Cyndi stole one of my tampons today. I joked around and asked her if she needed to use it. Now, normally the subject of tampons and sex is taboo...but it got me thinking.


In an effort to promote our series, I've started trolling around on message boards related to anything and everything our series is about. The first element of this is relationships, and young couples making things work. Now, where does a twentysomething girl go when she needs relationship or sex advice? She reads Cosmopolitan magazine. But when she needs to vent her deepest, darkest secrets....she goes online to the Cosmopolitan message boards and shares intimate details of her sex life.

There was one message board under Sex > Secrets entitled... The Craziest Thing that Turns You On?? and I just had to read it. Little did I know what I was in for. Women are turned on by peeing, armpits and chest hair. That isn't really my idea of a good time, but I think it's healthy for us to indulge our fantasies. A lot of these women would post on the board about their fantasy and then complain about how their lover wasn't performing it...how do they expect their lover to know what they want if they never express themselves in real life?

I went over to the Relationship boards and started looking around at different posts, and I saw a girl who was "sick to her stomach with anger" towards her boyfriend. She had logged onto his facebook account, snooped around, and found a few things to be suspicious about. Instead of expressing anger to her boyfriend, she bottled it up and posted it online, further distancing herself from him. Her suspicions might have been lessened if she would just trust him and give him the benefit of the doubt.

Speaking of trust issues, I found another post about a girl who had trouble trusting people.

I have a really hard time trusting people in my life. I've been walked all over so many times, I can't help but hold my trust very close to me. It makes me do mean things sometimes. I lie, I can never say how I really feel and it causes my boyfriend and I to argue. I've told him I'm ready to have sex, when I'm really not. I'm not proud of any of it and its hard. I don't know what to do anymore, I'm so lost.

She was avoiding a real connection by hiding her feelings about sex and saving them for the internet. People anonymously share their most intimate and dark secrets on the internet, and they get validation. They get the feeling of being understood because other users on these sites read about these issues, respond, and help with their problems. This creates a vicious paradox.....it discourages a real life connection that is missing in our globalized culture. People are encouraged to run to their computer to vent their problems rather than actually dealing with them.


The internet has become our new therapist. This is how the therapy industry works -- you pay someone to be your friend, and vent all your problems. You take care of these "issues" yourself rather than burdening those you love with your personal struggles. This is separation and individualism at its worst. It's as if you're saying, "No one in my life will ever understand me except my therapist." The internet is a convenient, no-strings-attached friend that you never have to visit or care for. It's a cold place to run away to and claim a self-righteous sense of being misunderstood. In the end, no one wins. Not even you. Of course, when you have that attitude then you are never going to feel understood by those close to you.

(image source: AlignMap - TV Fiction as Public Health Instruction and Motivation)

And thanks to The Sopranos, now we all know where therapy lands us. In the mob.

Until next time,
Katy