Here, your weekly installment of Ask Lynn, BG’s alter ego’s column at MSN.com (powered by Match.com). This week, we meet “Never Had a Boyfriend,” who … well, you know. What she has had are plenty of hookups. But how to upgrade from “casual” to … formal? Read her whole letter, and Lynn’s advice (hint: let something develop before you wind up squashed on some couch) and then come back here to comment!

Bonus: for much, much more advice to other Never-Had-Boyfriends — and Never-Had-Girlfriends — click here, and here. You are so not alone. I mean, okay, maybe you are right now, but really, you are so not.

Breakup Girl helps a dark avenger crash a super-powered singles event…

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Today’s New York Times includes a bit of a bodice-ripper about the CW’s new reality show, Farmer Wants a Wife (April 30, 9 PM EST), a sort of “The Bachelor” meets “Green Acres” featuring real-life Missouri farmer/bachelor Matt Neustadt, 30.

“When meeting women, it’s very hard to sell the fact that I am [a farmer],” Neustadt told the Times, explaining that they’re immediately suspicious of what apparently comes across as just some kind of aw-shucks line. “A lot of times they seem to think that I am a player.”

Some of this confusion may also arise from Neustadt’s physique, which the Times describes in blush-worthy detail, from his “surfer” tan to his “rippling washboard abs” to his entering the show “shirtless, his pectoral muscles rippling in the sunlight.” (Sheesh! Get a hayloft!)

But Neustadt hopes that his good looks won’t stand in the way of a true connection. And the ten women vying to be Mrs. Farmer (who “include several aspiring actors or entertainers, members of professions that might be hard to nurture in Portage Des Sioux”) say that all they’re looking for is love, too. In fact, most claim they’re more interested in finding a soul mate than being on TV. And clearly they’re willing to look outside their comfort zone. After all, according to the show’s producer, city women are simply tired of the urban singles scene.

But hey, Neustadt’s peers might say, at least urban singles have a scene.

So, reality TV junkies: you gonna watch this one? Think the down-home (versus, say, Orange County) factor will make it different from the rest?

Here, your weekly installment of Ask Lynn, BG’s alter ego’s column at MSN.com (powered by Match.com). This week, we meet Mandy, who — just like we always tell you guys — totally met a guy in her dance class! Everything went great until … it didn’t. Caramba! Now what? Can Mandy — who now feels dancing-foolish — still show her face in salsa? Or is she doomed to a life of long romantic nights at home with Bruno Tonioli? Read her letter and Lynn’s answer to find out, and then come back here to chat!

Want to know where all the single people are? Here’s a map. No, really.

Computer dating? Breakup Girl finally gets with the program…

 

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Via BG’s alter ego at Broadsheet:

Hey, kids, how’s that abstinence-only sex ed going for you? The answer, if you ask the grown-ups, often has to do with how many teens simply don’t abstain and how many get pregnant (PDF) as a result. But the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention remind us that there are other consequences to sexual cluelessness, and right now, they’re pretty darn dire. That is, the first study of its kind on this demographic has revealed that one in four American girls has a sexually transmitted infection. At least one STI, actually. Mostly HPV (which can cause cervical cancer), then chlamydia (linked to infertility), plus herpes simplex and trichomoniasis. Nearly half the black teens surveyed had an STI, compared with 20 percent among both whites and Mexican-American teens.

Man. Be careful, you guys! Don’t think you can’t get something because it’s your first time, or because you used a condom (HPV can be wilier than that), or because you just, like, think you can’t. I’m certainly not trying to perpetuate the ridiculous — but still deeply hurtful — stigma associated with STIs. But these things can harsh your mellow, cramp your dating style, and, in some cases, compromise your health down the road. Get checked (some STIs are asymptomatic), take precautions (less than 100 percent effective in certain cases is way better than nothing, which is ZERO percent effective), and while you’re at it, lobby for your state to join the 17 others that have refused funding for abstinence-only education (which, you see, has also been less than 100 percent effective).

Here at BreakupGirl.net, we talk a lot about the challenges of finding love when you are shy, when you have low self-esteem, when you don’t look like society’s ideal single, when you live in a small town, when you’re spinning your wheels in a romance rut. But what about finding — and keeping — love when you know that at some dreaded point, just when things were going so awesome, you’re going to have to say, “There’s something I have to tell you”?

At this point, the news that anyone has a sexually-transmitted infection (STI) should not be a shocker. STIs are, in fact, shockingly common. (At least half of sexually active men and women get HPV at some point in their lives, for example.) Yet matter how “out” people are these days about Asperger’s or therapy or whatever they take to help them sleep, the stigma against STIs — and the 19 million people who have them — remains as virulent and pervasive as the infections themselves. They are, after all, about sex — stereotypically, about casual, anonymous, unprotected sex; about (also stereotypically!) skeevy sores where the sun don’t shine. Just look at the vernacular: people who say they’ve tested negative for STIs commonly call themselves “clean.” Opposite: “dirty.” Carriers of STIs: they’re seen (WRONGLY, let’s be clear) as slutty, stupid, damaged goods. (This despite the facts: you can, of course, get infected from your first and only partner; condoms may not provide 100% protection.)

Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a place, a magical place, where people with STIs never had to have The Talk? Where they could make friends — even find lovers — knowing that no one would judge them, never mind dump them, over a stroke of bum luck and the occasional cold sore?

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Here — in case anyone’s puzzled by the references to it in the comments — is the current installment of “Ask Lynn,” BG’s alter ego’s column at MSN.com. We’ll start posting links to the column weekly from here on out. Meanwhile, here’s your teaser for this one:

“I am a 46-year-old woman; I take care of myself, but I do look my age. ‘Cute’ might best describe me. My question? I simply cannot attract a man my age. They’re either 10-20 years older or 10 years younger. This has been happening since I was old enough to date…What’s wrong with me?”

To find out (hint: nothing!) click here.

That guy you’re chatting up online? He could be … that other guy. This just in from the Wall Street Journal:

“Among the 125 million people in the U.S. who visit online dating and social-networking sites are a growing number of dullards who steal personal profiles, life philosophies, evensignature poems. ‘Dude u like copied my whole myspace,’ posts one aggrieved victim. Copycats use the real-life wit of others to create cut-and-paste personas, hoping to land dates or just look clever. Hugh Gallagher, a 36-year-old writer in New York, is one of the copied. Match.com has more than 50 profiles with parts of Mr. Gallagher’s college entrance essay, which he penned nearly two decades ago and later appeared in Harper’s Magazine. ‘I translate ethnic slurs for Cuban refugees’ and ‘I write award-winning operas’ are among Mr. Gallagher’s most popular lines.”

Read the whole piece for some entertaining anecdotes about people getting royally busted — dude, if you say you write award-winning operas, your date is going to ask about them! — or, on an upside, overhauling their profiles after seeing them cut and pasted onto someone else’s page (!) … and realizing they didn’t like what they’d said in the first place.

Yeah, it’s amusing, and there’s even a happy ending. And if it’s a phenomenon, it’s a phenomenon; report away. But still. BG remains weary of the seemingly endless out-churning of “Gotcha!” articles about online dating that, intentionally or not, perpetuate the misapprehension that the people you find on the Internet are probably lying, that they are NOT WHO THEY SAY THEY ARE. (Why, we revisited that chestnut just this week, in a letter from 1997.)

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