Melissa Petro

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

"Certainly, my life as an alcoholic was not what most would imagine. I was a writer, living in the West Village of New York City, enrolled in a prestigious graduate program and working on a book. At least, this was my cover story."

It's time to talk substantively and honestly about how sex work isn't any one thing.

Engagements being the universally stressful occasions that they are, what this has meant is that I’m constantly pushing my fiancé to make wedding-related decisions, and he is constantly having to ask me (nicely and less-nicely) to give it a rest. It all came to a head this past weekend.

Would Sheryl Sandberg be able to get away with leaning in while donning Zuckerberg's signature v-neck T-shirt and jeans? History says no.

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

Use insect repellent, sleep under a mosquito net, and just don’t get pregnant — is this the best we can do for Latin American women?

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!

The biggest fashion mistake of my lifetime may not be what I wore, but what I didn’t.

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.