Author: Amy Alkon

My best friend is a guy. We have tons in common and have conversations that are lively, honest, and deep. He’s basically everything I’ve ever wanted in my future husband, but he has an infatuation for Filipina women half his age. I’m 37, his age, and Caucasian. His plan is to find and marry a […]

My boyfriend of two months is a gem, but his house is a horror. The fridge and bathroom are disgusting, and the whole place is seriously messy. There’s this eerie feeling that the house was formerly homey, like nothing has changed since his wife left him three years ago — down to the box of […]

I just turned 26, and I’m ready to be married. My previous two boyfriends dragged their feet and then said the blood-boiling line: “I will marry you … someday.” I met a guy online, and we initiated a relationship on the basis that he was ready for marriage. Four months after our first kiss, I […]

I asked my boyfriend for his email password so I could look at a message he’d mentioned. He grabbed my laptop and said he’d log in and forward it to me. He is a good guy and has never given me reason to distrust him, but if you aren’t hiding anything, why would you care […]

My boyfriend of three months is 22, and so am I. He tells me he loves me but is horrible about returning texts and calls and following through with dates. (He seems to ditch me if something better comes along.) He also doesn’t treat me very well around others. Recently, he got really drunk at […]

After my girlfriend and I split up, I wrote a creative nonfiction piece about our breakup (changing some identifying details). I published it on a popular blog and linked to it on Facebook. We’re back together, and things are great; however, she saw the story and was humiliated. I explained that what I wrote was […]

When I married five years ago, I was on the fence about having kids. I thought some parental gene might kick in, but it never did. Now, at 40, I’ve accepted that a childless marriage is best for us, given my wife’s fertility issues and my ambivalence about parenthood. My wife, however, sees no purpose […]

This woman and I have been friends for a year. She’s a free spirit of sorts with zero boundaries. In the time I’ve known her, she’s been married and divorced and then engaged, and now that has ended. She always has another man on the side. (She did even when married and engaged.) She frequently […]

In your answer to “Dismayed,” the 32-year-old woman with a Ph.D. who was unimpressed by the men she was meeting, I was struck by how cold and calculating it all sounds: Women evolved to marry money and power; men look for eye candy to parade around on their arms. As a man who doesn’t bring […]

My boyfriend and I are college juniors, happily together 10 months and living together for five. An article I read said it’s healthy to argue with your partner, and I got a little worried. We sometimes bicker about what to watch on TV, but one of us quickly gives in, and that’s it. It does […]

This man I’ve been dating didn’t want anything serious. I don’t either. I explained that I just wanted to hang out and have fun. We were going out several times a week, sleeping together at least once a week. Suddenly, he freaked, worrying I’d get attached. I reinforced that I absolutely don’t want anything serious, […]

My fiancee insists on having our wedding at “THE most magical place to get married,” this beautiful lake resort. Her family’s well-off, but having it there creates a financial hardship for my relatives and our friends, who are working crappy jobs in a terrible economy. Our guests mostly live in our hometown, and the lake […]

I’m a recently divorced 40-something woman, now dating again, and I’m wondering what the guidelines are on how long to wait to have sex. I’m not interested in casual sex, but I have a healthy libido. If I’m really attracted to a man, I’ll be dealing with some powerful mixed (internal) signals regarding how long […]

When I got married, I was a slim 6’2″, but I’ve gained a lot of weight. My wife gained about 20 pounds but recently lost that and more. I’ve been as high as 265, but I’m now at 238 and losing about a pound a week, which isn’t fast enough for my wife. When I […]

I’m a 32-year-old woman with a Ph.D. I’m beyond happy with my career path, but I’m not meeting men I’m impressed with or inspired to see again. A girlfriend sent me a New York Times op-ed by a historian named Stephanie Coontz, who said that highly educated women can find a man if they drop […]

Your answer to “Roseless,” the woman bemoaning her boyfriend’s lack of “romantic ambition,” hit a nerve with me. My wife of 19 years and I shared equally in raising our three children. She only sort of “works” now, but I do the home chores and all the cooking — while running a very stressful business […]

I’m an Occupy girl, age 45, into eco-shamanism and planetary consciousness stuff. I’ve mostly dated engineers with a playful side who initially seemed open to my interests but quickly became resentful of them. My boyfriend of two years is different — easygoing and willing to expand his horizons. He actually reads the articles I post […]

My boyfriend lacks romantic ambition. In our two years together, we’ve never gone out to dinner someplace I can wear a dress and heels, and he never brings me flowers or does anything for our anniversary or Valentine’s Day. I’ve suggested he pick out lingerie he’d like to see me in and shown him how […]

My commitment-phobic boyfriend of several years is also my neighbor. I resolved to make it work with him and then caught him on FriendFinder exchanging numerous messages with some woman in Tijuana. He claimed he was just being friendly. I asked if he’d correspond with a guy. He responded, “No. I’m not gay.” Humiliatingly, I’ve […]

I’m having a whirlwind romance with a man I met online on Thanksgiving. I moved across the country to live with him on December 20, and we’re now building a life together. The problem is I have a high IQ (137), and he’s very unintelligent and illogical. It’s hard to have a good conversation unless […]

I’m a 33-year-old nurse in a five-month “friends with benefits” thing with a doctor co-worker. I am only 18 months out of an abusive 10-year relationship and wanted something fun and light. We get along well, but he rarely asks me ahead of time about getting together. I know he has a busy schedule, but […]

I’m a retired pastor in my 50s. A nearby church wanted my help with their Christmas musical, and I asked my wife of five years, who played bass at my church, to join me. She became angry at this suggestion and said I should do my own thing on Christmas and she’d do hers. She […]

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; […]

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 […]

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 […]

Our Founding Fathers were a bunch of obnoxious jerks — and I mean that in the most reverent way. They were fiercely opposed to blind obedience to authority and risked their lives to flip it the bird. Oh, how disappointingly — and dangerously — far we’ve fallen. Our constitutional rights are increasingly being eroded, and […]

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 […]

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 […]

My girlfriend’s best friend is her ex. They broke up six years ago (upon mutual agreement). She swears she’s much happier being his friend and says they both feel they weren’t meant to be romantic partners. Well, she clearly adores the hell out of him, and he’s her go-to guy for her problems (family, career, […]

Two years ago, my man left his 22-year marriage to be with me, but he told me he loved his former wife and would always want a friendship with her. I accepted that (I’m friends with my ex), but I’m bothered by the amount of contact they have. They do have two adult children and […]