I'm thinking of postponing my wedding. My fiance seems incapable of being apart from me. We dated long distance, so I didn't realize the extent of his clinginess until we moved in together. If I want some "me time," he gets offended. If I don't stand or sit next to him or cuddle with him, he claims I don't like him. If I eat lunch with a friend instead of him (as I do daily), he's upset. Even when we spend time with my family, there are repercussions (moping and drama when we get home). I do try to take his upbringing into consideration. His parents divorced when he was 9, and neither wants much to do with him or his brother. Initially, I found his behavior sweet...as in, "How cute that my fiance wants to come with me to the grocery store or to buy shoes," but now I'm thinking, "Hey, Crazy, calm down, I'll see you tonight, and I can go to the store without you."

Even an emotionally together person can feel a little pang when their partner's going away for a time -- like, to Europe for a week, not to Rite-Aid for a box of tampons.

Other women betray their partners by having illicit sex. You only have to have illicit lunch (eat a burger with somebody who isn't him). Grab a little alone time, and it's like you're slutting around on him -- with yourself. For him and his unresolved issues, every day is the first day of nursery school: "Mommeeee, don't leave meee!" On the plus side, he's probably potty-trained to the point where he wears boxers instead of Huggies Pull-Ups.

You might end up giving birth to a clingy child, but you sure shouldn't marry one. In a healthy relationship, two fully functioning adults come together; they aren't bolted together. They stay together because they love each other -- meaning they respect and admire each other, have more fun together, and are better together than alone. What you have isn't love, but a guy dressing up pathological need in a love suit and manipulating you with cuddly-wuddly coerciveness: "Just stay and snuggle -- or I'll pout till the end of time." You've got a choice: live with constant conflict or avoid seeing your family and friends -- or doing anything that'll trigger his abandonment issues, like going to the mailbox or the ladies' room.

Hang with crazy long enough, and it can start to seem normal -- to the point where you're only thinking of postponing your wedding instead of mapping out routes to flee. Even if your fiance wanted to change (and it seems he hasn't yet been motivated), he isn't going to become a full, independent person in six months or a year. It's probably tempting to try to make it work and make allowances for his past, but just picture yourself once his neediness has not only the force of habit from your putting up with it, but a state license behind it. Sure, you can always get divorced -- that is, if you can figure out the combination to get out the front door.

In February, I discovered my girlfriend was cheating on me with her millionaire ex. I told him, and he told her to beat it. She tried to patch things up with him, but couldn't, and came back to me two months ago, saying she loves me and wants to marry me. But I've started catching her in lies again. For example, she said she'd be studying at home, but she wasn't answering her phone (rare for her). I dropped by at 10, and she wasn't there. This was just two days after she took me to dinner and told me, "One day the world will be ours!" What gives? What alternatives do I have besides ending it?

Good thing you're not on the parole board. You'd only need to hear a guy talk like a motivational poster -- "Good is its own reward!" "Tomorrow is a brand new day!" -- and you'd campaign for the release of some serial killer who kept all his dates in jars in his basement. Of course you want to believe your girlfriend's "One day the world will be ours!" but she has yet to show herself to be ethical, and it's wildly unlikely she'll become ethical now. What alternatives do you have besides ending it? Well, you could stick around and be lied to, cheated on, and placated with aphorisms: "Our love is here to stay!" (As long as you don't call or come by after 10.) "Our love is like a rose!" Well, okay, we'll give her that one -- in that it has something in common with getting stuck with a thorn, coming down with necrotizing fasciitis, and losing an arm.

I was on a first date with this guy, and he kept texting right at the table. Amazingly, he asked me out again. Is this on-date texting becoming the norm?

There are times when your date can't help but break away to text or take a call, like if he's got the other half of the missile launch codes and Luxembourg just attacked Staten Island. If it could be the secretary of state or the babysitter about his kids setting the house on fire with My Little Meth Lab, he should apologize in advance that he might have to take a call. Otherwise, answering is the digital version of leaving your date alone at the table and bopping over to join friends across the restaurant. Texting? You might as well whip out a pen and legal pad: "You busy yourself with that pork chop, Sweetcheeks. Got a couple letters I gotta mail out first thing."

Many people think the fact that their pants are vibrating gives them a pass to put the person they're with on face-to-face "ignore." People with manners consider how their companion might feel sitting before a full restaurant audience pretending to examine a napkin for hidden messages. Cool as it is that you can message somebody in Moscow right from the table, groovy new technology needs to be paired with groovy old-fashioned social graces. If you're going to invite somebody to dinner and ignore them, at least have the decency to get married first and build up years of bitterness and resentment.

This guy I met at a club seemed great, but when we went on a date, he made no eye contact. ZERO. Apparently, he needs lots of alcohol to be normal. My friend just went out with a guy who took her to the equivalent of Subway for Hawaiian food. They sat in plastic chairs, ordered from a counter, and looked out at a parking lot and a porn store. How do we stay in the dating game without becoming bitterly annoyed?

A date, as a way to get to know somebody, is really fun -- for anybody who enjoys a police interrogation with two-for-one well drinks. Group dating is a much better idea. There's a site called Ignighter.com where you and some friends post a group profile and go out with other groups of friends. Or, you can arrange this sort of thing yourself. With your friends there, you won't be so nervous, you won't have to hold up half the conversation, and you'll get a clearer picture of a guy by seeing him with his friends. Should a group date be a bust, it's like you and your friends all went to some lame party, not like you alone once again failed to find everlasting love. If you must go on a first date solo, meet for drinks -- for an hour and a half, tops. Basically, keep it cheap, short, and local -- which'll ease the pain should it take a Hobbesian turn toward "nasty, brutish, and short." (Do your best to laugh if that also describes your date.)

I'm a mature 21-year-old woman considering a relationship with a 30-year-old man, but I worry about our age difference. I've yet to graduate, and live the life of a student, but I don't want to miss out on the guy of my dreams.

Yippee, you can now be tried as an adult, but don't be on your high horse about how all growed-up you are. At 21, everyone thinks they're "mature." By 23, some catch a whiff of what blithering idiots they've been. At 30, many have nine years of proof. Making matters worse, you're from one of the most overmommied generations ever. While the original umbilical cord is still cut at birth, there are now aftermarket versions from Sprint, AT&T, and Verizon. One 20-something girl complained on a blog that her mother calls her every 30 minutes when she's out. Once, when she didn't reply right away, she logged 96 missed calls from Psychomommy.

Even if your parents aren't all helicoptery, the last thing you need now is a guy you'll look up to as some elder statesman with all the answers, eliminating the need for you to flail around and find them for yourself. In fact, there's never been a better time for you to miss out on the guy of your dreams. Your dreams are likely to be rather different at 25, let alone 30, making your 20s, especially your early 20s, the ideal time to date all the wrong guys. Avoid locking onto Mr. Dreamy today and you might avoid waking up at 30 with the urge to date a garage band drummer with a part-time job shoplifting.

My husband of 18 years woke me up one morning to inform me that he told this woman in the class he's taking that he's happily married and isn't looking to cross any lines. Feeling uneasy, I peeked at his text messaging and call history. They'd been texting for hours before his declaration to me, and text all day, every day. (He texts her upon reaching his office, and before he goes to bed at night.) Meanwhile, he had me stop calling him during work because it didn't leave us enough to talk about at dinner. He claims they're just friends but refused to cut back on their texting, despite how it's upsetting me. He keeps saying he can't have friends because of me, and thinks there's nothing wrong with texting her all day.

When you aren't guilty, you don't wake your wife to confess your guiltlessness -- complete with the details of what you aren't guilty of: "I just want to let you know, Honey, I didn't murder five people, three of them women, and bury their bodies five yards from the chestnut tree."

Marriage used to play out on the Wal-Mart model: the idea that one person would meet your every need from altar to gravestone. Couples these days seem to understand that this is ridiculous, and have friendships outside the relationship. But, there are friendships and then...well, let's just say there are two kinds of people who text as much as your husband and this woman: 14-year-old girls and people with the hots for each other. He might swear it's platonic, but can you see him goodnight texting some hairy buddy of his? "Yo, Frank, tuck me in?"

Marital tenure has been in the news thanks to the Gores rounding out their 40th anniversary by announcing their divorce. People are calling this sad/tragic/horrible. But, is it? Okay, they promised to be together forever, but the reality is, things end. People use each other up and grow apart. It takes guts to admit it's over, especially in light of all the "stay together no matter what" propaganda, like calling an ended marriage a "failed relationship." (Why is it a failure if you had a bunch of good years together?) As I've written before, for couples who don't have kids, or whose kids are grown, a marriage license should be more like a driver's license: up for renewal every five years. Spouses would be less likely to slob up, get mean, and cut off sex, and they'd have to ask themselves the question you two should: "Do we want what we have, or do we just have what we have?"

Marriage is supposed to be a partnership, not a partnership with an option on a harem. Still, you don't get to tell another adult what to do, just what you refuse to stick around for. But, unless you make it clear that you're willing to walk, you may as well tack a rider on your marriage contract allowing unlimited extramarital texts. If you believe you two have more to share than collective boredom, try firing up his empathy. Ask how he'd feel if some guy called you on your home phone every five minutes during dinner, and one last time at bedtime: "Hey, man, mind putting your wife on the line so I can sing her to sleep?" At the very least, it'll make for some compelling dinner conversation to break up all the chewing, and it's probably your best shot at getting him to consider changing his calling plan to one that leads to fewer dropped wives.

A nice-enough guy who's part of a group of friends I hang with sent me some "You looked delicious today" and "What a great butt you have"-type e-mails. I felt flattered, then got a case of the ickies. Should I ask a trusted male friend (also in our group) to lie and say I have a boyfriend?

Chances are, the guy's just a doofus -- one who doesn't get that "You look beautiful" is a compliment and that what he wrote is basically "Hey, sex parts!" The moment a guy shows interest in you, decide whether you have any interest in him, and shut him down right away if you don't. Whatever you do, don't create boyfriend fiction you'll have to maintain. Assess this guy and the group dynamic, and either ignore his e-mails or respond with something like "I'm telling myself you were drinking when you wrote that, and we're both going to forget you ever sent it." That might sound mean, but it's actually the benevolent response: letting him know that he can't just haul off with "You looked delicious today" unless he's already getting it on with a girl or he bumped into her when she was dressed as a giant chocolate croissant.

I met a nice man (so I thought) who lives about 40 miles away. On our second date, we had drinks in my neighborhood. He drank too much, and asked to hang at my house so he wouldn't drive under the influence. I didn't like this because I'm used to guys using this ploy for sex, but he said if I didn't let him in, I was making him drive drunk. I grudgingly allowed him in, and he immediately started making moves on me. Eventually, I tried to send him home, but he said he was still in no position to drive, so I kicked him out early in the morning. What were my obligations here? Every man I asked said I shouldn't have risked letting him in. As one said, "Better a strange drunk on the road than a strange drunk in your home, where he could rape you." I have yet to ask a woman who can give me a definitive answer; they're all as conflicted as I am.

--Manhandled

If a stranger comes to your door and says, "I'm too drunk to drive home," you don't say, "No problem, I'll make up the bed!" Yet, this guy's a near stranger, one you didn't want in your home -- even before he took the post-date sex ploy to a remarkable new low. Yeah, forget the usual lame lemme-in tactics like "I'd love to meet that cat I've heard so much about!" or "Mind if I use your bathroom?" No, it's "Mind if I cause the fiery death of a family of five?"

A guy might present you with an either/or situation, but that doesn't mean those are your only choices. In this case, you should've told the guy to cab it to a motel. (To borrow from your friend, "Better a strange drunk cabbing to Motel 6 than a strange drunk turning your home into Motel Sex.") If your date insists on driving drunk, call the cops, report a drunk driver, and give them a description of his car. Of course, it's possible he isn't really drunk, just trying to con his way in, but that's for the cop who stops him to determine: "I can touch my finger to my nose just fine, Officer, but I'm having real problems getting my hand up a girl's shirt."

It isn't surprising that all your girlfriends are "conflicted" about what you should've done. In fact, other women would have given in like you did -- not necessarily because they're weak or dumb, but because they're women: the gender that evolved to be the nurturers, peacemakers, and consensus builders of the species. (All great until a drunk guy swinging a set of car keys is standing at your front door.)

Recognizing that, as a woman, you have a hardwired tendency to be a pleaser is the best way to avoid succumbing to it. You have to decide before you're in a dicey situation that your comfort level and safety take priority over possibly coming across as rude or unsympathetic. Keep in mind, as Gavin de Becker writes in The Gift of Fear, that "'No' is a complete sentence," and if you let somebody talk you out of it, "you might as well wear a sign that reads, 'You are in charge.'" Get his book, start a reading group with your "conflicted" girlfriends, and in the future, see to it that your door policy is determined by you, not Jim Beam and Captain Morgan.

I was OUTRAGED that you criticized a college guy for online dating, saying it's "for the Rogaine generation." I'm 23 and met my wonderful fiance on the Internet. A man isn't less of a man because he finds a girlfriend online!

Sure, some college students find dates online, but you're OUTRAGED that I advised against it? And, of all the things in the paper you could find to be OUTRAGED about? What happened, seen one oil-soaked dead baby duck, seen 'em all?

Eventually, the pesky human aspect will probably be removed from dating, and a guy'll stay home repiping the sink while his avatar's out trying to unhook some other avatar's bra. For now, the human-to-human element remains, and a guy in college will never again be in a place so swarming with hot, single, dateable women. It's especially wise for this particular guy to take a more analog approach to hitting on girls if I'm right in my suspicion that he online dates because he's too big a wuss to deal with face-to-face rejection. Opportunity (aka the hot girl down the hall) is knocking on his dorm room door, and he should be answering it, not calling out, "Not now! I'm IMing with Im300LbsFatterThanMyPicture999!"