I’ve been seeing this wonderful man for three years. I’m 29, he’s 41. Although he says he loves me immensely, and deems me the person most important to him, I mostly feel single. He never accompanies me to functions (weddings, Christmas parties, etc.). I’m independent, and love hanging solo with friends, but sometimes I’d like him to be my date to something. His response: “I just don’t do functions.” I get that. He’s an introvert. In his defense, he threw a big birthday party for me, and says I’m always welcome to invite friends to his place for drinks. Still, I feel I’m kept low-profile, and it hurts. My friends have pronounced our relationship dysfunctional. So, despite all the fun we have, I wonder if something’s very wrong and I’m compromising my needs.

You know those party games where people ask, if you were an animal, what would you be? Well, if your boyfriend were a party animal, he’d probably be something between a deer in headlights and roadkill.

There are people who need people and there are people who need fewer people. Or, as Bukowski put it, “No [I don’t hate people]. But, I seem to feel better when they’re not around.” The image of the introvert is negative: Norman Bates, Ted Kaczynski, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Howard Hughes with Kleenex boxes on his feet. But, for many, being introverted is merely a social preference, not a disorder. This probably goes for your boyfriend -- unless it stops him from getting to the grocery store and he starves to death, or he’s so “not a people person” that he’s compelled to get them out of the way with an ax.

Frankly, your boyfriend sounds like mine. I go to a monthly writers’ dinner that people would, as the saying goes, give their right arm to attend. My boyfriend would actually gnaw off his right arm to get out of it. While I thrive on human contact, it’s more in his nature to stay home alone in the dark reading about Stalin and listening to Penderecki’s “Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima.” When there is a social gathering he needs to attend, his life dream is to be mistaken for a shrub and left outside beside the porch while the party flames on.

How does this reflect on me? It doesn’t. In fact, I kinda brag that he’s antisocial. Of course, I don’t have the equivalent of Alvin and the Chipmunks weighing in on my relationship, leading me to wonder stuff like “Does he love me enough to be miserable for me?” If you sincerely can’t deal, you’re with the wrong guy. Otherwise, what do your friends know? After all, the boyfriend who’s supposedly keeping you “low-profile” threw you some huge birthday bash, and you don’t complain that he only takes you to out-of-the way restaurants frequented by drunks and the bowling league.

It’s possible you can sometimes get the guy to compromise. But, pick your parties -- maybe your best friend’s wedding, maybe not the housewarming for whatsername from Accounts Receivable. Set ground rules; like, you’ll leave by a certain time, and you won’t leave him stranded with some blowhard. Just don’t get carried away and start expecting him to lead the hokey pokey line. Remember, the question for him isn’t just “Honey, wanna go to a party?” but more along the lines of “Honey, wanna go to a party or be locked in a small cage and gnawed to death by ferrets?” (Uh, he’ll need a little more time to mull that over.)

Your advice for the 25-year-old woman who didn’t want to get involved with a guy with a daughter was disgustingly shallow. In supporting her not wanting to date single dads you’re saying, yes, segregate single parents, remove them from the dating pool! Yes, how dare they try to pass themselves off as people first, not as potentially inadequate mates due to being broke, having the psycho ex, and the bedwetting child?! Here’s advice for you: Compassion. It's developed by seeing and sharing life. Try getting out of the shallow end of the humanity pool and seeing the wider world of relationships!

Tragically, it seems you’ve lost your all-access pass to the dating pool.

Unlike when you were in nursery school, and teachers aides saw that every kid got the exact same allotment of Jelly Bellys, advice columnists are not standing outside bars making sure everybody leaves with a smiley sticker and a hot 25-year-old. Grownup life is harsh. Actions have consequences. Sorry to bring down the giant fly swatter on your free-floating sense of entitlement, but you gave up your Romeo status the day you let Tommy Trouser Snake out to play without his raincoat.

Parents aren’t people first. They’re parents first. Here in “the shallow end of the humanity pool,” this means the parental agenda precedes all other agendas, as it should. In other words, you’re a wee bit more likely than the single, 25-year-old stud boy to have your date interrupted by a frantic call from the neighbors: “Little Sprogly’s shot the babysitter with the staple gun!”

Now, unless your ex died or ran off with the UPS man, or you worked a deal for some neighbor lady to be the oven for your bun, chances are you’re not just a single dad, but a divorced dad. There is this notion of “the good divorce,” but is there really such a thing? There are better divorces and worse divorces, and there are couples who aren’t doing their kids any favors by staying together and continuing to chase each other around with an ax.

But, let’s be real, even if you aren’t alimony-bled, with a psycho ex-wife and a 15-year-old who’s suddenly wetting the bed, divorce doesn’t exactly simplify a guy’s life or leave a trail of rose petals and cupcakes in its wake. The girl in question, who admitted she wasn’t ready to handle a guy with a kid, could have a boyfriend whose only real distraction is getting his motorcycle rechromed. Or she could have you. So…if you were her, which would you choose? Assuming you’re looking for a boyfriend, not looking to become a one-woman chapter of the Salvation Army.

Oops…I forgot to ask if I could take your coat and your crown of thorns. And, please see that your stigmata don’t drip on my white carpet. Next order of business: putting a tracker on my compassion. Actually, no need. I believe I left it in the kiddie pool with all the children of divorce. The last thing they need is for me to goad a girl who isn’t ready to take on kids into taking them on anyway. Sorry if I’m just too shallow to see it your way: Why urge some child-averse woman to bail now when she can bail a year from now, after your kid’s really attached to her? On the bright side, what kids can’t get in stability, they tend to take out in guilt, which may mean, before long, your kid’ll not only be the proud owner of a miniature Shetland pony, it’ll be living in her bedroom: “Daddddeeeeeey, Rambler missed the potty again!”

As a single male, I find something extremely repulsive. More and more, women are making as much or more money than men. Yet, on dates, when the check comes, these career women conveniently disappear to the bathroom. I smell a scam. I’m sick of this ugly “What's mine is mine/what's yours is mine” mentality. So, a little philosophical consistency here, or else I give up.

There will be plenty of time after you’re married to drain her bank account and move to the Bahamas.

Life isn’t fair, Bucky. Deal with it. Or, if you’d rather, bow out of the dating game, and spend your nights on men’s movement blogs posting rambling screeds about the “feminazis” and this new set of filet mignon mercenaries. Sure, men and women are now equal under the law, but that hasn’t made them the same biologically. Because women are the ones who get knocked up and stuck with mouths to feed, they evolved to seek “providers’” -- guys who show signs they’ll stick around to fork over gifts and grub after the fun is done. Modern women are still getting this directive from their genes -- even staunch feminists, chicks with six-figure incomes, and women who think of themselves as “Barren!” In short, there are about 1.8 million years of evolutionary hard-wiring standing between you and any clever notions that you’ll wax your legs and Nair your mustache if she’ll just pick up the tab.

We aren’t the only species that goes on dinner dates. Anthropologist Helen Fisher calls gifts of food one of the “universal features of wooing” -- and guess who’s almost always responsible for the check? Fisher writes in Anatomy of Love that the boy black-tipped hang fly plies his crush with aphids, daddy longlegs, or houseflies. (Hard to say which wine goes best.) “The male common tern often brings a little fish to his beloved. The male roadrunner presents a little lizard.” And then, of course, there’s the ultimate courtship gift, the male praying mantis letting the female praying mantis eat his head during sex.

You don’t have to go that far, but you could maybe buy a girl a glass or two of wine without making out like you’ve fallen victim to one of the greater injustices of our time: “I have a dream…that one day men and women will go halfsies on dinner…” Actually, a glass or two of something-or-other, not dinner, is all you should be buying on the first date. You don’t shell out big for a near-stranger. The point is getting to know a girl, not getting to know whether she prefers Kobe beef to lobster. And yes, the person who does the asking out -- usually the man, poor dear -- should do the paying. On at least the first and probably the second date. Beyond then, if a woman’s wallet seems welded shut, have a little talk and suss out whether she worries you’ll think ill of her for paying (some men do), or whether she’s just a leech with lipgloss.

Look, either you’re setting the stage for seduction or you’re spearheading the investigation of the global conspiracy to make men pay for dinner. You have a decision to make: Accept that dating costs money, and consider it an investment toward finding love, or follow through on your threat to “give up.” Who’s that gonna spite? All the women who are denied your company? Don’t worry about them. They’ll be out with guys who not only buy dinner, but sometimes even precede it by bringing flowers. And no, the little card tucked in there isn’t an invoice.

I'm a stay-at-home mother of two young kids. Come Saturday, I want nothing more than to fade into the back bedroom with a 2-liter of Pepsi and the remote...leaving my saint of a husband to handle requests for food, more food, different food, a checkers partner, a Lego partner, and someone to read "Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb" for the 40th time since breakfast. My husband's 14 hours of kid-wrangling pale in comparison to my 70, and although he gives me no grief (saintly, remember?), I feel guilty for wanting alone-time so badly, and taking it on his only off days.

The parental "no" has officially joined the ranks of chronically missing items like The Holy Grail, Atlantis, and Britney Spears' underpants.

You're supposed to be your kids' mom, not their full-time birthday clown. This means meeting their needs, as opposed to falling prey to their ransom demands; i.e., "Send in the chopper and the cupcakes or I'll scream my lungs out until spring!" If you're keeling over from reading "Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb" 40 times, it's because you didn't say no 39 times. "No" is also the correct response when besieged with requests for a chunky peanut butter sandwich with all the chunkies removed. But, children can be such finicky eaters! Correction: American children can be such finicky eaters, because their parents tend to confuse parenting with working room service at a five-star hotel. In France, on the other hand, the kids' meal is whatever the parents are eating; brains, livers, kidneys and all. And while the kids can pick out bits they don't like, their choice is clear: eat or starve.

Saying no to your kids will not turn them into meth-smoking, liquor store-robbing carjackers. Actually, throwing up a few boundaries might even serve to prevent this -- and less dire but extremely annoying outcomes (just what society needs, another 35-year-old snot who was denied nothing during childhood). Kids need to feel loved and secure -- and that doesn't take hours of mommy-and-me Lego. In fact, psychologist Judith Rich Harris writes that "anthropological data suggest...there may be something a little unnatural about adults playing with children." Anthropologist David F. Lancy notes that, beyond Western society, one "rarely" sees it. Regarding this apparent lack of a parental instinct for parent-child play, Harris writes, "This implies that children do not require play with an adult in order to develop normally."

I know, I know, that's not what The Cult Of The Child tells you -- when its proponents aren't too busy checking Amazon to see whether anybody's published "The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective Children." The reality is, your family is better served by a stay-at-home mother than a stay-at-home martyr. Take the advice of the late British pediatrician Donald Winnicott, and avoid trying to be the perfect mother -- micromanaging your little darlings' every move ("Harvard or bust!") -- and just be a "good enough mother." Your kids can entertain themselves -- and will, if you suggest they do. Likewise, forget going for the Good Housekeeping Seal and just resolve to keep the health department from sealing up your house. Your kitchen counters don't need to be operating-room sterile. Just see to it that nothing walks across your lasagna.

You're probably not the only mom on your block who lives for the moment she can go catatonic in front of the television. I think we care for children all wrong in this country -- in nuclear families instead of in a more efficient, tribal way where there isn't so much weight on the stay-at-home parent. My suggestion: Five families with kids band together in a child-care collective, with one parent (and maybe one consistent nanny) staying home with all the kids each day. Kids will be socialized together, and parents will find that having children feels a little less like a punishment for having sex.

Sex? Surely you remember sex. (Presumably, your children weren't dropped off on your porch by a giant cartoon stork.) From the sound of your schedule, if you fantasize about anything these days, it's sleep, sleep, more sleep, and maybe a half-hour to read a book about somebody who isn't four-legged and purple. Yeah, you need alone-time, as does your husband, and, of course, family time, but you two are also in dire need of regular date nights. And not just for your benefit, but for that of your kids. Marriages tend to last longer when one or both partners' preferred bed position isn't snoring into a pillow. Get any elements of aspiring supermom in you under control, try my commie child-care suggestion, and pick up a copy of Esther Perel's Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic + the Domestic. Eventually, when you find yourself really looking forward to getting in bed, it shouldn't be with a 2-liter bottle of Pepsi.