Whether the LW is mentally ill or just a selfish butthead, how about some real advice? (Ironically, the advice columnist didn't give any.)

How about trying a few things like:

Women tend to avoid getting naked with a new partner if they haven't shaved. So stop shaving when you go out.

Have a buddy be your drink gatekeeper.

When you just have to have something, go walk around the block a few times before you decide to buy/drink/sleep with it.

Or go home and think about it with your sweetie rubbing your feet.

Other ideas?

Look nobody cares how many people you screw. You may feel as if you're doing something wrong, it might not be something you want to share with your father and mother when you're sitting around the table over Passover, but that's really just you, not some objective criteria for goodness or even wise restraint. Use a condom, and if you set the goal of messing with every deliverman who arrives at your office building in midtown Manhattan, great!

But, the boyfriend. That's why you wrote, that's why you got published, that's why everyone's so mad at you. You don't have an "impulse control" problem, you have an "honesty" problem. You sustain relationships under totally false pretenses, dealing the cards to your partner from the bottom of the deck, and letting him hum along in a state of ignorance. As Philip Roth points out, it's the most contemptible form of exercising control over another person. And I'll bet you always have a boyfriend -- don't you? You can't bear the idea of being alone. There's your "problem." You need a relationship, but you're not equipped to fulfill the implicit terms to which you've agreed. As others have pointed out, open relationships aren't all that outre any more. You could give it a shot. Of course, then you might end up "alone" sometime when ordinarily you could expect Old Standby to be waiting around in front of SportsCenter while you're "working late." It's a choice, that's for sure. Maybe it's time to make it.

a bad case of sex addiction to me, an addiction often coupled with a secondary one, in her case, alcoholism.

Get thee to a Sex & Love Addicts meeting and/or an AA meeting. For your own sake and the partners you keep betraying.

Google "sex addiction" and "sex and love addiction" - hours and hours of fun reading.

Enjoy!

P.S. I like your column Cary, but in this case you are acting as an "enabler" by telling her it's okay to keep messing up. It's not okay.

a bad case of sex addiction to me, an addiction often coupled with a secondary one, in her case, alcoholism.

Get thee to a Sex & Love Addicts meeting and/or an AA meeting. For your own sake and the partners you keep betraying.

Google "sex addiction" and "sex and love addiction" - hours and hours of fun reading.

Enjoy!

P.S. I like your column Cary, but in this case you are acting as an "enabler" and telling her it's okay to keep messing up. It's not okay.

a bad case of sex addiction to me, an addiction often coupled with a secondary one, in her case, alcoholism.

Get thee to a Sex & Love Addicts meeting and/or an AA meeting. For your own sake or the partners you keep betraying.

Google "sex addiction" and "sex and love addiction" - hours and hours of fun reading.

Enjoy!

P.S. I like your column Cary, but in this case you are acting as an "enabler" and telling her it's okay to keep messing up. It's not okay.

How many paragraphs does it take to say, "hey, just verbalize your Subject line up there" and everything will be okay because, hey, I'm okay and you're okay and the world has enough conformists in it?

Go see a psychologist. You need to really find out why you constantly cheat and why you drink to excess and why you spend your money with no regard for tomorrow. These don't look like impulses. They look like compulsions or addictions.

A person with no impulse control put a bunch of kids, including mine, in an unsafe position. Said person thought that "that's just me, lack of impulse control, la di da" was going to save the person. Others around this person have excused the behavior. Not this time.

She "lacks impulse control" because she can get away with it without consequences. I wonder how long she would continue this behavior if there were severe consequences (and I am not talking about a breakup. What if her cheating led to her exclusion from her group? If she does so much impulsive shopping, she'll wind up without cards or credit at some point.

People who actually do not have impulse control lack it all of the time. They do not keep responsible positions for long. That's why I think LW has impulse control. She just likes the thrill of cheating.

LW might be underestimating her boyfriend. He may know. He may be cheating too. Since she didn't seem able to see herself being cheated on (and imagine how much it hurts), I wonder what else she is blind about?

Cary I'm glad you took a light approach because people get so heavy-handed about this stuff. the reality is we can't diagnose this woman. and frankly, I don't need to wave my preference for monogamy around like a brightly colored flag in the wind.

once and for all, we ALL <3 monogamy. get over it.

Yes, I do feel like we have reached some common ground. I do understand where you're coming from about the LW's impulse issues not inherently rendering her a bad person or even bad girlfriend.

It's the biggest cliche in the world, but we all have our flaws and maybe even our demons. It's how we handle them and (choose to) work on ourselves that makes us who we are, I think.

Also, my feeling of "beating the issue to death" wasn't meant as a slant against you. In writing, I just felt that I was searching for different ways to say the same thing. I try to involve analogies in dialogue/debate - with occasional success. =)

As for the issue of STDs, that certainly doesn't seem to be at the forefront of the LW's mind. Hopefully she at least demands condom use each time...although if her escapades are initiated with alcohol, the odds of that may be quite lower.

From a libertarian's perspective, it is a thorny issue. The LW does have both a right to self-preservation and self-destruction, as she so chooses. But she doesn't have the right to inflict "unhappiness", in a John Stuart Mill kinda way, upon others by spreading an STD(s). My previous example of a friend stricken down by cervical cancer - while admittedly rare in occurrence - illustrates the extreme end of possible negative consequences indirectly foisted upon others.

Regards,

Lonewolfy