I loved a previous commenter's analogy to rock climbing. This won't really improve on it, but give a slightly different perspective. Watch bridge players sometime. When dealt a perfect hand, there's satisfaction in winning. But when dealt a really crappy hand and someone actually manages to finagle a win, there is REAL satisfaction--even happiness.

My own life has been a series of crappy hands and great hands and average hands, and I've dealt with my cards sometimes way better than it seemed like I could have, sometimes worse, and sometimes pretty much the way anyone would. Sometimes I played them perfectly according to the rules. Sometimes I haven't. And following those rules has sometimes led to a winning game, and sometimes not, because even when you know what your own cards are, you don't know what the other hands are. The times I've been happiest haven't been when I was dealt all the aces--they've been when I negotiated a very tricky hand and succeeded or at least fended off a total disaster. When I've been truly happiest in my life, I've been pretty pleasant to be around, because real happiness is contagious, and genuinely happy people want others to be happy and are focused on the happy and good elements of our friends and our friendships, not the negative. Looking back I can see times when I was pretty smug and judgmental. Those times I was not genuinely happy, but struggling to ward off my own fears of losing badly, and clinging to rules before I really understood that the game itself, not the winning or losing at the end but the negotiation of each unpredictable hand, is the part that gives us happiness or sadness.

Choosing one bridge master and following his rules every step of the way gives one a system for winning, but not a system for joyfully playing the game. Little by little coming up with your own system, working it out delicately with your partner, and coming up with lovely little insights of your own is where real happiness comes from. With luck and maybe a few unexpected hands, the LW will come to that realization herself.

>But let's look at the facts of the situation and find the simplest solution.

In the building I worked at with a cougher, there were only two office rooms with doors, and because of space considerations, those were shared. The salespeople who needed to answer phones were in the large main part of the building, and naturally the cougher could not be put with them. So he was relegated to a room with two others (including me). Had I complained to a supervisor, I well may have been moved to the main room. But because of space, that would have required someone else to move to my desk.

Headphones really were the simplest and most effective way of dealing with it.

Edgar Allan Poe's story, "The Tell-Tale Heart," begins with a similar situation, only the condition the victim was suffering from was an ugly-looking clouded eye which the narrator took personally and obsessed over. So I guess it's better that the LW wrote to Cary BEFORE taking an ax to the poor man.

I worked with a cougher--his cough was deep and wet and extraordinarily loud. To my ears it sounded like blood was coming up every time. He had a bad lung condition--was hospitalized three times in the two years we worked together. He was a sexist jerk, but I felt fairly compassionate about the coughing. But it still could be very difficult to concentrate when he had a bad day, and neither compassion nor annoyance helps you get your work done. As other posters have noted, though, Bose noise cancellation headphones plugged into my iPod did.

For many years I had a close friend--she was very helpful when I was going through a rough patch in my life. But I started noticing that she seemed to love hearing about my problems not because of any sense of genuine empathy but because knowing I had problems made her feel better about her own, which she was reticent about sharing. I started feeling used. What finally made me cut off the friendship for good was when I discovered she was also telling stories about me to her friends. As I'd inferred, she was gossiping about me because it made her feel better about herself.

It is quite possible that the person the LW's friend was seeing had a need to keep the relationship quiet. This may have been a public person--a local news reporter or radio announcer or business person or anything--who didn't want his/her private relationship turned into a piece of gossip, or all kinds of other scenarios. She has a right to her privacy, and the person with whom she had a relationship also has this right. Friends are supposed to support each other, not invade them.

(I write this as an ENFP.)

I'm glad John Edwards is on record opposing new nuclear energy plants. We still don't know what to do about nuclear wastes, some old plants are starting to have serious seepage problems, and I'll never believe that nuclear plants are safe as long as the Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnification Act remains in effect. This act strictly limits the liability of utilities and nuclear plant builders and indemnifies Department of Energy private contractors from nuclear incidents, even in cases of gross negligence and willful misconduct. Also, most homeowner and auto insurance policies specifically exclude nuclear plant accidents from their coverage.