Advice Goddess: His life is methy ....

My girlfriend had a drug problem but claimed she’d been clean for seven years. It turns out she’s been using for the entire year we’ve been together. Two months ago, she went to rehab. I thought she was doing all right afterward, but then she admitted that she’d twice gotten high and had sex with a guy she met at rehab. I think I can forgive her, but I’m wondering whether I can ever believe her again.

Random urine tests can say a lot about a person, like that she either got the dog to pee into a cup or could one day give birth to a fine litter of Labradoodles. Drug addicts lie. Yours has been lying to you from day one, and not about inconsequential stuff. (Don’t run to get an HIV test; grow wings and fly there.) Your girlfriend’s motto appears to be “Just say ‘Don’t mind if I do!’ to drugs.” You could say she’s been cheating on you with drugs. Actually, she’s been cheating on drugs with you. Make no mistake about what comes first and who comes second. That’s not going to change overnight -- and maybe not ever. You can someday have a loving, mutual relationship -- once you find a partner whose moments of painful honesty involve admitting to stuff like scraping your new car getting into the garage, not “Oh, I had sex with a crackhead I met in rehab. And how was your day?”

I planned a cross-country trip to introduce my girlfriend of five months to my family. She just sprang on me that she wants my family to meet “all of” her, which includes her 9-year-old daughter. My family knows she has a child, and I really enjoy her daughter, but I’m really not ready to introduce both of them. It would suggest that I’m taking on the role of a father, that she’s important to me, that I’m ready to care for her, and that they should accept her as part of my life. I’m okay with their meeting the daughter later if our relationship progresses, but it’s still so new that we haven’t even had our first big argument yet. Is it okay for me to first want to love the woman and decide whether she’s the one? Is it a warning sign that there are already issues regarding her child?

It would be clear you were in the wrong place if you’d spent the first date brimming with child-loathing: “Kids require a total commitment for 18 years -- or maybe 13, if you can get them to run away as teenagers.” But it’s perfectly reasonable to want to be called baby for a while before you commit to having one, and especially one at the soon-to-be-sullen age of 9 who already calls some other guy daddy. Ironically, it’s you, the single, childless guy who’s taking the more responsible, parental approach: waiting to see whether the relationship has legs before you start acting like you’re all a family, which could end badly. Kids need stability. Ideally, “Who’s your stepdaddy?” isn’t a question a little girl should have to answer while standing by the revolving door outside the men’s department.Your girlfriend’s apparent attempt to leverage your affection for her into a Very Brady Vacation could be a straight-out power play or a fear-driven test to see whether you’re up to quasi-daddyhood. Think hard about the day-to-day details of being with a woman with a kid, like how her daughter will ultimately come first and how her presence will change the relationship dynamics. (You can’t just tie a kid to a parking meter and make it up to her by taking her to pee in somebody’s bushes after lunch.)If, for the right woman, the tradeoffs wouldn’t be too much for you, reassure your girlfriend of that, and then lay out the path to a relationship that works for you (more of a get-to-know-you stroll than a get-to-know-you freeway chase). If that timetable doesn’t work for her, well, there’s got to be a door there somewhere. But the fact that you have self-knowledge and the integrity to be unwilling to rush things suggests that she’d be prudent to see whether there’s something between you -- that is, besides an anonymous call to Child Services by someone making serious accusations: adults around her wearing Crocs with socks and not letting her wear makeup like all the other fourth-grade girls.

If you can’t stop the rain, you might just make the best of a bad situation and position your girlfriend over your Slip’N Slide. As for why she’s so often inconsolable, it may be because her tears are, in part, a cry for more attention from you. Holding back on giving it, like those parents who let their babies scream their little lungs out all night long, is exactly what you shouldn’t do, according to “the dependency paradox.” Social psychologist Brooke C. Feeney, who coined the term, found that in a committed relationship, the more a person feels they can count on their partner to be responsive to their calls for comforting and support the more independent that person can be. So, for three weeks, try being much more affectionate and caring -- and not just when she’s crying. Maybe even give yourself a quota of three out-of-the-blue shows of affection per day. When she does cry, don’t try to “reach” her, except to hold her in your arms and let her sob into your shirt. Postpone any discussion till the storm subsides, tempting as it is to get right in there all guy-like and solve things -- taking her, weeping, to Home Depot and calling over a salesperson: “‘Scuse me, sir…got anything to fix this leak?”

There comes a time in a man’s life when he’s so desperate to be abducted by aliens that he goes to Roswell and tries hitchhiking: “Yer galaxy or bust!” But don’t stick your ex with all the blame. After all, nothing says “I never want to speak to you again” like picking up the phone to have yet another conversation about it. Talking probably seems kind, but giving her what she wants in the short term is cruel in the long term because it gives her hope -- and reason to call back. Answer one last call. Tell her only that you will no longer be answering her calls and that “you” need to move on. If, somehow, she sneakily gets through, gently reiterate that message and immediately hang up. Sure, it’s a stock plot of chick flicks, a girl annoying a guy into loving her. Unfortunately, if this were a movie, it would be the sort shot by your doctor using a tiny snaking camera, with your girlfriend typecast as the polyp.