relationship revelations

• What is the best relationship advice you've ever received? It goes well beyond “’relationship’ advice”, but it was given in that context:
  Listening to your heart, finding out who you
  are, is not simple. It takes time for the chatter
  to quiet down. In the silence of "not doing"
  we begin to know what we feel.
  If we listen and hear what is being offered
  then anything in life can be our guide.
  Listen.
• How many people have you dated at once? How many people do you think it is acceptable to date at once? When I was in college, I might have had overlapping sort of half-assed relationship-like things with maybe three different people at once. But it wasn’t exactly “dating” and it definitely didn’t last for very long.
  Acceptable is a word laden with subtext. I don’t think that it is inherently wrong to date more than one person at a time. I do believe that it is wrong to give the impression of exclusivity, if one is actually seeing more than one person at a time. And I believe that certain relationships are inviolable. Marriage, for instance, is an absolute. If you’ve literally made a vow to another person, legally—Jesus, just get out of it if you’re so selfish as to actively seek something else. I don’t care what the rest of your life looks like, how complicated it is, how no one understands…. Cheating. Is. Worse.
• What made your worst kiss so bad? A good kiss is like flirting. It can be light and playful. It can be slow, sultry and infused with meaning. It can happen when you barely know the person you’re doing it with, or it can come out even after years together. It can be simple and sweet and leave you feeling a little silly for having impure thoughts. Or it can be so dirty and deep that you’re left breathless and one-tracked. But the best thing about a good kiss? You might not know what’s coming, but you want to see where it goes.
  The worst kiss is bad because there is no doubt. It’s all laid out before you. It’s too obvious, too planned, and too ordinary. No mystery. No play. No art.
  (I won’t even get into the huge, lazy tongue thing. yuccck)
• Can a relationship last if the sex is bad? “A” relationship probably could. For me, it would not. It would be a symptom of much greater problems.
  Sex is a big deal. And “bad” sex (for adults) is more a function of an inability to communicate than some catastrophic lack of equipment or talent for either party. If I’m with somebody and we can’t communicate, then we shouldn’t be having sex, much less a "relationship."
• What one thing would you like your partner to do every time you have sex with them? Love it.
• Bonus (as in, optional): What is your secret weapon to lure in the opposite sex? If I had such a secret, would I tell?

[pulled from TMI Tuesday; originally posted in slightly different form on OkCupid]