You, like a lot of women, probably love surprises -- just not the sort that leave you kneeling over your boyfriend's lifeless body, wondering whether to call EMS or the coroner. (What, was there no Saran wrap he could put across the toilet bowl?)

The power of laughter can get a little oversold. (If it truly were "the best medicine," hospitals would skip the morphine drip and hang a chimp in overalls from that metal pole by the patient's bed.) Laughter does seem to be pretty good medicine for relationships -- assuming a guy's attempt to make a woman laugh doesn't make her hold a grudge. Researchers have found that the ability to be funny is correlated with high intelligence -- a plus in a partner -- and with what Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman deems "the Woody Allen effect," the possibility for even geeky-looking guys to get and hang on to girlfriends. (Woody Allen didn't attract the ladies because, in pitch darkness, he looks just like Clive Owen.)

As for why your boyfriend pulled this stunt, the phrase "Seemed like a good idea at the time" comes to mind. A guy can get so caught up in making authentically gruesome char marks on his arm that he never considers how hilarious you're likely to find it when the man you love appears to be lying dead on your kitchen floor. As for your inability to forgive him, it probably feels "safer" to cling to your grudge because it puts distance between you and the potential for future hurt. Unfortunately, it also distances you from the good stuff -- love, affection, connection, and the continuation of your relationship.

To decide whether to break up with your grudge or your boyfriend, ask yourself a few questions: Does he now understand why you were so upset? Is this number 3,024 in a long line of painful idiocies or just a one-time painfully stupid thing? And outside of when he's pretending to have died horribly, does he show you he cares about your feelings and well-being? Unless you have reason to believe Faked Death: The Sequel or other major insensitivities will pop up in your future, it's probably time to give that grudge you've been holding a pat on the butt and a bag lunch and send it on its way.

When they say that to find a prince you have to kiss a lot of toads, this isn't supposed to mean kissing the same two toads a lot -- week after week, for 10 years. Now, Flotsam and Jetsam here aren't without their merits, such as how being with one endears you to the other -- much in the way stomach flu must make you long for strep throat. And if, as a little girl, you lay awake imagining yourself being shuffled between an untrustworthy bad lover and a man with a girlfriend, well then, congrats -- you're living your dream. Otherwise, perhaps you've forgotten something: You have freedom of choice and lots of men out there to choose from. Of course, for freedom of choice to work, you actually have to choose -- have standards and not drop them and your panties every time a bad deal texts you that it wants to come over. No, it won't be "easy." It's just what you have to do if you want more -- like a guy who can't wait to see you, and not because his girlfriend's yoga class is only 45 minutes or he's hot to make up for violating your trust with some unsatisfying sex.

What will happen if one of these calls goes to voicemail? Kim Jong Un will unleash an electromagnetic pulse bomb on the U.S., and the power grid will be fried for 40 years -- or the neighbor will have to call back to tell your girlfriend the ingenious thing she did to perk up her banana cake?

Two years into your relationship, the point when so many partners are just getting good at taking each other for granted, you're telling your girlfriend you want to carve out special time to focus on each other -- just 30 minutes out of her unbusy, retired woman day. She, in turn, responds like you just demanded she cut off her three favorite fingers and feed them to the pigeons.

It's possible that she isn't entirely conscious of why she's treating you this way. She may fear getting closer and then getting dumped or think you'll value her more if she makes you feel like less and less. It's possible she is punishing you for something or is trying to abuse you into leaving. What is clear is who's the controlling one here -- the self-appointed dowager countess of the relationship, making the unilateral decision that the phone will be answered no matter what. As for you, her significant serf, keep quiet and eat your gruel while milady has a nice chat with Rachel from Cardmember Services.

It must get hard to parse whether you're in a relationship or a call center. Perhaps you, like many people, assume that being in a relationship means having a partner who loves you and cares about your happiness. Your girlfriend does seem to -- as long as it doesn't mean having to call somebody back after dinner. Even if she doesn't fully understand what's motivating her behavior, if she does love you, she can behave lovingly while she figures it out and stop answering the phone like she's one of the town's two sober volunteer firemen. Telling her how unwanted you feel obviously isn't enough; you also have to have standards for how you'll be treated and be willing to walk if they aren't met -- ideally, into the arms of a woman whose screams of passion in bed don't include "Who's calling, please?"

Many men have had success getting the attention of a woman who works in a bank by coming in wearing pantyhose over their head and handing her a note. Unfortunately, this approach also tends to draw the attention of the woman's co-workers (unimaginative sorts who, at the first sign of creative headgear, are quick to summon the SWAT team). Even if you forgo the pantyhat, asking her out in person is a problem, as nothing turns the workplace into a junior high school cafeteria faster than having your co-workers looking on as somebody hits on you. (Unless your "local bank" is Citibank's world headquarters, she probably sits at a desk in the middle of the place.) So, do go in on some pretext -- so she can attach a face to your name -- and then phone her to ask her out. If she turns you down, just act like you're cool with it and you shouldn't have a problem showing your face in the bank -- tempting as it might be to go in wearing a Richard Nixon mask and try again: "No dye packs or marked money, and can I interest you in dinner and a slow-speed police chase?"

We all want to believe -- in the tooth fairy and talking dogs, that Santa got to the mall on his airborne sleigh and not the bus after his car got impounded for DUIs.

Sticking to your preferred version of reality works when you're 6. At 26 or 36, it tends to end badly. You, for example, tried to ignore the wildly obvious: A guy isn't logging in at a dating site daily because his mouse gets lost on the way to the sports scores. Eventually, Reality popped up to ask you, "Am I really going to have to bite you?" So, you asked the guy whether he was seeing anybody from the site, and he said, "Only a friend I work with." Note that this was not a no. To a woman seeking the truth, it sounds like what it was -- a truth-flavored lie. But, determined as you were to keep believing you'd found your Mr. Husband, you cut up all the red flags and did a remarkable job repurposing them into throw pillows.

The fact that your suspicions finally got too big and stanky to ignore didn't give you the right to plow through the guy's email -- the techno-quivalent of breaking in to his house and reading all his mail. People are entitled to privacy. Even scummy people. Even scummy people who are sleeping with you. If a guy's level of sharing doesn't match your need to know, find the door -- not an opportune moment to go all Nancy Drew on his Gmail.

Railing about what a bad guy your ex is and contacting every woman he ever said "'sup?" to on some dating site is a great idea, as it will keep you far too busy to admit that you made it possible for him to skeeve you. (Your not wanting to know coincided rather neatly with his wanting to keep his options open.) You can't control whether somebody lies to you. You can only control whether you do -- and whether you treat reality like the 50-foot brick wall it is or pretend, for as long as you can, that it comes with an elastic waistband like fat men's pants.

There are sometimes great barriers to two people coming together -- warring nations, conflicting religions, violent family feuds, and other students seated in nearby desks. You're taking college classes, which suggests your problem-solving ability exceeds that of most boiled vegetables. This, in turn, suggests you could figure out the obvious solution: Pull this woman aside and ask her out. But maybe what you're most interested in is a convenient excuse for spending the rest of the semester staring at the back of her head while drawing little hearts in a notebook, allowing you to feel connected to her without risking rejection. The problem is, this can cause your feelings to fester -- to the point where you have such a huge one-sided relationship with her that you become unable to speak to her without seeming creepy. If you do want to date her, ask her out now, before "Wanna knock a few back at Kelly's bar?" comes off like "You know, you'd look really pretty chained to my cabin wall."

"Will you marry me?" is a pretty powerful question. Asking this of a woman who loves you can provoke tears, and not because you didn't hire Beyonce to sing "Put A Ring On It" and spend a year training a humpback whale to swim by at exactly the right moment and shoot the ring out its blowhole.

Regarding the proposals you mention, the New York guy is 27-year-old online marketing company honcho Josh Ogle. He wrote on reddit.com that he actually spent around $13K on a lavish proposal evening, starting with his popping the question to Nataliya Lavryshyn on a Manhattan hotel rooftop, decorated for the event with pages of Pablo Neruda's poetry. This price included $3,500 for a professional "proposal planner" and a $1,500 post-proposal private dinner cooked by a celebrity chef. (Media outlets came up with the $45K proposal cost by adding in the $21K custom-made ring and the $10K post-engagement European "honeymoon.") As easy as it is to mock the guy for outsourcing his proposal, Ogle is reportedly a self-made multi-millionaire (apparently, after growing up poor while his dad was in prison), so for him, $45K probably spends like $45 does for the rest of us.

The Portland guy, actor and theatrical director Isaac Lamb, pulled together 60-plus friends and family members in an elaborate (and wildly adorable) lip-synched song-and-dance routine to Bruno Mars' "Marry You." His girlfriend, choreographer Amy Frankel, listened to the song on headphones from the tailgate of a Honda CRV pulling her slowly down the street while everyone danced in formation behind it. Lamb then got down on one knee and said to Frankel, "You have already given me a lifetime of happiness. Will you let me spend the rest of my life trying to give you the same?" (Not surprisingly, she said yes.)

Although the trend toward extreme proposing is surely the lovechild of reality TV and social media, it has something in common with the mythic quest -- an epic mission a man would go on to prove his love and worth to a woman. Of course, these days, the most dangerous journey a man can usually take for a woman is a trip to 7-Eleven on bald tires. So, conspicuous romancing can act as a stand-in proving ground -- an extravagant display that a man's "all-in" and somebody the woman can count on...to keep life exciting and to call a singing, dancing, plumbing flash mob whenever the garbage disposal's broken.

That said, you're asking a woman to grow old with you, not auditioning for "America's Got Proposal Talent." If you are "all in," you probably show your girlfriend that in a lot of little ways every day. Keep in mind that Ogle's and Lamb's proposals reflected who they are and will likely continue to be -- a really rich guy and an artsy, creative guy, respectively. Your proposal likewise needs to reflect who you are and tell your girlfriend that you get who she is -- starting with whether she's someone who'd be horrified to have an intimate moment like a marriage proposal take place on the Jumbotron.

The truth is, there's no need for Jumbotrons or trying to hire away the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from some Bar Mitzvah gig they picked up. Even if every one of Lamb's dancers stayed home in bed, his proposal would have been extremely moving simply because of the words he spoke. Put your effort into telling your girlfriend why you always want to be there to hold her hand, even when it gets all wrinkly. Couple that with an essential element from the elaborate proposers -- delighting a woman with the element of surprise. You can do this by planning your proposal around something your girlfriend once said (and will be amazed you remembered) or just by serving her toast a slightly different way: with a heart cut in the middle with the ring inside it. This sort of proposal sends a message -- "I love you and want to spend the rest of my life with you" (not to be confused with "Bet I can get more YouTube hits than that big dog teaching the puppy to go down the stairs!").

It's good to keep a woman guessing -- but not as to whether you want her to go out with you or give you the Heimlich maneuver.

A Dutch study confirmed what you and most of us already know -- that talking to a hot woman can turn a man's brain into a pudding cup. The researchers -- a team led by Dr. Johan C. Karremans -- did the study after one of them was chatting up a "very attractive girl" he'd just met, intent on impressing her, but when she asked him where he lived, he suddenly couldn't remember his street address.

University of Chicago researcher Dr. Sian Beilock, author of "Choke" -- a book about overcoming performance anxiety in sports, business, and the arts -- explains that we have different types of memory. The type crapping out on you every time your head says "Well, hello, beautiful!" is "working memory," the cognitive horsepower that allows you to hold relevant information in mind (and protect that information from disappearing) while you're trying to do something else. Stressing about what a woman might think of you and overthinking things you normally do without much thought, like tossing around witty banter, depletes working memory resources that would otherwise be available -- maybe to the point where you find yourself glancing around the bar for help recalling the simplest facts about yourself: "My name? Uh...Bud. Bud Light."

You stop the pretty ladies from pulling the fire alarm in your head and evacuating your every thought the same way you, haw-haw, get to Carnegie Hall -- practice. Beilock lays out numerous examples that suggest that the more you practice under pressure the less likely you'll be to choke when the stress is on. For example, golfers who had their putting practice sessions videotaped and judged by coaches did much better in competition than those who practiced without scrutiny. You, likewise, would probably be helped by going out and practicing hitting on hot women with your friends watching in the wings or -- better yet, to raise the stakes -- with them watching and placing bets with you on how you'll do. To avoid self-conscious overthink, shift your focus from fretting about what a woman thinks of you to having a good time saying things you find interesting and fun. With practice, words should stop deserting you and you should have fewer grammatical accidents, making you far less likely to compliment a beautiful woman on how smashing she looks with, "Drop dead, gorgeous."

There are two surefire ways to see that a guy sticks around after sex on the first date: handcuffing him to the headboard or developing magical powers to control men and small appliances with your hair. Otherwise, you should assume that sex on the first date will be sex on the last date. This isn't to say it necessarily will be. But no matter how good a man's intentions, he can't reprogram male psychology, which evolved to push him to seek sex without commitment with as many women as he can. (All the better to leave lots of offspring to pass on his genes.) What keeps a man coming back aren't good intentions; it takes an emotional connection that overwhelms his urge to be on to the next. So, whenever it's possible you'll want a particular guy in your life for more than an afternoon, see that you take things slowly enough for an emotional bond to develop. In other words, if you wind up on your back on the first date, he'd better be standing over you asking, "Oh, my gosh...you okay?"

When you're looking into a woman's eyes and there's that awkward moment of silence, there are plenty of things you can say besides "I love you" -- like, "I was going to say something, but now I'm not" or "Have I told you I've started drinking the blood of freshly killed unicorns?"

It is wise to avoid spewing mush all over a woman on, say, the third date. The premature "I love you" tends to translate as "I really don't know you, beyond how you like your steak, but I love any woman who doesn't block my calls or spot me coming down the sidewalk and duck into a real estate office and beg them to hide her." Of course, what really lowers a man's "value in the woman's subconscious" is being someone who needs a "dating guru" to help him be calculating; he can't just be. Women value men who don't seem to be living by others' dictates -- men who are spontaneous and fun and don't have a faraway look in their eyes because they're trying to recall something they heard on some dating webinar.

Now, a lot of men have childhoods that don't exactly lead them to walk the planet feeling like they own the place. So, it's understandable if you began your dating life as a wimpy, approval-seeking suckup, but if you continue along those lines, you're a lazy, wimpy, approval-seeking suckup. Having value in a woman's eyes takes having value in your own, which takes doing the work to develop self-respect instead of just fencing off that huge sinkhole in your self so no squirrels or neighborhood dogs fall in.

Once you have self-respect, it'll seem ridiculous to pull out some dating calculus book to figure out what to say to a woman and when. The right words will just flow at the right time out of genuine feeling that's developed between you. Sure, there's always that chance that some woman who seemed into you will have an attack of the commitment heebies or decide that she doesn't feel the same way. If you're more of a man's man than a worm's worm, this won't be a statement on your worth. It's just a sign that you need to look for a woman who wants you as much as you want her. If you're secure, chances are you'll eventually find a partner who won't want to leave you -- and not just because you always open the door for her when she gets that look in her eye that says, "I can't wait one more moment to pee on the neighbors' rosebushes."

Can't you just let him get his information about you the old-fashioned way, by sneaking over with a tall ladder and peering through your blinds? Dating other people after ending an engagement is an awkward topic -- which seems the perfect reason to continue to avoid discussing it with your now ex-fiance. But say somebody does snap a picture of you and a date and toss it up on Facebook. Unless your ex has only 12 Facebook friends or he's monitoring Facebook like a bald eagle hovering over a prairie rat, he might miss the photo. And even if he does see it, assuming it doesn't involve tongue, who's to say whether it's you and your next candidate for fiance or you and some guy who dropped by your office? Although you two "weren't feeling it anymore" and it's natural that you'd both be looking to feel it with other people, once you've loved somebody, you probably can't help but feel a little pang at the thought of them blithely falling into the arms of somebody else. So, maybe consider ambiguity a gift -- one that lets you believe the deadening silence between you is the sound of him in his garage building a drone camera to spy on your every move.

Katharine Hepburn could have made a sex tape without anyone ever knowing, because after the 8 mm film got transferred to video, her image would have been hard to discern from that of Ernest Borgnine, Sasquatch, or Yogi Bear.

Thanks to technological advances, whenever some dermatologist in Idaho clicks up Kim Kardashian's sex tape, her agent probably gets a call telling him she's got some 2 mm birthmark that needs looking at. As distressing as it is that you could probably pick your boyfriend's ex out of a lineup -- one from the waist down -- it's not like you found footage of him clubbing squirrels. You just got unfortunate visual confirmation of what you already knew: He had a girlfriend before you. They did more than spoon.

Jealousy is a good thing when it rears its little green head to warn of an actual threat to the relationship: "Eeek! He's having sex with another woman..." But jealousy needs a slap in the mouth from reason when there is no real threat: "...and it happened a year before we'd even met." To help yourself think rationally, don't be nebulously hysterical ("I'm afraaaaid!"). Verbalize exactly what you're actually afraid of -- probably that he'd leave you, maybe for his ex. Next, consider what would happen if he actually did. The world would not end. Your head would not fall off, roll under the bed, and become a cat toy. You'd probably sob into your pillow for a few months, but you'd eventually get over him and get on with your life.

To get back the relationship you had, start acting as if you'd never lost it -- meaning, when your boyfriend asks you the time, you just tell him; you don't shriek that all you can see is that clock on the nightstand in his sex video. There's a good deal of research, laid out by psychologist Dr. Richard Wiseman in "The As If Principle," that suggests that changing how you behave is actually the fastest, most effective way to change how you feel. Let your boyfriend know that you know your fears aren't rational, that you're going to stop acting like they are, and that he, in turn, needs to stop treating you like a bomb that could be triggered by "pass the salt." Before long, you should be his cool girlfriend again -- faster, probably, if that blanket from the video finds its way to some homeless man. Ideally, he should be one who isn't in your neighborhood, lest your response to "Spare change?" be "You whore!"

If a woman agrees to go out with you, it isn't so she can finally find out why the chicken crossed the road. She either wants a free dinner or wants to figure out whether you're worth seeing again. You're unlikely to score a second date by pelting her with jokes and one-liners, which suggests you prepared for the evening by memorizing the joke book on the back of the toilet. What impresses a woman are shows of wit -- spontaneous expressions of humor in response to something she says or something around you. Wit reflects intelligence while communicating your worldview -- telling her who you are far more interestingly than droning on about your major and your dream to someday get your boss to assign you a better parking space. That said, don't get so caught up in making her laugh that you forget that connecting with her is the point. Make her feel like a one-woman audience for your "act" and she'll figure out for herself why the chicken crossed the road. (Because it would rather be hit by a car than listen to another one of your jokes.)

It's pretty hard to confuse an exam room with a singles bar -- unless the singles bars you've experienced have men leaning over and asking women, "So...when was your last period?" and "Do you leak urine?"

Cheating involves having a romance with a person other than your partner, not having him give you a Pap smear. Also, male doctors generally have a female nurse present while examining a female patient (so they won't be accused of any funny business). There will be that rare Dr. Pervo, but according to doctors I spoke to, by week two of their residency, bodies might as well be giant steaks. So, for a male doctor, your wife's "special area" is anything but special; it's the seventh vagina he's seen before lunch.

Stamping your feet and denying the obvious -- that there's a vast difference between medical touch and sexual touch -- helps you manipulate your wife with this ridiculous notion that she "violates the sanctity" of your marriage by getting a male doctor in rotation. So, according to you, what's special about your marriage is just that since you tied the knot, no other man has been assigned to see your wife naked (in a setting more in keeping with performing an autopsy than staging a seduction). Take your "logic" a step further and your wife is two-timing you by even speaking to people who aren't you, and never mind that she isn't exactly revealing her deepest hopes, dreams, and fears to some man in line behind her at the mall.

People in loving relationships will often accommodate their partner's ridiculous requests simply to make them happy. Your wife might've been more willing to do that if only you'd appealed to her sympathy instead of demanding that she do all the changing while you lift nary a brain cell to consider whether your position might be unreasonable. (Refusing to even consider another person's point of view generally causes them to cling even more firmly to it.) Of course, if only you'd look at this through reason-colored glasses, you'd probably acknowledge the reality: If somebody does come between you and your wife, it's unlikely to happen while she's upset, afraid, and grossed out during a medical test. And give doctors a little credit. If you're a doctor, a woman will take her pants off for you because you drive a sports car. There's really no need to come up with some ploy about scraping her cervix for cancerous cells.

Ideally, if you're surprised on Valentine's Day, it isn't because your boyfriend's given you that gift that says he cares enough to look under his mom's bathroom sink and see what's still in the package. (Good thing she'd already cracked into that gallon jug of toilet bowl cleaner.) There are several possible explanations for his gift: A. He doesn't care. B. He doesn't have a clue. C. He does care, but Valentine's Day popped up early in the relationship, and he went back and forth on how much lovey-dovey to express -- until he ended up at the last-minute gift counter in his mom's bathroom. Give him the gift of time. Paying attention to how he treats you over the next few months will tell you whether he's caring and maybe clueless or whether all he cared about was placating you with whatever gifting roadkill he came upon. You can't train a guy to adore you. A woman can work with caring and clueless -- although when her birthday rolls around, she may find herself doing it from behind the wheel of his mom's almost-new car.