Here’s another conundrum for you guys. I’ve already twisted my mind into a pretzel over this one.

As we progress farther into the digital age, couples are texting more and more. Some people meet and talk for the first time via text message. I actually had a terrible experience with this:

I met a girl through a close female friend of mine. She gave me her number and said: “text her and see if you can get to know her. I promise you’ll like her.” And I did. We texted a TON the next three days, and then I met her in person and we started dating.

The problem was, at the very beginning, face to face communication was hard and awkward. We felt perfectly comfortable texting each other about anything, but actual confrontation– it just felt weird. It took us months to get past that.

In my current relationship, my girlfriend never had a cell phone plan with texting, so we couldn’t text. Ever. And I am so glad for this. We met in person, got to know each other in person and through actual phone conversations, and we never experienced anything like this awkward phase.

So my question is, do you think that all this texting is affecting people’s ability to form close, meaningful relationships in any way?

So, my boyfriend and I have very different ideas of privacy in a relationship. I believe that everything should be put out there. Him, not so much. We often have issues with me going through his phone and facebook. The thing is, I’ve found things on there that aren’t okay. I found him flirting with another girl. Serious flirting. Borderline cheating. Because of this, I feel that I should have the right to go through his things. He broke my trust, and that, I think, gives me a pretty good reason to snoop. That was a while ago, so trust has, for the most part, been re-established. Now, I just like seeing what he’s talking about. At this point, it’s not even about trust anymore. I’m just honestly curious. He refuses to believe that though. He freaks anytime I even hold his phone, which just makes me paranoid. I usually end up looking anyway, and nothing’s there, which makes me wonder why he’s freaking. I’ve always been completely open with him and have nothing to hide. He has full access to my accounts/phone if he would ever want it, and I just wish he would give me the same courtesy, especially considering past incidences. Advice?

I want to ask my husband out on a romantic date, but don’t want to do the normal things we always do(Benihana, beach, Julian…). I live in San Diego. Any ideas??

I’m a woman who’s been single for the past few years. Up until a few weeks ago, I’ve had very little luck in finding a guy that I was interested in. But then a work friend of mine (A) set me up with a friend of hers (R) that had recently moved to the area. We’ve only been on a couple, casual dates, but we REALLY hit it off and had a great time together. As cheesy as it sounds, I felt like we really connected on the dates.

So another guy that I work with (T) is a friend of A’s and mine, and is from the same town that A grew up in. Because of this, T used to be friends with R back in high school. A couple days ago the three of us (T, A, and me) were out drinking when T said that R had a micropenis. A and I kind of laughed it off at first because we assumed he was joking, but he assured us that he was serious. So then I thought that maybe he was just over exaggerating when he said micropenis, but T was adamant that he was telling the truth.

The rest of the night was kind of awkward and I was kind of upset with T for being catty and bringing it up, but the more I think about it the more I don’t know what to do. I feel vain caring about it, like I’m some bitch who only cares about penis size. But I feel like sexual satisfaction is an important part of any relationship, and if T IS telling the truth I’m not sure how happy I could be in the relationship.

I guess I’m just kind of confused about what I should do. I’m in my early thirties, so I really want to settle down and I don’t want to wait too long to have kids. But I’m not even sure if he can have kids, and I’m not sure I’d want to continue a relationship where it seems I’m going to meet a dead end.

But how would I even bring this up? It seems incredibly tacky to just ask him about it. I don’t even know how to handle the situation, or what I should do or say in order to find out the details that I want to know. Does it make me a huge, vain bitch for turning down an awesome guy over something like this?

So, my boyfriend of about 8 months was driving my car (I was the passenger), and he backed into a (big, YELLOW, obvious) pole. There is only superficial damage, but it is still damaged. And it’s ugly. My sweet, oblivious, boyfriend apologized profusely, but has not offered to get it fixed. He makes a significantly larger salary than I, and I kind-of feel myself resenting him for not offering to get it fixed. Should I bring it up and ask him to fix it (or at least pay for half of it)? What would you do?

I’ve gotten to the age now where pretty much any girl I meet is going to have had at least on previous relationship/sexual partner/tennis coach.

However, being at university I’ve found this number varies wildly from person to person. For example, I know a girl (let’s call her X because it’s a cool letter and it rarely gets the face time it deserves.) Now X revealed to me she’s had around 10 previous partners, some were relationships some weren’t. However Just this knowledge alone has made X rather undesirable to me, simply because I don’t know how I’d feel being number 11.

So I thought I’d ask whether people have an upper limit on the number of exes a person can have before you’d get a little apprehensive about being with them.

I don’t know if this site is limited to just relationships or if you can discuss family relationships as well, so sorry if this is out of line.

I grew up in an emotionally abusive environment. My wants and needs were never as important as what my mother and father wanted for me. I wanted to be a writer, but that didn’t matter “You need a job that is high paying. Screw writing. You should be an engineer,” my mother would always say.

Any time I screwed up, even the smallest thing, I was called “fucking stupid,” and “worthless.” They took all of my flaws and focused on them all the time, and said things like “You’ll never be as successful as your brother will,” or “I don’t know why we even had you.”

Fast forward to today, and I’m twenty and still living in their house. Why? Because they’ve made it impossible to leave. Until I’m 24, I cannot file as independent when asking for financial aid for college, so I have to say I have my parent’s income. BUT they refuse to help out at all, so I can’t get enough aid to afford it.

I can’t get a job and move out either because I don’t have a car. To buy one, I’d need a job, but they refuse to transport me to any job that I get. And I can’t walk because we live in the country and the nearest job would be at least a 10 mile walk.

And yet, they talk all the time about how they can’t wait until I move out and that they are sick of having my “worthless ass” around all the time, but they are the ones making it impossible for me to leave.

None of my family members can afford to take me in while I search for a job either, and that was my only other idea.

So I have two questions really: 1.) Why would they intentionally put me in a situation like this? 2.) What can I even do about it?

I’ve noticed this trend in some of these blurbs but also on other websites for those seeking advice.

Many times somebody will ask a question about cheating and wanting to come clean. Invariably, somebody will say that it will only ease their own mind and make things worse. It’s not everybody, but always at least one.

My question is whassupwitdat? Some people believe in honesty about the situation and I understand that because I identify with that. I’m trying to understand the other side.

Thoughts?

Here’s a question that I’ve always wondered about. Why is it that most women (at least those that I’ve known) tend to have more guy friends than women friends?
Maybe it’s just the women I tend to meet and share interests with, but almost all of them would rather hang out with/around men than other women. I’ve heard the typical answers like, “Women are catty” and “I just get along better with guys” and such. It’s always the same reasoning and if pressed, nothing more is added to it. It’s like they’ve never really thought much about it and I find these types of answers unsatisfying. For example, if you’re classifying other women as ‘catty,’ aren’t you 1- stereotyping and not giving other women a proper chance to NOT be that type of person to you and 2- saying much more about yourself?
And yet, if you flip the coin, it’s rare to see a guy with almost exclusively female friends.
Now I’m not saying that there aren’t women out there like this, that actually do get along better with guys, but the amount seems highly staggering in comparison, to the point that it’s almost surprising that women have any women friends at all!
I have a few theories that I’ve come up with over the years, but none of them are very flattering, so it’s not something that anyone would want to admit to.
I know I’ve rambled on this one and jumped around more than a hummingbird on crack, so hopefully you’ll see where I’m coming from enough to give me some ideas.

I’ve been dating a guy for a very long time, over 4 years, and everything is going great. Lets call him Mike. When we first met i had broken up with a guy not long before, who we’ll call Rick. I then started dating Rick again, while my current boyfriend and i were simply friends, but I never mentioned it to Mike, simply because we didnt talk about relationships, only our mutual interests and such. I wasnt hiding it, it just never came up in conversation. One night hanging out with Mike, and still dating Rick, we slept together. I broke it off with Rick the next day, and told him why and that to me, our relationship wasnt worth fixing. He really didnt get it, so i actually had to tell him we were no longer dating many times over the next two weeks until he finally got it through his head.

Getting to know Mike better and better throughout the years, i’ve discovered that he HATES cheaters, with a flaming passion, although it doesnt sound like any of his serious relationships ended that way. So i’ve been feeling guilty for quite a while now that the first time we slept together, i was technically cheating, but not on him.

Now, the past 2 months or so, Rick has started hanging around with our mutual friends, who i met him through, once again, and i see him every once in a while. My feelings for him are gone, now i just think of him as a ‘nice guy’ who i’m acquainted with. I dont believe it will ever come up in conversation, but having him around again is bringing up all the guilt again. After 4 years, should i tell Mike that our first night sleeping together i was in a relationship? Should i keep my mouth shut and deal with the guilt? I know our relationship is very strong, but with his such deep seeded hatred of cheating, i dont know if he would be able to overlook it, forgive me, or be okay with it. I’m not sure what to do.