I haven't read all the letters, but judging from the editors choice ones I know this will go against the general grain:

What if he's withholding on the LW? Some people sense what you most need and then withhold it, as a way of maintaining their desirability and 'hard-to-get-ness'. I read an interview with Angelina Jolie where she said she doesn't really trust anyone, doesn't cry much and rarely talks about how she feels. I thought: No wonder Brad was so into her! He's had women giving him all of themselves all his life. What a change she must be!

Well, LWs guy could be doing the same. LW is obviously beautiful and talented, and obviously a lot of people tell her so. LW's man may be insecure and perspicacious enough to decide he'll be special by not telling her so, the way everyone else does. He'll keep her wanting more.

By the way, I don't think this is the mark of a dickhead. It can be the mark of someone who so loves and adores their partner they don't feel they deserve them. They're afraid of losing them. And so they hold something back, just in case. Lo and behold, it often results in their partners eventually leaving them.

Just as I am sure will happen wtih Ange and Brad.

If you choose any other option than #2 you are ASKING, no INSISTING on being unhappy for the rest of your life.

What a victim! Your letter just screamed willed helplessness. I'm going to be charitable and put it down to Stockholm Syndrome. If you hang around with the crazy provincials long enough you can start drinking the Kool aid and going a bit crazy yourself.

I don't know how it's taken you this long already. You need to be outta there. It seems hardest now because you think you're all comfortable. As soon as you get somewhere where you really feel at home though you're going to realise just how truly UNcomfortable you really are. And have been since you were 12.

So leave. You have skills. You have property. MUCH more important than either of these though is: you are healthy, you are young, you are literate. You are free. You won't be letting anyone down too badly if you go now.

This is it. Do it now or forever hold your (uneasy) peace.

It's interesting to me that people compare Christianity to Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam (hey! The 'is' come as the beginning of that one!) etc, and then there is SCIENCE, which is turned to for the Final Word on Reality. As though the religions are the warm up acts to tbe Big Daddy of them all.

But Science is just another paradigm of belief. The placebo effect demonstrates this. And this is hardly denied by Science. It's commonplace now to hear highly regarded scientists discussing the impact of the observer on the observed. A disturbing discovery to a system that is based on observation.

It's also a commonplace that Science does not have the answers to everything. Rather it's colouring in the picture of reality bit by bit. And often enough a new discovery cancels out an old one.

I think it's anti the very spirit of Science however to start claiming a religious status for it. And I heartily distrust any scientist who loses their crucial sceptisism to become a 'Believer' in it. That's when they start trying to 'prove' the nature of God, or talk about 'advancing towards a theory of everything'. That's when they start sounding like a wannabe Pope.

Science, like all Christianity, has a great deal to offer us. But only in so far as we give it our belief. It can definitely help me enormously in curing an infection, delivering a baby, posting this email.

But when it comes to the nature of reality itself? How I should live my life? How to find meaning? We have to find the answers to those questions inside our own self. And nothing Big Daddy (whether that's Christianity or Science or your very own brand of theism) says is going to last your whole life time.

I liked Darcey Steinke's article a lot because she's expressing a feeling and a way of living that's like my own. We each have to make our own individual journey. Sometimes we'll find a teacher, but inevitably that teacher will go or we'll leave them, and then we have to search again. As Jung says, the Living Waters are always moving. We have to have the courage to acknowledge when the Source has dried up, rather than go on worshipping at an emty river bed, and be willing to search again until we find it - or stumble upon it - again.

By the way, I think Jesus had doubts. 'Why hast thou forsaken me?' he asked God on the cross.

I find the 'investigative' tone of this article odd. Was the writer born yesterday? The wonderment with which classic brainwashing and cult techniques are described suggests it hasn't all been done, and documented, a thousand times before. Cutting off from your family and old life, having sex with the leader, intense competition and strife fostered among the followers as they compete for the fickle favour of the leader ... this is all as old as the hills.

There will always be people who want to give up responsibility for their own lives and cede it to another. Fortunately for these people there will always be those willing to take the job of 'glorious leader' on.

All I can think of to change this is to have cults and cult techniques studied in school, along with the other hallmarks of any abusive relationship. eg inconsistent reinforcement. Then, hopefully, people will at least be aware of what they're doing and what's in it for everyone when they willingly allow themselves to be exploited like this.