Cohen - The sex diaries project: what were saying about what were doing

Copyright 2012 by Arianne Cohen. All rights reserved

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada

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ISBN 978-1-118-15725-1 (cloth); ISBN 978-1-118-18094-5 (ebk);
ISBN 978-1-118-18095-2 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-18096-9 (ebk)

A dare:

If you are in public right now, please make sure that everyone around you can see what youre reading. Theyre interested too. Promise.

introduction

A FEW TANTALIZING WORDS FROM YOUR SEX DIARIES EDITOR

We all like to know other peoples secrets so we can live with our own.

Jonathan Ames

I have the best job in America. I collect sex diaries. Dozens per week, filled with love and lust and pining and people who say things like, Im leaving you, but when my mom calls, will you pretend that Im still here? Its on par with eating ice cream for a living.

You probably grabbed this book because of the word sex . Youve chosen well: The Sex Diaries Project is a life-changing read, and the pages ahead will open your eyes to what is actually happening behind bedroom (and kitchen, bathroom, and closet) doors nationwide, in enticing bite-size portions. Yes, you will read a great amount of sex in this book in ways that will keep you riveted. But the diaries are a phenomenon because they are about all the ways that people just like you connect withand disconnect fromothers: emotionally, romantically, physically. Relationships are the centerpiece of our lives, yet rarely do we see the available options or have a context to which we can compare ourselves.

I began the project in 2007 on a personal mission: I wanted to know how to have a happy private life. At the time I was in my late 20s (single, pining), with a relationship attitude best described as stoic acceptance. But how does one learn to have a smart, fulfilling love life? Private lives, by definition, take place behind closed doors, cloaking the many clever ways that others handle their erotic lives. I thought a lot about this. My education, up to that point, had been inspired: Id attended top schools, trained under an Olympic coach, and written for some of the countrys best editors. And yet my main information on sex and relationships came from friends and... Vivid Videos?

This book is a tonic to that. I am thrilled to present the pages ahead, in which you can wade into the minds behind a wide array of happy bedrooms and pilfer freely. Whether youre happily married or decidedly celibate, this is your first chance to gain context for your sex and relationship urges, and grab ideas. Stealing is strongly encouraged. Much of chapters 36 are about this; theres a cheat sheet at the end of the book. Ive structured the pages ahead so that you can spelunk through the diaries as you choose, and also pop up to read the chapter essays as they intrigue you.

I assumed that I would publish the tonic, and move on to another project. But American bedrooms are nothing if not captivating, and three years in, something miraculous happened: I was sitting on my office floor one evening, surrounded by hundreds of shreds of paper, arranging the sex diaries for this collection. I had noticed years earlier that some diarists relationships differed vastly from othersthe way that diarists interacted with their partners was sometimes so dissimilar that comparing two marriages was like comparing apples to donuts: both are spherical sweet foods, yes, but otherwise... different. And so on a whim, I grouped my shreds of paper by the type of relationship the diarist was in. And suddenly, patterns emergedfirst in diarists sexual escapades, and then throughout their relationships and lives. I stayed up all night rereading my database of diaries.

I realized that I was sitting on a trove: Couples I found, relate to each other in three main ways, based on their shared relationship priorities. Those priorities, in turn, forecast their whole future: their sex life, friends, family, financial status, happiness, everything. Its predictable, and fairly obvious in real-time relationship accounts, from the perspective of inside of peoples minds. It was like finding a magic key.

Now, lets talk about you. Why are you holding this book? Because youre wired to. Evolutionarily speaking, your curiosity in your neighbors bedrooms is natural. The brain is built for love, says biological anthropologist Helen Fisher. Those who didnt love never had children and died out, leaving people on the planet who are very interested in love. And until a few thousand years ago, humans knew a lot about their neighbors. If your fellow hunter-gatherer could only climax while donning a zebra-fur loincloth and screaming unsweet nothings, you knew about it. Now we only know what we accidentally hear through the walls, which is an odd, alienating, and misleading state of affairs. Reading The Sex Diaries Project is the equivalent of sitting around the campfire, learning equally about others and ourselves. Its fascinating to flip ahead and see what may be coming down the pike for you, or to read a sex diarist similar to an ex and gain new perspective.