your depression is your soul telling your intellect it will not cooperate any more til you process this horrible injustice that happened to you.

Your decision to be silent was right at the time and it got you through what you needed to get through. But NOW, you need to face it, process it, move it out of your subconscious by telling. Get it off your shoulders, free yourself.

there is plenty of reason to tell on the BAD abuser. The first is, above, to free yourself from the victim chains.

the second is to STOP HIM FROM DOING IT TO OTHER YOUNG FAMILY MEMBERS.

I believe the current term is Cougar

no, it's not only your partner's relationship. How antiquaited that wifie has to defer to hubby and let him handle all situations. She sent you an email, so you do have a conctact with her and may resond as you like. Do not respond with claws out, that just establishes that you're scared and that she has a chance. YOU aren't and she doesn't.

Address her with condscending pity. YOU're happily in a relationship with a great guy and she's a lonely cougar trowling for other folks men. Act confused but benevilent. Thanks for asking? but Fred's OK and he'll see you at work next week. Period. Put her in her place by superiority.

do a full copy so Ms. Cougar knows you two tell each other everything. No secrets.

Cary just focused on the material need, the moeny, the stuff.

But there's a whole other aspect that is all the more important: why do you choose this self-destructive act?

Why do you want to ruin this good job.?

These acts are more about hurting yourself than about acquiring money or stuff.

It's important: why are you making such self-destrictive choices LW?

living on your credit card between freelance gigs is one thing. Charging an $80 BAR TAB during those lean times is another!

ever heard of going without until you have the cash to pay for extras? We all need food and habitat, but an $80 bar tab? no.

the sort of person you describe (giggling "I'm a mom!") is that sort of person regardless of whether or not they have kids. ("I have 3 cats!"

You, are who you are whether or not you have kids.

It's up to you if that description of who you are includes JUDGEMENT AND SUPERIOR

er, I meant judgementAL and superior

one slip on the sidewalk and you're out $50,000 for orthopedic surgery

the adult children of aging parents often (rightly) resent the sibs who live far away and don't sacrafice their time to help care for aging parents. It's hard, depressing, time-demanding.

I don't like the suburbs either, have never lived there, but at least I can objectively see that people who go around saying "suburbs are cultural death" like LW and Cary are just as sheeplike as the suburbanites they shun.

You've just adoped a different lifestyle to claim your superiority with. You're just like them: falsely superior, judgemental, shallow, pompous. You just do it in the city instead of in the suburbs. Bully for you.

Now everyone: EACH individual has a right to live where they want, AND an obligation to respect others' choices AND to acknowlege that there are many paths to the top of the mountain and many good, fine, varied types of communities to live in. This supriority will lead us nowhere but divisiveness, counterproductiviey and BORING people talking about how superior They are. NOT!

try some paragraph breaks! you aren't as spellbinding as you think

swatstikas, nazi tee-shirts, KKK emblems.

Symbols that support discrimination and control of a race or gender do NOT belong in healthy socities

"Just ask yourself. Why would a healthy, well-adjusted professional man of 40 suddenly start using crack cocaine? I cannot tell you, so I suspect that he has some severe personal problems underlying this behavior, or may be a long term history of substance abuse."

get out now. why should you sacrafice your life to nurse this user? Because you're supposed to be a supportive woman? No, he's lied, used you, used your patience, used illegal drugs. Be SMART, look out for the good life you've worked hard to give yourself and leave him to solve his own problems. He'll steal, lie and use and hurt you. He got caught, he's no angel.

I read my local paper. Most times there's a mysterious muder of a sweet family on a nice cul-de-sac, a few days later it comes out that they were small time drug dealers (mostly to pay for their own 'innocuous' habit) who got in bad with big time drug dealers and were killed to make an example. Not movies, a, b, or c, but current news in a medium east coast city. REALITY. Most of the murders in my city are drug related.

do whatever he wants and you always take him back.

You've conditioned him to treat you poorly.

any excuse for a wine party, I'm all for it!

NO. Your happiness is inside your mind and results from your actions, NOT based on your breast size.

NONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONO

OR BETTER YET:

Don't engage with the cat fight. and shallow thinking. REsponding the way this poster recommends only further feeds the shallow judgementalism.

really, give it a rest girls.

Go read a book and exapnd your brains, not your breasts and stop with the shallow cat fights. It only snowballs as this poster shows.

I don't think "Charlie" is really the worshiped center of attention she things she is. Come on, no one is that amazing and admired, she tames the heart of bikers. Sounds like an after school movie.

I think she got a little attention, and it went to her head. She got conceited, started thinking she should be the center of attention and THAT pissed people off.

Step back, take a deep breath and realize YOU are not the center of anyone's world except your own.

Be Humble.