I am a part-time yoga teacher and aspiring screenwriter living in L.A., married for 12 years to a thoughtful, kind, lovely man who appreciates my sense of humor and loves music the way I do. Unfortunately, I am not (and haven't been for quite some time) sexually attracted to him. My problem: I met a man, a student in one of my yoga classes, who arouses fantasies in my mind. I have never fooled around on my husband, never thought I would, yet this man is very attractive and seems to be sending discreet signals that he finds me attractive. He knows I am married and has hinted at getting together for something to eat, has sent postcards when he is out of town, and Christmas cards. I am so ripe for an affair it isn't even funny. I know the pitfalls and I recognize that it is my need for excitement that is causing me to consider betraying my loyal and faithful husband. However, I am sad and miserable at the thought that I will spend the rest of my life in a sexless marriage. Do you have any words of advice? Yoga, ironically, hasn't helped enlighten me.

I am a single, 47-year-old woman in San Francisco who would like to fall permanently in love with the right man. I've been worried that I'm not attractive, but I think it's a problem of volume; I need to meet a larger number of straight, well-read, available men in their 40s. I keep trying to imagine where they are, and I'm afraid they're all home drinking beer and watching the ballgame, or reading something wonderful they've ordered from Amazon. I hate meeting people through ads, and trying to come up with a cute pickup line for a guy in a museum whose wife is probably standing in front of the next painting is not my idea of a good time. What do you suggest?

I'm a youngish (35) academic who is afraid she's running out of luck. I got my Ph.D. four years ago from a good school with a well-respected advisor. Since then, I've held two temporary positions in a state far from everyone and everything I care about, but I haven't yet managed to land a tenure-track position. I'm weak on publication, in part because I haven't had enough stability to settle down to work (but also, I worry, because I'm just not good enough). I'm beginning to face the prospect of not making it as an academic. But I can't imagine another life as rich and interesting as that of a philosophy professor. I worry that if I leave the academy I'll feel like a failure the rest of my life. I'm smart and passionate about life and the world, and I know I have something to contribute, somewhere, but I can't see myself clear of this sorry state of my life. What should I do?

I fell in love with a German woman here in Iowa, a very endearing and outgoing person, and then after a year and a half, she moved back to Germany to raise her children there. I visited them a couple of times in the past two years, but it was impossible to hold onto the relationship at that distance, and we parted. Half a year later, we began writing again. Now, she is planning to visit Iowa, letting her children stay with their father (he lives in this town), and she wants to see me.

I'm excited; my dreams still turn her way often. Yet I don't want to set myself up for romantic doom when she leaves. I have deep feelings for her, and since dating Ms. Germany, I've not felt anything remotely similar for anyone else. I'm trying to be optimistic, but no one else is on the horizon for me.

Until two years ago, I didn't believe in true love or soul mates; then I fell in love with my best friend and fell badly. She returned my love. But she decided she couldn't leave her boyfriend of seven years. She broke off with me after a short, glorious affair. I tried to remain friends with her, but it proved to be too painful for me to be around her, so I took off for a trip around the country. I haven't spoken to her since, though I think about her quite often.

Last October, I started dating a colleague at work. I reluctantly fell in love with her. She is a wonderful woman. We laugh together, hold hands like love-struck teenagers, feel incredible sexual passion for one another and we are also great friends and share the same goals of traveling and building creative lives before settling down to have a family. I can see myself spending my life with her. Yet, in my heart, I do not feel the same transcendental "connection" to her that I felt with my first love. Is there only one soul mate for each person? Can a soul mate connection be cultivated, or is it simply there or not? Does a commitment to living a life together need to be based on such a connection, or is it possible for ordinary, mundane love to sustain a partnership?

Am I cheating on my current love by thinking about my ex so much, and pining for that sense of "spiritual" connection?

What is it with the single Gen-X-ers of today who constantly complain about being alone and uninvolved, and yet they never do anything about it? I'm a 27-year-old grad student with a large circle of friends who socialize frequently: At parties, nights on the town, dinner parties, etc., everyone is constantly complaining about "being alone," or "being uninvolved," but no one ever seems to do anything about it! Opportunities to meet other people are abundant, but people prefer to stand around with friends and ramble on with their self-involved complaints about loneliness. Why aren't people meeting?

My older sister is a 34-year-old mother of four in her second marriage. She got pregnant right out of high school, and for most of her life, she's been an irresponsible person, getting herself into pretty much any trouble you can imagine. Through everything, my parents and I have supported her and bailed her out. Now, for the second time in 12 months, her husband has left her. He's a lazy bum who has worked about two weeks in the past year, and now I find out that he's been hitting her and may have hit my 14-year-old niece. She doesn't want to divorce him! Wanting to stay with a lazy, abusive, selfish man is beyond the comprehension of any semi-intelligent being. She has put my poor parents through so much and they are such sweet, naive people that I just can't take it anymore. I wish that I was an only child.

For three years, I've loved a funny, articulate and sexy man who has a degenerative disease. We've been living together for one year, and in that time my creative life and my houseplants have bloomed. But last week, I started packing my bags. I'm 41, want to get married and want the option of having a child. He's 43, has been divorced and is scared of getting trapped in marriage or kids. He figures he has 20 years left. We love each other, but it seems that all he can see is a downhill trudge toward disintegration. I would like us to make a commitment for a hopeful future. We just had a tearful fight and great make-up sex. Any thoughts?

I've always felt more alive when I'm in the practice of writing. In school it was easier to do as I had deadlines to meet. Now that I'm out of school my habitual laziness is taking over. I'm beginning to feel that it's an inborn trait I'll have to battle for the rest of my life. It doesn't help my motivation any that when I'm out of the practice of writing my senses are dulled. Am I always going to have to battle this? Just while trying to write this to you, I've spent the better part of an hour gazing out the window.

Last fall, my husband and I separated. The marriage was a wreck for years, and we were both miserable as individuals. I thought the marriage was the problem because I didn't know how to fix myself. I told him that I didn't want him or our marriage anymore, and then, to make things worse, I started seeing someone right after the split.

I am still with this guy, but I still love my husband deeply and continue to find him attractive. I can't understand why I pushed for the divorce. My reasons seem so trivial now and extremely selfish.

Recently my husband and I found ourselves in an empty house together. We ended up in a clinch, debating whether or not to make love. He was torn, I was torn, but it was clear we wanted each other. We did not go through with it, but we affirmed our love, affection and mutual attraction for one another. We also did a lot of talking and crying, and cleared up some of the issues between us. It was cathartic.

Afterward, my husband said it was a complete mistake and that it is totally over between us. But I am clinging to the idea that someday we will get back together. I feel like the biggest moron. I can't believe I ended this relationship. Should I keep hoping? Or am I better off putting all these feelings aside and getting on with my life?

You've heard of procrastination and writer's block and people who can't find their way out of labyrinths of their own creation, but you've never heard of a case as bad as mine. I started graduate school in the humanities in 1985. I did course work, took exams, wrote seminar papers and eventually graduated to teaching, yet I never could write my dissertation. The project seemed too big. I could never figure out where to begin or how to organize it. The pressure and the stakes seemed too high. My family wanted nothing else from me (they're academics), and my whole identity rested on my presumed intelligence. I wanted desperately to finish. I read books and articles, collected notes and boxes of files. I forced myself to write through tears and terrible depressions. From all this effort I eked out parts of chapters, all told some 60 pages. My question: Should I let it all go? I'm 37 and feel sharply the need for a real career and a real life. But if I give up, I'll never be able to teach at the college level; I'll have to cope with the shame of quitting and letting my family down; I'll feel like a big failure; and my connection to the subject I've studied will dwindle. I still love reading about it when I'm not under duress to do so. What life I have is built around the idea that intellectual pursuits are all that matter. My studies are the one thing that gives my life any purpose beyond the most mundane form of survival. My self-esteem is all wrapped up in this. Should I keep working at the dissertation until I finish?

I'm 27, and have spent the past five years learning to let go of things. My grandmother died, my mother moved far away (leaving me to clean up her house), I just ended a four-year relationship and I'm recovering from rape.

I'm really tired.

I'm in therapy, my life is in decent shape, my writing is good, but I'm scared to start forming attachments again. I'm afraid of being abandoned, and I'm afraid to trust my own judgment, having made such a grave error in the past.

Any words of encouragement for this slowly chilling heart?

I live in Los Angeles and work in television. I find Angeleno women culturally devoid and overstuffed with attitude and would like to move to San Francisco or Manhattan, where people tend more toward the intellectual, but I am trapped by my career. How's an Ivy Leaguer to meld the proximity career issue with the population?

I have fallen head over heels in love with a man, and I want to ask him to marry me. I'm 28, an editor; he's 25, a movie critic. We've only been together three months. Should I wait for six months to be sure? How does a woman propose to a man? I'm nervous.

I found out this week that I have herpes and that I gave it to my new boyfriend of five months. I didn't know I had it. I knew my last boyfriend had it, but I really thought I didn't catch it. But I am at fault because I didn't tell the new boyfriend that my last one was infected. How can I possibly forgive myself and how can I regain the trust of my boyfriend? I have never, never intentionally hurt another human being. I can't quit thinking about all this.

I find myself, at the ripe old age of 34, completely paralyzed by fear and hopelessness with regards to romance. I was obese throughout my 20s until finally, a few years ago, I decided to seize hold of life and shed all those pounds and recapture my self-confidence. I succeeded, and my reward? The only woman with whom I could link up was a grossly obese woman I met in an Internet chat room. I hadn't had so much as a kiss in 11 years, let alone made love, so I stupidly dove into a relationship with her. It was a disaster. I am still recovering, three years after we split up. Part of the fallout has been that I've gained back nearly all the weight I lost during that earlier heroic lunge at a better life, 160 pounds. I'm at a loss and wondering what to do, with visions of a 54-year-old me, still alone and miserable beyond all belief, shambling through my head.

I am married to a wonderful, beautiful woman, and blessed with a fabulous child, but I've become rather unhappy in the last few months. Among other things, my life has become rather sexless. My wife is certain that her sex drive is gone for good, and she doesn't seem to particularly miss it. I was never sexually demanding before -- maybe that's what attracted her to me -- but now I am unraveling. Sex isn't everything, but I have been obsessing about it lately. I am starting to regret my idealistic and solitary youth. I am unaccountably falling in love with women friends, compulsively exercising to make myself more presentable, becoming a leering, scheming old man. There is no nobility in acting this way, and I do not want to sacrifice my relationship with my son or my friendship with my wife for my libido, but I am far too young to have to put it away.

I have an ex-girlfriend whom I visited last weekend in another city, a couple of months after we said goodbye. She dances topless at a fancy club, which is where we met. We have nothing in common: Our social paradigms are vastly different, our level of education is completely incompatible. And yet when I am next to her I feel such an overwhelming love for her. I lose all sense of rationality. Gone is the sound thinking and proof by reasoning. It is disquieting because I am sure I am not in love with her. My hypothesis is that my attraction to her is caused by pheromones, that her chemical makeup is uniquely compatible with mine. Do you think that an uncontrollable attraction could be pheromonal? If yes, then what is love?

As the song goes, "Sometimes a day goes by when I don't think of her ..." and then morning comes.

The hallways are swept, the linens shaken out and changed, the pictures stored in a cardboard box somewhere ... but I can't stop dreaming about her.

She's been purged from my heart, ripped from my soul and scoured from my touch; but she lurks in memory, darting out at random moments to startle the shit out of me.

I'm scared I still love her, and, until I know better, can't or won't love any other.

I am 26 and have everything I ever wanted -- a best friend in marriage, two beautiful babies. I love everything about being a wife and mother, all the mundane little details, the smell of my daughter's downy hair after I dry her off and get her ready for bed, the way my "big boy" needs his mama and only mama will do. My problem has to do with my husband. I love him so much, have loved him for so long. I was the bold pursuer at the beginning and we had a sweet courtship. I was a jazz singer and he played football and sat in the cafe and I would sing to him. Lately, I guess the level of romance has just dropped. I don't want anybody else, I just remember feeling desired, desirable. Is there any way to make him see me again, and not just "what's for dinner, I'm turning on headline sports." I know he loves me, would do anything for me, and he loves being a daddy and enjoys our life together. Is this just a season in our marriage? I am assuming everyone goes through this, but does anyone come out the other end?

I just came back to the States after two years in Europe. In that time I fell deeply in love with a native, but decided to leave him and come home to work on my career, which feels really important to me in my late 20s. It's been four months and my lover and I talk quite often on the phone and I plan to visit him soon. The only problem is that I've started seeing someone else, and I feel like I'm starting to fall in love with him. How can I have feelings of love for two very different men. And worse yet, I can't choose between the two.

I'm 42. Is it all over for me? Is the pattern of my life unalterably set? I've had opportunities to marry and have run from them. Opportunities for careers and have run from them. When does the hardening of the sensibilities become intractable and what decisions am I making that seal this fate? I'm exhausted by the thought of having to meet someone and I despair at the possibility of never meeting someone to joyfully share life with. I suspect that joy and sharing are, in time, oxymoronic. My, don't I sound dramatic.