I have the same problem and solved it by:

- exercise - 30 minutes of treadmill a day helps me sleep more soundly

- calcium supplements at bedtime - same

- king-size bed, he knows to stay on his side

- spare bedroom set up for the nights I can't sleep - we have been married 20 years and when I was pregnant or the kids were little I spent about 5 years sleeping in the spare room. When I COULD sleep, I needed the whole bed to myself. They got older, I went back to our bed.

- final and most important key to solving the problem - marry a person who never takes such things personally. To him it is simply one more quirk of a partnered life. His attitude frees me to attend to my sleep needs and not feel like I am injuring him or hurting our marriage.

PS - I usually always leave after he falls asleep - that might help

I ached for this woman as I read her letter. We are so often deluded by the notion that our lives are our own - that our personal actions have minimal consequences on others. It is very American of us, to imagine that we are such free spirits that we may somehow reinvent ourselves every so often without cost.

No one imagines that children can be so easy to lose. The LW, the Former Wise Mother, perhaps did not see it coming, or if she did, maybe she thought that mother love could overcome all. Would that it were so.

As I regard my own temptations, I think of her letter. Of her message that to have an affair is to deliberately poison the well your family drinks from. I work with some of the kids who took a sip. I see them, looking ADHD, all scatter-brained and random. I knew one boy whose father left and the boy appeared frozen all the rest of his days in school. A previously normal boy, frozen. He said : I have the same thought all the time - I should be in _________________. If he was living with mom, he thought he should be with dad. If living with dad, he thought he should be with mom. And the Biology lectures droned on, and he simply could not move his mind toward any other thought except longing. They gave him Ritalin and still he sat and contemplated his other life, the one he was missing by living whichever one he was in.

No one wants to talk about that part - the losing the hearts and minds of the kids part - even those of us who should talk about it skirt it. Why hurt the parent now? How does piling on guilt help? After all, it doesn't happen to all kids!

And yet - silence allows more wells to grow more toxic. It should be said: Affairs and divorce may hurt your family in ways you may not predict or control.

I thank the LW for saying it.

I agree with Onebird's post. It is as if there, behind the mirror in the therapist's office, sit Rex Reed and Pauline Kael, jotting their ctitiques of the client's first session. "Melodramatic!" "Over the top!" Chewed up the scenery AND the potted plants in Dr. Tennis's suite!"

Feeling as if you have lost your children due to your own choices is about as tough as guilt gets, and the LW described it in words as best she could. She tried to fend off the role of martyr, and to ask for paths to redemption. If she were to next slash her wrists it seems some in this readership would jeer even louder -"Poser!" "Drama queen!"

I don't understand.

As a mythical bird rising from ashes, you already have the answer to your desire for mutual closure with your ex: No. It is one more thing, in a long line of things, he cannot give you. That is why your metaphor is so apt - you cannot save anything but yourself. Ashes are ashes.

I recall fantasizing about having closure with my ex - about the conversation over lunch that would somehow be a goodbye, an ending. I had the conversation many times in my head, but knew I could not have it with him. What helped me tremendously was writing letters to him - over time I wrote about a dozen very long letters, never sent. I wrote that last lunch conversation and more, all the hopes I'd had, all the disappointments. Finally, I found I could write to him about what I would take away from the relationship, what I had received.

I kept the letters in a box until the day came when they (and he) lost their power to matter much to me and I threw them away.

What I learned was that closure does not have to be two-way - you do not have to wait for another being to rise from the ashes and converse with you - you can do it alone. After all, you have been doing everything else alone for a long time.

Bright blessings on your new life.