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 to set a romantic mood in our apartment.

Reality, like angry little dogs, often bites. Every day, I wake up wishing for home-invasion housecleaners. But, as much as both Nature and I abhor a vacuum, at a certain point, I have to pull one out, lest my rugs provide shelter to a lot of little things with a lot of little legs.

I bet the doc doesn’t have patients show up at whim: “Hi, I was in the neighborhood, and I thought I’d have a physical.”

A “love” like hers sends chills down a man’s spine — that is, when the man happens to have one. Did you forget yours at the airport? Maybe leave it at a hotel? Although your wife is engaging in outrageous emotional abuse, your reaction — your fear of her rage, which she uses to control you and get her way — is what keeps it going.

Q: 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 news of a female body being found in a remote area — or not found after a disappearance.

Q: 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.

divorce his wife for me. He has been married five times and cheated on all of his wives. I have reason to believe he'euro;'s still having sex with his ex-wife. I´m not sure what to do. I refinanced my house a few months after meeting him and paid off his and his wife´s $14,000 credit card debt (my idea, to help him out of the marriage).

Q: 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 him. (I take an antiviral drug for this daily, and I’d have him wear protection during intercourse.) Do you think he knows I have herpes? Maybe he just isn’t interested in me romantically and doesn’t want me getting too attached. —Puzzled

Q: 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, and probably any issues with me). She respects my opinion, but sometimes I feel she only asks for it so I won t feel second banana to him. We ve only been dating eight months, and I feel she believes what she says about their friendship, but part of me worries that she s still in love with him but not aware of it. During one of their long phone chats, if he said he wanted to be with her after all, I suspect I d be dumped fast. Second Best

Q: 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 own property together. But, although she s living with a new partner, she sometimes wants to borrow his car, have him pick up the dogs, or drop off some paperwork. They phone about every other day, and not a week goes by without his stopping over occasionally for a family dinner. I get plenty of his time, energy and affection, and I know their relationship isn t romantic. The issue is split loyalty all the effort he s putting into remaining loving friends with a woman who d love to see our relationship fail. Am I being petty and jealous? It feels like she’s clinging hard and so is he.