I absolutely hate to admit this, but I’ve been looking forward to Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop newsletter for days now. What are you looking at? I enjoy a good laugh! Last week, Goopy tried to convince us fatties to go on a purifying juice detox diet. This week, the newsletter is all about love and relationships. Goopy declares this as a “Be”, as in “be in a relationship, or Goop will think you’re a loser”. Unfortunately, Gwyneth doesn’t offer her own ideas about love and relationships, and I’m not being sarcastic with the “unfortunately”. I’d really love to know/laugh at Gwyneth’s take on her marriage and love in general. Gwyneth has chosen to provide us with other people’s insights:

A long-term relationship between two people is an ever evolving organism. Some stay the course, some fall, all stumble. Here I’ve asked a few very wise women, most of whom are in varying forms of longtime partnerships, for their insights.
Love, Gwyneth

[From Goop]

At least she’s not making us pay for these pearls of wisdom, right? So Goopy has solicited this wisdom from four women, yet she only identifies one of those women as being in a long-term relationship. The others, Goopy just identifies by credentials. Interesting! Goop has submitted one question to these women: “What does it take to sustain a happy and successful relationship or marriage?” Do you get the feeling Gwyneth doesn’t know?

First up is Monica Berg, “a spiritual teacher and guide… creative director at the Kabbalah Centre…also the co-founder of the charitable organization, Raising Malawi.” So Berg was asked as a favor of Goop’s bestie Madonna. Berg’s message is simple and excessively anal retentive: Marriage is really difficult, stop being such a romantic, hunker down and make a lot of lists. Also: screw stability, because “Either we are growing forward or falling backwards.” This is the advice that worked so well for Madonna.

Next up: Dr. Karen Binder-Brynes, “a leading psychologist with a private practice in New York City for the past 15 years.” My guess? Dr. Binder-Brynes is Goopy’s current or former shrink. She quotes Kahlil Gibran, and her overwhelming point is: don’t get married thinking you’re going to change someone. Or, “there is no such thing as potential.” Also: be honest, have a lot of sex, and cultivate mutual hobbies. It takes her forever to get to these simple points, though. You can tell she’s used to getting paid by the hour.

The absolute worst of the three is Cynthia Bourgeault, “an Episcopal priest, writer and retreat leader.” She gives the artsy-fartsy advice, and basically copies-and pastes an old sermon she gave at her daughter’s wedding. Blah, blah, blah, love is a “well” that you draw from. This is probably the reason I’m so ambivalent about weddings and marriage – all too often, it just seems so boring and cheesy.

My favorite is the last woman, though. Her name is Rebeka Sawyer and all Goopy says about her is that she “lives on the West Coast with her man of 26 years….and counting (kisses).…” Rebeka is the queen of cutting-and-pasting, just grabbing random quotes, poems, song lyrics and old e-mails, and making some hodge-podge of non-sensical advice. You can tell Rebeka thinks she’s “deep” though. Especially when she asks this humdinger: “How do we create a “doing”?” Dude, you just blew my mind.

Someday, I hope Goop seeks my advice. And I hope she identifies me with something like “Kaiser is a sarcastic bitch who lives with her dog…(kisses)…” followed by my own insane Goopified rant.

Here’s Gwyneth at the photocall for “Two Lovers” at the Cannes Film Festival on May 19th. Images thanks to Mavrix.