I'm deeply moved by this letter.

And I am renewed in my determination to always vote for publically funded healthcare. When I think of the environmental causes of cancer proliferating for the profit of corporations, and yet the individual is the one who must pay ... thereby increasing profits for other corporations ... it makes my blood boil.

This letter gives me insight into what two recent cancer survivors in my family circle might be going through also.

It also gives me insight into myself in a way that's too painful to explain - but I think I know whereof the LW speaks re having to reinvent oneself.

Thank you Letter Writer.

Can someone explain to me how this could happen in such a rich country as the US? It's unbelievable. I can credit that perhaps it's a conspiracy to keep everyone tied to their jobs and malleable.

I live in Australia. Our health system is by no means perfect, but there's no question of going broke paying for births, deaths and in between.

I don't know how a candidate who promises universal healthcare in the US doesn't just win the presidency, hands down, slam dunk.

Is because this would actually be impossible? S/he would actually be assassinated or ridiculed by a vast rightandleft wing media conspiracy? Paid for by the insurance companies and hospitals and pharmaceuticals that make a fortune out of this? I remember the contempt Hillary Clinton has always been spoken about in regard to her attempt to achieve this and have wondered if she hasn't stood as the warning example to everyone else: don't even think about it or we'll go after you so hard you'll regret it forever.

This calls for a revolution.

Do you have any sure fire things that get you through the week? For me it's Jane Austen. About once a year I read one or all of her books. They just make me happy - and maybe because they're from another time, or maybe because nothing worse than heartbreak occurs, or maybe because they're so well written - I feel very comforted and look with new eyes on my situation. History is a tremendous comfort, along the 'this too, shall pass' lines. Also, the complete DVD set of Sex and the City works for me.

What I'm saying is: how about art? You don't need much energy to consume it, and if you find the right things that do it for you it can give you somewhere to escape to, so that you're changed when you come back.

Nothing like heading off to work with your novel packed into your bag. You look forward to lunch because you'll be engrossed in it. You look forwrad to your evening because you know exactly what you'll be doing.

If nothing like this springs to mind you could start a thread on Salon's Table Talk asking for suggestions. Or go back to adolescence and early adulthood and try again things that you enjoyed then. Final suggestion: Nancy Mitford. The Pursuit of Love is one of my all time favourites.

I also Australian am. I also understand these generalisations not.

Sounds ridiculous. I wouldn't have bothered to write a book on research gathered on that basis.

That said, the Australian Womens Weekly ran what seemed to me to be a reputable and comprehensive survey recently which found that: about half of all coupled women think their partner/husband is having or has had an affair; and only one in four of these women were considering leaving their partner over this.

Then the 'experts' they interviewed applauded this, saying how terrible it is to break up a relationship over an affiar. I was incredulous. People can make mistakes, sure, but this sounded different. Made me wonder how many women out there are feeling crap about themselves and not trusting their partner, but hanging on to the relationship. I wonder if htis is peculiarly Australian? Not exactly the most idealistic, passionate or romantic of nations ...

I wholeheartedly agree with many of the points made in this article and am interested to learn about the rest of them. Utopian thinking, from political leaders to middle class westerners poses its own grave dangers to managing global warming.

However, I do take issue with the idea that seeking as a nation to make choices about and manage immigration - particularly on a mass scale, is just bigotry. To imagine that it's possible to absorb all the world's poor and disenfranchised who would like to move to the attractive west is another form of Utopian thinking, and just as dangerous.

The immigration debate, like the birth rate debate, is one we have to have. Cool heads and imaginative solutions are needed. And to divide it into those are 'for' and those who are 'against' won't help anything.

It seems to me that even at the 'height' of western civilisation - or at least, good living conditions for western civilisation, any 'lessons' would have been pretty much the same: be prepared to move if necessary; be prepared to fight. Be grateful if you currently have to do neither of these things.

Agree with Melthough and other posters saying nine months is way too short a time for the honeymoon phase to be over. The convenional math rates it at three years I believe, and the Itch happens at seven years. She is letting you down slowly.

Let her go. And raise your hopes and your expectations! Sure, sex with novelty can be great. It can also be stitch inducing cringe inducing awful though. And sex after many years with the same partner can be boring in prospect, but it can be mind blowingly fantastic when you are in the mood. And yes, you should expect to want to fuck like bunnies sometimes, even if not, sadly, all the time. But mortages, kids, work yada yada yada ... so it's probably, on mature reflection, a good thing that one doesn't.