MSN.com, Match.com, HappenMagazine.com: they’re in a healthy and satisfying 3-way relationship. Meaning that you’ll find MSN/Match.com’s “Ask Lynn” columns –penned by BG’s alter ego — over at Happen now as well.

This week’s entry is from Rave Boy who not only got mixed messages from his ex when she broke up with him, he now hears that she’s been missing him. He wants to know if he should attempt a reunion with his rave girl. Read the letter at Happen, then come back here to comment!

Floating in a vacuum on March 9, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

I am currently separated from my wife of six-plus years — have two children (teens) from a prior marriage … one with me, one with her. She has the house — I have an apartment in a remote area. She has a high-power job with the county — I am unemployed. We have been separated for a month. Nothing has been said about the future. I need to know if she wants to be with me in the future???? Should I cut my losses now … and move on — ??? Am almost 50 and don’t really want to go through the dating game again. There are many unresolved issues … but I feel that if the relationship is #1 then everything else will follow suit….???

— Kevin

Dear Kevin,

Okay. I mean this gently: you are definitely lost in space. About whether your wife wants to be with you in the future: well, I don’t intend to be flip, but don’t ask Breakup Girl, ask her. If she does, make a plan. How will you resolve these unresolved issues? What has to happen before she’s ready to have you back in the house? If not, make a plan: how will you handle making this separation official? If she’s not sure…make a plan: when — and how — will she know?

Here’s the danger, Will Robinson. If the relationship “is #1,” then yes, as you say, other things may follow suit. But this is not magic. Thinking “Okay, if I can fix my relationship, then everything else — my job, my future — will be fixed, too!” is about as effective a plan as casting Matt LeBlanc in a scifi thriller. “Other things” “happen” to follow suit as a result of actually vaulting out of limbo, refusing to settle, and taking charge of what’s going on in all areas of your life — not just crossing your fingers, hoping, and idealizing. You may be in space, but you’re not weightless.

Love,
Breakup Girl

BG will be back posting tomorrow. Today I’m bizzy with Avril.

From Broadsheet: “Here is what I want to know: If you’re a guy, what do you do when the girl you are tangling tongues with turns out to be wearing Spanx? Is it embarrassing for you, too? Do you even care? Do you try to ignore it, disappear the image, just like the girl you are with is trying to disappear her flaws, so that you can store that moment in your spank bank without the messy realities of the moment, of her body, of this otherwise lovely little tussle?”

Well, they’re no O-Town (or DaVinci’s Notebook), but this Backstreet Boys laptop homage is a swell way to start the day.

MSN.com, Match.com, HappenMagazine.com: they’re in a healthy and satisfying 3-way relationship. Meaning that you’ll find MSN/Match.com’s “Ask Lynn” columns –penned by BG’s alter ego — over at Happen now as well.

This week’s entry is from AE, who is worried that his communication style  — lots of texting — which worked well with his last relationship, isn’t working with his new girl. Things may be over before they’ve begun, so what can he do? Read the column at Happen, check out the comments from our MSN posting, and add yours below.

Drifting in orbit on March 9, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

Does Breakup Girl have advice for a separated mom who feels like she is in limbo? My husband decided he wanted space. He moved out and now I am still in the house with the kids. It’s not like I am fond of rejection, but I feel like I should try to make it work before calling it off. It’s been five years, and it was supposed to be forever. I don’t know if there is someone else. Maybe, but he works 90 hours a week, so I don’t know when. Thanks.

— Lonely in Suburbia

Dear Lonely,

It was supposed to be forever, and the fact that it may not be really, really stinks. But when you’re ready, you’re going to have to deal with this as a matter of practicality, not principle. You may not be able to “make” the relationship work with some assemblage of words, actions, and tactics, the way the guys in “Apollo 13” made the rocket work with styrofoam, a fan belt, and a Slinky. But you can set up a framework in which both of you can figure out if it’s going to work.

(more…)

STUDY: The sexual overperception bias: Evidence of a systematic bias in men from a survey of naturally occurring events

ABSTRACT:  According to error management theory (Haselton & Buss, 2000), natural selection will often produce adaptively biased systems of judgment, even when these systems produce more errors than alternative designs. In a study of naturally occurring events, evidence of one such bias in men—the sexual overperception bias—was documented. Women (n=102) and men (n=114) reported past experiences in which a member of the opposite sex erroneously inferred their sexual interest. Women reported significantly more false-positive errors committed by men than false-negative errors. Men reported roughly equal numbers of false-positive and false-negative errors committed by women, suggesting no bias in women’s sexual inferences. Several within-sex predictors of misperceptions were identified; for example, individuals high in self-perceived mate value reported more false-positive inferences by others than did individuals lower in mate value.

TRANSLATION. “She totally wants me.”

MARGIN OF ERROR: That other guy. The one who’s all, “I know she’s always calling and bringing me muffins and offering to drive me to the airport and all, but I’m pretty sure she thinks of me only as a friend.”

Via Broadsheet:

During the most unwieldy parts of my pregnancies, the only way I could sleep was by spooning a huge plaid pregnancy pillow called something embarrassing like a Snoozle, or a Froogle, or a Foshizzle, or something or other. With me in my comfy flannel PJs, my pillow and I looked like a huge plaid G-clef, and my husband looked left out. Which is simply to say that yes, I know and embrace the wonder of a well-placed body pillow.

But now there is the Funktiontide — or at least there might be, says its designer Stefan Ulrich — and now, remarkably, we may behold something perhaps even more unsettling than the Real Doll. Ulrich says his pillow prototype, which would use advanced robotics and artificial muscle technology to move and change shape depending on how you hold it, is but a polymer harbinger of the day when bleak, alienated humans will turn to “robots” for emotional satisfaction. (Yeah, like I didn’t already do that with my second husband. Folks!) That, or as we see in this technically G-rated, but somehow NSFW video, maybe the Funktiontide is nothing more than a Shmoo with benefits.

While the video’s human co-star appears rather satisfied with his lot, Ulrich is not unaware that his Pillbury Dough-bot raises some juicy issues. “…[T]he the work’s intention is to create a provocative picture for discussion, which enables us to question how much we want technological products to satisfy our emotional needs,” goes his commentary. “The ambiguity of this scenario is, that it could be understood as a solution to a wide range of different kinds of loneliness. But it might as well be understood as a scenario which should be avoided by all means possible.” Speaking as someone who practically sleeps with her iPhone, I’m sure I have no idea what he’s talking about.

Via BoingBoing.

Struggling with the ultimate romantic choice? The one you’ve got vs. the one that got away? Familiar and stable vs. fizzy and exciting? Veronica vs. Betty?

Well, envy Archie.* Looks like our man in Riverdale may get to have it both ways.

As today’s Times reports: “That perennially teenage redhead…made headlines around the world when word leaked, back in May, that he would propose to his longtime love interest, Veronica Lodge, in issue No. 600 of the comic that bears his name. But that issue, published in August, was only Part 1 of a six-part story. Although Archie did marry Veronica, things will take a turn in November, when Archie proposes to the lady in waiting, Betty Cooper. That’s just the latest twist in the romantic triangle that has thrust this nearly 70-year-old character, and his parent company, into the media spotlight.”

How’s he gonna pull that off? Easy: alternate universe! “The wedding story was written by Michael E. Uslan and illustrated by Stan Goldberg, a longtime ‘Archie’ artist. The first half was called ‘Archie Marries Veronica,’ but issue No. 603, on sale next month, is called ‘Archie Marries Betty.’ The end of bachelorhood began in issue No. 600, in which Archie found himself on a road named Memory Lane, which he has often traveled. This time he walked a different direction and encountered a fork in the road. He chose the left path, which allowed him to see his future with Veronica and their twins, and himself working for her tycoon father. At the end of the October issue, No. 602, Archie goes for an evening stroll and encounters the fork again. In the November issue Archie will find himself back in Riverdale High, this time envisioning a future with Betty as his wife. (A set of twins factors into this destiny as well.)”

(Doctor Who fans will recall when this totally happened to Donna Noble, only instead of twins there was a giant bug. And — Halloween preview — let’s not forget Breakup Girl Friday in Ghost Ex!)

But the question remains: who do you think he should wind up with? (“Jughead” would of course be a revolutionary twist, but I don’t think we’re there yet.)

* And talk to The Guy At The End of the Bar.