Dear Navy SEAL,

My boyfriend was laid off from his job a few weeks back. Ever since cashing his severance check, all he does is sit around and watch TV while I work to support us both. I know unemployment has undermined his confidence, but I'm not his mother! How do I get him out of the house and looking for work?


—Peeved In Palmyra

Dear Peeved,

Killing silently is a tall order, but a quick look at an anatomy chart will show that the larynx is an easy enough target—providing you can make a stealthy submerged approach, sneak up on your victim, and catch him unaware. Once that's accomplished, grasp his hair as close to the scalp as you're able to and yank his head back while using your Ka-Bar combat knife to make a lateral cut across his throat. Make sure you sever both the carotid artery and jugular vein while piercing the windpipe, and press hard; the larynx is a tough, rubbery piece of tissue.


Dear Navy SEAL,

I am a happily married man with a warm and loving wife who is also my best friend. We've been together for 17 years and couldn't be happier. But lately she says she wants separate beds. I'm reeling! We're barely in our 40s, and in my mind separate sleeping is for seniors. Am I making too much of this? Help!


—Anxious In Andersonville

Dear Anxious,

Destroying a bridge might look easy in the movies, but remember: They're designed to withstand the immense shear-forces of wind and weather. Deploying an underwater M-32 satchel charge at the base of each load-bearing pylon looks like the answer, but it might not even shake a modern riveted steel highway or railroad bridge. Without delving into the complex language of the guerrilla combat engineer, the best advice I can give you is to forgo subtlety in favor of brute force: Put two satchel charges at each X-shaped trestle buck, and this should rob the bridge of any reinforcing strength and cause it to buckle nicely.


Dear Navy SEAL,

After several catastrophically bad relationships, I have finally found the right man. But old habits die hard. After all those cheating jerks, it requires great will for me to trust this absolute prince. I find myself reading his mail, listening to his answering-machine messages, even—God help me—following him around! How do I handle this situation? I don't want to ruin the best thing I have ever had.


—Paranoid In Portsmouth

Dear Paranoid,

The 10mm Colt sidearm might not be an ideal long-distance weapon, and it's certainly no sniper's rifle, but it has the advantages of low weight and quicker target acquisition. You can reliably engage aggressors at ranges of 30 meters and more. Use a two-handed grip and brace the barrel against a tree, or use your dive tanks and rebreather as an improvised bench rest. Don't worry about "stopping power": One of those 10mm slugs opens up to about 70 caliber when it hits, leaving an exit wound you could toss a cat through, and bringing so much energy to a target that a hit in the extremities is often enough to drop Ivan in his tracks.


Lt. Ryan Cusper is a combat-decorated Navy SEAL and nationally syndicated advice columnist. His weekly column, Ask A Navy SEAL, appears in 250 newspapers nationwide.