I’m afraid I’m never going to find anyone as good as my ex-boyfriend. He was abusive (emotionally, occasionally physically), manipulative, passive-aggressive, and we were terrible for each other, yet he still knows me better than anyone else in my life, and I don’t know how to change this or get past it. I’ve turned into one of those girls who constantly rejects ‘nice guys’. What do I do?

He knows you better than anyone else in your life? Bullshit. What does that even mean? You don’t know yourself, so how is it possible that he has a fucking clue?

Believe me, all he knows is how to press your buttons. He can manipulate you because you’re emotionally or intellectually weak, but that’s not a connection. That’s being fucked with.

He’s a predator and you’re easy prey. You’re a victim, and he can smell it on you. Hell, I could tell it with your first two words. That doesn’t mean I know you. It just means I know how to take advantage of you.

So yeah, quit being afraid. Have some fucking self respect. Don’t be a victim.

I know, it’s easier said than done, but put the time and effort in now before you get locked into a pattern of this hopeless crazy nonsense.

I’m sixteen, and I’ve always been identified as “the girl with the long, poofy hair” and I’m sick of it. My hair is too thick to straighten with a flat iron every day, and even when I do, it still looks awful. My friends all say it’s beautiful the way it is, but I seriously disagree with them. They also don’t know that it takes me an hour to wash every day. I really want to get it permanently straightened, but I don’t know if it’s worth all of the judgment I will get from my friends, family, and long-time hairdresser and the constant maintenance. Should I do it?

The good news is you obviously don’t have any real problems. The bad news is I don’t give a fuck about your hair.

You wanna know what to do? Quit your fucking whining, cut it all off, and donate your hair to sick kids who would appreciate it a hell of a lot more than you.

So I screwed up a good friendship with another girl by saying I was in love with her and making out with her a few times, despite knowing she’s been in love with another girl (who has a boyfriend) for 4 years. Now she insists we’re still friends but barely talks to me, while I want to call her out on her patheticalness and half-assery. And kiss her again.

I hate how everyone in this school makes a big deal of a boy and a girl sitting next to each other, let alone two girls making out without being in a relationship. I don’t want to be her girlfriend or the girl with “unrequited lesbian love”. Just a girl who kisses her girl friend sometimes.

How do I convince her it’s not a big deal? Or should I just give up on the friendship altogether?

First things first, no more telling her that you’re in love with her. She’s a friend. Sure, you love her, but the “in love” stuff is fucking with her head. Actually, it’s fucking with yours too. You’re not even sure what you mean when you say it, so until you do, keep that bomb in the bay.

As for damage control, your best bet is to fess up to an isolated stretch of clumsy infatuation, and then play it cool. Put a bow on the mess and start calling it the past.

Say something like, “I had a little crush on you there for a minute, but I’m completely over it now. I’m not in love with you, and it wasn’t fair for me to have said that I was. Sorry for almost fucking things up with our friendship, but hey, it’s high school. Shit happens.”

Acknowledge that you squirted awkward sauce all over a perfectly good platonic relationship, and let her know that this is you wiping it off.

Don’t try and convince her that “it’s not a big deal.” That’s not the way she sees the world. After all, your friend has spent four years pining for a straight, unavailable girl. It takes a certain kind of hopeless romantic to pull that off, even in high school.

You have to understand that for her, this kind of stuff is a huge deal. You’re never gonna make this seem small. All you can do is make it seem like old news.

The tricky part is that you really will have to play it cool. You may not be over her just yet, but until you are, can you fake it for the sake of the friendship? If not, don’t bother with any of this.

Good luck.

Why do people keep talking about Don Draper’s wardrobe? I feel like Roger Sterling’s is so much fucking hotter, no?

Roger Sterling is a coat hanger with silver hair. The man was born to wear a suit, and he does it well. So yeah, if you’d rather run your fingers down Roger’s lapel, go right ahead.

I’ll still be on the sofa loosening Don’s tie.

I just found a bunch of open condom wrappers in the pocket of my boyfriend bathrobe— a robe he has had hanging on the back of his bathroom door since the beginning of time. He and I haven’t used condoms since April (I got on birth control around then). Is it crazy to consider this a little fishy? Why would he stick the wrappers in a bathrobe as opposed to throwing them in the garbage as he usually did?

It’s probably nothing. A bathrobe pocket of the average bachelor seems like a perfectly legitimate place for condom wrappers to lay dormant for months if not years, especially if the robe has been hanging on the bathroom door since the beginning of time.

Unless you already suspect your boyfriend of cheating, try not to get all “Murder She Wrote” with circumstantial shit like this.

My boyfriend won’t masturbate in front of me. This bothers me. Am I being unreasonable?

I love my boyfriend a lot and, in general, the sex is pretty good (we both have stressful careers, and sex sometimes takes a backseat to work, which can be frustrating for both of us).

I’ve never been able to orgasm from intercourse, so often, after we have sex, I’ll masturbate while my boyfriend watches / helps. I find this highly satisfying, and I know my boyfriend does, too. I’d love to watch my boyfriend jerk off, but the two times I brought it up, he got uncomfortable and said he didn’t want to. I tried to push him a little bit, to find out what made him feel weird about it (especially because I masturbate in front of him all the time), and he didn’t really have a good answer. He basically said that, if he were going to masturbate in front of me, he’d rather just fuck me.

I think what bothers me so much is not the jerking off, per se, but more that this is a sign that he’s not very sexually adventurous. I mean, if you won’t jerk off in front of me, will you ever be okay with all the other fun things I fantasize about doing together?

To be clear, I love him a lot, and we have really hot vanilla sex. But, I’m thinking about marrying this guy, and while I’m okay with vanilla sex most of the time, I can’t imagine ONLY having vanilla sex for the rest of my life.

So – two questions. First, is it strange that he won’t jerk off in front of me? Maybe he has some weird masturbation technique & he’s embarrassed? Or, maybe it’s something else? Second, any tips on how to talk to him about expanding our sexual repertoire? In general, we have really good communication, but this topic is a little awkward for us.

Okay, this is no big deal.

It’s not that it’s too personal for him to share it with you. It’s that it’s too private. Masturbation is his “me time,” and you’re not invited. You might as well have demanded to watch him read a magazine while he takes a shit.

I know it seems silly, but try putting yourself in his tube socks. When your boyfriend jerks off, he’s looking at porn or he’s up in his head fantasizing. If you’re there with him, he can’t really do either. That leaves him stuck being very self-aware in a very vulnerable state, and so naturally he’s not responding to your demands.

Maybe if you gave him explicit permission to pretend like you aren’t there, it might make it easier. Tell him to close his eyes and go off to his happy place. Of course, then you’d have to let him. That would require that you shut the fuck up and just watch. No helping. No talking. Nothing, at least for the first few times until he got used to it.

Alternately, you could make a game out of it. Trick him into a mutual masturbation session by pretending it’s some kind of team sport, something that would essentially be the sexual equivalent of playing air guitar. Guys play air guitar, right? I dunno, call it air fucking.

On second thought, that’s a stupid idea.

Listen, at the end of the day, he may just not want to be your little jerking monkey. That doesn’t mean he’s boring. It just means you’ve found a boundary. Fine. Whatever. Don’t worry, he’s still got his kinks. Just because he’d rather spank it solo doesn’t mean he’s not more than willing to strap a ball gag to your face and tie you to the furniture.

(For what it’s worth, I bet he’d be in to the ball gag. Something about your tone makes me think he’d really like to do that to you.)