Hello Ladies (and Gentlemen)!

Avalon asked me to post on here today so here goes…

I recently got out of a very intense but short relationship- 9.5 weeks- pun intended.

Yes, she’s a dancer, and no, I’m not telling where or any identifying details. If you take anything away from any relationship, you MUST take the LESSON you were supposed to learn, or you’re doomed to repeat it. I call it “Relationship Groundhog Day”- you know, like the movie with Bill Murray?

While our passion and connection were never in question, I kept thinking in the back of my mind that there were ever-increasing long term incompatibilities racking up. I appreciated the fact that she was so open and honest with me about her faults. You have to be if it’s going to work, right?

So the lesson I learned was to be more open and honest about my doubts and issue areas earlier on. If I had let my concerns be known earlier, the DRAMA that ensued would not have been so bad. I also learned that my lower floor for age difference was there for a reason and I violated it for the last time (sounds good on paper anyway).

So what was the drama? All was quiet for about 3 weeks, then let’s make this potentially long story a short one by saying out of the blue I got a very unflattering, immature Facebook posting that I caught within 30 seconds of it going onto my profile. Phew, right??

WRONG! Because several people posted responses to it, (my posting about Facebook’s incessant ads for singles) they all got a copy of this scathing email in their inboxes!! Not once, but twice before said ex-girlfriend-turned-scorned psycho posted it again before I could delete her out of my friends! So my mom, my sister, and my aunt, among others- got to read all of the drama. Now I have to do triage with all of them. Thanks, Facebook, and thanks drama queen.

Dancers are regular people before they are dancers, and we all have feelings. I just need to do a better job of stating my concerns earlier and defusing drama. True, with some people it doesn’t matter what you do because they thrive on the dramatic, but I saw it coming! Fool me once…I learned my lesson!

Tell me about your drama in the comment area below…

It’s about time!  Texas finally de-criminalized vibrators!  Thanks for that newsflash Susan Wayward!  I must pass it on.

I found some really bad stripper advice.  Even worse, its from a site that sells a book on “How to be a Stripper.”  I had written another comment dissecting their viewpoint of how they feel that selling lapdances pits “us girls” against “sick perverts” but they declined to post it publicly.  I’m all for Freedom of Speech.  Even if I disagree with something someone has to say, I’m not going to block their comment if it is relevent. 

In eight and a half years of dancing I’ve never had a stalker.  I’ve never felt my safety was threatened.  I’ve never had to move my family to another town to get away from a client.  Gee, maybe it’s because I don’t lead men that I deem to be mentally unstable to believe that I’m “dating” them.  Think about it: if a client actually believes that your “dates” are inside a strip club; yet you won’t let him meet your kids, you won’t see him outside the club, and you ignore him if you do happen to see him…and he still thinks that the two of you are “dating”… then you are playing with fire and setting the stage for an explosion.

That exposion occurs when the mentally unstable client goes across the line and wants to become a part of your life.  How dare he!  I mean how many girls let a finacially stable boyfriend meet their kids after they’ve known them for a year? Especially when he donated to little Jimmy’s baseball team and little Susie’s dance troup?  If you have to”break up” with a client and then worry if he is going to stalk you then YOU ARE DOING SOMETHING WRONG!

Now, I’ve had a few potential “White Knights” lose interest in me because I don’t play this game.  For my non-stripper readers the White Knight is the client who had deep pockets and want to “rescue” you and be your sugar daddy.  To be fair, I have actually seen entertainers leave dancing and marry their White Knight.  Its rare, but it happens.  Most of the time though, the entertainer is manipulating the mind of a very emotionally unstable person.  Manipulators never win in the end. Instead, learn how to create win/win situations for both you and your clients so you build trust and longer lasting business relationships.

Valentine’s Day had a slow start at Christie’s Cabaret last night.  By 9:30 the Sports Equipment Convention guys started rolling in. I danced for some guy who has his own cable TV show on ESPN2!  “Wow!  It’s like dancing for the Tool Time guys!” I giggled.

Right on cue, my knee started hurting at 1:15.  Thats also when half the girls left and all the guys in the house decided they wanted table dances.  I closed out the night and trekked home to my humble abode in the far flung suburbs.  It started to rain just as I entered my brightly lit, well manicured, cookie cutter HOA.  It hasn’t stopped raining yet and I have an overwhelming urge to consume copious amounts of carbohydrates and lay on the couch.  

Hmm. think that might be counter-productive to walking around in a gstring tonight

I picked up this month’s copy of Scientific American at Barnes and Noble. I needed some sort of stimulating reading while Li buffed my french manicured toes, and the salon’s offerings have been limited to US Weekly, People, and Jane lately.  The headline article Why We Kiss is actually available online.

Kissing unleashes a cocktail of chemicals that govern human stress, motivation, social bonding and sexual stimulation. In a new study, psychologist Wendy L. Hill and her student Carey A. Wilson of Lafayette College compared the levels of two key hormones in 15 college male-female couples before and after they kissed and before and after they talked to each other while holding hands. One hormone, oxytocin, is involved in social bonding, and the other, cortisol, plays a role in stress. Hill and Wilson predicted that kissing would boost levels of oxytocin, which also influences social recognition, male and female orgasm, and childbirth. They expected this effect to be particularly pronounced in the study’s females, who reported higher levels of intimacy in their relationships. They also forecast a dip in cortisol, because kissing is presumably a stress reliever.

But the researchers were surprised to find that oxytocin levels rose only in the males, whereas it decreased in the females, after either kissing or talking while holding hands. They concluded that females must require more than a kiss to feel emotionally connected or sexually excited during physical contact. Females might, for example, need a more romantic atmosphere than the experimental setting provided, the authors speculate. The study, which Hill and Wilson reported in November 2007 at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, revealed that cortisol levels dropped for both sexes no matter the form of intimacy, a hint that kissing does in fact reduce stress.

To the extent that kissing is linked to love, the act may similarly boost brain chemicals associated with pleasure, euphoria and a motivation to connect with a certain someone. In 2005 anthropologist Helen Fisher of Rutgers University and her colleagues reported scanning the brains of 17 individuals as they gazed at pictures of people with whom they were deeply in love. The researchers found an unusual flurry of activity in two brain regions that govern pleasure, motivation and reward: the right ventral tegmental area and the right caudate nucleus. Addictive drugs such as cocaine similarly stimulate these reward centers, through the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine. Love, it seems, is a kind of drug for us humans.

If you have a date tonight, heed this advice from the same article…women know exactly what they’re looking for and can tell in JUST ONE KISS!

Although a kiss may not be wise, it can be pivotal to a relationship. “One dance,” Alex “Hitch” Hitchens says to his client and friend in the 2005 movie Hitch, “one look, one kiss, that’s all we get … one shot, to make the difference between ‘happily ever after’ and, ‘Oh? He’s just some guy I went to some thing with once.’ “

Can a kiss be that powerful? Some research indicates it can be. In a recent survey Gallup and his colleagues found that 59 percent of 58 men and 66 percent of 122 women admitted there had been times when they were attracted to some­one only to find that their interest evaporated after their first kiss. The “bad” kisses had no particular flaws; they simply did not feel right—and they ended the romantic relationship then and there—a kiss of death for that coupling.

The reason a kiss carries such weight, Gallup theorizes, is that it conveys subconscious information about the genetic compatibility of a prospective mate. His hypothesis is consistent with the idea that kissing evolved as a courtship strategy because it helps us rate potential partners.

From a Darwinian perspective, sexual selection is the key to passing on your genes. For us humans, mate choice often involves falling in love. Fisher wrote in her 2005 paper that this “attraction mech­anism” in humans “evolved to enable in­di­vi­duals to focus their mating energy on speci­fic others, thereby conserving energy and facilitating mate choice—a primary aspect of reproduction.”

According to Gallup‘s new findings, kissing may play a crucial role in the progression of a partnership but one that differs between men and women. In a study published in September 2007 Gallup and his colleagues surveyed 1,041 college undergraduates of both sexes about kissing. For most of the men, a deep kiss was largely a way of advancing to the next level sexually. But women were generally looking to take the relationship to the next stage emotionally, assessing not simply whether the other person would make a first- rate source of DNA but also whether he would be a good long-term partner.

“Females use [kissing] … to provide information about the level of commitment if they happen to be in a continuing relationship,” Gallup told the BBC in September. The locking of lips is thus a kind of emotional barometer: the more enthusiastic it is, the healthier the relationship.

Because women need to invest more energy in producing children and have a shorter biological window in which to reproduce, they need to be pickier about whom they choose for a partner—and they cannot afford to get it wrong. So, at least for women, a passionate kiss may help them choose a mate who is not only good at fathering children but also committed enough to stick around and raise them

I’m Back!

I’m back from vacation, but taking a few more days to myself before I head back to Christie’s.  I ate LOTS of really good food.  Whenever I know I don’t have to fit into a g-string with a flat stomach, I have a tendency to eat a dessert or two (or five).  Tomorrow I head back to the gym, Wednesday I head back to Christie’s. 

I found this interesting article.  Thought I’d pass it along.

Marrying for love … of money

Robert Frank
The Wall Street Journal
Dec. 14, 2007 09:40 AM

On a recent episode of “Dirty Sexy Money,” ABC’s soapy drama about the filthy rich, heiress Karen Darling gets married for the fourth time, to a golf pro. Minutes after the ceremony, she decides she wants a divorce, leaving the golfer to wonder about his $3 million guarantee in the pre-nuptial agreement.

“I still get the check, right?” he asks.

“Of course,” Ms. Darling sneers. “I made a vow.”.. BOXAD TABLE –>

Marrying for money isn’t just grist for television plot lines. With the wealth boom creating unprecedented riches – and greater opportunities for gold-digging by both genders – price-tag partnerships and checkbook breakups are increasingly making headlines. Even more surprising, according to a new survey, are the going rates for today’s mercenary unions.

Celebrities get the most attention, of course, whether it’s Kevin Federline, the backup dancer-turned-millionaire ex of Britney Spears, or Heather Mills, Paul McCartney’s estranged second wife, who is set to receive tens of millions of dollars when her divorce is final, according to the British press.

Yet even among the workaday (or wannabe) wealthy, marrying for money has become a popular pursuit. In an infamous personal ad posted on Craigslist this summer, a twentysomething New Yorker who described herself as “spectacularly beautiful” wrote that she was looking for a man who made at least $500,000 a year. She’d tried dating men earning $250,000, but that wasn’t “getting me to Central Park West,” she said. The ad inspired all manner of parodies and follow-ups, including one by an investment banker, who replied that since his money would grow over time but her beauty would fade, the offer didn’t make good business sense. She was, he said, a “depreciating asset.”

To many New Yorkers, jaded by multimillion-dollar condos and wall-to-wall wealth, the salary request probably seems reasonable, maybe even low. Yet nationally, the going rate is much lower.

According to a survey by Prince & Associates, a Connecticut-based wealth-research firm, the average “price” that men and women demand to marry for money these days is $1.5 million.

The survey polled 1,134 people nationwide with incomes ranging between $30,000 to $60,000 (squarely in the median range for nationwide incomes). The survey asked: “How willing are you to marry an average-looking person that you liked, if they had money?”

Fully two-thirds of women and half of the men said they were “very” or “extremely” willing to marry for money. The answers varied by age: Women in their 30s were the most likely to say they would marry for money (74 percent) while men in their 20s were the least likely (41 percent).

“I’m a little shocked at the numbers,” says Pamela Smock, a sociologist at the University of Michigan who has studied marriage and money. “It’s kind of against the notion of love and soul mates and the main motivations to marry in our culture.”

Still, Ms. Smock has found in her own research that having money does encourage people to tie the knot. “It’s more likely that a couple will marry if they have money, and if the man is economically stable,” she says.

Women aren’t the only ones with the gold-digging impulse. In the Prince & Associates study, 61 percent of men in their 40s said they would marry for money. Ms. Smock says that as men get older, they become more comfortable with women being the bread-winners.

The matrimonial price tag varies by gender and age. Asked how much a potential spouse would need to have to be money-marriage material, women in their 20s said $2.5 million. The going rate fell to $1.1 million for women in their 30s, and rose again to $2.2 million for women in their 40s. Ms. Smock and Russ Alan Prince, Prince & Associate’s founder, both attribute the fluctuation to the assumption that thirty-something women feel more pressure to get married than women in their 20s, so they are willing to lower the price. By their 40s, women are more comfortable being independent, so they’re willing to hold out for more cash.

Men have cheaper requirements. In the Prince survey, their asking price overall was $1.2 million, with men in their 20s asking $1 million and men in their 40s asking $1.4 million.

Douglas Freeman, a tax and estates attorney in California who works with wealthy families, says the men’s numbers are lower because they would feel threatened by women worth several million dollars. “The men aren’t going to say they want $10 million, because they wouldn’t be comfortable with a woman who’s worth so much more than they are,” he says.

Whatever the case, the prices for both men and women seem surprisingly low, given the new landscape of wealth. While $1 million or $2 million may sound like a lot to people making $30,000, it’s hardly enough to transform someone’s life or make them “rich” by contemporary billionaire standards. No one in the survey quoted a price of more than $3 million.

Of course, when the mercenary marriage proves disappointing, there’s always divorce. Among the women in their twenties who said they would marry for money, 71 percent said they expected to get divorced – the highest of any demographic. Only 27 percent of men in their 40s expected to divorce.

Says Mr. Prince: “For these women, it’s just another step on their journey to the good life. They want to be paid what they think they’re worth and then move on.”

Most of this article wasn’t surprising.  Women tend to marry for financial stability regardless of a man’s physical appearance.  Men tend to marry the best looking partner they can afford.  The last statistic is what shocked me: 71% of women in their twenties expect to get divorced? Wow! 

So if the divorce rate is currently 50%, I guess I can anticipate a 21% increase in bachelor parties and divorce parties over the next 10 years.

Oct 1

Hotmail always has the most interesting articles.

The first one that caught my eye was $25/hour Jobs http://msn.careerbuilder.com/custom/msn/careeradvice/viewarticle.aspx?articleid=1156&SiteId=cbmsnhp41156&sc_extcmp=JS_1156_home1&GT1=10466&cbRecursi..1&cbsid=bad15b8706e44a178c9c24fab01d8416-244570720-JM-5 Of the 10 jobs that were profiled, only two did not require an advanced degree: detective and human resource manager.  However, they did require appropriate training (read: years of working your way up the ladder)

I love when I see stuff like this.  It confirms how good I have it.  If I only sell 3 lapdances an hour, I usually think “Man, it’s slow in here!”  At Christies I average 15-20 dances per hour during the busy season; and 8 during the dreadfully slow summer season.  After tipping out and paying my house fees, my LOWEST hourly per shift return this year was August 7th.  There was a monsoon that Tuesday night so not too many people ventured outdoors.  I remember all the girls complaining in the locker room “It Sucks….I wanna go home!  Blah blah blah”  I worked 4 hours from 8pm-midnight and walked home with $235. That’s a 58.75/hour wage for a job that does not require an advanced degree.  And that was my worst night all year!

The second article that caught my eye was When You Earn More Than Your Man. http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/21069775/?GT1=10450 This is very common among strippers. Of course, we charge upwards of $300 per hour in Phoenix, $500 per hour in Vegas and other cities.  That is in the lawyer and doctor ballpark….yet doesn’t require an advanced degree nor is it accounted for via a W2 or 1099! Insane!

I’m feel lucky that my earning power has never been much of an issue in my seven year relationship.  I’m a giver.  I always have been.  I also have never had thoughts like “I need someone who can take care of me” run through my head.  Nor have I ever dated anyone for his money.

Likewise, I have never ceded financial control to my partner.  That never works because no one cares about your money as much as you do!  I’ve seen co-workers bust their pretty a$$es at the club to just hand over all their cash to their boyfriend/husband/flavor of the month.  Then he spends it on flashy rims, saltwater aquariums, but somehow the mortgage is in default.

One of my goals through this blog is to inspire my fellow entertainers.  We have it pretty darn good!  Do you know how many people are looking for a high paying, all cash job that will NEVER go out of business.  There will always be wealthy men who want to spend time with pretty girls.

The trick in not falling victim to the pitfalls of this industry is to know what your other options are.  Once you see how good you have it, take advantage of it!  There is no reason to not go into work 4-5 nights a week.  There is no reason to take a smoke break when the floor is slammed.  There is no reason to go home when customers are still on the floor and want dances.  There is no reason to get burnt out when you only work 2 nights a week!

DBacks made the playoffs!  That means Christie’s will be slammed on Wednesday and Thursday night!  Betcha know where I’ll be!

I saw this article when I logged off of hotmail.

http://lifestyle.msn.com/relationships/couplesandmarriage/articlemc.aspx?cp-documentid=5352156&page=1

If you don’t want to read the whole article, I found these snippets very interesting.

Of course, our generation can afford to chuck the Cinderella story when the glass slipper doesn’t fit. While our grandmothers were forced to remain shackled to unhappy unions for monetary reasons, most women today have the financial wherewithal to cry uncle and bolt whenever we get uncomfortable.

More and more women have that throwaway mentality with their first marriage — the ‘I want it now’ attitude.” Until, of course, you don’t.

And that’s just our prerogative, says Generation Me, fingers poised above the do-over button. We can pick and choose among limitless possibilities seemingly unattached to consequence because today’s 20-somethings are living out an extended adolescence in a manner unlike any generation before them. We’re still knocking around and figuring it out, often on our parents’ dime.

It’s easy to write these women off as callous or self-absorbed. And yet on some level, they just might be pioneers: Why stay put in an empty shell of a marriage — an arrangement on paper only — instead of calling it what it is? “This generation is reinventing marriage,” says Paul.

“I think women our age are like, We’re either going to fix this, or we’re going to end it

and that’s for the better,” says Kay Moffett, coauthor of Not Your Mother’s Divorce. She married her own starter husband in a funky, flamingo-filled Florida wedding at 27, then divorced him four years later after realizing she could never make the real commitment of having children with him. But don’t call her divorce a failure; in this enlightened world, it was simply a relationship that ran its course. “I think maybe we’re moving more toward a serial-marriage society — maybe you have three marriages in your life and several different careers. That’s where I’m heading,” she says.

As a married woman with a successful career, the ability to provide my own financial security, and thousands of “other” options thrust at me every night I work…I can empathize with the above sentiment…but I don’t know if I buy it.

50% of all first marriages end in divorce.  67% of all second marriages also fail (this includes marriages where only one partner is a divorcee).  No one enters into marriage thinking they’re going to get divorced, but the odds are stacked against us from the very start!

Sure, there have been times I’ve wanted to pack up and go back to Philly.  Ugh, GOD that thought didn’t last very long!  At one point this summer, I had to give some “tough love” when I felt my better half wasn’t pulling his weight.  After his intial backlash where we missed our FREE dinner in Chicago, he has since stepped up to the plate.  (I’m still pissed about missing free food….)

I think the problem lies in accountability.  No one wants to be accountable for their actions anymore.  It’s always someone else’s fault, or “I can’t because….(fill in the blank with lame excuse)”

People just aren’t accountable for their relationships anymore.  It’s always “He did this” or “She did that” or “He cheated on me, so I cheated on him to get back at him”

And it’s not just strippers!  I was on the treadmill at the gym chatting with a woman who takes my classes.  I must have “tell me your life story” emblazoned on my forehead because people spill their guts to me.  Anywho, she thinks her husband is going to leave her…so instead of being accountable for her actions, communicating with her spouse, and finding the root of their marital issues…she’s trying to get pregnant.  She stopped taking her pill and is using an ovulation predictor to figure out the exact best day for conception.  Apparently they don’t have sex very often (hmmmm maybe that’s the root of their marital issues) because she kept saying that she doesn’t want to “miss the best day”  I told her to just screw him everyday, ya just might like it!  An absolute look of horror crept over her face.

So here’s the kicker….she’s not doing this to save her marriage….she’s doing it because (direct quote) “I’ll get more money in child support than I will with alimony.”  I almost fell off the treadmill!!!

Here is a woman, who is planning on bringing another life into the world just so she can have a monthly paycheck!   I don’t know if I should be disgusted by her lack of accountability or feel bad for her because she is a user and probably will never be able to sustain a meaningful relationship.  She prides herself on being a nice church-going girl too.

A “user”  Remember the term from high school?  A person who uses someone to get what they want.  That is what some people seem to be turning marriage into.  Some use their spouses for financial security.  Others use their spouses for great sex until he/she gets fat.  Then they discard them for a “newer” model.

Duh!  No wonder our divorce rates are so high!  You can’t discard people!  Of course 2nd marriages fail at a higher rate than 1st marriages do.  If you weren’t accountable for the first relationship, why would the 2nd (or 3rd or 4th) be any different?

As an entertainer, I see customers ebb and flow with their current relationships.  They come see me regularly when they are unattached.  Then they get a girlfriend/fiance/third wife and disappear for weeks, months, years.  Then they resurface again, bewildered about how they thought this one was different.

Yeah….well.  Maybe that one was different, but you are still the same.

So, everytime I start having thoughts that the grass is greener in Philly (hahaha) or that I want to reclaim my independence, or that I want to get bigger boobs and travel the country on the stripper circuit (well, I DO want to do that, but I don’t need bigger boobs)….

….I open up my wedding album.  I look around my house.  I sit out in the grass under my fruit trees that hubby so painstakingly planted by hand.

I have my independence.  I make my own financial security.  And I’m accountable for the relationships that I have entered.

Besides, I had such a fairytale wedding…it would be such a shame to draw mustaches on this.

Sept 10

Why do people settle?

They settle in sub-par relationships.  They settle with humdrum careers.  They settle with their mediocre salary.  They settle with their annual vacation to the same place year after year.  They settle with not rocking the boat because they’re afraid of “what if…”

Most people doubt their full potential.  They feel like things happen to them rather than taking the initiative to make things happen for them.  Its easier that way.  It sure is a lot easier than failure.

I took a risk 8 years ago.  I found myself settling into a disasterous relationship, a crummy teaching career making peanuts, and my only “vacations” were to Philly to visit Mom.  I wanted more, and I knew I could have it if I just tried something different.

Maybe I’m a dreamer, but thats ok.  The world needs dreamers or else there wouldn’t be any art, music, architecture…or anything really.  I recently re-read Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich.  What a great psych-me-up book.

I’ve felt like I’ve been settlin’ lately.  But where is the line between greed and motivation.  I have a wonderful husband, a profitable career, I did go to Philly this summer, but there were other vacations too….

Mom always said to me, “You’re never satisfied, you get what you want, and then you always want more…”  Is that really so bad?

I chalk that up to Only Child Syndrome.

According to Dr Kevin Leman in The Birth Order Book, birth order has a powerful influence on who you are, who you marry, and the job you chose.  Did you know that of the first 23 astronauts in space, 21 of them were only children and the other two were first borns?

Only children and first borns tend to be the movers and shakers of society.  Goal oriented and success driven, their drive for perfection is how they make things happen for themselves.  Ironically these same traits usually work against them in personal relationships when their lofty expectations aren’t met.

Just how serious a problem is perfectionism?  If we lived in a vacuum, none.  However even only children have to learn to get along with other people.  I had dinner the other night with a good friend who is an only child.  Her boyfriend is an only child too.  I have never seen such a breakdown in communication than when two onlies both refuse to let go of their “perfect idea of the way things should be” to give in to the other.

So what is my perfect idea of the way things should be? I dunno.  And I’m learning that it doesn’t matter because it will never be perfect.

It can still be better though.

Other great only children: Abraham Lincoln, Leonardo DiVinci, Gerald Ford, Franklin D Roosevelt, Ted Koppel, Walter Cronkite, Joe Montana, Indira Ghandi, Isaac Newton, T Boone Pickens, Carl Icahn….I’ll bet they never settled.

Not an uncommon theme I deal with on a daily basis.

“My marriage is falling apart.  My wife and I just don’t have the same feelings for each other than when we first started dating.  I guess I just don’t love her anymore and she doesn’t love me.  The feeling just isn’t there anymore….What can ya do?”

Men and women have such different methods for dealing with break ups.  Women eat ice cream and talk it out with their best girl friends.  It’s a way of bonding: sharing emotional experiences and helping each other get through hard times is what makes female friendships stronger.  The locker room at the strip club is ALWAYS full of relationship drama!

On the other hand, men don’t talk about their feelings.  When a guy breaks up with a girl, his friends don’t ask him how he feels.  Now, I’ve never been in one, but I don’t think that guys stand around the locker room consoling the guy who just found out his wife’s been cheating on him. Hell no!  They get him drunk and take him to the strip club for the Divorce Party.  No kidding, Divorce Parties are just as common as Bachelor Parties these days.

However, after the Divorce Party is over… the guy is left alone for the first time in years.  So now it’s Saturday night, he doesn’t have a date, and all his attached friends are out with their mates…what does he do?  Usually the man’s first step is to go back to the strip club where he had his Divorce Party. Hmmm, maybe Avalon’s working tonight… He proceeds to get drunk, hands the VIP hostess his credit card, and pours out all the pent up emotions that he can’t talk about with his buddies.  Alcohol is the ultimate truth serum.

So, back to the original question.  What is love?

The best definition I’ve found is by Steven Covey, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, page 80.

Reactive people make love a feeling.  Hollywood has scripted us to believe that we are not responsible for our emotions; that we are a product of our “feelings.”  Is this reality?  If our feelings control our actions, it is because we have abdicated our responsibility and empowered them to do so.

Proactive people make love a verb: things you do, sacrifices you make.  It is a value that is actualized through loving actions.  Proactive people subordinate their feelings to this value. Love, the feeling, is a product of love, the action.  With lots of work, it can be recaptured.

Usually this advice comes a bit too late for the divorce-ee.  He’ll show up a few more times on a Saturday night until he’s ready to start dating.  After a few more therapy sessions he starts to get it, moves on, and disappears from the strip club until his next bachelor party.