On Crowd Nine
The man I’ve been in a long-term on-and-off relationship with has started seeing someone else. He’s cagey about the details, but what’s really bothering me is that she has no clue that I exist. I’m tempted to write her an anonymous note, telling her that I was here first, have been here a long time, and am continuing to have sex with her Lothario.
—Pen Poised
Like many people around the holidays, your thoughts turn to the have-nots: “Hi, I believe you have not heard that I’m having sex with your new boyfriend.” The reality is, you’re looking to escape feeling vulnerable by lashing out. (When life gives you lemons…break some other woman’s windows with them.) The “anonymous” note is really about telling this woman, “Hey! I’m here! I’m lovable! I’m important!” Well, there’s a better way to say those things, and it won’t even take a stamp. Just call this man and say goodbye. This means finally admitting that the parameters of this relationship aren’t working for you. Come on…you’re well-aware you aren’t his one and only, yet there you are complaining, “Waiter, waiter! There’s a harem in my soup!” What is there to say to you but “Yes, madam, of course there is. It’s the Lothario special. It comes with other women on the side.”

How likely is it that a date could end in a shallow grave? Well, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 2005, 513 women in the U.S. were murdered by “boyfriends” (men they were dating but not married to) and 164 men were murdered by “girlfriends.” (And yes, men, too, are victims of domestic violence, much of which goes unreported.) These intimate partner murder stats are a bit unreliable because the FBI doesn’t always identify the perp/victim relationship, but even if you include the 2,363 uncategorized murders of women, a woman’s chances of being a victim of “dinner and a murder” are seriously small. Divide the 513 number by the population of unmarried American women ages 15 to 64 — 45,752,000, per a 2009 Census Bureau sample — and a woman has an 11 in a million chance of getting offed by her date. (Statistically, she’s far more likely to speak Cherokee.)
Of course, those odds of getting murdered really only apply if she’s anywoman on anydate with anyman. Unfortunately, partly because people are reluctant to be seen as “blaming the victim,” there’s a politically correct popular notion that intimate partner violence happens at random, to random victims, kind of like an air conditioner falling out of a high window just as you’re underneath walking the dog.

But, various authorities on violence, including personal security expert Gavin de Becker and domestic violence researcher Jacquelyn Campbell, have independently identified very similar coercive, autonomy-limiting behaviors in men who murder their female partners. These behaviors echo the four items from a 1993 Statistics Canada survey that researchers Martin Daly and Margo Wilson noted were strong predictors that a woman will experience serious violence from a male partner: “1. He is jealous and doesn’t want you to talk to other men; 2. He tries to limit your contact with family or friends; 3. He insists on knowing who you are with and where you are at all times; 4. He calls you names to put you down or make you feel bad.”

Although government agencies and victim assistance organizations parrot the politically correct warning that intimate partner violence “can happen to anyone,” the truth is, certain women are more likely to be victimized, and research shows a stew of contributing social, financial, and cultural factors. (Poverty and prior experience of family violence are two biggies.) Amazingly, there’s almost no research showing the particular psychology that might make one more prone to get into (and stay in) a physically violent relationship. (In the scant findings there are, researchers are unable to tease out whether, say, low self-esteem precipitated victimization or was caused by it.) But, it seems likely that women who have low self-worth, who are “pleasers,” and who have abandonment issues — women who are more likely to stay in emotionally abusive relationships — are more likely to stay in physically abusive ones. De Becker, in his vast experience with victims and victimizers, concurs, observing in “The Gift of Fear” that “men who cannot let go choose women who cannot say no.”

The muzzle of political correctness — intended to protect the feelings of victims — actually makes women more likely to be victimized by stifling discussion about who becomes a victim and how they might prevent it. Interestingly, the bounds of political correctness don’t extend to how we portray men. But, demonizing all men as deadly is like demonizing crossing the street because many people die each year at intersections (983 in 2009). A better idea is to look both ways. In relationships, this means assessing your individual risk for victimization and fixing feelings of low self-worth instead of trying to plaster over them with a partner — a partner you may feel compelled to cling to no matter what. In dating, this means engaging your judgment — not going off into the woods with some guy you barely know but also not seeing life as one giant “Law & Order” episode: “Hey, pretty lady…in the mood for a murder-suicide, or would you rather just see a movie?”

(c)2011, Amy Alkon, all rights reserved. Got a problem? Write Amy Alkon, 171 Pier Ave, #280, Santa Monica, CA  90405, or e-mail AdviceAmy@aol.com (www.advicegoddess.com)Read Amy Alkon’s book: “I SEE RUDE PEOPLE: One woman’s battle to beat some manners into impolite society” (McGraw-Hill, $16.95).

This guy treats pleasuring you like it’s something on a chore wheel.
Bizarrely, you’re in “friends with benefits” relationship that’s short on benefits, which is like buying a blender that doesn’t blend, a Cuisinart that doesn’t cuise. Unfortunately, the elusive female orgasm is especially persnickety when one’s partner sets up a sexual ambience reminiscent of one of those movies where Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson are staring down a ticking time bomb: “Hey, baby, just relax, lay back and let it happen — anytime before this kitchen timer I’ve placed on your nightstand strikes :60!”
Sure, poor Booboo might have niggling fears you’ll get attached, but it isn’t like you’re buying baby clothes and leaving wedding magazines around. It’s unlikely he’d force numerous icky conversations about boundaries on some chickie of his more recent acquaintance. But, probably because he’s known you forever, he feels free to go manners-optional and let his worries all hang out: “Don’t take your coat off. You won’t be staying. And by the way, I’d prefer if you’d fake your orgasms. It would be so much less work for me.”
Yep, this boy toy of yours is a real animal in bed — a rat gnawing away at your self-confidence. Why are you still involved with him? Well, there’s a tendency to try to fix a thing instead of just bailing and to get so caught up in the momentum of your efforts that you neglect to consider whether the thing should just be put out on the curb. In continuing to get in bed with a man who  can keep his hands off you and pretty much does, you’re a co-conspirator in your feeling like crap. It’s really damaging to be with somebody who isn’t into you. Even in an FWB situation, you need a man who finds you hot — or at least is enough of a friend to give you the sense that he’s undressing you with his eyes, not using them to drop a refrigerator box over you.

Epic Frail
I’ve had a crush on a guy who’s been flirting with me at my neighborhood coffeehouse. Today, he sat by the door, watching as four elderly people struggled to go out — a couple pushing walkers and, about five minutes later, a couple who were all hunched over and using canes. I was seated in the back, but when I saw nobody was helping them, I ran over and held the door. Is his behavior a clear sign that he’d be bad boyfriend material?
—Door Closing

Sometimes it’s hard to know what to do when you see somebody in need. A person falls down on the sidewalk in front of you. Do you just step over him? Or do you stop and take his wallet and then step over him? In assessing people, I tend to go with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s notion: “Action is character.” Or, in this case, inaction. I personally don’t know how you sit back and enjoy the view as a parade of infirm elderly people struggle out a door, but I do know that things aren’t always as they seem. Maybe it looked like he was looking but he was in some sort of fugue state. Maybe he has a cranky, independent granny who sees any help as an insult: “Why don’tcha just throw me in a hole and stick a wreath over my head?!” If you end up going out with him, do what you should with any guy you date: Look closely at his behavior, especially when he thinks nobody’s watching. Be honest with yourself if it seems a fundamental lack of empathy kept him in his seat — much as you’d like to believe that there’s a rash of pranksters going around to coffeehouses and gluing all the hot guys’ feet to the floor.

If The Shoo Fits?
Through no one’s fault but my own, I am a rather pathetic, washed-up character — a man approaching 40, slaving away for $10/hour, and getting around on my bike after having to sell my car. Yet, I’m ever driven by my wants — for pretty ladies in their early 20s. Do I have any hope?
—Seeking
It’s tough attracting the ladies when you have transportation issues: “I’ll be over at 8. Wanna run behind my bike, or would you prefer to balance yourself on my handlebars?” This might fly if you’re 23 and parking your bike outside the drafty garret where you write mind-blowingly beautiful poetry or if your hobbies include shrinking your “carbon footprint” while snarling that the eco-posers tooling around in their Priuses are fouling the environment. Unfortunately, most hot young chickies willing to date a guy cresting 40 expect him to have achieved some status and position, and not a position paying slightly better than fast food. Still, if you can’t substantially increase your income, you might increase your status by making a difference. You could start and run a humanitarian organization (like Robert Werner, who started BC Digital Divide, refurbishing donated computers and giving them to the needy). But, if you do this solely to get chicks, they’ll surely see through it. Ultimately, this mostly has to be about a passion to help others, and not just to help others who are 23 and hot out of their clothes.

(c)2011, Amy Alkon, all rights reserved. Got a problem? Write Amy Alkon, 171 Pier Ave, #280, Santa Monica, CA  90405, or e-mail AdviceAmy@aol.com (www.advicegoddess.com)Read Amy Alkon’s book: “I SEE RUDE PEOPLE: One woman’s battle to beat some manners into impolite society” (McGraw-Hill, $16.95).

When you start to care about somebody, it’s nice to give him little romantic gifts — flowers, a gourmet cupcake, a sweet card, weeping genital sores.

Surely you’d tell the guy pronto if you had a cold: “Hey, don’t get too close, because you could catch this and have an unpleasant few days.” But colds go away. Herpes is forever.

Yeah, I know, so are diamonds. But, unlike a mammoth rock on a girl’s finger, a big genital pustule isn’t anything you want to be showing off to the crew at the office: “Look at it gleam under the fluorescents!”

Genital herpes hasn’t always been such a big stigmatized deal — to the point where it’s led to the tanking of countless potential relationships. Until the late ‘70s, it was seen as “cold sores down there” and often not even worthy of a visit to the doctor. Except in rare cases, the physical symptoms are relatively minor. At the first outbreak, especially, it feels a bit like the flu, with fever, headache, and muscle aches. There’s also tingling and itching, and there can be pain, burning during urination (and don’t forget the yucky sores!).

So, what led to all the stigma? The sexual revolution, for starters. In the mid-‘70s, with lots of people having lots of sex, genital herpes spread (as probably did the common cold). In 1979, the CDC, seeing the herpes stats rising, got a little hysterical and announced an “epidemic” (of cold sores!), and the media ran with it. In 1980, Time magazine declared herpes “The New Sexual Leprosy,” and in 1982, The Miami Herald called it a “cruel disease.” “Cruel disease”? Multiple sclerosis is a cruel disease. But, an infection that gives you the itchies and makes you walk funny for a few days? As herpes simplex expert Dr. Adrian Mindel told The Independent in 1987, “For the majority of people herpes is … nothing more than an occasional nuisance.”

The thing is, if you’re having an outbreak of your “occasional nuisance” and your naked parts are rubbing against somebody else’s naked parts, you could infect him. The risk of transmission may be reduced by daily antiviral treatment and condom use — provided there are no contagious areas outside the condom zone. But, you can be in a contagious stage and not know it. Of the approximately 1 in 6 U.S. adults ages 14 to 48 who have genital herpes, 80 percent don’t show visible symptoms, says herpes researcher Dr. Anna Wald. Research by Wald and her colleagues found that even when herpes carriers showed no symptoms, they were contagious 10 percent of the time. Of course, that’s on average. Wald explained to me that there’s a range: “Some people may be contagious 1 percent of the time, and others 30 percent, but we don’t have a good way to predict who is who.”

Putting this guy at risk for herpes without giving him any choice in the matter was not only unfair but pretty dumb. For many people, the betrayal is the biggest problem. If you tell somebody before he fools around with you and maybe pull a fact sheet off the Internet to allay his fears, he’ll be less likely to ditch you, and he won’t have the rage he would at being unwittingly exposed. To launch the conversation, maybe say something like “Ever gotten a cold sore? I get them sometimes…but not on my lip!” And then, as DatingWithHerpes.org advises, don’t say “I have herpes,” which makes you sound like you’re having an outbreak right then. Instead, say “I carry the virus for herpes” and explain how often you have outbreaks…which should make it sound more like a manageable annoyance than the guy’s ticket to a lifetime of Crusty Pustules Anonymous meetings.

NOTE: There are press reports, tracing back to the respected Herpes Viruses Association of the U.K., that drug company Burroughs Wellcome caused the initial stigmatization of people with herpes by marketing the stigma to sell its drug. The association could provide me no evidence supporting its accusation, nor could I find any in 51 years of newspaper and journal articles (from 1960 to 2011). I’m very much for going after drug companies for malfeasance, but not in the absence of evidence they’ve committed any.

Poach Class
Two male friends who know I’m happily married have made a pass at me recently. One’s kind of a player, so…whatever. The other I considered a very good friend (of seven years), and I find myself remarkably angry with him. Some friend. I feel like posting a blog item, “I have never been unfaithful to my husband and never will be.”
–Betrayed
When one dog tries to hump another, it generally isn’t because he finds the other dog ethically sketchy. I get that you aren’t a chihuahua with computer privileges, but there’s a good chance the thought process for these guys was dog-humpingly deep. I had you send me your photo, and you’re gorgeous. Men make passes at women who are blindingly attractive — and not necessarily because they devalue them as friends or think they’ll be quick to toss their wedding ring on another man’s night table. Sometimes, impulse, dirty martinis, desperation, and seven years of a woman’s hotitude just come to a head. This isn’t to say you should excuse what these guys did or continue being friends with them if that’s painful, but it may help to understand that the calculation here may not have involved a comprehensive risk/benefit analysis…beyond you’re beautiful and they’re drunk, and if they’re going to be relegated to meaningless anonymous sex, they’d like it to be with you.

Speaking Ill Of The Dud
One of my coolest girlfriends is in love with a total dud. He gets wasted at every party, talks in front of her about how hot other women are, and is generally pretty disrespectful of her. I keep wanting to yank him aside and ask him whether he knows how lucky he is. Now I’m thinking I need to yank my friend aside and tell her she can do better.
—Disgusted
It’s considered an act of friendship to tell a girlfriend that she’s got a piece of spinach stuck between her teeth. You’d think she’d be equally appreciative when you point out that she’s got a soulmate stuck in some other woman’s cleavage. But, her ego is probably all tied up in her belief that she’s found love, and she’d probably just get combative. Instead of telling her she’s making a mistake, try to get her to come to that conclusion by borrowing from an addiction therapy technique called “motivational interviewing.” Get her to talk about what she wants (all the wonderful qualities she’s seeking in a man), and then gently ask her how that stacks up against what she has. By drawing the discrepancies out of her, you’re leading her to do the math: She hasn’t so much fallen in love as she’s slipped in a pile of something somebody should’ve picked up with a plastic bag.

When you’ve been romantic with a woman for a decade and you’re taking her on yet another “passionate” getaway, it’s reasonable to expect she’ll be interested in doing more in bed than letting you watch as she does the crossword puzzle. (If she’s feeling kinky, you could be in for some mind-blowing sudoku.)
It cost you, what, $3,000 — the price of a TV the size of a small European country — to have her personally deliver the news that she wouldn’t be having sex with you? You’d be leading your friends in fuming if you hadn’t gotten all tangled up in your self-image as a gentleman. And no, just because a man buys a woman something — dinner, for example — that doesn’t mean she owes him sex. But, let’s be honest; we all know he isn’t buying dinner out of an overwhelming desire to feed hungry females free lobster, and it isn’t brotherly benevolence that’s behind an all-expenses-paid vacation from a man who does not earn a living as a game show host.
The question is, was this woman’s lack of pre-vacation disclosure a random act of jerkhood, utterly unpredictable, like a Russian satellite landing on some poor schlub’s beater Yugo? Or, more likely, was it utterly predictable based on years of your showing her you’d take whatever she dished out? Your lack of anger is telling. Anger gets triggered when you feel somebody’s shorted you on something you were entitled to — like the courtesy of a phone call (before you paid for yet another “passionate vacation”) informing you that the birds are taxidermied and the bees are dead.

Chances are, you’re a too-nice guy — a guy whose “niceness” is actually suckuppy-ness, who believes his perceived loserhood will be “cured” if only he can get into a relationship. Ironically, the loserhood is caused by the willingness to do anything for love. That doesn’t get you love; it gets you doing anything and everything for it and ending up with blue balls and a big hotel bill. In the future, even if you can’t quite believe you deserve a mutual relationship, you need to risk acting as if you do, and speak up and even bail whenever one turns out not to be. Everything won’t always be 50/50, but you and a woman you take on a romantic vacation should be on the same page about the proper placement of the “Do Not Disturb” sign: on the doorknob all weekend, as opposed to around her neck.

Odd Manischewitz Out
Several of my Jewish friends have found love on JDate. I am a 32-year-old man who isn’t Jewish and has no aspiration to convert but would like to give JDate a try. Huge faux pas?
—Lapsed Catholic
JDate advertises that its mission is sustaining “Jewish traditions” — apparently including the tradition of pissing off one’s parents by getting together with a Catholic. Where I live, in the 21 to 41 age group, I counted 279 non-Jewish JDaters, including four lesbians looking for nice Jewish girls. The thing to be wary of is that people are prone to be overly inclusive at the point of sale. A woman may sincerely believe some interfaithy thing can work, and then the relationship gets serious and her parents lay on the pressure, and before you know it, you’re getting dumped for Shlomo McShlomowitz. Should you end up dating some hot Hebrew, as tempting as it is to focus on all the ways you’re compatible, you’d better dig into all the ways you’re not. Sure, relationships are compromise, but it’s one thing to put off the zombie movie till next weekend and another thing entirely to try to answer the question “What will the children be?” with “Jewish on Wednesdays and Catholic on the weekends?”

It must have been hell for you in your previous relationship when stopping your boyfriend’s self-destructive behavior only involved putting out messages like “Just say no to chicken-fried steak and the occasional cigar.”
Some women do volunteer work; some women date it. You and your boyfriend are a classic combination, the drug addict and the enabler. Addict behavior is immature brat behavior — throwing over tomorrow to get your rocks off (or snort some rock) today. These days, your boyfriend’s nose might not be powdered (“Crack: The other white meth!”), but he’s leaving you “gone fishing” notes instead of going looking for “help wanted” signs. Then again, why should he man up when he can always count on you to mommy up?
Welcome to “the well-intentioned path to hell,” as Dr. Barbara Oakley puts it. Oakley, author of the fascinating book “Cold-Blooded Kindness,” studies “pathological altruism,” help that actually ends up hurting — sometimes both the helper and the person she’s supposed to be helping. Oakley explains that your boyfriend may not be the only one in the relationship who’s been getting a buzz on: “Part of our sense of altruism — of wanting to care for others at cost to ourselves — is related to the positive feelings we get from our nucleus accumbens and related areas (the brain’s pleasure center)…the same areas that are activated when we get high on drugs or gambling.”
You have a choice: Keep pressing your paw on the little lever for your do-gooder’s high, or accept the risk of seeking real love with the sort of man who can live without you but would really rather not. Real love means having a crush on a man as a human — respecting and admiring who he is, as opposed to pitying him for what he’s done to himself. A man who really loves you wants the best for you; he doesn’t guilt-trip you (“I did this all for you!”) into ignoring your own needs so you can better meet his. Should you decide to stay with your help object, inform him that you’ll bail if he doesn’t start putting out more than a clean urine sample. If he doesn’t come through, either accept your fate as Mommy II or finally act on what you’ve spent three years pretending not to know — that a woman without an addict is like a fish without a Smart car.

You’ve Got Stale
I’m a woman who’s been online dating for two years. I’ve noticed that people who’ve been on the dating site as long as I have often put up different pictures. By never changing my picture in two years, am I broadcasting that I’m a loser? I feel changing it seems more loserish, as in, “Hey, anyone want me from a different angle?”
—Still Here

Do you also suspect Banana Republic is going out of business every time they update their store windows? Changing your picture is a way to say “New and Improved!” — a classic advertising gambit that seems to perk up sales despite everybody knowing it probably means “Toothpaste’s largely the same, but check out the butterfly and sparklies we added to the package!” Keep in mind that research has shown that men are drawn to flirty, smiley shots of women, and common sense says to avoid cropping all your photos at the shoulders, as this leaves a little too much mystery about what shape the rest of you is in. Have fun while posing and you should seem like you’re having fun putting yourself out there — as opposed to having fears that the next man at your side will be the utility worker who discovers you sitting mummified on your couch.

(c)2011, Amy Alkon, all rights reserved. Got a problem? Write Amy Alkon, 171 Pier Ave, #280, Santa Monica, CA  90405, or e-mail AdviceAmy@aol.com (www.advicegoddess.com)Read Amy Alkon’s book: “I SEE RUDE PEOPLE: One woman’s battle to beat some manners into impolite society” (McGraw-Hill, $16.95).

Adjusting The Shudder
I’m an okay-looking guy, but I look terrible in photos. I am joining an online dating site and don’t know what to do about my picture. I can’t afford a photographer.
—Unphotogenic
Some people’s photos look best with some clever cropping. Apparently, yours look best if you crop out your head. Part of your problem is that you probably think of taking “a” picture (or three) instead of doing as professional photographers do — taking maybe 1,000. This basically means staging a photographic accident, meaning in at least one of the 1,000 shots, you should accidentally look like yourself or even better.
A novelist friend of mine, Sonya Sones, author of “The Hunchback of Neiman Marcus,” takes some fantastic photos of her various traumatized author friends. She says people look best when the photographer shoots from a little above them and advises against using a flash — ever — because “it makes people look ugly. Period.” She suggests shooting outdoors, in the shade: “In the sun, people get hideous haunted-house shadows under their eyes and noses, which is not a good look unless it happens to be Halloween.” I’ll add that you should experiment initially with different angles to find your best and try some shots in which you’re doing something you enjoy — fishing or grilling or playing poker — so you’ll forget to freeze and look awkward. Put in a little effort and you could soon be posting a picture that’s more NotBadLookingGuy123 than Quasimodo456 (“You had me at ‘Hell no!’”).

(c)2011, Amy Alkon, all rights reserved. Got a problem? Write Amy Alkon, 171 Pier Ave, #280, Santa Monica, CA  90405, or e-mail AdviceAmy@aol.com (www.advicegoddess.com)Read Amy Alkon’s book: “I SEE RUDE PEOPLE: One woman’s battle to beat some manners into impolite society” (McGraw-Hill, $16.95).