Who Wants to Date a Loser?

Dear Jason Adair the Unlicensed Therapist,
I have a friend who is pressuring me (and others) to fix her brother up on dates. He seems nice but I know his story and it involves professional disgrace, financial problems and depression. None of us feels comfortable introducing this man to anyone. I've tried to put her off but she won't stop. She is blind about her brother and a real control freak. How can I get her to back off without telling her that her bro is a loser no one should date?
-Frustrated Friend

Dear Frustrated,
You have just entered into my third favorite relationship paradox; the degree of acquaintance to a person is proportional to the number of truly horrible things you know about that person. This is why it's so much easier to date a person you've just met rather than someone you've been friends with forever. The biggest problem for you, and the loser brother, is that most of the information you have about him probably comes from his sister complaining about how he used to pee on the neighbors dog, beat up homeless people, and steal medicine from the neighborhood retirement home. In all actuality though, he probably never really peed on the dog, but just said he did to sound cool. As for finding him someone to grind his professionally disgraceful loins against, I recommend fixing him up someone who has wronged you in the past and deserves to be stuck in a soul killing relationship they will never get out of because every time they try he will threaten to kill himself. If you are to nice for that kind of payback, you should try befriending some women who work for Health and Human Services and set them up with him. Not only are they trained to deal with people like that, but they're all kind of suckers for a fixer upper.

Your Friend/Holy Avenger,
Jason Adair the Unlicensed Therapist

Mad Communication Skilz

Dear Jason Adair the Unlicensed Therapist,

Yo so here it goes dam i need help so bad!!!!! im really depressed and sad because of this. U see im 13. I really like this girl ok. we were really cool until one day i had to screw it up by sending her a letter/poem. WOW. So she didn't like me i guess and she sent me an email saying she wants to be my friend instead which is a lie because we never had a conversation since then. So My close friend who is 12 and she is 13. he likes her too he told her and she told him that she liked him too. I was so sad dam. next day. we had an event in school ok and i was with my friend ok. Then she comes and starts flirting with him. dam. he was with my like the whole time. so sad. I later went outside and cried. some girls saw me and asked me wut was wrong i said nothing. the she left my friend and came to me her name is kate. so kate comes and says come wid me i said no ( dam it ) then she asks wuts wrong i said nothing ( dam it ). she later leaves unhappy too. dam but i felt better because she asked me which meant she cared wow it felt so good man. Ya so now kate and my friend are like together but not dating. So what do I do man please please help me !!! i really like her man. how can i win her bak or something. dam im in soo much pain right now...... help

Dear ......Help
I want to tell you to forget about this girl and to move on, but if there's one thing I remember about girls, and being thirteen, is that the emotions you're feeling right now are so much larger than your rational mind can really deal with. This is totally normal. As for what to do about it, my advice is to play it cool. I'm not saying you should ignore this girl, but take great pains to treat her as if you're not interested in dating her. The truth is, once a girl says she's not interested, and a guy makes a plan to "win her back" he develops a stink of desperation, and everyone can smell it. Once you get that stink on you it's really hard to get off. Unfortunately, the way Kate is acting, you might be stinky already, in which case you really should move on. Take that pain you're feeling and channel it into improving yourself so that you'll be more of a catch for the next girl your teenage hormones target. First and foremost, work on your written communication skills. If that letter/poem you sent to Kate was as incoherent as the letter you sent to me, she might not have even understood what you wanted. Also, DO NOT WRITE GIRLS POEMS. There aren't many guys that can actually pull that off and not seem either creepy or shallow. Instead, read some poets who have good stuff to say about love and relationships (Emily Dickenson, E. E. Cummings, Charles Bukowski) and send their poems instead of your own, kind of like a poetry mix tape. That way you get the double impact of a good poem and being seen as well read. Good luck with the ladies, and before you send another letter to anyone, read it to yourself out loud first.

Your Young Love Cheerleader,
Jason Adair the Unlicensed Therapist