Melissa Petro

How do you break up with a best friend?

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

There was nothing easy about recovery, but it helped that living the trainwreck lifestyle had stripped me of everything. Within sixteen months, I was unemployed with no job prospects, barely scraping through my last semester at school. I was drinking every day. Sex with classmates had led to casual encounters which bottomed out at trading sex for cash, something I spent a whole lot of time justifying.

You may have heard the old joke that 98% of people masturbate, and the other two percent are lying.

A week or so ago I started shopping for a wedding dress, and guess what? Shopping for a wedding dress sucks!

If you missed my weekly column this summer all about getting engaged and planning a wedding, here’s the highlight reel: after doing

Hate hurts us all, but we don’t all receive it with the same systemic intensity. Those of us with the privilege to do so need to push against the borders of what is “permissible” in this society. We need challenge the idea of “normal” — rather than conform to it — so that all of us can live more closely to our truths.

For any couples thinking about moving in together, I thought I’d share my Dos and Don’ts, and how my husband and I are making my small and unattractive (but inexpensive!) apartment work for our family.

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!

If you watch TV and movies hoping to be emotionally moved or intellectually challenged, you know that means you’ll some