Transatlantic Let-Down

I'm getting old, and my girlfriend is 10 years my junior. I live in Manhattan and she resides across the Atlantic. I long for cozy nights, while she is deeply committed to her fledgling career. She insists on staying there for a few more years, with a promise to move. We've talked about marriage, but she doesn't want to tie the knot right away. I was ready to move in with her and learn to speak the tongue of her country, but her feet got cold (or realistic). We see each other about once every two months. To me that's not enough, although for her it's fine. "Suck it up and be a man," she says.

When I ask my friends, they tell me to "suck it up and be a man—pipe down and cheat." I won't do that (cheat). To reiterate, I long for cozy nights. How long should a man wait? Penelope held back for some 20 years, but wasn't Odysseus enjoying the occasional shag?

—Spring Is Here and the Tide has Turned

Now, I'm not the world's most sensitive gal, but if my Special Naked Friend told me he was desperately unhappy with our relationship, I hope I would come up with something a tad kinder than "suck it up." Your girlie's complete lack of empathy says heaps more about your relationship than the ocean separating the two of you does.

Let's look at the not-so-hard facts here, my friend. You're 10 years older than your girlfriend, so I'm guesstimating that you're at least 35, probably more in the neighborhood of 45. How many boners do you honestly think you've got left in you? I hate to put it in these terms, but you hit your sexual peak at 17. From your teen years on, it's all downhill. Take it from one who's dated older and younger—erections aren't like death and taxes; these delicate creations are far, far from being a sure thing. I mean, look; whereas a decade ago you would've been bemoaning your lack of hot fuck action, these days you're bereft because you don't have any fuzzy wuzzy "cozy nights." Ahem.

Meanwhile, Ms. Junior Mint Foreign Exchange Fox is getting randier and more orgasmic with age. Do you think this will go unnoticed by the exotic Gnthers and/or Pablos crossing her path? More to the point, do you really expect that this roiling pit of pheromones (otherwise known as your girlfriend) is not going to notice them?

Two months is an appropriate amount of time to put between Big Macs or calls to your mother, but not between incidents of sexual intercourse. Besides, everyone knows (or should) that long-distance relationships are for suckers. You get none of the good bits of being in a relationship (i.e., sex) and all of the bad (moping, pining, money woes, etc.). When you only see a person once every 60 days for a weekend or so, there's all this pressure to make your limited time together perfect—even if that visit coincides with the worst case of stomach flu you've ever experienced. Who wants their significant far-flung other to recall them emitting huge gaseous anal roars and projectile vomiting into the Seine for the next two months?

Then there's the problem of good behavior. When your time together is limited, you always want to put on a happy face. That's not real. What happens when/if you do ever move in together? Are you going to be upset to learn that she really doesn't enjoy Teen Titans and was only tolerating it because she didn't want you to think her a tv snob? Is she going to be appalled by your habit of leaving skid-marked underroos on the bathroom floor? You never did that when weekending in Minsk, did you?

Speaking of cohabitation, it doesn't sound like this is in the cards anytime soon. Besides her obvious ambivalence, I gather the two of you won't even be on the same continent for a couple years. If you're sending moany letters to random advice columnists already, you're going to be ready for inpatient therapy a couple dozen months down the line. The way I see it, you have a couple options: You could do like your helpful friends suggest and cheat, but that's an even bigger sucker's game than having a long-distance relationship. Or perhaps you could try to arrange some sort of "open" relationship, wherein you both date other people, but spare each other the details. Then again, you could simply dump her.

This last course of action is probably your best bet. It sounds like you're a whole lot more invested in this relationship than she is, so I'd think real hard before wasting your last few boner-ific years pining for something that may never happen.