Really meant to have this in my original note, sorry for the follow-up. My wife is a clinical psychologist and deals with sexual addictions among many other things. From what I hear, most people misunderstand sex addictions. It is not about orgasms and such for most people. It is about the serial buzz and the attempt to sustain it that Cary is talking about. Of course the writer feels terrible and empty, crushingly so. It is easy to feel sympathetic for a person suffering so. But that is the syndrome. As others have said, it is also stalker in the making stuff. And what is really scary is that it is close to "mask of sanity" that is traditional psychopathy, where the true psychopath, especially as they age, feels more and more empty inside, and that is a horrible thing to feel. As with most addictions, most of us have a sense of how a particular something can be addictive, but we do not succumb. But for those that do, or by nature or whatever cannot but succumb, it is not something to simply deny or take lightly. It is something to address with real personal work and change, or it can take over one's life. Hard to tell from a letter to Cary, of course, but this one sure seems to me as if getting the girl back is not the issue. Perhaps the writer can use the current occasion of that pain and emptiness to inspire working through a potentially terrible and debilitating psychological issue. Best of luck, anyway. Again, kudos to Cary for the clarity of insight.

Cary's answer is great. "[H]e can't be serious, right?" pretty much sums it up. No one in a committed relationship gets to go off and spend a week with someone of the opposite sex, about to be divorced, met on-line that they have never met in person. The "week" part seems so outrageous it makes me think the letter is a fake, but if the letter is not a fake, the week's duration of the visit just seems so many multiple standards of deviation from a norm that there is virtually no hope of doing anything with the guy. I would go along with Cary's advice, but alternatively, I think the best advice would be, as someone else said and many readers essentially suggest, "Run!"

If the duration were less, say one night because he happened to be in the area anyway or something along those lines, I would think that many of the writers were overreacting. If the guy has never had a serious girlfriend before, maybe he really is just that clueless. He does seem amazingly upfront about the whole thing. Maybe he really does think that nothing is likely to go on sexually or whatever and/or he is trying to be modern and hip, and not deal with petty jealousy, etc. But clearly, under the facts described, even with a much shorter stay and even if he subjectively has the best of intentions, he is putting his relationship at risk and his partner has every reason to be very upset about this. Part of learning to maintain relationships is learning to protect them from danger. Maybe he is so inexperienced and clueless that he does not recognize the thin ice and that is why he is being so upfront about what he is doing. But it is clearly within his mate's duties to the relationship--if she wants to preserve that relationship--to recognize the dangers herself and to put a stop to it. If he really is that clueless, and heaven knows cluelessness can know no bounds, she does not have to be mad at him or feel a victim, she just has to take the objectively correct actions for her, his, and the relationship's benefit. And his reaction, as others have said, should immediately be, gosh, if it bothers you, of course I will not do it. Your feelings are far more important to me than this even though it seems innocent to me. Another thing one should learn about sustaining relationships if one does not want to go one's entire life without a serious one.