Flee Collar

One week, my boyfriend of four months was telling me he loves me and planning our vacation, and the next, he was saying he was overwhelmed with life stressors and needed to be alone. Not long afterward, a friend who's online dating showed me a guy's profile, and guess whose it was! I want to scream at him, "Grow up, put on your big boy pants, stop being a coward and treating me like a stupid female."

--Irate

If honesty were actually the best policy, people would use it more often. In a mob hit, instead of making up some ruse involving fresh cannoli, they'd say "Tommy, come over, we're gonna garrote you." To make tough situations easier, we all lie or tell just enough of the truth to get the point across: "It's not you, it's me..." No need to get into the hurtful specifics: "...and how I hate the way you look, smell, talk, and chew, and that weird snorting thing you do in bed." With either one, the takeaway is the same: "It's over. Move on." Much as you feel you deserve the truth, having it isn't always the best thing. It's his half-truth -- "I need to be alone" -- that sets you free (to find somebody else), and the whole truth -- "I need to be alone to write up my JDate profile" -- that keeps you too busy screaming that he's a patronizing coward who shops for pants in the little boys' department.