In her footsteps, following her example

I spoke to him for three hours, from the New Jersey Turnpike through Delaware. When we finally pressed “end’’ on our cellphones just before I entered Maryland, I was overcome with shame, my face red. I could hear the imaginary voices of thousands of my readers tsk-tsking me.

Had a woman like me submitted a question to Love Letters — the advice blog I have written for the Globe for more than a year — and asked whether she should talk to an ex on the phone for hours knowing that it might break her heart all over again, I would have told her to protect herself. I would have told her to resist the urge to reopen a wound that had healed. I would have told her to ignore the call from the ex and to dial up a friend instead.

This happens. Do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do behavior. It’s bound to happen, but when it does, I feel judged by people who aren’t even aware that I’m messing up. I am extra horrified with myself, knowing I owe my readers more.

I felt much less guilty about my cellphone stumble after I saw David Rambo’s play “The Lady With All the Answers,’’ now being presented by the Nora Theatre Company at the Central Square Theatre. The one-woman show follows the late longtime advice columnist Ann Landers — in real life, Eppie Lederer — as she writes a letter to her millions of followers explaining that she’s getting a divorce. Lederer had been a big advocate of staying married. She jokes that she was “so anti-divorce, my dateline could be Vatican City.’’ So it was terribly difficult for her to admit that her own union had failed.

I’m a baby when it comes to giving advice to strangers. I’m still new at the game, even though I’m quite confident about every piece of advice I give (we advice columnists tend to think we know everything, no matter what). Still, it was unexpectedly therapeutic to watch actress Stephanie Clayman perform as an icon who is wise and firm to a syndicated audience of 60 million but somewhat puzzled about her own life.

It was like watching a nutritionist eat a whole cake. It’s comforting to know that even the best of the best are human.

It was also fascinating to see how the advice game has changed for the better. As Lederer, Clayman runs about the stage holding stacks of handwritten paper letters. Paper? My Love Letters column started as a blog on Boston.com. All my letters come as e-mails, some written in a panicked or angry state at 3 a.m. on a Sunday. Watching Lederer with papers in hand, I had to wonder whether I would receive nearly as many letters if people had to take the time to write something down, put it in an envelope, and buy postage. I would certainly get fewer “I’m angry right now!’’ letters. I’d certainly see less of the passion that I deeply love about the letters I receive.

With Lederer’s lack of technology also came the option of more privacy. She didn’t share details of her personal life, and she didn’t have to. She was in the news and was certainly public about her opinions, but she lived in a world with more boundaries: She was pre-Google, pre-YouTube. My readers, on the other hand, expect to be able to engage me. They friend me on Facebook. In live chat rooms on Boston.com, they ask me personal questions. Just a few days ago, a user wanted me to share the length of my longest relationship. (I was vague and answered, “too long.’’) Those kinds of questions are scary, but I prefer the accessibility. I like that readers know they’re getting advice from someone who’s easy to find, like the friend Lederer always hoped to be to her readers.

What struck me most about watching the ghost of Ann Landers dart about the stage was that she was alone. Lederer sits in her desk chair weeding through thousands of letters, talking to herself (which, yes, is somewhat necessary in a one-woman show), and discussing all kinds of human interactions while remaining solitary. In this phase of her life, her daughter (brilliant advice-giver Margo Howard, who also appears in the Globe) had already moved out and started a family of her own, and her husband, Jules Lederer, the Budget Rent A Car king, had moved on.

I wondered if her readers had any idea that she was reading their letters by herself in her pajamas. I then wondered, horrified, whether my readers know that I do the same — that I sit around debating how they should live their love lives while I’m alone, sometimes with a bag of Skittles, sometimes wearing fuzzy pajamas, while they’re actually experiencing the world.

I wonder if they know that I’m telling them what to do with their love lives when I don’t always know what to do with mine.

I suppose that’s why it was so important that Lederer fessed up about her divorce, a decision that I hope her readers appreciated. “The lady with all the answers does not know the answer to this one,’’ she wrote.

We advice columnists think we know the answers, but that doesn’t mean we’re not going to make our own mistakes. And if we didn’t make horrible mistakes and experience the same highs and lows as our readers, we wouldn’t have the empathy to give good advice. I would bet that Lederer wrote her best columns about love after she experienced the loss of it.

Meredith Goldstein dispenses love advice while wearing pajamas and eating Skittles at www.boston.com/loveletters.