The Advice Goddess: May 2015

I’ve always been a feelings stuffer, but I’ve been reading about vulnerability creating intimacy, blah, blah, blah, so I’m trying to be an open book. Though my boyfriend appreciates this, he keeps telling me there’s a line between expressiveness and my making everything an emotional issue to be hashed out. He last said this when I confessed that I had Googled his ex-girlfriend and felt threatened by how pretty she is. Should I have kept that to myself?

It’s great that you’ve thrown yourself into the trenches of Self-Improvementville, but the way you connect with someone is by letting them see who you are, not poking them in the eye with it every 20 minutes. Vulnerability shouldn’t be a fancy word for “everything you say or do hurts my feelings.” This Carnival Of Insecurities presented as problems for your boyfriend to solve turns his life with you into a never-ending emotional chorewheel. (Remember, he’s in a relationship with you, not a psychology internship.)

This isn’t to say you’re wrong to look to your boyfriend for soothing. But before you press a problem on him, ask yourself how it would affect him, whether he can fix it, and whether it’s really his business to know. Not all feelings are made for sharing. Some need to go off in a corner and die a quiet death on their own. Still, you aren’t without help in ushering them there. (This is what therapists, best friends, and the Journaling-Industrial Complex were invented for.)

People think that keeping romance alive takes a $10,000-a-night Spanish castle package, complete with moonlight carriage rides with an aria-singing Placido Domingo jogging behind. But it’s actually the mundane daily stuff that matters -- how you and your partner respond to each other’s seemingly unimportant remarks and gestures. It turns out that telling your partner “I can’t find the salt shaker anywhere” isn’t just an expression about a lost object; it’s what marriage researcher John Gottman calls a “bid for connection.”

In a study Gottman did with newlyweds, he found that the ones still married six years later were overwhelmingly those who consistently engaged with their partner and met those “bids” with “turn-towards.” Turning toward a partner means being responsive -- soothing, encouraging, supportive, or maybe just showing interest. This involves, for example, replying to your partner’s remark about the lost salt shaker -- even with “I hate when that happens!” rather than “Lemme finish this ‘Minecraft’ session” or saying nothing at all (effectively treating them like some old couch you stopped noticing).

This “turning toward” thing is something you and your boyfriend can each do. Think of it as treating each other like you haven’t forgotten you love each other. It’s smart relationship policy and smart life policy -- wiser than getting in the habit of responding to a partner’s “I’m starting a machete collection” with “That’s nice, dear.”

The guy I’ve been seeing for a month just told me that he doesn’t want a relationship or monogamy. I told him from the start that I was looking for something “real” and wanted to take it slowly. I did sleep with him too quickly -- on the first date. Still, I feel that men don’t really respect what you say you’re looking for. They get what they want and then leave. How do I keep this from happening in the future?

Nothing like tearing off all your clothes on the first date to say “I want to take it slowly.” (Your words said no, but your thighs had a marching band and a banner: “Welcome Home, Big Guy!”)

Many women claim to be seeking something “real” — either because they are or because they don’t want it to seem like their exercise program is “the walk of shame.” Guys are hip to this, so they nod their heads about the “real”ness-seeking and then nudge the woman to see whether she’ll tumble into bed. In other words, your problem was not that the guy didn’t “respect” what you said you wanted, but that you didn’t. (This might be a good time to notice that “blame” is just “lame” wearing a “b” as a hat.)

To avoid another Sexodus, match your behavior to your goals. Research (and common knowledge) finds that having sex pronto is a bad idea for a woman who’s looking for something lasting with a guy.

This isn’t to say sex on the first or second date never leads to more. It’s just a risky strategy to sleep with a man before he’s emotionally attached to you — like when your answer to the question “So… how long have you two lovebirds been together?” is “It’s actually coming up on two and a half beers!”

My boyfriend has a crazy ex-wife who can’t let go. She is the meanest, most vengeful and manipulative person, initially convincing the 15-year-old son she has with my boyfriend that I’m the reason “Dad won’t come back.” (He actually divorced her after she, in a fit of rage, made a false police report about him.) She also slashed my tires and spread a rumor that my boyfriend is a child molester. I love him dearly, and we feel we’re soul mates, but his ex-wife is making it so hard to be happy. What can I do?

Don’t take this woman’s behavior personally. And yes, I’m serious. Assuming what you say about her is true, she seems to be one of those born bar brawlers, ever on the lookout for a reason to break a bottle over someone’s head and start the second Hundred Years’ War. If she could, she’d not only slash your tires but take a sponge bath in the Fountain of Youth so she could live long enough to slash your great-great-grandchildren’s, too.

The problem is, because she isn’t acting from anything resembling reason, there’s no reasoning with her. As personal security expert Gavin de Becker says about the irrationally persistent in his terrific book “The Gift of Fear,” “There is no straight talk for crooked people.” So, practically speaking, short of finding a home security company that sends out zombie squads by radio call, all that you, personally, can do is decide whether you find love and soulmatery worth the trade-offs in terror and tire costs. As for what your boyfriend can do, the answer, unfortunately, is “not much more”: Install video surveillance; document everything she does; and use the legal system to the extent he can (and the extent that seems prudent).

The following advice — to use gratitude as a buffer against ugliness — might sound like it’s from the Little Miss Sunshine Solutions Department, but there’s actually solid science behind it. Research by social psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky and her colleagues finds that people are meaningfully happier when they take regular stock of the things they have to be grateful for. (A caveat: This happiness-increasing effect was found only for people who did this blessings counting once a week, maybe, the researchers surmise, because doing it more often felt like a chore.)

So consider getting gratitudinal once a week, maybe on Sunday night. You could even write five things down on slips of paper and put them in a “Gratitude Jar” so you have a visual reminder of how good you actually have it when things go bad. This may also help you avoid getting snippy with the irritatingly well-meaning who chirp, “What goes around comes around!” Right. If there is such a thing as karma, it seems to go after the truly heinous offenders first, like all the people who ever dropped a straw wrapper or let out a puff of tail wind in the elevator.