I've been to our excellent local sex shop, Venus Envy Halifax, and interviewed the funny, smart and wonderful Kayleigh Trace, who provides sex education through the shop and advocacy everywhere.
I've wandered the aisles of hardware stores, looking for things shy men could pick up to spice up their sex lives. I've done the same at Dollar stores and pet stores, I've cruised so many websites, looking at furniture and various equipment and ideas and such.
I have to say I have NOT gone to porn sites. I personally find porn boring and degrading, so I asked someone else to do that research for me. He's got a background in that stuff, so can judge better. I always find myself wincing or giggling.
I've read every sex and intimacy related book in the Halifax Library system. There are a lot. My favourite is A Tired Woman's Guide to Passionate Sex, by Laurie Mintz, because even the title sounds right.
I've done the same with MS related books. Fewer of them, and more focused on things like taking meds to control pee, or helpful advice like "Talk to your partner". Oh, and full of grim info on what can happen with MS and such as it progresses. Not cheery reading for me.
I even started a survey on Survey monkey about what people wanted to know, about challenges they had, etc. Belatedly, I added a second survey for partners, because I want to know what they want, too. Being as how good relationships often require partners....
But I need more responses. I've had over 100 responses to the MS-ers survey, and I would love to have more to the partner's half. Could I ask you to circulate this to your contacts and partners?
Partner survey
Oh, and another question - regarding illustrations. I don't have the budget to hire actors to pose in sexual positions for me, and trust me you don't want me in the book, so I was going to either use:
a. Wooden dolls
b. Needle felted dolls
to show positioning. What do you think? All comments welcome.
Here's one of my needle felted dolls (dressed) for perspective:
