Wow, he's really cute! I would never have thought he'd been female in a million years!

I happened to read that Onion satire piece about a week ago, and anyone who read it without his/her satire/bullshit dectector going off should not leave home unaccompanied. After all, the author remarks on how she is "looking forward to induced dilation of my cervical opening and suctioning of my uterus" and "the chance to have a doctor insert a metal instrument into my womb to dislodge tissue from my uterine wall!" This guy is, as is sometimes said in psychology, "clueless".

A couple of things I thought of when reading this letter:

LW: are you SURE he's having sex with this woman? Maybe he's not! If he is still impotent (oops, we're supposed to call it ED now), he sure wouldn't be advertising it. He might not be providing the other woman "goodies" and passes it off as "respect" or "wanting to get to know you better". I think this situation should enter into those mental filmstrips, they'd be more fun.

The age of 45 doesn't seem "young" (I know!) but 20 years from now you'll think ruefully about how you didn't appreciate how young you really were at 45. Think from that perspective! I'm certain there are things you can do now that you couldn't do at 25 or 30 and there are probably few things you can't do now that you could do at 25 or 30.

Sure, you're mad. Even if you didn't have such good reason to be mad, you're supposed to be mad at an ex. If you weren't, you'd be a saint and who really wants to hang out with an annoying saint?

After looking at the pictures on the WholesomeWear website, I could not stop thinking about that literature classic "Curious George Flies a Kite". Given a strong enough wind, these suits could possibly double as transportation devices.

My graduate school advisor did the same thing constantly...to men and women both. In his case I think he was just clueless (he hated dealing with conflict and was worried about sexual harassment issues), although it's hard to imagine a man made it to his 40's without realizing that he was making people very uncomfortable. In my case, I endured it or ducked it for a couple of years before just asking him to stop, and he never did it again.

King George on the other hand seems to be completely aware of the signal he's sending.

I can't think of any woman who does this to a relatively strange man. It would come off as a sexual advance and dealing with mixed signals about sexual interest is really really awkward.

"Sadly, there isn't a man alive who actually does all the housework every day, or even close to 1/2 of it."

Oh yes there is (at least 1/2). He's in the next room reading Salon on his own laptop.

I'm afraid this is going to sound elitist, but I've noticed that friends with more education and a broader worldview, especially younger than 50, don't fall into those gender stereotypes so much. But I know from having other friends and acquaintences that the man who expects the wife to clean and cook is hardly a thing of the past.

On a different note: I noticed that this change in LW's perpective that seems a little hypomanic came after the successful drug cocktail. She should know that many drugs that work great for unipolar depression can precipitate mania or hypomania in someone who is predisposed to it. It would be worth her while to see how one followed the other.

People in mania or hypomania are however not that good at realizing that they are the once with the problem, rendering all advice fairly useless.

I'd advise you to read and respond to NNG's posts purely for entertainment. The guy is one of the Chihuahua's of Salon: the same constant and repetitive yap, yap, yap with absolutely no substance or meaning. He uses cruel and abusive language to turn any thread around so as to focus on him and his posts; very narcissistic. In fact, I'm planning to use some of those posts as case examples in my Abnormal Psyc class.