I often find myself writing about self-love, simply because I know that that is the key to accomplishing absolutely anything we want in life. Self-love breeds confidence, and once we’re confident, the sky’s the limit! I think that we tend to overcomplicate things, or get “stuck in the muck” of what happened in the past.

Memo to the ladies: Your boyfriend jerking off to Perfect 10 or the occasional American Apparel ad is not cheating. Masturbating to a hot message that he got from a new 17-year-old “friend” he met on Facebook is. See the difference there? We hear a lot of complaints, especially from women, about concerns regarding their partners’ insistent masturbation. “Would you consider this cheating?” some ask. While no question is a stupid question, such queries do give me pause. Catholic guilt aside, when did self-love become tantamount to infidelity?

Ahh, that little man in the boat. How glad I was to meet you! And I wasn’t alone. While men joking about jerking off, spanking the money, choking the chicken, whatever is par for the course in most locker rooms, women discussing their masturbation habits is far less…known or encouraged. But not any longer! I asked a ton of women for the nitty-gritty on their self-love lives. All the details, after the jump…

May is National Masturbation Month. In the mid-‘90s, when U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jocelyn Elders recommended masturbation be taught as a form of safe sex, she was fired.  To protest, Good Vibrations, a San Francisco based sex toy company run by Dr. Carol Queen, started the annual celebration of self-love. This year, the company will host its 11th Live Masturbation-A-Thon, a benefit to raise privates and private funds for community-based sex education and health organizations. So far, the event has set a world record—Norine Dworkin got off for over 6 hours.  Impressive! [AC via Nerve]