Um, get a clue?

That assumes your letter isn't just another in the recent string of obviously bullshit letters Cary keeps falling for. Yeah, a guy in a lesbian bar munching rug. I haven't read that scenario since the last time I read Penthouse Forum. Please, Cary, get a fucking clue and stop publishing this obvious bullshit. This is even worse than you selling that stupid book every other paragraph.

Doesn't Joan Walsh ever look over your shoulder?

The "covered in popcorn" detail made me giggle. I'm sorry.

But seriously, you have to leave. It's been a decade and a half, you shouldn't wait another fifteen minutes to get out of this horrible marriage.

And don't feel sorry for him. He sounds very emotionally disturbed. I know it's probably hard for you to understand his detachment, because you're so invested. You might be thinking, How could he not love me? Easy. You're not really a person to him, more like a collection of annoying tics that occasionally has something to say. He can tune you out the way you or I change the channel and stop caring about what we were just watching. Let his therapist carry him, and take care of yourself. He'll be fine. Once he gets another Beemer, he probably won't remember your name.

"He said he went down to the local lesbian karaoke bar, enjoyed a burlesque show, treated every woman he saw like an object, culminating in giving oral sex to a woman on a pool table which led to his being asked to leave."

Perhaps the 'lesbian karaoke bars' in Nashville are different than the entire rest of the world. However, any 'lesbian karaoke bar' i've ever been in and that guy would be picking up his teeth with broken fingers long before he got anywhere near what he claims to have done on a pool table.

i don't believe this LW's story for a minute. i have to wonder why Cary would publish such an obvious piece of fakery.

Run, now, don't look back. You don't need to ever even think about so much as calling him or answering the phone if he calls. Get a lawyer, get a divorce, get him out of your life. Next time he's out of the house for any length of time, take everything you value and crash on a friend's couch, even if you have to impose on them. Seize the day, and you may just find happiness.

This "husband" has deep, deep issues with his sexuality. My God, diseases on his penis because he's allergic to you? Some weird obviously fake story from a "lesbian kareoke bar"? Please. I would not be in the least surprised if he was getting some on the side -- from a man.

get out get out get out get out

Start a new life. Hold fast to your family and your friends.

PS: lay off Cary everyone. The letter isn't fake, the husband's "lesbian adventures" are.

This letter is so over the top it doesn't even leave a question mark.

Folks, give Mr Lonelyhearts a break. Maybe it's "fake," maybe not. Besides, if the husband here were narrating a novel, he'd be known as "unreliable."

In short, just because he claimed to go down on one or more dykes in a lesbian bar doesn't mean he really did.

Still, perhaps Cary could give his readers some idea of what extent (if at all) he attempts to verify the legitimacy of requests for advice.

Hell, either way, this is a column I read for its entertainment value more than anything. It may as well be called, "Since You Asked for Schadenfreude..."

On re-reading the letter, I wonder why you're paying good money to a therapist, and have been for two years. S/he's got you hooked. A reputable competent advisor would have advised you that nookie once every six months is not a decent marriage. A husband who gives you nothing for Christmas is a shitty husband.

On the other hand maybe s/he has been telling you this and you just refuse to listen? You do seem to have some sort of infinite patience (or maybe naivete) in thinking that bad situations will get better. You seem to want to ride it out. That's fine, until you get the phone call that says he's been found dead in another man's apartment. And his life insurance lapsed, and he willed the house and everything in it to his boyfriend, and you're homeless and in debt up to your eyeballs. Is that the improvement you're waiting for?

People have commented that when folks write in for advice they generally just want affirmation that what they're about to do is indeed the right thing. Well, here's your affirmation: For fuck's sake, yes! Of course leaving is the right choice.

And even if the letter is fake, someone somewhere can relate to it. So leave it up, I say.

When you get in late from shilling Salon's latest collection of past columns, or book, whatever, you really shouldn't just grab the first letter you read so you can get your column in before deadline.

I'd also be interested in how you check the veracity of the letters you publish. Please, no Foucaultian bullshit, either. I'd have a tad more respect for what you do if you insisted on a contact and spoke with these people. Then again I'd have even more respect if you checked back in from time to time to see if your advice was the least bit helpful. Then again, that would bust this cozy racket, wouldn't it? Never mind. Pretend I didn't mention that. If we did that, folks like you would have to get real work.

I convert every dyke in the place because we all know they just need some serious deep dicking.

...and then I wake up from my dream covered in popcorn. Damn, I'm still married to that bitch who said, "Let's save money and not do Christmas this year" and then gripes when I do as she says. I wonder if she still believes that thing about being allergic to her. I can't believe she still falls for that.