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Dear Breakup Girl,

You are my last hope. I have done some things that I am ashamed of and I need to confess or else I will die of guilt! I know my actions were inappropriate, immoral -- and they border on illegal.

M. and I have been crazy in love since high school and it has lasted through college. We went to separate schools and carried on a long distance relationship successfully for three years. Last year, we broke up briefly, but I was devastated because basically, he told me he was no longer in love with me.

A week after the breakup, he is going out with "Jade." Jade is hot as heck, whereas I am not attractive at all. She is confident, while I constantly want people, especially M., to tell me I am beautiful and smart. M. and Jade end up having a four-month sexual relationship before he comes back to me realizing what a beautiful thing he almost lost with me. He assures me that what he and Jade had was purely physical, and that it is absolutely, positively over between them.

I hate Jade with a passion, although I never met her. I know from M. that she is quite the brain. It makes me almost insane with jealousy that she can be hot and smart when I am neither. Yet M. still comes back to me, which I am grateful for. Yet, at times, my jealousy seeps out, unintentionally. There are nights when I can't reach M. for hours because he is not home and I am always afraid that he still talks to Jade.

So, I do an ugly thing. I broke into his e-mail to check if they are e-mailing each other. They are! I check constantly, thinking I won't get caught. He does realize someone is been hacking into his e-mail, but does not suspect me. In fact, he asks me to write to his other account to try to figure out who is doing it.

That's not the worst thing. I hacked into Jade's account too. I didn't mean to. I kind of went into a trance, needing to know even though I knew it was wrong. After some guesses, I found her password and read their old love letters. M. lied to me. He told me it was purely sex, and that she seduced him. I felt like a terrible prude, not giving in to sex until very close before our breakup. It hurt a lot that I had been saving myself until marriage, and he gave into sex so soon. It hurt more reading his words and declarations of love to her.

Obviously, he made the decision to be with me, so I needed to make it easier for him to stop seeing Jade. I led M. to believe Jade was the one reading his mail, going as far as logging into her account and using it to access his mail (I will not go into detail as to how this works, as I know it is bad and people shouldn't learn.) That way, if he traces the break-in back to her, he'll never speak to her again. He has a very strong will about things like that.

It worked, but now I am up against a 30-foot wall. I am convinced it is over between them, but I have it where his mail gets automatically sent to Jade's box whenever she signs on. It gets put in a folder which I'm sure she never checks, so she probably has no idea what I've done. She since changed her password, and so I can't go and undo this function. Nor can I confess to M., because he'll never forgive me. We're going through some problems now, and I don't want this to influence his decisions about our relationship. Jade might discover soon, if not already, as his mail is probably filling up her mailbox space. If I confess to Jade, she'll tell M. They're not in contact now, far as I can tell, but this might send him running back into her arms, when I know they are absolutely wrong for each other. I don't want M. to find out, but I also have this awful feeling that he will. I don't usually do things like this. I am not a manipulative person. But I love him and need him to see that.

-- J.

Dear J.,

Hoo boy. Kinda makes one long for the heyday of the pony express, when this kind of snooping was just too durn much trouble.

And speaking of trouble, yeah, you're in a bit of it. Though the world of hurt you were in can sure explain (vs. "excuse") it.

So let's see how far we can dig you out.

1. You sussed out Jade's password once; could you try it again just as a last-ditch quick fix?

2. STOP reading M.'s e-mail, if you still are/can. Just like a diet, figure out what the snoopping triggers are, and avoid them too.

3. If/when one, the other, or both finds out, they are going to react however they are going to react. I know you know Mark well, but I wouldn't base your decisions on mere predictions of the effects you'd imagine them to have.

4. If one of them approaches/accuses you, you need to tell the truth. Same goes for if M. wrongly accuses Jade. You can't let someone else take the fall. Otherwise, I think, living with the guilt will be your purgatory.

Now, J. I don't know anyone on earth who wouldn't have turned a deep dark shade of green over Jade. (Let me just say, however, that "declarations of love" and "pure sex" are not mutually exclusive. And even if what they had was "more," what he told you may well have been soft-pedal spin to protect your feelings. Try not to sweat that PR issue.)

But what you need access to, somehow, is your own folder of girlfriend-worthiness. I don't know how to tell you to up and start feeling attractive and smart and auto-lovable, though (a) these guys might; and (b) your IQ is clearly way above "E-mail for Dummies." I will, however, point out that not just clenching your fists and trusting that you are is precisely what gets you into trouble. You say, "He made the decision to be with me, so I needed to make it easier to stop seeing Jade," and "I love him and need him to see that." Note that the stuff that comes after "need" is where your lovelife of crime comes into play. Why did you "need" that? Why wasn't his decision sufficient? Why didn't your love speak for itself? And please note that by getting yourself into this e-pickle, you've given M. a solid "reason" not to forgive you, not to love you. So you're covered. See how that works?

But J., it should be the other way around. You need to find a way to believe that he has/had every reason to love you in the first place. Not everyone manages to maintain a long-distance thing for three years. Not everyone succeeds in making love matriculate from high school to college, even for a while. Give yourself some credit here. I'm not telling you not to trust the instincts, even the jealous/insecure pangs, that suggest that something's off. (Like, I know you don't want your deeds to "influence his decisions," but is he giving you enough sincere adoration and admiration? Is he really?) You should also, however, trust their kinder counterparts, those that would drive you to use your skill and appeal and your capacity for commitment and devotion for good, not for evil. If I knew a magic password for that, I'd give it to you. But I think even the process of figuring it out will fill up your mailbox space with what you need most.

Love,
Breakup Girl

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Third-party intervention. Will BG green-light it?