Dear Piper,

What if your boyfriend only ignored you in the schoolyear but not in the summer I don’t think he likes me as much as he did do you think he still likes me the same we have been going out for 6 months and we have been good with each other until he’s around his friends his best friends are girls if your wondering and he totally ignores me and he lies to me to get off the phone with me but he’ll talk to them tell me what i should do. I need advice.

–Mary

Dear Mary,

Wow. An entire paragraph with only two punctuation marks. Your letter is very stream-of-conscious…as if what you wrote is the inner-monologue that plays in your head over and over again. I get the feeling you’ve listened to this monologue so many times you don’t really pay attention to the words. For you it may just be an anxiety-ridden script of blah blah blah.

Well, Mary, two key words stood out when I read your monologue: namely, IGNORED and LIES. Honey, I don’t think the big question here is does your boyfriend like you, I think what we really need to find out is if you like yourself. A woman who likes herself doesn’t hold on too long to a boyfriend who ignores and lies to her. I want you to spend some time building up your self-esteem…find some things you’re good at or really interested in and do them often. You’ll end up falling in love with yourself and nothing makes a woman more attractive to a man than that.

–Piper