I'm a 31-year-old guy who’s just about given up on dating. My last girlfriend was desperately needy. She’d make me go to the store with her, and when I went to work, she’d hang out in my office all day. (She wanted to sit on my lap and talk to me while I worked.) It drove me nuts, so we split a couple months ago. The girlfriend before her couldn't stop going on and on about the details of her sex life with her former boyfriend. I can’t seem to pick a winner. I think it’s due to one of three things: 1) I’m attracted to girls with serious issues. 2) All girls are like that. 3) My standards are way too high. I’d love to have a girlfriend who doesn’t have big issues, and who has friends, hobbies and goals beyond the relationship. Is that the impossibility it seems to be?

So, the last girl in your life not only went to the office with you but sat on your lap while you worked? Wait…you were dating a Chihuahua? Let’s just hope she was woman enough to do her business in the ladies room instead of on Wee-Wee Pads under the conference table.

This girlfriend was the replacement for Lady Overshare, sexual historian: “We interrupt this relationship to bring you the nude stylings of Lincoln And His Log.” And interrupt, and interrupt, and interrupt. Nothing like a woman who gets a guy all fired up to dash past the sexy underwear store to the pet store to buy her a muzzle.

Dating can be challenging for a man with standards. The thing about standards is that you can’t just leave them on the fake fireplace with your frat boy beer stein collection. You actually have to take them with you and hold them up to women you meet. Sure, you can say you want a girlfriend with goals, hobbies, and a self, but you seem to go for any woman who doesn’t have gills. Then, instead of taking responsibility for what you let into your life, you reach for ego shelters like “Maybe I’m just hot for the nutty ones,” “All girls are like that,” or “I’m just too good for this world.” In the words of my late pal Al (therapist Albert Ellis), “The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny.”

Mistakes do happen. If you make one, admit it, don’t take it to the movies every Saturday night. To catch your mistakes, pay attention to what a woman says and does, and what she seems to want from you. Take the girl who couldn’t stop clucking about what a blast she had in the past. You should’ve asked yourself, “Hey, Self, doesn’t she seem less interested in me as a boyfriend than as a big, warm ear?” You ask questions like this not only when you first meet somebody, but as the relationship goes on: Is she up to your standards? Is she still up to your standards? And while you’re at it, are your standards up to your standards, or are they in need of an upgrade, too? Yes, you actually can have a goal-oriented girlfriend with a job, hobbies, and friends -- just stop settling for the girl whose goal is never leaving your side (although she might make an exception when you have to use the urinal).

I’m being tormented by a co-worker’s husband. He visits our office often, flirting with me every time, but it's gone from “Hey, good lookin'!” to getting right in my space and whispering “Hot butt” or “Lemme see your cleavage.” He’ll come up behind me at my computer, so I'm trapped. He'll put his hand in my hair or on my neck or shoulders, even when his wife’s there. She’ll snort and call him “a perv,” but he doesn't stop. I talked to my boss, and she said just ignore him, don’t encourage him, but I haven't encouraged him at all. When he touches me, I try to duck away. When he says dirty things, I put my hand up and say, “Don't even start.” It's gotten to the point where I’ll hide in the back room until he leaves. He's not an employee, so my boss' hands are tied. And I don’t want to cause tension with his wife. Short of yelling at him (a bad idea, since I can imagine the fiery-tempered redhead comments), how do I stop this?

Why be known as the “fiery-tempered redhead” when you can cower in a supply closet until they start selling the “hostile workplace” companion to the Post-it-dispensing highlighter, the Post-it taser?

A pity you’re a white-collar worker, not a gold-lamé G-string one, since strip clubs generally have strict no-groping policies and big steroidal goons standing around itching to enforce them. That’s how it’s supposed to work in your workplace, too, except with your boss in the bouncer role. Her responsibility’s the same whether the gropings and smutticisms come from a co-worker or some co-worker’s gorilla of a husband. Law professor Kingsley Browne told me your boss’ legal liability turns on whether she’s “taken reasonable steps to prevent or remedy (sexual) harassment.” Somehow, I think advising you “Just close your eyes and think of paychecks” doesn’t cut it.

You may be able to drag your company to court, and maybe even squeeze some bucks out of them (for info, call the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission: 1-800-669-4000). The reality is, that can hurt your career. Nobody wants to hire Susie Sue-Ya. But maybe there’s no need to be her -- if you can see this as an opportunity to become somebody people know better than to push around. No, you don’t deserve what you’re going through, nor are you “asking for it,” but you do need to ask yourself where he gets off touching you. And the answer is, right where you let him.

Personally, the day somebody who isn’t my boyfriend, my granny, or an employee of Supercuts starts putting their hands in my hair is the day they lose a finger. I don’t have to storm around announcing this like some Big Angry Bertha. The memo comes from within. Think about the message you’re sending by ducking, hiding, and kinda-sorta telling him off. You want to be liked, you don’t want to make waves, you’re ripe for the picking. What you need to do now is what you should’ve done from the start: Get right up in his face, without shouting or screeching, and tell him, “Don’t touch me, don’t talk to me, don’t come near me.” If you don’t quite feel you have it in you, not to worry. You should eventually find it if you just keep putting it on. If he bothers you again, rinse and repeat, and go back to your boss. Remind her not only of the law, but of what they’re unlikely to be crowing about at the next stockholders’ meeting: “Why, 40 percent of our profits this year came from employees curled up in a fetal position under their desks.”

This girl I’ve known for six years is visiting me. We live on opposite sides of the country, and once a year, have weeklong “dates” (the polite word for it). I thought we had a no-strings-attached arrangement. Then, two days ago, she said, “I love you.” Yikes. I just like her a lot, but felt bad saying that, so I lied and said “I love you” back. She’s since said it three more times. So, I lied three more times. How do I get myself out of this?

Nothing makes the apartment walls close in like an unwanted declaration of love. You’re just dying to turn around and see if maybe, possibly, the person who made it could’ve been talking to somebody else: “Please, God, let an intruder be standing behind me.”

Even worse, an unwanted “I love you” is like a mouse infestation. Where there was one, pretty soon there are three, then six, then the extended family’s scampering over and counting on you to set out cheese plates. The problem is, there’s an expected response to “I love you,” and it isn’t silent terror. Those Three Little Words come flying at you, and all you can do is bat them right back, maybe figuring you’ll pick them up later and attach the part you left off: “Uh, what I meant was…please don’t cry…it’s just that I forgot the bit after ‘I love,’ which was something along the lines of ‘having transcontinental sex with you.’”

You two did have an arrangement along these lines. So, what happened? Was she just overcome by a wellspring of affection, like that moment in elementary school when you pour the vinegar into the volcano? Maybe this was the inevitable outcome of six years of Nude Fun Week, plus where she’s at in life, plus maybe a blast of oxytocin, “the cuddle chemical” that can make even a woman who swears she can compartmentalize go all nesty on you: “You know, I could really see us shopping for dishtowels together.” Oh, don’t stop.

It’s also possible that what she was overcome by was a desire to shove this to the next level. No better tool for that than the phrase that seals the deal. You say it back, a trap door opens, and you wake up hogtied in the hold of a steamer ship bound for a wedding in her parents’ backyard. “I love you” can also be an investigative tool: “Testing…testing. Can I put framed photos of us on my desk? Move my couch into your living room? If I do a cannonball off the Golden Gate Bridge, will you dive in after me?”

Whoops! Your answers to these questions -- “No! No!” and “Enjoy your swim!” -- somehow came out “I love you.” Okay, mistakes happen. But, when you let the first “I love you” scurry off into the relationship, that was the time to send out the guy with the truck and the net. Now, with multiple “I love you’s” bouncing around, how do you unsay “I love you”? The answer is, you don’t. That’s cruel and unnecessary. Instead, rejigger what those “I love you’s” meant by giving her a sense of where you won’t be going with her -- anywhere you haven’t been going these past six years. In the future, pay attention to whether somebody’s more invested than you’d like, and you might avoid L-bombs and uncomfortable exchanges like “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” You: “Not if you can help it.”

My boyfriend’s generally pretty sweet, and we’re enjoying it all. On his birthdays, I buy him a present and dinner. Both years we’ve been together he’s bought me nothing for mine, saying he didn’t know what to get. The second year, I waited in vain all weekend, hoping we’d do something special (he did make me breakfast in bed on Sunday, and woke me with kisses and “Happy birthday”). My birthday was that Monday, and he only took me out as an afterthought. As I was leaving for work, he said, “I’ll wait up.” (I work late.) Hurt, I said, “I can’t believe you aren’t even taking me to dinner!” He then lost his temper. Maybe this seems silly, but I’m actually still hurt. Part of me wants to rise above this, and part wants to give him a lump of coal for his upcoming birthday.

For a lot of women, it’s the thought that counts -- as long as the guy thinks of something a little more, well, pawnable, than a plate of eggs.

Personally, because I’m no longer 6, I mainly think of my birthday as a day to apologize to my mother. (I won some pickle company’s contest for being the biggest baby born in Detroit the week of March 8.) Also, I prefer to celebrate actual accomplishments. Of course, being a year older is an accomplishment for some, but I try to set goals a bit beyond “Well, well, well, another year, and I’m still not dead from meth!”

Perhaps I’m an anomaly, because there seems to be something girly about commemorating birthdays. Sure, there are guys who acknowledge each other’s, but at some point after seventh grade, birthdays seem to split off in importance along gender lines. For example, guys don’t have a version of the Sweet Sixteen, with their mom wiping away tears as she gushes, “Look, my little Adam’s grown an apple!” And consider how common it is for women to send their friends little cards and Hallmark desk bunnies, but when’s the last time you saw Rocco down at the garage buy a card with frolicking baby raccoons on it and get all sweet about Fred’s special day?

That said, your birthday’s important to you, and if you’re important to a guy, he’ll find a way to remember it. But, wait, there’s this: “He did make me breakfast in bed on Sunday, and woke me with kisses and ‘Happy birthday.’” So, your boyfriend did remember your birthday -- just not in the style to which you’d like to become accustomed. Assuming he isn’t a jerk the other 364 days a year, how could he not know what’s expected of him? After all, you bought him presents and dinner. All he had to do was the exact same thing, kind of like a chimp imitating somebody shaving.

Unfortunately, the male brain isn’t an exact replica of the female brain, just less, I dunno, lavender. Because men generally don’t operate on 13 levels of intuition, if you need something from a man, you probably have to say so. In this case, tell your boyfriend what you want (a gift and dinner), why you want it (it says, “I’m thinking of you, I don’t take you for granted”), and tell him a little before when you want it (meaning, give him reminders, don’t haul off the morning of with “Hey, potting-soil-for-brains, guess who turned 30 today?”). Finally, let him know that whatever effort he makes will score big with you -- providing it goes beyond asking Denny’s to try to get 30 candles to stand up in a Grand Slam.

I’m 25, my boyfriend’s 28. Our three-year relationship has been near-perfect, and he’s given every indication he plans to marry me. I was secretly (albeit prematurely) planning our wedding in my head when I found an e-mail exchange with his high school ex. (He’d used my laptop, and left the message open.) He claimed he was in a “complicated situation” with me, and suggested they had a future. I was floored. He swore he doesn’t feel that way or know why he wrote that, but says it was “like a game,” and he enjoyed the attention. He e-mailed her to apologize, explaining how in love with me he is, and how he’d never forgive himself if he let me go. He forwarded me this e-mail and her response, but I’m still having difficulty trusting him. He’s now trying to apologize with expensive gifts and fancy dinners. How can I convey that I need him to show his love in non-material ways, or maybe with one sparkly gift to weigh down my left hand?

As friends go, diamonds can be lying jerks. Skepticism is actually a girl’s best friend. Unfortunately, our culture celebrates commitment, not doubt. Nobody’s going to throw you a party because you’re wavering about getting married: “You two aren’t entirely sure about each other? Well, how wonderful! Are you registered for that at Tiffany’s?”

According to you, your relationship has been “near perfect” -- except for the part where your boyfriend was e-mailing his high school girlfriend on your laptop, telling her how troubled it was. What’s his next smooth move, murdering somebody, breaking into the police chief’s house, and leaving the body on the living room floor while he makes himself a cup of cocoa and watches CSI reruns? “Hiya, Chief…didn’t expect you home so early!”

If the guy doesn’t need “The Internet For Idiots” he’s probably trying to tell you something; like, it’s one thing for a guy to throw around wildly romantic ideas about forever in the heat of the moment and another to march down to the courthouse to say it in triplicate. Of course, men do marry, but you don’t find them meandering around the hardware store picturing the tux they’ll someday be walking down the aisle in. For a man, pledging that you’re “the one” means swearing off all access to the other six or eight. Or 18 or 88. And then, after foreverizing, what if it gets to the point where “the spark” can’t be reignited, not even with a blowtorch and a bedroom of dry leaves? Sure, he’ll be right over to take that blood test, just as soon as he dashes off a couple e-mails.

As anxious as you are to get “happily ever after” squared away, you don’t want to make marrying you the ultimate apology for hitting on the high school ex. While the guy didn’t express ambivalence in the nicest way, it seems he has some. He should be encouraged to explore it so you can find out how he really feels -- whether he got momentarily freaked by the sign, “Last Girl, Food, Lodging For 100 Years,” or whether the only monogamy he’s actually up for is the serial kind. You might take this less personally if you can look at marriage in consumer terms. With a divorce rate of up to 30 percent for college-educated couples, getting married is like looking to buy a refrigerator with a big sticker on it, “Only a 30 percent chance this sucker will crap out!” Do you rush in shouting, “I do! I do! I do!” or mumble, “Uh, yeah…I think I might need to see a few more refrigerators”?