A Sappy Medium

For a year, I’ve been in a serious relationship with a woman whose “best friend” is a guy she dated a while back. They e-mail each other about their daily doings -- signing “love” with an emoticon kiss (:-*) -- talk on the phone twice a week, and send birthday cards with words like “You Sweetie!” I don’t understand the purpose of such talk between non-dating men and women. She calls it “normal communication between friends.” My approach is adapt or adopt. I’m trying to adapt to the guy having such a presence in her life, but if we marry, I can’t have him sending her cards and e-mails with love and kisses. Adopting means doing what she’s doing -- writing to single women I know in love talk. I can’t do that -- it’s not my way.

--Plagued By Her xox-Boyfriend

Internet cute-icisms like emoticons are a problem. In case Ted Kaczynski or any other computer-opposed types are reading this, emoticons are punctuation marks combined to make gaggingly cute little sideways faces (:-o) intended to convey emotion in chat rooms, instant messages, and e-mail. The way I see it, they’re acceptable when used by anybody under 12, and excusable when used by 35-year-olds who have yet to master written English. Emoticon users are also prone to use the likes of “LOL” (Laughing Out Loud), and “ROFL” (Rolling On Floor Laughing); acronyms sometimes included in e-mail to indicate that something the person’s written should have us wetting ourselves laughing. Guess what: If it's funny, we'll laugh. If it's not, and you use that acronym, it may leave us “WTTYS”: Wanting To Throttle You Senseless. But, enough about my menagerie of pet peeves, let’s get to why you’re being so nutso unreasonable. Here’s a girl who’s pretty much typing out her daily to-do list, junking it up with punctuation-mark faces, and e-mailing it to some guy she was done with long ago. You don’t mention feeling attention-deprived, and it doesn’t sound like there’s more than questionable taste being exchanged. Can’t you just let her play nicely with her little friend since it doesn’t seem like she has any intention of playing doctor? So, her style isn’t your style. What’s important is whether you match up on the stuff that matters most to you. Of course, if this matters most to you, you’re with the wrong girl. Sure, it’s a bit unsettling to have a girlfriend with an ex-boyfriend best friend. But, come on, are you seriously threatened by this guy’s presence, or more by your apparent inability to dictate to your future Stepford wife what she can and cannot do? The real danger to your relationship is probably your “I’ll show her!” model of conflict resolution: “My name is Conan. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” Satisfying as it might be to get revenge by writing loveyisms to single women, if you’d like to learn about the civility, deep friendship, and compromise necessary to make a relationship work, you might watch a little less old Arnold and a little more recent Oprah. There’s a good chance these punctuation skin tags aren’t so much your girlfriend’s way of conveying she has feelings for the guy as they are a way of glossing over the fact she doesn’t. Stop stewing over “adapt or adopt,” and consider the possibility that she signs off with all that goop because she’s always signed off with all that goop. Maybe, to her, it seems cruel to suddenly yank the kissyface and replace it with (:-|) or with what you’d probably prefer t(-_-t) -- the emoticon (read upright) for flipping somebody the double bird.