I just got dumped by a guy who swore he was ready to settle down (after years of serial monogamy). His relationship history reminded me of the man you wrote about recently who had been married and divorced five times and was on relationship number six. Woman number six wrote you, "He's in his 50s; his marriage-hopping has to stop." Obviously, she's fooling herself, but what's his deal? What's anyone's who gets married over and over?

Some model their marriage on their parents' and some on their parents' car lease. (Sadly, hanging a new-car smell pine tree around the wife's neck doesn't seem to stem the flow of trade-ins.)

Everybody wants to believe their love will last, but when a guy's marrying Wife Number Five, some honesty in vow-making seems called for -- for example, "Till mild boredom do us part." And in keeping with the trend of using movie lines in the ceremony, the groom can turn to the minister at the end and state the Schwarzenegger-accented obvious: "I'll be back."

The notion that the only valid relationship is one that ends with the partners in twin chairs on the veranda of Senior Acres, rocking off into the sunset together, keeps some of the wrong people chasing it. The truth is, some people just aren't wired for forever. That's okay -- providing they're honest with themselves and their partners that for them, lasting relationships last only so long ("when two become as one" and then one starts getting all fidgety for the next one).

Even for those who are determined to make forever work, there's a problem, and it's called "hedonic adaptation" -- getting acclimated to positive additions to our lives and no longer getting the lift out of them that we did at first. This happens with boob jobs, lottery wins -- and marriage, explained happiness researcher Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky on my weekly radio show. Lyubomirsky writes in her terrific book, "The How of Happiness," of a 15-year study in Germany showing that couples got a big boost in happiness when they got married -- a boost that, on average, lasted two years.

According to Lyubomirsky, research shows that the most powerful ways to combat hedonic adaptation are adding variety and expressing gratitude. You add variety by shaking up your date night routine, going on vacation (even a quick one), and varying your daily life in small, fun ways. You can express gratitude by buying or making some little thing to say how much you appreciate your partner or by verbally admiring his or her hotitude and wonderful qualities. Lyubomirsky explained, "Gratitude is almost by definition an inhibitor of adaptation," because adaptation means we're taking something for granted. "Being grateful for something is appreciating it, savoring it - i.e., NOT taking it for granted."

Predicting whether a particular guy is a romance junkie can be tough. (It's not like a meth habit. There are no scabs.) A girlfriend-hopper might swear he's ready to settle down and believe it -- until the moment he realizes he's not. You'll want to believe him; we all tend to lead with our ego: "I'll be the one he's different for." This is risky if your ovaries are on the clock. If, however, you can just live in the moment and hope for lots more moments...well, there's always that chance you'll end up being his eighth and only.

The man I've been in a long-term on-and-off relationship with has started seeing someone else. He's cagey about the details, but what's really bothering me is that she has no clue that I exist. I'm tempted to write her an anonymous note, telling her that I was here first, have been here a long time, and am continuing to have sex with her Lothario.

Like many people around the holidays, your thoughts turn to the have-nots: "Hi, I believe you have not heard that I'm having sex with your new boyfriend." The reality is, you're looking to escape feeling vulnerable by lashing out. (When life gives you lemons...break some other woman's windows with them.) The "anonymous" note is really about telling this woman, "Hey! I'm here! I'm lovable! I'm important!" Well, there's a better way to say those things, and it won't even take a stamp. Just call this man and say goodbye. This means finally admitting that the parameters of this relationship aren't working for you. Come on...you're well-aware you aren't his one and only, yet there you are complaining, "Waiter, waiter! There's a harem in my soup!" What is there to say to you but "Yes, madam, of course there is. It's the Lothario special. It comes with other women on the side."

You overlooked the danger when you replied to the woman who was invited on a hiking date by a man she'd had a crush on. You said that he probably got interested because he saw her with her new boyfriend. Well, he could also have wanted to murder her because of that. Every year, there's news of a female body being found in a remote area -- or not found after a disappearance.

Recall that this guy spent seven years barely noticing this woman before noticing she had a boyfriend and asking her out. This is not exactly the behavior of a man obsessed, brimming with jealous rage. Chances are, he just thought, "Hmm, I could hit that." (And I very much doubt he meant "over the head with a shovel.")

How likely is it that a date could end in a shallow grave? Well, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 2005, 513 women in the U.S. were murdered by "boyfriends" (men they were dating but not married to) and 164 men were murdered by "girlfriends." (And yes, men, too, are victims of domestic violence, much of which goes unreported.) These intimate partner murder stats are a bit unreliable because the FBI doesn't always identify the perp/victim relationship, but even if you include the 2,363 uncategorized murders of women, a woman's chances of being a victim of "dinner and a murder" are seriously small. Divide the 513 number by the population of unmarried American women ages 15 to 64 -- 45,752,000, per a 2009 Census Bureau sample -- and a woman has an 11 in a million chance of getting offed by her date. (Statistically, she's far more likely to speak Cherokee.)

Of course, those odds of getting murdered really only apply if she's anywoman on anydate with anyman. Unfortunately, partly because people are reluctant to be seen as "blaming the victim," there's a politically correct popular notion that intimate partner violence happens at random, to random victims, kind of like an air conditioner falling out of a high window just as you're underneath walking the dog.

But, various authorities on violence, including personal security expert Gavin de Becker and domestic violence researcher Jacquelyn Campbell, have independently identified very similar coercive, autonomy-limiting behaviors in men who murder their female partners. These behaviors echo the four items from a 1993 Statistics Canada survey that researchers Martin Daly and Margo Wilson noted were strong predictors that a woman will experience serious violence from a male partner: "1. He is jealous and doesn't want you to talk to other men; 2. He tries to limit your contact with family or friends; 3. He insists on knowing who you are with and where you are at all times; 4. He calls you names to put you down or make you feel bad."

Although government agencies and victim assistance organizations parrot the politically correct warning that intimate partner violence "can happen to anyone," the truth is, certain women are more likely to be victimized, and research shows a stew of contributing social, financial, and cultural factors. (Poverty and prior experience of family violence are two biggies.) Amazingly, there's almost no research showing the particular psychology that might make one more prone to get into (and stay in) a physically violent relationship. (In the scant findings there are, researchers are unable to tease out whether, say, low self-esteem precipitated victimization or was caused by it.) But, it seems likely that women who have low self-worth, who are "pleasers," and who have abandonment issues -- women who are more likely to stay in emotionally abusive relationships -- are more likely to stay in physically abusive ones. De Becker, in his vast experience with victims and victimizers, concurs, observing in "The Gift of Fear" that "men who cannot let go choose women who cannot say no."

The muzzle of political correctness -- intended to protect the feelings of victims -- actually makes women more likely to be victimized by stifling discussion about who becomes a victim and how they might prevent it. Interestingly, the bounds of political correctness don't extend to how we portray men. But, demonizing all men as deadly is like demonizing crossing the street because many people die each year at intersections (983 in 2009). A better idea is to look both ways. In relationships, this means assessing your individual risk for victimization and fixing feelings of low self-worth instead of trying to plaster over them with a partner -- a partner you may feel compelled to cling to no matter what. In dating, this means engaging your judgment -- not going off into the woods with some guy you barely know but also not seeing life as one giant "Law & Order" episode: "Hey, pretty lady...in the mood for a murder-suicide, or would you rather just see a movie?"

A divorced male friend and I recently became "friends with benefits." However, I'm not receiving the same, uh, level of benefits as he is. He isn't giving me orgasms from intercourse, and his pleasuring of me is measured in seconds rather than minutes, despite my telling him that this is a problem. (I haven't felt this pressure before: "You've got 60 seconds to orgasm!") He also keeps reminding me that he doesn't want any kind of commitment. I get that, and I keep telling him so, but he's persisted with the warnings to the point where I have to say stuff like "I hear and understand the boundaries of this relationship and am in agreement with them." I've known him since we were 8, and he isn't a player. Part of me thinks he isn't attracted to me. He's fit and I'm...less-than-fit and have big boobs, and I think they freak him out. However, out of bed, we laugh and have fun and connect. Oh, what to do...

This guy treats pleasuring you like it's something on a chore wheel.

Bizarrely, you're in "friends with benefits" relationship that's short on benefits, which is like buying a blender that doesn't blend, a Cuisinart that doesn't cuise. Unfortunately, the elusive female orgasm is especially persnickety when one's partner sets up a sexual ambience reminiscent of one of those movies where Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson are staring down a ticking time bomb: "Hey, baby, just relax, lay back and let it happen -- anytime before this kitchen timer I've placed on your nightstand strikes :60!"

Sure, poor Booboo might have niggling fears you'll get attached, but it isn't like you're buying baby clothes and leaving wedding magazines around. It's unlikely he'd force numerous icky conversations about boundaries on some chickie of his more recent acquaintance. But, probably because he's known you forever, he feels free to go manners-optional and let his worries all hang out: "Don't take your coat off. You won't be staying. And by the way, I'd prefer if you'd fake your orgasms. It would be so much less work for me."

Yep, this boy toy of yours is a real animal in bed -- a rat gnawing away at your self-confidence. Why are you still involved with him? Well, there's a tendency to try to fix a thing instead of just bailing and to get so caught up in the momentum of your efforts that you neglect to consider whether the thing should just be put out on the curb. In continuing to get in bed with a man who can keep his hands off you and pretty much does, you're a co-conspirator in your feeling like crap. It's really damaging to be with somebody who isn't into you. Even in an FWB situation, you need a man who finds you hot -- or at least is enough of a friend to give you the sense that he's undressing you with his eyes, not using them to drop a refrigerator box over you.

I've had a crush on a guy who's been flirting with me at my neighborhood coffeehouse. Today, he sat by the door, watching as four elderly people struggled to go out -- a couple pushing walkers and, about five minutes later, a couple who were all hunched over and using canes. I was seated in the back, but when I saw nobody was helping them, I ran over and held the door. Is his behavior a clear sign that he'd be bad boyfriend material?

Sometimes it's hard to know what to do when you see somebody in need. A person falls down on the sidewalk in front of you. Do you just step over him? Or do you stop and take his wallet and then step over him?

In assessing people, I tend to go with F. Scott Fitzgerald's notion: "Action is character." Or, in this case, inaction. I personally don't know how you sit back and enjoy the view as a parade of infirm elderly people struggle out a door, but I do know that things aren't always as they seem. Maybe it looked like he was looking but he was in some sort of fugue state. Maybe he has a cranky, independent granny who sees any help as an insult: "Why don'tcha just throw me in a hole and stick a wreath over my head?!"

If you end up going out with him, do what you should with any guy you date: Look closely at his behavior, especially when he thinks nobody's watching. Be honest with yourself if it seems a fundamental lack of empathy kept him in his seat -- much as you'd like to believe that there's a rash of pranksters going around to coffeehouses and gluing all the hot guys' feet to the floor.

Three years ago, I was divorced six weeks from a 22-year marriage when I got involved with a married co-worker and persuaded him to divorce his wife for me. He has been married five times and cheated on all of his wives. I have reason to believe he's still having sex with his ex-wife. I'm not sure what to do. I refinanced my house a few months after meeting him and paid off his and his wife's $14,000 credit card debt (my idea, to help him out of the marriage). He's been repaying me $250 a month, although I also usually pay for his plane ticket here. (I moved for work.) He's a pretty bad alcoholic. Not a mean one, just a goofy one. I know he has a bad marital track record, but he's in his 50s; his marriage-hopping has to stop...you'd think. Crazy as it seems, I'm madly in love. He is charming, is generous, and shows me he loves me in little ways -- cards, phone calls, etc. Really, I'm not dumb. I'm a librarian with a master's. But, tell me: How bad is this?

Oh, the charming, generous things he does, like putting your credit card back in your wallet and closing the snap.

He doesn't sound like an evil person; he just is who he is: an undercapitalized, serially married goofy drunk who's probably sleeping with his ex-wife. Three years ago, you were just-divorced and probably panicking about your prospects, when you spotted your Mr. Right (aka an age-appropriate, conveniently located, attractive man with a pulse). Hellooo, confirmation bias! That's a common human irrationality -- the tendency to snuggle up to information that confirms what you want to believe and to ignore any information that doesn't. Before long, you were slammed with "cognitive dissonance," the clash of two simultaneously held opposing beliefs -- your belief that this is a worthy love thing versus how this guy goes to the altar more often than some men go to the carwash.

To reduce the psychological friction of cognitive dissonance, you're prone to justify whichever belief shines up your ego. The more some choice costs you the more driven you'll be to defend it -- like when you've abruptly thrown 14K at the idea that you can change a man who thinks soul mates come in six-packs. And no, you aren't that "dumb"; you're just that human. Deep down, you know that love -- real love -- is never having to say, "Are you cheating on me with your ex-wife?"

Keep in mind that the term "madly in love" refers to a state where you aren't making rational decisions. You need to get in the habit of standing back from your life and assessing what you're doing -- especially when you're at your neediest. Recognize your human propensity to act irrationally -- to let your emotions lead and then to mop up afterward with a bunch of self-justifications. If you can accept yourself as human and fallible, you won't feel so compelled to toss less-than-flattering facts in the hall closet behind the badminton net. Be open with yourself (and even your friends) about your flaws and fears and you should start managing them in healthier ways -- instead of paying off a bunch of pantsuits a guy's wife bought five years ago at Macy's and telling yourself you've found love.

Through no one's fault but my own, I am a rather pathetic, washed-up character -- a man approaching 40, slaving away for $10/hour, and getting around on my bike after having to sell my car. Yet, I'm ever driven by my wants -- for pretty ladies in their early 20s. Do I have any hope?

It's tough attracting the ladies when you have transportation issues: "I'll be over at 8. Wanna run behind my bike, or would you prefer to balance yourself on my handlebars?" This might fly if you're 23 and parking your bike outside the drafty garret where you write mind-blowingly beautiful poetry or if your hobbies include shrinking your "carbon footprint" while snarling that the eco-posers tooling around in their Priuses are fouling the environment. Unfortunately, most hot young chickies willing to date a guy cresting 40 expect him to have achieved some status and position, and not a position paying slightly better than fast food. Still, if you can't substantially increase your income, you might increase your status by making a difference. You could start and run a humanitarian organization (like Robert Werner, who started BC Digital Divide, refurbishing donated computers and giving them to the needy). But, if you do this solely to get chicks, they'll surely see through it. Ultimately, this mostly has to be about a passion to help others, and not just to help others who are 23 and hot out of their clothes.

I'm starting to have feelings for this guy friend I've been fooling around with, but I'm worried he isn't feeling the same way. He's stopped short of having full-blown intercourse with me, which I find odd, although I don't want to have sex yet because I have genital herpes and I'm not ready to tell him. (I take an antiviral drug for this daily, and I'd have him wear protection during intercourse.) Do you think he knows I have herpes? Maybe he just isn't interested in me romantically and doesn't want me getting too attached.

When you start to care about somebody, it's nice to give him little romantic gifts -- flowers, a gourmet cupcake, a sweet card, weeping genital sores.

Surely you'd tell the guy pronto if you had a cold: "Hey, don't get too close, because you could catch this and have an unpleasant few days." But colds go away. Herpes is forever. Yeah, I know, so are diamonds. But, unlike a mammoth rock on a girl's finger, a big genital pustule isn't anything you want to be showing off to the crew at the office: "Look at it gleam under the fluorescents!"

Genital herpes hasn't always been such a big stigmatized deal -- to the point where it's led to the tanking of countless potential relationships. Until the late '70s, it was seen as "cold sores down there" and often not even worthy of a visit to the doctor. Except in rare cases, the physical symptoms are relatively minor. At the first outbreak, especially, it feels a bit like the flu, with fever, headache, and muscle aches. There's also tingling and itching, and there can be pain, burning during urination (and don't forget the yucky sores!).

So, what led to all the stigma? The sexual revolution, for starters. In the mid-'70s, with lots of people having lots of sex, genital herpes spread (as probably did the common cold). In 1979, the CDC, seeing the herpes stats rising, got a little hysterical and announced an "epidemic" (of cold sores!), and the media ran with it. In 1980, Time magazine declared herpes "The New Sexual Leprosy," and in 1982, The Miami Herald called it a "cruel disease." "Cruel disease"? Multiple sclerosis is a cruel disease. But, an infection that gives you the itchies and makes you walk funny for a few days? As herpes simplex expert Dr. Adrian Mindel told The Independent in 1987, "For the majority of people herpes is ... nothing more than an occasional nuisance."

The thing is, if you're having an outbreak of your "occasional nuisance" and your naked parts are rubbing against somebody else's naked parts, you could infect him. The risk of transmission may be reduced by daily antiviral treatment and condom use -- provided there are no contagious areas outside the condom zone. But, you can be in a contagious stage and not know it. Of the approximately 1 in 6 U.S. adults ages 14 to 48 who have genital herpes, 80 percent don't show visible symptoms, says herpes researcher Dr. Anna Wald. Research by Wald and her colleagues found that even when herpes carriers showed no symptoms, they were contagious 10 percent of the time. Of course, that's on average. Wald explained to me that there's a range: "Some people may be contagious 1 percent of the time, and others 30 percent, but we don't have a good way to predict who is who."

Putting this guy at risk for herpes without giving him any choice in the matter was not only unfair but pretty dumb. For many people, the betrayal is the biggest problem. If you tell somebody before he fools around with you and maybe pull a fact sheet off the Internet to allay his fears, he'll be less likely to ditch you, and he won't have the rage he would at being unwittingly exposed. To launch the conversation, maybe say something like "Ever gotten a cold sore? I get them sometimes...but not on my lip!" And then, as DatingWithHerpes.org advises, don't say "I have herpes," which makes you sound like you're having an outbreak right then. Instead, say "I carry the virus for herpes" and explain how often you have outbreaks...which should make it sound more like a manageable annoyance than the guy's ticket to a lifetime of Crusty Pustules Anonymous meetings.

NOTE: There are press reports, tracing back to the respected Herpes Viruses Association of the U.K., that drug company Burroughs Wellcome caused the initial stigmatization of people with herpes by marketing the stigma to sell its drug. The association could provide me no evidence supporting its accusation, nor could I find any in 51 years of newspaper and journal articles (from 1960 to 2011). I'm very much for going after drug companies for malfeasance, but not in the absence of evidence they've committed any.