First, I’m not a fan of the phrase "love addiction" (it’s really a popular media term for a clinically recognized pattern of when someone gets into multiple love relationships - and is sort of hooked on the feelings, highs and dramas related to falling in love - and it becomes a distressing or maladaptive pattern for them). But I am trying not to get too much into semantics here and instead just accept Alanis Morissette’s quote for what it is - which is to say that she apparently feels that she found herself always committing to men - one after another - and this got her into a pattern that didn’t work for her. So she decided that for one year, she would only date casually. And by "date", she means that this dating included "lots of sex".

More and more it seems that women celebrities are becoming comfortable (well, is it comfort? attention-drawing? I guess it’s unclear) talking about their sexual behavior in the media - and particularly non-traditional sex roles. Whereas Britney Spears once drew media attention talking about a traditional sex role (e.g., being abstinent until marriage; something that apparently turned out not to be true), a few years ago Angelina Jolie drew media attention by talking about how she was having lovers, but no serious relationships, until she found someone to parent with (who, as we all know now, turned out to be Brad Pitt). And now Alanis Morissette describes her casual sex and how it has been helpful for her. Read the full (and short) article here.

Bookmark To

"I subscribed to Netflix a few weeks ago. I’m on my third DVD, which is the second one that’s too scratched to play. They have a good “send back your scratched discs!” policy. But I don’t care because it’s only once a week that I find time to settle down and watch a video, and if it gets interrupted, I’ll turn it off and go do something else. I feel like I’m an old married man with E.D." - Jakob Lodwick, on his tumblr

Bookmark To

"At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet." - Plato

Bookmark To

"If you have it [Love], you don’t need to have anything else, and if you don’t have it, it doesn’t matter much what else you have." - Sir James M. Barrie

Once I came to feel that someone who I thought loved  me didn’t really love me after all… or at least not in the way that  mattered to me. His love had been dishonest and more self-involved than I wanted, a love that seemed was for his sake rather than ours. A few days after we broke up, I had to give a big talk at an event - me being billed as the "sex expert", the person who was supposed to know so much about love and sex and relationships. 

I remember showing up to give the talk, with people walking up to me to say that they always read my sex advice columns, someone even asked for an autograph (which shocked me), and they remembered me from another event, and congratulated me on certain recent successes and such, and generally people seemed to think that I had it all. Or at least that I had quite a lot going for me. However, inside I felt sad and despondent and like I had nothing… even though the break-up was a good thing. I felt completely at a loss and acutely aware of the irony, and whatever bad sex karma I had earned, of having to show up and talk about relationships and love and sex at a time when I was hurting enormously because of these exact things. Because of that experience (and others - just because I know about sex and love doesn’t mean I’ve been able to escape their clutches), the above quote matters to me.

On a more positive note, most of the time in my adult life I have been very fortunate to have good love, even when it seemed I had nothing else. And for that, the first part of the quote has been true too, and I’m grateful.

Bookmark To

"Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place." - author Zora Neale Hurston

Bookmark To