Freud's insights into axiety are interesting, but CBT, which focuses purely on behaviour and repogramming ones thought patterns works.

A therapist I saw put the relationship between medication and CBT like this. You're drowning. Meds get you out of the pool and breathing again. CBT teaches you to swim so you can get back in the water.

By setting your wife up as the moral arbiter of your behaviour you're creating an 'out' for yourself by thinking that, while she doesn't know, the consequences of your drinking are not that bad.

This is a terrible role to give your wife, as well as a terrible role to give yourself. The sinner and the saint, the dammer and the damned ... Somehow you need to release you and her from this toxic dynamic in the relationship.

Presumably you're well aware of your own reasons for not wanting to drink, quite apart from her reasons for not wanting you to drink. You are the person you have most harmed. Perhaps by focusing on your guilt towards your wife you can gloss over the harm you have done yourself. It could be good to list all the harms that have come about from your drinking, starting with losing that job - for the purposes of this list you should give the drinking the benefit of any doubt. Addiction so clouds reality that I think it's impossible to judge how much of what has gone wrong could be attributed to that. Suffice to say a lot.

I don't know whether you should tell your wife. It's a pretty big lie and it's one you've been telling for years. I probably wouldn't stay married to you if it was me in your wife's situation. The reason to tell is that lies are the very air that addictions thrive on - and you would be suffocating your addiction by forcing it into the clear light of day. Honesty is also very important in a good marriage ...

She may not trust you again though - and she may be right to. And by not telling her and staying sober you avoid that awful co dependant suspense of 'is he sober? Isn't he? Is he? Will he? Won't he?" that is hell in itself.

If that's what they're saying then what a short sighted and narrow idea of growth and achievement that is.

Love isn't easy and creating and maintaining a successful relationship takes practise. If a woman wants to be in a position where she is ready to start a family with a loving supportive partner before 40 she had better start practising young. Sure, she may come unstuck a few times, her boyfriends may also. She may have some bad experiences, but she'll learn a lot about herself and about what works and doesn't work in a relationship as well.

Forgetting about any 'life plan' even of having a family, intimacy is a point in itself. Nothing teaches you about yourself like intimacy. Nothing brings you up against your fears and gives you the courage to move through them like real love and trust with another adult who isn't related to you.

I feel very sorry for people who don't value this, and I feel even sorrier for people who think they can simply choose to aquire it when they feel like it. They're going to be disappointed.

The internet is the new frontier, and like all frontier towns it's messy, violent, lawless ... and women are well advised to stay inside with the blinds down. Or ride a real fast horse and carry a big gun.

I'm sorry the author resigned from her campaign job. Did the Edwards people who hired her actually tell her to go? I didn't get that impression from this story. And if they didn't, then she shouldn't have left. 'They' would have found a new target soon enough.

All of this reminded me of my experience in student politics. A big caffuffle happened about a misquotation regarding drugs. Ugly right wing men abused my colleague on national TV. Tabloids phoned her father asking if he wasn't ashamed of his daughter. It seems to be a media sub-genre - the humiliation of the ingenue. But it goes away, and they find a new target soon enough.

Regarding the especially unpleasant harrassment of young women - I know it's true. And I know it takes a special kind of person who get their thrills from writing foul emails to women - and there seem to be a lot of them out there.

Reading the thank yous at the end of CD booklets is a favourite pursuit of mine while loitering in the corner of boring parties or killing time in music stores.

My favourite: Destiny's Child on their penultimate album. 'Finally, we want to thank God. There is no one like you, God. You are the greatest.'

If I ever win anything I plan to quote that.

I agree, Tonia. What is the big deal socially? I was surprised that the author felt that she had to justify anything, or even explain anything to her friends. I also wondered if her friends were really in the slightest bit interested. Jesus said 'when you pray go into the closet and close the door'. To me that means do it privately. Let your actions, and the way you live your life, declare your values. Why should it signify, to anyone but you, what label you do it under?

Self consciousness is death to authenticity. Self consciousness is the soil that hypocrisy thrives in.