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"  I am in a long-distance relationship, and I love him. We talk every day, but he doesn&amp;#039;t want to get married. He hasn&amp;#039;t visited me in a long time. We&amp;#039;ve been together almost four years and communicate really well, but to have a happy ending, you need more than that, right? What should I do? Stick around or leave him? A generation or two ago, a long-distance relationship might have seemed exotic, and tragically romantic. A lot of our parents and grandparents didn&amp;#039;t move for work or college or fun. Now, it seems, we&amp;#039;re all chasing careers in a tough economy, and it&amp;#039;s depressingly common to get pulled away from someone we love by work or family or inertia. There are plenty of reasons why this sucks, but the biggest reason is that when you&amp;#039;re in a long-distance relationship, you are basically single. Phone calls help and Skype gets steamy, but there&amp;#039;s no substitute for the real thing. It gets lonely. It&amp;#039;s lovely that the two of you communicate well and that you love him, but that&amp;#039;s never quite enough without actually being together. A long-distance relationship is like that Skype chat: a limited window into each other&amp;#039;s lives, with lots and lots of life that&amp;#039;s left out of the frame. You deserve a real relationship in which you see everything. You deserve to fall asleep watching a bad movie with the guy you love, wake up and hear him snoring, come home from work and see how he deals with your bad day (and how you deal with his). You deserve the chance to figure out if your hot weekends together are great because you&amp;#039;re so good as a couple or because you know you&amp;#039;ll be leaving soon. You deserve to find out if, after discovering everything you don&amp;#039;t see on Skype, you still love the guy, or maybe even love him more. Four years is long enough to figure out the logistics of being together. But it sounds like you don&amp;#039;t have a plan. That&amp;#039;s your responsibility too. You have to ask yourself: Why? I have so many friends in long-distance relationships that I&amp;#039;ve begun to see patterns, and the most obvious is that the distance is almost never the real problem. Is your guy not visiting you because of the miles? Or is it because, on some sad level, he doesn&amp;#039;t care quite enough? (And maybe you don&amp;#039;t either.) Distance is a tragic, romantic excuse, but it&amp;#039;s often a cop-out. Relationships never fail \u2014 or succeed \u2014 for just one reason. It sounds like you want to get married. He doesn&amp;#039;t. He can&amp;#039;t blame that on distance. And neither should you. It&amp;#039;s been four years. If you haven&amp;#039;t worked out a plan for your future at this point, it&amp;#039;s time to dump him. I&amp;#039;ve been dating a new guy for two months now, and he still texts his ex and sends Snapchats. Am I being irrational getting jealous and annoyed? It&amp;#039;s been just two months. Everyone should be a little suspicious in the first two months. If you&amp;#039;re not, you&amp;#039;re going to get burned badly some day. So, no, you&amp;#039;re not necessarily being irrational. A little jealousy can even be healthy. But it&amp;#039;s a question of degrees. You&amp;#039;re worried that he&amp;#039;s trading photos that immediately disappear on Snapchat? That sounds totally rational. Are you expecting him to cut off contact with all women in his life just because you&amp;#039;ve dated for eight weeks? That&amp;#039;s irrational. Are you installing GPS trackers on his car and stealing his passwords? That would be super-irrational. Basically, though, you&amp;#039;re right to be suspicious. Your next step should be a direct conversation. It sounds like you prefer relationships with clear boundaries. I&amp;#039;d suggest you talk to him and make sure he does too. How do you explain to someone you&amp;#039;re dating that you have an STD? That&amp;#039;s an important question. Right now, about 110 million Americans have STDs (including the common type-1 Herpes), and nearly half of all new cases each year occur in people ages 15 to 24. So you&amp;#039;re certainly not alone. STDs are common, all are treatable, and many are curable. So be upfront, honest, and keep it simple. Timing-wise, I&amp;#039;ve heard of people who never tell (which, controversially, has landed some in criminal court, and I&amp;#039;ve seen women flag their STDs in online dating profiles (too much for me, but, hey, that&amp;#039;s me). Most advice on the subject boils down to putting yourself in your date&amp;#039;s shoes. What would you want to hear? Where? When? Find a private moment, in a private place. There&amp;#039;s one firm rule: Tell your partner before you have sex. (And don&amp;#039;t get Clintonian about it: Sex includes oral.) Better yet, even though it may be nerve-wracking, tell the person you&amp;#039;re dating when you are both relatively sober: Not necessarily &amp;quot;Hi, my name&amp;#039;s Jane and I&amp;#039;ve got HPV,&amp;quot; but not after you&amp;#039;ve unzipped his pants and turned off the lights, either. Between those extremes, feel it out. This is an explanation, not an apology, so a big preamble isn&amp;#039;t necessary. Just keep it simple: &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s something we need to talk about: I have an STD.&amp;quot; You don&amp;#039;t need to launch into a graphic description of how you got it and who you got it from. It&amp;#039;s more important to fill him in on the basics: what you have, how it gets passed on, and typical symptoms. Assume that he knows less about it than you, because he will likely be clueless. He may even make dumb assumptions or ask stupid questions. That&amp;#039;s fine. Be patient. Prepare to educate him. Your partner may know so little, in fact, that he needs some more time. Offer it to him: &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s cool if you want to take some time to think about it.&amp;quot; If he needs to read up, suggest he starts with the CDC&amp;#039;s site, rather than randomly Googling. Try not to take any immediate reaction personally, but if he&amp;#039;s a total jackass, look at it this way: It&amp;#039;s good you found out before you had sex with him. Two more things to keep in mind: You can ask for discretion, but you can&amp;#039;t demand secrecy. He may want to talk to someone, and he deserves the chance to ask for advice. And you can&amp;#039;t keep it a secret from him just because you&amp;#039;re scared of the response. That&amp;#039;s dangerous, and it&amp;#039;s unfair. If you&amp;#039;ve already been having sex, tell him now \u2014 and suggest that he get tested soon. Do you have a question about sex or relationships for Logan? Submit it here. Follow Logan on Twitter. Photo Credit: New Line Cinema "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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