I am in the fourth year of a partnership with a great guy—smart, athletic, caring, fair, trustworthy, all of it—but I am bored out of my mind. Although he loves outdoor activities like biking and skiing by day, his only hobby in the evenings is watching TV. I am a musician, artist, craftsperson, not an outdoor whiz, and I feel like I am completely uninspired in this situation. I have talked with him about at least not watching TV every night, and we try for a while, but it always ends up back where we started, with him watching TV, and me in another room reading or doing something somewhat productive, or just giving in and watching with him (I hate TV, wish we didn’t have one). I want to do things together but he is not interested in any of the things that I am interested in. Maybe this is just the most a person can hope for in life and I’m spoiled for wanting more than loyalty and love from someone, but I feel guilty all the time for hiding these thoughts from him. Maybe he would be better off without me, too, you know? Maybe I should let him go so he can find a girl who is really IN LOVE with him.

How much you love someone depends, in part, on the effect of partnership on the necessities of your life, as well as your interests. In your case, however, you don’t seem to see partnership as necessary for the necessities, so the difference between what you two want may be be more than television.

If you’ve been struggling to make ends meet and/or raise kids and someone enters your life who’s decent and willing to share the load, you’re probably going to wind up loving him, even if you don’t love everything you do together.

On the other hand, if you’re a fairly self-sufficient person who doesn’t need a partner in order to have a decent standard of living and raise kids, then there’s no reason to live with anyone who doesn’t ring your bells or leave the couch.

You didn’t mention kids or finances, so I assume you’re kid-less, and, despite being an artist and musician, miraculously not broke. If that’s true, then what do you need this guy for? If you haven’t grown to depend on him after four years of living together, and you’re not eager to have a family, then it’s hard to see him as a better off with you since you don’t really sound better off with him.

Be careful not to get paralyzed by guilt. You can’t control your feelings about him, and what you’re going to do next isn’t about failing or lacking, it’s about evaluating how well the two of you match up and deciding whether that match suits your goals. So add up what life would be without him (the effect on your time, bank account, plans, etc.). You sound as if you’ve done this, but sometimes, feeling guilty can prevent you from doing routine accounting.

If, as you suggest, you can do better without him, don’t feel defensive about letting him go. You both made a good effort to make it work, and you have many good things to say about his character and can be sure he’ll do well with someone else. You’ve just seen many big differences in your interests and activities and have gained a healthy respect for their importance in making a relationship work. Neither of you were stupid to try this relationship, but, despite being a good idea, it was a near miss you can both learn from. You’re doing the right thing for both of you by moving on.

If the pain of breaking up is more his than yours, that’s not as important as the other stuff you evaluated. As a matter of fact, you suspect he may well have an easier time finding his next match than you will.

If this experience has taught you about your needs and you respect what you’ve learned, you’ll become better at screening out your dates and ensuring that you don’t compromise your independence again unless you encounter a more compatible candidate.

If you aren’t happy with someone who’s “perfect” for you, then they probably aren’t. And if you don’t need a someone, period, give them the chance to find someone new (or spend more quality time with the TV).

STATEMENT:
“I wish I could like my boyfriend better and I don’t want to hurt him, but I think I’m better off without him and vice versa. I won’t let fears about negative feelings stop me from doing what’s necessary and remembering that break-ups are part of the learning process.”

Now that I’m 35 and looking around for a wife, I can’t help feeling that I destroyed my future by not marrying my college sweetheart. She’s a terrific person and we had a great relationship, but I wasn’t ready to settle down back then. So I dumped her, she found someone else, and now she’s happily married with kids and I’m a successfully executive who can’t find anyone to compare with her. The women I meet always have something wrong with them and I think my mistake has doomed me to die single and alone.

The biggest danger you face is not dying single, but dying defeated. Well, the biggest danger you face after death itself.

Some good people are single because they aren’t lucky about finding a mate—their lives are too complicated or, for various good reasons, they don’t meet someone who’s both available and on their wavelength—but that doesn’t mean they’re sad, lonely failures. They’re simply dealing with a mixed bag of luck, like everyone else.

As Christ might have said, if he hadn’t been so busy telling parables, what’s important is not whether you find riches or happiness, it’s how you deal with it when you can’t find riches and happiness. And, despite dying penniless, single and alone, he seems to have done alright for himself.

In addition, your negative attitude may be damaging your mate-search technique. While your college relationship taught you that you have a good capacity for friendship and partnership, it’s the timing that was wrong; your personal equipment—the size of your heart, and size is everything—has proven itself. So instead of feeling sad and defeated when you think of your old flame, be proud of your relationship and determined not to give up your independence unless you find someone just as good.

Assess the efficiency of your mate-search. Like any kind of search, it needs to be done efficiently or you’ll wear yourself out and then, see above, feel tired and defeated. That’s often a sign that you’re spending too much time on unsuitable candidates and losing your focus. Ask yourself whether guilt, horniness, or sentimentality are causing you to prolong pseudo-friendships that drain energy, reduce availability, and leave you yearning for solitude. If so, get a coach and learn how to do a good, tight search and a rapid, polite exit.

You can’t make yourself lucky, but you can be sure that there’s nothing wrong with your ability to be a good partner. If you’ve also given yourself the benefit of a good mate-search, you also know you’ve done your best. You may be sad about being single, but it’s not personal and it’s not failure. It’s just life, which, as always, is preferable to the alternative, no matter what your relationship status is when you enter it.

STATEMENT:
“I can’t avoid feeling that I fell off the deck of the love-boat after having been given a choice cabin for two, but I’ve made reasonable choices, I’m a good candidate, and I know what I’m looking for, so I will pursue my search with patience, I will not doubt myself, and I will never give up. “

You’ve probably had a disgusting amount of questions like the ones I’m about to put towards you, and that’s another thing that annoys me—I’m a cliché. 17 months ago my boyfriend broke up with me, explaining that he was too young to be in a serious relationship. I know this is perfectly logical but I have never been able to get over it, even though I do understand his point of view. I am still very much in love with him. I know perfectly well that realistically no one really marries their first love, that realistically it wasn’t even a proper adult relationship but I feel as raw today as I did the day it happened. I’ve been diagnosed with severe depression and anxiety. I have regular nightmares about him. Last Easter I attempted suicide yet it failed. I’ve been sent to counseling, but I didn’t like it. I dropped out of university as I was too distracted and there is nothing I can throw myself into to make me forget it. The idea of him with someone else would kill me. I keep thinking to myself, I’m only 21 and I shouldn’t take this so personally and seriously but I do and I have no idea why. I know I need to wise up but I can’t.

Some say love’s like a drug, but we think it’s more like a (sometimes) innocuous mental illness; it doesn’t make you “crazy”—at least not necessarily—but it does give you weird thoughts, sometimes long after the relationship is over.

While those thoughts are hard to stop and easy to believe in, at least they’re not true. Like anxiety and depression, love has a weird way of keeping itself alive by changing the way you think and act, until it changes your beliefs. That’s when you’re in trouble.

You think there’s no value to life once love goes from bliss to bad, so you try to remember and revisit and talk about everything that hurts the most, even though that keeps it hurting longer. Each time you think the thought, visit the memory, and talk about your feelings, you grind the loss in deeper, and the pain makes you do it again. You can set a Guinness record for miserable pining (i.e., a lifetime) if love-thinking goes unchecked.

Love has got you treating yourself like shit, and there’s nothing noble or beautiful about that. You feel worthless, treat yourself as worthless by trying to kill yourself, and then feel more worthless for failing and still feeling miserable.

Remember, there’s nothing wrong with being needy. OK, you’ve got a sensitivity to love, and in the right situation, that makes you open to certain kinds of joy and poetic feelings that others miss. Like some traits associated with mental illness, it has its good side (if there was no such thing as depression, most of the good art in the world would not exist).

Besides, the most likely reason you have this trait of sensitivity is that you were born with it, so don’t waste time wondering why you’re suffering, what you did wrong, or what you need to do to change. You are who you are, and you happen to be vulnerable to lost love. You need to manage that part of yourself better instead of focusing on it and feeding its destructiveness.

Big Pharma has yet to release an anti-love potion, so take treatment into your own hands by challenging the thoughts and memories that keep the disease going; keep busy while accepting the sad fact that you’re miserable, you can’t control it, and you can’t stop it. Almost everything you want to do about it will make it worse, so force yourself to do the opposite.

Find a recovery coach, or a recovery support group, that can remind you that you have a self that’s independent of your sadness and loss and that you deserve to respect yourself for carrying on with your life, in spite of your pain, one day at a time.

If you ruminate, visit old haunts, or try to share your sad story, they can tell you to shut up and do whatever you’re supposed to do when you “slip.” Prepare to fight negative thoughts and feelings every day for as long as it takes.

You will recover, learn from your experience, and do better next time, but only if you accept the unfair burden of your disease. There’s no cure for love, but if you work hard enough, you can manage your mind again, and then maybe one day find a truly healthy relationship.

STATEMENT:
“Right now I don’t care about living, but I’ve never believed that the meaning of my life is much related to how I feel. I respect myself for doing what I think is right and being a good woman and that hasn’t changed. I’ll stand by that view for as long as it takes.”

My husband and I have been married two years. Before we were married, we had been living separately and co-parenting our then 4-year-old son (we had split up when he was 18-months-old because I suspected he was cheating on me). He became involved with the woman I suspected, moved in with her and got engaged all within a year of us breaking up. Then, she cheated on him and they broke up. We began hanging out with each other and “dating.” I broke it off with him when he admitted he did not consider our relationship “exclusive.” I moved on again with my life. Then eight months later he proposed marriage stating that he knew he had made mistakes but was now certain he wanted nothing more than to be with me exclusively for life. I have trouble getting our past out of my head and trusting that he will not abandon me for someone else again. We have trouble getting along sometimes and his passive-aggressive behavior bothers me. My goals are to get over my feelings of mistrust and to be able to communicate better with my husband.

Being abandoned feels terrible—the word suggests the helplessness of a newborn left alone on a wet rock—so don’t apply the word to yourself if you’re an adult unless you intend to abandon yourself, which I’m sure you won’t do unless you’re thinking too much about your husband.

Besides, you did fine without him before and you’ll do fine without him again, if necessary. Meanwhile, ask yourself whether life is better with him around, assuming that you can’t get rid of your suspicions. Put aside, for the time being, whether your suspicions are true or not; assume you’ll find out someday and, if you do, you’ll deal with it then.

One thing you don’t want to do is to get rid of your suspicions by asking him for reassurance or watching him closely. That’s a good way to kill your relationship, drive you both crazy, and improve my business.

It’s unfair you should have to live with painful suspicion, but as long as you decide he’s a worthwhile partner, it’s part of your job description. That’s what you get when you re-cycle a flip-flop guy, which is why deciding his worthiness is so important—otherwise, it’s a lot of suffering in vain.

Don’t blame yourself for your suspicions, and don’t blame him; you can’t help having your feelings and he can’t help stirring them up. All you can do is not make things worse (see above) by keeping your feelings to yourself and not being overt about checking his email.

Remind yourself that you’re independent and not a fool. If he strays, you’ll find out sooner or later. At that point, you’ll know it’s not because he’s “too young for commitment,” but because he’s too self-absorbed to be faithful. Luckily, you seem self-reliant enough to “abandon” his sorry self and move on.

STATEMENT:
“It’s hard to live with suspicion, but I can do it if I think it’s necessary for a good partnership, and not because I’m too needy to say good-bye to a jerk. I can live alone again if I have to. Whether my husband proves true or not, I respect myself for taking risks in a good cause.”

I love my work, my kids, and my wife, but I have bipolar mood swings (and I’ve taken medication for years) that lead me to do things that get me into trouble. Recently, in spite of the medication, I felt a surge of energy and started to stay up late, sneak into my studio and paint. I’ve also started to drink again. I don’t want to change meds or let people know what’s happening because I want to keep my options open. I love the highs and the freedom, and I hate being told what to do, but I’ve got a demanding day job that doesn’t involve painting, and a wife who doesn’t like it, to say the least, when I’m not honest. So my goal is to get myself under control before people catch on to what’s really happening.

There are few fathers and husbands who can’t identify with the goal of wanting to feel special, have time to themselves, and avoid humiliating comments about eating, drinking, toileting or sleeping habits from their next of kin.

The fraction of these fathers who are dealing with mental illness and addiction to alcohol don’t want to be asked if they’ve been taking their medication or started drinking.

So, if your goal is to avoid immediate disrespect and hang on to your secret Van Gogh identity a little longer, then keep doing just what you’re doing.

On the other hand, if you want to avoid the long term chaos of going nuts, listening while your doctors try to find a mental hospital that also does alcohol detoxification and having your wife tell you that you’re not welcome home until you straighten out and maybe not then either…then you’ve got to give up on secrecy and come out of the out-of-control closet.

That’s because it takes a powerful part of your personality to make a good guy risk his health and marriage for the joy of a very, very good but relatively brief mood and paintings that will never reach Sotheby’s. It takes a demon.

Lots of people have demons—they pay my bills—and it’s a waste of time to figure him out instead of looking for ways to manage him better, all of which require you to face and ‘fess up to your (or should I say his) possession.

Sorry, but it’s almost impossible to gain control of a demon without acknowledging that he’s A, there, and B, can’t be extirpated or exorcised (except through lobotomy). That’s because he gains strength from being hidden.

So tell your wife and trusted friends about your problem, share your story with similarly possessed people, discard false shame, and do your best to keep the demon under control.

In recovery, they say you’re only as sick as your secrets; admit your secrets, and you can keep your demon at bay.

STATEMENT:
Here’s what you need to say to yourself (and others). “I’m living a good life, but it isn’t easy. My priorities are to make a living and raise a family, but there’s a part of me that wants to drink and paint and stay up late and enjoy the bipolar highs, and sometimes that part takes control, particularly when I think I’ve beaten him for good. Making my problem public is the best way to strengthen my self-control. I respect my willingness to humiliate myself for a good cause.”

My girlfriend and I keep breaking up without ever really getting together. She’s obviously interested in me, or she wouldn’t keep calling, and I can sense her sincerity. We have a good time together when we get a chance to go out. Whenever we’re at the stage of taking things to a new level, however, like we’ve been talking every day for a couple weeks, she’ll suddenly drop out of contact for a few days and then act like nothing’s happened and I shouldn’t expect her to be that available. A couple times when she dropped out, it was because she couldn’t decide whether to get back together with an old boyfriend. That’s no longer the issue, so I thought we were clear to go, but we can’t seem to take off. I’d like to know if I’m doing something wrong or if there’s a way she could get help.

Don’t trust your feelings to tell you whether someone is really interested. Feelings are easily fooled and love is blind; watch her feet and see what they have to say.

This girl’s feet are doing the cha-cha-cha, one step forward, one back, quick shuffle, one more back, one forward, another shuffle, and repeat. She likes to dance with you, but that doesn’t mean she’ll ever move forward or make you her number one partner.

If you trust your feelings, then you must ask yourself what you’re doing wrong, which keeps you stuck with her and introduces you to doubt, depression, and me. It costs you time and money to stay at the mindfuck disco.

Ask yourself what you’re dancing for. It’s not because you need to dance (though you do), but because you’re looking for a partner, which requires you to know what you’re looking for and keep your feelings out of it until you’re sure you’ve got a likely candidate.

One of the requirements—I know, it’s amazing that I can read your mind, but remember, I went to Harvard—is that someone has a good track record with relationships. No one who does the cha-cha-cha need apply, ever.

Don’t tell me that’s easier said than done. First, I’ll tell you it’s harder if you don’t do it, so you don’t have a choice. Second, given today’s theme, I’ll tell you you’re possessed by a demon who loves attention and wants to dance and you have a hard time keeping him in check.

Your goal is to make a solid, independent choice, regardless of your short-term needs. Cowboy up, be a grown-up and give yourself the benefit of solid, caring protection and a nice, sturdy, one-on-one waltz.

STATEMENT:
Here’s a statement, in case your demon (or sometime dance partner) asks why you can’t, at least, enjoy a nice, friendly talk. “I don’t think our chemistry is right for what I’m looking for, though we certainly have a good connection. Spending time with one another right now doesn’t take either one of us in the right direction.”

I’m a 58-year-old gay man and it’s a long time since life has been any fun. I’ve been single for some time (with no real prospects of a relationship), my friends don’t seem to have time for me, and at the end of a hard day’s work running my own business, I’ve barely broken even and have nothing to look forward to but spending the evening alone. That’s when the depression closes in and I can’t stand living. I write all this because I know that I’m a miserable failure, and that facts, not depression or any other mental illness, are behind my reasoning. I mean, when I tell my few close friends how I feel, they tell me I’m being too hard on myself, but if you’re almost 60, alone, and a financial mess, doesn’t that mean you’re a loser? My goal is to be real about myself.

Sounds like your goal isn’t to be real about yourself, it’s to be mean to yourself because you’re in a bad mood. If you were to reread the above paragraph when your mood wasn’t so shitty, you’d see your treating “facts” with the same care as Bill O’Reilly.

So, to quote Bill, Shut up, I don’t want to hear it. You wouldn’t talk like that to a friend, or even probably your worst enemy, so don’t do it to yourself.

Sure, the pain in your life is real, but there’s a monster in most of us that speaks up when we’re hungry or poor or lonely and says, “Look what a mess you got yourself into, you worthless piece of shit.”

If you’re smart and have high standards and a well-developed sense of style, the monster will comment on the bad clothes, dull conversation, and depressing colors; it’s very specific and discerning, because it’s the meanest side of yourself. It will give meaning to your pain, alright, by telling you that it means a lot and it’s your fault.

It’s your job to keep that monster from influencing your values. I assume you’re working hard on your own business, because you care about being independent and self-supporting.

I also assume you have old friends, because you care about friendship and maintaining relationships, regardless of whether someone is wealthy, clever, or stylish. You haven’t mentioned doing anything wrong; you’ve just described the kind of bad luck that often happens to everyone at one time or another, with or without depression, or a partner, or a great job.

If you have good values, be prepared to use them. If you want to talk “facts,” remind yourself how hard you work at your job and your friendships. Your goal isn’t to get me or anyone else to confirm that you deserve to feel bad; it’s to keep your perspective and not let the negative thinking of loneliness and bad luck undermine your sense of pride.

STATEMENT:
“My life sucks right now, but I respect what I’m doing. I work hard and stand by my friends when all my efforts are relatively unrewarding and, on top of that, I’m fuckin’ depressed. I can’t wait for my luck to turn but, until it does, I wouldn’t want to do anything differently, and that’s what counts.”

I have struggled with bipolar disorder for almost ten years now, but sometimes I can’t see the point. The last time I was admitted to a hospital, I was actually raped by another patient, and the whole experience left me with fears and nightmares I just can’t get over. I’ll never let my family or a psychiatrist put me in a hospital again. My goal is to find a psychiatrist who will give me the support I need so that I will never, ever have to go into a hospital.

If you had diabetes and got the best possible supportive care from the best physician in the world—you could even marry her—you might still need hospital treatment if you got an infection, overdosed on peeps, or just fell into a manhole.

So, while you have every right to feel traumatized by your assault, don’t paint yourself into a corner because of it. When it comes to this anti-hospital stance, (or pro I-need-to-be-nurtured-very-carefully-or-else), you have to shut yourself up.

Thinking about the risks logically, it becomes clear that you probably wouldn’t get raped a second time, and there would be steps you could take to make it more unlikely. So, in reality, you aren’t facing a choice of rape vs. death, but rather terror vs. death.

Terror or death is a decision most of us face every morning before we get on the subway; that’s life. There would be no other choice.

Unfortunately, you can’t change the way rape gave you nightmares, and you can’t avoid the possibility that you’ll find yourself in the same neighborhood. What you can do, however, is bear the terror—the fear of fear—so that you can promise yourself the best possible care and manage yourself as carefully and respectfully as possible.

Your goal shouldn’t depend on finding the kindest or most available psychiatrist, or extracting promises about what he or she would never allow to happen. Your goal should depend instead on your own ability to ignore fear while benefiting from your bad experiences to make good treatment decisions.

Yes, bad things might still happen, but you can be sure you will have done everything to protect yourself while taking the risks necessary to manage a bad illness. If you go to the hospital, something bad might happen, but if you need care and you don’t go, something bad is guaranteed.

STATEMENT:
I may never be able to shake the rape nightmares or promise myself that a mood swing won’t become catastrophic and push me into a loony bin. I can swear, however, that I’ll take reasonable care of myself and that, when I’m well, I’ll try to focus on living life, caring about friends, and ignoring pain, regardless of whether I can get it to go away.

I’m interested in a woman here at work, which automatically has two complications. First of all, we work together (although not directly, we’re just both teachers at the same elementary school). Second, despite being an educated guy in my 30s with hobbies and friends and all those good normal things, I am and have always been a completely incompetent flirt. I do not know how to be charming or cute, and I have no idea how I’ve gotten women interested in me in the past (and yes, I’m a math teacher). Do you have any flirting tips for the socially inept? My goal, simply, is to get the girl.

Thanks goodness flirting isn’t necessary, or many of us would never have gotten a first date, math teachers wouldn’t be able to propagate, and Poincaré would never have conjectured. Fortunately, there’s more than one kind of mating ritual for humans.

Ever if you were good at it, you’d find that flirting has its drawbacks. Because it’s fun and sexy, flirting tends to start something up before you really know where you want to go (see: the case that follows this one).

Particularly at work, getting attached and then getting to know someone is a risky way of dating that can turn a normally shitty day at the office into an endless trail of tears (and into good business for me).

If you’re a flirt, people may like your company and want to date you, but not necessarily do business with you. Unless they’re totally charmed, there’s an element of mistrust. Flirting is a two-edged kind of magic that, if you have it and use it, can often do more harm than good.

Even with internet dating, flirting often backfires. While two flirts are having fun playing verbal tennis, they often lose track of what they really need to find out about one another. They forget that their goal is not simply to connect, but to find a good person, and that good people are often not good flirters.

Finally, there’s Bill Clinton, the Olympic heavyweight of flirts, who proves that flirting can both win friends and influence people . . . to want to end your career (and maybe wring your neck). It’s a tough gift to manage.

Take advantage of what you’ve got, which is an opportunity to get to know someone you’re attracted to before you have to think about asking her out. Working together gives you a chance to see what she’s like, and how the two of you get along under pressure.

You get to see how she deals with kids, bosses, hard work, and colleagues. With luck, you can form a bond of friendship before you have to deal with love or sexual attraction.

You might long for the fun and sexiness that go with flirting (as opposed to the more straightforward tactics at your disposal), but remember, you’re smarter than that. Since you’re co-workers, you want this equation to result in a relationship, not a carefree fling. So get to it, and remember, show your work.

STATEMENT:
Then, if you still want to date her after you’ve gotten to know her, there are non-flirtational ways to move forward without having to be eloquent, attractive, or cool. In other words, without having to make a fool of yourself. “I’ve noticed we work well together and have a very positive chemistry. I wonder if you’ve thought of exploring a more social and personal relationship.”

For whatever reason, I always find myself getting hung up on guys my friends and I call “flirtrons”—guys who flirt with everyone and everything as if they were robots built that way. The problem is, I don’t realize that they’re not flirting with me on purpose until it’s too late and I’m hooked (and then hurt when the interest isn’t mutual). I want to know, what makes these guys act this way, and how do I get better flirtron-dar. My goal is to stop falling for guys who don’t give a shit.

The first mistake most people make when trying to correct bad behavior is trying to figure out why they do something instead of just skipping to how to stop it. That’s like starting a seminar to debate the sources of a fire before reaching for the extinguisher.

In your case, you hope that knowing more about your weakness for compulsive flirts and/or their reasons for being that way will give you a way to stop wanting them. Don’t do it, because by the time you’ve figured it out, your house will have burned down.

Don’t ask why some people can flirt without getting hurt but you can’t—even if you figure out an answer, you’re unlikely to change—and don’t ask why some guys don’t mean what they say.

Whatever answers you come up with won’t allow you to change them, or the fact that there are a lot of them, and you’re attracted to them, and they’re bad for you. God makes lots of bad things, and your job isn’t to study them, but to recognize and avoid.

Now that you’re ready to accept the fact that you’re an incurable flirtronaholic, it’s time to plan your own rescue. Until you’ve got yourself under better control, don’t talk to men unless you’re accompanied by a friend who can pinch you when she sees that you’re connecting too much. That’s right, you need a designated flirt-monitor, because you don’t need “flirtron-dar,” but a flirt detector that administers sharp shocks.

When she pinches you, stop, shut up, and walk away, and afterwards she can tell you what she saw that identified the guy as a flirtron, and at what point you should have reduced the intensity of your contact and didn’t.

Draw up a list of flirtron identifiers: lots of eye contact, conversations with momentum and emotional content and entertaining topics that leave you wanting more. It’s not normal for men to be like that. It’s exciting, but also combustible.

Don’t worry that your reticence will drop you out of the relationship market entirely, just off the market for guys who crave your (or any girl’s) attention. Naturally, we think firemen might be your perfect dating pool.

STATEMENT:
Prepare a mission statement that will keep you away from your deadly weakness. “I admit that I’m a flirtronaholic. Finding one male friend requires screening out 100 flirtrons and, in the absence of good instincts, I’ll rely more on my friends and develop procedures for keeping myself under control while I do the screening that must be done. ”

It’s been a tough year (surprise), and so I’ve been a little more quick to anger than I usually am, and I tend to have a few more beers after work than I would normally have. Things with my wife were kind of rough because of all of this, so she told me to see a therapist, and for the sake of my marriage, I agreed, because losing my wife would be the worst thing that could happen. Six months or so ago, my therapist started asking me about my childhood, and it finally clicked that my dad also had a really bad temper, and was also a pretty lousy drunk, but I’d never really thought of him that way, and I’d never really made the connection to my own behavior. My therapist was really pleased at my breakthrough, but here I am, six months later, and I don’t feel any better, and my wife is ready to leave if I don’t stop yelling at her. My goal is to use what I’ve learned in therapy to solve my problems, but what is it I haven’t figured out, why do I keep acting this way, and why am I spending money on therapy if I’m getting nowhere?

Once psychotherapy helps you figure out where your mean streak comes from, you can write an interesting book about it and, usually, blame it on a brutal ancestor and tell Oprah all about it.

What all that hard-earned knowledge probably won’t help you much with is keeping you in check the next time you get irritable and/or drunk. Bad daddy or no, what will help you a lot more is to get sober and learn how to shut the fuck up.

No one knows why some people have a mean streak, but such a trait is probably one of those things that are both bad for you and good for you; in the right situation it helps you survive (no one messes with the Hulk) and gets passed onto your green children in your genes.

The Darwinian solution provides a good answer to most questions—”no one knows why you do X, but it’s probably not all bad”—because it’s hard to disprove, and carries an implication that you can probably guess by now: you’re probably not going to get rid of your mean streak, unless you’re agreeable to a friendly lobotomy.

Many therapists think they can help you overcome your anger if you work hard with them, and, while they’re sincere, they’re usually wrong. They can help you manage it, but nothing more than that, and, in your case, not until you get sober.

If you wait for your anger to go away before doing anything about it, you’ll be on wife number 5 in no time. This is why certain kinds of therapy can do lots more harm than good unless you’re willing to ask yourself the one question you’d prefer not to: what do I do next if this treatment doesn’t make my anger and dependence go away (just my money and patience).

So your goal isn’t to figure out why you’re angry, or to stop feeling angry, or even to stop feeling thirsty. It’s to accept the feelings and urges that you’ve got, and get better at managing them.

You’ve got to accept the shame of not being able to control a natural and unavoidable tendency to transform into Superasshole (maybe you were bitten as a child by a radioactive rectum).

Once you make that your goal, you’ve got a much better chance of succeeding; not at feeling better—because c’mon, you’re not stupid—but at reacting to life’s misery with fewer tantrums and beers, daddy be damned.

STATEMENT:
Here’s a statement you can use to keep yourself on track. “I hate being mean and I know that, when I’m mean, it always seems like other people deserve to be put down. But it hurts me and my family more often than not, so regardless of whether people deserve it, I’ve got to improve my self-control and learn to eat shit, rather than become an asshole (there’s a consistent metaphor here). Which means controlling whatever releases my anger (tasteful restraint on the metaphor), like drinking. I will have no shame about admitting my asshole tendencies, as long as I know that, whenever I tighten up (can’t escape the metaphor), I’m strengthening my self-control.”

I’m not a stupid girl, but it took me fifteen years to realize that I always date the same kind of guy, someone who is kind of sad and wild but always turns out to be nasty and unreliable. I don’t know why I’ve always gone for mean sad sacks, but I have, many, many times, and knowing that, I want to avoid my deadbeat curse. The problem is, I don’t know how to start being attracted to different kinds of guys, or even where to find them. And meanwhile, I’m still a deadbeat magnet, so I want to know how I can stop attracting such losers and reel in better quality material. My goal is to get out of my romantic rut and date guys that don’t suck.

If you can find a survival benefit to being mean, (under the appropriate football field or nuclear apocalypse scenarios), you can also find a survival benefit to being attracted to the mean.

For example, your partner’s cruelty will protect your genes, or, maybe you’re so good at nurturing you can’t distinguish between babies and outlaws. Whatever.

Again, the genetic explanation is far from scientific, but fits the fact you’ve already encountered: you, and your tastes, are not likely to change, no matter how much you talk about them.

So tell your friends that you’re tired of hearing them tell you they told you so–almost as tired as they are!—and that you want to change your ways and are open to suggestions.

The usual ones that come up, like drawing up a list of negative screen-outs for your dates and sticking with them (e.g., no guys who had nasty fights with prior girlfriends unless the girlfriend was clearly nastier and crazier). Have your friends screen your dates.

Don’t be discouraged if you’re not attracted to nice guys. Remember, there are some songs you dislike the first time around, but wind up liking a lot in the end. You can’t force yourself, but give yourself time and you’ll probably wind up liking a nice guy well enough.

Sure, you may not get as hot about a nice guy as you would about an outlaw. But if your primary goal is to get turned on, stick with outlaws and get a good, solid humiliation at the same time. And if you yearn to nurture and live with a nasty, vicious, out-of-control criminal, get a Jack Russell terrier.

STATEMENT:
Announce your policy with a statement. “I may want to tame a beast, or beastly guy, who’s in pain, but I don’t have the touch, the whip, the chair, the whispering technique, whatever, and meanwhile I need a friend and partner I can trust. So I’ve got to watch out for my sick yearnings, stick with better ways of screening out the ones I want, and stay single, lonely, and unsatisfied until I find the one I really need.”

Just a few years ago, in my early 20s, I was a fun, outgoing law student at a top tier school, on the cusp of beginning a promising career in a competitive field that I loved. But then, out of no where, my health fell apart. Without getting into it, I was diagnosed with a rare, chronic disease that causes me so much pain and fatigue that even the simplest tasks have become arduous. I had to drop out of school, move back home, and learn to deal, not just with the physical pain of everyday life, but with feelings of failure and being a complete loser. All my old friends are moving upwards and onwards, like I was once set to do, and all I can do is take it slow and try to cope with this new, brutal reality. Plus, because my disease is rare and not physically obvious (I look healthy), several friends and even family members have decided that I’m not sick, but that I just buckled under the competitive pressure of my law career or that I’m just lazy, and am using a fake disease as an excuse. They say things like, “my joints hurt, but I go to work everyday,” and I just want to curl up and die. Between my own disappointment and their cruel judgment, I’ve withdrawn from social interaction almost completely for a year now. My goal is to not completely isolate myself from the world and maybe even start to enjoy some social interaction again despite feeling self-conscious and experiencing such dismissive attitudes from others.

It’s good that you want to get out of your self-imposed solitary confinement—living like that’s unhealthy, even for people who are physically healthy to begin with—but attaching the enjoyment of social interaction onto your goal is not so hot, especially when you’re suffering from a disease that seems to make enjoying anything nearly impossible and gives prospective friends a case of the repulsive willies.

Problem is, despite your best efforts, enjoyment is out of your control, and if you make a big effort to extend yourself socially and run into crap, you’ll feel like a stupid failure and personally rejected, when, really, it’s your standards that are the problem. Yours and everyone else’s.

A better goal is to work at not taking your pain and isolation personally while working out rational standards for what it means to cope with them.

It’s hard not to feel like a failure when you’re no longer meeting expectations that were basic to your career and self-esteem. As a young person, educational institutions teach you to believe that success will follow from hard work and be granted fairly according to merit.

That’s a favorite topic of teachers, principals, and graduation speakers and, of course, it’s pure bullshit. Even the sunscreen crap seems fishy.

It helps motivate those lucky enough to be reasonably gifted, but destroys the self-esteem of the ungifted and those like you who lose their gifts. If you don’t want to take your illness as a personal failure, you must defend yourself from accepting common beliefs that are a part of everyday culture and probably built into your DNA.

You were bright and energetic, now you’re a tired, achy average drone, and you’re fucked. And it’s not personal. What matters is what you do with it.

Your helplessness scares your friends; consciously or subconsciously, they see you, someone who fell so far with no evident cause or cure, and wonder what’s to prevent the same thing from happening to them. You’re the personification of their fear of failure, so of course you’re a pariah. But, just as your affliction was random, their reaction is also not personal. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck, but still.

Your job is to construct measures of success that do not depend on normally accepted, idiotic expectations of accomplishment, or the response of bosses or friends. Your basic measure of success is doing the best with what you’ve got, one day at a time, regardless of what others think or how your results compare with those of other days.

Don’t make a big deal out of the good days or you’ll be discouraged by your inability to do the same tomorrow. What’s important is that you push as hard as you can, every day.

Find and spend time with people who’ve survived chronic, debilitating conditions; if those people are interested in holding weekly pity parties, then avoid them in favor of your fellow sufferers who are proud of themselves.

That’s your goal too: not happiness or friendship, but pride in what you’re doing and a refusal to deal with people who do not accept your condition for what it is. Especially when all they see is a reflection of themselves. True friends will still appreciate you for you, particularly for the courage they perceive in your response to sickness, which is much more important than a corner office and law degree.

STATEMENT:
Formulate a positive statement about what you’re doing with yourself that challenges ignorant criticism from others (and yourself). “My ambitions and values have not changed but I’ve had a serious equipment failure that prevents me from doing many of the things that I and others expected me to do. The more disability I’ve encountered, the more I’ve realized that I continue to value work, independence, friendship, and doing good and that there is much I can do to pursue these values, even if it’s far less than what I used to do, want to do, or see others doing. In terms of results, I appear a loser. But I know the effort it takes to deal with my handicap and, whenever I make that effort, I’m a winner. I welcome help and friendship. I’m not interested in advice about doing things I know can’t be done.”

I am the first person to admit that I’ve had a lot of luck in my life: my parents are loving and supportive; my education was top notch and those connections helped me get to an excellent place in my career at a relatively young age; and, my long-time boyfriend is supportive and financially together, so even though I’ve had my heart broken a couple of times, I’m in a great place in my personal life. The problem is—and I do have problems—that, between my seemingly perfect life and my incredibly demanding work schedule, my friends are quick to be resentful, either because I’m doing so much better than they are or because I’m too busy to actually spend time with them (or really figure out how to schedule time with them even when I’m free). And I know they’re true friends, but I can feel them distancing themselves from me and I don’t know what, if anything, I can do about it. I don’t feel like I should have to apologize for all my luck and hard work. My goal is to be proud, not sorry, for what I’ve accomplished, and for my friends to feel the same.

You’ve hit at one of life’s sad paradoxes: that good luck brings its own special kind of pain to which, of course, there’s no complete answer. (Not that bad luck’s pain has an answer, either; see above.)

When you’re good at doing things and work hard, life gets more complicated. You get handed more responsibilities, you have more to be crabby about and less time to relax, and everyone feels you no longer have time for them. And no right to complain.

Or, if you do have time, you’re too busy relaxing to pay attention, so the only person who is really pleased with you is your boss, and you wonder why you’re unhappy and isolated when you’re the luckiest person in the world. And I wonder why the lord was so kind as to find yet another patient who wants to pay to talk to me so that I can make a living without lifting heavy objects.

If your goal is to feel happier or more relaxed, forget it. You’ll just become more self-critical. If it’s to get your friends to cheer you on instead of being needy, resentful and envious, you’re asking for the impossible and your attitude will widen the gulf with your friends. You’re successful and fucked, fucked by success. And you’re not even on drugs.

But if you accept that a successful life forces you into being a constant disappointment to your friends and family, there’s much you can do with it. For one thing, don’t blame yourself or your friends. The fault is that there’s never enough time or energy, and life is life, and someone should have warned you about this in school, but they didn’t (just about the drugs).

If you focus on achievement alone as the source of your pride, your problem will get worse. But if you try for a better balance, you may well be able to keep the inevitable pain and resentment from becoming too bad.

Decide for yourself where you want to draw the line between work and social commitments. Don’t over-respond to the pleasures or prestige of work or the ill-will of “spurned” friends. You’re trying to make the compromise that best reflects your needs and values.

And if you never achieve the perfect balance, congratulations; you’re human. And you’ve finally found one thing you’re not good at.

STATEMENT:
Make a statement to protect yourself and your friends from translating the frustrations of limited social time and energy into feelings of failed friendship. “I love my work and the way I’m developing professionally but it puts unbelievable strain on friendships that I also treasure. I’m gradually learning how to protect my social time, but it’s hard to do when I’m still an apprentice and my assignments seem to take every minute I have. It won’t be like this forever. My long-term goal is to find a better balance and a way to do a good enough job and be a good enough friend. It won’t be easy or always feel good. I won’t ever feel like I’m doing the perfect job as a professional or friend. But I hope that my professional success will give something special to my social life and compensate for the hard compromises and that my friends will appreciate the fact that I’m making good compromises, even when they feel we don’t have enough time.”

I’ve given my closest girlfriend the same advice a million times, and a million times, she’s passively ignored me, so I’ll say straight away that my goal is to give advice she’ll actually listen to. The problem she always comes to me with is this (and in her mind, it isn’t a problem, at least at first): said friend is in a band, and because of that, she’s always on the road, and in her travels she meets these guys (either randomly for one night or for a few weeks at a time if they’re touring with her band, that kind of thing), and every so often she falls for one of these guys and wants to find a way to have a real relationship with him, even though it’s logistically impossible in the long term due to the fact they live in one place and she lives in another (never mind that they’re usually too young, too drunk, too full of themselves, etc). I tell her those things, but she insists her feelings (which is what made me think I should write you!) can’t be ignored, that guy-of-the-moment gives her butterflies and she can’t remember being this excited about anyone. It’s only a matter of time before things go horribly wrong (he stops returning her texts/calls, starts being a jerk to her, take your pick), and then she’s sad, tells me she should have listened to me, and wonders why she’s so dumb about guys. I, too, wonder, but I’m sure you’ve got it all figured out.

Instead of asking yourself what’s wrong with your advice because it hasn’t got through to her after a million times, ask yourself whether there’s any hope of her hearing your advice. Ever. And not because she has tinnitus.

Because the sad thing is, when it comes to the thrill of romance, some people are addicted to those “butterflies” and want to embrace that sensation, no matter how many times they’ve been burned. They love love, whether it’s real or phony, and regardless of how long it takes them to recover, or what else they lose while recuperating. Love is blind, your friend is deaf and dumb.

And yes, like all addictions, it can be terribly harmful and make sufferers irresponsible and self-centered. She has no control over it, and you certainly don’t, so it’s time to start singin’ a new tune, as it were. Or really, no tune at all.

With your friend’s particular disorder, a sort of emotional ADD, you’re probably doing more harm than good by listening to the same old crap over and over; by offering the attention of a concerned friend, you’re giving her more opportunity to talk about love and feelings and play the role of foolish, free, expressive romantic child to your worried, overly responsible unhappy adult. She’s getting nowhere, and you’re getting annoyed. So stop.

A better goal is to stay clear of her problem when it makes her self-absorbed or foolish, and offer help when and only when it’s likely to do good.

If you have a need to offer advice, figure out a way to get paid for it. Actually, if she’s managed to turn some of her excess feelings into songs, you’re probably already owed some royalties.

STATEMENT:
Compose a statement to protect yourself from over-involvement the next time your friend wants to share her giddy anticipation of future happiness. “I’m always interested in hearing about someone who might be a good friend or partner for you because of the qualities you think they have to offer, but making a big deal of their attractiveness by itself is stupid and I don’t want to talk about it.”

My little sister and I are only a year apart and really close—we’re also roommates—so I think I know more about her love life than most sisters would, and vice versa. She likes to make fun of me for being so conservative, because I believe in real dates, having doors held open for me, the whole thing, and she insists that she just wants to have fun and randomly hooks up with guys all the time. The thing is though, and what she won’t admit, is that she doesn’t just want to have fun. The morning after a one night stand she tries to act all cool, but when the guy doesn’t call in the next few days, she gets annoyed. Then she starts asking me all these absurd questions, like what it meant that he ignored her when she saw him at the bar, or if the fact he talked to her means he’s interested in hanging out again, and no matter what I say (usually something like, “it meant nothing, you said yourself it was a one night stand and there’s nothing there”), she doesn’t let it go until the guy is really rude to her or she finds another victim. I try to tell her that there’s nothing wrong with wanting a boyfriend, but she thinks I’m just projecting. My goal is to get her out of denial and stop torturing herself (and me).

Your sister must be closely related to the woman above who is in love with being in love and deliberately avoids thinking, looking, or being in the same universe as anything that would interfere with her loving feelings. Even if she won’t admit those loving feelings are there.

As you see it, your goal is to get your sister to admit that she cares about her casual dates more than she lets on, because she always suffers afterwards. But perhaps it’s time for you to face some facts of your own; namely that it’s not a message she’s ready to hear, and that her suffering may be, for the time being at least, unavoidable. They say denial is a river in Egypt, but in this case, the current runs both ways.

It’s hard to watch your sister suffer when she’s also your roommate, and then persist in asking dumb questions that convey her suffering. Unfortunately, you can’t ease her pain by answering her questions, and even trying is unhelpful because it suggests to her that someone has an answer, when there is no answer.

Worse, she may hear your criticism as telling her she screwed up a relationship and drove someone away, which will make her more defensive and impervious to logic.

You’ve made your point with her: in so many words, fucking around with fucking causes her pain, and she’d do better and become stronger by learning to tolerate loneliness and/or sexual frustration until she finds someone better.

From your point of view, it’s not a matter of being conservative or a free spirit, but accepting the way your feelings happen to respond and making the best of it. She can’t do that, and that’s what you need to accept.

A better goal—you’d do the same if she were an addict—is to pull away from her a little bit when she’s being self-destructive. No more advice, no sympathy, just go about your business. When you’re at an impasse with someone you love, it’s best to quietly agree to disagree. Or, if she’s really harping on it, leave the room.

STATEMENT:
Prepare a statement that expresses support while discouraging topics you think are stupid. “You’re a great person and you deserve someone worthwhile and you’ll probably do better and have more emotional energy available if you stop fucking around. And that’s all I have to say. Ooh, ‘Greek’ is on!”

I just broke up with my boyfriend, and even though I thought I was doing the right thing in the long run, I think I’m now making a habit of ending relationships before they get too serious. This time I ended things because, after a year together, I had to face the fact that I wasn’t as excited about him as I should be, and certainly not as excited about him as he was about me (and never was—this wasn’t an issue of the spark being gone, but never really being there in the first place). I left the guy before him because he and his mother were very close—maybe too close, in that his mother seemed to boss him around—and that mother lived hundreds of miles away, which meant he’d want to move hundred miles away eventually, and I really didn’t (let alone raise a family there so close to his crazy mother). I’m not that old, but I’m definitely in the marriage window, and while I think I’m just being realistic when I make these decisions, I worry that I’m just panicking in the face of actually settling down. I hate how much I’ve hurt my exes by what I’ve done, my goal is, I don’t want to do it again.

It’s understandable to feel bad when you’ve made someone else feel bad, but feelings aren’t that important when you’re looking at the bottom line. Before you start criticizing yourself for the painful outcome of these two relationships, considering the obstacles that make it difficult to find a good partner.

Ultimately, your goal isn’t to avoid painful breakups; it’s to deal with prospective partners honestly while you try to find a good match, knowing that it’s entirely possible to begin a relationship with someone you like and respect and then discover problems that would doom a long-term future.

That’s what you can’t control here: the unsolvability of two of those problems and the need to break the relationship sooner rather than later, regardless of the pain you might cause.

We both know couples who broke up because one of them is over-responsive to another priority in their lives, like a mother or job or college basketball. So when you’re considering settling down with someone, you need to ask yourself how this guy is likely to respond if the demands of our family conflict with his other loyalties.

Consider whether or not he’ll respond to your demands by getting his priorities straight without being too subservient, using what you know about your time together as well as information about his previous relationships to help make your determination. Which seems to be exactly what you did.

Even though it was painful to end things with your Freudian issues ex-boyfriend, you did so without frivolous motivation. I agree with you that this criterion—how well he handles the boundaries of the relationship—is critical and can be a deal-breaker, and, in my experience, it’s often hard to figure it out before you know someone well. So don’t fault yourself for back out or the pain it caused since you prevented more pain later. And dodged a hell of a mother-in-law.

We also know couples whose marriage failed because one of them tried too hard to make things work with someone s/he thought s/he should care about and didn’t. I think you were right to give it a try, because sometimes your feelings for someone grow with time. Then again, sometimes they don’t, and you need to move on. Painful, again, but what you did seemed necessary, principled, and well-intended.

In some ways, you are panicking in the face of settling down, but only because you’ve done a fair assessment of what your future would be like and don’t want to settle down with someone who isn’t right for you, which is a completely appropriate (if painful) response. You’re doing the right thing, even if you haven’t yet found the right guy.

STATEMENT:
To protect yourself from the guilt and remorse you don’t deserve, write a statement setting out your principles and procedures for doing a search under these tough conditions. “I think it’s important to try to find a good partner and dangerous to choose a bad one. So I need to search for qualities that I believe are necessary for a relationship to last and not be overly influenced by attractiveness (though that’s not unimportant). I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings or break my own heart, but it’s my job to move on quickly if I think someone won’t pan out, because that will do the most good in the long run. This is a worthwhile task and I will not be deterred by pain.”

I like to stay friends with my exes, or at least friendly, but this one woman I dated a few years ago won’t speak to me, and I don’t understand why. We were friends before we dated, were together for a year, and when she told me she didn’t want to be with me anymore, I admit, I was upset, but then she agreed to try to maintain a friendship, at least for a while. When I told her that I wasn’t happy with her level of effort, she told me she thought we should spend some time apart then, and I haven’t heard from her since. I’ve written her a handful of emails since then, like when I heard she’d gotten promoted at work, or when my wife and I first got engaged, but she won’t talk to me. I’m happily married now, so it’s not that I’m not over her…I guess I just miss her as a friend and can’t think of a reason she’d consider me an enemy. I would be really upset if she thought I’d hurt her in some way, and I’ve only ever been friendly, so I don’t understand how that could happen. My goal is to figure out what I’ve done to my ex to make her shun me, and what I can do to make it right.

When your goal is to keep a friendship, you’re assuming that it’s within your power to do so, and that’s a dangerous assumption. When it isn’t within your power (as it usually isn’t), but you still put on the full court press, you’ll always make the relationship worse. You’ll press so hard that the other person will likely feel smothered to death.

So regardless of whether your commitment was cemented with blood, a legal contract, or an oath on your honor as a gentleman, there are obstacles to continuing friendship or love that are truly insurmountable. A break-up is one of them.

It may be a subtle matter of human chemistry or the way brains and/or personalities are put together, but it often happens that people who are initially drawn together as friends or lovers can’t stay that way. When she stopped being your girlfriend, she was announcing that something wasn’t working for her. So she agreed to try a half-assed fix.

It makes sense; after investing a year in the relationship, she probably wanted it to pay off, but was forced to admit that something got in the way. Whatever that something was, there’s always a good chance it will not permit friendship, even if you both wish one another well and have no lingering resentments. Chemistry is tricky, not just in bringing two people together, but in keeping them apart.

The sad truth is that when one party in a broken relationship makes the plea to maintain friendship as the romantic relationship ends, it’s an offer best refused; it exists to cushion the blow of rejection, either to make someone feel less guilty or less devastated, but all it tends to do is draw out the break-up process. One day, you might be friends, but at that point, you’re just exes.

Yes, it’s worth trying harder to improve or keep a relationship if you think it’s really possible. But if you try harder once or twice and it’s not working, accept the overwhelming probability that you’ve arrived at a limit to what you and she control and that, sad though it may be, and impossible to understand, the time for leaving her alone has arrived. I’m sure your wife feels the same way.

STATEMENT:
Compose a statement that reminds you of your need for a boundary, a limit to how far you’ll let your wishes go. “I hoped my ex-girlfriend and I could maintain a friendship and thought she agreed to make an effort. I hoped that her negative feelings, whatever they were, were limited to our being a couple and that our previous friendship could reassert itself. I was wrong, but I’m glad I tried. There’s a good chance that she tried also before feeling that it was wrong for her. I have a right to feel disappointed, but expressing my negative feelings or trying to reach out to her gets me and her to focus on our negative feelings instead of on the good things we brought one another. My goal is not to keep the friendship going, but to make the best of what we had.”

I don’t know if my husband is cheating on me, but I admit that I’m convinced enough that I’m wondering what to say to him. He’s always looking for an excuse to get out of the house—suddenly every single game, no matter what sport, deserves a trip to the bar with his buddies. It may just be that he doesn’t like to hang out with the kids, or that I annoy him, but that seems to extreme. We’ve never had a screaming fight about the whole thing, mostly because we’re both too tired from work and life and whatever. When I do joke about it, he just swears up and down he’s not cheating, and that he’s going alone out because I hate going out with him, and that I’m letting my insecurities get the best of me. And I guess he’s right in some ways, because I am kind of shy and, when I’m busy, I forget about going out. But he knows how much it drives me crazy, and that I need help with our kids, so you’d think he’d cut back out of consideration for my needs. I’m tired and lonely, too, so now I wonder where I’m supposed to turn. So that’s it. My goal is to keep anyone from cheating on anyone.

Just the fact that confrontations over infidelity are the climax of choice for most tabloid TV programs should tell you that they seldom work out positively. Instead, they lead to mutual accusations, just-stop-attacking-me apologies, ineffective denials, and/or resolutions to do better followed by the same old behavior.

The problem is that, if he tends to lie or fool around, then that’s the way he is. As much as it feels personal, it usually isn’t, and if you looked at his past under a fidelity microscope, you’d probably find microbes of secret flings everywhere, and those microbes will keep chugging along until the Cialis stops working.

That said, your goal isn’t to slide into this negative morass of overwrought feeling, but to reconsider the value of your marriage and make it better if you think it’s worth it. It’s usually worth it if, as in your case, you’re working hard to raise kids together and you think he’s making a major contribution and isn’t that bad to live with. That isn’t romantic, but being a parent rarely is, and giving a kid a stable home outweighs your need for doting affection and John Mayer CDs.

I’m not saying that suspicion and infidelity aren’t very painful. But as much as having a cheating spouse can hurt, the result of divorce is often worse, and it’s your job to give yourself a chance to make a decision rather than let your emotions do it for you, either by calling him out or sticking it to him with some fooling around of your own.

In your case, there’s a substantial chance that he’s not fooling around, or that, if he is, it’s for reasons that are relatively superficial and within your power to change, particularly if you avoid venting your pain in an emotional blowout. Your shyness and preoccupation with kids and crises may have prevented you from developing a clear job description for your spouse and actively reminding him about your expectations.

Some guys head out to the bar if they’ve got nothing to do and the kids are noisy—but they will nevertheless pitch in and hang around if you give them clear tasks, including a schedule for your social and recreational life together. Your husband probably doesn’t have a wandering eye, but he does lack a sense of direction as a partner. You need to give him that direction before letting him loose entirely.

STATEMENT:
Before you tell him that you’re hurt, suspicious, or disappointed, figure out what you want him to do and address the issue positively. Compose a statement to keep your negative feelings at bay. “We’re both working hard to raise our kids and make a living, and we’re a good team, but we don’t spend as much time together as I think we could and should, both as parents and friends. We both like doing things on our own, but time is very limited these days, and we need time together to keep the union strong. I like spending time with you. So I’ll develop a schedule, you tell me what you think, and we’ll see if we can put more energy and pleasure into our relationship.”

OK, I know this sounds juvenile, but I’m in love with this guy I work with and it’s killing me. It’s kind of a catch 22, because if we didn’t spend so much time together, I probably would never have developed feelings for him, but I did, and I have, so now I’m stuck. I’m not sure how he feels about me, but I’m also not sure it matters; if he doesn’t reciprocate, things will get extremely awkward, and if he does, we can’t have a relationship since that’s strongly frowned upon in our workplace, especially because he’s an indirect superior. Plus I’m one of only a few women, it’s very competitive, so if we do get together and are found out everybody will write me off as someone who sleeps her way up the ladder, which couldn’t be farther from the truth since all I do is work (with this guy, who I can’t have). This of course means I never have time to meet anyone else (or really do anything else), which is why the whole situation seems so dramatic. At this point, my choices are to confront him and quit (which I can’t afford to do) or keep working in agony (which is, as mentioned, killing me). I’m willing to work to find a compromise.

As is usually true in these situations, your romantic longings for your colleague can do nothing but get you into trouble. Romance at work is highly risky in more ways than you’ve considered.

He could break your heart and then you would have to see him every day (and if you’ve got a weakness for depression, that can be counted on to kick it off). It could then become impossible to work with him, and after that, as you yourself admit, others could blame you for being overly ambitious and/or your performance ratings could mysteriously sag for no apparent reason other than your bosses want you out.

Central to the risk is a nastily vicious circle of loss, pain, poor performance, self-criticism, and more pain. I can assure you that cases like this provide me with a thriving sub-sector of my business.

However, if your goal isn’t to satisfy your longing, but instead to see if there’s something constructive you can make of it without exorbitant risk, you can pursue friendship while making it clear that your intentions, at least for the present, are non-sexual and non-romantic. But you must be clear with yourself that friendship does not mean the pleasure of feeling close to him while he tells you his problems.

If you’re checking out the possibility of a real relationship, friendship means that he shows as strong an interest in you as a person as you do for him, and that he takes independent action to demonstrate that interest, action and not just words.

With luck and careful management, you may have found a guy with a good, well-researched track record for fidelity and responsibility who works well with you, has common goals and interests, and has actively held up his side of your relationship over a long and sexually unsatisfying period of time. (But is also sort of your boss.)

At that point, you many well decide that good partners are hard to find and worth the risk of heartbreak and/or a change of job, particularly if the economic climate has improved by then. If that’s the case, go ahead and make your move. But your goal is not to share your current dramatic emotions. It’s to manage the often-high risk of finding a good partner, in or outside of the office.

STATEMENT:
Compose a statement that will keep your “he loves me, loves me not” feelings in check and encourage you to manage the risk of a partnership search carefully and responsibly. “Hiding my love, lust, and loneliness may make me feel like a loser (and give me lyrics for a country and western song), but they’re necessary to managing a high priority search in a high risk environment. If the results don’t add up to a likely relationship, I’ll need discipline to beef up my out-of-work social life and wall off strong feelings for someone with whom I must always remain professional.”