BY CHAS AUGUST

“Are you two dating?” I asked a 20-year-old. She looked at me strangely and replied, “Dating? What’s dating? Nobody ‘dates’ anymore,” and rolled her eyes.

“Are you seeing anyone?” I asked a 25-year-old guy. “There’s a WOW (World of Warcraft) girl I like a lot. Sometimes we text, sometimes we FaceTime,” he tells me. “Have you actually met her?” I ask. “I don’t really know how to do that,” he says.

“Are you guys a couple?” I asked one of the millennial members of our family and a friend she had invited to Thanksgiving. “We’re hanging out,” she explained.

“Hey, you two, how’s the relationship going?” I asked a twenty-something couple I’ve known for a few months. “We exchanged last names,” one of them told me proudly.

As a longtime sex educator, relationship coach, and workshop leader, I am noticing a sea change in the world of romance. Statistically and anecdotally, people are having sex at later ages compared to my era. Between 2011–2013, 44% of female teenagers and 47% of male teenagers aged 15–19 reported having had sexual intercourse. According to surveys by the National Centers for Health Statistics, this represents a 14% decline for females and a 22% decline for males over the past 25 years. The good news is that teen pregnancies and STIs have also declined.

Sadly, the majority of public high schools have quietly canceled some or all dances, including proms. The reason? Lack of participation. High schoolers would seemingly prefer to interact on their digital screens rather than meet under the watchful eyes of chaperones at the school gym.

In a Wall Street Journal blog (A-Hed) Nicole Hong writes, “Now that smartphone apps are the primary way people meet, some things have become too awkward to ask . . . Many millennials say asking directly for a last name on a first date feels awkward and signals too obviously they intend to scour the internet for biographical information . . . Others say that downloading a date’s entire digital footprint—armed with the full name—can stop a relationship from developing organically.”

If the media is accurate, we have a digital generation of disconnected young people who’ve never taken dance lessons or dressed up for the prom. Nor have they gone bowling together, slow danced with someone they had dreamed of being with, attended a make-out party, or parked at a secluded spot to round some bases. As a result, too many young people feel isolated, lonely, and less apt to create lasting friendships and love relationships. Articles and surveys abound blaming the Internet, the patriarchal rape culture, “helicopter” parents, online porn, the media, our schools. These all contribute to the mournful isolation I observe.

Where are young people learning to socialize? Many aren’t. The ever-present screen creates the illusion of friendship and the fantasy of relationship but bypasses the risks of actual intimacy. The Hollywood romance they witness just doesn’t transpire like that in real life. The sex mis-education they receive from ubiquitous porn sites offers dangerously bad models for real-world sexuality. The fear of sexual abuse is polarizing and freezes normal exploration. Lately I’ve been hearing clients and participants say that in their efforts to avoid any hint of sexual harassment they feel unable to speak a compliment, start a conversation, or initiate a contact. The increased isolation amid young people aggravates this problem.

Perhaps you’re wondering about that 44-47% of teenagers 15-19 years old who are having sex. There we see a related but different phenomenon. Romance seems to have been

replaced by “hook-ups.” These are brief uncommitted sexual encounters between individuals who are neither romantic partners nor dating each other. It’s as if the digital generations, not ready or willing to learn the complex and confusing lessons inherent in emotional intimacy, have bypassed dancing, wooing, dating, and kissing to relieve their urge-to-merge with NSA (no strings attached) sex. For too many young people, the experience of hookup sex with someone with whom you’ve barely had a conversation will likely foster feelings of sexual harassment and abuse.

The good news is that humans are unlikely to cease forming capital-R Relationships or intentionally reproducing, and families are unlikely to fade from the Earth. We’re just starting the intimacy and mating dance at an older age. Without all that teenage practice many millennials in their twenties and thirties are being challenged to learn basic skills like kissing, asking for a date, bringing sex to a platonic relationship, being a couple, etc. Why is learning in adulthood more difficult? Because a teenager’s mistakes are more easily forgiven as “baby steps” versus the way adults are judged.

Scattered amid all the isolation of the Internet one can still find “meet-up” groups, dance communities, and drop-in dance lessons. There are hundreds of videos on how to ask someone out, how to ask for a kiss, the meaning of consent, how to host a dinner party, how to propose marriage, and much more, including where to find a relationship coach—a promising career given the inherent human clumsiness that defines the digital era.

Chas August has led more than 300 personal growth workshops and leadership trainings, including as a HAI Global (HAI.org) facilitator (1991-2008). To learn about his private practice as a Life, Relationship, and Intimacy Coach and how he can support you in person or via online sessions, visit ChasAugust.com.

One way that my life partner and I keep our love alive is through our conversations. We talk about everything. We talk about the weather, current events, books we’re reading, friends we have in common, friends the other partner hasn’t met or doesn’t know well, the kids, work, everything.

We talk about things we’re afraid to talk about. We talk about things we have a habit of not talking about—we both notice deep hesitancy in asking for 100% of what we want in our sexuality. It doesn’t feel like fear, more like deep neuronal pathways to keep silent and hope our partner fortuitously happens to do the thing desired. If they get it right, then appropriate moaning and sighing will let them know. If they don’t get it right, the habit is to let it go, enjoy what is being given. So we talk about that habit, and gently teach ourselves to talk about everything.

And paradoxically, sometimes talk actually gets in the way of intimacy. We both know how to hide in our words. We both are quite adept at building arguments and debates when our hearts are crying out for hugs and cuddles. We strive to understand why. Why did you say that? Why am I feeling this? Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t I learn this as a child? As if understanding, comprehension analysis is the goal. But understanding is often the consolation prize, the worthless toy that game shows give to the losers, the booby prize. And analysis often creates paralysis. In science and engineering it is often useful to search for causality, but in the affairs of the human heart it is often useless. Or maybe, worse than useless, causal thinking can interfere with intimacy.

Most often when my heart aches I want contact, not explanations. The best thing I can do for my beloved when she is hurt or upset is to stay present with her, to hold her, to listen and not ask questions. The best thing my beloved can do for me when I’m hurt or upset is to stay present with me, to hold me, to listen and not ask questions.

And if our talking is having either of us feeling isolated, more alone, less supported, then it might be a clue that we should stop talking and, perhaps, start stroking each other’s face.

In other words, talk is very important, but touch can be even more important.

Chas August is a personal growth coach in the Berkeley area. Since 1988 he has participated in, volunteered for, and led the Human Awareness Institute’s Love, Intimacy, and Sexuality Workshops. ChasAugust.com

BY CHAS AUGUST

We humans mostly love love, especially what I like to think of as “big-R” love—Relationship. We write songs and poems about love relationships, we give gifts, make pledges and promises, go on dates and vacations together, create a bank of memories of loving moments, give and receive appreciation and adoration, share loving touch and physical intimacy, and so much more. When we are in new relationship energy, we gaze into each other’s eyes, we kiss, we fondle, we caress, we text, phone, and email. We send cute cards, buy flowers, go out to dinner, and go for long walks. We make time just for us. We start to hope we might just be on the path to “happily ever after.”

But too often, as our relationship matures and ages, a lot of us begin to curtail loving behaviors and lose sight of our hopes and dreams. Somehow, love grows cold, intimacy leads to loneliness, sexuality gets more and more infrequent and less and less connected. Happily ever after starts to be boring, routine, stultifying. We start to feel like we’re in a rut, and it feels like something in the relationship has died. It turns out that the biggest difference between a rut and a grave is the dimensions.

Do you know about confirmation bias? Simply put, when you believe something, you find evidence to support that belief, and you reject evidence that contradicts the belief. If you believe in God, you find evidence of the divine hand all around you. If you believe that God is just a myth, a comforting story, then you find all kinds of proof of God’s absence. If you believe you are no longer sexy, then you disbelieve people who say you are. If you believe your relationship is dying, then you pay attention to all the ways it seems to be dying and miss all the ways that it just might need a little help.

Learning is a balance between our confirmation bias leading us to more and more depth of knowledge, and also our challenging the foundations of our belief, discovering new and often contradictory truths that have us reject our own confirmation bias. For example, we learn the “correct” way to play a musical instrument and get more and more skillful. Then one day we hear someone break all the rules in a jazz improvisation. Hearing this challenge to what we believe about the rules of music has us reject what we know and open to new musical truths.

In longer-term relationships we encounter beliefs—often unconscious—about love, intimacy, sexuality. Perhaps we believe we are no longer loved (or just not lovable), or that we are no longer desirable, or that other things are more important than working on our relationship. Confirmation bias has us collect evidence so that, day-by-day, our relationship falls into that sexless, passionless rut. We become more partners than lovers, smoothly handling the business of life.

We come to believe what we are repeatedly told, or tell ourselves. Sometimes we have an experience that triggers the beginning of a repeated message—someone treats us in an abusive or unkind way, and we begin to tell ourselves that we deserve such treatment. Sometimes the experience is cultural—home economics classes have more girls than boys, so we tell ourselves that sewing and cooking are for girls and not for boys.

It is a powerful, life-changing, relationshipenhancing practice to notice beliefs about love, intimacy, and sexuality that cause suffering. What if my beliefs about lost libido are not true? What if beliefs about my partner no longer loving me are not true? What if beliefs about how men are supposed to be and about how women are supposed to be are not true? What if beliefs about not having the time, or our partner not willing to take the time, are not true? What if there is a “happily ever after,” and the path to it is to believe in it and then create it?

A note about the work of relationship: relationships take time. It is my experience that we will work on getting better at our job and getting better at our hobbies but seem to believe that relationships should just happen and be magically self-sustaining. If we spent as little time and attention at our jobs as we spend on our relationship, most of us would be unemployed.

One of the best ways to work on our relationship is through shared sensuality and sex—stroking each other from head to toe, eye gazing, shared laughter, and shared thoughts. Great sex is kissing and hugging and dancing. Great sex is lying naked in each other’s arms listening to our hearts beating. Great sex is about surrender and control, about laughing and crying.

Have a happy, love-filled, sexy Valentine’s Day.

Chas August is a life, relationship, and intimacy coach (ChasAugust.com). Chas is also a workshop leader, hypnotherapist, and marketing director for Human Awareness Institute Global, offering workshops that explore love, intimacy, and sexuality (HAI.org).

In honor of Common Ground’s 40th anniversary, here is a brief list of some of the Bay Area’s heroes of the past 40 years. I am a relationship and intimacy coach, as well as a sex, love, and intimacy workshop leader, so my heroes are the brave men and women who risked everything to bring sex out of the closet, out of the gutter, out of the darkness, and into the light.

I think of these men and women as the heroes of the revolution. I’m talking about the socalled sexual revolution that the media talked about in the 1960s. You see, we “won“ the sexual revolution—sex norms actually changed, and there was a dramatic shift in values related to sex and sexuality. Sex became more socially acceptable, both inside and outside the strict boundaries of heterosexual marriage.

We won the war, but we lost the aftermath. By the mid-1970s we all knew we were supposed to have somehow shaken off the narrow attitudes and roles of the 1950s, but most of us had no tools or training for this brave new sexually awakened world. Thank goodness it all began to change, right around the time this magazine was first published. Teachers, coaches, workshops, and trainings started showing up to help lead all of us out of the chaos and into fulfilling, shame-free sexuality and relationships.

The Bay Area has been particularly blessed with a rich and varied collection of teachers and coaches working in and around human sexuality. A few that come readily to mind are Lori Grace and her Celebrations of Love relationship skills training center; clinical sexologist and psychosexual expert Claudia Six; Reichian therapist Michele Newmark and her Center for Healing and Expression; Nicole Daedone and her Orgasmic Meditation teaching at One Taste/SF; all the resident and visiting teachers, workshop leaders, and therapists at Harbin Hot Springs clothing-optional spa, retreat, and workshop center; Steve and Lokita Carter and their EcstaticLiving Institute and Tantra trainings and classes; alternative healer and “channel” Evalina Rose; Celeste and Danielle, creators of the Somatica Method of Sex Therapy and Relationship Coaching; Dossie Easton and her groundbreaking book The Ethical Slut; sex-positive feminist Susie Bright; and sex columnist Isadora Alman (“Ask Isadora”).

Let me introduce you to a cross-section of my personal Bay Area heroes—teachers and leaders who made a real and lasting difference for everyone reading this.

Maggi Rubenstein

Maggi Rubenstein has been called San Francisco’s “godmother of sex ed.” In 1972 she began working at the National Sex Forum at Glide Memorial Church, offering workshops and courses about everyday human sexuality—masturbation, pornography, men’s sexuality, women’s sexuality, sex and disability, and much more. In 1976 these trainings became the basis for an accredited program that became the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality. In 1973 she also cofounded the Bisexual Center and the San Francisco Sex Information Hotline (SFSI). Graduates of the SFSI training program include Isadora Alman, Susie Bright, Patrick Califia, Carol Queen, Midori, and Violet Blue. The organization answers about 3,000 phone calls and about twice as many emails every year.

Starhawk

Starhawk is a writer of both fiction and nonfiction—The Spiral Dance, The Fifth Sacred Thing—that explores and celebrates what she calls feminist neo-paganism, ecofeminism, and the use and abuse of power. She believes our patriarchal society has confused eroticism with violence and domination, and she passionately advocates sexuality as “sacred because through it we make a connection with another self—but it is misused and perverted when it becomes an arena of ‘power over,’ a means of treating another—or oneself—as an object.”

Marty Klein

Dr. Marty Klein is a licensed marriage and family therapist and certified sex therapist as well as an author, speaker, and advocate for understanding and accepting sexuality. His self-stated goal is to tell the truth about sexuality, helping people feel sexually adequate and powerful, and supporting the healthy sexual expression and exploration of women and men. In his own words, “I’ve continually called attention to the social and political conditions that keep so many of us feeling guilty, confused, scared, and hopeless about our sexual feelings, experiences, and relationships.”

Joanie Blank

Joanie Blank is a writer, publisher, sex therapist, and family-planning counselor. In 1975 she wrote and published her first book, The Playbook for Women About Sex. Leading support groups for women who wanted help to be orgasmic, or more orgasmic, Joanie often suggested trying sex toys, including vibrators. Sadly, the only places such things could be purchased were through mail order or at local adult bookstores. The mail order info was mostly found only in men’s sex magazines, and the local stores did not feel safe or inviting to most women.

In 1977 Joanie opened Good Vibrations, the first women-oriented sex toy shop in the Bay Area (and only the second such shop in the country). Good Vibrations offered sex information and education, featured erotica and books about sexual health and pleasure, and pioneered the concept of, in Joanie’s words, “a sex-positive, clean, well-lighted place” to buy sex toys.

“Del” Martin

The late “Del” Martin was the first openly gay woman to be appointed to the SF Commission on the Status of Women (SFCOSW) by then mayor George Moscone in 1977. Martin joined forces with other minority SFCOSW commissioners, such as Kathleen Hardiman Arnold and Ella Hill Hutch, to focus on the nexus of gay women’s rights and racial and ethnic discrimination. Martin was ahead of her time in understanding the cultural aspects of gay health.

Sandy “Mama” Reinhardt

Mama is a leader in the leather, BDSM, and LGBT communities and is very active in the fundraising arena for her annual Breast Cancer Dinners; LeatherWalk (for the AIDS Emergency Fund and the Breast Cancer Emergency Fund), which kicks off Leather Pride Week leading up to the Folsom Street Fair; and Toy Drive for Camp Sunburst, a program for children and families living with HIV/AIDS. She has devoted her life to helping others by networking and organizing community activists for short-term and ongoing campaigns.

Joseph Kramer

Joseph Kramer, PhD, is one of the foremost teachers of erotic massage in the world. In 1984 he founded the Body Electric School in Oakland, where he trained thousands of professional massage therapists, erotic body workers, and educators. The Body Electric is the world’s largest community network offering safe sex education today—and for the last 25 years. Body Electric is committed to expanding people’s understanding of the role that sexuality can play in their personal and spiritual lives.

Joseph has also created and distributed one of the finest collections of videos about our bodies and our sexuality. Videos like Fire on the Mountain and Fire in the Valley offer shame-free, easy-to-understand instructions for genital massage and play that have delighted, educated, and transformed thousands of adults’ sex lives (including my own).

Stan Dale

No list of my heroes could be complete without including my friend and mentor, the late Dr. Stan Dale. In 1972, after being pushed out of his psychotherapeutic call-in radio show in Chicago after 19 years for being too supportive of the anti-war movement, Stan moved to Santa Rosa and restarted his show. And he began looking for a home for the “Stan Dale Sex Workshops,” which later became the Human Awareness Institute.

Stan was the only person I’ve known well who truly loved everyone. He believed and taught that everything we humans do could be seen as acts of love or cries for love. Stan liked to say that “every second we get a second chance” to move toward love and loving connections. His workshops were, and are (they’re still going strong seven years after his passing), powerful, heart-opening experiences that are juicy and fun, risky and completely safe, shameless and innocent.

So, let’s raise a glass and offer a toast to our Bay Area sex heroes. These past 40 years they’ve helped make all of us more tolerant, more loving, more sexually liberated, more educated, more alive, and spicier than we might otherwise have been. And a toast to Common Ground and 40 years of promoting workshops and events that transform us all.

Chas August is a workshop leader, hypnotherapist, and marketing director for Human Awareness Institute Global (HAI.org). He is also a Life, Relationship & Intimacy Coach, and his offerings include the Healing Anger Workshop, Techniques for Listening, Conflict Transformation, and Couples Communication. ChasAugust.com