In the medieval period, females who made their living by spinning yarn, known as “spinsters”, enjoyed a level of financial independence that freed them from the need to marry. However, this term took on a negative connotation when European settlers in America began to disparage unmarried, childless women for not contributing to the growth of the settler population. It’s been only recently that marriage ceased to be a financial necessity for women.
Marianne Power delivers a wealth of insight from her comic-rich personal journey chronicled in her new memoir, capturing her experiences of non-monogamous romance, intimacy, and the choice to remain childless. Her path to sexual and relationship gratification is shaped by the most profound literature on these topics, supporting her profound longing for freedom. Over the course of this journey, she liberates herself from the sexual inhibitions instilled in her by her upbringing, which included a strict all-girls Catholic education. By her 40s, her lack of a long-term relationship and the absence of the fulfilling intimate experience she longed for caused her to believe she was inadequately knowledgeable about sex.
Having connections to Ireland, although based in London, Power embarks on her transition from an inhibited perspective on sex to polyamory, and body discomfort to erotic pleasure. Her guide on this journey was the revolutionary book, Pussy: A Reclamation, where author Regena Thomashauer suggests women should warmly greet their exposed vulvas in full mirrors with a hearty “Good morning, Beautiful!” to earn smiles from men and have successful meetings that day. Encouraged by Easton and Hardy’s The Ethical Slut: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships, and Other Freedoms in Sex and Love and following the completion of a couple of cringeworthy Tantra courses lasting a week, Power starts to discover sensual touch and the ways sex can be explored beyond porn-like one-night stands and monogamous relations.
Marianne Power’s Love Me! documents her five-year long quest of love and sexual liberation and is truly enlightening.
Amidst the imminent isolation wrought by the Covid lockdown, many solitary individuals, including the author Power, were coerced into establishing friendships and connections with their neighbours, which facilitated an understanding of how essential a sense of community can be to individual happiness.
Power’s debut composition, Help Me!, delved into a year of personal development guided by self-help literature. In contrast, Love Me! presents the outcome of the writer’s enlightening and liberating five-year journey in search of love and sexual freedom, a venture most individuals are either too timorous or overloaded to contemplate. Provoking amusement and introspection, digging below our conditioned responses, Love Me! stands as an enlightening comedic reading experience, masterfully penned.