Cameron Diaz: What I’ve Learned About Love

As the Annie star’s relationship with rocker Benji Madden heats up, Cameron Diaz opened up to Cosmopolitan about her thoughts on love and the mistakes she’s made in past relationships.

Despite being spotted out in October wearing a pretty suspicious sparkler on her ring finger, the 42-year-old actress would neither confirm nor deny the possibility that she’s engaged to Madden, 35.

“You have to find someone else in the same place as you are,” Diaz said in the magazine’s January issue, on newsstands Dec. 9. “Timing is everything. If you get into a relationship where you want something the guy doesn’t want, it’s never gonna work. You’re never going to get him to be in that place.

“No matter how old you are, finding the guy who’s in the same place as you are and wants to show up is the only way a relationship works, period.”

Diaz and Madden have been linked only since May, but as a source previously revealed to PEOPLE, “It’s early, but they have talked about marriage.”

Diaz, who has made headlines in the past for relationships with Alex Rodriguez and Justin Timberlake, is keeping things close to the vest these days.

“Here’s the thing,” she said. “You make the same mistake over and over again until you learn your lesson. We girls sometimes do the thing where we pick the same person over and over again – they look and seem different, but deep down, they’re the same. And that’s on us.”

Annie opens in theaters Dec. 19.

People