Sounds to me like you’re pouring salt on your stinging wound three times a week. To heal, you must terminate contact with the salt man. Join a new gym, then take an even harder step by asking yourself what this man gave you through his promises and way of loving (or leaving) you that tapped into longings you may have kept hidden even from yourself. Did he seduce you by posing as a potential father figure for your son? Do you feel guilty for building your child’s hopes, only to see them dashed? Are you hanging onto the dream of bringing “daddy” back? Until you face up to why you’re clinging, you won’t have “everything under control.”

There’s no real mystery to kissing. Lips are like fruit, ripe for nibbling and licking, and the French kiss is merely a variation, when lips part and tongues meet lightly, shyly at first, then perhaps more insistently. But there’s more to kissing than the French know. You might sample kisses Italian style and rent the film Cinema Paradiso, which ignites the screen with a montage of movie history’s most gasp-inducing lip locks. Or even better, take in the classic Thomas Crown Affair (the Faye Dunaway version), which sizzles with an erotic, slow-motion sequence that is like a graduate course in tender mouth-meld techniques. On the other hand, chances are good that the new man in your life has logged plenty of kiss miles, so rather than worry about your lingual loops, take a deep breath and just enjoy following his lead.

Stick to your guns and don’t let him drag his stuff back into the house. Believe me, he’ll want to! But because pack rats have strong emotional resistance to letting go of the flotsam and jetsam of their lives, you can bet your sweetie will do his damnedest to avoid parting with you, too.