In ‘The Joy of Connections,’ a book set to publish shortly after her death at 96, America’s best-known sex therapist offered practical strategies for anyone feeling lonely.
Toward the end of her life, America’s best-known sex therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer stopped talking so much about sexual dysfunction and started talking about another topic often shrouded in shame: loneliness.
She had, she believed, the perfect credentials to take on our ongoing loneliness epidemic. A German Jewish refugee whose parents died during the Holocaust, she had been divorced twice, and then widowed. Dr. Ruth understood loneliness.
But she also believed her training as a sex therapist helped her address the humiliation that loneliness can cause.
“Nobody is excited to admit they’re having difficulty in the bedroom,” Dr. Ruth wrote in “The Joy of Connections,” her final book, which will publish on Sept. 3 — less than two months after her death at 96. “Nobody is thrilled to confess they have too few reliable friends. Shame is the thread that connects them both, and shame is what I’ve always tried to help people overcome.”
“The Joy of Connections” is, essentially, a list of 100 strategies for building stronger bonds, all shaped by Dr. Ruth’s belief that loneliness is nothing to be ashamed of, and by her intolerance for wallowing.
“You can,” she insisted, “make the decision that being lonely is no longer an option.”
“She’s all about agency,” said Allison Gilbert, one of two authors with whom Dr. Ruth wrote her new book. “She’s all about taking steps to get to where you want to go, and not waiting.”