So how are those resolutions going, friends? Anyone out there reading this clutching that filthy cigarette they swore off in one hand and that filthy person they swore off in the other?

One thing I’m doing this year, sex-wise, is seriously considering an IUD. For the past year, I’ve been on that dirty rotten Pill, getting all bent out of shape, pissing out hormones into our water supply and giving fish tits. I figure the IUD is the most effective and environmentally friendly form of birth control for someone in my current situation and I’m just going to have to get over my paralyzing fear of having someone harpoon my womb with a piece of copper and just deal with it. News in stirrups to follow. In the meantime…

Dear Sasha: I’ll save you the trouble—I’m an asshole and I did something only an asshole would do. I was cleaning crap off my live-in girlfriend’s computer recently and happened upon a conversation with her friend about me that took place when we started seeing each other. She told her about a date with me and made it clear that she was not “physically attracted to me at all.” Her friend, who I had met once before, offered up a pretty colourful comparison to a barn animal. I’ve never violated her privacy before this and I barely touch her computer so I have to think this was not some trap set for a snooping prick.

I’ve lived my life looking the way I do so it’s not a vanity thing but I love her very much and I’m afraid this might affect our future. Knowing that she sees me through those eyes is a major headfuck because I don’t think a woman can be satisfied by a man she’s not the least bit attracted to. —Karmafucked

Dear Karmafucked,
Whatever your girlfriend’s reason for saving this piece of information—two possibilities being to reminisce over her now implausible first impressions, or to engineer a tactless test of boundaries—it’s not unusual to find a person you end up falling in love with initially unappealing. It’s the classic story: Girl meets boy, girl is unimpressed, girl’s BFF thinks boy looks bovine/equine/porcine, girl falls in love regardless. I thought my boyfriend was an insincere moron when we first met (seriously, who hugs people they don’t even know? I just about punched him in the ass) and now I’m fucking crazy about him.

My guess is that your girlfriend’s feelings have changed since this gabby e-mail exchange, a good indication being that you live together and presumably there’s been some healthy sex and communication or this wouldn’t have sideswiped you so badly. If you moved in with her despite creeping suspicions about her attraction... well, there you are, showing the same lack of forethought we all have at one time or another.

Now let’s get to the snooping part. Cleaning crap off a computer can be interpreted two ways, one being you were cleaning up her desktop, something you would not likely do without her permission. In my opinion, people who allow their partners access to their computers must be sensitive to the temptation to trawl for classified information. Unexpurgated thoughts neatly concealed by a skull are often provokingly accessible on a computer and though the computer might be built to process them without emotion or consequence, most of us are not.

If you were simply wiping it down and got a bit enthusiastic looking for dirt, I still don’t think you should be too hasty to brand yourself an asshole. Part of me would sooner leap on a wild bull than someone’s laptop while another is keenly aware that I facilitated infidelity in a relationship by respecting someone’s online privacy (at the expense of my instincts) too much, so it’s a difficult thing for me to be unequivocally condemning about. Either way, what you’ve learned is that snooping carries some weight and if you feel your discovery is going to affect your relationship so deeply, I’d consider a heart to heart.

Got any questions for Sasha? Email: POULEDELUXE@YAHOO.COM