Melissa Petro

No exaggeration, when I close my eyes— even for a second— I see white dresses.

Is there anything problematic about trading foot rubs for blow jobs? Or is it a healthy way to add a little spice to a long term relationship?

I do have one advantage when it comes to meeting people online: I really like dating. I like getting dressed up and going out. I even kind of dig meeting someone new. I know these are aspects of dating other people dread, but I’ve always enjoyed these things. Perhaps this is one explanation for (or else a result of) my sex work past, I dunno. I know that, in the beginning, I thought of dating as an adventure. I didn’t take it too seriously.

Everyone I talk to agrees: Apparently, wedding planning is the most awful thing ever! Seriously, I did not know that when I first got engaged. This got me thinking... What else don’t I know?

On FYI’s newest, Kiss Bang Love, the show sets one man or one woman up with ten strangers who the contestant will kiss, one after another, while blindfolded. From these ten hopeful suitors, the contestant chooses five and then two, with whom they go on “intimate 24-hour dates.” The producers ask: Can blind sexual chemistry lead to love? I say, probably not!

Sometimes the fights I pick with my fiancé are really fights with myself.

[I]t looks like our wedding will cost us more like $10,000. That is a hell of a lot of money. Still, it’s our one and only wedding. And for a wedding in Manhattan that includes most of the typical expenditures [...] that’s not too bad. Here’s what I’ve learned about how to make your big day (relatively) less expensive.

"We built a luxury dream home but can only afford to have two children."

After gaining as much as forty pounds and pushing a cantaloupe out my vagina, I wondered: will my body ever be the same?

My relationship with my father was never father-daughter picnics. Maybe when I was very little — or maybe this is less a memory and more of a wish — I have an image of myself as a very little girl sitting on my father’s lap, and we are both laughing. Perhaps my father enjoyed fatherhood when his children were very little, but that joy seemed to curdle into constant frustration as my brother and I grew up.