DEAR MISS MANNERS: A few months ago, my partner of some years and I decided to end our relationship. The decision was cordial and mutual and there remains a bond of history and of love between us. The immediate cause of the breakup, however, was a relationship he had developed and concealed over the past year.

I am not 12 years old and I have read novels, so I am aware that this has happened before. Nonetheless, I decided to take the high road (as there was no one else there competing for space) and tell people that our split was cordial and mutual. Only when asked did I mention where X had moved and say, with a practiced poker face, who he was living with. If asked "And are they friends, or ... " I always simply say, "You'll have to ask X about that."

So far, so good. But what about the several times when someone asked directly "And are you sure that they are just friends?" (Believe me, it is the couple's behavior over the last six months that prompted those questions.)

Is "You'll have to ask X about that" still the preferred response, and, if so, was I really awful in saying (again with a poker face), "I think you would get different answers from X and me to that question"?

GENTLE READER: Stop! You're looking in the wrong direction. That way will take you off the high road. And you were marching along it so proudly.

You have not yet fallen into the mud, Miss Manners acknowledges. But watch out. Your proposed statement is a road sign pointing your questioners toward the low road, and hinting that you can be enticed to guide them there.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I'm talking long distance on the phone when the doorbell rings, and when I answer the door, I have someone standing expectantly in front of me, but I'm unable to verbally greet them.

The person on the phone finds it rude that I'm cutting them off and the person at the door is uncomfortable because I'm making funny hand motions and faces. I just don't know how to deal with it in a generous fashion.

Should I answer the door and try to gracefully get off the phone, or should I continue my phone conversation and ignore the doorbell? To compound my problem, what if the person at the door knows perfectly well that I'm home (since they just saw me drive in the garage)? Or what if the person on the phone is my great-grandmother, whom I haven't talked to in three months? Help me!

GENTLE READER: Not if you refuse to make funny faces. Miss Manners considers the ability to look regretful with the eyes, smile with the mouth and shrug with the shoulders, all at once, to be one of etiquette's great skills.

At the table, it says, "I want to answer you, but my mouth is full." In the theater, it says, "I can't hear while you're unwrapping your candy, but I'm making myself believe that you don't realize what a nuisance you are." And at the door, it says, "I'd like to greet you, but I can't until I get off the telephone."

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am a material girl who appreciates many of the finer things in life. I was raised by wealthy parents who taught me to only have the best. Therefore, I wear designer clothes, attend the theater and symphony regularly, and only travel first-class on airplanes.

When I started dating my boyfriend one year ago, I was informed that he had a very similar childhood. Our families were supposedly very much the same. He made a point of telling me repeatedly that he made a lot of money and liked to have a good time with it. He wanted to spoil me.

My boyfriend and I are very much in love. We have a wonderful time together and have many of the same goals in life.

The problem is that he is what I consider a "cheapskate." I bought him a very lavish Christmas gift. He purchased me a nice watch and a few other nice things. This may sound hideous, but I totaled up the cost of my Christmas gifts. It was less than half of what I spent on him.

I know that feelings cannot be "totaled up" with a monetary value. However, I feel like I may be signing myself away to a lifetime of coupon clipping and two-for-one dinners.

His cheap behavior is something that has been instilled in him from a very young age. For his birthday, his parents took us to dinner. It was him, me, his two brothers and their significant others seated around a bowl of spaghetti and a pizza at a family-style restaurant. I did not dare order a drink or ask for more food -- even though I had to eat dinner when I returned home that night. I thanked his parents for a lovely evening and sent a thank-you card for their generosity a couple of days later.

I would like to know how I should approach the subject of his cheapness. Even if you advise me to wipe away the tears I cry with my Armani dress as I whine.

GENTLE READER: Wipe away, because Miss Manners is sorry to inform you that this would be a most unsuitable marriage. Your backgrounds are far too different.

Love has been known to overcome vast differences of incomes. Even differences of goals may be rendered compatible. But not basic differences in manners. A marriage between someone who was brought up with a major sense of entitlement and someone who was reared on the modest code of simplicity is doomed.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: What is the proper response when a store employee asks how you're doing? Should you respond and then ask them how they are? Or just respond? Or just get on with the task at hand? Does it make a difference if the employee is a cashier vs. a floor person, or if there's a line?

GENTLE READER: It depends on how you are doing.

If the answer is fine, say so and move on. Such questions are greetings, not conversation openers. However, if the answer is that you are going nuts trying to find where the socks are hidden, Miss Manners suggests that you speak up, although in more polite terms.

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(EDITORS CQ the term ‘friend egg’ in the second letter of this column.)

Perhaps only someone who has escaped seeing any of the so-called reality programs on television can have something good to say about them. Others are much too busy managing the double burden of denouncing them and watching them.

The attraction, Miss Manners has been told, is in observing other people humiliating themselves. Oh, well -- anything for a good time.

As everyone knows, whatever the premise such a show might have, its setup is designed to ensure that nearly all of the people involved expose their greed, romantic desperation and/or inability to cope. And heaven knows what they expose in the untelevised competitions to be allowed on the shows.

Miss Manners is therefore an unlikely candidate to point out that reality shows could be useful. She is, after all, in the business of helping people avoid causing embarrassment to themselves and others.

But mind you, these people are seeking out embarrassment. They are volunteers. One might say that in agreeing to the terms of these shows, they have taken care to not have any dignity left to lose. Of course it is rude to set traps, but when the traps are clearly marked, one can hardly stop people from marching determinedly into them.

Miss Manners can therefore spare herself cringing at their fate. But neither does she derive pleasurable relief from seeing others held up to public ridicule. It even shocks her when people seek to comfort those in trouble by saying, "You'll be happy to know that so-and-so has the same problem."

For those who do indulge in schadenfreude, these are good times. There are ample opportunities to see the rich ducking as they are led off to jail and the powerful squirming as they are questioned under oath. The heroes and heroines of storybook romances recount in detail how unhappily they lived ever after.

But amid the glee, people should be able to discern some primitive moral lessons. Such as "Maybe it's not a good idea to embezzle, because you could get caught" and "Lies that were clever enough to work for an extended time may trip you up long after you think you got away with them."

Reality shows provide similar lessons in manners for those who are able -- or directed -- to find them. Noticing how awful people look when they fail to clothe their normal but selfish desires with some decency, and how they inspire dislike and ridicule in others, should be useful.

Miss Manners has never held with those who believe that it is the responsibility of the entertainment industry to teach children etiquette by providing examples of perfect behavior. She especially dislikes it when parents, teachers and members of the clergy try to shift this important job of theirs over to athletes and actors.

Besides, not even Miss Manners would find it entertaining to watch drama that lacks conflict because everyone is behaving so well. But when television takes over the job of providing bad examples that the responsible can use as teaching tools, it knows what it is doing.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Is the proper way to cut a friend egg using a knife and fork or just a fork? The knife seems like overkill to me.

GENTLE READER: Miss Manners is in the habit of tactfully correcting typing errors, but she couldn't bear to change "friend" to "fried." It sounds like such a pleasant way to start the day. Well, not knifing a friend, exactly, but being greeted by a friendly egg.

Even a hostile egg should not be attacked with a knife, however. Since the passing of the days when people did most of their eating with knives (fastidiously wiping off blood stains left over from hunting first), it has been the rule to use knives as little as possible, certainly not with anything so pliant as an egg.

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