Here, your weekly installment of Ask Lynn, the advice column penned by BG’s alter ego at MSN.com (powered by Match.com). This week, we meet (again, for some reason that BG’s supercomputer has yet to determine; stay tuned) A Little Worn Out (ALWO), who was searching online for matches for a friend when this great guy came up. As in, the great guy ALWO was already dating. For three months! Why was his profile still active? Was she actively being played? “He hasn’t made any promises, but I don’t want to make a complete idiot out of myself, either,” she writes. How to handle it without being either passive or aggressive? Read Lynn’s response, and then come back here to comment!

Update: There are some structural changes going on over at MSN.com, after which the new Ask Lynns will wind up on a new page. So, just for now, this blast from the recent past!

Listen up, single New Yorkers.  Think it’s impossible to find a good worm in the biggest of apples?  Meet Sandra Schwartz-Pingrey, Founder and President of Cause & Affection Dating (formerly Cause and Effect), a matchmaking service that — like others before, but with a more individualized touch — brings together this perfect couple: dating and volunteering.

As Time Out New York reports, “a 2007 study conducted by the Corporation for National & Community Service revealed that New York’s volunteering rates ranked in the bottom three of 50 U.S. cities.”  Oof! Cause & Affection is doing its part to help improve this ranking by offering clients (screened via face-to-face interviews!  no online profiles!) a date structured around a charitable cause, such as taking shelter pooches out — together — for those proverbial “long walks.”

Soup kitchens can’t guarantee soul mates, of course, but hey: as Cause & Affection says, “Even if it goes bad…you did good.”

Young singles searching for love in Boston, say, have it hard enough. Now — societal age preferences and demographic clusters being what they are — try being a 50-year-old single mom in a Granite State “bedroom community,” where much of the nightlife likely consists of driving two hours from Boston and going to … bed. With that, we bring you this week’s installment — now on Mondays!* — of Ask Lynn, the advice column penned by BG’s alter ego at MSN.com (powered by Match.com). This week we meet “Searching in New Hampshire,” who, well, there you go.

She’s got two grown kids plus a 9-year-old — and room in her heart for a fella. Her hope both wanes — “I’m starting to feel that I need to move…as everyone around here is either married or in a relationship with women my age who don’t have younger kids” — and waxes: “I still feel that there must be men out there who like kids or have never had children and would like to experience them without the baby/toddler phase or miss having children around the house now.”

Yes, there must. And they are not made of wood. Or granite.

What suggestions — and reassurance — does Lynn have for Searching? Read the whole exchange, and then come back here to add your own!

* Our latest season of all-new adventures wrapped up a few Mondays ago >sniff< ! Stay tuned for more!

Here, your weekly installment — now on Mondays!* — of Ask Lynn, the advice column penned by BG’s alter ego at MSN.com (powered by Match.com). This week we meet Brian (nope, not Baffled Brian, or Brian in Baltimore, or Cryin’ Brian; just, elegantly, Brian), who, as many do, has been chatting casually with (at least) two women online. But among the many things he learned about them — enjoyment of long walks, equal comfort in both jeans and dress-up — was, it turned out, this: the two ladies are FRIENDS. With each other. Now, with Busted Brian, not so much.

But really. Was Brian Two-Timin’, or just … dating? (Specifically, the online version of what BG calls “Brady Dating” — ?) Find out what Lynn has to say, and then come back here to comment! (If you’re also commenting, casually, on another blog, we won’t mind.)

* Our latest season of all-new adventures wrapped up Monday before last >sniff< ! Stay tuned for more!

Here, your weekly installment — now on Mondays!* — of Ask Lynn, the advice column penned by BG’s alter ego at MSN.com (powered by Match.com). This week we meet Edgy in Erie, and right away we see where she got her classic alliterative nom-de-lovelorn:

“I find myself on edge all the time,” she writes of her boyfriend, “because …

1. He hasn’t followed through with the divorce.
2. He has cheated on me with her.
3. He talks to her often and seems overly concerned with the goings-on of her life (beyond kid-related things).”

Yep, Erie, we’re all edgy now too.

How to take that edge off? Find out what Lynn has to say here, and then come back here to comment!

* Our latest season of all-new adventures wrapped up last Monday >sniff<! Stay tuned for more …

Over at Tango, Jill Provost shares her first experience with a naughty, naughty, dirty-talking boyfriend, and offers advice for anyone giggling — or gagging — in the same situation.

Here, your weekly installment of Ask Lynn, the advice column penned by BG’s alter ego at MSN.com (powered byMatch.com). This week, we meet Not Sure, who, during a sloppy three-way (him, her, Johnnie Walker) blurted to her boyfriend that his “stamina” was “terrible.”

This did not go well.

What now? Can they bounce back … into bed and otherwise? Find out what Lynn has to say, and then come back here to comment!

You’ve got a friend on January 9, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,
For some reason, whenever I meet someone that I find cute and interesting, we always end up buddies when I would like more! How do I get past this and not feel rejected — and not lose a good friend?
— Everyone’s Buddy

Dear Everyone’s Buddy,
See, Jilted Guy?! This is the girl version of the Nice Guy thing — and yeah, it smarts. Wouldn’t it be nice, once in a while, to be intoxicatingly mysterious, to have men come up to you and say, “Friends, schmends, I must be your lover!” instead of “Hey, buddy, howaboutta game of horse?”

But try thinking of it this way: maybe there’s nothing wrong at all. Maybe, for some cosmic reason, you just happen to be the kind of person for whom serious relationships start out as — and develop most soundly from — friendship. If you trust that this will naturally evolve when it “should,” you’ll be playing a mean game of horse with your devoted hubby while Miss Tedious — I mean, Miss Terious — wishes she had more true friends.
Love,
Breakup Girl

Doubt sets in on January 9, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,
I fell in love with a 3-year-old (not literally) and I thought he was my knight in shining armor. I was seriously disillusioned the other day and now I’m not sure how to feel. Help!
— Sarah

Dear Sarah,
Standards, yes. Larger-than-life expectations, no. Listen, sistren, we have to relate to boyfriends as bonuses in our lives, not as Bob Villas who are going to spackle and caulk and make it look like everything’s all pretty and together. When we think, “Oh, if I can just have this boyfriend, then my life will be complete, world suffering will cease, and Buffalo will win the Super Bowl,” then of course disillusionment strikes — maybe even in the wrong place and for the wrong reason. So chalk this one up to “Whoops!” and start looking for someone whose personality type falls somewhere between the age three and medieval.
Love,
Breakup Girl

Here, your weekly installment of Ask Lynn, the advice column penned by BG’s alter ego at MSN.com (powered byMatch.com). This week, we meet Lost, who poses one of the biggies: why is breaking up so hard, even when my relationship is so bad?

The deets: “My boyfriend of five years feels like he has to hide everything and lie to me about who he speaks to. …We have fought constantly about it, and every time we fight we break up….he tries to blame me…. I do not think that he appreciates me. Am I stupid for wanting to stay with him? I think so. Then how do I get out of this?”

You mean, besides fast? Find out what Lynn has to say, and then come back here to comment!