Dear Fed Up

Though Cary often gives wise advice, he completely missed the boat with your letter. From the few details you provided, its pretty clear to me that you are a "relationship addict." Relationship addiction is common - hell, its virtually inescapable - for women who grew up in alcoholic and/or disfunctional homes. You are addicted to helping your brother. Its a compulsion and just as hard to give up as it would be for an alcoholic to give up booze or a drug addict to give up their drug of choice. Indeed, relationship addiction is just as dangerous and fatal as any other addiction - the stress that you endure is going to make you sick and eventually kill you. Its important to realize that relationship addiction is a disease and just as one can't cure their own cancer, you cannot address this problem without help. It is also important to be willing to accept your own powerlessness - you are powerless to fix your brother's problems and, at this point, you are powerless to change your relationship with your brother without help.

If you truly want to help your brother, you MUST address your own addiction first. Forget about sitting your brother down and giving him a talk that will no doubt be ineffective and meaningless to him. Instead focus on getting help for yourself. If you don't know where to start, here are some suggestions: go to Al-Anon, Co-dependents Anonymous or read "Women Who Love Too Much" by Robin Norwood

Good luck Fed Up. There is help available to you and writing Cary for help was a good first step.

Your wife left her blackberry OPEN to an incriminating email so on some level she wants you to know. Maybe she wants to leave you but doesn't have the courage or maybe the drama her affair brings makes your sex life more interesting. It amazes me that you can say you have respect for a woman who would do this her husband and children. You're either in denial or just as whacked as she is. The second letter hit the nail on the head: poor children. They're the victims of two completely self-absorbed adults.

The letter-writer obviously feels insulted and victimized by this experience but the sad fact is millions of children are abused every day. I know several adults who were sexually and physically abused as children. There were plenty of warning signs and some even reported it to trusted adults and no action was taken. Instead of being insulted that she was being investigated she should have thanked the case-worker for doing her job because there ARE abused children that desperately need help and don't know how to get it. Child Protective Services has been called out in recent years for being unresponsive and not thorough when complaints have been called in so now they've gone to the opposite extreme. If people let these agencies do their work, it will eventually balance out. The most important thing is to protect defenseless children from being harmed! There's something about this woman's overreaction that makes me think she's either hiding something or defensive of her parenting skills. Otherwise she needs to get over it and be thankful the children out there who need help are finally getting it.

Cary, I think you chose this letter to accompany your non-apology because it parallels your current struggle. I agree that you shouldn't only choose letters and write advice that you know will gain approval -- challenge is paramount to evolution -- but telling a woman with a two week old baby and four young children to take a vacation with with her abandoning husband is just plain assenine! To choose this particular letter to experiment with and offer no real advice or comfort was negligent and narcissistic! It is your right to challenge us readers with your attempt at experimentation but its our right as readers to stop reader your column.

As for the LW, you're son is in crisis. While there may be a sensory issue that is making him irritable, its more likely that the bad behavour is a REACTION to something that's causing him distress. Maybe you're wife drinking more than you think in secret. Maybe he's reacting to her distress. Maybe she's abusing or neglecting him when you're not around. Maybe a neighbor or relative is sexually abusing him. What's tipping me off is your statement that he becomes fearful in odd situations. That along with sudden burst of temper usually means somethings seriously wrong in your son's world. Does your son's irrational fear come out at a specific time? That may be a clue to who is possibly abusing him.

Wake-up! You're son needs help and you're wife isn't capable of providing it while she has her own drinking problems. This belief that you're "self-actualized" and that your world is almost perfect is preventing you from really SEEING what the problems are.

To Philly - in response to your "sermon" a few pages back. The 7th commandment states "You shall not commit adultery" from Exodus. This would trump your more obscure quotes about gossip. Besides the fact that its doubtful that the letter writer and her family are even Jewish. You've probably had to deal with adultery in your own life (was it you own parents?) which could be why you are minimizing it.

To the LW - If this has been going on for five years, then your mother MUST be aware of it on some level. Her silence indicates that its acceptable to her. You don't know the details of your parents relationship. Maybe she no longer wants sex and this is a concession she makes to keep her marriage and security in tact. Maybe you father's alcoholism is more that your mom can deal with and welcomes the reprieve when your father is out of town. It seems like this situation works for them so you may want to just let it be.