Sabine Walter

An anonymous writer put it this way: "Friends in your life are like pillars on your porch. Sometimes they hold you up and sometimes they lean on you. Sometimes it's just enough to know they're standing by." ©Seventyfour / Adobe StockWriter Elisabeth Foley points out that friendship doubles your joy and divides your grief, and that the most beautiful discovery that true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart.

If a couple tries to conceive but can’t seem to do it, one of the first things that doctors look for is a problem with the man’s sperm. Sperm compose about 5 to 10 percent of semen, and are the only part of the semen that can cause pregnancy. If a man is infertile, there is a problem with his sperm — often a low sperm count or low motility.

Impotence — meaning, the inability to have an erection when desired — frightens men, even though many have suffered from impotence at some point. Men may confuse short-term impotence with erectile dysfunction. The good news is that a couple of failures to have an erection doesn't mean there's something wrong with your penis.

One woman in nine will develop breast cancer in the United States. Because of this risk, every woman must know how to do a breast self-exam. Examining your breasts for cancer is easy but critical. Because our bodies often store any toxins that we absorb in fatty tissues (which are the bulk of abreast), the breasts are a common cancer site for women.

If a woman finds penetration painful during intercourse, the problem is probably vaginismus — not a vagina that is too tight. Vaginismus is a medical condition in which vaginal muscles involuntarily tighten up to the point where the woman will experience vaginal pain during intercourse. Sometimes, vaginismus causes the muscles to contract so tightly that penetration is impossible.

Many people have the erroneous notion that oral sex is completely safe because no one ever became pregnant through oral sex. But oral sex isn't entirely safe when it comes to sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). With more people engaging in oral sex, more people are catching STDs through oral sex. It is absolutely essential, if you want a healthy sex life, that you know how to have oral sex safely — for you and your partner.

The anus has a lot of nerve endings, so anal sex can be pleasurable to both the man and the woman. That said, it also comes with a lot of risk. If you want a healthy sex life, you absolutely must know how to have anal sex safely. It’s true that no one has ever gotten pregnant from anal sex—but many, many people have contracted sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) this way.

Privacy is one of the biggest hot buttons in a parent-teen relationship. Teenagers are working their ways toward independence, and parents are trying to find out how to balance privacy and safety — especially online. The Internet is full of hidden pitfalls for young adults, and parents must know how to allow their teens privacy from the greater world, as well as respect it at home.

No matter how much you enjoy talking to your kids, having “the talk” about sex with your older children can be nerve-wracking. For the sex ed conversation to be most effective, it needs to be heart-to-heart and factual. That sounds scary to many parents, and they may hope to avoid the talk by relying on information given out in school-sponsored sexual education classes.