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I am a late 20s woman with a sister five years my junior. She and I are very close and really consider each other best friends as well as sisters. She and her boyfriend have been together since they were young teenagers. They stayed together, long distance, throughout their college years. After college she moved to the city where I live for graduate school, and he followed about six months later after he found a job here. They do not live together, as my sister wanted to be sure their relationship was solid enough in close proximity, since the majority of it had been long distance for so long. Things appear(ed) to…

It’s time again for Shortcuts. For every question, I’ll give my advice in just a few sentences, because sometimes the answer to a person’s question is so obvious and the need to hear it so great, being as clear and frank as possible is simply the best way to go.

My younger brother and I are both in our early-mid 20s and living with our single mother (him for financial/maturity reasons, and I for a mutually beneficial arrangement). My brother and I have always had an awkward relationship as we are very different people. However, I managed to build a tenuous bond with him as we backpacked together for several months in late 2010. Since then though, the bond has been almost completely severed as he has grown distant from me and my mother. A lot of tension occured when he got a DUI in late 2011 and dropped out of school. He lost his license, and we moved away from our…

In a feature I call “Your Turn,” in which you, the readers, get to answer the question, I’m presenting the following letter without commentary from me: My boyfriend and I have been dating for almost three months. He is in his second relationship, whereas I am in my first. We’re both 18 and began dating somewhere around the time college began. In the beginning, my boyfriend was really lovey-dovey. He texted me all the time, wanted to spend all his time with me, seemed very happy being with me, missed me all the time, etc. He said “I love you” after maybe a week or two, whereas I was just starting to…

I am a straight man and my partner is a gay man in a woman’s body. I feel as if I can accept and possibly still have sexual feelings for her/him. I would honestly give up anything I could think of just to make him happy. I’ve given up the idea of biological children (I have always wanted some), and a typical lifestyle. I am not attracted to guys and it would be much less stressful to leave but I love him more than anyone else in the world. Breaking up wouldn’t make either of us happy. I am not a typical guy. I never have been. But I am happy as…