I’ve never been the girl to think about my future too much or obsess over meeting Mr. Right. I’ve met a whole lot of Mr. Wrongs lately so I’ve been happy hanging out with Mr. Right-Nows instead.

Even when I was little, unlike many other girls, I never ever fantasized about my future wedding… until now.

I’m 21 and I’ve got the bridal bug. It’s all I can think about! I don’t know if it’s all the “Say Yes to the Dress” episodes I’ve been watching (I’m obsesssssed) or if my biological clock is fiercely ticking faster, but all I can think about is weddings, weddings, weddings.

Over the past few months I’ve gone from an I’m-never-getting-married mentality to I-want a-short-ceremony-on-the-beach-250-guests-top-and-a-Monique-Lhuilier-dress-from-the-2010-spring-collection mentality. And my sudden interest in floral arrangements and color palettes is starting to freak me out.

I realize a wedding and a marriage are two completely separate concepts: a wedding lasts a day, while marriage is supposed to last forever. But I realllly want to have that one day of planned perfection right now.

Does anyone else feel this way? And should I feel bad or pathetic for feeling the way I do?

I’ve always been a huge supporter of single womanhood and feeling complete without the presence of a man or relationship, so why all of a sudden do I feel that I need a WEDDING to feel whole?

Am I starving for some attention? Is this just the natural effect of a society that has us believe from a young age that women aren’t fully complete until they’re married? Or is my uncharacteristic desire for romantic bliss a sign that I’m desperate for a relationship?

These are all questions that I just don’t have the answers to. But Dr. Phil does, obviously. According to him, if a woman is feeling any type of pressure to get married or the desire to get married (without the presence of a boyfriend…let alone a fiancé) she has lots of issues that can only be solved by these types of self-probing questions.

I’m not too keen on Dr. Phil (he seriously creeps me out), so does anyone else have better advice for me? Help me, and fast, before I pack an overnight back and camp out for Kleinfeld’s next blowout sale.

Catch Jay Leno at 10 pm…every weeknight.

Gmail: now with to-do lists!

Homegirl lights her cheating husband’s junk on fire.

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Want equal rights? Call in “gay” to work tomorrow.

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Take criticism gracefully.

Everyone loves LiLo’s leggings.

Whoops! An NFL wardrobe malfunction.

But allowing your husband to get one? Encouraging and then laughing with him about it afterwards? Telling him how cute it was that he had a hard time finding someone to finally do it?

WTF.

Now, I’m not one of those rabid girlfriends who beats their boyfriend for accidentally checking out the boobs of another woman — hell, I’m not even one of those girls who won’t let her dude go to a strip club — but I really don’t think I’d spend my time convincing my husband to let some other chick give him a handjob for $55 with tip.

My reasoning is less about the possibility of him getting ideas and then cheating (I believe if a guy is gonna cheat he’s gonna cheat, no matter what you say or do), and more about the weirdness of encouraging a husband to seek outside sexual gratification. I mean, if I’m his wife, shouldn’t I be the one providing all the sex acts? Is that what you kind of promise when you get married — that you’re the one who will be giving all the handjobs from now on?

What do you think? If you were married, would you encourage your guy to get a “happy ending”?

Possibly.

Dr. Laura Schlessinger has never been one to shrink from controversy and she leaped headlong into one on Monday when she appeared on the Today Show and said that if a husband cheats, his wife may share some of the blame.

“When the wife does not focus in on the needs and the feelings, sexually, personally, to make him feel like a man, to make him feel like a success, to make him feel like her hero, he’s very susceptible to the charm of some other woman making him feel what he needs,” the popular psychologist and radio personality said.

Now, I hate Dr. Laura with the fire of a thousand suns, so anything that comes out of her mouth leaves me ready to come out fighting against her or makes me turn the ignore button on in my head, but after initially dismissing her as being wrong yet again, I thought about what she’d said.

I shudder to type this, but: she’s on to something.

Reverse the usage of wife/husband and he/she. How do you feel about her statement now?

If you say that what Dr. Laura is saying applies to BOTH sexes, then you have the answer to our poll. It absolutely enrages me that she didn’t go further to say that the same thing applies to cheating women but that’s annoying Dr. Laura for you (I still hate her guts). Both people can share some of the blame when it comes to cheating, though I will say that it is not necessarily shared equally. The cheater does shoulder more because it’s plain wrong and no one deserves to be cheated on.

I realize that the culpability game is not always so black and white and that there are instances in which the person who has been wronged has been an amazing partner and the other person is too entrenched in their own issues, be it substance abuse, addiction of any kind, or just plain egotism. Who knows what was going on in the Spitzer household – maybe it was his ego that made him think that he wouldn’t get caught. Maybe she neglected his needs. Maybe they neglected each other’s needs. (Though given my opinion of my former Governor, in my head she was a great wife and he’s a freak who believed that he could get away with infidelity).

I’ve been a cheater and I’ve been cheated on. For the cheating that I’ve done in college, I cannot place any blame on my then-boyfriends. I was drunk-–that was my excuse, meaning that I had no excuse. But in the long term for real relationships that I’ve had, I’ve held myself and the guys that I have dated to a much higher standard.

In long relationships and especially marriage, it somehow becomes more complicated because when things get hard or hectic, you tend to neglect your relationship. Not because you consciously are abandoning it, but because you think that it’s strong enough to take care of itself. And that’s just not how things are.

It’s when you aren’t careful that the distance between the two of you can start to push you apart.

It is the space between that develops when our needs are not met that allows one person to consider cheating to fulfill the void.

Cheating is NOT an appropriate response to feeling neglected, unloved or unappreciated but it is a symptom of perhaps a larger problem in the relationship.

Ideally, we all would be able to talk to our partners when we’re feeling such disconnect. But it’s the disconnect that makes us fearful to broach any uncomfortable topics – including how we’re feeling like we’ve slipped down on the list of important things in our partner’s life.

Have an opinion on cheating? We want to hear it.

Are you one of those girls with a problem with strip/burlesque clubs? If the answer is YES, please proceed to paragraph number 1 and then read 2. If the answer is NO, please proceed to paragraph number 2.

1. Well, alright. I get it. You have respect for a woman’s body and sexuality, right? Watching men drool over a woman’s body with whom they have no personal, let alone emotional, connection with whatsoever is sickening, right?

Something about the placing of a dollar bill in a thong makes you want to barf. And the idea of your boyfriend/husband/love interest being the guy with the dollar bill is just thoroughly intolerable, right? After all, if you two are involved, he should only think about and see your body sexually, right? He should not be involved with the chauvinist society of strip club going men. That would make him much more like a slime ball than the perfect guy you THINK you’re dating.

But THINK is the key word here, ladies. I beg of you to place yourself in the mindset of the girls who have proceeded directly to paragraph 2. Suspend your opinions at least momentarily if you can.

2. Girls who are OK with strip clubs seem to all agree on a few things:

A. Strip clubs are not degrading. Rather, they’re kind of exalting of the woman’s body if anything. These girls are making so much money for a reason: they are harnessing their sexuality and empowering themselves with it.

B. All men have a percentage of pig in them. If you’re going to go ahead and believe your man when he tells you that a gorgeous, naked woman dancing in front of him is not arousing; then you’re an idiot.

This is what I call an animal instinct. It’s there, it’s natural, and it has NOTHING to do with whether or not he loves you. Strip clubs do bring out this element in men. But if you keep trying to repress this, you might as well go date the woman you’re trying to turn him into.

C. We all know that confidence is what’s sexiest of all. Having had friends who have been and are strippers, I can tell you one thing for damn sure: A girl who hates stripping doesn’t last more than a few nights…if even one.

Strippers today, in a world where women can get any job of their choosing (even without a degree, they could choose something besides stripping if they wanted), are confident. They are not being forced into a bad, dark place where they have to take off their clothes as their only means to eat. Instead, they have actually embraced their sexuality on a professional level.

I must admit, if I had been reading this blog, I would have had to go straight to paragraph 2. Having once had a serious issue with porn and strip clubs and all other outlets of “inappropriate” sexuality; I have finally learned that sex comes in many levels…but primarily: Lustsex and Lovesex.

If your lovesex with a gentleman is truly lovesex; lustsex poses no threat to you. Remember, confidence is what’s sexy and there’s nothing more unsexy than a girl whining about the guys wanting to go to the strip club to celebrate something some Saturday night instead of coming to your tea party. If this is you, again, I beg you, just please go date the woman you’re trying to turn him into instead. (But let me warn you: she’ll probably be into hot chicks being naked, too. I’m just sayin’…)

A youth instructor like myself, we spent our days holding up languid 3-year-olds on the bunny slope and chasing screaming kindergarteners down larger hills, hoping against hope no one slammed into a tree in the process.

Being in a high stress (and FREEZING) situation supplied us with an instant bond, and we soon found ourselves skiing together during our free time and discussing our lives on chairlifts.

During out time together, it began to dawn on me that he was everything I had ever looked for in a guy: smart, funny, good with kids, active, gentle, and giving. He liked his parents, wrote music on his off time, and always waited for me whenever I fell into a giant snowdrift.

Basically, he was awesome. The only issue? I wasn’t attracted to him in the slightest.

He wasn’t ugly. It didn’t hurt to look him in the face or anything; he just wasn’t my type. Nothing about him made me jittery or full of butterflies, my heart never jumped when he walked into a room, and those long chairlift rides were never awkward with anticipation.

I didn’t fantasize once about kissing him.

Having an amazingly platonic friend was fine, but I often caught myself watching him coax a toddler to put on giant ski boots and wishing with all my might that I was attracted to him. If only! I’d think, squinting to see if I could make something happen. If only I could just find something…

But I never could. No matter how perfect this guy was in every way, I could feel nothing for him except comfortable nonsexual affection.

He was an Almost Husband—a guy who’s perfect in every way except for one, and that one is a deal breaker.

Sometimes, AHs (or AWs, Almost Wives) come in the form of a gay man or woman, a person you feel nothing but platonic emotions for because of obvious sexual preferences. But when an AH or AW could potentially be your significant other, that’s when it gets frustrating.

Everything is in place! you think. Why can’t I just make it happen?!

But try as you might, you can’t squeeze out even the slightest drop of sexual magnetism.

AHs and AWs are truly one of life’s most annoying occurrences.

Have your own AW or AW story? Commiserate!

“Lovely Bones” is based off of the popular book of the same name by Alice Sebold, centering on a murdered 14-year-old girl watching the way her death has affected everyone close to her. Gosling was slated to play her father, and decided to gain some weight to help him seem age appropriate.

According to the Los Angeles Times, when Gosling walked onset, bearded and heavier than usual, Peter Jackson became slightly bent out of shape. The director was “still expecting some movie star allure” from Gosling, “not paunch and a beard”.

First of all, if it’s Ryan Gosling, it doesn’t matter if he’s got antennas and three arms—he’ll still give an amazing performance and be alluring while doing it. Besides, when did a beard and a little paunch hurt anyone? Has anyone seen Vince Vaughn lately? How about Benicio Del Toro? Tom Hanks?

Anyway, even with a few extra pounds, he still looks good to me.

As far as I’m concerned, Ryan Gosling can do no wrong. Especially now that he’s single again. If he wants to run around Los Angeles (or, God willing, New York City) naked while screaming about how aliens are about to land and capture us all, he could do that, and I’d still love him.

So Ryan, baby, why don’t you give me a call? Peter Jackson may not like paunch…but I’ve never had a problem with it.

You can star in my movie any day.

At the gym this morning I caught a segment on some talk show about cheating. Basically, the show was about agencies that helped people find out if their mate was cheating on them, and if such spy agencies were even ethical.

One of the panelists on the show was “relationship expert” and author Steve Santagati, a “former model and bad boy” who penned The Manual: A True Bad Boy Explains How Men Think, Date, and Mate–and What Women Can Do to Come Out on Top.

I’ve caught Santagati’s TV appearances before, and each time I see his smug face on camera I can’t help but throw up a little and shake my head at all the women who actually buy anything written by such an obvious egoist.

My distaste aside, Santagati never actually said anything revolting during those appearances, so I had nothing to confirm my gut reaction—until this morning.

When it came time for Mr. “Manual” to weigh in on the cheating issue, Santagati had a whole bunch of things on his “Not Cheating” list.

Flirting with a girl who’s not your girlfriend? Not cheating. Sending flirty text messages to a girl who’s not your girlfriend? Not cheating. Getting the number of a girl who’s not your girlfriend? Not cheating. Walking into a hotel with a girl who’s not your girlfriend with the intent of sleeping with her but not actually doing it because the girl backs out? Not cheating.

After watching video footage of a guy who was married for 15 years walk into a hotel with a spy agency “decoy” (a woman who pretends to want a suspected cheater), Santagati maintained that because the decoy pulled out before intercourse took place, the deadbeat husband was totally not cheating!

The women on the panel obviously went after Santagati, and after a few minutes of trying to defend himself, the “relationship expert” reverted back to the idiot I always knew he was by shouting something very close to “oh please, if I put my hand in your hair you’re coming home with me tonight!”

Santagati’s caveman speak (aka: I could totally make you cheat simply by being my douchebaggy self) hurt his already stupid cheating argument by illustrating the fact that only straight-up assholes think intending to cheat doesn’t count as cheating itself.

“Doing anything you wouldn’t do in front of the person you love” is how one panelist on the show described cheating, and I completely agree with her. Nobody needs a “relationship expert” (or “manwhore”) to define the complexities of the act.

Cheating is simple; those who make it complicated and open-ended are people like Santagati—self-servers who most likely think of doing it themselves.