This letter interested me for two reasons; the pushy friend and the Aspergers. My friend of 29 years is pushy, loud, sometimes thoughtless and has embarrassed me many times throughout the years. For the last 21 years we have lived in different states and now in different countries. Our friendship is kept alive by telephone. And I thank god for that. She knows me better than any other person alive and we have been there for each other in countless ways. We have also hurt each other deeply and we've had our "break ups."

If I was extended an invitation like the letter writer's, my friend would be about the last person I would think of to include. If she found out about it, or if I, in a moment of weakness, told her about the invitation, I would find some alternative plan for including her on a different vacation--where we could be alone. I would feel I owed it to her for not keeping my mouth shut.

Even though she's pushy and sometimes a pain to be around, she still gets her feelings hurt. Since I care for her I would try to protect her from that. But I also need to protect myself and I know I wouldn't want to spend a week at the lake with her inappropriate comments and self-centeredness. I think the real question here is how much does the letter writer value this friendship? What is she willing to do to keep this person in her life? Then she should act accordingly.

Now the Aspergers is a different story. My daughter has a very dear friend with Aspergers who she met online. They texted and chatted for a couple of years and decided they should meet. There was no romantic feelings, she has a boyfriend, but she wanted to meet this guy she had shared so much of her life with albeit in cyberspace. To make a long story short, he came up, intending to stay for a week and my daughter made him go home after 3 days, and she said even that wasn't soon enough.

She was totally unprepared for behavior exhibited by her friend. She told me he stared directly at people not getting the subtle social clues at all. He said whatever came into his head and just couldn't follow conversation or grasp anything that wasn't said directly, i.e. body language, facial gestures, nuances. It was a nightmare. Somehow their friendship survived (kudos to my daughter for knowing her boundaries and speaking up for herself!), and to this day they text several times a day and she feels very close to him.

I see nothing but disaster ahead if the friend comes to the lake based on my own experiences and that of my daughter. Good luck to you, letter writer.

I can imagine this letter is going to strike a deep chord in a lot of people, it did in me. I was a child of divorced parents and the mother of two children who went through my divorce. I was a very young mother, 18 with my first child and 22 with the second. I stayed with their insane father for 8 years after my children were born. Eight miserable years full of hatred, violence and fear. A lot of the reason why I stayed was because I didn't want my children to go through what I went through when my parents divorced.

Then I took a lover. This guy asked me if I wanted my children to grow up thinking love was what they witnessed everyday between me and my husband. I never thought of it that way before. I stopped simply existing in my marriage and started thinking about love and what it meant to me. And one day, I left. Not for this guy--that had already ended--but for me.

I remember thinking a couple of years later that if I'd known what was going to happen to my children as a consequence of my leaving, I never would have left. They suffered horribly. My ex used them as pawns in an ever escalating war between him and me. I often wonder if I should have taken them away in the night and gone into hiding. But I wanted my kids to have two parents no matter that one was crazy.

My kids are in their 20's now. They are more or less stable but still suffer horrible scars from those years before they could control their own lives. So, the question is whether to stay or go. But I think LW needs to imagine what her family's world will be like with two separated parents. I blinded myself to the future so I could get out of a situation that was extremely bad for me. Maybe if I would have stayed a little longer I could have mitigated the damage? All those maybes...

When there are children involved, I think parents need to really consider how a divorce will impact them. How can they create a safe, stable environment for them? Can the parents work together to that end? It's not divorce that is bad, it's the aftermath. Many parents handle divorce sanely and respectfully.

Cary is so right on this one. LW: get to a quiet place, feed your soul. Think carefully about all the people in the puzzle and how they will fit together after the picture on the box has changed. If the LW can see a reasonable picture of the future with her and her ex working together for the benefit of their children then I think her answer will reveal itself. If not, then maybe she needs to give it some more time.

Randi