I had this amazing chemistry with a guy I met at a wedding. Then he casually dropped that he's in a new relationship of about six months. A mutual friend told me the guy isn't too happy with the woman and feels he's "settling." The guy's been texting me in what seems to be a purely friendly way. Still, if I were his girlfriend, I'd be pretty upset.

--Confused About His Intentions

Say your car skids off the road in North Nowhere and you wake up trapped in the driver's seat with zero bars on your phone. You'd probably trade your house, your car, and your favorite grandma for some emergency eats in the glove box -- even the remains of a granola bar that looks to have been purchased just before the Lewis & Clark expedition.

Well, humans seem to have evolved to be romantic doomsday preppers: ready for any sudden famine in the partner department. At the moment, you seem to fall into the category of "backup mate" for this guy, though maybe just because he's inconveniently still attached to somebody else.

Evolutionary psychologists Joshua Duntley and David Buss find that both men and women cultivate backup mates -- "approximately three," on average -- whom we can use to rapidly replace our current long-term mate in case they die, dump us, or cheat, or their mate value takes a dive. Maintaining a romantic plan B cuts the time costs of having to start from scratch -- which could be the difference between, say, a man passing on his genes and passing on what could've been into an old tube sock.

As disturbing (and, perhaps, dirtbaggy) as this partner reserve stock business might seem, Duntley and Buss report that even people in happy relationships seem motivated -- often subconsciously -- to maintain backup mates. (Not being quite aware of one's own motives keeps away the guilt that would likely accompany consciously collecting potential relief pitchers.)

This guy you met might be figuring out whether to give notice in his current relationship, or, if that'll be in the pipeline, figuring out how. Consider the potential risks of texting with him: getting emotionally entwined with someone who might remain unavailable and suggesting you need to take whatever romantic scraps you're given. If you prefer to opt out of these risks, you could tell him you hope to hear from him again but that you're a woman with standards: "Call me when you've lost weight -- 125 pounds of excess girlfriend."

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 really like the girl I'm dating, except for one thing. On every date, she asks me to take photos of her for Instagram. Afterward, she consults me repeatedly on which will "get the most likes." I'm starting to get really annoyed, and I find it cuts into my enjoyment of our time together. She even did this on my birthday!

--Irritated

Psychologist Erich Fromm wrote, "Mature love says: 'I need you because I love you.'" He died in 1980, 30-some years before Instagram-infused love: "I need you, love, because my telescoping selfie stick won't fit in my cute purse."

This girl's far from alone in turning every occasion short of stints on the toilet into a photo op. Social media (and Instagram especially) transformed fishing for compliments into a business model. #admirationvampires

Some young women -- especially 20-somethings with a still-murky sense of identity -- might feel they don't exist in any meaningful way if they don't post pix and videos of themselves to score likes and gain followers. #KeepingUpWithTheInstadashians

There's also the lure of easy money for those who can rack up an audience: potentially making big "influencer" bucks just by showing up to events in some pop-up shop's dress and striking a bunch of poses they copied off Beyonce.

Chances are you went on Tinder or Hinge or whatever in hopes of landing a girlfriend, not unpaid work as a photographer. Saying yes to taking this girl's pic the first time -- before you realized it would be an every-date thing -- probably seemed like a one-off request and thus not a big deal. But now you're annoyed that you're constantly being pressed into photo slavehood. Even your birthday got co-opted into a #MeMeMeMe #takemypicture celebration of her personal "brand."

The problem is not that she's asking but that you keep going along with photographing her. There's a way out of this -- and a way to get women to respect you instead of seeing you as a chump they can use and eventually lose -- and it's assertiveness.

Social psychologist Daniel Ames and his colleagues define assertiveness as "the degree to which someone stands up" for their own needs and interests "when they are faced with someone else who does not want the same outcomes."

Assertiveness allows you to be in charge of your life instead of becoming the tool of anyone who wants to use you: basically living like an insect that gets batted around by a cat. People who default to a passive approach -- just doing whatever's asked of them, no matter how they dread it -- often have a deep fear of rejection. They act on the mistaken belief that "the way to be accepted and appreciated by others is to give and give," explains clinical psychologist Randy Paterson.

This isn't to say you should live like an accountant, calculating to the penny or the calorie whether the give and take between you and another person is exactly 50/50 at all times. What matters is your motivation: giving to a woman because it feels good to make her happy or, say, safer (like if you install burglar-frustrating thingies on her windows).

That's healthy giving -- in contrast with emotionally indentured Boy Scout-hood: fulfilling the terms of a contract that exists only in your head, in which you re-sod a woman's lawn, rotate her tires, and/or become her pro bono "palace photographer" so she won't kick you to the curb.

This "chore-bribe your way to love 'n' sex" model tends to work about as well as my attempt, as a lonely, picked-on little kid, to geek my way into having friends. In second grade, two girls approached me, worksheets in hand, and said they'd be my friend if I did their math homework during recess. I got to work with my thick No. 2 pencil. Maybe 10 minutes later, I finished -- and they immediately succumbed to childhood amnesia. Neither girl even spoke to me again -- all the way through the end of 12th grade.

The willingness to assert yourself is a reflection of self-respect: the belief that you have value and have a right to be treated as if you and your needs matter. But say your current level of self-respect is on the low side. You can still act like a person with strong self-respect: Explain what you want -- in this case, to retire from fashion photography and post-date photo selection.

Be prepared. It's possible she'll ditch you for expressing the inconvenient need to quit as her Instagram documentarian. But if your needs and feelings are of little interest to her, maybe you can view getting yourself dumped by her not as a tragedy but as a point of pride: the first day of the rest of your living with self-respect. Carpe diem! (By way of carpe scrotum!)

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 recently met this guy, and we've spent the entire past week together. Unfortunately, he's moving across the country -- tomorrow. He asked whether I'd be open to dating after he moved. I panicked and said no -- I'm really not looking for long-distance -- but now that he's leaving, I'm sad, and I'm worried I've made a mistake. Help!

--Confused

Obstacles to love are like situational steroids. We long for what's out of reach -- and all the more romantic if reaching it takes crossing the desert on a camel or $553 with a layover in Boise.

The perception that something is in short supply or soon will be (say, because it's about to move across the country) makes it seem more valuable to us. Psychologist Robert Cialdini calls this the "scarcity principle" and explains that the possibility we could lose access to something (or someone) jacks us into a motivational state: Go! Chase it! Don't let it get away!

The scarcity principle is the psychological scheming behind ads like: "Today only!" and "Only one sofa at this price!" The looming scarcity (or "scarcity") shuts down your Department of Reasoning, basically turning you into a dog chasing a couch-shaped squirrel. Only after you buy the thing and get it home (P.S. "no returns!") do you notice an important fact: It will fit perfectly in your living room...if you take a sledgehammer to part of a wall and -- "surprise!" -- extend one end into your neighbor's apartment.

Recognizing how scarcity primes us to see through loss-prevention-colored glasses, do your best to set aside "Eek! He's leaving!" and objectively assess what you two have. In short, is he (and how you are together) so extraordinary -- so near-impossible to find locally -- that the thousands of dollars in travel costs and other trade-offs of long-distance might be worth it? If so, just tell him you'd like to try long-distance and see how it goes.

Should you decide your feelings were more about the circumstances than the guy, well, you're not alone. Impossible love brings out the drama queeny 14-year-old in many of us. Imagine if Romeo and Juliet's parents, instead of forbidding their love, were all, "Hey, you crazy kids...have fun at the movies!" The play would've become a hate story for the ages -- after things between them inevitably got kinda meh and Juliet walked in on Romeo in bed with her BFF and her lady-in-waiting.

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 really appreciate my boyfriend, except for one thing: his constantly posting photos and videos that include me on his Facebook or Instagram. I'm a pretty private person, and I told him I don't like having my life and our life together posted online. He grudgingly agreed to stop posting things about me, but he thinks I'm being unreasonable and "paranoid."

--Discreet

"Online privacy" is a quaint fiction. The reality: Any info about you, from your sexts to your Social Security number, is probably stealable by any basement nosepicker with an IQ over 125.

That said, it's understandable you'd try to retain whatever shreds of yours you can -- like by engaging in the "impression management" sociologist Erving Goffman observed we all do face to face: tailoring the "self" we present and revealing more or fewer "regions" of ourselves, depending on the particular audience.

There's probably no person these days who can't be "canceled" -- out of a job, any ability to keep earning a living, and/or their social world -- by some photo, video, or quote from them that's cast in a bad light by an internet mob.

Take the San Diego Gas & Electric worker photographed driving with his hand hanging out of his truck window in what was claimed on social media to be a "white supremacy" hand signal. (The OK sign is said to make the initials W.P. for "White Power.") The man -- who is Mexican American! -- insisted he was doing nothing of the sort, but the utility fired him anyway. "To lose your dream job for playing with your fingers, that's a hard pill to swallow," he told NBC 7 San Diego.

Your boyfriend might never agree with your approach to online privacy. However, he might understand it -- and gain a deeper understanding into who you are -- if you evoke his empathy. Instead of simply telling him you "don't like" to appear in social media posts, go into detail about your fears and discomfort at allowing an unselect audience a window into your life.

It's awful enough when we violate our own privacy -- like by accidentally sexting Grandma and then rushing over in hopes of deleting it before she remembers where she left her phone. There's really no hope of privacy crime scene cleanup when your audience is "everyone on the planet but three Namibian guys whose goats keep chewing through their cable."

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.

During quarantine, my boyfriend started spending two or three hours a night playing video games. Not only do I think this is unhealthy (since video games apparently lead to violence and psychological problems), but I think gaming has become a coping mechanism/escape tool for him. How can I get him to stop?

--Annoyed

Claiming gaming causes violence is like claiming white wine causes stabbings. (Give somebody a sip of Chardonnay and before you know it, they'll be dealing meth and then arrested, convicted, and shanking somebody in prison.)

There's been a lot of "moral panic" over video gaming. A moral panic is a mass overreaction to some behavior, art form, or group of people, driven by the fear that it poses a threat to society's values and the social order. Examples include rock lyrics said to be corrupting teenagers and the belief in the 1980s that satanic cults were running nursery schools. About the latter, Margaret Talbot explained in The New York Times Magazine that day care worker/"Devil-worshippers" were supposedly "raping and sodomizing children, practicing ritual sacrifice, shedding their clothes, drinking blood and eating feces, all unnoticed by parents, neighbors and the authorities."

It's easy to succumb to a moral panic. Though we like to see ourselves as careful, rational thinkers, when we're afraid, we engage in reasoning that's better described as "emotioning." This makes us prone to believe "if it bleeds, it leads" news stories that report "research says" video games are addictive, lead to social isolation, and cause those who play them to become violent or more violent.

These media reports aren't lies per se, but the product of reporters understandably unable to parse scientific methodology -- usually because they were reporting on celebrities or City Hall until, like, Tuesday, when they got assigned to the science beat. They have no chops to critically analyze studies that, for example, claim video gaming turns normal teens into violent teens: like, if you let a kid play shoot-em-up games, he's supposedly more likely to take to a campus bell tower with an AR-15.

Reporters inexperienced in covering science typically chronicle the findings of just one (possibly flawed) study -- without reviewing the body of research on gaming (dozens or even hundreds of studies). If they did this, they would see "the emerging picture from the research literature," summed up by psychologist Pete Etchells, who studies the psychological and behavioral effects of playing video games: "Video games don't appear to have a meaningful impact on aggressive behaviour, and certainly aren't the root cause of mass acts of societal violence."

So, what about studies that claim otherwise? Experimental psychologists Andrew Przybylski and Amy Orben explain that this research is largely "riddled with methodological errors" -- errors so major they change the conclusion of a study. (And whaddaya know, the error-driven conclusion is typically the newsmeaty "Lock up your kid's Nintendo, lady, or you're gonna be putting your house up for bail.")

That said, you aren't wrong that video games can be a "coping mechanism": thinking and/or behavior we deploy to manage stressful situations and painful emotions. Coping mechanisms themselves -- whether going for a run, taking a bath, or engaging in a couple hours of Mortal Kombat -- are not bad.

On the other hand, if your boyfriend is at risk of losing his job because he can't stop gaming or burglarizes the neighbors to buy a bunch of new games, well, that reflects what Przybylski and Orben call "problematic gaming." However, they explain that this afflicts only a "small subset" of gamers, and it's likely driven by underlying problems such as anxiety and depression. In other words, problematic gaming is a symptom, not the problem itself.

By the way, contrary to the tired '80s/'90s stereotype of video games played by an isolated loser in the basement, online gaming connects gamers around the globe. Gamers make friends and are part of a community. (Best of all, in the virtual world, nobody's breathing on anybody, so gamers' friendships are immune to lockdowns.) And though there's a widespread assumption that gaming causes social awkwardness, it often opens up a social world for the sort of person who'd rather RVSP to be put to death than go make small talk face to face at a party.

Now, maybe you are so anti-video game that your relationship just won't fly anymore. But consider whether it's actually your boyfriend's gaming that's bothering you -- or whether you're longing for more attention than he's been giving you. If it's the latter, chances are the answer is not just time spent but quality time: being really present and affectionate when you're together. Tell him what you need, and see whether he's up for providing it. It's understandably upsetting to have serious competition for your boyfriend's attention -- whether it's from another woman or the 26 druids he has to gun down before dinner.

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.