In a recent column, you validated a woman's desire to lose weight solely to meet her husband's needs. Your encouraging her to take off pounds and get plastic surgery for him is an insult to yourself and every woman who reads your disgraceful article. I disagree with your notion that males care more about looks. I'm a heterosexual woman (19...am I a woman yet?), and my dates' looks are extremely important to me. For a few extra pounds to prevent a man from seeing why he fell in love with his wife is barbaric. If you're really in love, you transcend the external. If this woman can find it within herself to love the stuff she's made of, she'll attract attention she never thought imaginable -- the sort only unconditional self-acceptance brings.

If a woman's sex appeal sprang from inner beauty, Eleanor Roosevelt, who looked like a scone in a housedress, would've been Playboy's hottest selling cover girl of all time.

The woman who wrote me wanted to lose weight after stress-eating herself 50 pounds heavier in seven months. Her husband hadn't lost track of her inner beauty, he was just having a hard time finding her waist. He didn't stop loving her, he just stopped wanting to have sex with her. Although she wasn't losing weight "solely to meet her husband's needs," when is it not in a woman's interest to keep her husband interested? Regarding her desire for plastic surgery, if a woman's got post-weight-loss flapping flesh she'd like removed, who am I to tell her, no, do your best to walk proud with Dumbo's ears hanging over your skirt like pockets out of jeans?

It isn't just my "notion" that women are less looks-driven, but my notion based on reams of data showing that women seem to be hard-wired to care more about a guy's status and earning potential. Sure, you can make a guy's hotitude your priority because, at 19, it doesn't matter so much if he's earning his living carving carrots into swans on the street corner. Ten years from now, if you're looking to start a family, I'm guessing you'll be up for a little less hair in exchange for a little more 401(k). Think about it: If Bill Gates became single, women would line up like it was free tickets to The Stones. Whaddya wanna bet, when he was your age, women kicked him out of the way to get to the rocker boy who turned in cans to pay for food?

According to you, if a man's "really in love," he can "transcend the external." Lovely idea, no basis in reality. Male sexuality is much more visual than female sexuality. But, don't just take it from me, take it from a man who used to be a woman. Griffin Hansbury, a former lesbian who underwent sex reassignment surgery, talked on "This American Life" about how he saw women before and after "T" -- testosterone injections. "Before...I would see a woman on the subway, and...I'd like to meet her, what's that book she's reading?" Afterward, even nice ankles on a woman would be "enough to flood my mind with aggressive pornographic images. ... It was like...a pornographic nudie house in my mind. And I couldn't turn it off."

If anyone's reducing this woman to the sum of her fleshy parts, it's you. "The stuff she's made of" isn't 50 extra pounds. She could continue collecting chins and insist a worthwhile man would lust after her character alone, but that's really just a different kind of unhealthy than starving yourself until you look like a praying mantis in shoes.

My boyfriend of nine months leaves a mess in my home, and it infuriates me. Although he's otherwise a great guy, just a glass not taken to the kitchen makes me boil with rage. He doesn't only leave glasses around, but dishes and trash, napkins and soda cans. Jackets and sweatshirts are dropped wherever. He lies on the bed without taking his shoes off...arrrrgh! And he spits toothpaste into the sink without rinsing it out, and never does dishes when we cook or put carryout on plates. I don't understand my anger because I sometimes leave a glass out, too. I do know I shouldn't approach him about this while I'm this upset.

Where does your boyfriend think dirty dishes go to die? Do they jump out an open window and smash themselves on the pavement? Leap into a sinkful of soapy water and drown themselves? Or, do they hire a hit man to do the job? Maybe an aging housewife who breaks into your place in the dead of night, slowly and methodically pulls on rubber gloves, then holds the plates under water until the deed is done.

Your boyfriend could be pondering this question nightly, but it seems he's too busy flopping on the bed, swinging his big shoes onto your duvet, and snoring. Meanwhile, you're storming around the house collecting cans, snarling, "What does he think, that I answered an ad for a fully furnished dumpster with cable TV? Or was he worried I'd get lost making my way back from the living room to the kitchen? How sweet of him to leave a trail of dirty napkins to mark my path!"

Next, he'll complain there's no mint on the pillow -- or, worse yet, he'll slip and call you Mom. Who, exactly, does he think picks up all this stuff he drops? Actually, he probably hasn't the slightest idea. In fact, while, for you, one empty Chicken McNuggets box on the couch turns your apartment into a Superfund site, your boyfriend might have to sit on the thing to realize it's there. As I've written before, research shows that, in general, straight men don't have the filth- and clutter-vision women and gay men do. Men generally have better distance vision, and can maintain intense focus on small-scale projects, but they're prone to overlook environmental detail -- increasing the chance that they'll let the chips (and the empty potato chip bags) fall where they may.

Okay, so the glass is not only half-empty, it's been on your foyer table for three whole days. How could your boyfriend not know how upset this makes you? Well, there is the fact that, instead of sweetly telling him what works for you, it seems you've spent the better part of a year festering with hate. Your inability to ask, "Mind doing the dishes tonight?" or tease him about the difference between a bedspread and a sidewalk, suggests there's more to this than liking things tidy. Are you anxious or insecure, and manifesting it in a Gestapo-like need to control your environment? Are you skittish about commitment and seeking an out, like the idea that he doesn't respect you? If you want to be with him, tell him what you need. If he cares about you, he'll make an effort. He might sometimes screw up, but he'll probably put a good spin on it: Dinner with you was so romantic and wonderful, he wanted to leave you a little something to remember it by -- something day-old and encrusted on a plate. Come on, look closely at that petrified moo shu. Can't you see a heart?

My wife of a year is from a very conservative culture (a Muslim country). She said she'd only dated three guys, and only kissed and held hands. I told her it's nice she was a virgin, but honesty was more important. She kept saying I was the first man to touch her, sleep naked with her, awaken her sensuality, and on and on. Later, she let it slip that she'd slept naked with her exes, but said she'd never lie to me again. Eventually, she let it slip that she'd pretty much done everything but intercourse with two of these guys, but it was a detail she'd forgotten. She doesn't understand how it hurts the male ego to repeatedly say, "You're the only guy I've been with," then, "Sorry, I forgot, you're the third." Had this happened with a guy in her culture, it would have resulted in immediate divorce, and maybe something much worse. So, do I divorce her, or let this go? I'm concerned she may be hiding other things.

In our country, if people find out you've had premarital sex, they might hoot and slap you on the back once or twice. In Muslim countries, they bring in a guy with a bamboo cane to do it 100 times.

In Saudi Arabia, it's not just premarital sex that'll get you in trouble, but premarital seating. Religious police there actually arrested an American businesswoman for sitting with a male colleague in Starbucks after her office lost power and she needed WiFi. The Times of London reported that the woman was interrogated, strip-searched, and jailed for violating laws against public contact between unrelated men and women. The judge reportedly told her, "You are sinful and you are going to burn in hell." You have to wonder, if she gets hell for sitting near a man in Starbucks, what happens to the giddy 15-year-olds I saw groping each other in the big chair? Is there Hell Plus? Advanced Hell? Or maybe "New Hell! Now With Extra Charcoal!"?

Ask a Western woman if she's "dated" a lot, and she isn't likely to confess, "Why, I'm the Whore of Babylon!" Yet, you married a woman from a culture where slut can equal death, and you thought all you had to do to get her to spill everything was tell her honesty works best for you? As for telling you that you were blazing uncharted territory, and were quite the lover to boot, even Western women with sterling integrity have been known to exclaim, "Wow, that thing's enormous!" Meanwhile, they're thinking, "...compared to the stub of a No. 2 pencil."

Poor Booboo, you weren't her first. Or her second. And there is that possibility you weren't even her third. Get over it. All this moping is distracting you from the essential question: Did she lie about her sexploits out of some ingrained policy for self-preservation, or are you likely to wake up alone one morning and find that your bank account's cleaned out, your car is gone, and she's even taken the dog? The fact that her character is kind of a mystery to you suggests you pledged to spend the rest of your life with a near stranger. Smooth move, dude! At least get to know the woman before you divorce her: Is she ethical? Even when nobody's looking? Does it mean something to her to do the right thing? Does she act in your best interest or does she just act interested out of self-interest? I know, boring questions, but they'll ultimately be more instructive than interrogating her about whether she let Achmed get to third base in the summer of 2003.

In high school and college I was really overweight. I started losing weight and found a great guy online. During the year we talked, I went from size 18 to size 12, losing 80 pounds. When we met, I was a little overweight, but in my best shape ever, and we were really attracted to each other. We're now married, but stressed, as I'm the only one working until he completes the immigration process (he's South African). In seven months, I've gained 50 pounds. My problem is that he's insanely direct. If something's on his mind, he'll say it. He's now having a hard time being attracted to me. I do understand, and have committed to losing weight, and plan to have surgery next year to remove the extra skin. I'm excited because I know he'll be all over me, but I'm also scared I'll be resentful.

For a man, it's the size of a woman's heart that counts -- until her thighs approach the size of small Volkswagens.

Now, some men do go for a woman with extra padding -- not just "junk in the trunk," but junk bungee'd to the roof and hood, and crammed from floormats to ceiling in the front and back seats. Actually, there are about five men who go for this. On the bright side, the average guy isn't into haute couture thin: those slivers in stilettos who look like they subsist on cigarettes and the occasional French fry when they need enough energy to make it down the catwalk without fainting into Anna Wintour's lap.

Still, feminists see a cruel plot against women who eat. According to Naomi Wolf, author of The Beauty Myth, there's a patriarchal conspiracy to keep women dieting so they'll be too weak and hungry to compete with men. Right. Here in the real world, it isn't some brainwashed dim bulb who doesn't let herself bulk out, but a wise woman, assuming she's on the prowl for heterosexual men who aren't, say, Tanzanian hunter-gatherers. Male sexuality is hard-wired to be looks-driven, and research suggests that the body size men look for in a woman corresponds with the availability of food. Where eats are scarce, like in the Sahara, Lane Bryant ladies are in. Where there's food-a-plenty, men go for slimmer women. And yes, that describes our culture, where, if you're foraging for dinner, you're probably not scraping for grubs with a stick, just reaching deep into the cooler at 7-Eleven.

At a certain point, "more of you to love" becomes way too much for your husband to get around. He can't help feeling this way, but because his first thought is something like "Yeah, you're big-boned -- like a brontosaurus" doesn't mean he should release it into the atmosphere. People get way too much credit for being "direct." Sometimes what passes for honesty is really just poor impulse control. Your husband needs to take that 10 extra seconds to break things to you in a way that doesn't slap you upside the ego. As for your own impulse control issues, a fork is not a stress reduction tool. And dieting might take off the pounds, but it won't solve the real problem: getting it into your head that the only hunger pangs food relieves are those you feel in your stomach. For guidance, pick up Diets Don't Work, by Bob Schwartz. Whatever you do, avoid reading Naomi Wolf, who suggests that, until women can shovel down just as many donuts as men do, they "cannot experience equal status in the community."

Two years ago, my husband had an affair. He apologized profusely, but since he ended it, he's been on his worst behavior. He quit his job, saying that working for someone is beneath him. Fine, but he went back to school, then quit mid-semester to go on a solo camping trip, leaving me to shoulder our financial obligations. He's forgotten our anniversary these past two years, and while I've never missed one of his music gigs, he skipped my first photography show, saying, "You know I'm not into that. I'm staying home." He's now on a weeklong road trip to a friend's...down the road from his affair partner...and I'm supposed to "learn to deal with things one can't control." I've given him numerous chances to prove he cares beyond showing up to watch TV at night. Am I just not communicating right? I love him and want to keep him in my life.

Are you just not communicating right? I sure can't figure you out. I e-mailed you back and asked you for 10 reasons why you're still there. Or five. Or two. You sent me thousands of words -- and still failed to give me one reasonable explanation. A few highlights:

People change over time. I've changed, he's changed. Perhaps the next change will be for the better.
Some people do change, but most people just change their underwear. In this case, I'd say the likelihood he'll walk in the door all loving, giving, and gainfully employed, and stay that way, is up there with Larry King being chosen as the next Victoria's Secret cover model.

In a committed relationship, there should be room for growth and mistakes, forgiveness and support.
In this relationship, he grows increasingly neglectful, disrespectful, and sponge-like, and you make the mistake of forgiving and supporting him.

At one time, the love and support he offered gave me the strength to overcome my insecurities.
Somebody once opened a door for me in Cleveland. I'm not still trying to repay them. Remember all his music gigs you attended? He might not be "into" photography, but if he were into you, don't you think he'd find a way to brave two hours of cheap wine, cheese cubes, and gallery snots to cheer you on at your first show?

I believe he can do amazing things.
Keeping you in his life is the most amazing thing he's done yet. Of course, there's still time for him to come home and announce, "Darling, this is Becky. She'll be staying over tonight. Mind sleeping on the couch?"

I'm compassionate to strangers, so my loyalty runs pretty deep when it comes to someone like him.
Your loyalty is to avoiding reality. You're with him because of stuff that's missing in you, not qualities that are present in him. Ah, but it's easier to make him your project than to address flaws in yourself, right? And easier to do that if you hone an image of yourself as this noble, self-sacrificing person by spouting these group-huggy, drive-by zen excuses for staying with him.

Most worrisome of all, however, was your last reason for sticking around.

I see him being the father of my children.
Which takes only sperm with nice strong tails. I can hear him now: "Sorry, kid, can't drive you to school, I'm off to the wilderness to find myself. And, hey, should I bump into any old girlfriends...! Tell your mom I'll be home after she pays for your college."