My wife of eight years is a really good person but always needs reassurance that she's attractive. I'm finding that difficult because, on a typical night, she takes a dump in our master bathroom with the door open, saunters over to our bed with a few open sores on her face from picking her zits, rips a fart, and comes at me for a kiss. I give her a peck and dive under the covers so she won't think I'm interested in sex. She then feels rejected and unloved. When I point out specific things that turn me off, she's offended. She apparently expects me to be supernaturally attracted to her despite her actions (always wearing nasty sweatpants, hair in shambles, etc.). I don't expect her to dress up, just to try to look a little cute. If only she'd see herself as a beautiful, seductive, confident woman, and act like it -- instead of acting like her girlfriends, who brag that they've "trained" their husbands to accept their burping, farting, etc. Am I completely ignorant about true love?

When somebody asks, "So, what first attracted you to your wife?" I'm guessing you don't answer, "I'd have to say it's pretty much a toss up between the toxic farts and oozing open sores."

It's no accident that toilets are installed in little locking closets in the corners of homes and not in a big glass box in the middle of the living room. ("Poop du Soleil" is not a spectacle people are looking to see.) There are those couples who brag, "Nothing comes between us, not even the bathroom door!" That may work for them, but you've made it clear to your wife that watching her pick her acne scabs while straining on the pot isn't your idea of foreplay.

Your wife probably buys into the notion that love involves embracing absolutely everything about a person, including everything that comes out of their intestines. (Well, love might be blind, but lust sure isn't, nor has it had its nostrils cemented shut.) Your wife, like her burping, farting girlfriends, seems to see the marriage license as a voucher entitling her to retire from making an effort. Of course, it doesn't help that academic feminism elevated refusing to please a man into a sociopolitical virtue: "Dismantle patriarchy!" "Rewrite herstory!" "March around in nasty old sweatpants and see how long you can go without washing your hair!"

With so much support for your wife's behavior from her friends and society, your best bet for getting her to change is coming at this from the love angle: You've failed to master the secret language of farts (one long burst and two short ones mean "I love you, your happiness means everything to me"?), and frankly, your feelings are hurt. You don't care how these other women treat their husbands. You want to be treated like you're special, like it means something to her to meet your needs. To minimize her defensiveness, separate the woman from the behavior: I love YOU and think YOU are a beautiful, sexy, sensual woman, but I find these BEHAVIORS off-putting. They block the beautiful view -- kind of like a billboard in front of Yosemite. (Actually, it's more like a New York City garbage truck, but that's not helpful.) The bottom line is, you love her so, so much, and you're just asking that she join you in a few small steps to keep the heat in your marriage -- and no, lighting her farts isn't one of them.

My girlfriend's wonderful, but her house is one big clutterfest, with books, papers, old bills, and Post-its everywhere. I find myself unable to relax there, so we spend all our time at my place. She knows she's messy and jokes about it, so there's no awkwardness there, but can it work in the long run between two people with such varying standards of neatness?

There are people who march out into the world looking completely put-together, and then you open their front door and see that the only clutter-busting tip you could possibly give them is "Strike a match and run." If you don't look down on Sloppy Susan or maintain illusions that she'll change, this could work -- providing Good Housekeeping rules remain in effect: You keep your house and she keeps hers and visits yours. One major consideration is whether you'll eventually want kids. In sharing a home, you can do your best to bridge the tidiness gap -- hire a housekeeper and give your love a room of her own that she's free to decorate feng-shovel-style. Ultimately, you may need to be prepared for that day when you can't be sure whether your children have been kidnapped or are just lost in the debris pile in the den.

I'd love your take on a bizarre first date. I suggested happy hour drinks, but he wanted to take me to dinner, and picked a really nice restaurant. When we were ordering, he suggested we play "a fun game," which entailed closing our eyes and picking a number (the entrees were numbered). I said okay, then he said I couldn't pick numbers between 20 and 25 because those entrees were expensive. Completely disenchanted, I opened my eyes and chose something cheap. Later, the bill came, and sat and sat. He finally picked it up, muttered audibly about who had what, and eventually put his card out. Obviously, I turned down his request for a second date.

Just think of the "fun game" he had in store for date two -- probably something like "Close your eyes, Babe, and pretend we aren't under a bridge waiting in line for free soup."

It's a tough economy, and people are increasingly worried that they'll be dining on Fancy Feast casserole at 80 (or 45). More than ever, men need to be wary of gold diggers. But, this guy had good intel that you aren't one of them. The girl who suggests happy hour drinks is not the girl who orders the lobster dinner -- and then adds, "Oh, and can I get another one of those to go?"

He's the one who chose to up the price tag of getting to know you. The reasonable assumption would be that he was inviting you, not you and your VISA card. Assuming he didn't lose his job between "Pick you up at 8?" and appetizers, he's either a pathological cheapskate trying to pass himself off as Mr. Big Spender or is convinced that all women are out to milk 'n' bilk him. Either way, a date with him seems like a twist on "L'Oreal -- because you're worth it." His motto: "Don't even think of incurring the $2 substitution fee for onion rings -- because you're not."

The ironic thing is, even if you'd picked one of the pricier entrees, how much more would it have cost him...$10 plus tip? He ended up spending a whole bunch of money on a girl who now never wants to see him again -- charming as some may find it when a guy mutters over the check, "Let's see, you had that extra packet of ketchup --that's probably two cents right there..."

I sympathize with "On Hold," the guy sick of girls saying they wanted to see him again and then not returning his calls. Why do women think it's okay to ignore a guy -- the guy they let buy them dinner...the very same guy they agreed to see again when he walked them to their car?!

When a woman isn't returning your call, you want to hope for the best -- that it's because she died, is still in a coma, or was kidnapped by Bolivian terrorists while picking up a prescription at the drugstore.

But, you know -- we all know -- what no callback almost always means. And it isn't that women think it's okay to ignore a guy. It's just that lying and saying they'll see him again seems kinder and less awkward than being honest to his face. Sure, a woman could say something vaguely honest, like "I just don't think it's going to happen for us." But, the guy could end up pressing her for what's really on her mind: "You aren't as cute as I thought you'd be, and you chew like you're bad in bed." By the way, it isn't just women who'll say whatever it takes to close the door on a date. Men will pledge a sincere-sounding "I'll call you!" while thinking "You sucked the oxygen out of the room. Couldn't you hear the sound of my brain cells dying?"

Shaking your fist at the sky because rejection doesn't come in your preferred form won't make it any less a rejection; it'll just make you increasingly bitter, making you increasingly unattractive to women. Understand that not getting a promised callback is a common side-effect of modern dating -- especially if it was a first date, especially if it originated on the Internet. When you're just getting to know a woman, make dates cheap, short, and local -- drinks rather than dinner. Hope for the best, but until a woman's getting into your car to go on date two, think of "I'd love to see you again" as an announcement akin to "I'm going to go home and give birth to a litter of squirrels."

In middle school, I got a crush on "Sam," but he wasn't interested. In high school, he took me to prom, but only as friends when none of the other girls he asked said yes. I was jealous upon hearing he'd gotten married, but several years later, he called, said he was divorcing, was coming to town, and wanted to see me. I gave him a fine homecoming, thinking he was finally seeing me in a new light. At week's end, I said I wanted to be more than friends, but he didn't. Apparently, he was just doing the girl he didn't in high school. Twenty years later, he contacted me on Facebook. We messaged back and forth, just catching up, nothing flirty. We're both happily married, with kids, and there's no danger of that changing, but what surprised me was the amount of anger that welled up in me at how he'd treated me back then. I quit writing, and he wrote to ask if he'd done something wrong. Should I tell him what I'm feeling?

This was supposed to play out like it does in chick flicks. The guy finally realizes how dumb he was, that the perfect woman was right there all along, and he rewards her for her years of loyalty by swooping in and making this grand gesture -- the sort that evokes thoughts of "diamonds are forever" not "hickeys fade within the week."

You felt like the victim of a romantic swindle, but the guy merely said he wanted to see you, and he did -- naked. The problem was, you'd spent a decade seeing him through "Why don't you want me?"-colored glasses, making you desperate to believe he was seeing you in a new light, and not just the light from the lamp on your nightstand. But, remember, he made no promises, just blew into town, had sex with a willing girl, and blew right out again. This is what guys do. Being angry that a guy acts like a guy is like being angry that your dog lifts his leg on a fire hydrant instead of politely excusing himself to the downstairs powder room.

People tend to spin their experiences in the way that protects their ego. You, for example, entirely sans evidence, decided that the guy was finally feeling something for you, and not just feeling something in his pants. Eventually, the obvious became unavoidably clear, but you so needed to believe he loved you that you just proceeded as if he did -- getting angry at him for acting badly; in other words, for not acting like a man who loved you would. Two decades later, you're a happily married middle-aged woman with kids -- who's chomping at the bit to go on Facebook to prosecute her seventh-grade crush for not loving her back. (Unfortunately, they only have a button to "poke" somebody, not incinerate them into a small pile of ash.)

Acting like an idiot is the human condition. What makes things go easier is admitting when you've been an idiot so you can maybe avoid acting so idiotically the next time around. Had you just placed the blame where it belongs -- on you, the person in charge of the door policy for your bedroom -- you wouldn't have spent two decades lugging this bucket of anger around. If you do write the guy again, explain your absence by telling him you've been busy, and keep the embarrassing details to yourself: busy raging at being humped and dumped 20 years ago by the hot guy who's now somebody's uncool dad.

I swear I see this line in almost every guy's online dating profile: "Looking for a real woman." What exactly does that mean?

A guy advertising for "a real woman" sounds selective -- while not ruling out anyone on the planet with a working vagina. (Even a woman who's 51 percent silicone isn't going to say, "Whoops, I'm too fake to reply.") As for what it means, well, it means he's looking for a woman with real breasts. Or, a woman with real-looking fake breasts. A woman who knows how to change a tire. Or, a woman who knows to stand back and watch the man change the tire. Mostly, it's a euphemism for "I don't know what I want, but I don't want what I just had." Being so vague is pretty dumb, considering the medium. In a bar, you can only hope the hot thing across the room has the qualities you seek. The Internet affords you the opportunity to articulate exactly what you want: "funny, easygoing, college-educated, adulterous." Even being the slightest bit more specific helps; for example, as one "real woman"-seeker put it: "I'm looking for a real woman who wants to have sex with a married man."

My husband surfs the Internet for porn and pictures of women when he's bored. I want to accept this, but I can't help but feel insecure and betrayed. He doesn't watch porn when I'm home, but if I were gone more often, I think he'd be hopping online. I don't snoop; I just see clues. Yesterday, I returned from a quick errand, and he'd left up a search for "Serena Williams swimsuit photos." Pretty harmless, but it still stabbed me in the heart! He's a deeply caring and sensitive man, and has been willing talk to me about this. He suggested I look at pics of men or porn, and said he wouldn't feel threatened, just happy if I'm feeling good. It still drives me nuts and makes me less sexually giving to know that when I leave my house he's fantasizing about other women.

Male brains and female brains have some differences. You can probably count on an amputated hand the number of times a straight man has run up to another and squealed, "Those are, like, the cutest shoes!" In fact, it's a special day if a man happens to take note that another man has feet.

If you're like most women, you couldn't care less about Speedo shots of A-Rod or Orlando Bloom, and you'd run past a naked man to get to shoes, a dress, or a spot on a bench. A study by sex researcher Meredith Chivers (with electrodes in an area on a woman that only TSA agents, her lover and her gynecologist go) revealed that women are turned on by erotic video, but find footage of a naked guy exercising about as sexually arousing as long, slow pans of the snowcapped Himalayas. Not surprisingly, while Victoria's Secret is a bajillion-dollar global enterprise, the companion sexy undie emporium for men has yet to open its doors. Frankly, Victor's Secret could be communicated on a tiny piece of paper women would give to men: "Wear underwear. Preferably clean."

You aren't alone in being with a man who looks at porn. In fact, University of Montreal researchers wanted to compare 20-something men who watch porn with 20-something men who don't, but couldn't find a single guy who hadn't. Researchers Steven M. Platek, Stephan Hamann, and others have found that seeing pictures of hot women activates the reward centers in men's brains -- the parts of the brain that go "Yeah, baby!" to stuff like drugs, beer, and money. In other words, just as your husband doesn't connect on an emotional level with a can of Bud, his surfing the naked women of the Internet is driven by physiological hunger, not sentiment. So, while your brain sees Serena as another woman coming between you, to his brain, she might as well be a big, tennis-playing ham sandwich.

There actually is a war between the sexes -- one going back millions of years. A cave man could do a cave lady behind a bush and just walk away, no child support, no nothing, and still pass on his genes. Consequently, men evolved to have this extremely unsentimental sexuality: getting aroused at the mere sight of a nubile woman. Since women can get pregnant from a single sex act, and since there were few suckier places to be a single mother than 1.8 million years ago on the African savannah, women evolved to care a lot less about a man's looks than his ability and willingness to provide. Although we now have reliable birth control, our genes are extraordinarily slow learners (basically, they're still partying like it's 2 million B.C.) so these competing sexual strategies remain. As my friend Walter Moore put it, "A guy was complaining to me that women are only attracted to wealthy men. I said, 'That's so unfair, because we don't expect them to be wealthy; all we ask is that they look like models.'"

Of course you want to believe the fantasy tale -- that your guy only has eyes for you -- and not know that whenever you run out to CVS, he's browsing page after page of fantasy tail. But, unless he starts showing signs that he's bought a one-way ticket to pornoland, the biggest threat to your relationship isn't his babe-gazing but your freaking out about it -- to the point where you're shutting down between the sheets. Remind yourself that he's just looking at these images because he's biologically and psychologically male. He's with you because he loves you, for the sexy way you brush your hair out of your eyes when you're thinking, for all the ways his life is better and more fun because you're in it. Compare all of that with what he gets from Serena and the rest -- the sum total of which fits in the toe of an old tube sock.