"For six months I had an affair with a married woman who seduced me."

This line really troubled me. The LW seems to be ceding all responsibility and control to her former lover. LW, you need to accept that you were a full participant in initiating this relationship--otherwise, you're not going to be able to resist any attempts by this woman to resume the affair.

I usually love CT's column, but this advice is unbelievably bottom-of-the-barrel. She's just supposed to reprogram herself via this hackneyed exercise and that's that? Even worse is the possibility that the exercise will get her more aroused, because Cary's methodology is akin to telling the LW, "Don't think about pink elephants." It's just as valid to tell the LW to fantasize about her former lover to her heart's content, until the fantasy eventually gets stale and the erotic kick wears off, like a song one's heard too many times.

Male or female, if you have and then end an affair with a co-worker or colleague whom you have to see with any frequency because of your work situation, the only thing that will make it better is the passing of time. You put one foot in front of the next, you say hello, you wave goodbye. One day your heart won't hurt so much.

I'd stop with the "checking in" conversations, though.

Also, you might try wearing as a necklace or keeping in your pocket some object that can be a sort of protective talisman. Whatever works for you -- a gemstone, a smooth rock. I find it helps to have some small object to hold on to when you feel in danger of "falling."

Last but not least, try something new that you've always wanted to do. Like flamenco dancing. Or kayaking. Whatever. Something on your own personal Someday I'm Gonna... list. You'll feel better if you start taking some chances. Perhaps you can even arrange to do your new activity on the day that you see your ex. That way you'll begin to re-define the meaning and tone of that day.

Mix things up. Have another kind of adventure. And good luck!

Cary is a good guy and most often gives solid advice. However when a gay specific question arises, I often wonder if the question should be handed it off to someone else like Dan Savage, or a guest columnist as Savage does for hetero and out of range questions. I say this as a straight guy who senses apprehension and vagueness amidst good effort and sensativity. Likewise this could be applied culturally specific questions as well.

Make a point, every single time you think of her, to picture her surrounded by her husband and children. Picture the husband and children really really sad because they think they're going to lose her.

Now, every single time you SEE her, conjure that picture. Don't think twice about it - just do it.

And when you aren't seeing her, when she comes to mind - something she said, a gift she gave you, a song you both liked, a food you shared, whatever, picture the mournful and accuisng faces of her family.

She is not invulnerable - sure she went back to her safety net, but if her husband leanred of her affair who is to know what he'd do. Perhaps he'd throw her out unceremoniously on her ear. This is not a situation in which only you might be hurt. They could be hurt too. I'm sure you don't want that burden on your already crushed heart.

So picture them. You won't want to - you'll want to romanticize your time with her, protect the image of the two of you cocooned in your affair, in love, with the tantalizing possibility that she might choose you always in the offing.

But she didn't choose you. She chose them. And it's probably best, because instead of one resilient person being hurt, it could have been a family torn apart.

Picture those faces, hurt, sad, confused, angry. See them EVERY SINGLE TIME you see, or picture your ex-lover. Retrain your brain to associate her not with pleasure and hope for an indefinable, unlikely, shimmering-at-the-edges future that pretends the fam doesn't exist, and associate her instead with her commitments, her choices, and the very real faces of people who predate you and whose pain would likely register much higher than yours on the agony Richter scale.

I'm not seeing any recognition by the LW of having wronged an innocent person, the spouse of her former lover, choosing to take part in the breaking of marital vows in ways in which her former lover will have to deal with in that marriage ever after.

Maybe guilt can play the role of the cold shower it should. But if it didn't yet, the odds don't seem good.

If, as she claims, the LW is a psychotherapist, she knows perfectly well what to do. She goes to her supervisor (no real psychotherapist practices unsupervised, no matter how experienced they are) confesses all, and gets back into therapy.

She does not send a letter to an internet amateur (sorry Cary) on a popular website providing enough details (they are both therapists, both Latin American, she's gay, the other woman is married, they both work in the same clinic, their clinic days only intersect one day a week, she's a sponsored migrant) to enable all her colleagues and the family of her erstwhile lover to identify her and themselves.

She does not commit major professional misconduct and then try to get away with it by keeping quiet (whilst advertising it on the net) in the hope that her employer will not sack her. She has the guts and integrity, and the belief in the values which underpin her profession, to advise her employer, so that the clinic can take steps to limit the damage caused by her misconduct. This might involve something as complex as changing her work schedule, or something as straightforward as sacking the pair of them.

I wonder how her patients are faring, now that whenever she sees them she is an emotional wreck? I wonder how her embarassed colleagues (come on guys - they're therapists, you think they don't notice?) are managing the additional tension in the workplace?

So lets see - she doesn't care about the family she has wronged, she doesn't care about her professional integrity, she doesn't care about her patients, she doesn't care about her colleagues, she doesn't care about the evil married woman who "seduced" her. She cares about her discomfort. Oh yes - and her visa.

Cary, don't you sometimes wonder if you take being non-judgmental too far?