A close friend and I spend a lot of time discussing her issues with her boyfriend. I'm always there for her, even late at night when she's upset about something. However, when I bring up someone I'm interested in, she'll cut me off or say she just can't listen to me talk about the guy. Is it petty to feel hurt and to expect more from her?

--Disturbed

There are friends you can count on -- and friends you can count on to fake their own kidnapping the moment you are the slightest bit in need.

This sort of "friend" can be hard to identify because we want to believe their friendship is based on more than seeing us as an easy mark. This isn't to say we lack the psychological tools to identify and deal appropriately with users posing as friends. As humans began living in groups, we evolved to have a social "loss prevention team" -- the psychological version of the squad department stores have to catch crafty shoppers who get nine months pregnant in a matter of minutes, uh, with 26 designer dresses.

Our minds are tuned for "cheater detection," to notice sneaky nonreciprocators -- people who intentionally take more than they give -- explain evolutionary psychologists Leda Cosmides and John Tooby. The police force of our cheater detection system is our emotions: anger and resentment and other gloom-eristic feelings that rise up when we're giving and giving and being shafted by somebody who's all take.

That said, friendship isn't always 50/50, and it's important to identify when a good friend is temporarily unable to act like one because they're going through a rough patch. Unless that's the case here, your emotions are telling you the balance of give and take between you is just not right.

Now, maybe she's just a selfish taker and things will never be right. Then again, you could explain that you feel shorted and give her a chance to right the balance. Even good people sometimes act like crap people. As I see it, one job of a real friend is to put us on notice when we're falling short. This gives us the chance to make the requisite sacrifices to be a good friend to them -- like by dragging our emotional immaturity out back and slaughtering it like a goat on a stone altar (uh, the condo patio).

For pages and pages of "science-help" from me, buy my latest book, "Unf*ckology: A Field Guide to Living with Guts and Confidence." It lays out the PROCESS of transforming to live w/confidence.

I'm having this undefined thing with this great woman I see just about nightly. She ended a toxic relationship seven months ago, and I'm still recovering from a terrible breakup. We're great friends, crack each other up, are extremely honest with each other, and have great sex. Should we try to label this? I worry this free love/no-strings-attached approach can't last.

--Troubled

Zoos have cages so the lions don't wander through suburbia, snacking on children and labradoodles.

Commitment serves a similar boundary-establishing function, though out of the worry that one's partner will sneak over to the hot neighbor's for a nooner, not lunch on them with a side of purse dog. Also, once two people spell out that they're a "we," the parameters of decision-making expand accordingly: "What works for us?" instead of "What's best for me?"

But sometimes, people still licking their wounds from their last relationship have the close-to-perfect next partner show up inopportunely early. They could push that person away with "I'm not ready now," which could turn out to be "goodbye forever." Or...maybe they could have a "not-quite-sure-what-this-is" thing until they feel ready for a relationship again.

There's a challenge to this loosey-goosey approach, and it's how disturbed we humans are by uncertainty: a lack of information about what might happen. The murky unknown revs up feelbad emotions like anxiety and dread over our inability to narrow down the various ways things could go toiletward.

Different people have varying levels of what psychologist Mark H. Freeston and his colleagues describe as "intolerance of uncertainty." To decrease yours (and the angsty feelings that come with), spell out what you can -- a likely worst-case scenario: for example, a woman you've grown attached to tires of you and takes to Tinder like a duck to those little goldfish crackers. Painful, yes. But, as you've shown, survivable -- if temporarily deadly to the ego.

Understanding this should help you avoid any temptation to rush things -- possibly blowing up the relationship in an attempt to relieve the tension of uncertainty. To help yourself stay on the straight and ambiguous, keep in mind that this uncertainty-alleviating impulse is the business model for horror movies. Without it, they'd be horrifying bores that fizzle out at the three-minute mark -- when the teens hear unearthly growls coming from the basement of the abandoned house and one says to the rest: "Yeah, whatevs. Let's just stay here upstairs playing strip chess."

For pages and pages of "science-help" from me, buy my latest book, "Unf*ckology: A Field Guide to Living with Guts and Confidence." It lays out the PROCESS of transforming to live w/confidence.

I'm a guy, and a female friend asked me to objectively rate her looks on a scale of 1 to 10. She has a very high opinion of her looks, but she insisted she wanted the truth, so I told her I'd put her at a 5.5 or 6. Afterward, she sent me a text about boundaries and said she's cutting me out of her life -- for being honest like she asked me to!

--Burned

If there were a class in "how to be a heterosexual man," lesson one would be how to answer a woman's questions about her appearance. She'll insist you give an honest answer to the classic gotcha question: "Do I look fat in this dress?" Always lie. Well, unless you are held at gunpoint or threatened with disemboweling with a steak knife or rusty pliers. In which case, also lie.

Admittedly, this advice is at odds with the black-and-white notions of honesty and deception drilled into us from an early age: Honesty, good! Lying, evil! If we lie, terrible things will happen to us -- such as cancer of the nose (as seen in that lie-arrhea-prone puppet, Pinocchio) or pants that spontaneously explode into flame.

"For centuries, philosophers and ethicists have railed against deception," note business school professors and researchers Joseph Gaspar and Maurice Schweitzer. The belief that deception is always evil and harmful was preached by the Christian bishop St. Augustine, "who claimed that 'every lie is a sin.'" Philosopher Immanuel Kant "argued that 'The greatest violation . . . is lying.'" These beliefs are baked into our culture and "permeate modern thinking."

Gaspar and Schweitzer define deception as "the transmission of information that intentionally misleads others." That sounds pretty awful. However, they suggest, "Think about what you should do when your grandmother asks if you enjoyed her meatloaf" or "your friend asks if you enjoyed her wedding reception." In situations like these, lying "might be the exactly right thing to do" (tempting as it might be to tell your friend you wish you'd been given a choice: attending the reception or or being repeatedly electrocuted via a car battery attached to your nipples).

These feelings-preserving falsehoods are "prosocial lies." "Prosocial" is psych professor-ese for "intended to help other people." Prosocial lies mislead but also benefit the person we're lying to, explain Gaspar and Schweitzer. It's basically benevolent deception: deception in service of kindness and even respect. For example, when a friend fails to show up at your party, "they might (respectfully) cite an illness" instead of admitting that they stayed home to binge-watch season seven of "Bosch."

Reflecting on the merits of prosocial lying, they argue that "deception has been unfairly disparaged" because "scholars have conflated deception with the pursuit of self-interest." Schweitzer, in "Friend & Foe" (co-authored with fellow B-school professor Adam Galinsky), advocates that the truth be judiciously told -- or withheld. The bottom line: "Is it ethical to tell prosocial lies? Our answer is yes. And we'd even take this claim a step further." Instead of telling our kids never to lie, "we should teach them the guiding principle of benevolence" and advise them to make "careful -- and deliberate -- choices when they face a conflict between telling the truth and being kind."

"For tasks that really matter for future success, honesty may be the best route to take," advise Schweitzer and Galinsky. For example, taking a junior colleague aside and being gently but painfully honest -- telling them how their performance fell short -- can be prosocial, helping them in the long run by alerting them to corrections they need to make. "But when a task really doesn't make much difference -- like your grandmother's meatloaf -- prosocial lies can be just the right thing."

The same goes for situations that no amount of honesty can change. Take your friend asking you where she lands on the 1-to-10 hotitude scale. She probably believed she was seeking an honest review, and it's reasonable that you took her at her word. However, she was probably fishing not for the truth but for reassurance that she's pretty.

Judicious honesty is the right amount of honesty at the right time. For a personal example, I'm pretty slim, but there is no pair of skinny jeans in which I do not look like a redhead stuffed into a sausage casing. There's a time to gently hint that I might put a pair of skinny jeans out to pasture, and it's not moments after I strut into a party all Alkonwursty but in the cold light of several days afterward. You'll be doing your sworn job as my friend, looking after my interests, but in a way that allows me to enjoy myself at the party instead of hiding under a parked car with the cat till it's over.

For pages and pages of "science-help" from me, buy my latest book, "Unf*ckology: A Field Guide to Living with Guts and Confidence." It lays out the PROCESS of transforming to live w/confidence.

I'm a woman in my early 20s. The guy I'm dating brought me to meet his friends. His male friends were warm and friendly. The women were awful. One deliberately kept saying my name wrong (it's not exactly exotic), and two others glared at my miniskirt. Another said something about how low-cut my top was. She made it sound like a compliment, but it was a mean dig. How can these women be so nasty when they don't even know me? How do I diffuse situations like these?

--Upset

Nothing like women celebrating other women: "Way to go, girl! Showing everything but your areolas."

When a man has a beef with another man, he'll be direct about it: hurl insults at the guy's face and maybe try to renovate his jaw with a barstool. Women fight sneaky-dirty with other women, using covert tactics, explains psychologist Anne Campbell. These include mobilizing a group of women to ostracize a woman, talking trash to men about her looks and how "loose" she is, and offering "compliments" that are actually nasty digs. Give a woman's confidence a beatdown and she might dim her shine (cover her miniskirt with a shawl and wipe that sexy red lipstick off on her sleeve).

Psychologist Tracy Vaillancourt separated female research participants into random groups. She compared one group's reactions to a 20-something woman walking into a classroom dressed "conservatively" (in a loosely fitting shirt and khaki slacks) with the other group's reactions to the same woman dressed "provocatively" (in a very short skirt and a tight, low-cut shirt). Dressed conservatively, she was "barely noticed by the participants." When she entered in skin-baring sexywear, almost all the women "aggressed against her." They rolled their eyes at her, gave her "once-overs," and shot her "death stares." After she left, many laughed at her, ridiculed her appearance, and/or suggested she was a man-hopping sleaze.

You're a target for the she-hyenas whenever you wear sexy clothing and makeup (like an intense smoky eye with winged eyeliner). Decide whether you have the emotional strength and social capital to bear the glares and backbiting, or whether you need to, say, stock up on some floor-length prairie dresses. This isn't to say you should immediately assume the worst of all women. However, understanding what you can expect from some might help you stand tall in the face of an attack -- remembering that it's about them, not about you, when they imply that your bedroom's visitors log rivals Ellis Island's.

For pages and pages of "science-help" from me, buy my latest book, "Unf*ckology: A Field Guide to Living with Guts and Confidence." It lays out the PROCESS of transforming to live w/confidence.

I'm a guy in my 30s. Before COVID, I used Tinder to hook up with different women a few times a week. I don't recognize myself anymore. Yesterday, I was on a date, and the girl was really hot and wanted to go back to my place to have sex. I was weirdly turned off by the idea and called her an Uber home. This isn't like me, but it keeps happening. Why am I suddenly like this?

--Worried

If we hadn't gotten vaccines, we might've seen a whole new category of lingerie, a la Victoria's Crotchless Hazmat Suit.

Our body's immune system protects us by mobilizing warrior cells to fight off invaders like bacteria, parasites, and viruses that cause infectious diseases. However, war is costly -- whether between nations or inside us. Psychologist Mark Schaller notes that our body's effort to surround and kill "pathogenic intruders" sucks up calories needed for important bodily functions. It can also be "temporarily debilitating" due to "fever, fatigue, and other physiological consequences of an aggressive immunological response." (You sometimes have to boil the village alive to save the village.)

To avoid these costs, we need to avoid being exposed to disease in the first place. Helping us do that is the job of our "behavioral immune system." This is Schaller's term for a suite of psychological mechanisms that function as our early warning system, helping us identify signs of pathogens in our social environment and motivating us to feel, think, and behave in ways that keep us from getting invaded by the buggers.

For example, social psychology grad student James B. Moran and his adviser, social psychologist Damian Murray, find that reminding research participants of the looming threat of infectious disease puts a damper on the appeal of casual sex and their inclination to have it down the road.

Chances are this response explains your own psychological and behavioral shift: stud-turned-monk of COVID-19. There's no clock on exactly when you'll be back to your sexual-Wild West self. Should you get nostalgic, keep in mind that you can still dip into some elements of the hookuppy old days, such as "the walk of shame" -- though, these days, that's what we call it when you get yelled at by the old lady down the street for taking out the trash unmasked.

For pages and pages of "science-help" from me, buy my latest book, "Unf*ckology: A Field Guide to Living with Guts and Confidence." It lays out the PROCESS of transforming to live w/confidence.

Call me old-fashioned, but I find humility attractive, and I'm disturbed by the lack of it in a guy I've been dating. He seems to need to keep telling me how desirable he is, like by mentioning he dated some Instagram model and saying, "I'm used to being the smartest guy in the room," when he initially lied about going to a top-tier university and had actually failed out of community college. I find his lack of humility to be a big turnoff, but my friends keep telling me not to be stupid: He's a sweet, considerate good guy, who seems to love me.

--Disturbed

The guy probably figures there's a reasonable explanation for why you're with him, like still-lingering impairment from a concussion you got walking into a pole while texting or a rogue amoeba screwing with your brain function.

Though you're getting icked out by what you see as a lack of humility -- a guy preoccupied with his own greatness and shoving it at you -- consider the sorts of things that require his type of hard sell: for example, cricketburger sliders -- as opposed to the bacon cheeseburger variety.

You might also consider that the way most people see humility -- as not being a showoff, downplaying and even denying one's talents and accomplishments -- seems to be off-base. Though humility has become a hot topic of study, an evidence-based definition of humility remained elusive. Researchers have merely described the ways humble people tend to think and behave. For example, according to clinical psychologist June Tangney, humble people have an accurate view of themselves ("not an underassessment," but a realistic one). They're willing to acknowledge mistakes, gaps in their knowledge, and their limitations. And they're open to "new ideas, to contradictory information, and also to advice."

Social psychologist Mark Leary observes that this description of humble people "is probably correct on average." But it falls short of identifying the "fundamental nature of humility." Hoping to drill down to a definition, Leary and his grad student, Chloe C. Banker, ran two studies. Their findings support his hypothesis on how humility should be defined: "Humility is characterized by the belief that, no matter how great one's accomplishments or positive characteristics," they don't entitle one to special treatment.

Say there's a famous actor with more Oscars than he has cousins. If humility is one of his character traits, he won't see his acting accomplishments as a reason he should be treated specially "overall, as a person," Leary explains. "Overall, as a person" means that, outside the acting domain, he doesn't feel entitled to be treated differently -- better than other people -- unlike the sort of pompous power lord who demands a seat on an overbooked plane with "Do you know who I am?!" Answer: "Yes, sir. You're a tiny little man with an ego bloated like a dead body that's been floating in the East River for days."

This brief tour of the research on humility should tell you that the problem with your man probably isn't a lack of it. Chances are insecurity is the actual issue: his feeling not enough for you or, more problematically, being not enough for you. If it's the latter -- if you're actually much higher in "mate value" -- the problem may not be fixable.

There's a term, "positive assortative mating," describing similar individuals being drawn to each other. Say a woman's what we call a "10" -- gorgeous and also kind, intelligent, and charismatic (basically, a major catch). The 10 and a man who's a 9.5 (or even an 8) have a chance of making it as partners, but a 10 and a 6 likely have poor prospects. Ultimately, when the shine wears off the relationship, the partner with much higher mate value will start to see the other like a couch that looks shabby in the afternoon sunlight.

But say you're a 9 and the guy simply (SET ITAL)feels(END ITAL) like a 5 -- but is really an, oh, 8.7, or even a 9.5. If that's the case, you can help him bridge the gap between who he is and how he feels. Research on the "dependency paradox" by psychologist Brooke C. Feeney suggests that in a relationship, when the more emotionally secure partner shows their insecure partner a lot of affection -- like through frequent texts, touch, and conversation -- it allows the insecure partner to relax and stop clinging.

Feeney's research is about loving dependence leading to independence, meaning it doesn't directly apply to your situation, the constant Cirque du So Look At Me Now! Chances are you'll eventually have to (gently) tell the guy there's no need for this, lest he keep working overtime to dazzle you out of noticing that the pet name that suits him best is probably "sinkhole."

colta

For pages and pages of "science-help" from me, buy my latest book, "Unf*ckology: A Field Guide to Living with Guts and Confidence." It lays out the PROCESS of transforming to live w/confidence.