On March 16th, a white man named Robert Aaron Long went to three massage parlors in Atlanta, Georgia, and killed eight people, seven of whom were women. The police apprehended Long and on the morning of March 18th gave a press statement.

Captain Jay Baker, then spokesperson for the Cherokee Sheriff’s Office (who has since been removed from the case), said Long “understood the gravity of [his crime]. And he was pretty much fed up, had been kind of at the end of his rope, and yesterday was a really bad day for him, and this is what he did.”

…

From the moment I laid eyes on James, I fell in lust with him. He was tall, handsome, sexy, stylish — dressed in a suit. He wore loafers with no socks. His ankles were slender and tan. I notice things like that in men. I definitely noticed James’ ankles the first time I met him.

Not many men have beautiful ankles. Not many men have beautiful hands either. James also had lovely hands, his fingers long and tapered. How could I not fall into a blind infatuation with this man?

He was visiting my new friend, Ava, at the same…

You wouldn’t believe how backward I used to be. Years ago, the editor of a magazine I was writing for asked me to do a sex-toy review, and I was like: no way.

This was the early 2000s. Very few women were writing sex-toy reviews for magazines back then if any were.

The first time I ever heard of a woman writer reviewing a sex toy was when Anna David did for Playboy. I remember thinking that was cool for her, but I would never.

Sure, I wrote about sex. But write about my own sexual experiences? No way!

The…

“You’re a lousy wife,” my husband told me. His words hit me hard. They stung but not because I didn’t think they were true, but because they were.

I was a lousy wife. I had cheated on my husband. But the crazy thing was, he wasn’t calling me “lousy” for that reason. He was calling me a “lousy wife” because I stopped having sex with him after our second son was born.

My husband declared this after I confessed to cheating on him. That’s when he admitted he had, too. Since we’d both betrayed each other, neither of us could…

Though this is great advice on its face, it's also highly simplistic. Yes, love is a verb if people are ultimately right for one another. If you've found the right person, then sure, you should be doing everything in your power to keep the love alive. Because that initial infatuation will fade. Then you're just left with another human being, fit with all the flaws that we all have.

Keeping the love alive is doing your best to empathize with, uplift, support, encourage, and maintain an attraction to your partner, who at times may be annoying, smelly, in a bad…

I didn’t really begin to feel “weird” as a single woman until I reached thirty. That coincided with my move from Los Angeles to Spain. I went from living life as a wild and crazy party girl in L.A. to hanging out with a group of British ex-pat couples in Barcelona.

I ended up in Barcelona because an American friend of mine lived there with his British girlfriend. Through them, I plugged into the ex-pat community. Most of the new people I was meeting were couples: married or simply “in a relationship.” …

There was once a time when it felt like Valentine’s Day shone a very bright spotlight on everything that was wrong with me. For most of the year, I presented an aura of confidence. Look at how beautiful I was: tall, thin, stylish. I was an independent young woman! I didn’t need a man. I was out every night in the bars and clubs, partying. I was a culture-vulture, a jet-setter, living it up, traveling the world. Why settle down when you were as amazing as I was?

But then February 14th would roll around and on flashed that spotlight…

An article from NBC News recently popped up in my feed that caught my eye because the reporter, Joel Grover, purported that some homeless people in Los Angeles are living in “McMansion”-style tents.

“One tent near downtown L.A. occupied by a homeless man had a working shower, kitchen, water heater, electricity and even a doorbell. In Hollywood, another tent installed a 15-foot slide for entertainment. And, in Venice, a tent had its own wading pool, while another had its own tiki bar to serve drinks to other homeless people.”

Grover paints a picture of the city’s unhoused living in “luxury”…