Maybe it’s because I’m reaching mid-life and many around me are, too. Maybe it’s because many I know are parents of young kids and viscerally know the toll that parenting takes on romantic relationships. And maybe it’s because more and more people of ALL ages are getting clear about what they need, what’s working, and what truly isn’t.

Whatever the reasons, in my circles of friendship and acquaintance, many are ending long-term relationships.

And I think this deserves attention.

This is a cultural phenomenon, and anything that touches everyone this overtly matters – whether you’re in a long-term relationship or not.

Anything that touches everyone this overtly says something we need to hear about how we understand ourselves, how we understand relationships, and about the messages we give and receive (or don’t give or receive) about love.

I don’t subscribe to a formula of right and wrong about how to do relationships, and sense that many of the relationships that are ending right now truly need to end – for the good of everyone involved.

But I also sense that many in my culture – and surely around the globe – aren’t being particularly helped by their friends, parents, faith communities, or the media to untangle the complexities of the human heart, or the challenges inherent to love.

We’re fed half-stories most of the time. Stories that are only about the beautiful, easy parts of love, or only about the ugly, painful ones, or only about steel-toothed commitment, with few culturally transmitted maps or tools to navigate everything else in between.

So as we talk about sensual evolution here this week, my hope is to lift the veil on some of this “everything else” – which, truly, is what all of us are LIVING, even if we don’t get helpful glimpses of the “everything else” that others are living each day, too.

As these veils get lifted, I hope to share insights and tools that might begin to or continue to bridge the gap between where we are individually and culturally when it comes to our capacities to love and be loved well, and where we wish to be.

Learning to love and be loved well seems, to me, at the heart of every goodness we can know or spread.

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Join us tomorrow for an interview with soulful coach and healer Yollana Shore, talking about the “everything more” that is sexual attraction to people outside our committed relationships.

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