For what it's worth, my guess is that the LW was somewhat predisposed to OCD (there are some clear risk factors) and the experience at 9 was upsetting enough to set it off. If that's the case, it was a matter of time...if this hadn't happened, someting else later would have. While most people would be somewhat traumatized by her experience, I think most of them by adulthood would be entertaining friends with stories about it (much as I entertain friends with my mom's reaction when I told her I wanted a sex-change surgery when I was 12. I just wanted to be able to pee standing up and not be pressured to wear dresses constantly!!!) The "gay incident" is probably more of a catalyst than a true cause.

Focus on treatment, as has already been suggested. You don't have to understand what caused it. Who knows what causes any mental illness, really?

It has been my experience that men say what they mean and mean what they say.

The man is an adult. The man has been sober not a couple of weeks, but several years. The man says it doesn't bother him and seems to mean it. What is there to discuss? To treat him as though he doesn't know his own mind is pretty condescending. The LW would be best off making an agreement (which she may have already) that if he's disturbed by her drinking or smoking, that he will tell her and she won't do it around him. Don't treat the man like a child who doesn't know what he wants.

And for heaven's sake, an occasional drink or toke is not substance abuse and does not mean the LW is a degenerate. I'd say she falls well within the realm of normal.

The reality is that parents sometimes need to occupy a small child while they take a quick shower, or engage in a cooking step that must go uninterrupted from start to finish for a few minutes. Sometimes a parent is exhausted or sick and needs the kid to focus on something other than mommy that can keep them busy for more than 30 seconds. That's most parents' reality, so is it so terrible to give them a video that lets them do so without tremendous guilt? Is it so terrible to let a child watch something while Mom's busy that they will actually enjoy and maybe even model? You know what's not terrible? Having a video to fall back on that is NOT BARNEY, that's what.

I wonder if any of these anti-birth-control advocates think about the effect on children. Would it really be in your children's best interest to continue having babies ad infinitum? I have two children and a job I enjoy, and we can afford a decent house and go on vacation for a week in the summer and take them to the doctor right away when needed and let my daughter take ballet lessons...nothing really fancy, but things you want your kids to have. But apparently some people would prefer that I have fifteen children, not be able to work, feed the family beans and rice every day and pretty much go nuts. How can that possibly be an improvement?

I checked out one of the websites (Quiverfull) and found a picture of the founder and his family. Obviously they are a mixed-race couple. Am I the only one who finds this ironic? This couple is enjoying the freedom to create a family of their choice, while using Bible verses to deny everyone else a similar choice.

The kicker of course is that interracial marriage was soundly criticized by generations of "Christians", using rhetoric as nonsensical as that of the anti-birth control activists.

On the bright side: maybe this will wake up some of those in the Republican party who remember when it was the party of small government, not the party of the radical right. Maybe,.

I haven't read the study but in this type of study the 56/44% would apply to the population studied, and not to any specific individual. Some individuals would be very predisposed while others would not. However, about 44% of the factors that explain anorexia in this group of subjects would be environmental ones.

Rather than saying some cases are genetic while others are environmental, it would be more accurate to say that genetics predisposes some women to anorexia, while other women's genetics lets them off the hook (at least with regard to anorexia). Anorexia as we know it did not truly exist 100 years ago and I am certain we didn't evolve that quickly, so genetics cannot ever be the sole cause. But genetics could be a key reason why some women succumb to the compulsive fear of gaining weight, while other women realize that it's not healthy or genuinely attractive to be that thin.