I’m a single girl, mid-20s, happy with life, but I do sometimes yearn for a true companion. I’m starting to wonder if I need to take a more rigorous plan of action — personal ads, perhaps. But is this quasi-scientific approach to love destined to disappoint, when love can’t be quantified in height, hair color or even personality traits?

Musing

Dear Musing,

Well, yes and no and not exactly. You can’t force yourself to fall in love, but you can increase the odds of finding someone that you end up falling in love with. You do that by, as you say, methods like personal ads, methods that expose you to more possible mates. And then, if you do fall in love, even if the love itself seems like a mysterious and overwhelming force, you can still consciously choose what to do about it, i.e., whether to marry, whether to restrict yourself to only one lover, whether to be kind or cruel, whether to be honest or dishonest.

Love is not a product that is acquired, but an activity that is engaged in. Love itself has no hair color or personality traits. Lovers, for better or worse, indeed can be classified by their traits. Perhaps that troubles you, that all of us can be rated and classified. That doesn’t mean you should ignore your physical likes and dislikes in a man. But because love is an activity rather than an object, behavioral traits are ultimately more important than physical traits.

Love is not a get-out-of-reality-free card. It does not suspend gravity or the rule of law. It can be a bit of an intoxicant, but it should be taken with food. So I would say: Think about it all you want; concoct elaborate schemes to your heart’s content. It will remain essentially mysterious and beyond your control.

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Want more advice from Cary? Read yesterday’s column.

We started communicating more and everything looked bright. We fell in love again and became engaged, but recently she has made it clear she doesn’t trust me and hasn’t forgiven me like I have her. She has admitted the fact that I’m much more attentive now, but what can I do? I love this girl and want to marry her, but it is very depressing having her distrust hang over my head as a constant reminder of what I did. Please help.

Distrusted

Dear Distrusted,

It often seems to me that the period of engagement prior to marriage is like some senseless pregame show no one wants to watch. You want to shout, “Just get married, why don’t you!” Or it’s a medieval throwback in which the man places a nonrefundable deposit, in the form of expensive jewelry, on the woman’s vagina, pending the outcome of a period of probation during which she must remain chaste and demonstrate her devotion. Other times it’s just sheer empty ritual whose forgotten meaning is replaced with conspicuous consumption, which is pretty much decadence incarnate, no?

But in your case, it sounds like there are some issues that time alone may solve, and the trial period represented by the engagement is probably prudent. I think there are two kinds of trust and they are not always in sync; there is the gut-level trust, and there is the intellectual trust. When one has been betrayed, try as one might, even though one can calculate that the probability of being betrayed again is near zero, it’s not easy to feel comfortable. Even if she believes you when you say you’re going to be true, and believes you have the capacity to back up your words, it doesn’t mean she’s over being hurt. It might take her a long time. And, in fact, something might be broken that can’t be fixed. If you become associated in her mind with that hurt, if there is too much emotional baggage, it might just be that the two of you have to call the whole thing off; there might come soon a night when you call it a day.

Stay engaged for a while. See if she regains her trust. See if you can be a good boy. If nothing gets better, move on. P.S. If you gave her a ring, let her keep it if she wants to, regardless of what happens.

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Want more of Cary’s advice? Read yesterday’s column.

We’ve also started talking to each other at home. We’ve had long conversations (up to three hours) at night when both of us are in bed, and more than once this has lead to mutual masturbation. It’s phone sex, pure and simple. What makes the whole situation even better is that we really do like each other — we’re really compatible, and we both love talking with each other about all sorts of stuff. Neither one of us would be bothered by any “office talk” if we started dating, so it has all seemed to be going along just perfectly.

The complication? I’ve met someone. A boy who is so adorable, funny, cute, smart, sweet and lovely that I cannot believe it. We spent all of the past weekend together, with both nights ending in PG-13 slumber parties. The most amazing part was that when I was ready for things to progress past the kissing and rolling-around stage, he said no, he thought it would be a better idea to wait. I’ve never encountered that in my life — every boy I’ve ever been with has been in my pants from the get-go, and having this boy tell me he would rather wait and take it slow was just the icing on the cake. He holds my hand in the most affectionate and sweet way, and when he kisses me I can barely breathe. I smile and turn pink just thinking about him, and I honestly feel that this could very well be the beginning of something long-lasting and wonderful.

So what could the problem be? In short, I don’t ever want to cheat on anyone, and I wouldn’t. It’s just not who I am. But I hate the idea of missing out on any sexual encounter. I have a sex drive that is akin to that of a 14-year-old boy, and since I’m not in a relationship yet, I want to take advantage of the entire situation. Work Boy wants me to come over and play on Thursday night, and I’m not sure what to do. Work Boy and I were on the phone last night for an hour and a half, with him detailing everything he’d like to do to me and with me on Thursday. It was one of the most astounding sexual encounters I’ve ever had, and knowing that we have these results without even touching each other makes both of us crazy to shut ourselves in a room together completely naked for as long as we can.

But the problem is that I feel like I’m being “bad,” like I’m cheating on Adorable Boy. I know I’m not his girlfriend, but I feel that there is a very strong possibility that I will be in the near future, and I want very much for nothing to get in the way of that. But on the other hand, I’m not his girlfriend now, and anything that would happen with Work Boy should be fair game. I’m torn between being the good girl and the bad girl, and I don’t know which girl is the one I really want to be!

Can you help? Any thoughts appreciated.

Angel With a Devil’s Sex Drive

Dear Angel,

I think you should just be the bad girl. Maybe I like the bad girl better, or maybe she’s not even a bad girl, but just a girl who wants to have fun. But maybe it’s more fun to see her as a bad girl. It doesn’t seem like you’re the only one who’s experimenting, and it doesn’t seem like you’ve made any commitments you’d be breaking. You wouldn’t be interfering in any innocent person’s life. You’re all young and sexy and you should just go fuck each other’s brains out. That’s what youth is for.

I wouldn’t look for moral restrictions where they don’t exist. You don’t have to make life complicated yet. It gets plenty complicated later, all on its own.

This summer, after a few beers, we confessed our feelings to one another: We are deeply and wholly in love. At the same time, he’s in love with his wife, and I’m in love with my significant other. We really have no desire to leave our relationships and be with each other in that capacity.

Hunter Thompson said, “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” We’ve decided to legitimize our relationship. We’ve both gone to our significant others and informed them of the recent developments. Tentatively, they’ve decided to go along with it for now. We’ve all decided to see where this whole thing goes.

Before now, it’s never even crossed my mind to engage in this kind of “alternative lifestyle,” but this seems good and right and like it could work out. Am I insane to think this could work?

Feeling Polyamorous

Dear Feeling Polyamorous,

‘Swonderful. You’ve made his life so glamorous, he can’t blame you for feeling polyamorous, now can he? I know it’s four-leaf clover time and your heart is working overtime, but let’s all four get down on all fours for a little Clintonian hair-splitting and say: It depends on what “work” means.

What will probably happen is that his wife and your other will also find love outside the dyad, which will serve to make a more equitable distribution of the jealousy and fear. Then you’ve got a swingin’ little sextet:

You
Your other
Your other’s other
Your new other
Your new other’s other
Your new other’s other’s new other

My opinion of such crystalline formations is that they are inherently unstable, given the way stresses multiply in the interstices, and how the supports are not reinforced by the structure but, on the contrary, tend to be weakened and stretched even thinner. There will be crucial moments of stress, such as that moment when your other needs you urgently and paradoxically because at that very moment you are out with your other other, and his other other is out as well, with yet another other, and maybe, besides that, his new other just isn’t the other other that you are and he’s realizing that the grass isn’t always greener on the other other’s side of the street, and tears appear in the fabric of the face.

The thing just tends to crumble. The dyad works because it combines the greatest strength with the fewest stresses. When you reverse that, adding stress and weakening the supports, you aren’t designing for stability, you’re designing for the excitement of a dramatic Las Vegas-style implosion. So it depends on what you mean by “work.” If you mean will everybody be able to hobble away from the pile of rubble still breathing, sure, it can work. But if you mean will it provide stable, fulfilling lives for those involved, you’ve got to be kidding.

Far be it from me to tell you how to build your building or pilot your ship. I’m only the engineer. Just please don’t have any innocent passengers along, like children and pets.

If ever there was a time when it would have been nice to take some drugs and zone out, post-9/11 was the time. But since that really wasn’t an option for yours truly, baseball on television was a pretty good second choice. Plus, after the game you could just get up and yawn and you didn’t owe anybody any money and nobody was threatening to beat you up.

Strangely enough, the home team ended up in the World Series this year, as a wild-card team, against another wild-card team from Orange County, San Francisco’s geographical and cultural opposite. What had begun as a casual and tentative interest, based solely on its being a good, inexpensive way to chill out, became (as it has been nigh the last 45 years for many Giants fans) a tortured and sleepless time during which the gods seemed to have deserted us and all hope was lost.

I had begun not only watching baseball on television but also listening to KNBR 680, “The Sports Leader,” in the car. Arriving at home many nights during the spring and summer I sat outside in the car, still listening to KNBR. One afternoon Gary Radnich, one of the voices of KNBR, told us a woman had written in saying that if 12 years ago she had known how much better baseball was than drugs, she wouldn’t have wasted all those years doing drugs.

Now that was very touching and sweet and all. But whatever replaces drugs in a person’s life — rehab, religion, sports, sex, whatever — seems to arrive with a set of demons all its own. And after Saturday’s inexplicable and strangely tortured seventh-inning loss to Anaheim, and Sunday’s rather dull defeat, the comparison with drugs took a darker turn. Because waking up afterward was much like waking up after some innocent little coke binge had gone horribly wrong, but the kind of horribly wrong that you can’t put your finger on while it’s happening, because you’re still doing the coke, you’re still out in the club, you’re still ostensibly having fun, except you feel like a dancing dead man. In the case of the coke, of course, you just don’t have enough of those happy brain messengers running through the nervous system. But the horrible wrongness of baseball wasn’t so simple. It was more about the inexplicable changes in fate that occur despite all we know and all we do.

So, actually, baseball’s not better than drugs, it’s just different.

I should have known. Not that it would have mattered. Now I just don’t know where to turn. I’m kind of ashamed. Is there a 24-hour number you can call? Is that big gathering in the stadium the only meeting, or are there others around town, in gymnasium basements or the backrooms of card shops? I’m hooked, and things don’t look good.

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Dear Cary,

What does one do when trust and enthusiasm have been laid utterly to waste in a relationship? We’ve been married 10 years, we’re both 35, and we have no kids. My wife was in love with another man for a while but didn’t act on it. She had a secret male friend for over a year that had many appearances of an affair — he was a confidante for her troubles. When I found out, I threatened divorce. When I threatened, she said she loved me and wanted to stay together. At which point I melted and recanted. At this point I’m pretty sure neither of these were affairs, so let’s just leave it at that. Pretty sure.

In marriage counseling I’m finding out that she has been angry at me for years on end, while acting like things were fine. Between secret crushes, hidden grudges, and the withering of our physical sexual relationship, I’m burning out. We fight a lot. We didn’t used to fight because neither one of us would act angry when we were angry. But she would be secretly furious with me for years at a time. And cut off sex in retaliation.

We still basically like and admire each other, without trusting each other, and occasionally have good times kind of by accident. We are more honest with each other than we used to be.

How many years of painfully scraping by should we endure? How do you know when fizzle is the diagnosis? I’m sure people used to endure cold, distrustful marriages till death did them part, in the old days. I’m afraid that’s what I’m signing up for, because my survival instincts aren’t kicking in and telling me to run for my life.

Whaddya think?

Just Treading Water

Dear Just Treading,

I think it’s over and you need to find the courage to split up.

You say you threatened your wife with divorce but reconciled. I think in that act is a clue to what has gone wrong. Threats are corrosive. They interpose a calculus of fear between two people at the very moment when what they need is heroic and fearless self-exposure, willful, if momentary, acceptance of a radical truth. When what you need to do is find out what your wife is actually doing, a threat only shifts both your foci to some spectral evil. Whatever hope you might have had of reaching the truth is thereby lost.

The threat of divorce is particularly destructive because it perverts the one thing about divorce that makes it a merciful and life-saving legal remedy. Divorce is not a weapon of persuasion or a lever of control over your spouse, but a final act of surrender, an admission that something has been irretrievably lost and that there’s no sense looking for it anymore. It’s that moment at twilight when you shrug your shoulders and walk out of the woods.

I think you’re at that point. I suggest you divide the assets and move apart. And for once in this relationship, don’t press for an advantage. Just let the whole thing go and start over. I have said in the past that I hate divorce, but those words were the words of the child in me. As an adult, I recognize that divorce can be an act of great mercy.

Besides, if the finality of divorce frightens you, think of it this way: You can always marry each other again. It wouldn’t be the first time.