DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am a 25-year-old living with my (usually wonderful) boyfriend of five years. He has recently lost a job, and in the few days following this job loss, he has been a little more needy than normal. When I am home from my job, he is usually following me around the house and asking for my company, which he says comforts him and makes him feel better.

I wish to politely remind him that while I am full of empathy for his grief and depression over losing a job (and thus losing a sense of meaning and a feeling of providing for me), I am not exactly a security blanket who is there to calm him at every moment, but I am in fact a partner who is dealing with issues of my own at work and does not need the added frustration of feeling that I am in charge of his every emotional need right now -- that I am a girlfriend, not a mother.

How can I politely inform him of my feelings without seeming uncaring?

GENTLE READER: You run a harsh household.

A few days of being at loose ends after being fired does not strike Miss Manners as unreasonable. Five wonderful years and you feel that less than a week of helping him deal with a major crisis would turn you into his mother?

However, you know what you can bear, and the gentleman should know that about you. Tell him as nicely as you can that you really do care, even though you are unable to spend extra time with him. It hasn't convinced Miss Manners, but perhaps you will have better luck with him.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am hosting a large party at my home. What do I do about hand towels in the powder room that my guests will be using? Because the nature of my uncertainty may be unclear to anyone at all experienced in these matters, let me be specific.

How many hand towels should there be? Are multiple guests to use the same towel? Are used towels at some point to be discarded into a hamper -- by the guest or host? Need the host concern himself with the order or hygiene of the hand towel(s) during the course of the party?

One would like to think that having attended many parties in one's life, one would have learned the answer to these questions from observation. One would like to think many things, and, unfortunately, I have no parties scheduled between now and mine.

GENTLE READER: One would like to think that guests washed their hands and dried them on the towels provided. However, Miss Manners has noticed a major disconnection between the obligations of providing enough little towels for the number of guests (and a small basket or other reciprocal in which used ones are discarded) and the number of bathroom-visiting guests who actually use them.

This is because, for reasons Miss Manners will never understand, the guest towel has become an untouchable totem. Personally, she cannot bring herself to endorse this to the extent of more practical hosts, who provide paper towels or a communal one of terry cloth. She suggests doing the right thing by putting out guest towels and hoping for the best.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: Often, when I purchase food or a beverage at a coffee shop which is attached to a large bookstore, I find there is no place to sit down because the tables are being hogged up by persons who have not bought anything to consume. They are writing letters, reading magazines or perusing books they have no intention of buying, doing homework on their laptops, or having conversation back and forth between two tables when they could easily be sitting at the same table.

The management seems oblivious to this problem. Is there a polite way to ask someone who is not a coffee shop customer to vacate their table and make way for the people who are real customers?

GENTLE READER: If you want to manage a coffee shop, Miss Manners suggests you first talk to those who do. It may be that they do better selling books by being a neighborhood center than they would by checking to see that the tables are occupied only by people who are eating and drinking.

In any case, they probably do not want you to scold their clientele. Your hope of changing their policy would be to tell the manager that you love coming there to eat but are discouraged by your inability to find space.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I do not like to be hugged. I am affectionate with my husband, and we hug daily and often in our own home. Also, I recognize that there are situations where you must bite the bullet and accept the offered hug as a greeting: children, the affectionate aunt who has hugged you every time she has seen you since the day you were born, etc.

My main problem is with random people, such as friends of my parents, who decide to hug me as a greeting after I have met them for the first time, or, more recently, my 35-year-old male cousin. He greeted me with what can only be described as a prolonged back-rub and when he left, he gave me a hug that would have gotten him arrested throughout most of the country!

When I mentioned to my parents that I thought this was inappropriate, they responded that "he likes to hug" and informed me that I should just suck it up.

Why should I submit to unwelcome (and often creepy) touching because someone else is completely clueless about what is and is not appropriate behavior? I usually avoid these situations by offering a hand for a handshake pre-emptively or by side-stepping the hug and giving a light squeeze around the shoulders. I have found that these methods usually get my point across without offending the person involved, but some people are just too thick to pick up on these cues. Suggestions please!

GENTLE READER: "Ow!"

This must be said just loud enough for others to hear, but in a tone that seems startled, rather than accusatory. Then Miss Manners insists that you follow it with a self-deprecatory laugh and an apology: "I'm terribly sorry; I'm a bit sensitive. But how very nice to see you."

No doubt the gentleman will attempt to recover by saying something like, "You sure are." But he will be wary of you of you in the future.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: Twice now, I have met potential dates over the Internet, and after some e-mailing we met in person over coffee or lunch. I would expect a gracious person who had decided, at the end of this event, that he wanted to see me again to say something like, "I enjoyed myself very much. May I see you again?"

Instead, on two occasions, I have received the very blunt question, "Well, what did you think?"

I was not prepared for a pop quiz, particularly with no indication as to whether I was of interest or not!

In one case, I thought that his self-image was about 50 pounds lighter than reality, and in another that his teeth were much worse than in his picture. My training kept these words in my head rather than my mouth, while I fumbled and said that I'd enjoyed myself, which was not true.

However, I think that in each case, I was feeling rather favorably disposed toward possibly meeting again until that horrid question came up. Please, what is the correct way to handle this delicate situation?

GENTLE READER: These gentlemen are being not only brusque, but rash. There are a great many mannerless people around who would be only too ready to consider this an invitation to give them an earful. Miss Manners congratulates you for refraining.

Still, you are stuck with that unanswerable question. The way not to answer it is to say, "I hardly know what to think."

If you have some interest in pursing the acquaintance, this can be said with a coy smile as if his presence has thrown you into pleasant confusion. If you don't, then say it straight.

Miss Manners can see why the question itself, more than the bad teeth, would kill your interest. While it is evident that he would not ask what you thought unless he favored you, it is cowardice for a gentleman to ask about a lady's feelings before divulging his own.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: On formal mail, such as wedding invitations, a married woman who is a doctor is addressed as Mrs., correct? For example, the invitation would say "Mr. and Mrs. John Smith, not Mr. John Smith and Dr. Susan Smith," right? If so, what is the reason behind this rule?

GENTLE READER: Well, you know Susan Smith and Miss Manners does not. So you should know if she is likely to consider the invitation an insult and give you an indignant talk about how hard she worked to become a doctor and how she does not consider herself a mere appendage of her husband.

Sigh. Things were easier -- or at least it was easier to address wedding invitations -- when people accepted standard conventions without subjecting them to analysis. And it is more likely to be a harsh analysis than the notion -- so foreign to today's thinking -- that a lady might want to use the old forms.

But everyone does analyze and hardly anyone knows what a private identity of any kind is. You risk less offence by using two lines to address such couples: "Dr. Susan Smith/Mr. John Smith."

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