My wife of three years complains that I'm not romantic anymore. In the beginning, I did romantic stuff all the time. I still love her very much, but I guess I'm subconsciously reacting to the fact that I've nabbed her forever. (There's definitely something to be said about "the thrill of the chase.") How can I let her know I still care?

Your wife could be a mix of Angelina Jolie, Madame Curie, and Sue Johanson (the cute little old lady sexpert from TV), and the thrill of the chase would probably still give way to the thrill of pretending to listen to what she's saying while you're watching the game.

You can try to keep the romance alive with some therapist looking disapprovingly down her bifocals at the two of you -- or with the gift of a 50-cent purple plastic chimp. The chimp, happily, will not ask you to "own your feelings" or repeat awkward "I" statements. Of course, the chimp could also be a toy pig, a chocolate dog, or some celebrity's toenail clippings. I happen to have a thing for chimps, so my boyfriend gives me chimp thingiedoos. The point is to extend yourself in ways that give your partner a little lift even though you no longer need to chase her (you just reach over in bed and give her a gentle shake so she'll stop snoring like an old wino).

Doing nice little things for each other regularly is the romantic version of car maintenance to keep you from ending up broke-down in Scarytown. A 2010 study tracking 65 couples by psych prof Sara B. Algoe found that a partner's little thoughtful actions led to feelings of gratitude in the recipient partner, which led to both partners feeling more connected and happier with their relationship the following day. Algoe and her colleagues speculated that "moments of gratitude can act like 'booster shots' for the ongoing relationship." Previous research by Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky (detailed in "The How of Happiness") suggests that two of the most effective ways to increase a person's overall happiness are feeling grateful and doing thoughtful things for others, so yes...the key to both a happier marriage and a happier life could be the occasional checkout line impulse item.

The husband you don't want to be is the neglectful one with the miserable, angry wife he tries to placate with occasional seismic gifting -- waiting until their anniversary and going bankrupt buying a diamond tennis bracelet or hiring the Three Wise Men to drop by her office with gifts of frankincense and myrrh. His wife knows very well what his gifts are: remedial romancing -- a peace offering instead of a love offering. The wiser approach is replacing the thrill of the chase with the thrill of making your wife happy by being regularly attentive: Hug her and tell her she's beautiful. Change her windshield wipers without being asked (you care about her safety!). Slip out of work to get her a cupcake (at 3 p.m. on a Thursday, her happiness was important to you). Every now and then, mix the little things up with all that stuff guys do early on -- stuff like sending flowers after sex, not sneaking out after your wife falls asleep and then avoiding your favorite bar for two weeks so you won't run into her.

I've been dating a really sweet guy for a month and a half. Three weeks in, I knew I had to end it, but he really likes me and somehow talked me into staying. Last night, I realized I absolutely must end it...immediately! How do I do this gently and make it stick?

"If you love something, set it free" is, I guess, helpful advice for those whose first thought is "If you love something, lure it into your house and lock it in your basement." But, what you and a whole lot of people need to hear is "If you pity something, set it free." When you aren't into a guy who's into you, the kindest thing you can do is snuff out all hope. Cut him loose as soon as possible and as definitively as possible. Be starkly honest that it's over but vague and maybe even dishonest about why (for example, you just don't have "chemistry"). Giving specifics is usually mean and gives your dumpee wiggle room: "I'll take sex lessons! And comedy lessons! I'll even start reading books." By letting it get to this point, you're prone to lash out with a suggestion of exactly the sort of book he needs to read: "How To Get a New Head, Body, and Personality, and To Think, Smell, and Talk Like a Totally Different Person: A Love Story."

I met a really great girl before deploying to Iraq. We've gotten as close as two people can while physically separate, but she is sexually frustrated to the max and wants to have an unemotional hookup. She suggests we each have a "last fling" before we start our relationship (when my deployment ends in 60 days). Well, I'm in an all-male unit, and when I'm home, I want to be with her. She's attending a wedding this weekend (single guys, hotel rooms, open bar, etc.). She says not to worry, but I know how much she wants this. I just fear that any hookup she had might stick in my mind and keep me from giving her my very best. How can I encourage her to hang on a little longer? Barring that, how do I get okay with this?

Oh, yay. You, too, are allowed a last fling. And lucky you, you've got your pick of a bunch of big, dusty, sweaty men in camouflage pants. There's no open bar, but there is an open desert, stocked with a variety of IEDs. Luckily, this doesn't stop groups of young single females from wandering past the base, but the old bearded goatherd urging them on with a stick surely frowns on interspecies hookups.

Probably many readers' first thought is, "Jeez, the guy's off in a war zone. Can't Miss Ants In Her Panties keep her legs crossed for another 60 days?" The truth is, maybe not, no matter what you say. The question is, can you deal? It may help to understand why you feel so threatened. Your feelings go way back, and I mean way. Like 1.8 million years, to genetic adaptations that helped our male forebears guard against paternity uncertainty. Today, figuring out who a kid's daddy is just takes a DNA test, and birth control can eliminate the question entirely. These vintage genes of ours are the problem. We're wandering around the latter part of 2011 biologically and psychologically calibrated for life in the Stone Age, and complex cognitive adaptations like "Yo, DNA! In 1951, Carl Djerassi invented The Pill!" take hundreds or thousands of generations to get wired in.

It might help to recognize that sex isn't special -- or isn't necessarily special. Insects have sex, and not because one particular bug means more to them than any other, but because the urge to get it on is just one of many physical urges of living critters, like the urge to eat lunch. Yeah, okay, on a realistic note, you'd probably feel a lot less hurt and threatened if she were talking about some guy at the wedding slipping her a roast beef sandwich.

Still, assuming there's no pregnancy, disease or continued attachment, yesterday's sex act is no more relevant than yesterday's lunch. What gives it relevance is the importance you decide to place on it. Can you see this hookup as something she just needs to check off her single-girl bucket list? Or, will you preserve whatever happens like a fossil in amber, poisoning your potential future together with a never-ending symposium on a tiny bit of her past? To start fresh together, it's probably wise to have a "what happens at the wedding stays at the wedding" policy. This way, you'll lack the details (if any) to make a dirty little movie you can run on a loop in your head -- which may keep you from making the mistake so many jealous men do: turning their woman's forgettable drunken hookup before they were even a couple into the most unforgettable sex she's ever had.

This girl I've been dating for a couple months really likes me, but I'm not feeling it. Because we've done a lot of texting, I'm thinking of breaking up with her by text. It would be a lot less uncomfortable.

Getting dumped is bad enough; it's worse when your soon-to-be-ex not only won't spare you face-time to do it but stiffs you on vowels. (If your girlfriend doesn't have unlimited text messaging, it could even cost her 20 cents to find out "its ovr.") Smartphones make life easier, but not everything in life should be. Once you've spent more than a few naked hours with somebody, you can text them to tell them you're late, but not that you're never coming back. As for this girl, even though you're "not feeling it," breaking up in person will be hard for you, and she'll see that, making the experience less dignity-eating than if you used your phone as a buffer. In other words, compassion, not cellphone technology, should be driving your breakup behavior. But, if compassion's not really your thing, at least consider your text messaging limits, and maybe keep your phone in your pocket and program your Roomba to go tell her it's over.

I am 19 and have been dating a wonderful 24-year-old guy for about a month. Some of his family members wish he were still with the fiancee he broke up with six months ago and aren't too happy about him seeing me. His 19-year-old half sister actually contacted me on Facebook, told me to "watch my back," and made some mean assumptions about me. Next, his mother Facebooked me and said that she's also sorry her son's with me and that I should watch what I say to her daughter. (I just told her daughter that it wasn't cool to judge me, because she doesn't know me.) I told my boyfriend, who immediately called them, told them I'm in his life, and said a lot of nice things about me. I'd really love for his family to like me, but they don't even want to meet me. How do I get them to? If they don't like me after that, fine.

The wonderful thing about social networking is how easy it's become for people to get in touch with one other. As you've discovered, this is also the really awful thing about it. That's why my boyfriend, who's not exactly a people person, claims he's starting a nihilistic social network called "Quitter." (Posts are zero characters, and you're asked not to join.)

Speaking of anti-social networking, that's an interesting family your boyfriend's got there. In many families, there's some Voice of Maturity who steps in when a squabble gets out of hand. In your boyfriend's family, they apparently leave that to the parrot: "Hello! Hello? CRAAAACKER!" Now, maybe his 19-year-old half sister was plastered when she Facebooked you or typically seems one Ding Dong short of a valu-pak, but probably the last thing you'd expect from somebody's mother is for her to come in and bat cleanup in the psycho family division.

As hard as it is to feel misrepresented, misunderstood, and unheard, you're unlikely to change that by clamoring for a part in his family's trashy reality show, "Don't You Be Goin' Near My Son!" Beyond that, prematurely going through the steps of an already-serious relationship, such as meeting somebody's family, can lead you to decide somebody's right for you instead of looking to see whether he actually is. Consider why you feel compelled to try to win these two nasties over. Perhaps, like many women, you have a mental photo album of your life upon meeting the man for you, perhaps with some sunkissed snapshots of a Sunday family barbecue. Well, you may be in this guy's future, and there may be family barbecues, but there's a good chance his mom and half sister will be picturing you on the spit.

If you two start getting serious, make sure you can both handle whatever relationship or lack of one you have with the Wicked Witch of the Wherever and her buzzard daughter. Contact with them now is sure to be very uncomfortable. But, who knows...you and his half sister may end up sitting there on your wedding day, laughing at how she came after you on Facebook -- which should give his mother just enough time to dump the laxatives into your drink. The music starts: "Here comes the bride..." and wow...there goes the bride...and at quite a clip!

My last boyfriend lied and cheated so much that I am wary of all guys now. My best friend keeps telling me that not all guys are like him and that I just have to put myself back out there.

You didn't end up with a cheater because he fell down your chimney, pulled a gun on you, and said, "Ho-ho-ho, let's date!" You chose the guy and then neglected to un-choose the guy when there were indications of more than a few ho-ho-hos in his life. But, like many people exiting a bad relationship, the last thing you seem interested in is taking responsibility for sticking with a partner who treated you like a gymnast in the Humiliation Olympics. In other words, the answer isn't just putting yourself back out there, but putting yourself out there with what was missing the last time around: a little discernment. As I wrote recently, boyfriends who are liars and cheaters go for girlfriends who put up with lying and cheating. And if you're like a lot of women who've been romantically duped, you'll say you want a man who's ethical if you're asked, but you don't make that an actual requirement in men you date. Now would be an excellent time to start. It beats being wary of all men because your last man cheated on you, which is kind of like being wary of people in pants because the last person who mugged you was wearing pants (as opposed to a stylish summer shift).

When my boyfriend moved across the country to Manhattan for two years, we pledged we'd be faithful. We talk and text daily, and he tells me he loves me and that I'm the only person for him. Well, my best girlfriend visited her brother, my boyfriend's roommate, and returned with some real fun facts: Last year, my boyfriend became obsessed with some girl and got into an "open relationship" with her -- all year. He claims only she slept with others; he didn't. Yeah, right. He also insists he only slept with her once and didn't tell me because he didn't think I could handle the truth. That's ridiculous because he knows honesty is everything to me. I now feel I have reason to leave him. Still, I'm 24, he's my first boyfriend, and we've been together for four years, so I'm reluctant to end it. Please give me a silver lining to this dark cloud over my head!

Sorry, but this cloud's lining isn't silver; it's cheap polyester with one of those "remove under penalty of law" tags: WARNING! Boyfriend with scruples of spandex has relocated to the North American capital of hot women -- "The City That Never Sleeps" (except when people roll over after sex instead of smoking a cigarette or having a cuddle).

For some, a wake-up call is a gentle nudge or the delicate tinkle of a fine watch; others need to be bludgeoned over the head with an alarm clock. In case you're wondering, you're in the sound sleepers group. In our email exchange, you revealed that in addition to a number of friends warning you about your boyfriend, a complete stranger who spotted you with him in a bar took you aside to hint that he had zipper issues. In red flag terms, this is a call to start shopping for an Eiffel Tower-sized flagpole.

Although women typically stick with dirtbag boyfriends out of a lack of self-respect, your problem seems to be an excess of respect for The Relationship. Okay, he's your first boyfriend and you've been together for four years. This is merely interpersonal census data, not reason to stick around to be lied to and cheated on for another four years. To this day, your boyfriend shows you that his words are suspect anytime he says anything weightier than "pass the Cheerios." In fact, he may be in Manhattan, but the old joke about the Hollywood agent applies: "Hello," he lied.

What you need isn't a silver lining, but a diving pool of louse shampoo. You also need to understand that boyfriends who are liars and cheaters go for girlfriends who put up with lying and cheating. If you want honesty, don't swallow lies like they've been buttered, and don't let wanting a man to be ethical get in the way of looking to see whether he actually is. You might also take a more realistic approach to human nature. The 20s are our prime rutting time. Send any twenty-something man off for two years, and unless he's on a solo mission to Mars, you'd better ask him to supplement his daily "ur the only 1!" texts with a webcam so you can see the girl he isn't sleeping with in the background, motioning him to get back into bed.

My boyfriend dumped me, and I'm besieged with inquiries about how I'm handling it, both from friends and people who don't care about me and just want to pry. How do I field questions from the latter without getting into a lot of discussion?

Without gossip, people would have to sit around talking about particle physics, the economic downturn, and what's going on in Libya. Gnawing on your life is much more fun: "Yeah, they broke up, and she's alone, and I counted 62 empty pork rind bags and 73 beer bottles in her trash."

Recognize that you have no obligation to feed the info vultures, and plan in advance exactly how you won't be answering their questions. However you decide to shut them down -- with humor, vagueness, wild invention, or deflection ("Finehowareyou?!") -- keep responding that way until they get the message that it's all the message they're gonna get.

Preserving your emotional energy means you can channel it where you need it most -- into working your way through the "Seven Stages of Grief": 1. Drunk dialing; 2. Watching "Law & Order" reruns; 3. Looking up elementary school boyfriends on Facebook; 4. And then not writing them; 5. Tearing pages from "Chicken Soup for the Soul" and lighting them on fire; 6. Putting on shadow puppet shows of brutal murders; 7. Making hangup calls at 3 a.m. to nosy buggers who ask you prying questions about your breakup.