I’ve been in a relationship with a wonderful man for three years. Last year, I met a really great co-worker, “Brian,” who’s also in a serious relationship. We hit it off from the start. We talked about our stressful work environment and quickly began hanging out outside the office -- getting coffee, going to lunch and happy hour. We’ve discussed our mutual attraction, and, on occasion, have flirted past the point of friendship. However, we want to stay friends, and not jeopardize what we each have at home. How do I tell my boyfriend about my friendship with Brian without hurting his feelings? I believe honesty is always the best policy, and I’m afraid if I start hiding feelings or keeping secrets from my boyfriend it could lead to other bad behavior on my part.

Whenever I write that honesty actually isn’t the best policy, I get piles of e-mail from people who’ve heard 75 different therapists earnestly tell some TV chat-tron that you can’t have “real intimacy” with your partner if you don’t spill everything. Please. If two people lack closeness, are they really going to bond over the news that one of them has taken to bumping uglies in the janitor’s closet with some third person?

Brian started out as your “office husband,” that one special person you share your life with, but just from 9 to 5. The term started catching on after a 1987 Atlantic Monthly essay by David Owen describing close platonic relationships in the workplace: near-marriages in which a man and woman spend lots of time together, can talk about their underwear bunching up, and feel free to ransack each other’s desks for change for the vending machine. The limitations of this “office marriage” are part of its advantage. Your office spouse knows you well, but not too well, like your spouse-spouse, who has not only seen you on the toilet but heard you on it, too. The bottom line is that you don’t have sex with this person (which, of course, for many unfortunate people, mirrors their situation at home).

With Brian, there had to be a point at which you sensed Happy Hour could turn into Meet Mr. Happy Hour. That’s when you should’ve reminded yourself that you’re in a relationship with “a wonderful man,” and you’d better stick to well-lit lunches -- lest you find yourself “flirting past the point of friendship.” (Exactly how far past friendship would that be? “Deep Space Nine,” or just a little lunch cruise to second base?) The problem isn’t being attracted to somebody else, which is a part of life, but being attracted to somebody else and having ethics that stretch like a gold lamé thong on a 300-pound man.

If you must be honest now, be honest with yourself: Mentioning Brian in anything more than casual conversation about goings-on at the office is a sneaky way to use your boyfriend’s ego to lighten your guilt load and police your ethics. (Why stick to self-flagellating when you can slap your boyfriend around?!) Great, so like Jimmy Carter, you admit, “I’ve got lust in my cubicle.” This knowledge will help your boyfriend how? You broke it, you pay for it -- by leaving your boyfriend out of it. If you can’t refrain from future sexual outsourcing using good old-fashioned self-discipline, refrain from staying in a relationship. This should cut down considerably on the need for uncomfortable revelations -- save for those times public health demands you inform somebody that last week’s “staff meeting” actually turned out to be a staph meeting.

Since I was old enough to date I’ve been practicing serial monogamy and loving it. The excitement is always high, and I never have to experience the boredom of the old shoe. I’m 32 now, and wondering how long I can realistically keep this up. What’s your take on serial monogamy? Have I ruined my chances of ever being happy with just one man forever?

“Being happy with just one man forever” sounds great in concept, but in practice, it often plays out like standing in the one line that doesn’t move at Customs.

Yet, going from relationship to relationship -- having a ball instead of a ball and chain -- is frowned upon…even, a little bit, by you. Perhaps, deep down, you buy into the Puritan Work Ethic approach to relationships: the idea that a “real” adult relationship means spending a lifetime slaving away in the hot fields of couples counseling, and trying everything from tantric yoga to Kama Sutra Pilates to relocate that lost spark. This romantic hardship worship --- the assumption that you’re a better person if you tough it out -- should remind you of lectures you must’ve gotten as a girl: “You know, young lady, Grandpa crawled on his hands and knees over 10 miles of broken glass to get to school every day!” “Gee, thanks, Gramps, good to know, but there’s my bus.”

People don’t necessarily stay together because they’re happy, but maybe because they promised they would or the priest says they should. Or, maybe because breaking up would just kill Great Aunt Mavis, or because it’s too embarrassing to admit failure, or, more admirably, because they pumped out a bunch of kids. It’s humiliating enough being a teen just starting to date without pulling up in your driveway with some guy you’re madly in crush with, and -- yikes! -- there’s your mom making out in the parked car next to you.

But, what will become of you if you don’t lock in a man like an interest rate? Who will change the rubber sheet on your bed and put tennis balls on the bottom of your walker? This is an understandable concern, but maybe you could just put a few bucks aside for that, as it seems kind of insulting to get together with somebody now as a means of saving big on elder-care. Beyond the need for good nursing, maybe you fear being all alone in your twilight years (or, worse yet, dying alone and being turned into a Purina substitute by your 26 cats). The truth is, according to studies referenced in Bella DePaulo’s terrific book Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After, women who’ve never been married have some of the strongest friendships and sense of community in their lives, and are the least likely to feel lonely when they’re old bags.

Assuming your friendships aren’t as fleeting as your relationships, and serial monogamy isn’t an excuse to avoid fixing something in your psychology that’s broken, what’s the problem? Your current approach actually seems pretty wise -- not planning in advance how long your relationships will last but being honest about how long they actually do. Until you start longing for something longterm, why not have the love that works for you instead of the love that’s supposed to work for you? Despite all the people who’ll ask how long you’ve been with somebody, not how happy you are, the real tragedy isn’t the relationship that ends after a few years, but the relationship that’s allowed to drag on like the ballet (forever) or a bad play (about 10 minutes longer than the ballet).

Earlier this year, I met what I thought was a sweet, kind, caring man. After a whirlwind romance, he proposed, we got engaged, and moved in together. Shortly afterward, I discovered he’d shaved 10 years off his age. He said he was 42; he’s actually 52. (I’m 32.) I then began snooping on his computer. Here’s my problem: He seems addicted to Internet porn. Not just any porn, gay porn. He has five separate e-mail aliases, and belongs to 67 gay porn sites. He has used gay phone sex and gay personals. When I confronted him, he said he was “not gay in the least.” He is very underendowed, and this was the reason he gave for looking at naked men. He claims he pretends that he has what they have while “entertaining himself.” I don’t buy it, but I’m wondering if maybe it’s possible for a heterosexual man to not be gay and be addicted to this type of porn.

This guy’s straight like I’m a vegetarian. Okay, so there’s a freshly slaughtered cow taking up my entire refrigerator/freezer. It’s just there for those times I can’t help but eat a dead animal (like when it’s too hard to spear on a fork while it’s still running around).

But, maybe your fiancé’s just “bi-curious.” Very, very, very bi-curious. The problem is, he doesn’t seem the least bit hetero-curious. In that tidal wave of gay porn, you don’t mention spotting a single Busty Juggs or Wendy Whoppers. And, when I told my very gay best friend that this “straight” guy is a member of 67 gay porn sites, he noted that these sites each charge about $19.95 a month, and chortled, “He’s gayer than I am!”

The size comparison angle might be believable -- if he were 11 and sneaking furtive glances around the locker room, but when a man’s had the same willie attached to his body for half a century, he’s usually made peace with his piece. The exception, of course, is your “not gay in the least” fiancé who only goes on gay phone sex lines to ask that age-old question, “Does size matter?” My answer? Not if there’s a bigger question, like “How does a man pack all his gay porn into one little ole closet?”

It’s not surprising that this mess you’re in started as a “whirlwind romance,” or as I prefer to call it, the relationship version of anonymous sex. Don’t tell me: After he sent you flowers, said all the right things, and took you to a French restaurant three times, you and he just knew you were “meant to be!” -- the perfect excuse to avoid taking the time to figure out if you actually are. (Oh, that crazy little thing called sexual orientation!)

For a girl who doesn’t “buy it” that he’s straight, you’re working awfully hard to parse whether he’s mostly gay, sort of gay, or maybe just gay on weekends. And go ahead, keep parsing that -- ideally, while waiting at the clinic for your test results for everything from HIV to Hep C. According to a survey by public health researcher Preeti Pathela, men with a sexual identity at odds with their sexual behavior are more likely to engage in “riskier sexual behaviors” (sex without condoms, not just muffled sex chats when the girlfriend’s in the next room). As far as your future together goes, come on, admit it already: There may be a special place for you in his heart, but it’s unlikely to stop other parts of his body from pointing due West (Village).

I love my girlfriend of eight years very much, but I’m at wits’ end over her (non-romantic) relationship with her ex-boyfriend, who lives in another state. To her, he’s a helpless 37-year-old boy who needs constant motherly supervision so he doesn’t get taken advantage of. They talk on the phone multiple times daily, and she sees every problem he calls about as a catastrophe that MUST be handled immediately (he needs a doctor or a house to rent or to vent about a driver who cut him off). I’m bothered to no end when she leaves the table during dinner to go talk to him or gets up when we’re watching a movie, leaving me to pause the DVD for 30 minutes until she returns. During eight years of this, I’ve asked her not to talk to him while I’m around since we have conflicting schedules and limited time together. She’ll agree, but nothing changes. I do my best not to upset her, but sometimes I let it be known I’m ticked off, and she flips out, and says she’ll leave me if I can’t handle her “talking to (her) friends.”

Well, you got the sap part right. It’s only taken you eight years with this woman to begin to suspect that the actual saying is “I am my kid’s mom,” not “I am my ex-boyfriend’s mom.”

There are times to interrupt a meal with your partner to take a friend’s call, or even an ex-partner’s call -- like when it’s coming from the emergency room, the bail bondsman, or the space shuttle: “Houston, we have a problem…” “This is Houston. Say again, please.” “Well, this big meanie just refused to pull up in the left turn lane, and I was stuck there for three whole lights!”

Don’t mistake this “Girlfriends Without Borders” act for some kind of selfless humanitarianism. She might care for him, but her real motivation is probably being too busy with safe, ego-boosting mommylove to risk real attachment in grownup love with you. Meanwhile, if she takes over for this guy much more, he’s likely to devolve into a giant amoeba with one big finger for telephone dialing.

But, let’s give credit where credit is due. You can’t have “Girlfriends Without Borders” without “Boyfriends Without Boundaries.” (That would be you, Mr. Poodle.) It sounds like she’s not the only one with abandonment issues. Why else would you sit there like a big ventriloquist’s dummy while she regularly dumps you in the middle of dinner or a movie to go off on a phone date with her ex? (And, what is it this time, cancer of the hangnail?)

If you insist on being treated like you matter, there is the danger that she’ll leave you for good. (That’s worse than being left daily?) Time to go rent a pair of snap-on testicles. For operating instructions, buy the book No More Mr. Nice Guy, by Dr. Robert A. Glover. Tell her what you need to be happy, and if she screams and yells and says she’s leaving, say very calmly, “That’s really a shame, I’ll miss you.” Let her know that the next time she gets up from the table to take his call, you’re not waiting around for her, you’re going out to the bar. And then do it. Grab your cell phone, take a stroll to the corner, and ring in on call waiting: “Your mashed potatoes are getting cold, and so is your boyfriend.”