I liked the letters from KitchenGirl and Older and Wiser and hope they get the Editors' Choice big red star. They contain what I found missing in your letter, a conversational sense of the full human picture. Maybe this kind of opening up in a public letter isn't something you're comfortable with. But I don't get a sense of you and your boyfriend and your lives; of the quality of your relationship, and of other relationships your relationship relates to. Not that there needs to be prose portraiture of group social psychology for us to get a better picture, but a little more, please.

Which leads to the question of whether you're able to step back and look at and chat to yourself about things. Is life narrowed down to just-the-facts? Who gets the boy? Where is the English? Really - take a little time to step back and find where the English is in all this and see what turns up for you. If life looks just cut and dried, and people are starting to look like pawns moved around on a board, really, where's the heart in it? Not just between you and this guy. But in you. It's there. Really. It's there.

And, interestingly, heart does require important facts. As other letters have pointed out, necessary facts are missing from your letter. Do you have all the facts?

Best,

Monty

(More, for free: google "Rabid Fanatic" +"Monty Johnston")

Let me get this straight - the meaning of life is in intentional codependence? Good. Eagleton can buy my drunk uncle his next bottle.

But it is the old Confucian versus Taoist misunderstanding, in which I'm a fan of the way, and Eagleton seems to place his bets on the inert: You don't get to meaning and purpose by following rules to do good so everyone will do good to you and give you, in your self-hate and ulterior motives, a meaning-and-purpose buzz. No. Instead you, if you want, let go to the way, and in experiencing the fullness of life - there's your meaning and purpose, and the unthinkability of torture - find yourself doing the next right thing, which may or may not redound to you.

The debating society, the college bullshit session path to the meaning of life - old, tired, depressing. Meaningless. Take a walk. Maybe take a hike, but take a walk. Fritz Perls: "Go out of your mind and come to your senses." Want to think better? Stop thinking. Breathe. Et cetera.

Best,

Monty

(More, for free: google "Rabid Fanatic" +"Monty Johnston")

Another mental health professional I know said you could go to your boss and say you won't share an office with this person because you have a conflict of interest. This does not reveal anything about your former relationship with the potential office-mate. They could be the spouse or offspring or parent or roommate or neighbor of a former client. They could, as this mental health professional said, have sold you bad drugs. All you have to say is that you have a conflict of interest. You need not describe its nature.

I'd quit before I'd share an office with the kind of person you're describing. Maybe even nothing would go wrong, but I'd be a total wreck, and for what? Life's too short.

Best,

Monty Johnston

(More, for free: google "Rabid Fanatic" +"Monty Johnston")

To further clarify, if need be -

Conflict of interest need not imply any proximity to a therapeutic relationship. As this other mental health professional said, you and the potential office mate might have once had an affair, or maybe the two of you had a fender-bender in a supermarket parking lot which led to words and the cops.

Schmoedipus, schmelectra.

I have been astounded on more than one occasion to see this spouse/parent thing acted out. I suspect what recovery counselor John Bradshaw calls spousification. Yes indeed, did parent and child get along, though short of physical incest. That is, they got along dysfunctionally. And I suspect that one aspect of the initial unholy alliance contains the ulterior motive of pissing off the other spouse/parent.

If accurate, all this would shake out in a study with a better-refined psych component.

Best,

Monty

(More, for free: google "Rabid Fanatic" +"Monty Johnston")

Good work.

About addiction, it's not religious belief that William James credits for addictions recovery, but spiritual experience, what we now call egolessness (which can include the entirely secular and atheistic.) Religious belief has always been a method used to get off the hooch and, without the non-self-hating egoless experience, results in, as George W. Bush so splendidly illustrates, fanaticism.

Best with the book. It looks good.

Monty

(More, for free: google "Rabid Fanatic" +"Monty Johnston")