by Rudy Cheeks

Dear Dr. Lovemonkey,

I am in the midst of a great dilemma and hope that you can help. I've been involved in a serious relationship for over three years now, and although I am deeply in love with my boyfriend, I have fallen for another man. At first, I saw no harm in having a simple crush on this man. However, this crush has escalated into an intense physical relationship.

This man satisfies me in ways that my boyfriend never could, and, as a result, it is hard for me to let go of the affair. It's gotten to the point where I am lying to my boyfriend and making excuses just so I can be with this other man.

Yesterday, my boyfriend proposed to me, and I realized that I truly do love him and want to marry him. I am ready to end my affair, but this is extremely difficult because this other man is my boyfriend's father. How do I end my affair with his father and still maintain my relationship with my boyfriend?

Daddy's Girl

Dear Daddy's Girl,

Dr. Lovemonkey is always concerned when he reads, "although I am deeply in love with my boyfriend, I have fallen for another man." No matter how strong your feelings are for someone, it is still necessary for individuals to set boundaries. When we are engaged in an intimate relationship with someone and become attracted to another person (it happens), we must say to ourselves, "I am involved with someone I care about and believe that the intimacy we share is an important trust between us. I will not betray that trust by sharing intimacies with another."

Obviously, you failed to do this by not setting and/or keeping to explicit behavioral boundaries. There is an image of romantic love that suggests that it is wildly passionate and impulsive, and while this is certainly part of it, there are other, equally critical components necessary to build and sustain healthy romantic relationships.

Discipline is one, as is an ability to compromise and a shared devotion to some basic principles. One of these principles is the notion of exclusivity of intimacy. You just don't cross that line. (By the way, the "intimacy" is not merely physical, so we're not just talking about fornication here but secrets, small personal details, and shared feelings -- in short, all that is intimate between two people).

Dr. Lovemonkey's hope is that by thinking about your situation in the terms that I have just discussed, you will have a clearer understanding of what to do (or, not to do) in the future. If you are actually considering marriage, it would behoove you to start looking at the moral aspects of committing yourself to another.

I'd also like to respond to your question, "How do I end my affair with his father and still maintain my relationship with my boyfriend?" What you are basically asking is how you can have your cake and eat it, too, despite the reality of your recent behavior. Well, this is not something that you can pretend never happened. You need to tell your boyfriend the truth.

It's my belief that it would be wrong not to tell your boyfriend about your relationship with his father. The stress of having to hold on to a secret like that would doom any marriage. On the other hand, chances are that the revelation will end your relationship with your boyfriend anyway.

In short, if you tell the truth, there is a slim chance that you'll be able to patch up your relationship, but if you decide to keep your affair a secret, I believe your relationship is doomed as well. There is no comfortable or easy answer to your problem. Wrong behavior has consequences.

While I am sure that our readers have been greatly entertained by the sensationalistic aspect of your story, the fact that this is your boyfriend's father makes little difference to Dr. Lovemonkey. It may, however, be of great interest to a book publisher. The "women fucking up" genre is currently a hot one, I hear.

Dear Dr. Lovemonkey,

I have been having strange dreams or visions of being abducted by men in black Nike sneakers! It all started when a bottle of olive oil I discarded on the morning of my first "close encounter" was held over my head later that night while I lay half-asleep in bed: "There was enough oil in this bottle to fry a pepper," one of the three mysterious men in black overalls and sneakers scolded.

Now I have the overwhelming urge to castrate myself as a way of doing penance for my dreadful wastefulness. Every night I seem to be beamed aboard a space ship and served macaroni with Buddy Cianci's marinara sauce! And worse yet, I'm ordered to clean my plate! Is this Heaven's Gate's version of the Christmas Carol? Help!

L.D. Theobald, Gent.

Dear L.D. Theobald, Gent.,

This is not Heaven's Gate's version of the Christmas Carol but Dr. Lovemonkey's nightmare of what life would be as the editor in charge of unsolicited manuscripts at Spy magazine, a "humor" publication now in rapid decline.

You may want to consider sending your next missive there. The address at Spy is 49 East 21st Street, 11th floor, New York, NY 10010. In a statement on their masthead, they announce that they are "not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts, photographs, illustrations, or other materials."

It might be worth your while to issue a similar proclamation once you've devised a cover story to explain how, in the throes of an hallucinatory episode, you found yourself at a keyboard, pecking out imaginative tales that border on the amusing, if not for their unfortunate tendency to be largely unintelligible.

Oh, and by the way, add a little garlic and cayenne to Buddy's sauce and you'll find it much tastier.

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