Q. This is always a difficult time of year for me. Not because I have family problems or tend to be depressed by the holidays, but because I am something of a germaphobe. Cold and flu season to me means not just tissues, hand sanitizer, preventative treatments of all kinds, and seasonal flu shots, but often a mask, regular head and body shaving, bathing sometimes several times a day, and anything else I can use to keep me from getting sick from other people’s carelessness and pestilence. This year is especially bad because of the H1N1 virus, otherwise known (however mistakenly) as the Swine Flu. It scares the living daylights out of me. Worse, as someone without this year’s “risk factors,” I can’t even get on the list for the vaccine, which is in such short supply anyway. How can I get through these next months?

A. It’s not clear to me exactly what you want help with here. Is it your self-professed neurosis about getting sick that you feel is holding you back? Is it a fear of the H1N1 virus (which is no worse than any other flu—it’s just newer), and getting through the next few months until the pandemic will presumably subside somewhat? Or did you want advice about how to be less ungrateful for all you have? It certainly seems to me that anyone who is disappointed in not having sufficient risk factors for serious illness is in need of help, if not a life-changing disaster to help him wake up. Feel free to clarify your question and ask again, or simply to take a trip to some other part of the world where people have real illnesses and actual reasons to worry about their lives.

Q. Like I do every year, I will be hosting the family Thanksgiving gathering at my house. It has been much sadder the last few years, since my mother passed away, but everyone still comes and seems to have a nice time. This year, my father has started dating again, and he wants to bring his new girlfriend to dinner. I for one am not ready for that. I think it is too soon to replace my mother at a family gathering and that this woman is not part of the family. I do want to be welcoming, but it seems to me like we should get to know her a little better first before she joins in as part of the family.
There is an additional problem. My father’s girlfriend is very allergic to dogs, and my father wants me to board my dog elsewhere for the holiday and have my house professionally cleaned of all dog hair and dander. Frankly, I am not willing to do that. For one thing, I don’t have the money and they aren’t willing to pay for it. For another, with hosting the dinner and all, I simply don’t have time to deal with another thing. Most importantly, my dog, who has been with us for eight years now, is much more a part of the family than she is. I don’t think it’s fair to displace him and take him away from his loving family on a holiday (one of his favorite events, when he gets to see everyone and get treats) just for an unwanted and difficult guest.
My father says his girlfriend has no family and doesn’t have anywhere else to go, so he doesn’t want to leave her alone on the holiday. What the rest of the family and I would like is for my father to come along and to keep my dog, but it’s pretty much Thanksgiving with both of them and not my dog, or Thanksgiving with the dog and neither of them. Both options seem unreasonable. What do I do?

A. I’m not certain what the problem is here. You don’t want the guest, and she doesn’t really want to come. She is probably making unreasonable requests just to have an excuse not to be there. It seems to me that everyone should be happy: she doesn’t have to show up, you don’t have to do anything to accommodate her, and the dog can snatch scraps from under your gluttonous diners’ chairs as usual. My advice to you is to stop making a problem out of a solution. It’s supposed to work the other way around.

Q. A dear friend of mine recently proposed marriage to me. We are not in love or in a relationship—in fact, my friend is gay, and a heterosexual relationship between us would be quite impossible. We are very close, though, and we certainly enjoy each other’s company. I’m not sure if he wants to be married for the sake of appearances or his career, or if he just wants to take care of a friend, but at least part of why he proposed was for me to get on his health insurance and live in his gorgeous house, so there are some things that are quite appealing about the offer. I don’t know how I feel about it, though. I always thought I would marry for life—and for love—and raise a family. Is this a good thing to do, or should I stay alone in my tiny apartment, hoping not to get sick or in an accident, waiting for a Mr. Right who may or may not ever show up? If I do marry my friend, what will I tell my family?

A. OK, so far, we’ve seen someone without a clear question and someone without a real problem, and this is a case of someone who knows the answer to her own question. I can’t help but feel that my extensive training as a lifecoach is being squandered on hand-holding.
All right, fine. Look at how you’ve described your dilemma: health, loving friend, beautiful and caring living situation, and security on the one hand; loneliness, cramped living situation, risk of disaster, and uncertainty on the other. How is this not a no-brainer? Tell your family whatever you want.
Now let’s address that larger problem. If you have that hard a time, people, asking questions, identifying problems, and making choices, you really need to hire your own lifecoaches and put them on retainers, rather than just one-off emailing them for free. Please contact me again for rates at dr.meglifecoach@gmail.com. I can guarantee it’s the last time you’ll be emailing me for free.

Q. I moved cross-country to be with a guy I met over the Internet. I thought I was deeply in love with him, but being close by, he hardly seems to be the same person I met online. I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with him—I really did—it was such a perfect match. Now I have no idea what to do. I don’t think it’s going to work out, and I quit my job and uprooted my whole life to move nearly a thousand miles. It was my whole life plan. Do I do whatever I possibly can to make it work out? Do I scrap it and move somewhere else? Try to make a life here without Mr. Wrong? I feel totally lost. I just know that this isn’t working.

A. Clearly, you have made a very serious error in judgment. Perhaps in the future, you will consider more carefully actually meeting someone and spending time with him before you make your entire life plan hinge on him. This is exactly why people do that, incidentally: so they don’t end up where you are right now. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t an opportunity to do something good here. The good news is that your ridiculous choices have left you with a sort of blank slate. Where do you want to go? What do you want to do? Where would you like to be in a year, or five? What would you want it to say in your obituary? What would you like to have accomplished? It’s time to make a new plan that’s not based on some remote stranger. Unless what you wish for is to live your life like some sort of consensual mail order bride, that will almost certainly improve your future—and give you something to work toward. Good luck—I’m excited for you!

Q. I suffer from incredibly dry winter skin, and I do mean suffer. My skin soaks up lotions like a sponge, and it still doesn’t help that much. It gets so dry in places that it splits and bleeds, which is gross and embarrassing. I have heard that you have gorgeous skin and appear to be a mere fraction of your actual age. Can you help me?

A. Well, it is true that I appear to be much younger than I am, but I’m not sure how that might help you with gross embarrassment, or anything else, for that matter. I can tell you, though, that often, difficulties with skin dryness have to do with climate, genetics, and diet. If you can’t move to a moister climate (and we are years away from being able to correct the genetic hands we’ve been dealt, if not decades), so it would seem that the best way to do something positive for yourself would be to address your diet. Do you drink enough water? Perhaps more importantly, do you eat enough saturated and animal fats? If not, that may be the place to look. Saturated fats—which are usually solid at room temperature—are often present in meats such as bacon and sausage, and can also be combined with vegetables as lard, to help improve flavor. That’s the best news about this method: it’s a tasty way to reduce your dry skin problem. Try replacing your vegetable oil with palm kernel oil, coconut oil or beef fat; adding versatile bacon to your meals, leaving the skin on your poultry, and replacing your skim milk with whole milk, or where possible, half-and-half or cream. Just as you got used to the “lighter” products that may be contributing to your dry skin problem, you can get used to the more flavorful ones that can help it. Enjoy your new, moist and yummy lifestyle!

Q. I am a chronic wingman for my much more confident friend. He always talks to women in bars and at parties, and claims to be trying to help me while I either chat up his target’s friend or just attest to his good character. The hell of it is that he often makes up stories about who he is, what he does for work, who he knows, and them I’m supposed to back him up and help him to get together with these women, who he will then promptly never call again. Not only do I feel lousy for helping him lie and be a jerk to women, but I’m also jealous that he can get women to take him home. On top of that, I resent him for making me an accomplice while pretending he’s doing me a favor, but I also feel like not helping him would make me a bad friend. I guess all I want is to find someone to stay in with so I don’t have to go out and watch this guy’s sickening performances, wondering how much my helping him is creating problems for these perfectly nice women.

A. Let’s do a sort of visualization exercise, shall we? What would happen if you were in a bar with your so-called friend, and instead of lending him credibility, you took the “target” woman (as you so charmingly called his victims) aside, told her that he was full of it, intended to try to go home with her and never call her again, but that you thought she seemed nice and you’d like to buy her a drink? My guess is that you’d get a fair amount of phone numbers before your friend catches on—at which point, of course, he would stop asking you along rather abruptly. Helping women avoid your friend, though, is a reasonable way to start conversations with them, and it makes you look like a nice guy who’s looking out for them. Maybe you could keep going out with him anyway. If he stopped making his plans known to you, you could even pick out some random guy in the room and claim he’s your miscreant friend. The woman won’t actually want to talk to him, so that may work just fine. Good luck.

Q. Last night, I received a cryptic email from a friend who claimed to be about to kill himself. It sort of looked like his will, and he sent it out to a whole host of his friends, judging from the email list. He then went on to list some possible plans for doing away with himself: sleeping outside that night when there was supposed to be a hard freeze, jumping off a dam, and a few others. I wasn’t really sure whether he was going to do any of them, but made some effort to get a hold of him to try to find out what was going on. As it turned out, he had been rejected by a girl he had been sort of following around for the last couple of years. He was convinced they were seeing each other romantically, but that wasn’t her perception. So it seems to me that he is coping with the loss of this “relationship” rather badly. My better nature wonders if there is something I should be doing for him as a friend, but I think my stronger reaction to his behavior is that it was unacceptable for him to do that to me, to us, as his friends, and that I should have a different kind of conversation with him entirely. What do you think?

A. Well, the first thing to do in this kind of situation is get your friend to distinguish in his own psyche between sadness, what we might call clinical depression, and actually wanting to die. People who actually want to die typically tend to try to take action rather than sitting at home sending emails and trying to get sympathy, so you’re probably looking at one of the former: sadness or clinical depression. If he’s clinically depressed, he probably needs professional help (preferably the kind with a prescription pad), or at least a lot more exercise and a lot less processed food. If he’s just sad, consider explaining to him that you can be there for him without all the drama.
You see, in our society, men are usually not encouraged to pick up the phone and say to their friends, “I feel sad. Can we talk?” Instead, they have to do ill-advised things like get drunk, get in badly mismatched fights, and wreck their cars. When they can’t fulfill these social needs (for example, if they live in remote areas, and don’t have enough liquor, or suitable fighting partners, or cars whose crashing could constitute a serious loss), they can sometimes be transformed, ironically into drama queens. It’s true: Yeah, I read about a study on it on an airplane.

Q. I have been playing an online video game a lot. Although I have advanced beyond this one particular level, I keep lingering there because there is this girl there. She is just so beautiful. I know she isn’t real—she’s basically just a really good cartoon—but I think I am in love with her. What’s worse, my real-life wife is getting suspicious. I don’t know what to do. Do these characters have models? Should I try to find this character’s model? What should I tell my wife? I can’t think about anything else but this virtual girl.

A. Wow. I could tell you a bunch of things about CGI composites, and the difference between those and actual women, and this girl is just someone else’s fantasy and you shouldn’t let it be yours, and how the mere fact that you’re calling your wife your “real-life wife” is really disturbing. However, the bottom line is that you need to unplug your computer and go outside. If that doesn’t help or it makes you miss the cartoon girl, get some therapy. Lots and lots of therapy.

Q. My husband seems to be online constantly. He says he’s just playing this one game all the time, but I’m suspicious. How can I find out if my husband having an online affair? More importantly, how can I find her if she is?

A. She’s probably just a cartoon. Don’t worry about it, and stop being so vindictive and stalky. The good news is that the two of you are well suited for each other in your creepiness. How about a trip out of town together to reconnect?

Q. Dear Doctor Meg, I understand you’ve been married and had lots of long-term relationships. I am in my thirties, I had always planned to get married and I really want to do it now, but it doesn’t seem to be happening. How can I find someone and get married as soon as possible, so I can get on with the living happily ever after part?

A. My, what a revealing question. Did it occur to you that someone who has “been married and had lots of long-term relationships” has not, in fact, lived happily ever after—at least, not yet? These things are journeys rather than destinations, after all. Living happily ever after is not an endpoint—it’s something you have to work on every damn day. Furthermore, the maximum number of relationships one can have that “work out” is a mere one—and not only that, but one of the major criteria is that it’s the one you’re in when you DIE.
It also bears stating that, if you are the sort of person who has had her whole wedding planned out since she was twelve, not only are you setting yourself up for disappointment (and the embarrassment of a pink unicorn theme to your wedding), but you may very well miss out on the “right” person or situation just because they don’t exactly meet those adolescent expectations—or worse, you could have already.
I would advise you to stop trying to get married right away. When I was in my twenties and I would hear those statistics like, “It’s more likely for a woman over a certain age to get struck by lightning than it would be for her to get married,” I would think it was very sad that these women in their thirties and older wouldn’t be able to find husbands (and of course, might also get electrocuted by atmospheric disturbances). Now that I am over that certain age, I realize what a benighted imbecile I was for thinking that, and I hope you are not still one. I don’t feel sorry for those women at all. It’s not that they are all sad and manless and alone, it’s that they are comfortable with themselves and would need to be convinced that a given prospective husband would be worth the hassle and upheaval. Marriage is a ton of work—even that bad ones—and let’s face it, men are pretty gross—even the nice ones.
You should please yourself. Do things you like to do. Enjoy stuff. If you find someone who likes to do those things, pleases you too, enjoys stuff to the extent you do, and is committed to making Happily Ever After work every damn day after every damn day, then maybe consider beginning to think about making that partnership a legally state-sanctioned one. Or just become an event planner if you love weddings so damn much, find a guy who’s into pink unicorns, and be his legally-sanctioned beard.

Q. There is no nice way to say this. My new boyfriend has terrible taste in music. Everything he listens to seems to be either an 80s hair band or a “Where are They Now?”-style revival of 80s hair bands coming out with more CDs, or imitators—sorry, tribute bands—of 80s hair bands. People stopped listening to that stuff for a reason, you know? Actually, for lots of reasons, as far as I can tell. The worst part is that we’ll go back to his place and he’ll put on some of this terrible music, expecting to “get lucky.” I tried to just tune it out at first, because I really do care about him and I enjoy our time together, but every once in a while, he’ll actually stop what he’s doing for an air guitar solo. Going to my place instead doesn’t help—he’ll just bring a “special mix CD” of the terrible music and insist on playing it in all its obnoxious glory, as if it’s supposed to turn me on. I just can’t deal with it anymore. I don’t expect to change his taste in music, and he really is sweet to me. I don’t want to hurt his feelings. How do I tell my boyfriend that his musical selections kill the mood?

A. This could be a symptom of a much larger problem. The inability to comprehend that bad music is bad is often linked to other issues, such as perpetually living in one’s parents’ basement, fruitless employment, not winning the lottery as expected, week after week, and general spinning of one’s wheels. It suggests a certain detachment from reality—specifically an inability to calculate cause-and-effect responses in the rest of the population. He may not be ready to seek help on his own, but you can help him in small ways by explaining your responses. Remember to use “I”-based language. For example, you don’t want to say something like, “Your music sucks and your life is headed downhill fast,” rather, you want to say something like, “When you play that particular album again, I feel depressed and annoyed, and that makes it difficult for me to perform.”
If that doesn’t work, consider giving him the valuable gift of empathy. Get the worst music you can find, and insist on listening to that. See how that makes him feel, and by extension, how you must feel when he does that to you. If you’re unsure as to what sort of music may bother him, may I recommend Welsh Penillion? That bothers almost everyone.
If that doesn’t work, recall that men are slaves to their libidos. You are likely to win an either-or contest between an act of intimacy and listening to a Poison CD.

Q. What in the world is Penillion?

A. Penillion is a traditional form of Welsh screeching. Technically, it’s supposed to be singing. I recommend approaching it with a culturally open mind or in a spirit of vengeance, like the food. Above all, please do not judge the Welsh culture, which has brought us many good things—beyond just King Arthur and Catherine Zeta-Jones—on Penillion and leek tarts alone.

Q. Like you, I am a professional lifecoach. I have a professional ethics question for you. With medical doctors and clinical psychologists, for example, there is an explicit code of ethics. For lifecoaches and other such professionals, however, there are guidelines, but rarely explicit codes or procedures. So I would like to ask you this: Do you ever date clients? When is it OK to do that in our profession?

A. I personally do not. I dated a former client once (first satisfying myself that all the ethical angles were covered), and I have to say that, after the initial predatory thrill, it was just too weird. Think about it a minute. Do you really want to take your work home with you like that? Just how much do you want to work for free? Isn’t it easy enough to get taken advantage of in our line of work, where people just expect you to help them without remuneration all the time? And anyway, don’t you find our clients to be, well, just a bit too needy and damaged to be good relationship material? There may not be explicit ethical prohibitions on dating clients, but why on earth would you? Good luck with that.

Q. When we first started dating seriously, my vegetarian girlfriend tried very hard to get me to give up meat, and was pretty convincing about it. I went a few weeks not eating meat, but I missed it too much, and I caved. I mean, what is the point of supposedly being healthier and living longer and all if you can’t eat the things you enjoy during that longer life? Do I really want another five meatless years on the end of my miserable, meatless life? I went back to eating meat, just not around her, and I didn’t know how to tell her. I think she assumes I am still vegetarian all the time, even though I haven’t been for about six months now. I’m not all that comfortable with the deception (even if it’s not an outright lie), but I’m a lot more comfortable with it than I am with eating nothing but rabbit food all the time.
Other than that one secret that I still feel a little guilty about, things between us have been going just great. When I found out I would be losing my lease because my apartment building and my landlord are being foreclosed on, my girlfriend asked me to move in with her. I was so overwhelmed by her kindness and what this would mean for us that I immediately said yes… without thinking about how I would handle that problem of my eating meat and not telling her about it. With her generosity, I now feel even worse. What can I do here, other than give up meat for real?

A. The way I see it, if you are not willing to “give up meat for real,” you have three choices: 1., Confess and hope for the best; 2., Continue to practice this deception, which is about to get a lot harder; or 3., Break it off suddenly, disappear, and try to start your life over elsewhere (see tips on doing this from past shows at http://doctormeglifecoach.wordpress.com/). All of these of course have their drawbacks, and all are stressful. The easiest thing to do might be to confess and come up with some medical reason why you can’t give up meat entirely. If you can produce both a doctor’s note and jewelry, you’ll save yourself the hassle of the second two options.

Q. I live in a remote area in a quiet place. I really like it there, but my commute is pretty long, and the closer I get to the city, the worse the traffic gets, and more noticeably, the worse the drivers get. It’s like they’re always trying to get the better of everyone else. They have this “me first” attitude that seems to come before basic safety, and I don’t appreciate it. I would rather be able to trust that other drivers are being reasonable and that we’re all conspiring not to get in accidents together. I can laugh off a few annoying or unpleasant incidents in the course of a day, but when I’m driving so many miles every day, there are so many more opportunities to encounter people driving like idiots, and it all gets to me after a while. How do I keep other drivers from bothering me so much?

A. I would like to applaud your not being a victim about this and asking the right question. The question is not, “How can I make other people be nice to me?” and that’s refreshing. We can each only be responsible for ourselves, after all—you can’t make random strangers in cars be responsible for your happiness or comfort on the road. All you can do is choose to modify your own responses.

Q. Not long ago, I converted to Buddhism. The principles had always appealed to me, and then when I began living in a house with a number of other people, most of whom were practicing Buddhists, it seemed like the right time to make the shift. Overall, I am very pleased with the Buddhist lifestyle (well, as much as Dukkha will allow, lol). However, living with several other Buddhists, some of whom are not as tidy as I am, is proving somewhat difficult. For example, we have a few different kinds of bugs now living in our kitchen (and spreading to other places in the house) because of food left out or poorly stored. It’s disgusting, the communal food supply is compromised, and those responsible will not alter their habits or assist in removing the insects. They claim that killing the bugs would be against our religion. Which is probably true, but the one person in the house who is not Buddhist is rarely home, and I feel badly asking him, while he is home, to kill a bunch of bugs whose residence he had nothing to do with in the first place. I like the overall living situation, but this one problem is getting bigger and more alarming by the day. What can I do?

A. Move out, of course. It sounds like even living in a tent would be more sanitary. Then you can hang out with nature all you want and practice your faith without any contradictions or obstacles of any kind, like you should if you really believed in what you were doing.

Q. This one is a sign of the times: it was sent in real time from a handheld device. I guess that makes it our first text-based emergency question.
One of my good friends spent the evening at my house a few weeks ago. She complimented on my favorite blouse, which I was wearing then, and then “accidentally” spilled her drink on it. She apologized profusely and offered to have it cleaned for me. The next day, she took it with her and said she dropped it off at the cleaner’s near her office. We didn’t see each other for a couple of weeks, but then yesterday I ran into her in the supermarket, and she seemed to have forgotten about the blouse and said there was no cleaner’s near her office. Acting like she was humoring me for the sake of our friendship, she said she would check with her cleaner’s and see if she somehow dropped it off there or something. This morning she told me she had called them and they didn’t have anything of hers (or anything she had dropped off) there. Sorry. I was kind of wondering what to think about it and wasn’t sure.
So right now, we are at a baby shower for a mutual friend, and she is WEARING my blouse! I can’t believe it! What do I do?

A. I think the first thing you need to ask yourself is why your friend didn’t seem to feel comfortable just asking you if she could borrow your blouse. Do you tend to share your things with others, for example, or do you project an aura of punitive unwillingness to share? Maybe she thought you would not just refuse to lend you the blouse if she asked, but that you would get very angry with her as well.
The next thing you need to ask yourself is whether people are really more important than possessions, particularly if those people you considered friends are so deceptive—and if you have fancy enough consumer electronics to email radio lifecoaches in clandestine fashion from baby showers.
The final thing you need to ask yourself is whether anyone else there has a top to lend her. Clearly, you can’t let her leave with yours. You might never see it again.

Q. When my husband of 14 years and I broke up rather amicably some months ago, he told me he thought I would make a great cougar. I think he meant it as a compliment, but I really don’t think I am old enough to be a cougar. Is there some sort of age guideline?

A. Oh, honestly. How should I know? I–
Um, yes. Well. I believe the most common, agreed-upon guideline is that a cougar must be over 50, although I have also heard that she need be at least 10 – 12 years older than her quarry.

Q. “Cory” from Broomfield writes: I know you don’t like relationship questions, but this is really an etiquette question, which I know you do like. Bear with me.
I have recently started seeing an older woman. She is not quite old enough to be my mother, but she is very sophisticated and fun and I enjoy her company very much as well as, well, her other fine attributes [the listener inserts a winking smiley face here]. She is also very generous and sometimes takes me to dinner or buys me small gifts, which makes me feel very special.
Here’s the difficulty. I am currently working only part time. I live about 45 minutes away from her, and if I see her a few times a week, my traveling to see her eats up a significant amount of my meager paycheck buying gas. However, she expects me to come see her whenever she invites me, which I would certainly be willing to do if I could better afford it.
So this is the question: What is the polite way to resolve this conflict? Do I ask her to come to me or meet me partway instead of always going to see her (even though she really doesn’t like to drive)? Do I tell her I can’t see her as often? If so, do I tell her why? Do I ask her for gas money? It seems like any one of these options is both rude and could result in her calling it off.

A. What an interesting question, Ja—I mean—“Cory,” and very cleverly broached. I’m sure that if this sophisticated, attractive older woman genuinely enjoys your company, something could be worked out—particularly if you would be willing to be flexible about certain things. I’m sure you know which ones. Why don’t you meet her to figure things out around 8:00 at that place you went to on the 4th of July? That should be plenty close enough.

Q. Although I consider myself an enlightened sort constantly on a journey of self-discovery, I find I sometimes just lash out at strangers. Sometimes they’re not doing anything particularly offensive or anything, they just irritate me, and before I know it, I’m shouting at someone I’ve never met before in a very awkward social setting, and making it even moreso. Even if I think I’m in the right, it seems like it embarrasses other people. Still, I can’t seem to stop. What is going on with me?

A. Difficult to say with this relatively small amount of information. You might be suffering from some sort of disorder that makes social interaction irritating for you. There are a few out there. You may also just be a jerk.
To find out which, you may want to start with asking your friends what they have observed and if they think you have a problem. You may also want to consult a professional who can meet with you regularly in the event that you do have some sort of treatable disorder.
Or you could just embrace what may very well just be your nature. Determine whether shouting at people in the checkout line or cutting people off in traffic really makes you feel more comfortable, more like yourself. If it does, or if you can’t find a friend whose opinion you may be able to ask, then you’re probably just a jerk, and being true to yourself is important. We all spend so much time figuring out who we are, you know? As someone who considers himself fairly enlightened, you already know that. Congratulations—your journey of self-discovery may very well be drawing to a close. I think we all envy you.

Q. Like a lot of people, I recently lost my job because the company I was working for went under. I have been looking for work every business day ever since, but I haven’t had much luck in my area. In the meantime, my mother is rather ill and my family is asking me to move back home to a small town in Texas. I ran away from there—I really did—and I have a life very far away now that I like very much. However, I may not have too much time left with my mother and I am having a very hard time making ends meet without a job in the city where I’ve been living for the last 15 years. If I moved back home for a while, although I’d have free rent and get to spend time with my family, I am afraid that town I ran away from would suck me back in with its evil gravity and that I would never get out again. What do I do?

A. You know, the first time I read this question, I thought, “Am I missing something here? Is there some reason why spending time with one’s dying mother and living somewhere familiar rent-free isn’t appealing?” Then I read it again more carefully, and I realized we were talking about Texas. I think what you have to ask yourself is how long you can hold out with your current financial situation and whether that’s long enough to get another job before you get evicted. You might consider your family’s offer as a fallback plan. That is, you could keep doing what you’re doing, redouble your efforts at finding a job, and then if you do get evicted before you find something, perhaps that would be the time to go to Texas, which is, after all, at least a bit better than living under an aqueduct.

Q. My fiancée seems to have some sort of major family secret she’s not sharing with me. Whenever she spends time with her family, they seem to be sharing this secret and working hard to keep it from me. I think it has to do with someone named Gerald and something they might consider shameful, like severe mental illness, a criminal history, or a bad drug problem or something. I don’t want to pry… well, that’s not true—I do want to pry—but I haven’t had any success finding out what’s going on. My fiancée just won’t tell me, and it’s not like she cries or something when I ask—she gets sort of smug and seems very bemused. If I’m going to marry into this family, don’t you think I should know what everyone is talking about? What if there is some kind of serious genetic problem I could be perpetuating if we have kids? What if I’ll be sort of a target as the new guy? What if the family is just toying with me? I’m not sure I want to marry into a family that thinks this kind of thing is funny. I’m on the verge of calling off the engagement unless she tells me what is going on. Is that the right thing to do, though?

A. Good relationships are about communication and honesty. Bad ones can be about many different things, but good ones really have to contain those components to work. If your fiancée is denying you those very basic elements, nothing else is going to make your impending marriage work long term. It sounds like you’ve determined that it’s important enough that it bothers you to the point where it’s a dealbreaker. So if she won’t share this irritating secret with you, then you have two options: First, leave. Second, go through with it and commit to a very short, bad marriage. If the money or conversation or sex or cuisine or real estate are good enough, perhaps that would be worthwhile. I can’t determine that for you. Only you can say for sure. Meditate on it and discover the universe’s answer for you.

Q. Recently, a friend of mine did something very brave: she left her abusive boyfriend and moved out. I think, like many women in her situation, she thought her friends would judge her, or that she would be entirely alone in the world once she left that jerk. She’s not, though. Some of us helped her move, some of us helped her get a restraining order, some of us have been driving her places as needed, some of us have been offering her our various couches or making her some supper, or some combination of those things. We’re all happy to do it.
One of the things I did to try to help was that, a couple of weeks ago, I offered to dog-sit for a day. My friend was staying with me and my housemates for two nights in a row, and wanted to leave her dog at the house during the day in between, which made perfect sense to me. I was going to be the only one home, and I thought it would be fine. There are even two other dogs, who would occasionally need feeding or letting out. What could be the harm?
Well, as it turned out, plenty. The dog is old enough to drive, and apparently very arthritic. He doesn’t move around so well, and whines loudly whenever my friend leaves him alone. I tried to put him outside, but I was afraid the neighbors would call the police or animal control because of the horrible noise, and I also couldn’t seem to keep the dog out of the sun and hydrated. I was terrified he was just going to keel over on me, and while I would be temporarily relieved by the peace and quiet that would finally ensue, I didn’t want to put my friend through that—she was going through enough and needed my support—as well as her pet’s.
I tried everything I could to take care of the dog and keep him quiet. I fed him treats in the hopes that he couldn’t eat and yowl at the same time. He couldn’t, but he could do them in quick alternating succession. I tried getting him his favorite blanket and petting him. I tried talking to him. I tried everything I could think of. It was horrible. I got almost nothing done all day long, and it was the most stressful day I’ve had in a really long time. Maybe ever. How can I tell my friend that she is welcome any time at my house, but if her dog comes over and I am left alone with it, one of us will have to die?

A. My goodness, that seems like an awfully extreme response. Nonetheless, if that really is your bottom line, perhaps you should preface it by talking about how death is a part of life. It sounds like this dog, for example, has lived a long and happy life. Maybe you could begin by complimenting her on the wonderful job she has done keeping him alive all these years. You could compare his lifespan with your own, for example, and list some of your accomplishments, and some of his. In this way, you can highlight how either of you losing your lives might be considered tragic. This might help your friend see what a difficult position it would put you in to have the dog alone at your house again in the future.

Q. Does size matter?

A. Well, this is an age-old question, it seems. The short answer is that it matters less than technique, and it mostly only matters in the most extreme of cases.
Oh, wait! This question was about truck engines. Sorry, the rest of it was on the next page. In that case: yes. It matters. There is no substitute for cubic inches.

Q. When my live-in boyfriend and I split up not too long ago, I fought hard to keep the car we had bought together, because I thought it was a really nice car. Since then, though, it has had all kinds of problems and I’m sick of dealing with it. I can’t sell it back to my ex-boyfriend now—he won’t take it—and I haven’t had any luck selling it to anyone else. Even if I did, I can’t afford to buy a new one right now, and I need this crappy car to get to work. In the meantime, I can’t really afford the insurance, and I’m really tense about maybe getting pulled over and not having any. This whole thing is just stressing me out. What can I do?

A. Well, if your insurance isn’t affordable, it sounds like that might actually work to your advantage in this case. Just how good is your coverage? Are you still paying on the car? If you are, you’re required by the dealership to carry what’s called “gap” insurance, in case you wreck the car before it’s paid off, so the bank still gets its money. What you want to do is also take out the maximum insurance you possibly can. Don’t worry—you won’t be making a lot of payments at this rate, and it will be a worthwhile investment.
You’ll want to take your car to some isolated place that’s still within an hour or so’s walk of civilization. Bring a cigarette lighter and a roll of paper towels with only about half a dozen or so towels left on it. Get out of the car, and once you’re sure you have all your valuables, stuff some of the paper towels in the gas tank, and light them. Then, begin walking back toward civilization. You’ll then have all that time to get rid of the cardboard paper towel tube, come up with a story of how your car got stolen, and relax. Try breathing deeply while you’re walking.
When you get there, report your car stolen, and tell your story breathlessly to anyone who will listen. Just, please, when the police take your statement, if you go with the carjacking story, be respectful of other ethnicities and use your own, whatever that may be. That is the polite thing to do in this day and age: get along with your fellow human beings.

Q. What’s the deal with Sudoku? Is it dangerous? I like puzzles, but it seems highly addictive and I’m afraid to try it.

A. Sudoku is indeed a puzzle—a sort of cross-number puzzle, where you try to get the numbers 1 – 9 in each column, row and square without repeating any of them in those regions. Is it dangerous? I suppose that depends on your sense of danger. If you are frightened by thin sheets of paper or equilateral rectangles, or if you have a terrible graphite allergy, sure, I guess it could be dangerous.
You know, sometimes fear is a good thing. It keeps us from doing potentially life-threatening things by setting off internal alarm bells when we do things like stand too close to the edge of a cliff or notice that the milk we’re about to drink smells sour. What you need to ask yourself, though, is what kind of alarm is being set off by this otherwise innocuous number puzzle and what sort of evolutionary function that might be serving. What do you think? Is it really dangerous? What about it makes you afraid? If you feel there really is some threat to life and limb, you may want to consider long-term counseling.

Q. About six weeks ago, I found out my boyfriend was cheating on me. I didn’t care who with—I just broke it off. I can’t stand being cheated on. The next day, though, as I was driving by my best friend’s house, I saw his car in her driveway. I asked her about it later on, and it turned out she was the one he was seeing.
Now, I’ve moved on in my love life, but I don’t really know what to do about my best friend now. We used to have afternoon tea once or twice a week and do a lot of things together—none of which I seem to be able to do by myself now. It’s just not the same. Is this friendship over?

A. That would depend on how your feel about your friend at this point. Do you think you can each get past this awkward period in your friendship and move on? It doesn’t sound like it bothers you that she ended up with your boyfriend, which is great. Is she going to be smug about it, though, do you think, and if she is, will that bother you? Would it bother you that, knowing how you feel about being cheated on, she colluded with someone to do just that to you? Would you be inclined to trust her again after that? For that matter, how important is trust in your friendship? Would you, for example, be trying to fall asleep but be unable to keep from picturing her snickering about things you have confided in her, and what she might do with that information after she’s finished being entertained by it? I mean, do you really know what her intentions are with regard to the relationship? It might be worthwhile to ascertain the answers to some of these questions before you make your decision as to how to proceed.