The Six Passions of the Red-Hot Lover
The Six Passions of the Red-Hot Lover
The Six Passions of the Red-Hot LoverFind Out Which One is Yours Buy the Paperback: Amazon Buy the E-Book: Amazon Kindle | Apple iBookstore | Kobo As a Red-hot Lover, you’re not just into mind-blowing sex. There’s a big part of you that’s also up for regal, passionate love. Your passion is your guide; it gives you a delicate, intuitive sense along with a wild and crazy side. You may even focus on one of the six passions: heartbreak, challenge, pursuit, gallantry, vindication or attention. Finding out which passion is yours helps you understand and interpret what happens in your love life. As a Red-hot Lover, that can make it possible for you to star in one of the great love stories of our time. “…Informative, full of clever ideas, and rich in sensible advice – this is a book very much worth reading…” Read the full, five-star review by Grady Harp, an Amazon top reviewer. “Wendy’s concept of the six passions… Continue Reading
National Indie Excellence Book Award
National Indie Excellence Book AwardWhy Love Succeeds or Fails has won a National Indie Excellence® Book Award in the Relationships category! Continue Reading
Interview at Mommy Noire website
Interview at Mommy Noire websiteAbiola’s Love School is a weekly empowered Love Lesson... Continue Reading
Why Love Succeeds or Fails
Why Love Succeeds or FailsBuy the Paperback: Amazon Buy the E-Book: Amazon Kindle | Apple iBookstore | Kobo Falling in love is easy; it comes naturally. But you have to find a way to keep your love alive. This is how you can use Why Love Succeeds or Fails to help you succeed in love: Figure out your attitude to love. (Take the test.) When you’re in love, your attitude determines how you think, feel and behave. For you, love may be a Gripping Drama, a Passionate Adventure, a Sensible Compromise or a Joyful Diversion. Read about your attitude to love, including your most lovable and unlovable features, the magic word(s) your lover can say to you and your red flag. Pay attention to your recommendations. Do the same for your lover. Read about your love-match, with a focus on the core features of your love and your issues, your tips and your red flag… Continue Reading

Questionable Dating Advice

By Wendy Brown March 2, 2015 Advice No Comments

I am a psychotherapist who has a lot of experience dealing with love relationships. Over the years, I’ve seen people upset because they’ve accepted dating advice from their family and friends that hasn’t served them very well. Having love-life difficulties and feeling at least a little desperate for a solution, they were perhaps too eager to have advice; any advice. Then, things went wrong. Sometimes the dating advice caused them to solve one problem and create another, or it worked fairly well but had a hidden downside that showed up later.

That is why I’ve decided to write a series of blog posts to point out:

  • The thinking that goes along with the dating advice
  • What tends to be the fallout of implementing the advice

By the way, I think it’s generalizing too much to say some dating advice is good and some is bad. Every person is different and every relationship is different. Only you know the path you need to take at any given time.

I’m in no way criticizing the concept of dating advice; I think it can be very useful. I’m just trying to promote understanding and awareness to go along with the advice. After all, not everyone is lucky in love; most people need to think through complex emotions and situations to create their own luck.

Dating Advice Blog Post #1

Find a man who’s more in love with you than you are with him.

The thinking here probably is:

Passion dies anyway. So what’s the difference if you have any at the beginning of your love relationship or not?

Being passion-free allows you to have a clear head and remain in control of your love-life.

With him crazy about you, you greatly reduce the chance that he will ever leave you.

He’ll never know the difference.

The potential fallout from following this advice is:

No worries if he’s just slightly more besotted with you than you are with him.

If, however, he’s over the moon about you and you could take him or leave him, be careful. Ask yourself: Do you have any chemistry with him? Are your feelings for him increasing or decreasing? If you have no chemistry, or your feelings for him are steadily decreasing, you might want to think long and hard about this.

You can’t tell your man the truth about how you’re feeling therefore you have to lead him to believe that you’re in love with him. That means you have to lie to him, his family, his friends, your mutual friends and at least some members of your family. You also have to pretend in and out of the bedroom that you’re fulfilled. This is a pretty tall order.

You might end up feeling trapped in this relationship: how can you leave a good man who loves and trusts you? What would you do if you met somebody else and felt the real thing?

Bear in mind that your lies could catch up with you; somehow or other the truth could come out. That could very well be one of the worst moments in your life or in his. How would you face him? Would he leave you over this?

While it’s true that no two people have exactly the same amount of love for each other, it’s generally best if the amounts are roughly equivalent.

It is very difficult if not impossible to pull off this deception in the long term. You can’t be on guard all the time; your guy may very well realize that you’re just not that into him.

Any time you cheat another person, you’re probably cheating yourself too.

50 Shades of Grey and domestic abuse

By Wendy Brown February 23, 2015 Articles No Comments

I’m going to do a series of blogs on some controversial elements of domestic abuse and BDSM (bondage and discipline, domination and submission, sadism and masochism) in 50 Shades of Grey. Today I’m focusing on whether or not Anastasia Steele, the 21 year old virgin, actually consents to be battered. But does it matter? Either way, is she a victim of domestic abuse by Christian Grey, the 27 year old billionaire who is into BDSM? On the surface of it, doesn’t it sound ridiculous that somebody would freely and willingly consent to abuse? Surely a victim has to be ensnared, coerced or trapped in an abusive relationship. At the very least he/she would be in some sort of forced-choice situation. It certainly doesn’t sound like Steele is on a mission to find a batterer or a dom (dominant male in BDSM) when she interviews Grey for a school newspaper article. Over time, he makes it abundantly clear that he wants her to accept a BDSM relationship with him. It couldn’t be clearer; he even provides her with a lengthy contract to sign. Her response to this is very interesting: she doesn’t run, lose interest in him or sign the contract. Instead she tolerates him monitoring and trying to control what she eats. She allows him to spank her, him slapping her 18 times on the first occasion. But she doesn’t do these things with BDSM enjoyment of them; she rather dislikes them. Instead, she takes this abuse because she feels she has no choice if she wants to be involved with him. She also proceeds to accept a BDSM relationship with him. So, where does Steele stand in terms of her consent to being abused? She appears to grudgingly give nonverbal consent to it, without in any way being forced by Grey to do so. Now Steele and Grey are in a loaded situation. She is in a power struggle with him: she wants love and he wants BDSM. She doesn’t have the personal power to be able to negotiate a dating relationship with him. She’s stuck playing his game while she tries to work on her hidden agenda. This appears to be her forced-choice. Just like in real-life cases of domestic abuse, their anger and violence escalates. Steele rolls her eyes at Grey and he punishes her by spanking/whipping her with a belt six times. She can’t take the pain and sees no option but to leave him. He lets her go, but we know their relationship isn’t over; she’ll be back. So, we have to sum up to say Steele allows herself to be battered. However, in the minds of most people this is almost irrelevant. The general consensus seems to be that there’s something wrong when a person accepts abuse and it’s not his/her fault. As a result his/her consent should be ignored. And there’s even more wrong with an individual who perpetrates abuse; nothing he/she does or says can relieve him/her of the responsibility for harming another person.

Letter to the Editor: Toronto Life, June 2013

By Wendy Brown May 27, 2013 News No Comments

Toronto Life, June 2013, Letter to the Editor, by Wendy BrownBrandon Wade, the founder and CEO of the sugar daddy dating site Seeking-Arrangement.com, made a comment in your April issue that keeps ringing in my ears: “The sugar lifestyle is sneered at by prudes because it’s so up-front about the give-and-take.” As a psychotherapist, I’d be out of business in about 30 seconds if I were a prude, but that doesn’t mean I applaud his business. His viewpoint appears to be honed precisely to suck in young women who don’t have the life experience to defend themselves properly. I’ve seen sugar babies 10 to 20 years into their lifestyle choice with shattered self-esteem and a thoroughly jaundiced view of love.

—Wendy Brown, in response to “The Sweetened Life” from Toronto Life, April 2013

Letter to the Editor: Toronto Life, April 2013

By Wendy Brown April 1, 2013 News No Comments

Toronto Life, April 2013, Letter to the Editor, by Wendy BrownI’m a psychotherapist working in Toronto, and several of my patients have read “My Cheating Heart” and expressed anger over the writer’s selfish actions, as well as sympathy for her husband. Discovering your partner has been cheating on you is a painful blow and can shatter your sense of value, security and pride. Having an affair is like carrying a bomb; you can conceal it and try to keep it from exploding, but ultimately you’re exposing yourself and your loved ones to an enormous risk.

—Wendy Brown, in response to “My Cheating Heart” from Toronto Life, February 2013