DR. WALLACE: I'm worried about one of my girlfriends. She broke up with this guy over a year and a half ago, and she still has a hard time avoiding voicing her displeasure whenever she sees him with another girl.

What's really strange is that she has a really good current boyfriend she's been dating for seven months, and she only dated this other guy she's still upset with for a few months over a year and a half ago! I just don't get it, and some of her other close girlfriends who I know well don't get it either.

For example, if she sees this guy accompanying any other girl, whether it's a dating situation or not, she'll make really surly comments underneath her breath out loud that we all can hear. The other thing that's really odd is that this guy has a very nice personality, and he's known as a very nice person at our high school. When they stopped dating each other, the word that his friends gave was that their personalities just didn't match up well, that's all. There was no other drama involved.

Why do you think this continues, and is there anything we can do to help her snap out of it? — She Won't Let It Go, via email

SHE WON'T LET IT GO: To you answer your first question, she may be holding onto this because she took it as a slight that their personalities didn't blend when they parted a long time ago. She may have felt that this reflected poorly on her for whatever reason, even though in romantic relationships, there are definitely personality styles that simply don't match up, even though both parties are really good people as individuals.

It could be that she felt wounded by that breakup due to this feeling of it reflecting negatively perhaps, and she has never truly gotten over it.

To answer your second question, you could gently bring up that both she and this particular guy are nice people, and that sometimes personalities just don't match up for whatever reason, and that it's nobody's fault when that occurs. Also point out that she's currently in a nice longstanding relationship that's going very well, which is an indication that the personalities in her current relationship are matching up in a comfortable way. Finally, if you find an opening and are bold enough to mention it, you can suggest letting go of this past short relationship will likely help her greatly in her life going forward.

I THINK HIS FORMAL ATTIRE IS ATROCIOUS!

DR. WALLACE: I'm 20 and a college student, and I have a great boyfriend who is 21 and attends the same university that I do. We've been together now almost a year, and I must say that this is the best relationship I've ever been in.

However, there's one thing about him that drives me really crazy! He's definitely not a dorky guy or anything like that. In fact, he's very masculine. But whenever we go out for a formal occasion, he always insists on wearing a really wide tie! Invariably, he's the only one wearing such a tie, and it looks so out of place, but he literally beams at his ties and tells me that he loves the "old-school" neckties!

All the other guys at these events are wearing a normal-size ties, and about 30% of them actually wear the fashionable skinny ties that are in these days. Once when I brought this topic up to him, he just laughed and told me, "You're lucky I'm not wearing a bowtie!" I think for a while, he thought I was just kidding him, but when I brought it up again for the fourth or fifth time last weekend as we were heading out to an event, he literally snapped at me and said, "I've never once told you what to wear or not to wear. Please get off my back about this!"

I was quite taken aback and didn't know what to say, so of course I said nothing further. Things were a little chippy for the first hour of that evening, but eventually we both returned to our normal ways of conversing with each other. Do you know of a better way for me to get my point across to him, and to get him to wear something more in line with what everyone else wears to these events? — He Looks Ridiculous, via email

HE LOOKS RIDICULOUS: My advice is to let this go completely at this point. Your letter mentioned that this is the best relationship you've had in your life, and to me this one quirk that he has is a very, very minor issue in the big picture.

I also noticed that in the quote that you attributed to him, he used the word "please" when he was snapping about having you get off his back about the tie issue. This indicates to me that although he was indeed steamed and not happy at all with your comment, he still did his best to be respectful.

There are important battles in every relationship, as well as other battles that should never be engaged in, and this one most definitely falls in the latter category. Please let it go.

Dr. Robert Wallace welcomes questions from readers. Although he is unable to reply to all of them individually, he will answer as many as possible in this column. Email him at rwallace@thegreatestgift.com. To find out more about Dr. Robert Wallace and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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