Dear Dana is a bi-weekly advice column for humans who engage in romantic relationships. Please send your dilemmas, issues, conundrums, assumptions, conflicts, anxieties, worriments, obstacles, complications, predicaments, queries, questions, and any other synonyms for “problems” to deardana@rolereboot.org. Dear Dana, My friend is getting married, I’m her bridesmaid, and it’s getting strained between us. We’ve been friends […]
The more people I can love, the greater love I have to give overall. For years, I appeared destined for one of those single lives depicted in Hollywood rom-coms—that friend of the popular girl who can never seem to snag a man. A cursory look at my biological family, and one can surmise why I […]
It took me a long, long time to understand that addiction isn’t the same as love. Trigger warning: abuse in relationships I don’t know that I’d ever given much thought to the concept of emotional abuse in relationships. Or, I thought of it as something clear, stark, the menacing man standing over the cowering woman, […]
As soon as someone starts talking about how enlightened they are, it just gives their shadow more room to act out. Portland, Oregon, based therapists Gwen Cody and Mark Wald have been doing body-oriented psychotherapy and sexuality related work for over 20 years. Their work with individuals and groups as well as leading workshops offers valid […]
Even when we’re supposedly the ones being pleased, we still feel our duty is first and foremost to please our partners. About a year ago, I ran into a guy I’d been on two dates with at a Metric concert. I’d declined the third date because I wasn’t really feeling it, but that night I […]
The biggest thing that makes our relationship work is our willingness to make it work: to choose to be kind to each other, to show appreciation for the other’s small and large acts of kindness, to find moments of connection and romance in the mundane routine of our lives. I don’t suppose it is possible […]
Dear Dana is a bi-weekly advice column for humans who engage in romantic relationships. Please send your dilemmas, issues, conundrums, assumptions, conflicts, anxieties, worriments, obstacles, complications, predicaments, queries, questions, and any other synonyms for “problems” to deardana@rolereboot.org. Dear Dana, I’ve been estranged from my family (father, stepmother, and two brothers) for the past six years. I’ve suffered […]
What I hope for my daughters—for young women everywhere— is an authentic experience of sexuality, free from self-consciousness, shame, or violation. When Ariana Grande and Miley Cyrus sang together at One Love Manchester, an all-star benefit for victims of the May 22 terrorist attack, they showed tenderness instead of hotness, a shift from their usual […]
