I'm a 40-year-old guy seeing a 29-year-old woman for four months. I seem to have a pattern of dating women with serious problems. Sure enough, weeks after we met, she suffered a major emotional upheaval that triggered issues from her history of abuse (a vicious marriage). As an understanding companion, educated about abuse (I'm a part-time counselor), I've elected to stay. This has meant shelving my needs across the board. Sex was okay at first, but we hadn't been together many times before she fell apart, suffering from major PTSD symptoms. I'm her mainstay, so we're still seeing each other, but without physical intimacy, and she isn't even comfortable going out on dates. There's no telling when she'll want me as a companion again, but I can't just toss somebody to the curb when they've been hit by a bus.

So, you're a part-time counselor. Aren't you supposed to close your case files and take off your telephone headset before you leave the crisis center? I mean, if you were a doctor, you wouldn't go home and remove your wife's appendix or go to neighborhood barbecues and do tonsillectomies.

Of course, probably a big part of your self-image is how different you are from ordinary men. For starters, most guys just have to match their belt and shoes. You've got an additional element to coordinate -- that 9-foot wooden cross you strap on your back every morning. But, hey, it's for a noble cause. Or...is it? There you are, time and time again, pairing up with women who are too wounded to leave you. Hell, this one probably had a hard time leaving some guy who beat her up. And then, just weeks into knowing you, she's too shell-shocked to go on dinner dates. Yet, instead of telling her, "Hey, let's be friends," you trot over, make her a little nest, and feed her out of an eyedropper.

Now, it's one thing if your longtime love gets diagnosed with a brain tumor. Of course you're not gonna be, like, "Well, bummer! I'm outta here. Good luck with chemo! If I remember, I'll send you one of those cute knit hats with a butterfly pinned on it." It's a totally different story -- or should be -- when you've just met somebody, and it's clear that they aren't partner material in really fundamental ways. That's your cue to extend your arm and flail your hand around. Also known as waving goodbye.

The reality is, you're probably too wimpy to take the chance that somebody would want you just for you, and not because having your shoulder to cry on saves them hundreds of dollars in Kleenex. But, instead of recognizing your wimpiness as a flaw to fix, you spin it like you're on assignment for Doctors Without Borders (uh, try Man Without Testicles). As a bonus, you get to feel like Dr. Phil next to all these Humpty Dumpties -- giving you even less incentive to mop up after yourself. Breaking your pattern takes having the guts to be selfish. Not mean-selfish, but appropriately selfish: putting your needs first. You should also redefine your idea of a relationship. Here, try mine: "Two people who have more fun together and are better together than they are alone." You're sure to find it more satisfying than the redefinition you've been working from: "It's not that she won't have sex with me, it's just that her idea of foreplay is a decade of intensive therapy."

Women these days think they have the luxury of being picky about men, and you encourage them. You ran a letter from "Almost A Bride," the woman whose fiance has difficulty dealing with conflict. She said, "I'm in my late 40s, and don't want to end up alone. No man is perfect, right?" I have news for her: If she doesn't marry him, she probably will end up alone. I read about a study of women over 65 who'd been married: 25 percent were still married, 50 percent were divorced or separated, and 25 percent were widowed. The article also stated that 70 percent of girls in high school would work full time their entire lives. So much for the marrying the guy and being a full-time mommy dream! Face reality, ladies!

Imagine shopping for dinner the way you suggest shopping for a husband: "Oh, look! A piece of rotting meat that's fallen on the grocery store floor! I'll take it!"

This woman's fiance doesn't just have "difficulty dealing with conflict." He causes scenes in public. Feels everybody's out to get him. And the woman wrote, "My wedding would've been tomorrow, but my fiance broke up with me over a triviality, took my engagement ring, and stormed off -- his pattern at the slightest conflict." As I pointed out, "Being with this guy isn't a way to avoid ending up alone, but a near guarantee you'll end up alone -- dozens and dozens of times."

But, hey, a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do to get a man! Or, as you put it, "Face reality, ladies!" Yes, ladies, do that. Reality number one: the marketability of skills like wiping a toddler's nose and reading "The Very Hungry Caterpillar." If your husband leaves you for his Very Sexy Secretary, let's hope you didn't have children at 22 after graduating with a B.A. in philosophy. It's wonderful if you can read Heidegger in the original German, but as a newly single mother, adrift at, say, 31, that qualifies you to be an unusually well-read salesgirl at Dress Barn.

Reality number two is human mortality. Damn humans keep getting picked off by buses and drowning in their own nosebleeds. You do mention widows in those stats you're holding up like the Ten Commandments. Those stats tell you how things turned out for a bunch of women somebody surveyed. But because something COULD happen to somebody in your demographic doesn't mean it WILL happen to you. Those particular stats didn't even include couples who've been together for eons but aren't married, like my lovebird senior citizen friends, Kay and Earl, and those cute little old ladies in San Francisco who just celebrated their 55th anniversary of not being allowed to marry with a wedding at City Hall.

Last spring, my friend Cathy Seipp died of cancer. The fall before, she told me she was afraid to be alone, so 15 of her friends became "Team Cathy," and saw that she never was. Did I mention that she was divorced? Not one of us was there because we were married to her or sleeping with her. Face reality, ladies! You'd better make some friends and fill in whatever in yourself you've been trying to patch with a man. Eliminate desperation, and there's no need to settle for the first exploding cigar that falls in your lap. Of course, being pickier may mean that women like "Almost A Bride" will miss out on that "full-time mommy dream" you talk about -- or whatever you'd call life with a tantrum-throwing 3-year-old who's just this side of 50.

I'm a 46-year-old woman who just started seeing a 55-year-old man. He's always telling me how excited I get him, how he's your typical horny male, and how I'm asking for trouble if we make out at the door after lunch. Frankly, he seems all talk. For example, on our much anticipated weekend away in San Francisco, we had two hours to kill at the hotel before dinner. He suggested window shopping. I suggested we "make out on the bed." (I wanted to say "have wild sex.") We kissed, and when things started heating up, he said we should head out. When we returned, he said, "So, should we get to it then?" It was so crass, I suggested a movie. He seemed relieved, and we watched "Juno." Afterward, we started fooling around, but it was bland -- as was sex the next morning. I'm frustrated but hoping things will improve over time. Am I too focused on sex? I should say something, but it's so awkward, and I don't want to hurt his feelings.

Here you are on a weekend getaway with a guy you just started seeing, and all he can think to do is get away from the bed: "Shall we totter down to Neiman Marcus and stare at the displays?" Now, there is that chance he's freezing up out of performance anxiety or because he sees sleeping together as an I.O.U. for commitment. But more than likely, his favorite sex positions are spooning, snoring, and doggie-style -- as in, rolling over and playing dead.

This sort of bedroom bait-and-switch -- the dud billing himself as a dynamo -- is pretty common with older guys who are embarrassed that they don't want sex like they used to. Perhaps this guy's had a drop in his testosterone level (as men do, usually after 40), or perhaps there never was much "T" to go around. What's especially worrisome is that this a brand new relationship -- the time when you should be having trouble making it out of the elevator with clothes on. In "The Truth About Love," Dr. Patricia Love explains, "During infatuation, with the help of PEA (phenethylamine), dopamine, and norepinephrine, the person with the low sex drive (the low-T person) experiences a surge in sexual desire." Uh-oh. What's he experiencing, a surge in window shopping?

As for whether you're "too focused on sex," you are what you are -- probably too focused on it to be satisfied with a guy who'd rather watch "Juno" than...you know...but who finally blurts out, "So, should we get to it then?" What, clean the hog pen? Yeah, let's get this chore over with. You can hint a guy into expressing himself more appealingly, but what matters is whether that's how he really feels: if he'd really rather be napping.

You hear people say stuff like, "Sex is best in the context of a loving relationship." No, sex is best when the two people having it are sexually compatible. You can ask a guy to do more of what you like, but you can't get him to be more of what you like. Go ahead, hang around a little longer, maybe try initiating, and see whether he's just a bit slow to come out of hibernation. Ultimately, the person in need of your honesty is you: whether the man for you is one who's always got Mr. Happy at the ready, or whether you can make do with a guy who should probably pet-name his entire sex drive Nuclear Winter.

It took me two years to get a divorce from my husband, a jerk I was married to for only 13 months, after knowing him for just nine weeks. (I was 38 and increasingly desperate to get married and have a baby.) I basically gave up on "equitable distribution" because I ran out of steam, but he agreed in our divorce decree and in court, under oath, to give me $7,000 of his retirement monies. Two years and numerous legal letters later, he has yet to comply. Meanwhile, he just published his first novel and is doing readings at local bookstores. I'd like to show up at the last one, and when he's done, stand up and ask when he plans to pay me. So...out of curiosity, what would you do? Looking forward to a pithy response!

Oh, are you?

Let's start by talking about my writing process. Much as I'd like it to involve afternoons spent in a silk dressing gown in a canopy bed dotting witticisms on vellum with a big quill pen, the reality is rather different: long sweaty hours crawling under furniture looking for better verbs -- when I'm not too busy trying to unzip my skin and run away screaming.

This guy just wrote his first novel, a feat on par with climbing Mt. Everest in a motorized wheelchair. I don't care if he snacks on kittens, if you're looking for justice, you have 8,758 other hours in the year to make your case. Of course, if this really was about getting what you're owed, you'd go about it in the most pragmatic way: dragging him back to court and garnishing his wages or bringing in a collection agency. Instead, you're about to make him hate you so completely that he'll probably do anything to avoid paying you, including ditching fiction writing (an endeavor typically less lucrative than picking lettuce) for a career in the fast-paced world of haiku.

As for your plan to hijack his reading, will you just be reciting your grievances, or should the bookstore put out a table for you so his friends, relatives, and groupies can line up to have you autograph copies of your divorce decree? If you weren't so deluded with rage, you might see that the person who's likely to come out of this the worst is you. At the moment, he's yet another first-time novelist clamoring for shelf space. Cue the cut-rate Heather Mills McCartney (that would be you), and he and his book might even make front-page news. Meanwhile, you'll have established a permanent resume for yourself as a vindictive, mouth-foaming shrew -- possibly endangering your current source of employment, almost certainly impairing yourself in gaining future employment, and surely making you the last woman any guy with Google will ever date.

"Equitable distribution" after 13 months and no kids? To me, it's a wave goodbye. But, he signed off on giving you that $7K, so he should pony up. And sure, try to get it, but factor in how much that's costing you, and maybe shift your focus to having a future of your own instead of destroying his. If you ever loved him, how do you behave this way? For real resolution, look to yourself: If he's such a bad guy, why did you marry him? What did you refuse to see? Hmmm, perhaps that the correct answer to "How do I love thee?" isn't "I'm 38 and increasingly desperate to get married and have a baby."