Until recently, most women, when they thought of birth control, thought of the pill, condoms, abstinence or the calendar method.  It used to be that IUD’s, or intrauterine devices, never came to mind.  There is an increasing awareness of the IUD as a viable and effective method of birth control.

IUD’s were used commonly, as a form of birth control, until in the 1970′s, a type of IUD, called the Dalkon Shield, caused a host of serious health problems for women.  These problems included increase in PID, or pelvic inflammatory disease, miscarriage, sterility or even death, in extreme cases.

This device was pulled from the market over 30 years ago.  Because of this scare, IUD’s fell out of favor with the medical profession and the general public.  There was a basic flaw in the design of the Dalkon Shield that allowed infections to travel into the uterus.

Due to research and redesigning, safer and improved IUD’s are now on the market and FDA approved.  The demand by the general public for IUD’s is starting to increase and women are asking about them and for them again.

One of the reasons women are asking more for IUD’s is because of their effectiveness.  With  human error factored in, the hormonal methods of birth control such as the pill, the ring or the patch, effectiveness of preventing pregnancy is reduced.

Another factor that could make the IUD a desirable method of birth control is for women who smoke.  Smokers should not be using estrogen based birth control methods as it increases chances of serious side effects from blood clotting too readily.

The health care profession needs to catch up with a new and increasing demand for IUD’s.  Providers need to list them as an option so women can make an informed choice how to prevent an unplanned pregnancy effectively.

An IUD is inserted into the uterus and it affects the way sperm moves to prevent them from joining with an egg.  The two latest FDA approved types of IUD’s are the Paragon and the Mirena.

The Paragon costs about $600.00 and is effective, 99.8%, for up to 10 years.  It contains no hormones and is a better choice for smokers.  Major side effects with the Paragon are heavier or longer periods and increased menstrual cramping.

The Mirena costs about $700.00, is 99.8% effective for up to 5 years and does contain synthetic progesterone.  The major side effects with the Mirena are lighter or missed periods and ovarian cysts.

IUD’s need to be inserted and removed professionally by an experienced clinician.  They can be removed at any time before their contraceptive duration expires.  According to research, fertility returns almost immediately, so they are a reversible form of birth control.

Of course, neither the pill or IUD’s prevent sexually transmitted diseases, so consumers need to use precautions to prevent STD’s.

One of the biggest problems that intervenes in a couple’s happy sex life is stress. Stress and anxiety about a variety of things that can come up in people’s lives is the single biggest killer of sexual desire.

The energy that you have to put into sexual intercourse, the whole flirting game and seduction game, and the foreplay, especially for couples who have been together for a while, takes a back seat to what are viewed as larger, more consuming problems.

But in the end, couples are only hurting themselves, their marriage and their families by not engaging in sex and affection when they are going through difficult times. In fact, the lack of sex actually makes it much rougher to get through these periods, since sex in and of itself is a great stress buster.

It releases all kinds of happy hormones, and it takes your mind off all your troubles, even if only temporarily.  Couples who get stuck in the stress rut often just end up taking not only their anger from the day’s stress at work (or not having a job or maybe not enough money) on eachother.

They also take their sexual frustration out on eachother. They may not even realize it, but they are missing the sex they once had, and the lack of it can actuallly be a depressing factor.

Some studies have shown the women who are regularly exposed to semen are actually happier than women who are not.  Also, for men, they just need to release their semen and their stress in a sexual fashion in order to just maintain their level of happiness and contentment. Men can actually get more agressive and angrier if they are lacking in the sex department.

The current recession, or as economists have dubbed it “mancession” since it has affected men much more than women with losing jobs, has really put a damper on many couple’s relationships. Not only is there financial pressure, but there can be building resentment against one another.

One may resent the other for having a job while they can’t find one to save their lives. The other may resent the other half because they perceive that they are the ones bringing in all the money while the other rests on their laurels. A lot of resentment can build when the economy is bad in marriage.

This much is evident in the relationships I see around me. People are frustrated and their libido shows it. They may not be able to get out of jobs they hate, or they may just feel stuck, and they take this out on their relationships.

Hey guys, Jill here. I’m here to talk to you today about a woman’s perspective (and some of a guy’s perspective too, my husband has a part in this piece as well) on something that we’ve all done, or at least made a measly attempt at : Dirty Talk in the bedroom.

I personally feel like dirty talk in the bedroom is a little overrated. But, there was a time when I enjoyed surprising a lover with some really low down dirty talk. I have a sweet demeanor and quiet look to me, so I think it really got guys hot and bothered when something super dirty came out of my mouth.

Sometimes I meant what I was saying. Other times I was frankly just drunk and saying whatever I thought would excite the guy to be honest.  Other times, I felt like the guy was looking for me to start talking dirty, and so I felt forced to come up with something.

Those were the times when it almost never came out as sexy, but rather as forced and contrived. I ended up feeling ridiculous. It was like I was laughing in my head but trying to keep a straight, sexy looking face while I was doing it. In short, I felt like a fool, and it didn’t translate at all into anything remotely sexy.

My husband said that he feels the same way. He feels like he’s faking it if he’s trying to do it and it’s not coming naturally. He said that also, unless he is drunk it almost never just “comes naturally” to talk dirty.

I totally agree. It is something that you can do much more easily when you are feeling totally uninhibited. Say, you lost a lot of  weight and you’re feeling really friggin sexy and hot and bothered – then it might come easily.

Or, if you’ve had quite a bit of liquid courage (alchohol) and you’re really into it, then you can sound genuinely sexy and sexual, and maybe you should go for it.

Other than that, it doesn’t do much for the libido to eek out some sexy words like “I want to make you come” or something like that, or “oh your penis is so big“, when you feel as thought you might burst out laughing doing so because your partner knows you too well, and they know that’s not how you normally speak.

Familiarity unfortunately puts some shackles on us when it comes to some sexual inhibitions, but if you’re not afraid to be embarrassed in front of your loved one, go for it!

The recent scandal to hit Hollywood (there are so many, how can one keep track any more), is a very oldish actor marrying a “child bride”. The creepy couple I’m speaking of, is of course, Doug Hutchinson, whose performance I admired so much in The Green Mile as the sniveling guard that everyone loved to hate, and his 16 year old bride.

His bride’s name is Courtney Stodden. She’s a beautiful young woman, and I must say looks a lot older than her sixteen years. She actually looks like she would be in her thirties to me, which I’m not sure if such a good thing for her.

However, she is in fact only sixteen years old. She met the 51 year old Doug Hutchinson when them met online. He was trying to mentor her in becoming famous or something of that nature, when they began a friendship and he began helping to manage her career.

They apparently fell in love, and regardless of the taboo that society has put on relationships where the man is this much older than the woman, ESPECIALLY when the woman is not yet considered to be a legal adult, they ended up getting married.

They say they know how odd their relationship looks to outsiders, but she’s much older than her years, and he is much younger than his (nah, really?), and so the relationship works out. I wonder what this girl is going to think when she wakes up in the next ten years, much wiser and more secure, and realizes that she probably married a guy as a father figure instead of a husband?

I just feel like relationships where the age gap is THIS BIG is a huge mistake.  You can’t deny that being on this earther thirty years or more longer than your spouse is going to not cause some sort of generational disconnect in the conversations you can have, the thoughts you have about things like experience, morality, religion and more are not going to cause a rift.

The longer people are in these types of marriages, I think the novelty wears off. People who enter into courtships like this often find that they really don’t have a lot in common after the sex and physical part of it wear off (which they always do at a certain point in every relationship and marriage).

I think that risk is there any time you enter in to a real “May December” sort of age gapped relationship. Sure, there are the occasional one offs where these types of couples really seem to work like Catherine Zeta Jones and Michael Douglas, but I think that’s because the age gap was after both people had already experienced a lot of adulthood.

Well, I guess this time there is not any direct evidence that this guy has literally screwed around on his wife (not as of this writing, but there very well may have been breaking news I’m not yet aware of), but Congressman Weiner is in a lot of trouble in the media because of his apparent lack of discretion in his tweeting of lewd photos and remarks to other women.

He’s fairly new at being married, and he happens to be married to a top aide to Hillary Clinton – and she’s pretty!  So, why would a congressman, who has a high profile life and profession, be tweeting lewd photos and messages online, the most public forum there is?

I keep questioning why these celebrities and politicians keep doing things that are so risky and hurt the ones they love, not to mention, embarrass the hell out of them.  Is it because they can get away with it? Or is it going to be another “sex addict” excuse?

There are even articles now on whether sexting and tweeting suggestive messages or pictures to people electronically is cheating. Um yeah. Because it is typically the first step of a cheater. Usually someone who is doing things like this, but not completing the act yet with a person outside their marriage is pretty much going to follow through with physically cheating one day.

It’s almost a certainty. And not only that, I think a lot of women and men consider sexting, tweeting and having suggestive conversations or photo exchanges with people other than your spouse or significant other is cheating. I know that I consider it cheating. It’s the intention, not the actual physical act.

I mean, I guarantee that this guy Weiner was thinking about cheating or has cheated on his spouse already. Guys like this usually don’t just stop at the suggestive stuff, especially when they’re tweeting or involved in multiple conversations with several different women.

Some people may not consider this type of communication “cheating” because there is no physical interaction, but usually when a person engages in this type of behavior, it’s just about inevitable that they will eventually go through with physical cheating.

I know that sounds like a broad statement, but it’s just true most of the time.  Relationships are definitely complicated, and we all have a wandering eye at times, heck we’re all human!  It’s just knowing what the boundary of trust is that sustains true, intimate, trusting relationships.

Hey guys, Jill here for a woman’s perspective on things to lighten it up every once in a while. I attended an art show the other day, and it started a conversation between me and another woman about how our ideals of what the “ideal man” would be. The topic got started because one of the pieces of art mentioned something about finding the perfect man, or ideal man.

I was joking how when I was younger, say in my late teens and through my twenties, looks mattered. I wouldn’t date a guy if he wasn’t “my type” looks wise. I guess you always picture yourself with a person who looks a certain way. Maybe you only like brunettes, or you really dig green or blue eyes. Or you like guys who are big and muscular.

Or conversely, you may like guys who are smaller and more ripped, or who don’t work out at all. You may like tall guys only, or you may prefer that they are 5’10″ and under. There are all kinds of physical traits we could go through right now.

But the one constant, a person’s personality, their goals, their dreams, and their morals and ideas of what is fun and not fun. Those are all things that keep you in relationships for the long haul.

If you marry someone strictly based on an explosive sexual chemistry, or based purely on how they look like your ideal mate, you may soon find out that the two of you really are not compatible at all. The lust and passion that come with new relationships quickly fade.

What is left after that initial newness wears off is what truly makes a relationship, and a mutual attraction, last for a long, long time. You can quickly fall out of love with someone who you never really deeply knew or understood much more quickly than with someone who you truly find beautiful, heart, soul, and mind.

They say that a lot of these older men who marry younger trophy wives often get divorced or have serious marital troubles because they didn’t get married for the right reason. They may not even have a lot in common with their chosen wives, except for the fact that they greatly enjoy seeing them naked and sleeping with them – at least at first.

Once that novelty wears off, and someone is not intellectually challenged and stimulated by their partner, the trouble and discontent sets in.

If you look up the term “cuckold”, it states that it is a derogatory term, depending on how you look at it, for a man who willingly knows and lets his partner cheat on him and it ok with it, or who enjoys watching his partner engage sexually with another man. 

As I said, depending on how you look at it, you could view this as either being a sucker, or as having a sort of unusual sexual fetish. I originally heard the term on the Opie and Anthony show for those of you that may have listened to this once popular terrestrial radio show which has since gone to satellite on XM radion.

Jimmy Norton, the comedian who also sits in on their show, was the one who brought up the term, and frankly just the way he said it was pretty friggin hilarious.  I was reminded of it again when I read a story about a man who probably knew about his wife’s many affairs, but either he did not care of about them, or was just too busy and looked the other way because he didn’t have time for it, nor care enough to try to stop it.

Interesting how relationships are!  I wonder what the term for a woman who looks the other way or willingly ignores her husband’s cheating affairs? Hmm, we’ll have to think of one for that!

Hey guys, Jill here to give a woman’s point of view on female sexuality and enjoyment.  Oh, and relationships – healthy sexual relationships as well, which is exactly what this subject matter I’m about to discuss has to do with.

I recently saw a news clip of a British woman’s interview about her new book called “Make Love Not Porn”. The authors name is Cindy Gallop, and in the interview, she says that she habitually dates younger men in their twenties and has encountered some of the unrealistic fantasies that are pretty much attributed to a lot of porn watching.

You see, younger men especially, have had access to a lot of free pornography due to the advent of the internet. If you’re a guy who is thirty or under, you pretty much grew up in the porn craze age, where porn abounded all over the web and you no longer had to go to covert little dirty magazine and porn shops to get your VHS tapes any more.

Shoot, now if you want to buy a porn video, you just have to order it online!  I  must say that sometimes the things my husband wants to do and finds arousing are downright not a turn on for me, or for most other women at that, but he thinks they’re “hot” because he undoubtedly saw them ina  pornographic video of some sort.

There are a lot of common themes of female degradation in porn films that men tend to find very appealing, but women don’t really as much so.  The whole thing is, if you want to watch porn as a couple, make it known the things that turn you on about them, and make him do some of that stuff too, so it’s more of an equal “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” type of thing.

I may find the fact that my husband does the dishes and can also work on a car and get his hands dirty extremely sexy, whereas he might find me dressing up in stinky patent leather and ridiculous bondage gear sexy.  You should both try to indulge eachother’s sexual fantasies, that way there’s no resentment that it only goes one way. 

The author of  Make Love Not Porn wanted to make it clear that she is not against pornography in relationships, but that she thinks that sex must be openly talked about, and that pornography may not be so healthy when it is the only thing that gets you off – or when you are constantly copying it – whether you are a male or a female. 

An example of an unrealistic female expectation that comes out of porn is that all men have enlarged penises that are almost supernaturally big. Well, we all know that is not the case – men come in all shapes and sizes when it comes to penis size – and that may be an area where traditional porn has hurt men as well.

It’s interesting to consider the very controversial idea that two people can actually be happier without having children than they could be WITH having children. It’s because having kids is part of the American dream that has been forced down our throats.

It’s almost as if you don’t belong to some exclusive club if you dare utter the words “no I really don’t want to have kids” when someone asks you if you’re planning on it. And imagine if you’re a woman and you utter those forbidden words.

People tend to look at you like (I”m stealing a phrase from one of my all time favorite movies, Christmas Story), you have lobsters crawling out of your ears!  There’s almost a built in expectation that we must procreate in order to feel complete, and in order to complete our relationship with our significant others.

Maybe some people don’t quite feel that way, and with the times changing, it seems that more and more people aren’t shy about saying that they are perfectly happy with out kids. Perhaps even happier with one another than they would be with kids.  Kids can bring a lot of parental joy into a relationship.

But along with that joy comes a lot of stress, disappointment, arguing, and tension when the parenting duties are perceived as uneven, or perhaps when you disagree with one another on key issues that deal with discipline and other components of parenting that people tend to have pretty strong opinions on.

Not only that, but people with kids tend to start ignoring eachother. Many men complain that their wives don’t pay any attention to them and ignore their sexual needs when a baby is born. And who can blame her? 

When you’ve got a baby latched on to your breasts several times a day and you’ve just had your body beat by having the baby, there tends to be a lot of hesitance to shed your clothes and make woopy when all you can think about is when you’re going to get your next good nights sleep! 

Don’t get me wrong I really do like kids – at least most of them, but I do feel that people should be left alone who don’t have them, and hey, also they shouldn’t be pestered about their plans, because you never know….

It’s easy to feel envious of people who are in comfy, cozy relationships around this time of year, when everyone seems to want someone to snuggle up to in bed and read on these long, cold winter nights when most people, even single people, are hesitant to step out of the house and socialize because of the weather.

However, don’t be so fast to envy if you are single. There is a mountain of evidence that shows that strained relationships are actually bad for your health. And let’s face it, with a divorce rate of over 50%, we know that at least 50% of the relationships out there, if long term, whether married or not, are probably strained.

And apparently women experience more of the negative side effects of a bad marriage or a roller coaster relationship than men, so women are particularly vulnerable in their health and mental wellness, while men seem to be a bit more immune to experiencing the health downside of a strained relationship.

Women are more likely to experience heart health problems, higher blood pressure, higher blood sugar, and more belly fat when they are in stressful relationships where there is a lot of tension and resentment than their female counterparts who are either in stable, loving and supportive relationships, or simply are single and happy.

Research also shows that it’s better to stay out of relationships all together than to go from relationship to relationship that is not lasting, as women who do this are also more likely to experience mental instability as well as actual physical health issues.

Levels of the “stress hormone” cortisol, which is in itself a very destructive force when found in excess quantities in the body, were found in women and men who had constant marital stress that wouldn’t let up, and it often spilled into other areas of their lives, making it more difficult for them to deal with the every day stresses of work, social life and other family relationships.

If you’re experiencing relationship problems where there just seems to be constant hostility or criticism, you and your spouse of significant other should really seek counseling if you think the relationship is just going through a bad spell but there is still a foundation of love there.