Are things better in Ukraine than in Russia? My wife, who was there for a while, tells me it's pretty much the same in Kyiv and in Moscow. And people from Russia (actually St. Petersburg) I've met in the last few years don't seem to me to differ very much from the Russians I met in Kyiv. Did you feel any differences? I'm curious.

As some LWs have already mentioned (meh001, VivalaNerds, goeswithness), the discussion about MPDGs seems fraught with the possibility that people who help others, who reach out to actually care and do something about the suffering of others get seen as ridiculous or deprived of an inner life.

I understand Ms Berman was probably angry at exaggerated, semi-satirical characters who apparently have no function in a movie except redeeming the hero. A cliché. But I'm really bothered by some of the apparent assumptions here.

I suppose in real life nobody is going to exaggerate. In real life most people (I insist: people, not women) are not simply MPDGs or aggressive 'what-have-you-got-to-offer-me?' types when it comes to relationships. Most people will have a desire to help and nurture others as well as oneself. And will try to balance both.

I wished that the author had made clear she doesn't intend to disparage people who are deeply interested in helping those they love get over their problems. In my life I've played both roles -- helper and "helpee" -- and I respect both.

Is this about a conflict between selfishness and altruism? Or about female characters depicted 'as if' they had no inner life? If the latter, then I must say secondary characters (and even primary) in most movies I see around don't seem to have much of it, regardless of the roles they play.

I am indeed struck by how consistently (with a few scattered exceptions like starboy) everybody here condemns the LW and thinks it was a terrible mistake to tell this lie. Some will even say they are indeed ready to cast the first stone, ready to take the girlfriend's side, not even knowing how she feels about him or what kind of person she is.

The point is not whether or not we tell lies for 'embellishment' reasons (I think even the one who said we're mostly OK with who we are probably should have a deeper look at his own life). The point is that people make mistakes. This LW has made a mistake, and he is grown enough to understand that it was a mistake; now he's trying to solve the problem he created. I've met some people who were less mature than that. There may even be some among those who wrote angry replies here.

Personally, I've had girlfriends who lied to me, about stupid things and about serious things, because they thought they weren't interesting enough or because they thought I wouldn't like them anymore if I knew 'the truth'. In these cases, my attitude wasn't: she deceived me! she's bad! but: why did she do this? How does that fit with what I know about her?

We're always a mystery to ourselves and others, folks. Even when we're 100% sincere (which by the way I always try to be, but for reasons other than a Love for Truth), we don't know ourselves enough. Our girl- or boyfriends and future partners will still have surprise after surprise, and change the way they think about us anyway. Just like we will about them. It's all a process of getting from the stereotypes in our heads -- the people we imagine when we first meet our significant others -- to the real people who are here, communicating with us.

I had a girlfriend who was, as far as I can tell, always honest with me; but she wasn't there for me when I really needed her. I had a girlfriend who did lie to me about a rather important thing (she had been sleeping with another guy even after we started dating seriously, and she told me repeatedly she hadn't, and even made up plausible alibis). Still she was there when I needed her. So eventually, after I felt confident I knew who she was and understood why she had lied, I forgave her. Actually, I married her. The one who lied. And we've lived happily ever since, and even have a delightful 5-year-old daughter.

I think those who think 'I can't trust him/her anymore, I don't know who s/he is' because of one lie don't have that much experience with humans. They don't think that much about the people they're with, their needs and fears, their lives and loves, their little personal tragedies and comedies, their deeper souls. It's like going on autopilot, and thinking life can be correctly lived by following a few rules you found in some book about 'relationships'. Unfortunately, there's no GPS for life.

If I were the LW's girlfriend, I'd first of all try to understand how this lie fits into what I already know about this person, and how that relates to who I am. I would ask myself if I haven't also lied, or created expectations that gave a context to his lie, or something like that. And then I would think about who he is, who I am, who we are together, and whether or not that was worth forgiving. And I'd trust my both my heart and my mind.

If she is the kind of girl who will walk away unthinkingly just because of this lie -- as if she was simply following a rule she had heard from a girlfriend, instead of trying take into account all the available data, all her experiences with him in order to find out who this guy is and how she feels about him --, then I have to wonder: which of these two is really the biggest narcissist?