This article is correct. Like most Internet users, I am someone who Googles a medical condition when the explanation given by my practitioner is too rushed and simplistic and leaves me with more questions than answers.

99% of this research will result in a self-diagnosis following the worst case scenario, from either official-sounding journal articles citing dire medical statistics or from personalized, blog style web pages and message boards created by ordinary people who have experienced the symptoms of a particular disease or condition. Some information is very biased and medically unsound.

It is much better to have a doctor who has taken the time to run the google search, who can anticipate the patient's questions especially when there is an area of hot controversy (such as the thiremosol/autism debate which is VERY scary for a new parent to encounter for the first time). It is better for the doctor to be respectful of the patient's effort to self-educate and address the patient's questions in a straightforward manner in order to clarify and reassure the patient.

It is much better in general to have a doctor who can put his or her own arrogance on the back burner and anticipate the questions and concerns of the patient, and has the communication skills and intelligence to gauge the complexity of their explanations with the patient's level of intelligence and curiousity rather than adopting this all-knowing stance that keeps the patient half in the dark.

Educated patients know that technology and information is always in flux and they know that doctors have to keep abreast of new research and information or risk obsolescence and malpractice.

I generally fire doctors who are arrogant and dismissive of my questions and/or the self-knowledge I bring to the examining table, whether born of experience or discovered via the Internet. I don't trust doctors who act as if they are threatened or insulted by my tendency to self-educate.

I imagine that the era of naive and trusting patients who seek out doctors with a god complex is waning.

And save it for when my young children are old enough to need to read it, and the best I can hope for is that when they reach their own awakenings they go slowly as Cary cautioned.

Brilliant LW and brilliant Cary.

LW-- you might want to rent the fascinating film biography about Alfred Kinsey, the sexuality researcher, who experienced his own scientific awakening that ultimately conflicted with his strict religious and repressive upbringing.

Don't feel guilty. Don't even feel like you have to completely abandon your faith if it is an important part of you-- you were gifted with an inquisitive and questioning mind, and you can pray for the insight to reconcile the nuanced realities of the world with religious understanding. But like Cary said, go slowly. Not all sincerely religious folk are caught up in the kind of black and white, dogmatic thinking that you are questioning now.

LW- if you want this guy, want to build a wonderful life with him, then don't have some cockamamie tell-all session in which you tell him you can't be faithful and he thinks better of what he is getting himself into and breaks it off.

Read Erica Jong's Fear of Flying. Is that really what you want your life to be?

If you want him, make a decision and stick to it. It's your choice.

I could have written the LW's story, ugly duckling turned swan, yadda yadda. It wasn't until I met my husband that I met the guy I wouldn't/couldn't/didn't/won't cheat on. It wasn't until I turned down an opportunity to cheat that I realized what this guy meant to me. It was a good choice, has played out wonderfully, have a great husband and dad to my kids, a guy who is patient and understanding of a wife who has spent the entire three year duration of our marriage either pregnant or breastfeeding.

Look, the choice to cheat or stay faithful is not a matter of compulsion, it is a choice.

Yes, you are going to give up some opportunities for some hot slick variety sex with men and women if you choose monogamy and fidelity with this man. If he is the right guy, great as you describe, then for crying out loud don't be stupid, the trade offs of building a life with this person are worth giving up the hot slick variety sex. You can always fantasize about hot slick variety sex when you masturbate or you can fantasize or role-play within your marriage. There are going to be times, esp. if you choose to procreate, that the zipless f* will seem less than all-important.

The opportunities will still arise, you have to do what you can to remove yourself from the situation and stick to your decision.

If that is what you want. If not, have that discussion that Cary suggests. Maybe your fiance will turn out to be a swinger and bingo, problem solved.