How then can we account for the persistence of the myth that inside the empty nest lives a shattered and depressed shell of a woman--a woman in constant pain because her children no longer live under her roof? Is it possible that a notion so pervasive is, in fact, just a myth?

The depth of a friendship - how much it means to us ... depends, at least in part, upon how many parts of ourselves a friend sees, shares and validates.

Intimacy. We hunger for it, but we also fear it.

From our earliest beginnings, we have been a nation obsessed with sex, titillated by it at the same time that we fear it, elaborating rules to contain it at the same time that we violate them.

Sexual freedom is about choice. It's the freedom to say no as well as yes.

By identifying with the powerful, the disempowered achieve a measure of safety, at least for a moment. By doing the bidding of those in power, they become a necessary part of the system, useful so long as they serve to contain the stirrings and strivings of the oppressed. By making the rules and values of their oppressor their own, they separate themselves from the rest of their group and, temporarily at least, assuage the pain of their stigmatized status.

For sex to be wholly satisfying, we must have at least as much concern for a partner as for self - a requirement that doesn't live comfortably alongside the exhortation to 'do your own thing.' In the end, we are left with an extraordinarily heightened set of expectations about the possibilities in human relationships that lives side by side with disillusion that, for many, borders on despair.