.co/d/0hYLbeQ0 is the Amazon link. Remember: those skinny, narrow characters are zeros

HOT OFF THE AMAZON PRESSES! Suze Q's debut book is ready to make your mother blush (on Mother's Day) and your friends snicker. Sex manual indeed!

Dear Readers, My book, Cyber Frogs And Princes: A Sex Manual For On-Line Dating After 50 🐸👑 has launched on Amazon, just in time for Mother’s Day!  If you thought 50 Shades of Grey could only be read with a flashlight under the sheets, welcome to my autofiction, a not-100% true five-year journey looking for Prince Charming in Californian’s City of Angels. It evolved into a self-help book for others over 50 wading into the on-line dating pond loaded with so many frogs to avoid that I categorized them for you: the Not Over His XYZ, the Sex Teaser, the Fraud Frog and a dozen others. My book is full of tips and quips to guide you through your old and new mindset; his and her physical working of elder sex with elder bodies; and through my psychological lens what really is narcissism, depression, sex disorders, and such. My book is dirty in parts, but then so is growing old and swimming in frog ponds. My experiences are not for the feint of heart, much like on-line dating,but the fun and rewards are vast. -Suze Q

Freshen Up The Marriage

Dear Suze Q, I found my husband’s texts with his work associate with nude pictures and filthy talk about including me. He had to know I’d see this when he asked me to set up his new phone, so I ask him. He said he was afraid to talk to me of his fantasy, but he felt our marriage was stale. Any problem with a threesome to improve our marriage?

Dear Stale, He didn’t talk to you for fear of your reaction to a 3-way sexual encounter, but he HANDED you the texts that he’d imagined the whole thing with his workmate? He modeled in porn pics and texts with Workplace Wanda but not with you, his wife? Ménage-a-trois wouldn’t fix a marriage, and it won’t ignite your sex life if the object of his lust is her and you’re just a convenient obstacle to get there. What happens after the rendezvous? Sex fun → go for it. Save the marriage → see a counselor ‘cause sex may be such a minor problem compared to everything else that’s wrong. -SQ

Sex And Prostate

Dear Suze, What I wouldn’t do to be sexy and sensual like I was 30 years ago. My mind’s willing but my body says “no can do” because of prostate issues.

Dear Mindful, Many men over 50 have prostate and other issues that make sex more difficult, but not impossible. Broaden your knowledge about work-arounds. Tried the blue pill? The penis pump? Penis implants or injections? Since many older women aren’t aroused easily by penetration, become a Casanova of oral sex and sex toys. -SQ

May 7, International Masturbation Day

Dear Readers, Some of you are appalled that there is such a taboo thing as International Masturbation Month, and a dedicated day on May 7, but others of you are applauding “it’s about damn time.”

From my book, Cyber Frogs And Princes, A Sex Manual Of On-Line Dating After 50, soon to be available through Amazon, 🤞 here’s a bit about this fun topic. 

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT:  MASTURBATION

 

"Having sex is like playing Bridge.  If you don't have a good partner, you'd better have a good hand."                  -Woody Allen

 

Cumulative research touts masturbation's many health benefits as reduction of stress, tension, pain, depression, and anxiety; improved self-esteem; increased sexual desire and orgasms; less vaginal dryness; and improved sleep.  Whether self-pleasure reduces prostate cancer or diabetes continues to be debated.  I always thought that it was a bit of a locker-room exaggeration, but the more I met guys in card game chat-rooms, on-line dating sites, or in person, I believed Hugh Hefner's alleged quote that men think about sex every six seconds.  Even married or partnered couples masturbate with reasons given in the research such as knowing your own body helps you guide your partner to hotter lovemaking, or the opposing theory that one masturbates as an addition or substitution for unsatisfied partnered sex.  Medical News Today's January 2020 article summarized the research that approximately 63 percent of men and 32 percent of women between the ages of 57-64 masturbate.  Come on ladies, let's bump up those stats. 

 

Luckily, we've come a long way busting those masturbation myths that men will grow hair on their palms, go blind, go straight to hell, go insane, and that women will become addicted to their vibrators.  I'm still examining this last legend.  It's been written that the batshit anti-Master Bater, Minister Sylvester Graham advocated in the 1830s that eating his Graham Crackers would prevent unhealthy sexual desires and self-abuse (masturbation).  Later in that century, an anti-pleasure campaigner, Dr. John Kellogg, published books indirectly advocating the consumption of his bland cornflakes to discourage masturbation (as well as other barbaric alternatives such as sewing boy's foreskins with silver wire or burning women's clitorises with carbolic acid).   

 

To counteract this craziness, we also have our well-known and well-loved champions such as Mark Twain who gave an 1879 lecture to a Parisian men's club criticizing the anti-masturbation culture of those times.  Over 100 years later, in 1994, the United States Surgeon General, Joycelyn Elders, spoke at a United Nations conference on AIDS that masturbation was natural and should be taught as part of the sex education curriculum for students.  President Clinton thought that she had gone a step too far and had her resign (some irony here, Bill?).  A year later, the San Francisco retailer Good Vibrations declared National Masturbation Day to honor Dr. Elders that has expanded to include the entire month of May as International Masturbation Month.  Bravo.  -SQ