First of all, JANE, you know how your advice worked out for me. It worked out GREAT. I am in love, and I finally cracked the code of life, and I see everything in little green Matrix lines of ones and zeros and there will be no more problems or complications from here on out. Goodbye Agent Smith, I did it! So, thank you.

Personally, while I agree with your interest in the “why are you so hot for this particular, clearly problematic person” line of questioning because it’s definitely valuable to trace and understand those impulses, I have always felt, especially when I was on the receiving end of it, like your advice ends too abruptly with a “so cut it out.” It always felt like you were blaming me, and while one must take responsibility for the choices one makes in life, both in dating and elsewhere, I think in the middle of one’s desperate, hopeless singledom, when it feels hard enough just to find someone you are even interested in, let alone go on a third date with, to then hear that you are not allowed to be interested in them is like a nail in the coffin, if your heart is the coffin.

Sometimes you are obviously right, like back when you were only interested in dating married tattoo artists, or back when I was only interested in dating women who fundamentally disliked me, but there has to also be a version where someone meets someone they like and recognizes that there are some red flags, and in this awareness they are able to make it work because they finally have their eyes open? Is that completely outside the realm of possibility even? Jane, I am a people person, and I love all people, and I just want everyone to succeed. You know this about me.

My question for this woman is if you’re too scared to talk about this very simple, fundamental, obvious difference with a guy that you like who you thinks likes you, then what kind of relationship are you really hoping to build here? Like, this is just Step One. There are a bunch more steps after that. If you’re too scared to take Step One, which is fine, Step One can be one of the scariest steps, but if you’re too scared for that then you def might not be ready for the One Hundred Million Steps that will for sure follow. It’s like you found a job listing on monster.com that you think might be perfect for you but if you’re unwilling to even just create a free monster.com login then you definitely aren’t going to get the job.