Veronica Monet, Other - Expert (Page 2)

Janine Renee

Kristina Rodgers

Michael Blackstone

Skyler Myers, CAS, CMT, RYS, PKS, CDVSAC, BFA.

She has worked with me on real transformation that gives me the clarity and tools I'd hoped for.  I've replaced old ways of thinking and acting, with new habits so I can let go of a lot guilt and shame that was weighing me down physically, emotionally and spiritually.   

Asking  for what I want or need from others, seems so simple and yet it has been incredibly difficult for me, even when my own safety is at risk, I have frozen and become silent during times when asserting firm boundaries was critical!  With Veronica's support and insight, I have found a voice of courage to ask and to draw clear boundaries when it matters most.  Surprisingly I find that speaking up is giving me a deeper connection to myself and others and a whole lot more of what I truly desire in my life. 

Veronica is a fantastic facilitator in joint sessions with partners, friends, family members.  She supports each individual's concerns or views so they can become a partner in creative solutions to long-standing issues.

My time with Veronica is radically changing my life beyond what I knew was possible. She helped me through crisis and has enriched the path to greater connection, joy and truth.  Her work is priceless and extraordinary.  I am so grateful!

Debbie
Hospital Vice President

She is ahead of her time, spilling sex secrets centuries old and unique relationship advice. Her sex therapy practice is more than just a boring college degree and ideas she read from a book. She has  unique and personal knowledge of what I always dreamed of having. A dream of keeping my mans full attention with intense passion, emotional depth, and intrigue for years to come. Veronica has surpassed my expectations of learning how to have mind blowing sex! She has begun to help me to  connect with myself. To be comfortable  in my skin, embrace the sensual woman I am, so I can love myself and others confidently. My mind has been opened to the possibilities in life and the world in a way that earlier in life I was sheltered from.

Thank you Veronica Monet
Autumn Bryant

She quickly established trust, got to the heart of the matter, then lovingly provided hope, insight, laser-sharp wisdom and spot-on information.  

After our telephone session, she followed up with a supportive email and some suggested reading.   I felt 1000% better immediately and now have the tools I need to successfully explore my sexuality in the future. 

I will always be grateful to Veronica for dedicating her life to helping others to achieve maximum fulfillment in their intimate lives.

Mark 

You have helped me in many ways: with compassion, with knowledge, with the toughness to challenge my baloney as it becomes appropriate.  But mostly you have helped me to face the issues of shame that I have brought to you.  As the Adult Survivors of Child Abuse describes it, "Shame is that part of you that you can't face because it is so intolerable."  You have helped me face my shame issues, one at a time, and take possession of each so that I can accept what is real and rearrange the consequences to my own satisfaction.  Each success frees a part of me that was in some sense crippled.  I am so grateful for the space of safety you create and hold for me that makes this possible.

I consider what you offer me to be in many ways sacred.  I'm not entirely sure how that can be and am fast learning not to care.

Eric J. 
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Veronica, you afforded me a rare opportunity to really get to know what is going on in the mind of the opposite sex in a critical point in that relationship.  It was invaluable, insightful, and very useful to come at the problem from a completely different approach. Some of what you spoke just has the wisdom of the ages, and some is as fresh as the words of the latest hip-hop club scene.  Also, it was just downright fun to talk with you at a very difficult time in my life.  Thanks ever so much.

Nomad
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You help me to get clarity and stay on the path of improvement and progress as far as my relationship interactions are concerned. You have helped me to go from a guy who's fumbling around and mostly not dating to one who's having consistent and meaningful connections with the women who come into my life. By keeping me honest when it comes to the denials, self-illusions, and obsessive focuses that are so easy to build up in my head, you have allowed me stay on task with the real issues that have kept me from having the love life I always wanted, and my love life has benefited as a result.

Michael M.
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Veronica provides me with advice filled with plenty of wisdom, compassion and love. Veronica helps me to pursue a life with deeper meaning.
Sara L.

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I consider you a part of my support system.  After talking with you, I gained the confidence required to know that my pursuit is the right decision for me.  I feel connected with you because you are intuitive and level-headed, have a deep understanding of self, and we share a political and spiritual platform.

Cat 
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I actually consider the service I pay you for as COUNSELING. (Yes - I said "counseling.") The reason I utilize you is that with your experience and expertise, and your specialization as a sex educator, I feel that I can process some of my issues, which as I 'm sure you can appreciate are not often well received in mainstream mental health circles . . . I'm comfortable being honest with you about my curiosity, fantasies, and consider the information to be relatively accurate and valuable.
Our consultations are helping me to normalize and validate my curiosity and interests about sex workers; especially about the idea that sex workers actually do have a therapeutic role which they fulfill for many clients who have sexual and emotional wounds. Although they would not be accepted as such by the mainstream mental health and social service community, many sex workers are actually practicing in positive and normalized venues in which their clients are being therapeutically served at some level, which would be difficult for them to access in clinical therapeutic environments - mostly because of transference and counter-transference issues rooted in the prevalent sex negative values in our society.  The view of sex workers by clinical professionals is in serious need of reconsideration . . .

A Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in California
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Oh Veronica! You have helped me most of all just by being really clean with your energy. You have a *lot* of passion -- which gives you a lot of power -- and you have kept it clean with a loving honesty that is all too rare. It's a healing catalyst. Of course the breathing etc. exercises are great, but your integrity is what really makes it work.

Ed R.
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Veronica, coaching with you has been like a breath of fresh air in my life!  Our conversations have brought me to a new place – they are safe, comfortable and oh so interesting . . . Your voice on the other end of the telephone line is something that I always look forward to.  You have taken the fear out of my addressing the body image issues that have followed me since I was a teenager and have taken so much of my confidence for most of my adult life.

I am also experiencing more love and a greater connection with the man in my life.  Having you as my coach has given me a place to voice my feelings, and as a result, I am naturally becoming the kind of woman I have always wanted to be.  The nurturing guidance you have given me has made all the difference in my life.

Thank You . . .
Rene H.
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You are truly a priestess and therapist - and I'm touched by your warmth and loving acceptance. What I especially love about you is how you've evolved the work of Sacred Prostitute from an escort context to what you do now. All of my interactions with you have been catalytic in creating some kind of a shift for me in my inner spirit. Thank you.

Greg B.
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Veronica Monet is an everyday woman with a past.  She helps women find a greater sense of themselves by connecting them to their female roots and their truest sense of self.  She helped me to understand and reach out to the multi-dimensional world of greater intimacy and a stronger self-image.

Rene H.
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I love working with Veronica! Meeting her has truly changed my life for the better in many ways. I am so grateful to her!!
She's a wealth of knowledge and inspiration. She has a huge heart with the heels to kick you out of the places where your stuck.
She's a master at pushing someone out of their comfort zone so that they may continue to grow in the best ways possible, using inspiration, honesty, intuition and her own real world experience.

Ivy A.
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I want to thank you for your wild wisdom.  I am still contemplating a number of the things you said.  Most particularly your rant about the attractiveness of vital life-force rings true.  Of course that goes beyond the sexual.  You've inspired me to consider this in multiple situations in the ensuing days!  Your energy also encouraged me to take the chance to be open about my sexuality in some conversations, where in the past I would not have mentioned it.  The response was notable!  I'm glad to feel more alive for it and freer in having simply stated the truth.

Talk about wild!  I want to say that the second half of my session was as helpful as the first half was irritating!  I would not have chosen to arrange my session that way, but, as it turned out, the regrouping and clarifying I was able to do in between made it far more effective for me.

Dean Ray
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Your workshop was HUGE for us, and I wish we had had it at the beginning of our marriage.  It would have prevented a lot of the very explosive and emotionally intense interactions that have been the bane of our relationship.  The agreements for safety that we learned from you went into effect right away and our connection has as a result improved more in the few months since your workshop than in all the years before.

Alex and Melody

Monet refers to herself as a scientist and in this hankers back to the post Kinsey sex surrogates that used to work in the 70s side by side therapists and marriage counselors, before the lawyers and the Internet put most of them out of work. Monet's book made me think of sexual healers of old, such as Carolyn Elderberry and Juliet Anderson (of blessed memory), interviewed in Women of the Light: The New Sacred Prostitute by Kenneth Ray Stubbs (Sept. 1994). As to the spiritual and theological side, I especially enjoyed Monet's studies and practices learned from Tantra and how she brought these ideas into a context that is delightful in her writings.

It's not quite fair to review a book as I have when you've had the personal treat to meet and talk with the author face to face. A book should stand on its own. And some have criticized Monet for not including juicy vignettes from her days as a high class working courtesan. But that's just it. Because she knows about love, and the human spirit she doesn't kiss and tell. Because she loves and respects people--almost as a pastor of souls. Yes, this woman is a pastor of souls.

Maybe her bisexuality helps, as she says she loves women. But because the paying for it part of sex is a man's business, she learned to love and respect her male clients perhaps far more than the average wife loves and respects her husband. She definitely believes sex is a god thing, starting each session with a prayer and a heart chakra hug that not only screens out people she will not work with, but sets the tone and spirituality of the encounter at the outset for those she chooses as clients.

Monet is all about the depth and quality of the personal connection in her work and book. I find her as much a priestess as courtesan in Sex Secrets. She reminded me of another favorite book I liked, Nancy Qualls-Corbett's The Sacred Prostitute: Eternal Aspect of the Feminine (Paperback, 1988). Qualls-Corbett's historical look takes in the spiritual calling of the Sacred Prostitute of centuries past and the heat they took then from the high horse piety of uptight Christians and Jews and Muslims of old. No secret why Monet cannot use her real name now. Her previous professon remains illegal in most states, as does sex surrogate work and probably couples coaching, too.

It occurred to me towards the end of her Sex Secrets that, like many men who are taught falsely to believe that males are born smart about sex, that I'd read a hundred plus books on what women want sexually and otherwise. But until this book I'd never read a title by a woman aiming to teach other women what men might like erotically. I find it rather remarkable that a bisexual woman can be so caring for men. Nice.

The world is a richer place because of the retired and semi retired sex workers who have turned educators, sex counselors and relationship coaches. I've long thought it stupid for married couples to spend thousands of dollars on cerebral marriage counselors when often what the couple really seemed to need was simply to be sent straight to bed without their supper and told do the nasty slow by candle light and a little Enya on the boom box.

Much is said in this book about the sacramental healing available in the old fashioned business of simply getting it on and working through relationship issues at a body level. Yes, Monet's book for me was not unlike the books and seminars of the therapist, David Schnarch. (Passionate marriage: Keeping Love and Intimacy Alive in Committed Relationships, paperback, 2009.)

Read this book. And meet this author when she comes to town for a lecture. And then go out and love somebody. As the Italians say, "love is poor man's opera". Take singing lesions then and read this book.
....
Dan E. Nicholas, CLU, CLTC, LUTCF
Long Term Care Solution Specialist

I finally got the chance to pick up your book. Just finished it.

What a charming book! (just like you) It is refreshingly genuine. (also like you)

You and I have the same perspectives on sex. I don't want to write my own book here in an email, but so much of what you have written resonates completely. I have the same approach to sex. I make a safe space for my lover to be who s/he is in bed and I absolutely guard that special space. I don't fake orgasms. I had to chuckle as advice after advice that you give are things I do (that guys don't usually get from other ladies, unfortunately).

It amazes me how many guys have told me that I am the first person they slept with who wanted the lights on. I give the same genital anatomy lesson you do, and I love the looks of wonder (and maybe feeling like they are getting away with something) on guy's faces when I reveal my vulva. I can tell from the naive questions they ask that I am clearing up confusions they didn't even know they had about female anatomy.

Since adulthood I've been on the plump side and I've struggled with body issues since I don't look like a magazine ideal, but I don't have any trouble getting dates-- you are right about sexual confidence being more attractive than a particular body type and that men usually have different personal tastes than the anorexic adolescent society ideal.

I really enjoyed your book and identified with it.

When I was a young adult for a while I only dated women, and it AMAZES me to think of all the comments I heard from heterosexual women about their men! How the penis is ugly and balls are disgusting, how they only go down to get something, how they would never touch themselves "down there," how they endure sex. I became for a while the Lesbian Defender of Men--if sex is so horrible for you, why do you do it? If you are repelled by male genitalia, why touch them? I felt so bad for these poor men.

Thankfully I never had sex with men until it was something I really wanted. I am grateful that I was able to work out my issues with sex before I started having it, especially after hearing from my friends and acquaintances about years of bad sex or women who couldn't even orgasm.

Unfortunately society does not reward women embracing their own sexuality, and women also have the very real fear of getting the "slut" double standard imposed if they revel in their own juiciness. I am delighted whenever I meet other women--you!--who embrace their sexuality with both arms and then open up their spirits to it, even turning early damage into something healthier and more profound than most regular people experience.

Thanks for sharing this book with the world.

Agnes
 

For Kinsey, it was a quarter million gall wasps that brought him a sex career as an educator and pioneer. For Veronica Monet, it was boredom at a desk job supplanted by a couple thousand clients over a 14 year profession as a high end working girl. She's taken her love of people, a business acumen and the inspiration of her namesake saint, Veronica Franco, of 16th century Venice and given us this book.

With Monet's work we have the fruits of a soul map, I think, logging helpful lessons from many lovers, mostly men--as the paying part of sex is their world. She writes to women that want to know her secrets. But my guess is that more men read her than women. Off the clock she says she prefers women, yet as a certified sexologist now retired the high end prostitution business, she works as a relationship and love advisor for couples. Her book makes it clear that she loves sex, sees sexuality as sacred. This belief has allowed her to transition to the business of being a teacher of groups and couples as life coach, soul guide, and sex specialist--a world she believes is about connecting with the divine. Yes, no doubt you'll want to go to Tantra church with this fun time girl. But hold your horses. She's married and retired.

I got that she loves the giving and taking of pleasure, sure. But the persons touched seemed to matter to her all along the way as much or more than the joy of the touching. She's as much about the breath and the Tantra (means unity) and the coaching as she is about the bonking. It is life that should be fun and full of joy, not just business time in the bedroom. This is the message I got from Sex Secrets. Yes, some techniques are found in the last third of the book; but they seemed like afterthoughts to me. This book was more about the soul and getting close with someone you care about because that's where the meaning is.

No shock that most of her clients during those working years were married men. And, yes, while working she stashed enough to buy a house and pay taxes and vote, all through courtesan work. Interesting financial outflow here from half dead marriages and men who were dedicated dualists; men who loved their wives but found sex with them lacking. Indeed, many of her clients had church backgrounds. A few were women but most were men that had wives with whom they could not get sufficiently naughty. Monet could tell you a lot about that ancient contract between married people: don't ask for hot sex at home and I won't ask where you've been. Anything to keep the disturbing depth of spiritually and even religiously hot sexuality out of the perimeter of the white picket fence and the business of raising kids. I guess.

Monet explains also that often the men were the problem here as much as the women in this "body be nasty, spirit be pure" disconnect. Her married clients often held fast to the notion of purity and sex having no truck with each other at home. The spirituality of bodily love seemed unattainable with the mother of her client's children. God knows the church had well schooled these men that sex was for procreation if the act had a prayer of being holy. Intercourse is always sin otherwise. Augustine's law. Such nonsense, of course, keeps non consensual sex in the headlines for the church and people like Monet employed.

As to the silent contract between spouses, the wives might have minded if they had looked at the checkbook, as Monet used to charge $500 to $1,000 hour. Some clients had her on annual retainer at $50,000 a year, just to jet to the opera, with a night followed by intimacy. As mentor and friend and bed partner, she was obviously worth it. She explains that these men paid largely for the emotional intimacy and intellectual connection plus just some basic instruction on how a woman's body works.

Indeed, when you've had sex with 1869 clients--and many were repeat and regular clients through the years--you learn what works, she explains. You learn what men want. This woman took notes, thankfully, and the fruit is available in this book.

Monet refers to herself as a scientist and in this hankers back to the post Kinsey sex surrogates that used to work in the 70s side by side therapists and marriage counselors, before the lawyers and the Internet put most of them out of work. Monet's book made me think of sexual healers of old, such as Carolyn Elderberry and Juliet Anderson (of blessed memory), interviewed in Women of the Light: The New Sacred Prostitute by Kenneth Ray Stubbs (Sept. 1994). As to the spiritual and theological side, I especially enjoyed Monet's studies and practices learned from Tantra and how she brought these ideas into a context that is delightful in her writings.

It's not quite fair to review a book as I have when you've had the personal treat to meet and talk with the author face to face. A book should stand on its own. And some have criticized Monet for not including juicy vignettes from her days as a high class working courtesan. But that's just it. Because she knows about love, and the human spirit she doesn't kiss and tell. Because she loves and respects people--almost as a pastor of souls. Yes, this woman is a pastor of souls.

Maybe her bisexuality helps, as she says she also loves women. But because the paying for it part of sex is a man's business, she learned to love and respect her male clients perhaps far more than the average wife loves and respects her husband. She definitely believes sex is a god thing, starting each session with a prayer and a heart chakra hug that not only screens out people she will not work with, but sets the tone and spirituality of the encounter at the outset for those she chooses as clients.

Monet is all about the depth and quality of the personal connection in her work and book. I find her as much a priestess as courtesan in Sex Secrets. She reminded me of another favorite book I liked, Nancy Qualls-Corbett's The Sacred Prostitute: Eternal Aspect of the Feminine (Paperback, 1988). Qualls-Corbett's historical look takes in the spiritual calling of the Sacred Prostitute of centuries past and the heat they took then from the high horse piety of uptight Christians and Jews and Muslims of old. No secret why Monet cannot use her real name now. Her old work remains illegal in most states, as does sex surrogate work and probably couples coaching, too.

Her book reminded me also of Nina Hartley's Guide to Total Sex (paperback, 2006). But as wonderful a person Nina is and as fine a sex educator she has become and as personable, Nina's connections have been with what she terms "non-civilians", i.e. professionals. Monet's work has been largely with average and ordinary men.
It occurred to me towards the end of her Sex Secrets that, like many men who are taught falsely to believe that males are born smart about sex, that I'd read a hundred plus books on what women want sexually and otherwise. But until this book I'd never read a title by a woman aiming to teach other women what men might like erotically. I find it rather remarkable that a bisexual woman can be so caring for men. Nice.

The world is a richer place because of the retired and semi retired sex workers who have turned educators, sex counselors and relationship coaches. I've long thought it stupid for married couples to spend thousands of dollars on cerebral marriage counselors when often what the couple really seemed to need was simply to be sent straight to bed without their supper and told do the nasty slow by candle light and a little Enya on the boom box.

Much is said in this book about the sacramental healing available in the old fashioned business of simply getting it on and working through relationship issues at a body level. Yes, Monet's book for me was not unlike the books and seminars of the therapist, David Schnarch. (Passionate marriage: Keeping Love and Intimacy Alive in Committed Relationships, paperback, 2009.)

In summary, let's say you are a lack luster lover--of God or of a man--and want to improve. Or, as Veronica Monet puts it, "your orgasms are on the level of a sneeze". Maybe you are simply a wanna be lover of art and the human spirit but the fire's gone out in that department; and you want to get a little more intensely naked about what all that might mean. Read this book. And meet this author when she comes to town for a lecture. And then go out and love somebody. As the Italians say, "love is poor man's opera". Take singing lesions then and read this book.

Dan E. Nicholas, CLU, CLTC, LUTCF
Long Term Care Solution Specialist, 201 El Soreno Dr., Scotts Valley, CA 95066
CA Insurance License.#0711255, (831) 461-9340 home office/fax; (831) 359-7527c
"Serving Santa Cruz, Santa Clara, and Monterey counties since 1986"
www.DanNicholasCLU.com

Thanks to your help, we are now enjoying more sex, more sexual intercourse, more masturbation, more hugging, more passionate kissing, more interest and participation in sex and more sexual desire. Our love making is more spontaneous and more in the moment. And Joan experienced her very first female ejaculation!

You were the catalyst in helping us to see our individual and couple blocks to taking responsibility for our own happiness and success and learning to work together as a team.

I have worked to continue to stay more in the moment, enjoying both my own sexuality as well as staying personally happier. That nexus between love/sex/anger I also believe extends to depression and general feelings of well being. Since we've opened up our communication and authenticity, and both worked to 'stay in the moment,' I feel as though I have a partner and one to whom I feel connected - and this has helped my outlook tremendously!

Your loving but strong support helped me to see that I was not taking my need for Testosterone supplementation seriously enough (I was diagnosed with "Low T"). Since our last session, I have taken responsibility and do see that it is very important for both my own outlook and our relationship, that I consistently receive this treatment. I am now in my third month of treatment.

All of this has strengthened our relationship. There is a lot more touching, kissing, nice conversation, compliments and connection in general!  We are more open with our sexuality and interests and play.

We now have a strong "LOVE" foundation! We love each other, want to be with each other, and we do not want to do anything that would hurt the other in any way. This has become a filter for both of our choices.

What we now call our "playground" is anything that can potentially (sometimes we don't know until we try how we will both feel) add to our LOVE and FUN and Life experience that we discuss with each other and try if we both agree. And then either of us has the ability to veto or define limits.

We both feel that we can bring up our individual sexual, sensual and love-making interests to each other and discuss it without fearing that either of us will feel threatened, hurt, etc.

We are more relaxed about our love, play, fun and sex. I feel less pressure to make sex happen and Joan feels less pressure to try to fulfill her own or my interests. We are just moving forward with our interests to find things that meet both our goals.

We are enjoying more intimacy and improved communication. We now share our feelings more openly with much less passive aggressiveness. This has had a huge impact on our romance, helping to launch us into an adult playground where we are living out all our fantasies and feeling excitement and passion we haven't felt in years!

Thank you so much,
Dan and Joan
Los Gatos, CA