I have read your column religiously for the last two or three years and want to truly thank you for sharing  your insight. I'm not sure even where to start about my situation. In truth, I lied, and not a little white lie but a big compounding nine-year lie. I have never told anyone about this lie because it seems so psychotic.

For starters, I'm an orphan and grew up in the state foster-care system. I was adopted mid-childhood by a woman who adopts and fosters children as her only source of income. This being said she was never a parent but a paid caregiver to an ever-changing array of children. I lived in a town that was small enough that everyone I came into contact with knew my story. I was "The Orphan." This fact defined my life for 18 years.

I dreamed of moving away and going to college from an early age. In my mind college was the place where I could start over and no one would know that I was "The Orphan," no one would have their parents around, and I would just be a normal person. Turns out that was anything but the truth.

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My most recent ex-boyfriend, after our breakup, told me that I was one of the "few" people he knew who never flirted — and he said he appreciated that, because he never had to worry or feel jealous. More recently, a close male friend made a similar point, saying that not flirting and not having any romantic or sexual undertones in my relationships with male friends was characteristic of me but not necessarily of other women he knew.

I'm not sure why I'm like this, and I don't know whether it's a product of my disposition or of poor socialization (really). I guess my take on flirting is, why do it if you don't mean it? I've had a few male friends confess that they were attracted to me, and that was awkward enough — I think if I'd ever flirted with them, even in a non-serious, friendly context, they would've been more likely to believe that the feeling was mutual (as it was, they seemed like they were rightly anticipating a "thanks, but no thanks"). When guys flirt with me, all I can usually manage is to laugh it off uncomfortably, and the guys I've dated have generally been like me, addressing men and women in the same straightforward and friendly-but-totally-unflirtatious way.

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Any show that’s set in New York City and follows the lives of four women will inevitably come up against “Sex and the City” — a comparison “Girls” blunted in its pilot episode by making its least savvy character (Shoshanna, totally a Charlotte) a gushing fan of "SATC." But “Sex and the City” didn’t set the archetypes so much as it cemented them. Before women selected their fictional counterpart in Carrie/Samantha/Charlotte or Miranda, they had already assigned themselves to a Golden Girl. I’d argue that all television foursomes are actually walking in the sensible shoes of Rose/Sophia/Blanche and Dorothy, although variations on the rule-of-four dynamic has played out in other shows and films like “Mean Girls,” “Pretty Little Liars,” “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants,” “Heathers,” “Bachelorette” and, on the other end of the gender spectrum, “Entourage” and the mixed-gender roommates on “New Girl.”

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Taking leave of the premises of Hannah's apartment in this episode is Elijah. We've already watched Charlie's unbearable clinginess lead to his ejection, then Marnie's tetchiness towards Adam lead to hers. It's not surprising that the merging of Elijah and Marnie — on Hannah's own couch, yet — is the impetus for Elijah's.

This time, because he hasn't even paid for it, Hannah, at George's urging, gets to keep Elijah's furniture. "I'm going to sit on this chair all day," Hannah says, rubbing her bare bottom all over the seat as she informs Elijah that some people are meant to stay in the past, if not their green steel café chairs. "I'm keeping everything he paid for."

And note "paid," because, unlike some people who are old as even producer Judd Apatow, writer and director of "This Is 40," Dunham is not shy about depicting that, whatever their level of oft-discussed privilege, the cast of "Girls" is fairly clueless about how to use it.

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Talk to me about the sex scene with Booth Jonathan.

That sex scene makes me laugh so hard. We laughed throughout filming it. That freaking doll.  The set direction on our show is just so brilliant every day, and that was really at this amazing apartment in Bushwick, which is funny because Marnie vowed she never came to Bushwick and she did very readily. But walking into that bedroom and seeing that dummy standing in the corner, all of us had the same reaction, we were like, “She’s gotta be right here. She’s gotta be in the sex with us.” So as a result, the entire scene was just pure laughter.

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I'm writing to you with hopes of salvaging a friendship that seems all but lost.

I remained close with my friend Tommy after graduating college in 2008. About a year ago, he reconnected with an old high school friend named Laura, whom he had messaged out of the blue on Facebook after seeing that she had become single. He asked if she wanted to hang out, and she suggested they go to a hockey game that she already had tickets for. For Tommy, getting dates was a rare occurrence, and he was excited for what he considered to be a date with a very pretty girl.

But for Laura, the night out was no date, just a fun hockey game with an old friend. Here's where I come in. After the game, Tommy and Laura swung by a restaurant where I was having dinner with a friend. The four of us talked only for a brief time, but I had a feeling Laura was flirting with me. I didn't think anything of it, though, and Tommy and Laura left to get drinks at an upscale bar where Tommy had made reservations and footed the bill.

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I'm a graduate student in my mid-20s and my best friend is someone whom I have known since kindergarten and we've been friends since we were 10. My best friend is someone whom I love dearly. I want more than anything for her to be happy, but she's been kind of a mess for a while now and it's starting to affect our friendship. For the past four or five years she's never been single for more than a couple of weeks and has dated a series of men who in a variety of ways have all treated her extremely poorly. I'm not a fool and I realize these poor choices in men stem from her lack of self-worth. I've tried to be there for her as best as I can even though I've always hated these guys, and I've always told her that while I might not approve of her dating choices, I love her no matter what, and I can't judge her decisions to do what she feels she needs to do.

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For the past several years, I've ended most weekends with Sunday supper at my friends' house. She cooks a meal for the three of us, her husband, me and herself. We eat the food. I help clean up.

The whole time, we catch up on what may have happened in the past week and what's coming up in the next week. It's pleasant.

When they were younger, her stepsons were there. As they grew older and developed their own lives and schedules, her stepsons, the younger in his late 20s and the older in his early 30s, now come by occasionally to share the meal.

My problem is, I'm becoming afraid of the older stepson. He's simultaneously shy and grandiose. He's immature. He doesn't have many social skills. He recently, a long time after graduating with honors in a liberal arts program, got a pretty good job. So after years of free-floating anger and depression [it seemed to me] and threatening suicide [to his father], his life is improving. He's happier.

So what does he do? He buys an assault rifle.

He also has a pistol, which he once brought over to show his father while I was there. He and his brother were drinking beer at the time. I left.

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I hate fighting with friends. I’m prone to fits of hysterical deaf, dumb and blindness at the first whiff of a dust-up. The stakes are too high. I’d rather they run me down with their car than tell me I’m insensitive.

Which is why when I watched "Girls," and witnessed the blowout between Hannah and Marnie toward the end of the season (Episode 9),  I was seized by a mild terror. Not because I was so emotionally invested in this friendship, but because it was so true.

I shouldn’t have been surprised: While Dunham gives shout-outs to "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and "Sex and the City" in the first episode, it’s clear that "Girls" is a different beast altogether. Honestly, can you imagine Carrie and Samantha spooning in bed? Mary eating a cupcake in the tub while Rhoda sits on the edge in a towel shaving her legs? Yes, those girlfriends argued, but with five minutes left in the show they were weeping and apologizing over a gallon of Rocky Road or a round of Cosmos. Not so in "Girls." Then again, Rhoda never set up a doctor’s appointment for Mary to have an AIDS test, and Samantha never financially supported Carrie. So it should come as no surprise that when Marnie and Hannah do have a fight — a big BFF steel-cage death-match — it would get real.

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I have never written a letter seeking advice from a columnist before, but since I think you are the best advice columnist that has ever lived, and since you are quite well and alive, I thought I would ask for your advice today.

I recently had a friend die, a friend that I had not seen in over a decade, but whom, nonetheless, I had remained quasi-close to during most of that time. He was a musician, as am I, and so we both influenced each other at times although I consider him my mentor still, to this day. He taught me a great deal about old-time country music, from Dock Boggs to the Carter Family; from Doc Watson to Norman Blake. He was a god to me.

And he was also a junkie.

He quit junk a few years after I met him -- we all knew this. I did not find out until later that he had been smoking crack to keep himself "straight," however.

I have never so much as more than smoked a joint in my life, so you can imagine how distraught I was the first time I learned that my friend, "Nephew" Jimmy, was a junkie. One night, as I remember, at some party, I actually begged him on my knees in front of all of our friends, hysterical and in tears, to stop shooting smack. Silly me.

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First, you are awesome! I'm so happy your health has improved!

Now, I live in Los Angeles. I moved here from New Mexico 10 years ago. Can you tell me what is wrong with everyone here? Where are the nice people? When I try to be nice they look at me like a hopeless simpleton. When they try to "act" nice it never feels sincere. Like part of a show.

Like dinner parties where everyone has to leave at 8 because the host is going out later with "other people." Or people invite you out with them to a play and then they spend the whole time on their cellphone texting someone and making plans to meet them "as soon as the play is over." And then asking you to drop them off at this other person's house. Is this normal behavior?

I'm 42. Female. Normal, boring job. Married. No kids. Don't want kids. Kinda nerdy. I try to make friends here at work. Give gifts. Make muffins. Make amusing remarks. Invite people to do a wide variety of activities with me. Sailing? Symphony? Hiking? Auto racing? Air show? No dice.

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I did it again yesterday and I'm so disappointed in myself. My problem is I answer people's questions about myself without being able to stop, reflect and decide if it really is any of their business. It doesn't matter how personal the question is, you're guaranteed an answer from me. It isn't until I'm no longer in the situation that I gather my wits and realize the damage I've done to myself. These people have no right to this info.

I practice things to say to deflect the questions such as: Why do you ask? But, in the heat of the moment, I forget. I also understand that this lack of self-protection stems from no boundaries being allowed in my childhood. But I'm not a child anymore and I really must stop vomiting out this info.

The holidays are coming up and I will be around some pushy people who always ask questions that I would never dream of asking another. I need some strategies I can practice (although that doesn't seem to work). So I don't know what to do.

Your guidance would be appreciated.

Don't ask -- Don't tell

Dear Don't Ask ...

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Paula and I were never friends, even though we went to middle school together. She was poor (never mind that I, too, was poor), and she didn’t wear the right clothes (never mind that I didn’t, either), and if she wasn’t stupid, it was somehow implied that she was stupid, or that her future was less bright than the rest of our classmates'. It was never talked about, but it was there; it was apparent in the way that everyone ignored her and in the way that she shuffled sullenly from class to class.

And that’s where I would have left her if this story took place 15 or 20 years ago. I wouldn’t know Paula at all today. She’d be forever lost in the shadows of youth, a plump ghost who once ate with me in the small, cramped cafeteria of our middle school.

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My best friend's sister has been diagnosed with cancer. She is getting treatment in another city 1,500 miles away. Her doctor has assured her that he has a 97-percent cure rate with this cancer and we are all thrilled at that news.

Their mom had heart surgery last year and has recovered at about the pace expected for her age (70). For weeks, my bestie and her siblings did not tell their mother about their sister's cancer because they didn't want to upset her. They finally had to tell Mom and she is worried (of course) and furious because she wasn't told immediately.

For the last year all I have heard is, Mom can't do this, can't be told this, can't be upset, can't cook, garden, clean like she used to and so on. Well, Mom is still able to drive and hit the bingo parlors three times a week and get her shopping and hair done, so I think Mom is doing pretty well and is no more fragile today than she was before the surgery.

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