I dated and fell in love with a woman tourist here. After five months her tourist visa expired. I gave her a promise ring, and planned to visit her this summer.
       However, I lost my job, became depressed and lonely. She said she’s lonely too, and confused about her feelings towards me. She got a good job and decided to take a break in our relationship.
       By the time I got another job, she said she’d started seeing someone else, that the long-distance relationship is very hard for her.
       She said she’d been seeing him for three weeks (without sex). How does she know the real him (unless she’s lying and been seeing him longer)? I asked her, How can I go see her now that she has a boyfriend?
       She’s smart, beautiful and caring. Should I give her a chance and start the relationship all over? Or move on? I still love her but I’m very hurt and worried whether she has a predisposition for cheating. It’s been four months since we’re apart.
      -Confused

Move on. If she has a change of heart, or the guy turns out all wrong for her, she'll contact you. You can then assess whether you can forgive her and try again.
        Visiting her while she's still involved with another man is setting yourself up for discomfort, disappointment and anger.
       Long-distance relationships ARE hard, especially if there's no definite plan about how and where you’d be together long-term.
       She couldn't sustain it these few months so, even if she’s not a "cheater" by nature, there wasn't a strong enough commitment to waiting.

My mother’s in her 60s and helped me when I divorced including letting me rent, at market rates, a house she owned. But she’s made me bow and scrape for that support. She’s also increasingly pessimistic and critical of everyone around her.
       I’m now able to move out of that house. This has made her more huffy, critical and distant. My kids can visit her any time they want, but those visits are uncomfortable for me, as she always reminds me of when I was in crisis and needed her.
       So I’m less inclined to spend time with her. She can't seem to be happy for my renewed independence. I've expressed my feelings, but she says, "I did the best I could at the time" - taking no responsibility for what went wrong between us.
       Should I distance myself more, or ignore the elephant in the room and take my kids there for strained visits?
      -Torn

Granted that your mother may eventually push you to withdraw. But first consider your "distancing" plan through the eyes of your children: Mom can't handle even a limited visit with Grandma, so we'll not be seeing her.
       It's a negative legacy about how to deal with close relatives whose help you can seek but whose difficulties you can avoid. Remember, you'll be an older mother someday too.
       Its great that you've achieved independence. But consider too, your mother's perspective. I'm betting that what she really anticipates is that, when you don't need her, you'll stop caring at all about her. What you call "huffy" on her part, I see as a defensive reaction to her fear of being neglected.
       Keep taking the kids over for visits. Try showing interest in your mother's life. HOWEVER, if the visits deteriorate into a toxic atmosphere for all, then limiting contact is your next response.

Throughout dating my boyfriend of four years, I accepted and forgave that he didn’t satisfy my emotional and physical needs. Lately, I couldn’t take it anymore and fought with him. In our culture it's wrong to be intimate (we were) and not marry.
        But my boyfriend can't stand our fighting. He hasn't spoken to me in a while and questions whether he wants to marry me. I don't know what to do to ensure we respect our culture.
       -Upset

The horse has already left the barn - you were intimate, with no guarantees of marriage, you weren’t even engaged.
       Don’t punish yourself. It’s also wrong to marry someone with whom you don’t get along, who doesn’t satisfy your needs and who’s lost his commitment to you. There are far too many examples of miserable marriages and ultimate divorces for you to believe you MUST obey a tradition you’ve already ignored through pre-marital sex.