Editor’s Note: Who is the wisest of them all? Who is more dedicated to your pleasure than anyone on earth? Who can help you when you’re going online for the first time to find love; or when your lover’s children hate you; or when you want to strangle your husband? Why, The Love Goddess, of course. She promises nothing less than celestial wisdom, heavenly sex, divine dating … read on …

I wasn’t born yesterday, and as you might guess, there are quite a few steamy love stories locked inside this heavenly body. And let me tell you, I feel strongly about every one of them — and consider each sublimely personal. So when I hear from you who are dating again that, in a desire to get closer to a new lover, you feel compelled to reveal the details of your past — old lovers, marriages, affairs, positions — I get a celestial case of nerves. Truth-telling is so rampant these days that you’d think it really IS someone else’s business what you do in bed. Sure, increasing commitment always calls for increasing knowledge of one another, but true intimacy involves as much discretion as it does revelation — if not more.

Why? Because how you experienced your past is not going to be how it’s heard. It takes some serious thought, this truth-telling thing, and you play intimacy games ("I’ll tell you a secret if you tell me one") at your risk. How do you really feel when he confides his greatest love of all time left him on a moonlit night in Laguna Beach? How will he comprehend your teary remembrance of your first affair, with your yoga instructor (who was married)? Consider how you both will feel later on in the night — and on and on — after the sharing of secrets turn into a stomachache.  Who needs the retroactive scrutiny you’re both about to get? Who needs to picture him, forever and ever, heartbroken in Laguna Beach? 

Please, mortal lovers, do not confuse discreet with deceit. Discretion is not lying; it is revealing that which is appropriate to the level of real involvement you have, with a careful eye toward its emotional impact and its rebound effect. Ditto confusing honesty with honor. Your "truths" belong to you: You wouldn’t reveal a friend’s secrets, would you? (I once told Jove, after many hundreds of years of marriage, something about a little fling I had with a lesser god when I was single … and believe me, the heavens are still shaking. Big mistake.) See, I was feeling a little defensive and wanted to prove myself, ("You know, you may be The Love God, darling, but I had a pretty hot sex life once, too!) and sabotaged our hot sex life for 15 months!

So consider: What man really wants to be in competition with your guru? And do you really want to know about his whips and chains?

No, my darlings, confessing sexual secrets is fraught with problems — we’ll talk about this a lot more — and ends intimacy more often than it starts it. Talk only about what turns you on NOW. Not then. When he asks about the sexual experiences you’ve had in your life and with whom, it’s both fair and kind to be vague and forgetful. What really matters — and this you can speak to your heart’s content — is just how much you’re looking forward to the ones you’re about to have with him.

— TLG  

Like all savvy goddesses, The Love Goddess has her own blog, which can be visited by clicking here.