5 Ways to Feel More Connected, According to Dr. Ruth

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.

By Catherine Pearson

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.” Read the full piece at the New York Times.