... Americans are able to make something that is basically healthy and necessary like eating or sex into something that is sordid and nasty. A real talent, that is, for creating McFood, McSex, and so on.

You can almost guarantee that these women are pouring on globs of chocolate syrup rich in high fructose corn syrup to make blow jobs taste better.

A better approach would be to offer therapy:

When was the last time you got laid? How bad is your sex life? Don't worry, help is at hand at Gina's Suburban Sex Therapy Clinic where you can come for a good screw any time. All major insurances accepted. Don't wait. Call 1-800-GET-LAID for your appointment now.

... there is a world of difference between teenagers rebelling out of idealism, for example not wanting to go to church when they don't believe, or because they don't respect the right-wing values of their parents--an intellectual rebellion, if you like--

and rebelling because the kid is doing drugs or something like that.

Now this boyfriend in the closet thing. I am sure that she and he have all kinds of opportunities to have sex in the daytime, but maybe they are in love and wanted to spend the night together in each other's arms--so MAYBE this is a kind of idealistic rebellion. Maybe, but maybe not.

The LW might want to find out whether the daughter behaves in a responsible semi-adult way when she is away from home, as this may be a clue. The letter suggests that there is no problem when she is at the neighbor's, but is this accurate information? What about her conduct and performance in school?

It might be worthwhile for the parents to seek a psychiatric evaluation for the daughter, or try to get into some kind of family counseling. Locking her out of the house seems like a pretty drastic route to go, so fairly desperate measures are called for to resolve this situation.

But I'm in my 50's now and finding women are not that easy. The club scene -- well let's just say I got that out of my system years ago. I've no desire to visit nightclubs and dating services are useless -- at least that's been my experience.

Well, I am in my fifties and have a young wife, so it isn't impossible. There are all kinds of Web sites where you can meet or at least contact women in other countries. Of course it helps a great deal if you are willing to learn another language.

Points that other writers seem to have missed are that:

1) Many (but not all) of the men who have asian or foreign wives speak a language other than English, or have made the effort to learn one.

2) The relatively recent invention of drugs like sildenafil and tadalafil has probably given many older men a new sexual lease on life.

However, a relationship is still a relationship and requires a complex set of interactions over a long period of time if it is to flourish. Anyone who has the wherewithal can get a woman. Sustaining a relationship is quite another matter.

I spent most of my high school years and 20s (like the LW I'm in my early 30s now) pouring over scripture, Biblical history, science and philosophy trying to get a grip on what was real and what was made up.

So religion did its work. You clearly didn't spend your formative years as a stoner or a delinquent, because you were too busy rebelling against one kind of theology, or seeking another.

Same goes for the LW, or for Stephen Dedalus in the early passages of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man:

--Now let us try for a moment to realize, as far as we can, the nature of that abode of the damned which the justice of an offended God has called into existence for the eternal punishment of sinners. Hell is a strait and dark and foul-smelling prison, an abode of demons and lost souls, filled with fire and smoke. The straitness of this prison house is expressly designed by God to punish those who refused to be bound by His laws. In earthly prisons the poor captive has at least some liberty of movement, were it only within the four walls of his cell or in the gloomy yard of his prison. Not so in hell. There, by reason of the great number of the damned, the prisoners are heaped together in their awful prison, the walls of which are said to be four thousand miles thick

This is called putting the fear of God into the young, and of course it is all a fraud perpetrated by priests many of whom are drunken pedophiles, but it also does a lot of good.

And by the time we have figured out that it is all a con, it is too late for us to become career criminals or drug addicts. So we decide that if it worked for us, then it might work for our kids too.