Dirty, Happy Book Reviews: Anthologies

Variety is the spice of any relationship. It’s a bit too personal to go much into the variety we enjoy as a couple, but I will definitely recommend it for anyone. How do you know you’ll like something until you try it? (Damn open-mindedness is showing again, isn’t it?) But of course, you have to both be secure in your relationship to try anything. You have to be with someone you trust, and trust in an adult way. The best way I heard that kind of trust articulated was in a self-help book by an author I can’t place right this moment, who said (paraphrasing here) you can’t say to your partner “I trust you not to hurt me.” That’s immature and will get you hurt. But if you can say “I trust what you do with me,” then that opens a huge number of doors.

Having have experienced both of these types of loving, I can definitely say the latter is better. I trust my partner, I trust what he does with me, and I trust that if I say I’m uncomfortable that he will stop. Because being together is about growing and changing together. About pushing limits and learning about what you’re comfortable with. That’s one reason I love anthologies. You can explore a whole variety of scenarios and learn your limits, or at least decide on a limit you might like to explore further, in the safety of your own reading area. And it helps give you the vocabulary to have that discussion with your partner.

So I’ve touted this book before, but I just can’t recommend it enough. And I have a feeling it’s one of those books I’ll return to again and again through the years to draw on the decades of experience these authors share about their emotionally and sexually satisfying marriages. Of course, this book is Bedded Bliss: A Couple's Guide to Lust Ever After by Kristina Wright. This is a self-help/erotica and it’s fantastic. The erotica is hot, the advice is solid, and it helps so much in giving a sense of community to those of us who are in happy relationships. Being happily together is something that almost flies under the radar in our society, but just because you’re happy doesn’t mean you can be complacent. You have in continually invest in your relationship to keep reaping the benefits and I love this book and how it discusses, among other things, how to do that. So even if your relationship is fantastic, this book is still worth checking out, even if only so you can read it and smugly smile, saying to yourself, “Yeah, we already do that.”