My husband of 10 years has an old friend he dated for a few years before we met. She comes into our lives about once a year when she’s in town. Her e-mails sometimes seem flirty, and my husband says I take them too seriously. But, she also seems edgy around me, making me suspect she still has feelings for him. When she was here for a funeral, I told him he could join her and some friends for a night out if he didn’t make me look bad. Two days later, I got a mass e-mail with pictures of him and his ex cheek-to-cheek! That argument lasted a month. He finally agreed to do something, but I think he isn’t making it clear enough that she shouldn’t call or e-mail again because she hasn’t stopped. He claims he feels bad ending one of the only friendships he’s maintained for the past 20 years. Well, their relationship’s taking a toll on ours. How can I cut off their contact?

If you love someone, turn off the electrified fencing. If they hang around, they’re yours. If not, at least you won’t be facing manslaughter charges.

The guy married you, not her. Why work so hard to make him sorry he did? Sure, he’s still with you after 10-plus years -- maybe because he’s too beaten down to crawl to the phone and start ringing divorce lawyers. To your credit, you did decide to let him see this woman -- before you decided that he can never see her, talk to her, or even e-mail her again. Excuse me, but who decided that you get to decide these things? I’m guessing you were pronounced “husband and wife,” not “husband and warden.” Yet, at the moment, your relationship is basically prison with better towels.

You actually spent a month berating your husband for appearing in a photograph with somebody? Okay, so it was his ex, and they were photographed “cheek-to-cheek.” (We’re talking the facial kind, right?) Just wondering, when you take a picture, do you typically pose your subjects on opposite sides of the room? “Okay, you two, get as far apart as you can!” As for why this woman gets edgy around you, beyond your near-criminalization of her 20-year friendship with your husband, could it be that you tend to look at her like you’re trying to turn her into a smoldering pile of ash?

Yes, she could have “feelings” for your husband -- as could his secretary, several of his co-workers, and some lady in line behind him at the drugstore. But, the feelings you should be worrying about are yours, and what they’re doing to his. Do you really think you can alienate a man into loving you? You’re missing the real problem, which isn’t what’s out there, but what’s not in you. Instead of acting out “I’m insecure, you’d better curtail your life,” how about admitting to your husband, “I’m insecure, I’d better work on getting less insecure”? Tell him he can go where he wants, see who he wants, and even appear in photographs with them (providing the backdrop isn’t a motel bedspread).

You can’t make a man want you, but you’ll do better giving him reasons to stay than giving him the impression that all the exits are sealed. Having fun instead of extended arguments is an excellent start, especially when there’s no evidence the man’s done anything wrong. I mean, if you’re going to put a month into tormenting your husband, at least have the decency to wait until you catch him in bed with your best friend.

Seven years ago, my wife of 11 years left me and married my moneybags boss. Next, my girlfriend dumped me for my wealthy friend. Then, a different girlfriend left me to marry my best friend. Another girlfriend realized she was a lesbian; another couldn’t say “I love you” back. Although I was a struggling grad student when my wife and girlfriend ditched me for rich guys, I now have a prestigious job and a large income. (The woman who dumped me for my wealthy friend mysteriously came groveling back when I got money.) I’m a sensitive guy with a lot of love to give, but I’ve been hurt so badly, I feel safest home alone with Chinese take-out. How can I overcome my fears before I die of loneliness?

You’re looking for Action! Adventure! Romance! To ride the rapids of love -- with all the drama and suspense of a nice warm soak in the bathtub; or, in action/adventure terms, something more “Die Hard With A Plush Stuffed Bunny” than “With A Vengeance.”

“But…but…” you say, between sobs, from under your bed, where you’re hiding out with a plate of lo mein, “Love…doesn’t…last!” No, it often doesn’t. In fact, a relationship is one of the more high-risk ventures you could enter into, precisely because it’s based on love, which is a feeling. You can promise to stick around, but you can’t promise to keep feeling a certain way. So, relationships end. Lovers use each other up. They go become monks. Or run with the wolves. Or with the baby-sitter.

The way you see it, other guys all have black Labs with bandannas while you’ve been assigned your very own black thundercloud to follow you around. Okay, so your wife left you, and your girlfriend left you, and your other girlfriend left you, and maybe your other girlfriend left you for your other girlfriend, and so on. Surely there were a few good moments, or even a few good years, between “Nice to meet you,” and “I’ll be by at 5 to pick up the rest of my stuff.”

A good long snivel can be satisfying, but as a preventive measure, self-pity has nothing on self-awareness. So, you’re always the one who gets dumped. Maybe that’s because you’re not one to admit it’s over and do the drop-kicking yourself. Look for patterns. Do you pick gold diggers, schemers, women out of your league? No, it’s not your fault that a woman didn’t have her sexuality worked out. What you should look at, however, were signs you missed that a woman was “not that into you” (or, say, anyone with a penis).

You say you have a lot of love to give. Would it be terrible if you ended up giving it to a number of different women? And, what do you really have to mope about anyway? You had an 11-year marriage and numerous girlfriends. There are guys out there who haven’t been kissed in a decade, and women so desperate to be touched that they plot to have strangers back into them in stores in hopes of getting one of those little “pardon me” after-grabs. Instead of being terrified a relationship will end, why not accept that it could, and resolve to enjoy it while it lasts? Sure, you could get hurt again. That’s the price of having love in your life. If you decide you can’t afford it, fine. Just understand what you’re setting yourself up for -- one day trying to look back on all the fun you’ve had and realizing you’ve mostly had chow fun.

On New Year’s Eve I met the only man I ever wanted to marry. We have the same likes and dislikes, his family loves me, mine loves him, and he wants to marry me. Still, he finds ways to make me feel I may not be the perfect girl for him (like a knock-down drag-out fight where he smashed my phone and iPod against the wall because I’d kissed his best friend before he and I met). Also, he doesn't want me being some big career-minded woman (what he initially claimed to love about me). I just got my dream job, which requires overtime and travel. He’s pushing me to go for something less demanding so I can be home to cook him dinner and care for the kids (which I do want…someday). He reminds me that his mother quit being a lawyer to help his father run his restaurant and so they could have “a beautiful life together and two adorable kids.” How much is too much to sacrifice for love?

“How much is too much to sacrifice for love?” Well, when you actually have love in your life, write back and I’ll let you know. In the meantime, just wondering, when your boyfriend turned your iPod into a $400 doorstop, was it playing your song?

Now, no man does cartwheels upon hearing the news that his woman once kissed his best friend, but whatever happened to good old-fashioned sullen, passive-aggressive pouting? Here you are, so hypnotized by the call of the aisle that you can’t be bothered to parse exactly what the guy’s saying to you: “How dare you not invent a time machine, go back to the moment before you kissed my friend Biffy, and knee him in the groin instead?!”

Yes, your boyfriend was smashing your stuff against the wall because you failed to break the laws of physics to time travel on his behalf. If this doesn’t scream “Get out!” what does? But, don’t just take my word for it. Put in a free call to the National Domestic Violence Hotline (ndvh.org), 1-800-799-SAFE, and let them explain the difference between domestic violence and domestic bliss; preferably before Mr. Wonderful tires of practicing his fastball with your portable electronics and starts playing tetherball with your head.

Of course, you should have been outta there long before this; like, the day he suggested you revise your dreams to bring them into compliance with his: “I know! You can sell Tupperware so you can be closer to the stove. In fact, why don’t we just chain you to the stove?” Just what you need -- a guy who finds out what makes you happy, then pushes you to stop doing it. As for how well giving up lawyering worked out for his mother, maybe she was ready to drop-kick the law to count out catsup packets, or maybe she wakes up every morning regretting that she did.

Sure, at a certain age, “Someday my prince will come!” starts to wear on a girl, and it becomes tempting to flop a crown on any guy who’s heterosexual, still breathing, and isn’t doing 20-to-life for armed robbery (for 7-to-10 there might be wiggle room). Understandable as this is, pronouncing a guy “the only man I ever wanted to marry” makes you prone to weed out any inconvenient facts that suggest marrying him is about the dumbest thing you could do. Giving up what makes you happy will never make you happy, but giving up the guy who wants you to might do the trick; ideally, before he gets you pregnant so you’ll be too fat to run away.

I’m a 37-year-old single, never-married man. I have a decent career, own my own home, and I’m debt-free. What could possibly be the problem? Women have never asked me out, offered to buy me a drink, or even opened a door for me. The only women who’ve acknowledged me this year are two Realtors who offered to sell my home (of course, for a fee). I’m tired of asking women out because it’s us men who have to figure out whether a woman’s married, seeing someone, or is a lesbian. This past year, I’ve asked out several women only to have them snub me or give me the wrong number. Now, my only revenge is to never patronize female-owned businesses. Women have never done anything for me, and I will pass my philosophy on to other men, because I’ve just had it!

So, for you, going fishing must mean standing on the dock holding a frying pan over the water, snarling, “Why hasn’t a trout leapt into my pan?!”

I do wish your “Life should be fair!” approach worked. Unfortunately, I find stamping my feet and shouting “I should be a multimillionairess!” merely seems to lead to sore feet. And, what a shock, a woman has yet to spot you in a bar and say to her friend, “Hey, see that man down there who looks like he hates humanity? Bet he’s debt-free and owns his own home. I think I’ll go ply him with alcohol, then beg him to go out with me!”

In most animal species, it’s the males that are the sexual aggressors. Boy elk have big antlers to show dominance and get girl elk -- not to give people a place to hang their hats in Western-themed bars. Human women are attracted to men who have the guts to make moves on them and ask them out -- as opposed to men who stand around primping their hair and smoothing their dresses, hoping against hope that some girl will hit on them.

Sure, women can ask men out on first dates, but men tend to suspect there’s something wrong with women who do. Women evolved to be the nightclub bouncers of mating and dating – weeding out cads from dads, lest they become single mothers in the days before Kwik-E-Marts and portable Sony PlayStations. Men co-evolved to keep trying to crash the door. These days, men and women might be equal under the law, but that doesn’t mean they’re biologically the same. (Notice that funny hosey thing dangling between your thighs?) Male bodies are just coursing with the ideal chemical for doing the asking out, the aggression hormone testosterone. On average, men have 10 to 20 times more “T” than women do; well, save for violent female criminals and any women you might encounter with Winnebago-sized pecs and full beards.

Maybe if you put yours to better use -- trying to charm your way into dates instead of trying to run anybody with labia out of business -- you’ll have better luck with the ladies. Of course, this assumes you actually want dates, and you don’t secretly prefer the safety of feeling victimized to the risky business of attempting to be happy. Look around. There are a whole lot of men out there with wives and girlfriends. Hmmm, is it possible the problem is you? After all, unbridled hostility is always such a girl magnet. In fact, there are probably millions of more successful approaches -- starting with going to bars dressed as a ‘70s pop mogul, and asking every woman you meet, “Hey, baby, how ‘bout I lick that film off your teeth?”