I was reading an interesting piece in The Mail today  by Clare Catford who went into rehab for her love addiction.  I was especially intersted with one of her comments

Dan and I dated for a year and the relationship was quickly intense sexually and emotionally, because that’s what I craved."

For Clare, it marked the start of a decade of unhealthy, addictive relationships with men.

"I finished with Dan after that exciting initial period ended because I craved that intensity again…

It is this intensive initial period that fascinates me because I have always believd that is what LL provides best - what I call the ‘pink fluffy period’ at the start of the relationship when everything is an explosion of chemicals and hormones.  It is what the Observer quoted me as calling ‘the crack cocaine’ of relationships.  

"I was with heroin and cocaine addicts in rehab," says Clare, "and I realised that our addictions were fundamentally the same.

I see this addiction time and time again especially amongst longterm private clients and I think it is essentially different and more interesting than the ‘I want a shag’ brigade who congregate in the sex industry and porn parlours.   I think Clare’s need to go into rehab is a trifle extreme and although she says it is now under control I have my doubts.  I know in my own case I am a ‘lapsed’ smoker but there are times I am am so so close to having a ciggie

One of the really great things about LL is the offline social side of the community.  Tonight I am really looking forward to meeting up with 15 or so of our forum users for a drinks party in London.  These things happen spontaneously, someone is down in London on business pops up a post on the forum to see if anyone fancies meeting up.  Abracadabra!   We have a drinks party with 15+ men and women spending a fun evening - nothing sleazy, just a group of chums having a laugh and a gossip.  As one of our users said on TV - ‘Loving links is a sef-selecting group of nice people’.   Hard to believe that ‘nice’ adult dating services can survive and prosper in the face of  the anonymous and agressive sex industry on the net.  In fact this has been one of our best months ever and with a load of press and TV in the pipeline I am confident we will be helping quality peope enjoy quality extramarital fun for many years to come.

be very careful when you send texts to a contact.  I had feedback yesterday from a female client who was texted  on a saturday by a guy she had recently met.   This is just not on!  If a woman is married you cannot text her on weekends unless she has especially asked you to do so.  All texting should be kept to weekday working hours.  I know how easy it is to send a casual text but think a moment beore you push the button, just because your partner is not sitting next to you at that moment it doesnt mean that the person you are texting is equally free.  Emails tend to be less of a problem but texts are potentially intrusive and must be sent with great care.

Running a website is a very odd form of commerce it seems to go in peaks and troughs.  This last week it was incredibly busy - it was almost as if we were a vortex sucking in all the spare testoterone from the country as subscribers flooded in.  Now all is peaceful again and I can catch up on admin.  In 12 years of this game the only pattern is that there is no pattern.  The only day we have almost zero activity is Xmas day.  We expect a lot of activity though later this month with a planned editorial piece in a major national publication. 

I was just reading the latest issue of Scarlet magazine (I get it free ‘cos we advertise) and they have a wonderful agaony aunt column.   Some girl is concerned that her new boyfriend only gets turned on if she shoves a butt plug up his arse.  Advice ranges from - ‘didnt the faintest lighbulb go on in your mind that he might be less than 100% heterosexual?’ to the ‘let’s try a super new sex thing called normal naked sex’  Also one advisor said at least he doesnt want to shove it up your arse!   Scarlet is wonderful fun  and it seems to be doing very well we welcome their readers with open arms.

I had coffee this morning with a neighbour, a really bright woman who does market research.  She told me that from her experience and the women she had interviewed over the years that adultery was normally a guy thing.  That men were genetically programmed to play away whereas women were basically faithful.  She was startled when I explained to her that Loving Links is propelled by the women and that it is the women who drive the service.  I mentioned all this to a woman who signed up with me later in the day, a senior legal consultant and she had a good laugh.  ‘What a strange opinion’ she said ‘ what sort of women has she been interviewing - she ought to talk to me and my friends’.  She then launched into a wonderful collection of anecdotes of her extra-curricular pastimes with a vocabulary that wouldnt be out of place in a men’s locker room.  I am sure I would also have got a chuckle out of the middle aged, middle class female lawyer I saw yesterday who brought me up to speed about her dating this month.   No , dear reader, adultery is not about a bunch of guys running around with erections looking for release its equally about women looking for satisaction outside their marriages and being prepared to fnd it.

I have never felt closer to my global mission than I did this week when I signed up 2 delightful Zimbabwean women - as bright and as fresh as a tropical garden.  Both were graduate students from excellent families and I had a long chat with them over the election fiasco.  Although in their early 20’s they seemed so much more mature than English grls of a similar age who I would be very reluctant to take into our service.  Its a while since we have had African clients althoough I also took on a French woman of African descent the other week.  She, however, saw herself as "french’ which bodes well for ethnic integration in Europe.

This is a great piece I grabbed from the onion - a splendid spoof confession on religious infidelity.  I feel much the same about supermarket loyalty cards - I betray Tesco each time I willfully enter Waitrose..

With Jesus as my personal Savior, I felt like I had it all. But then we hit a rough patch, and before long, I was beginning to question both my faith in Him and His commitment to me. At one point, it seemed the relationship was doomed. But I did a lot of soul searching, and together we found a solution that fit both of our needs by adopting an alternative theological lifestyle.

Now that I’m in an open relationship with the Lord, I feel a greater spiritual satisfaction than I’ve ever known.

It all started when I was 16 and first asked Jesus to enter my heart. It was incredible. He filled me up with His love. I’d never been redeemed before, but with Jesus it felt so right, as if the sins of the world had been lifted off my shoulders. For a while there, we were communing via the sacraments several times a week! And every night we spent what seemed like hours in long, mutually satisfying sessions of prayer. I worshipped Him.

Soon the honeymoon period ended, however. Whenever I spoke to Him, He seemed distracted and distant—sometimes I wondered if He was listening at all. Daily devotionals felt like we were just going through the motions of repetitive, meaningless dogma. A few months later, I made a potentially disastrous discovery: I found out I wasn’t the only one He was sanctifying.

One day, I overheard my coworker Sally talking on the phone about how much God had helped her through her recent divorce. She said she "saw the light" after just one night with Him. At first I kept thinking, "Is she talking about the same Savior?" The next Sunday, I followed her to an unfamiliar church on the edge of town and just sat in my car for a while in disbelief. I finally walked up to the front door, but before I could open it, I heard the unmistakable sounds of ecstatic praise coming from inside. There was no denying it. I’d caught Sally red-handed, making a joyful noise unto my own special Lord.

I was devastated. How could He do this to me? Here I had let Him into my soul in the most intimate way possible, and He had betrayed our personal bond by accepting the thanks and adulation of Sally, and God knows how many others as well. I was humiliated I ever let Him wash my soul in His blood in the first place.

But I began to realize that He wasn’t the only one who needed more. Hadn’t I been growing tired of reciting the same old liturgy week after week? So I steeled myself with a stiff drink of communion wine, opened up my Bible, and confronted Him. In His divinely inspired scriptures, I learned that I hadn’t driven Him to seek out others. He just needed to redeem as many sinners as He could to fulfill His destiny as Messiah. It was part of who He was.

If He could forgive me all of my trespasses, shouldn’t I do the same for Him? He saved my soul, and now it was up to me to save the relationship. I decided then and there to start experimenting outside the boundaries of traditional monotheistic worship.

To be honest, I’d been flirting with polytheism all along by accepting the doctrine of the Trinity and simultaneously worshipping the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. If I could see all three of them as viable deities, why not others? I took it slow at first. I’d always been a strict Protestant, but I started practicing some Catholicism on the side. Before long, I was meditating on the Buddha. I felt serenity coursing through my body like never before!

The Lord my God is a jealous God, and He didn’t like the idea at first. He made it very clear that I should take no God before Him—but he never mentioned anything about taking one after Him! And now that I’ve opened myself up to exciting new spiritual experiences, our bond is stronger than ever.

I’ve gone to Native American drum circles, New Age channeling workshops, and Shinto temples. I hung a mezuzah over my door, and last summer I made a pilgrimage to Mecca. I even spent a weekend in a no-holds-barred, worship free-for-all with two dozen Hindu gods!

See, we have an understanding: He can save any sinner He wants, and I can worship any deity I want. But we are still together. Some may think it’s strange, but I’m no longer worried about other people’s unenlightened moralizing. My spiritual life is better then ever! I love God—heck, I love all of them—and I am one deeply, deeply fulfilled woman.

HAHA  some craigslist joker ran the following ad that sopmeone spotted:

Too cheap for Loving Links - 44 (East/Central London)

Reply to: pers-642963470@craigslist.org
Date: 2008-04-15, 11:23AM BST

Okay, so maybe 85 quid for two months’ ‘premium’ access isn’t outrageous, but it seems like a lot to me!

I’m looking for a long-term ‘thing’ with a woman my age - likely married or in a relationship (as am I), but looking for excitement, fun, and really wild things. A lover, friend, confidente - an interest in rock music would help, but that really would be a bonus.

My keywords are: musical, geeky, mathematical, moderately twisted, literate, six-foot-three, hairy, well-covered, brown hair, brown eyes, dominant-but-caring, open-minded, left-field, left-wing(ish), extrovert, introvert (yes, it’s possible!), tactile, cunning, funny (in my mind, as Izzard would have it), generous, free-spirited, orally-fixated (yeah, yeah, yeah), non-smoker, very light drinker (cheap date), curry-loving, kinky, green (in an environmental sense), discreet, body-sex, mind-sex, mind-otherthings, friendly.

…and yours?

Really had me chuckling..

I was just reading the Evening Standard and its profile on Nicola Horlick  a truly iconic superwoman. Ms Horlick talks about the big seduction moment with her new love Martin when he held her hand and kissed her at the National Theatre - she knew then thet ‘that was it’.  How romantic and how in contrast to another piece I was reading on Craigs List about what women really want in the seduction process.  I will quote it below in its entirety rather than just give you the link.  That way I get to have some interesting words on my own blog and you can have a chuckle without navigating elsewhere.  I wonder if Nicola would agree with the following perspective:

‘Look, I know you men have it difficult. Women are just about impossible to understand, much less please. In a post-feminist society, you never know exactly what you should be doing. Women are bloody picky, I know we are. It can be scary, too, when women freak out about what appear to be benign issues. And men who do their best to be respectful, female-positive humans, I salute you, I do.

*New point of clarification - some people have brought up some really great issues in response to this post, so let me say this: I don’t mean to imply that all women like to be treated like whores. I do mean to say that most women I know have told me that they like sex rougher than most men give it to them. Rough does NOT equal chains and bondage. And this applies to the bedroom only, and does not mean that she wants you to choose her dinner for her, or treat her like less of a person. **Some women have said that they don’t like it rough and what the hell am I thinking? Well, girls, you’re in the minority. HOWEVER, all women need to remember that, in addition to be straight forward about your sexual desires, you need to be straight forward about your sexual limits. Don’t be afraid to ask for more, but when something feels wrong, say so. Don’t ever do something you don’t want to do in silence and then blame the guy. Silence is dangerous.

I can’t resist reprinting in its entirety this seminal piece form Craigs list.  It sums up dating in an age of MTV-type porn www.redtube.com  and the total objectivisation and reification of love-making.  God I sound like an intellectual (I probably was once).  But truly this statement puts the point so elegantly and profoundly I post it for you below.

OK - I have been trying to meet a "nice" guy for quite a while now, using both traditional methods (set-ups through friends, the bar scene, work, etc.) and non-traditional (i.e., internet dating), and have had abysmal results. By "nice", I don’t mean a bible-thumping, republican, up-tight putz who could make a diamond out of a lump of coal planted firmly up his a-hole. I mean a guy who is capable of having a decent conversation that doesn’t center around the size of his cock; who is aware of the world around him; who is respectful of people and animals; who doesn’t clip his fucking fingernails on the train; who makes me laugh; who parties like a rock star when he has the time; and who can fuck me like a champ after checking his hang-ups at the door. Someone with a brain. A sense of humor. A job. I’m a busy, successful, attractive woman with a professional degree and a great circle of friends. I have a life. What I don’t have, however, is a lot of time to wade through a bunch of bullshit. If you just want to get laid, fine; just say that up front so I can move on. Don’t make me waste my time exchanging e-mails for days, then stop writing after I don’t want to answer the "money" questions after knowing you for 3.5 hours, like 1) what’s the craziest sex you’ve ever had? 2) how often do you masturbate? 3) do you have a nice, clean ass, with clean ass odor? (I couldn’t make that up) and 4) do you like oral? (DUH??!!?? WHO DOESN’T??) Apparently, no matter how pretty, sexy, funny, smart, successful, sweet, caring, interesting etc. I am, it all boils down to one thing: fucking. Fine. I give up. You want to fuck? I can fuck.

See, I do have what you want! Don’t tell ME law school was all for naught. . .
w4m