Category: Neil Strauss

Neil Strauss

Life is a learned skill, but instead of teaching it, our culture force-fills developing minds with long division and capital cities—until, at the end of the mandatory period of bondage that’s hyperbolically called school, we’re sent into the world knowing little about it. And so, left on our own to figure out the most important parts of life, we make mistakes for years until, by the time we’ve learned enough from our stumbling to be effective human beings, it’s time for us to die.

Neil Strauss

The women you’ve slept with, the ones you never did but primed for a future encounter, the ones who seemed interested but then suddenly stopped texting: Unless you do something horribly wrong, they never completely disappear. A lonely night, a cheating boyfriend, a sudden breakup, an attack of low self-esteem, an attack of high self-esteem—anything can, out of the blue, send them scrolling through their address book looking for validation, for security, for conversation, for adoration, for the fantasy of you filling some empty space in her life.

Neil Strauss

…each woman is a wonderful world unto herself. And monogamy? It’s like choosing to live in a single town and never traveling to experience the beauty, history, and enchantment of all the other unique, wonderful places in the world. Why does love have to limit us? Perhaps it doesn’t. Only fear is restrictive. Love is expansive. And I wonder, since fear of enmeshment impels us to avoid commitment and fear of abandonment makes us possessive, what type of evolved relationship can emerge once those wounds are healed?

Neil Strauss

Connected sex is a spiritual experience….It is spiritual because it’s a release from ego, a merging with the other, a discorporation into the atoms vibrating around us, a connection to the universal energy that moves through all things without judgment or prejudice. Thus, orgasm is the one spiritual practice that unites nearly everyone on the planet, and perhaps that is why there’s so much fear and baggage around it. Because…it is sacred. And every orgasm. Is in itself an act of faith. An attempt to reach out. And just for a moment. Relieve our separateness. Escape from time. And touch eternity.