You are basically trying to figure out the best way to go about cheating on your live-in partner with a guy you barely know.

Based upon your stilted interactions with this man it seems that you have little in common beyond physical attraction.

I find it odd that you've invested so much emotional energy in someone who is little more than a passing aquiaintance with whom you have an acknowledged attraction. You fret and worry about someone who you see while commuting.

I wonder how your partner feels about this. Perhaps they have noticed your emotional absence. After all, if you are emailing the man on the train many times a day, you certainly aren't maintaining the relationship at home.

This is nothing more than an emotional fling for you. If you and the train man become physical it will certainly fizzle out in a rapid course.

Regardless- you need to discuss this with your partner. Obviously you feel unfulfilled in your relationship and you are taking the cowards way out by not confronting it. Whether or not it means breaking up with your partner or not, you owe them that discussion.

I am sick to death of each and every politician seeking only to "look forward" and not hold the most reckless and lawless administration in our nation's history to account.

I am deeply ashamed and angered that all of our "leaders" in Washington have been so weak and so utterly spineless when it comes to investigating and prosecuting high crimes against the constitution and laws of the United States.

The intention of the checks and balances in our system, which have been atrociously abrogated over these past years, is to hold to account those in power who would corrupt our system toward malicious ends and for their own selfish means.

I am deeply disgusted at such a weak and dismissive attitude. Those who would break our laws -most especially those in positions of power- must be held accountable and must not be allowed to escape without consequence. Our society is based upon the rule of law. In the absence of fair and equal application of the law, our society crumbles.

has a letters thread so choked with racist postings?

Pretty disturbing.

I can boil this down pretty fast:

"Dear Cary, I am one of the most remarkably gifted geniuses that the world has ever had the grace to know. My ex boyfriend? He too is one of the most remarkably gifted geniuses the world has ever known. My current boyfriend? He is a lazy slob because he won't finish a thesis in Philosophy.

To again prove to you (and everyone reading this) how remarkable I am, I will pepper my own thesis-length letter with dazzling anecdotes about world travel, lofty goals and Henrik Ibsen. See how smart I am? I'm awesome. The boyfriend thing, secondary.

Love, LW"

If the LW is this excessively critical and self aggrandizing at the age of 25, I fear for how shrill she may become in the future.

The best practitioners I have met - in any field- are the ones who quietly and diligently go about their work. Not the ones who stand on the table shouting their self perceived genius.

Or as Henry Ford once said, "You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do."

Both my parents worked. Millions of people like me have the same story. And friends my age who are married with children - both of them work too.

Welcome to real life. Sorry to burst your affluent bubble, but just to make ends meet these days - forget getting ahead- often requires two incomes for any family. The days of one person working while the other stayed home are largely gone for most of us. You can thank our Capitalistic culture of greed, which is increasingly inequitable for the poor and working classes for that.

Our responses to addiction and addict recovery are based largely in our Puritanical views of personal and social behavior.

We require addicts to publicly and repeatedly humiliate themselves and beg and grovel for forgiveness. Are we interested in the recovery of the addict, or are we interested in the atonement of the addict for past misdeeds?

I don't wish to mitigate or excuse the horrors of addiction, or the destruction addiction wields upon the lives of the addict and those around them. But perhaps our thinking about addiction is a bit lopsided. With the advances in medical science, I think we must start tackling addiction as a byproduct of neurochemistry and psychology. Interesting to note that there are some people who can have one drink or two and stop, and there are others who have one drink and don't stop until they pass out. How can we explain this as nothing more than compulsory behavior without seeking underlying biological causes?

But, going back to our societal responses, we have to take a more compassionate and mature approach to addiction. We take drug addicts and lock them in jail where they are released as ex-cons and not former addicts. There is also something blatantly hypocritical about a society encouraging excess in every area - shopping, consumerism, gluttony, greed- and then blaming individuals for acting out in precisely the way our society expects.

There is also a sickening aspect of our culture which treats everything as a disease or addiction and punishes people at random (for what are mostly benign acts) in an attempt at control and cultural homogenity. The best example I can think of, and that the article touched on, is the revolting practice of trying to "cure" gay and lesbian individuals of their sexual orientation.