Sex / love advice I'd give my younger self

Every year we see numerous versions of Dickens' A Christmas Carol, none of which can hold a gingerbread-scented candle to the real thing. Dickens was a genius, the proof of which is that you can find new things in it, no matter how familiar you think you are with it.

The scene that struck me this year as never before was the one in which Scrooge's fiance "releases" him fbecause he loves money more than her and it's made him a different person. The old man Scrooge, seeing the meanness that made him the old misery is today, surely wishes he could have done things right the first time.

One can't turn the clock back but hopefully we pick a few things up along the way. A few months ago I wrote for Alternet a list of things I wish I'd known about love and sex, including that I would deliberately set out to see what happiness in love looked like (I didn't see it growing up: my parents were married) and that being brainy doesn't immunize you to being totally stupid in love.

Maybe you'll identify with them, maybe they'll make you laugh or avoid a sticky situation. Maybe they'll even help. Certainly it's better to learn from someone else's mistakes them, like Scrooge, to have to learn from one's own.