The letter needs to be read a few times. This line stands out:

"I am afraid of being close to people and he gets close to me anyway."

This man has probably been good for the LW. The 30s is a tough decade, because real wisdom doesn't settle in until the 40s.

She could leave him, but I have a real sense she will regret it someday. She isn't looking for a man; she's looking for herself.

LW: get involved in painting, the art world, follow your interests. If you meet another man along the way, you'll figure it out then. But your current guy may support you and encourage your art and be there for you like he's always been.

The boredom you feel is with yourself. Follow your interests, and become more interesting to yourself. You'll then be more interesting to others. See if another man comes along. You may not even want him when he does.

Dear LW, You are worrying about things that are real; happiness can come to a screeching halt at any time, as can life. People do get sick, and they die.

I was exposed to tragedy and loss at an early age, and so my world view is colored by this.

I don't have children of my own, and so I cannot speak from experience, but the people I know who have only one child seem to worry in a very different way than people I know with multiple kids. I realize this may sound morbid, so please forgive me, but I would also be afraid if I had only one child.

I am conditioned by loss. I grew up in a family of five; one parent died when I was 8, and one of my siblings became seriously ill when I was 14; my sibling never recovered. I thank god that my parents had three children.

People who experienced loss at an early age live each day with the knowledge that death and loss waits around the corner.

I wonder whether the LW and his wife might consider having another child or two...or three. They might greatly increase their joy, and their world would not - by definition - revolve around one small human being.

Dear LW, If you were single and someone asked you what you were looking for in a marriage partner, would you list the following qualities? Someone who is:

1. Manipulative

2. Deceptive

3. A liar

4. And someone who asks for a divorce every few years

If I were you, I would use your connections to find a good therapist, and look at your relationship with your parents when you were growing up. You are reenacting something that is very sick, but is obviously very familiar to you.

I don't buy Cary's sentiments about this being the madness of "love." This is just madness; this is not love. If you didn't have love growing up, then you probably don't know what it is. Get a therapist to help you learn about love. Best of luck to you both.

People who are calling the LW repellant and scary are reacting to scary and repellant *language,* not to the sentiments of a person who is in pain.

I can understand not wanting to go to a relative's funeral, but instead of the LW talking about the pain and suffering it would cause her, she talks about her grandmother the way you might speak of a dying animal or a bug.

"I had a good visit with her and figured her dead within the month." Figured her dead?

"She's hung on, though, despite the odds..." Hmmmm.

"Unfortunately, she hung on long enough that other family members have begun to realize that I haven't called in a long time."

UNFORTUNATELY?

People are reacting to the incivility of the LW.

Had she talked about her feelings, 98 percent of us would empathize with her.

The LW's need to dehumanize her grandmother is what makes her seem repellant. A murderer might say things like: "Unfortunately, he lived longer than I thought he would after I strangled him...." Or, "He hung on, despite the odds." Or, "I figured him dead."

She uses her letter to dehumanize another person rather than to tell us about herself. That's what is repellant and scary.

Please, LW, give yourself a break. You couldn't be there. That simply is what happened. Please, no regrets. I am so sorry for the loss of your mother and the loss of your father. It sounds like things have not been easy for you over the past several years. Please don't focus on guilt. I can't imagine she'd be happy knowing you were tormented by what you did or didn't do. There was no right or wrong thing to do. Peace.