Q: 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 to wait. Really what I want is to have sex with a man I like as soon as reasonably possible without getting labeled by him (consciously or subconsciously) as an expendable floozy.

Q: 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 contemplate going on a stricter diet, what comes to mind is feeling angry, tired, and hungry at my high-stress job. My wife said that I obviously love food more than her, and that if I won’t lose weight for her, maybe I’ll do it for our boys.

Q: 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 “the cultural ideal of hypergamy — that women must marry up.”

Q: 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 an...

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...

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.

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.