The biggest, baddest, most terrifying part of falling in love is opening up and letting yourself be vulnerable. When it works, love can seem like the stuff of fairytales: you meet someone, you get to know and like each other, you enter into a mutually trusting and respectful relationship, you fall deeply, madly, hopelessly in love, and you live happily ever after.

At least, for a while.

Between the Internet, blogging, and social networking, the concept of courtship can seem pretty antiquated. Depending on how Web-present you are, with the push of a button a guy could potentially access everything from your videotaped colonic to your SAT scores to mortifying details of your most recent heartbreak. All this before you’ve even met him in real life.

Once, I was regaling a new date with a funny story—only to have him interrupt and finish it for me. It wasn’t a case of sudden onset Alzheimer’s. I’d never met him before. He’d Googled me and read a piece I’d written that contained the anecdote. I was busted for plagiarizing my own material.

With any luck, your online presence isn’t as loud and embarrassing as mine. Still, living in a post-privacy world begs the question: How much information is too much information? Negotiating the privacy line becomes especially crucial when dating someone new. So here are some guidelines for what to reveal and what to leave unspoken. For now, anyway.

I never trust couples that claim they don’t fight. I don’t believe them, and even if they aren’t lying, who wants to be with a guy who agrees with everything you say? How boring would that be? The best part of being in a relationship is exposing yourself to new ideas and ways of thinking. If you don’t have any conflict, you’re probably not going to have many sparks.

It may sound counter-intuitive, but one of the most important things a couple should figure out early on is how to fight fairly and effectively. Here’s what not do when you’re engaged in battle….

A good friend of mine recently reminded me of some advice I’d given her back in college. She was about to sleep with a new boyfriend for the first time and had been fretting about some body part. Apparently I shrugged and told her, “Please—boys are just happy to have a naked girl in the same room as them.”

I was kind of surprised and impressed when she told me I’d actually said these words. Over the years I have had pre-sex panic attacks over (in no particular order): my eyebrows, nasally voice, bad breath, body hair, belly roll(s), teeth, table manners, inner thighs… basically if I had it, I wasted valuable lady hours worrying about it.

We get a lot of mail from readers, some insanely flattering, some helpful (thanks for doing a little free copy-editing for us, guys!), and plenty of nasty hate mail. With that in mind, we’re going to post some of the best reader mail we get from time to time, because we totally appreciate that you even take the time to write!

From: REDACTED@fastmail.fm
Date: Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 1:33 PM

“Ok, so you’ve got some of the low lifes down. Do you have any original ideas on the right guy? Or do you, just like all women man haters, know what you don’t want but havn’t a clue what a good guy is. Let me take a guess on the guy your looking for… Very rich, Brad Pitt looks, drives a Lamborghini. People who are not in a good relationship, or have never had a good relationship shouldn’t be giving advice on the matter. Good hunting…”

Judy McGuire got this one in response to one of her “Dating Don’ts” columns and asked me to fact check this hater’s slanderous statements. For starters, Brad Pitt is not her style. She’s more of a Richard Belzer girl. And a Lamborghini? Puh-lease. Is this the ‘80s, Patrick Bateman? She’d rather date a guy with a chauffeured limo, natch.

[Note: Spelling errors were left, um, because.]

The first thing anyone asks a battered woman is, “why did you put up with that?” Domestic violence is the only crime I can think of—well, besides rape—where the victim is treated as complicit in her own abuse.

This is why I rarely talk about my two-year relationship with a batterer. I wasn’t a housewife with no resources, I was a teenager and he was my first boyfriend. He beat me, raped me and stalked me. After I escaped, it was years before I told anyone what I’d been through because I was so ashamed. I still avoid the topic with those close to me.

What people don’t understand is that abusers don’t generally punch you in the face on the first date. If they did, nobody would ever go out with them twice. But there are some early warning signs—and as much as you might hate to admit it to yourself, the fact is, even a strong, smart, independent woman can find herself on the wrong end of the fist. Here are some behaviors to watch out for…

Your passive-aggressive aunt bought you a Match.com subscription for Christmas. While your first impulse was to hit her with a brick, you’ve always been curious about online dating. “What the heck?” you figure. “I’ll write an ad and take a look around.” But when you’re on your own in virtual reality, the search for computer-generated love can be daunting. Here are the top online dating types to avoid.

Women who fall in love with and sometimes marry psychotic killers — like Richard Ramirez (the Night Stalker) or Ted Bundy — have always fascinated me. I mean, why? Sure, people do tend to have types, but “big-schnozzed manorexic” is a far cry from “slitter of throats and raper of ladies.” However, I have to give these women some credit—at least those guys were still in jail and therefore unable to harm them when they hooked up.

Drew Peterson’s latest fiancé is more of a risk-taker. Twenty-four-year-old Christina Raines is set to marry 53-year-old Peterson despite the fact that two out of his four ex-wives were either murdered or missing and presumed murdered. Though he hasn’t been formally charged in either murder, he remains Suspect #1.

That said, most of us who’ve dated law-breakers go a lot less high-profile—here are a few signs that you might be seeing someone who lives on Johnny Law’s bad side.

Do you know anyone who keeps their New Year’s resolutions? Or even remembers them after January 15? I sure don’t. Most of us vow to lose weight, quit drinking, or cut up those credit cards. But some of us make relationship-related resolutions, and that’s what we’re here to talk about. After the jump are four resolutions. One of the four is valid; the other three are less so. Let’s see if you can tell which is which.

Writing about dating is my full-time job, so, naturally, I hear a lot of pretty deranged tales of love gone wrong. But last week I received a letter from a woman who was convinced that men wouldn’t go out with her because she was just too … beautiful.

She fully believed her breathtaking attractiveness was anything but a man-magnet—as one might expect. Instead, she said, her beauty acted as a Romeo-repellant, causing suitors to run screaming from her. Obviously, I explained the situation to her (perhaps it wasn’t her gorgeous outsides, but her narcissistic insides that were doing the damage), but it did get me to thinking about all the other ridiculous reasons that women—myself included—come up with when they get dumped.

Locking lips. Making out. Smooching. Kissing. It sounds so pleasant and easy, yet do a little research and you’ll soon discover that while everyone may be doing it, few are doing it well. For your edification, I have rounded up the different varieties of bad kissers and broken them down by the traits they share with members of the animal kingdom: 

Iguana: Characterized by cool, dry lips, and a tiny pink tongue, Lizard Lips is about as arousing as, well, a small reptile crawling around your mouth. One victim noted, “He’d dart his tongue in and out at a million flicks per second. Kissing is supposed to get you hot, not give you calluses.”

Maybe it’s because we’re forced to deal with our families more than usual during the holidays, but these can be trying times for women without rings on their wedding fingers. Aunt Esther’s annual grab at your left hand and subsequent clucking over your naked ring finger is annoying, but you write it off because she’s senile and will die soon. When your cousin Myrna gasses on about her impending nuptials over eggnog, you actually feel a little sorry for her because you see the way her betrothed keeps eyeing her sister. But when your baby sister flashes the rock that her professor-turned-paramour put under the tree, you succumb to a little condition called “The Ring Tizzy.”

Have you ever gotten a gift so ugly, so utterly not you, that you can’t even fake a kind response? That’s how I felt opening a box that contained the silver-plated, faux-turquoise-encrusted bracelet my then boyfriend gifted me one Christmas.

“Santa Fe fake?” I asked, slipping it over my hand, and removing it before it could turn my wrist green. I could tell that he was a little hurt, but c’mon. I had fire engine red hair and a pierced nose. He may as well have given me a beige mu-mu and a hairnet.

How does that old adage go? ‘Tis better to give than to receive? Generally, I disagree with this sentiment (after all, who doesn’t like presents?), but in that particular case it rang true. Gift giving and receiving introduces a whole new element of tension in even the most established relationships. Will it fit her? Do you think it’ll cover his bald spot? So I’m here to help you negotiate this treacherous terrain by making sure you don’t do the wrong thing.

There comes a time in every free-wheeling, fun-having relationship where a lady has to suck it up, buckle down and meet the people who spawned her beloved. Nine times out of ten, this happens around the holidays, and there is almost always a festive meal involved. The most wonderful time of the year? Yeah, right.

The first thing you need to do is get the skinny from your man. What are his parents like? Are they churchgoers? Recovering hippies? Military? You need to know what you’re up against. Though each set of parents is different (and once you throw in stepparents, you could be dealing with a couple sets), there are some universal things you should definitely not do if you want to make a good impression. Here are a few examples:

Last week, we covered how to avoid being a bad heartbreaker, so this week we’ll tackle the other side of things. Coincidentally, it’s a side of dating I’m far more familiar with: how to accept being dumped with dignity.

Just as there are myriad ways to screw up breaking someone’s heart, the possibilities for botching a “getting-broken-up-with” are limitless. Here are some behaviors to avoid so you won’t compound your heartache with a total loss of self respect.

The unthinkable has happened. He asked you out. The only guys who renders you speechless. The guy so smart, handsome and unbelievably hot you can do little more than blush and stutter in his presence. And now you’re going out with him. Tomorrow.  Hooray?

Your friends think it’s cute that you’re in such a panic, but you can’t see any humor in the situation. Not only do you have to lose ten pounds, grow an extra cup size and somehow talk your mousey mop into looking like Jennifer Aniston’s—you have to do it all by tomorrow. Oh, and you should probably also think about regaining your powers of speech. What to wear? What to smell like? What to do?

Okay, I can’t really help you with that, but here are a few things you definitely shouldn’t do, after the jump…

Don’t you just hate the type of person who smugly informs you, “I don’t watch TV,” like that’s something to be proud of? They think they’re so great with all their fancy book learning. What they don’t realize is that TV isn’t for dummies—there’s tons of educational programming available—you just need to know what to watch. I mean, you can learn your ABC’s with “Sesame Street”’s Grover, how to make gnocchi with Mario Batali, and the ins and outs of prettying up your home with any number of programs on HGTV.

Television is also a great romance resource. Think of all the great TV twosomes we’ve seen over the years—Lucy & Ricky Ricardo, Judy Jane & George Jetson, Speidi…but not all TV personalities set such a sincerely loving example. It’s also a good place to learn which type of guy you should avoid. A few examples, after the jump…

If you were to follow every rule (and not just The Rules) that have been written about dating, you’d be too confused to actually ever go out on any dates. So-called sexperts and relationship gurus are constantly contradicting both themselves and each other— Should you call him? How long do you wait to engage in frisky relations? Is a “MOM” tattoo a valid dealbreaker? Ask a dozen experts, get a dozen different answers.

However, there are one or two rules that everyone seems to agree on. Generally acknowledged as common knowledge, these are things that pretty much all the experts agree that you should follow like the law. Except, they’re wrong.

I’m going to come right out and cop to this—I have been dumped more times than I can count. You’d think that after the 5,234th time, I’d be a tad more resilient, but nah. I have mourned certain dead relationships for longer than they went on in the first place and made an idiot of myself over men so patently unworthy, it’s a wonder I haven’t had my feminist card revoked. Lucky for everyone within sobbing distance, I haven’t been dumped in a while, but as a public service I figured I’d share my mistakes so you can learn from them, after the jump…

Have you ever just not been in the mood to go out on yet another first date, but force yourself to do it anyway? You talk yourself into it, reasoning, “What if he’s the one and instead of meeting him, I stayed home to eat cereal out of the box and watch ‘Gossip Girl’?” So, being a trooper, you slap on some lipstick and head out. And then nine times out of ten, the whole evening turns out to be an exercise in humiliation and/or futility and you come home more miserable than you were beforehand.

That’s because while it can be fun, dating can also be brutal. To be at all successful you have to be at the top of your game. Do you think Serena Williams sits around drinking milkshakes and watching reality TV the week before Wimbledon? No. She trains, stretches, meditates and makes certain her cutest tennis whites are clean.