I'm an older woman (almost 50) in a six-year live-in relationship with a 25-year-old guy. The problem is he wants to sleep with other girls. I understand his need to be with other girls, especially at his age. Although I consented, I love him and cannot bear the thought of this. When he slept with two girls, he told me right away and said he'd used protection. I said, "I don't want you feeling guilty about exploring a natural aspect of human behavior," and I suggested taking a break from the relationship. He responded that he loved me and couldn't see his life without me. (He's financially stable, so money isn't a consideration.) Sometimes, I want to say, "This isn't working, and I want to move on." But, that would be far from the truth. I left a financially and emotionally stable 20-year relationship to be with him, and I haven't regretted a minute of it.

"I understand his need to be with other girls," you say. Right. So, he'll come home and say, "I slept with these two girls. And I have five more scheduled for next week." What do you do, say "You kids have a good time" then pack his "World of Warcraft" lunchbox with condoms and a cookie?

Not many women in their 40s can find their way into barely legal bliss. (What did you do, park outside prom and hand out Tootsie Pops and cans of Schlitz?) Unfortunately, the age-mismatched relationship has some pitfalls; for example, having one's youngster stud pop up in bed, six years in, and say, "Hey, wait! I forgot to have drunken hookups!" Even if you are the hottest thing this side of menopause, you can't compete with all the Hottie McBody 20-somethings he's never had.

In theory, you can be all modern and evolved and say, "I love you enough to give you your sexual freedom." In practice, while he's off learning a thing or two from Amber and Tiffany, the position you find yourself in is the fetal one, with bouts of explosive sobbing. There's much that's unrealistic about pledging eternal monogamy, but sexually open relationships don't work for a whole lot of people. Even the late Nena O'Neill, who co-authored the '70s bestseller "Open Marriage," came to that conclusion, writing in "The Marriage Premise" that these arrangements often leave the participants feeling jealous, resentful, insecure and abandoned --"sometimes as strongly as they do when a clandestine affair is discovered."

Being with a much younger guy is a bit like being with a rock star. "The power of the least interested" comes into play, meaning that the partner who can walk the easiest calls the shots (like by announcing that he needs to have his cake and his cupcakes, too). Because you left a lot to be with him, there's probably temptation to stay with him at all cost. That's easy to say yes to in the abstract. And then, some night, you'll have no calls from him for a block of hours and start flashing on all the horrible scenarios: fiery car crash...or did he bump into a hot pair of twins? Think about the emotional cost of living this way, day after day, and consider whether it might be time to give him that final teary kiss and part as friends with some wonderful memories. (In Bogie's words at the end of "Casablanca," "We'll always have Chuck E. Cheese.")

My husband and I are friends with several couples. He hangs out with the men of this group once a week, and I occasionally join them. Recently, for one of the guys' birthday, the plan was dinner and a movie, but when my husband got off the phone with the birthday boy, he said I wasn't invited. (None of the wives was, including the birthday boy's.) Am I wrong for feeling angry and hurt?

Think how angry and hurt men must feel when they're excluded from the wives' mani-pedi night. ("Hey, Frank, should I have her do Blushing Bride or Nudist Colony on my toes?") You're actually taking it personally that guys want a guys' night out? We all know men talk differently when there are no wives around. (Especially to the stripper.) You have some warped ideas about what you're entitled to as somebody's spouse. You got married, not conjoined. On the appointed evening, let your husband off his leash and smile and wave as he goes. Allowing him his freedom should leave him feeling less compelled to take it -- along with half of the house and everything you two own. If you can't quite manage to ease up, you might want to get a jump on deciding which half of your kid is your favorite and whether you'll be asking for the front or the back of the dog.

Two years ago, "Beth," this attractive woman I see around, gave me her number and mentioned three times that she hadn't been asked out in a long time. I called to ask her out and...silence. She then said, "I can't...as I think I may have something else to do." Well, that was that, as I rarely ask a lady a second time when a lady "may have something else to do." I saw her around occasionally, and we were polite. Fast-forward to last week: I saw her and about 10 of her girlfriends swilling pitchers of beer and doing shots. I said hello to Beth, nodded to her friends, then rejoined my group. One by one, Beth's friends wandered over and gushed, "I hear you asked Beth out!" I said that yes, I had -- two years ago. And once! Do you think Beth painted me as a stalker or some stain that wouldn't go away, or was I a victim of some rare chick moment?

People say things for a reason. Sometimes, the reason is that they are nervous and socially awkward and burp out the first thing they can that's made of words. "I think I may have something else to do" could've meant "anything but go out with you," or maybe she just couldn't think of a good excuse for the real deal: "The lady at the clinic told me to avoid all sexual contact until the burning and itching goes away."

It's unlikely Beth gave you her number just so she could prank you two years later. Chances are, she liked you and then felt insulted that you never called again despite the strong signals she gave you: stony silence, followed two years later by a gauntlet of her drunk friends. You didn't help matters with your little policy of never asking for a date more than once. This can be a workable strategy -- if you're Jake Gyllenhaal and you have women tossing their panties with their phone number over the booth divider whenever you go out to eat.

When a woman you've asked out turns you down in some nebulous way, asking her out again will either get you a date or confirm that she's a lost cause. It helps if you can divorce rejection from how you feel about yourself. Remember, it's called "self-worth," not "what girls think of me-worth." Try to see asking someone out as a procedural thing you have to go through -- ask once, then repeat -- kind of like "rinse, lather, repeat" directions on the back of a shampoo bottle. (Surely, you don't see "repeat" as a message from your shampoo manufacturer that you're a worthless human being who can't be trusted to clean his disgusting greasehead the first time around.)

Why not just walk away? Because, well, sometimes the guy who looks like a giant Martian baby gets the girl. I'm talking about a guy who writes at the coffeehouse I do -- a guy the color of fresh Wite-Out, with no eyebrows, eyelashes, or hair, who has a stunningly beautiful wife. Loads of men always ogled her, he told me -- and then just stood there with their mouths open, never getting to the point where their lips moved and "Wanna go out with me?" came out. Maybe some of those guys now realize that good things come to those who wait -- good things like a fleeting glance at the hot wife of the weird-looking guy who gets that far better things come to those who ask.

My girlfriend and I promised that if we ever broke up, we'd remain friends. Well, we broke up a year ago, and she doesn't want me in her life at all. She won't answer my calls, email, nothing. I finally emailed her, saying I'd wait patiently but I need her in my life. She sent back a curt "Please be kind enough to respect my wishes."

--Ouch

Of course, in the heat of love, you say, "We'll always be friends," and not, "If we ever break up, I'll go around my house and cut your head out of all the pictures, burn the sheets, and put everything you ever gave me in a plastic shopping bag and drop it off at Goodwill." After the relationship ends, however, the silliest things get in the way of a beautiful friendship, like the unbearable pain one person feels at the mere sight of the other. So, try to excuse your girlfriend if she isn't up for regular get-togethers to learn how great your life is without her, how easy it was for you to move on, and how you spend hours every day not giving her a moment's thought. What's a girl to say but "That was emotionally draining! Can't wait till next week!"

According to you, most women aren't interested in seeing pictures of naked men. To quote you, most would "run past a naked man to get to shoes." So, how do you explain all the women who go to clubs to see male strippers? Looks like somebody has to admit she's wrong!

Men and women go to strip clubs for different reasons. But, don't just take it from me. Let the Wiggle Willy Head Bopper do the talking. It's a headband with two glitter-flecked plastic penis antennae sprouting out of pink marabou feathers that women wear to strip club bachelorette parties. Just wondering...when's the last time you saw a man enter a strip club with a big plastic vagina strapped to his head?

A man's goal in going to a strip club is getting turned on and maybe having strippers grind in his lap -- not having all his friends laughing in his face. If women were wired like men and could get physically aroused just by looking at the opposite sex, you'd see something you never do, the lone woman at a male strip joint on her lunch hour, nursing a whiskey and clutching a wad of ones.

According to researcher Beth Montemurro, who watches women watch men strip, women show up in giggling herds because they mainly go to bond with their girlfriends. The bonding comes through shared embarrassment, and if the ladies start breathing heavy, it's probably because they're hyperventilating from laughing so hard. For women, Montemurro found that the stripper is less a sex object than a source of humor. Yes, it's just like in all those pornos for guys where they replace the moaning and screaming with the laugh track from "Two and a Half Men."

While a guy will spend the week's grocery money trying to get a stripper to ride him like a pony, Montemurro observed women gingerly touching a male stripper's butt, then pulling their hands back as if burned. Some women find the strippers hot, but most describe them and the experience with words like "disgusting," "mortifying" and "humiliating," writes Montemurro in "Something Old, Something Bold: Bridal Showers and Bachelorette Parties." One woman she interviewed had root canal-like enthusiasm for seeing a stripper, deeming it "something you should probably do once and then you don't have to do it again." Don't tell me -- that's exactly the sort of dread men feel at the prospect of watching naked girls gyrating around a greased pole.

Beyond the research, just look to the marketplace. There are eleventy bajillion strip clubs for men and the occasional one for women. Women often feel compelled to go to these places on their girls' night out -- as a rite of passage, a hazing for a bride-to-be, or a way to get even with a fiance for having a bachelor party. But, the neon signs across North America most effective at separating women and their dollar bills are the ones that say "Nails, Nails, Nails!" not "Live Nude Males." Sure, some women love to finish their girls' night out with a lap dance, but probably loads more would rather finish with a coat of clear polish.

Throughout my three years with my boyfriend, he's been less than faithful. Two years ago, he told me he met "a cool girl" while out of town. He claimed nothing had happened but good conversation. They're Facebook friends, and I have an overwhelming urge to message her and ask for the truth. This would give me the resolution I need.

Facebook is just the place to find answers to all of life's big questions: Which Pokemon character are you? What color gummy bear? How long would you survive a zombie apocalypse? And then, are you one of the skanks my boyfriend cheated on me with? You could ask this woman that last question -- ideally, in somewhat more polite language -- but even if she writes you back (and maybe even truthfully), what could she tell you that you don't already know? Your boyfriend is a cheater. Cheaters cheat. Unless he's given you reason to believe he's mended his ways, the person you should be asking questions of is yourself: Is my relationship making me happy? If not, why am I still here? Tempting as it is to focus on confirming your suspicions, wouldn't real resolution be getting into a relationship where you don't have them? Then you could go back to using Facebook like so many people do -- to have an hourly window into how wildly dull their friends are, and yet how intent they are to communicate it: "I'm cheating on Cheerios with oatmeal!!!!!" Well, that does beat yesterday's "I'm having my breakfast...mmmm."

I have an online dating issue. When a man and I are going to have our first phone chat, I set up a specific day and time so we don't have to play phone tag. This allows me to schedule around it and be prepared and at my computer viewing his profile when we talk. I take the man's number and call him, because I'm not comfortable giving out mine right away. During my several years of online dating, the percentage of guys who aren't there at the planned time has been about 90. Many never contact me again, even to explain or apologize.

A woman can be a little premature in setting up who wears the ball gag in the relationship.

Telling somebody they need to talk to you at a specific time might work fine in business, but because men tend to be wary of controlling women, it's a risky tactic when you're vying to maybe become a guy's girlfriend, not his supervisor. But, here you are, not only setting the call time but informing a guy that he'll be doing the waiting and you'll be doing the calling. Very possibly, there's more in your e-mails that suggests you're bossy and controlling. If so, for a guy, this can foreshadow a lot of being ordered around by you: "Sit. Stay. Repeat after me, 'I'd love nothing more than to turn off the playoffs and join you in watching Valerie Bertinelli kill her abusive husband with a shovel in the Lifetime Movie Of The Week.'"

The dynamic of Internet dating probably plays a part in your 90 percent no-show rate. Instead of connecting human to human in some chance meeting, it's the dating equivalent of clicking a box on drugstore.com to add Q-tips to your "basket." You're not so much a person as you are a picture of a person, and whether you'll actually resemble the person pictured remains to be seen. No, you swear, you really are 5'8" and 127 pounds...on Mars. (Here on Earth you're 317 -- if you weigh yourself first thing and don't put on socks.)

Now, maybe you have a peculiar attraction to rude men, but more than likely, you just need to try something new: Relax a little. Give out your number. Not your home number, connected to your address, but the number to your cell or one of those pay-as-you-go phones that isn't traceable to you. Should you start getting unwanted calls, put the thing on silent or give it to some wino and tell him to answer it by breathing heavy and asking, "Are you wearing crotchless panties?"

Instead of trying to wring every bit of uncertainty out of your life, accept that there might be a little phone tag. When you do get on the phone with a guy, step away from the computer and your spreadsheet of questions. Your goal shouldn't be vacuuming him for data; it should be having fun getting to know him. If you're having fun, you'll be more likely to sound like fun -- like the sort of woman who keeps the spark in a relationship (and not by tasing the guy whenever he's a little slow to take out the trash).

The guy I'm dating says it's "disgusting" and "troubling" that I let my dogs sleep in the bed with us, and he refuses to stay over unless they sleep on the floor. Trust me, this is not a simple matter of buying my dogs a nice dog bed, but a matter of an otherwise great guy not understanding or respecting my relationship with them. (This happened with the last two guys I've dated.)

A guy can respect that your dogs are important to you and still feel that the ideal bedmate isn't something that spent the evening licking a dead squirrel and then going around sniffing all its friends' butts. If your priorities are such that you'd kick a great guy out of bed before you'd roust a Great Dane, you'd better understand and accept that you're narrowing your choice of men. You might consider whether you have some ulterior motive for putting your dogs between you and these guys. It is easier to have a "relationship" when conversation is "Woof," "Sit," and "Treat?" instead of "So why do you think you have issues with intimacy?" It's possible you're just one of those intense dog people, like the woman who had her French poodle's headstone inscribed "Disappointed by humans, never by my dog." Well, okay. But, I bet she never had a boyfriend who peed on the rug, chewed her expensive shoes, and licked up his own vomit.