Q: I appreciate that you tell it like it is instead of telling people what they want to hear. I heard you on the radio saying that an online dating site isn't a very good venue for women over 40 who aren't very physically attractive. Honestly, on a scale of 1 to 10, I'm probably a 5. My marriage ended last year, and I'm ready to start dating again. Should I bother with online at all?

Q: Do men in troubled relationships often seek someone to give them a nudge to get out? I often attract these men, some of whom I suspect just want a backup relationship before splitting with the wife. I happen to be interested in the current man confiding in me about his angry, obsessive wife.

Q: My boyfriend of four years is a wonderful man who makes me incredibly happy. He was there for me throughout my breast cancer, making me feel sexy, beautiful, and loved. I'm 43, divorced five years. He's 41, never married, and his longest relationship was with a train wreck of an alcoholic on house arrest (I know, red flag).

Q: Loved your response to the bored-out-of-their-gourds parents of the 1-year-old. I'm three months pregnant and a little worried in the wake of a recent dinner party. There were four sets of new parents there, and all the wives seemed to resent the hell out of their husbands. The husbands, predictably, seemed defensive and angry in response. My husband and I have a really great partnership, and I'd like to keep it that way.

Q: My hubby and I had our first child last year, and we're so happy and proud to be the creators of the most adorable creature either of us has ever seen, but our marriage is tanking. We aren't naive; we expected change. But we're both stressed and exhausted and we never have sex.

Q: You wrote in your column, "Men, especially, are compelled to ditch what's chasing them and chase what's trying to ditch them." It seems you're advising that the simple desire to love a man must be approached without authenticity and personal integrity. Must a woman really scheme to get a man, using a painfully conscious strategy based on men's psychological makeup, and wait and wait like Cinderella until he reaches out to her?

Q: I married a domineering man 20 years my senior. We have two college-age kids. I've spent the past 22 years (half my life) navigating his ill-temperedness and high expectations, and my life is often chaotic and unhappy. For nine months, I've been infatuated with my super-hot 25-year-old co-worker, "Dax." I've tried to distance myself, but my husband met Dax, saw how buff Dax is, and offered him a landscaping job at our home!

Q: Seven months ago, when I met my boyfriend, I had no idea he had so many female friends. I’m 26; he's 30. I understand having opposite-sex friends to get perspective on dating, but he's like one of their girlfriends. He gabs on the phone with them constantly, and they treat him like their little teddy bear, inviting him to baby showers, bringing him leftovers, and baking him cookies. He only understands my jealousy as fear that he will cheat.

Q: The guy I've sorta been seeing travels around making videos for an extreme sports company but lives two hours away in the mountains. We met through a mutual friend, went to dinner and then had sex. We had a few more dates, and then he got a girlfriend. He contacted me after they broke up. I went up to see him, and we went to dinner and had sex. He then visited me, and I cooked him a lovely dinner and gave him a massage, putting lots of effort into everything, but he never puts much effort into us.

Q: I met this man, and it was instant attraction. I'm a 40-year-old woman with my own place, a car and a good job, and he's an ex-convict who served four years in prison for selling meth. He's very loving, but he has no car or driver's license (it expired during prison), has a minimum-wage job, and is too needy — always checking up on me and doubting where I am.