Melissa Petro

Melissa Petro

Bio

Melissa Petro is a former sex worker and "hooker teacher" who has written about the industry for HuffingtonPost, Salon, and others. She is also the founder of Becoming Writers, which provides free and low cost memoir-writing workshops and mentoring to writers of all backgrounds and experiences. More info at http://becomingwriters.wordpress.com. 

Melissa Petro Articles

At a certain point in my adulthood, I stopped trying to force friendships that just didn’t work.

How To Break Up With Your Best Friend 

How do you break up with a best friend?

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I’m glad I didn’t get married when I was younger. But delaying marriage has certain disadvantages, too. Image: Brandon Morgan/Unsplash.

Becoming Bride: On Being An Older Bride

The other day on Facebook, one of my friends remarked that I was a “later-in-life” bride.

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C-PTSD: PTSD's lesser-known cousin.

Years Of Abuse Have Left Me With C-PTSD: Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

C-PTSD stands for Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, also known as Developmental Trauma Disorder (DTD) or complex trauma. It’s a diagnostic term for a set of symptoms resulting from prolonged social or interpersonal stress, especially in the context of interpersonal dependence. It’s a tricky diagnosis to land on, given the way trauma is dealt with in the mind and by society. Like Kristof, I wouldn’t have told you there was anything wrong with my childhood. It took years of therapy to catalog early life experiences that were profoundly affecting, if not necessarily severe.

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Now All Of Us Singles Are Pathetic, Not Just The Straight Ones

Especially if you’re a woman, people assume you’re hungry for a man.

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Sex work is not a crime.

Jeremy Corbyn And The Decriminalization Of Sex Work

“If you believe in the decriminalisation of sex work,” Ian Dunt rightfully points out, “you will instantly come under a sustained and highly emotive attack on your morality and your identity.” In this vein, when a man comes out in favor of sex worker’s rights, he becomes “a betrayer of women, a gender Judas encouraging violence against them.”

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I realized that part of the reason I was constantly partnering with “broken” people was because that's how I viewed myself. Image: Thinkstock.

Becoming Bride: 4 Things I Learned From Online Dating

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.

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I'll just get a new one.

Your Bike Is Stolen, And It's OK: Signs You've Changed Social Class

The other day my friend on Facebook had made a remark about how there are people who have multiple income streams and travel abroad constantly and drive cars and eat at restaurants every week and then talk about class privilege like they don't have it and in my mind I was like, Oh. Yeah. She’s right. In the past six months or so, my life has dramatically changed.

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My wedding will not be the most important day of my life. Image: Melissa Petro.

Becoming Bride: We're Getting Married (FINALLY)

For someone like me — someone with difficulty forming and maintaining relationships, who has struggled with commitment, and who’s got intimacy issues galore — surely, you can see the appeal. You don’t need to be Freud to figure out why, at a disturbingly young age, I looked forward to the day a man would commit.

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“It’s your day!” —  Britni De La Cretaz, on her day. Image: Justine Johnson Photography

Becoming Bride: The Best Advice From Real-Life Brides

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?

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"My family is who they are, and for the most part, I’ve learned to live with that. But being engaged and planning a wedding has definitely challenged my ability to accept."

Becoming Bride: My Brother Won't Be Coming To My Wedding

So, I got an email from my brother yesterday telling me that he’s not coming to the wedding. “I want to be there,” he writes, “I really do, but the idea of being consigned to [our mother and her boyfriend’s] care for the duration of the trip is driving me mad. You know, the whole lack of autonomy and being on someone else's time and all that.”

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