I'm a 32-year-old guy with a really great female friend. We talk on the phone, grab food, etc. She even kept me company in the hospital after I got into a motorcycle accident. I've started falling for her, and I want to ask her out, but I'm afraid of losing her friendship.

--Conflicted

It's just a bit of a twist on the friendship ring. You'd like to give her a friendship penis.

Risk researchers find that decision-making in the face of uncertainty -- when we can't be sure of what the outcome will be -- is really hard for us. However, by plugging in all the information we have, positive and negative, we can make an educated prediction about how things are likely to turn out -- and whether we can afford the loss if our effort is a bust.

For example, if you have only one friend and if you're pretty sure you could never make another -- say, because you live on one of those tiny desert islands in a New Yorker cartoon -- you might decide it'd be too costly for you to risk saying something. And if, on a scale from 1 to 10, your friend is a 9.2 and you're more on the bridge troll end of the spectrum (in both looks and career prospects), your chances of romance with her might be pretty slim. ("Shrek" is not a documentary.)

If, after weighing the pros and cons, you decide to ask this woman out, you could simply say, "I'd like to take you on a date. Would you be interested in that?" Yes, it's possible that doing this would tank your friendship, but chances are, you'd just act a little weird around her for a while. Then again, if you said nothing and constantly agonized over wanting her, you might also end up acting all weird -- in ways that would make continuing your friendship impossible. (Okay, so she's not into you, but maybe if you send her yet another love poem written in your own blood...)