When my son was born 30 years ago, I met two other moms and we became friends. Although with partners, we shared the same interests and our kids got along well, and we spent the next years as very good friends doing lots of things together and with the children-one of those friends even married my brother (one son and three years later, they divorced). At the same time, I met a new partner (I was now separated from my son’s father), and we spent the next 27 years having a very on-off relationship. It’s difficult to sum up all those years but I think I can say that I probably cried through most of it! I should have left, I didn’t, he wasn’t committed, I was, I wanted a family life, he didn’t. I’m not perfect and I didn’t always behave well. Five years ago he had a son by another, not partner, woman and when that didn’t work out he and I got together again. Then last year, I invited my friend/ex sister-in-law to lunch with us, and they got together. The shock was immense … and it’s not so much the loss of either but this terrible feeling that I have been used as a sort of dating service by my friend and I just can’t get rid of this feeling of betrayal. It’s now a year on and I haven’t seen them since, and the emotional hurt is a lot less– I have done lots of new things, made new friends, and life is rosier, but I have this constant anxiety that this friend is going to take someone else from me – my sister? my other brother? and, worst of all, I have this strange fear that it will be my son. I would like to be happy for my ex and my friend, but I can’t. I protect myself by staying away but I have this huge sense of loss that I have lost this whole part of my life. I need to let go of this underlying anxiety that I am going to lose someone to her again.

When it comes to kids, we expect parents not to expose them to unnecessary rejections and losses from adults they’ll get attached to, who will then go away. When it comes to how parents protect their own hearts, however, the same standards don’t seem to apply, even though, as your experience shows, they really should.

Yes, I understand, you’ve loved a guy for 27 years, but it was always off-and-on, causing you intermittent heartache and wasting your opportunity for something better. You wouldn’t have needed a shrink, psychic, or your average plumber to predict a sad end to all you invested in him and his family.

That doesn’t mean your love was meaningless or less than real. It was powerful, at least for you. Like a good mother, however, your job is to protect yourself from real attachments that can’t work, and you haven’t done that.

What’s worse, you’ve come to assume that love controls you, as it has, so you’ve become a victim and fear that love will screw you again, and take away someone you care about. You’re afraid, but if you’re more careful about who and how you love in the first place, you will have the control you need, some peace of mind, as well as a lot less heartache.

The good news then is that love can’t screw you if you don’t let it. The bad news is that most love won’t work, and you’ve got to leave it alone when you know it won’t, regardless of what your heart says. One thing you’ve learned from your 27-year affair is that life is short, and it’s better to feel some pain now than feel a lot of pain over the course of decades.

First, resolve to stop being a victim. It’s no accident you’ve done better since your friend put an end to your underpowered (it takes two to power) love. Instead of worrying about your next loss, celebrate the fact that you’ve gained new friends and found better relationships.

You’re also more likely than ever before to find relationships that will last, but only if you interrupt the flow of good internal feelings at the beginning of a relationship to ask yourself if there’s any evidence it will actually work.

By the way, it would also help your brother and possibly your friend to ask themselves the same question. If you hang around with people who follow their attractions without giving much thought to consequences or values, you’ll find yourself in the midst of a boiling soap opera, and often be its victim. And the victimhood ends now.

As for that former friends’ tendency to use your friends and family as her dating pool, you’ve finally done what you should have done long ago, when you saw her mistreat your brother, by putting her out of your life. Suck up the sorrow, embrace your ability to do what’s necessary, and don’t let your feelings of powerlessness make you paranoid. You’re in control now, and even if you can’t control her, you can’t let her craziness run your life.

So, in addition to giving yourself better, more compassionate management, stay away from people who regard feelings-management as unacceptable interference with their inalienable right to follow their hearts.

As you’ve learned, following your heart often puts you on a decades-long trail of tears. Protect yourself as you would your son, enjoy your freedom, and keep enjoying it until you find someone reliable enough to enjoy it with you.

STATEMENT:
“I may always be sad about my old lover and scared of losing again, but I learned a lot from that love, I’ve done much better since I gave it up, and I will continue to do better if I remember what I’ve learned and stay away from people whose self-control I can’t trust.”

I promised my wife I’d stop messing around, and I meant it, but last month I did it again and restarted an old fling. I love my wife and the last thing I want is to lose her and the kids’ respect; I’ve got a wonderful family, and I’m not some macho guy who goes cruising to pick up skanks in bars. My problem is that women have always been very attracted to me, I don’t know why, and the sex is very, very satisfying (for both of us), even when we don’t really have much of a relationship. I’m an asshole, and I can’t stop myself. What can I do?

Certain ingredients make love particularly addictive, and one, for guys, is female adulation. They say women loves compliments and being adored, but they rarely ruin their marriages in order to receive them.

Certainly, what addicts you is not your fling-partner as a person, and sex is probably just a part of it. What lights up your pleasure centers and creates needs you can’t control is a mysterious combination of feeling strong, desired, and personally admired.

Whatever feeds your habit, it’s been going on a long time, and understanding its sources in your personality will probably not help. More likely, analyzing your feelings will make you more self-critical and vulnerable to the need for sexual re-inflation.

Unless I’m mistaken, you’ll find the addiction is hard to break, no matter how hard you try, and your first task will be, as they say in AA, to admit your helplessness and accept it as a fact of life. No, that doesn’t mean accepting that it will control your life, simply that it will be a presence in your life that you have to work hard every day to control and that may never be entirely controlled. The first step to avoiding asshole-ish behavior is acknowledging that you’re acting like an asshole in the first place.

Indeed, some people never control it, in spite of overwhelming incentives to do so. The good news, however, is that some good people have sustained meaningful marriages in spite of this behavior. Somehow, their wives felt loved, valued, and secure, despite their husband’s many affairs (and went on to become Secretary of State).

If it’s available, I recommend a 12 step group with other men who know what you’re talking about and who are trying to keep themselves under control. Look for a few attendees with good control who are leaders and sponsors. Unfortunately, there aren’t many guys who have this problem in the way you do, and stigma keeps them from identifying themselves, even to one another, but they are out there.

Even without a 12 step group, however, use 12 step principles. Accepting your helplessness means you shouldn’t promise your wife you’ll stop, because that will likely trap you in lies and shame. Tell her you can’t make promises, but you’ll try, one day (and come hither stare) at a time.

Take strength from your honesty and honest efforts. If you can regain your pride, you can show your wife how much you love her, instead of mollifying her like an angry mother.

Don’t give up. Spend time thinking about the reasons you want to stay faithful, aside from appeasing your wife. Look for any activity, or even a medication, that will allow you to think for a couple more seconds before you act. An antidepressant that has the side effect of reducing sex drive will go a long way towards preventing the act in the first place.

Shame, lying, and mollifying are probably as disruptive to your marriage as the infidelity itself. Work on all fronts and you may be able to improve your marriage and self-esteem, and then you’ll be able to look for some compliments and adoration from within.

STATEMENT:
“My compulsive sexual habits make me feel deceitful and threaten everything I value, but I’ll try to take strength from what I value to invest in my marriage, let my wife know where I stand, and stay focused on improving my self-control.”

Well, I’ve been with my boyfriend for 5 years, and during our third year I got into his Facebook account and saw that he’d cheated on me by talking online with girls saying he loved them. I walked away for about 4 months. He tried everything to get me back and after he showed me he changed I thought I should give it one last chance since he is my first everything. I’m trying to move past this but I feel there is something inside me that wants to explode every time I am with him. What advice can you give me to forget this incident or should I not forget?

You’ve given this guy one more chance because he’s your “first everything,” which is understandable. At this point, however, he’s also your first lesson in how character, unlike love, is forever.

He didn’t do this to hurt or disrespect you, because that would imply he thought his actions through before taking them. Instead, he acted on his very flawed set of instincts, which is what brings his character into question.

Sincerity, tons of respect, and heaps of flowers shouldn’t get you to lower your guard. Most guys who sincerely regret their bad behavior regret it because they got caught, or they don’t feel like that any more, or they wish you weren’t mad at them.

Sure, guys like this may really, really love you and have nothing but sincere regrets, but they can’t admit that their basic instincts haven’t changed, won’t change, and will always come back. They sincerely wish that weren’t true and that the guy who did those bad things was another guy, but all the earnest wishes in the world don’t guarantee that his actions will improve.

Most guys with bad instincts improve, not by becoming better people, but learning to control themselves after getting to truly know themselves, for better or worse. At some time or other, they accept the fact that their bad instincts will never go away, and that they will always have to struggle to keep them in check. They know that the moment they think they’ve won permanent control, they’re in real trouble.

Unless he worships the ground you walk on, your boyfriend’s love will probably not keep him on the straight and narrow. If he controls himself because he loves you and doesn’t want to hurt you, that’s fine for as long as it lasts. Usually, however, real couples get mad at one another over stupid things and have petty urges to hurt one another. That’s when his control will break down, unless it’s rooted in deeper, personal values, not just loving feelings that can fade after a shouting match.

Your goal then isn’t to forget this incident, but to first figure out whether it’s indicative of what your future together holds. Don’t pay lots of attention to the sincerity of his love or whether he shows you tons of respect, but do give him points for admitting that he has an honesty problem, and give him more points if he wants to change because he wants to be a better guy, and not just to get your love. Give him lots of points if his actions reflect his words over a long period of time.

You know what you think about his cheating, but the real question is, what does he think about it, and what does he plan to do. If his plan just involves groveling and empty promises, get ready to be the first one in the relationship to say it’s over.

STATEMENT:
“Cheating feels like my boyfriend disrespects me and that it won’t happen if his respect is real. That’s not true. Cheating is a bad habit that’s hard to change and it has very little to do with how much he loves or respects me. The only way I can safely trust him with my future is if I see that he owns his problem, wants to be a better guy, and keeps his hands, eyes, and email connections to himself.”

After 10 years of working my butt off for this company, my boss rewarded me by giving me all the shitty parts of her job and taking away all the things I liked to do and giving them to herself. She’s not mad at me and doesn’t want to force me out. I don’t think she expects me to be mad and if I told her, she’d think I was being touchy. My goal is to feel better about these changes so I don’t blow up, but doing this job has never been easy and now it feels like an endless humiliation.

If you’ve worked your butt off for a company and gotten treated like shit, there’s a wonderful lesson to be learned. You should never, ever treat work as if it’s family or the whole of your life. You also shouldn’t be surprised if losing your ass makes a shitty feeling increase.

I know most jobs come to feel like family; you see more of the people you work with than anyone else, and the bosses talk about caring, loyalty, and fairness. It’s hard not to feel humiliated and/or like the mistreated middle child if no one listens and you’re given tasks that everyone else hates doing.

Remember, however, that your goal in working is to make a living, not to get the job done or win your boss’s respect. You work for yourself and your own values, and, while your boss is your most important client, that’s all he is. Until the day arrives when respect becomes currency, focus on your paycheck and timecard instead.

If you care too much about your work and then feel unappreciated, your feelings become dangerous. It’s not just that disgruntlement gets noticed, but that criticized bosses always find something wrong with you. At that point, it gets personal and moral, and you’re the one who will wind up in the shrink’s office, not them.

Step back, assess your strengths and opportunities, then market yourself and see what’s out there. If the job market is dead—and that’s been the rule for the last few years—respect yourself for working with disrespect. It’s hard enough to make a living when your boss likes you.

Take comfort in this secret: the guy who does the shit-work no one else wants usually has a more secure job because processing shit is the most essential part of any job. Work hard, but get your butt back; after all, you already work for an asshole.

STATEMENT:
“I may feel as if my devotion has been rewarded with humiliation and disrespect, but that means I’ve been giving too much to my job and not thinking enough about my own priorities. It’s time to become my own boss and develop a job description that limits overwork and attends to other parts of my life. I don’t really want to be a well-appreciated worker who knocks himself out for the sake of the company. I want to be a guy who values his own work and loves quittin’ time.”

Do you think sex addiction is a real disease that needs therapy, or is it a way to make a big deal out of nothing that helps cheaters and the people they cheat on feel better while people in your business get paid? I love my wife—we’ve been together for almost 20 years—but I don’t think anyone would say I have an disease because I grab a little extra action if the opportunity comes along. I don’t think she knows I’m not faithful, it doesn’t happen that often, and I don’t think it hurts our marriage at all. It’s not like I have a steady mistress; I just end up going home with women I meet when I’m traveling sometimes, because it’s nice to feel young and like I haven’t lost it, whatever it is. As far as I can tell, everyone wins, because I feel better and my wife is less annoyed by my constant begging for sex. So my goal is to figure out if the way I live my life, which seems to be A-OK, is actually reason to go into rehab.

To rehab, or not to rehab. That is the question.

You’re raising the timeless question, and obviously, we’re not going to tell you to let your feelings be your guide, or, for that matter, your daddy, your minister, your rehab counselor, or your parakeet, Ray.

As to the validity of sex addiction, it either doesn’t matter, or it depends on your definition of illness. I define illness as something wrong with your body that’s personal, important, and out-of-control, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s cellular or behavioral, neurological or psychiatric. Or kinky.

Some people have lots of guilty feelings over nothing, others have no guilty feelings ever, and others are swayed by whomever they spoke to (or whatever website they read) last.

In reality, you can figure out the answer to the rehab riddle yourself if you’re willing to push aside false hope and wishful thinking, as well as unreasonable guilt.

Wishful thinking is believing there’s no risk of anyone’s getting hurt because, so far, no one has been hurt; that’s what it means to think with the little head. Unreasonable guilt is feeling so bad about having sinned that the only way of getting relief is to do it again.

That said, let’s look realistically at the risks and benefits of a sexual adventure. The benefit is a good (or even great) feeling, but the risk is that, despite your efforts to be discrete, your cover may get hit by an STD, a partner’s passionate clinginess or nastiness, or some other accident. You’re the one who knows best what happens after the great reveal in terms of your wife’s feeling hurt and/or deciding to end your partnership.

Whatever happens, it will involve lots of pain for you and your wife (and your kids if you have them), and lots of business for yours truly, never mind realtors, lawyers, jewelers, you name it.

For most people, that kind of marital apocalypse is an emotional and financial catastrophe. On the country music timeline, begin with “My Cheating Heart” and wind up “Sleeping Single in a Double Bed.”

You may think you’re in the clear if your partner subscribes to an “open marriage” and tells you she doesn’t believe in jealousy. Again, if that’s what you’d like to hear, don’t trust your ears until you ask yourself what she’s really likely to do, given all you know about her and her past relationships.

Remember, you’re not asking for permission from your mama; you’re the papa and a grown-ass man whose job is to figure out how things will really work out for the entire family.

So don’t wait until you’re scared by the evening news or local preacher or shrink to find whether or not to rehab. Look at the risks realistically and then do what you think is right.

If you decide to stop and can’t, then look for whatever help is simplest, cheapest, and most available and move on to costly treatments only if you absolutely have to. Remember, as much as you’d like to think that the costliest intervention—a month at Betty Ford—is more likely to give you the strongest, most permanent, temptation-resistant self-control, it’s not so.

If your sexual behavior is out-of-control and can do serious damage, and there’s a treatment that might work, then it’s worth a try. Start cheap, however, before you plunk down a college-tuition’s worth, and remember that treatment may not work. Or you can keep going, and pay the equivalent of my entire Harvard bill during your divorce.

Either way, the decision is ultimately yours, and hopefully things will work out better for you than they did for rehab Hamlet.

STATEMENT:
Write up a risk-reminder before the next time you leave town. “There’s nothing wrong with the pleasure of being attractive but there’s lots wrong with what can happen next. If I think the risks of causing harm are too great, I’ll do my best to avoid temptation. I may feel like a nervous wimp who’s afraid of what other people think. In reality, I’m doing what’s necessary to manage my life and do what’s right.”

When I was a teenager, I used to shoplift a lot, and I stopped, like a lot of kids, when I turned 18 and could get into real trouble with the law. That was a long time ago, and while I haven’t stolen anything from a store with a price tag on it since then, I do, and I’m not proud of this, grab any freebies I can get my hands on. For example, everything from the sugar packets to the toilet paper in my house is taken from local coffee shops. I want to stop doing it, because I’m really ashamed of the habit and I know it’s stupid, but I honestly feel like I can’t help myself. My goal is to stop taking things, whether or not they’re free.

Any behavior that doesn’t measure up to your standards of control will make you feel bad, but if control-of-everything was important, then those iron-willed guys who like to see how long they can hold their fingers in a flame (you notice they never hazard other body parts) or tolerate vigorous self-lashing would be the most virtuous, instead of the most insane.

Your goal then isn’t to feel in control (or put any vulnerable body parts at risk); it’s to have enough control over the controllable things that really matter.

You can judge the importance of any behavioral control problem by asking yourself how much harm the problem is likely to cause and how hard it is to control.

Don’t question whether it’s an addiction or not, or, at least, don’t do it more than once. Questions about whether or not you need withdrawal symptoms to define something as an addiction, or what the difference is between addictive and obsessive behaviors, help you dodge the tough question you don’t want to face, namely, how you’re going to deal with it.

Instead of debating the nature of addiction, ask yourself whether you have bigger behavior problems that are harder to notice, like, say, not doing enough with your life. Often a weakness for petty thievery is a sign that you don’t have other goals that are more important.

So add up the risk assessment of your out-of-control behavior. No, you’re not likely to get arrested, but you’re not going to like yourself for the fact that whoever sits down on the can after you’re finished, both with the toilet and taking the TP, is in for a nasty surprise. You need to ask yourself whether you’ve got better things to do with your time and, if not, what are you going to do about it.

Don’t ask yourself whether this sin will prevent you from getting into heaven, or even whether it will cause you embarrassment. Instead, imagine that your time is running out, and then wonder whether you’ve taken on enough meaningful tasks in life, like making a living and caring for others, to make you proud, with or without an iron-will.

STATEMENT:
Keep your smaller guilts from interfering with your bigger concerns. “I don’t always like my behavior or control it as well as I should, but I do my best with the bigger, harder responsibilities of life and that’s the source of my pride.”

My daughter is turning into a petty criminal. She’s getting kicked out of school again, she won’t stop messing around with drinking and drugs, she has unprotected sex, and her boyfriend is probably the guy who broke into our house and stole our TV, though she refuses to believe it. My husband and I have tried so many times to get her to see what she’s doing wrong and steer her in a better direction—we’re our own private “scared straight” program at this point—but every time we confront her about where she’s headed, she says she feels terrible, that she’s sorry, that she never wants it to happen again…and then she gets wasted and everything repeats itself. If only we could get her to understand the harm she’s doing, maybe we could get through to her and turn her around. Meanwhile, it’s killing us. We try to forgive her, but it’s hard. My goal is to forgive her and get her to see what she’s doing to herself and everyone who loves her.

There’s no point in getting your daughter to see what she’s doing wrong if she can’t really stop herself from doing it, and she really, really can’t. You can’t scare straightness into a boomerang.

Regret and remorse will make her feel bad, and you might think that will stop her from fucking up next time. Well, au contraire, my dear unHarvard-educated sap. It’s not fair, but that’s the way it works. You should know that since you’re the one missing a TV.

According to Christmas movies and sentimental parts of the Bible, repentance leads to redemption, but I say, goddammit, that’s just wishful bullshit.

Repentance leads your daughter to hating herself more for the shit she does when she loses control, and self-hate makes it that much easier to lose control again. Your goal isn’t to get her to repent. It’s to get her to accept that she’s fucked and should nevertheless try for better self-control.

Fuck forgiveness, too, while you’re at it. You wouldn’t forgive a snake for doing its thing with your foot and its fangs, because it does what it does, and your daughter’s lack of self-control is probably the same kind of thing. If you weren’t around, she’d still be having the same problems. She’s just steal someone else’s TV.

No one knows why some kids have so little self-control over anger and neediness, or sometimes we know but knowing does no good. Acceptance means you aren’t entitled to judge or forgive; just to make the best of things.

Making the best of things means trying all the standard tricks for keeping a kid of any age away from over-stimulation and temptation. Keep her busy, move her away from the bad kids if you can, and find good activities you can schedule regularly. Above all, stay calm and positive, and don’t show how scared and upset you are about her fuck-ups.

Don’t expect treatment to change her. Sometimes a 24 hour control-your-every-activity residential school will break bad habits and build new ones, but it’s expensive and often doesn’t work.

As for the oft-derided “Good Will Hunting” one-on-one psychotherapy, it’s less expensive and similarly unlikely to lead to a basic transformation. More realistically, therapy can do the same thing as you’re doing: positive coaching towards better behavior. As for achieving that better behavior by getting her to take responsibility, own her actions, and feel bad…you’d have better luck with a snake charmer.

STATEMENT:
Compose a statement of purpose that will keep you positive. “I think you want to be a good kid and that you regret at least some of the things that happen when you mess up. But it’s hard for you not to mess up because your brain pushes you so hard to act before you think, that’s just the way you are. So we’ll keep on trying to keep you away from risky situations and slow you down, so you have more time to think about what you really want to do. There are some troubles we can’t protect you from. You may get HIV or go to jail. But nothing will change our determination to help you get the control that you need, sooner or later.”

My sister and I have had issues over the years, but we’ve always managed to stay cordial despite our differences, at least until she got married. Just after she got married five or so years ago, she did something to my parents that really pissed me off—she was basically stealing from them, as far as I can tell—and while, in the past, she and I would have eventually gotten over it, her husband got into the crossfire (I chewed both of them out, not just her), and now he won’t let me anywhere near my sister to even try to move past this. I still think what she did was awful, and I still think her husband is an asshole, but she’s my sister, and she’s family, and I need her in my life. My goal is to figure out how and whether I should make amends to my brother-in-law, even though I’m not really sorry, so I can put my family back together.

You’re right to start thinking about what’s best for your family relationships and forget about who’s a conniving criminal, because you’re never going to stamp out family crime or protect its willing victims. You’re not God, or even Judge Judy.

On the other hand, you may benefit in the long run by avoiding unnecessary conflict, retaining your family membership card, and participating in events that allow you to make the best of the family you have, crooks, liars et al.

If forgiveness is important to you, you’re fucked, because whatever you forgive your sister for, she’s likely to do again, which will destroy your faith and make you nasty. Fuck forgiveness. Again.

If she’s a criminal, she is, so your goal is to accept her the way she is and decide what you want to do with her and the family relationships that you will always unavoidably share.

Figure out if the fight with her is worth it, and if it’s not, and you decide that peace will give you a better chance of enjoying family events, then mend fences, declare the war over, and let all hostilities from this point on be for her and her husband to sustain, or not.

You can’t stop her and her husband from continuing to hate you or freeze you out, but by refusing to hate them back, you just may lull them into giving it up, shutting up, and making nice.

STATEMENT:
Prepare a statement that stays positive, doesn’t lie, and lays out the advantages of peace. It may sound like an apology, but it’s not. An apology would be dishonest. “I know we’ve had our differences, but there were tensions in the past that no longer seem important, at least not to me. I believe you and your husband are an important part of my family and I think we’ll all be happier if we can share some friendly time together. I think it’s better to put the past behind us and remember that we share lots of good childhood memories, a love for our parents, and responsibility for their welfare as they grow older. I think we’ll all gain from resuming a positive relationship.”

I’ve given my closest girlfriend the same advice a million times, and a million times, she’s passively ignored me, so I’ll say straight away that my goal is to give advice she’ll actually listen to. The problem she always comes to me with is this (and in her mind, it isn’t a problem, at least at first): said friend is in a band, and because of that, she’s always on the road, and in her travels she meets these guys (either randomly for one night or for a few weeks at a time if they’re touring with her band, that kind of thing), and every so often she falls for one of these guys and wants to find a way to have a real relationship with him, even though it’s logistically impossible in the long term due to the fact they live in one place and she lives in another (never mind that they’re usually too young, too drunk, too full of themselves, etc). I tell her those things, but she insists her feelings (which is what made me think I should write you!) can’t be ignored, that guy-of-the-moment gives her butterflies and she can’t remember being this excited about anyone. It’s only a matter of time before things go horribly wrong (he stops returning her texts/calls, starts being a jerk to her, take your pick), and then she’s sad, tells me she should have listened to me, and wonders why she’s so dumb about guys. I, too, wonder, but I’m sure you’ve got it all figured out.

Instead of asking yourself what’s wrong with your advice because it hasn’t got through to her after a million times, ask yourself whether there’s any hope of her hearing your advice. Ever. And not because she has tinnitus.

Because the sad thing is, when it comes to the thrill of romance, some people are addicted to those “butterflies” and want to embrace that sensation, no matter how many times they’ve been burned. They love love, whether it’s real or phony, and regardless of how long it takes them to recover, or what else they lose while recuperating. Love is blind, your friend is deaf and dumb.

And yes, like all addictions, it can be terribly harmful and make sufferers irresponsible and self-centered. She has no control over it, and you certainly don’t, so it’s time to start singin’ a new tune, as it were. Or really, no tune at all.

With your friend’s particular disorder, a sort of emotional ADD, you’re probably doing more harm than good by listening to the same old crap over and over; by offering the attention of a concerned friend, you’re giving her more opportunity to talk about love and feelings and play the role of foolish, free, expressive romantic child to your worried, overly responsible unhappy adult. She’s getting nowhere, and you’re getting annoyed. So stop.

A better goal is to stay clear of her problem when it makes her self-absorbed or foolish, and offer help when and only when it’s likely to do good.

If you have a need to offer advice, figure out a way to get paid for it. Actually, if she’s managed to turn some of her excess feelings into songs, you’re probably already owed some royalties.

STATEMENT:
Compose a statement to protect yourself from over-involvement the next time your friend wants to share her giddy anticipation of future happiness. “I’m always interested in hearing about someone who might be a good friend or partner for you because of the qualities you think they have to offer, but making a big deal of their attractiveness by itself is stupid and I don’t want to talk about it.”

My little sister and I are only a year apart and really close—we’re also roommates—so I think I know more about her love life than most sisters would, and vice versa. She likes to make fun of me for being so conservative, because I believe in real dates, having doors held open for me, the whole thing, and she insists that she just wants to have fun and randomly hooks up with guys all the time. The thing is though, and what she won’t admit, is that she doesn’t just want to have fun. The morning after a one night stand she tries to act all cool, but when the guy doesn’t call in the next few days, she gets annoyed. Then she starts asking me all these absurd questions, like what it meant that he ignored her when she saw him at the bar, or if the fact he talked to her means he’s interested in hanging out again, and no matter what I say (usually something like, “it meant nothing, you said yourself it was a one night stand and there’s nothing there”), she doesn’t let it go until the guy is really rude to her or she finds another victim. I try to tell her that there’s nothing wrong with wanting a boyfriend, but she thinks I’m just projecting. My goal is to get her out of denial and stop torturing herself (and me).

Your sister must be closely related to the woman above who is in love with being in love and deliberately avoids thinking, looking, or being in the same universe as anything that would interfere with her loving feelings. Even if she won’t admit those loving feelings are there.

As you see it, your goal is to get your sister to admit that she cares about her casual dates more than she lets on, because she always suffers afterwards. But perhaps it’s time for you to face some facts of your own; namely that it’s not a message she’s ready to hear, and that her suffering may be, for the time being at least, unavoidable. They say denial is a river in Egypt, but in this case, the current runs both ways.

It’s hard to watch your sister suffer when she’s also your roommate, and then persist in asking dumb questions that convey her suffering. Unfortunately, you can’t ease her pain by answering her questions, and even trying is unhelpful because it suggests to her that someone has an answer, when there is no answer.

Worse, she may hear your criticism as telling her she screwed up a relationship and drove someone away, which will make her more defensive and impervious to logic.

You’ve made your point with her: in so many words, fucking around with fucking causes her pain, and she’d do better and become stronger by learning to tolerate loneliness and/or sexual frustration until she finds someone better.

From your point of view, it’s not a matter of being conservative or a free spirit, but accepting the way your feelings happen to respond and making the best of it. She can’t do that, and that’s what you need to accept.

A better goal—you’d do the same if she were an addict—is to pull away from her a little bit when she’s being self-destructive. No more advice, no sympathy, just go about your business. When you’re at an impasse with someone you love, it’s best to quietly agree to disagree. Or, if she’s really harping on it, leave the room.

STATEMENT:
Prepare a statement that expresses support while discouraging topics you think are stupid. “You’re a great person and you deserve someone worthwhile and you’ll probably do better and have more emotional energy available if you stop fucking around. And that’s all I have to say. Ooh, ‘Greek’ is on!”

My mother was crazy (bipolar or schizo, it was never clear), and as her youngest, I was the one who took care of her and eventually found a way to get her into the hospital where the state took care of her until she died. I was a crazy kid, but not technically crazy like my mom—I drank too much, got high a lot (too much), crashed a car or two. I met a girl who was crazier even than me, she got pregnant, and so we got clean together to start our family. I’ve stayed clean, but the mother of my kids—now my ex-wife—didn’t. She held it together when she was pregnant all four times, but otherwise, she’d fall off, and now that she and I are finally through, I’ve got the kids and she’s got a nasty drug problem which she funds through alimony, boyfriends, and money she wins from taking me to court for one bullshit reason or another. As for the kids, one has gone through rehab, one is a mom at 18, one’s on tons of medication, and one was killed earlier this year when he was driving drunk. This is a long way of asking a simple question: what the fuck is wrong with me, after the way I was raised, that I can’t stay away from crazy women? Now I’ve passed this curse on to my kids, and now one of them has died because he was unlucky enough to be born to a former-drug addict and a current psychotic crack whore. My goal is to get crazy out of my life for good.

It doesn’t take a Harvard degree (or two) or even a passing familiarity with Sigmund Freud to know that you tend to feel attracted by people who are like your parents, whether you like your parents or not, whether your parents were certifiable or not.

If you expect that feeling to go away, and meanwhile keep dating the people you feel like dating, you’ll keep on getting into trouble, because, surprise, that feeling doesn’t usually go away. And don’t expect therapy to take it away, either.

Like it or not, that feeling—that attraction—is stronger than whatever most therapists have to offer, so if your goal is to stop wanting crazy, forget it. You’re crazy for thinking you can help yourself. (That sounds like it might make a good country-and-western lament).

You’re right to think about the kids, but wrong to think about what your crazy-loving has done to them. The past is past and remorse will do no more than get in your way now. Instead, you should be thinking about how to help them handle their own crazy-loving urges.

Look, being wild (assuming you don’t wind up dead, in the loony-bin for life, or on a reality show) is what makes people interesting and creative; it’s not all bad. If you’ve got to feel guilty, then blame your genes, but right now, your job with the kids is the same as it is with yourself: to help them, and you, manage the attraction to crazy people so it doesn’t ruin your lives.

Face it, messing with crazy people is exciting. The talk gets raw and mean in an instant, which is why people watch soap operas and Judge Judy. Nothing gets unsaid, everything gets said with feeling, and all that intensity feels like living life to the fullest (when in fact it’s to the stupidest). You may get covered with shit, but the rollercoaster ride down to shit gulch makes up for it.

Lots of men love crazy women—as long as the world keeps turning out Brandees, Tiffanis, and Ambers, that means more crazy women are breeding—so you can at least take comfort in the fact you’re not alone.

In relationship terms, sex with sane women normally requires courting and foreplay; with crazies, this stuff is instantaneous (as in, “hello, let’s bone”). The first step to managing it is knowing there’s a part of you that wants it and that will find excuses to put you in harm’s way. The second step is to remember that women like this will just as instantaneously decide you’re the devil and try to burn your house down while you’re asleep.

The usual excuse is that you stick by the crazies, even after they turn, because you’re a gentle, good guy trying to do a kindness; someone is messed up and needs help, and it feels great to provide support when you know what it’s like to hurt. It’s like you’re helping dear Mamma, except she’s young and wants to take off her clothes. And then wants you to perish in flames.

So approach it like your other addictions. Learn the “triggers” that draw you in. Resign yourself to a life without the old, familiar excitement. Screen prospective partners by using your wisdom and experience, not your desire for sex in the backseat of a car and your instincts for wildlife protection.

And if you feel guilty about not saving your mother from a life of illness and confinement, your wife from addiction, and then your son from a horrible accident, ignore it. The grief is awful, but you never had the power to protect them, and so much of what you did was wonderful. Respect your grief as a measure of your love, and don’t let guilt get anywhere near it.

And if you feel vaguely unhappy, guilty and blah because you haven’t had a helpful, meaningful, misery-comforting conversation with a sad-eyed, oh-so-available lady, remind yourself that you must be doing an excellent job.

STATEMENT:
Compose a statement to protect yourself from remorse and old yearnings. “I may always feel most alive when I’m trying to help a dramatically disturbed and sexy lady, but what I want in the end is a friendship with someone I can respect and trust, and I know what that’s like and the kind of person I need to choose. So I’ll watch out for my sneaky and persistent reflexes while I get active about a more sensible kind of choice. Whenever I feel low and in need of a fix, I’ll remember my feeble powers as a white knight, my long-term wish to find an un-distressed damsel, and the virtues of ignoring my feelings and holding steady. And when those I love are in trouble, I’ll reject feelings ofresponsibility unless there’s something truly helpful I can do for them.”

I’m raising my daughter’s three kids…sometimes she has them with her and is a great mom, but after a month or so of that she just drops them off at my house one afternoon and then I don’t hear from her for a few weeks, and when I do hear from her again, she’s either with a new guy, in a new state, or angry at me for some reason that comes out of nowhere. The kids all have different dads, and the dads keep their distance because they all owe child support, plus she goes after them all the time in court saying she’s taking care of the kids and deserves to be compensated, so they don’t want anything to do with me because they think I’m backing up her lie (I take care of them much more often) and helping her steal from them. I know my daughter’s troubled—she has a really bad temper, sometimes says awful things to me she later denies saying in the first place, makes big decisions without thinking them through—but I think if she could just get a little help, have somebody to talk to, she could see some priorities and get her head on straight. If you’re really a shrink, then tell me how I can get her to a shrink who can get her to see sense.

If you want me to help you get her into therapy, you’re barking up the wrong shrink, and it makes you a bad mother and grandmother.

Yes, you’re doing a wonderful, generous and caring job of caring for your grandchildren, but you’re also doing some needless harm by blinding yourself to certain sad realities, the first of them being your daughter’s character, which is not going to change.

I can do a lot of things—give advice, prescribe medication, make a mean omelet—but I cannot, nor can any shrink, change a person’s character. There are certainly times I wish I had that power, but then, think of all the work I’d have to do.

On the other hand, if she was interested in a lobotomy, I think I could help her; the stylus of my palm pilot might do the trick. And hey, procedures are much better compensated by insurance than talk-sessions. But I digress.

So stop believing that crap about psychotherapy stopping people from being assholes. I’m not saying your daughter can help being an asshole, but I’m also saying that you and I and all the king’s shrinks aren’t going to change it, and you have a job to do as a grandmother (and mother) that could be better done if you were more realistic. So stop pining for your wishes, get real, and dump your make-believe goal.

Now that we’ve resigned ourselves to reality, try this goal on for size: providing as much stability as possible for the grand-kids, knowing, and in despite of, what your daughter is likely to do.

Of course, she will periodically fuck things up and blame you and others, and at those times the kids will suddenly be yanked from their schedules and introduced to a brief mother-child reunion, to be followed by a disappointing breaking of promises, a vanishing mommy act, and return (hopefully) to their life with you.

Ask a lawyer and/or state social worker whether there’s something you can do, by documenting her comings and goings, to give you more say over what happens during these crises. So instead of facing a judge who believes her sad story of frustrated devotion, there’ll be a solid record of her active behavior and a good, responsible recommendation that will give the kids more stability, you more say, and your daughter a less erratic and better managed connection with her kids.

Your daughter has a million reasons to stop her behavior—three particularly strong reasons, in fact—but if they haven’t gotten her to see the light, then no MD is going to do the trick. It’s too late for her, but not for those kids, and thankfully, they have someone as caring as you to look after them.

STATEMENT:
Compose a statement to protect yourself from the guilt of adding pain (or so your daughter would have you believe) to an already tortured life. “I’m doing a good job with these kids and my first responsibility is to their stability. I feel rewarded by their happiness and my daughter’s gratitude, but I must accept and prepare for the fact that she has an evil, uncontrolled side. That doesn’t mean I blame her or am disloyal to her. I’m loyal to the good ideals we share about parenting, and determined to protect the kids from bad behavior that interferes with those ideals, regardless of whether my daughter can understand what I’m doing or ever forgive me.”

I’ve always had a God-given gift for communicating with people and have tried to use my gifts to lead people in a moral direction. In recent years, after achieving success as a lawyer, and marrying a truly remarkable woman, I felt a calling to run for office and, with her help as campaign manager, I was elected to office. I wasn’t afraid to take unpopular positions if I felt I was doing the right thing, because I trust my passion; that’s what connects me with people. About a year ago, I felt an unbelievable sense of connection with a beautiful, foreign woman. I’ve never felt so close to anyone, and it seemed unfair to either one of us not to share our love. But instead of having a beautiful experience to share and then put behind us, I became obsessed. It distanced me from my wife, who sensed that something was wrong, and it distracted me from work. I had to lie, and I hate lying. Finally, and with great relief, I confessed the truth. But I still can’t stop thinking and talking about her and now my marriage and political life are a mess. In the past, passion has brought me all my success and I need passion in my life. Now, I want to recapture that passion in a way that revives my marriage, interest in my job, and relationship with the public.

To successful politicians, who often have your style and personality, intense feelings often seem like the core of their being, and what makes them special. Such feelings give the gift of easy communication, charisma, material success, votes, and a certain je ne sais what the ladies love (and, sometimes, the dudes—here’s to you, Larry Craig, for having more charisma in your feet than most of us have in our entire bodies).

Sooner or later, however, your skills work their mojo, you achieve your goals, and life settles down to boring conversations with family and the same old guys at work (even if many are relatively famous), and at that point, if passion has become your elixir of life, you may feel like you’ve lost your oxygen and slid into meaningless mediocrity. The spark, as you might call it, is gone.

Making it your goal to sustain the high level of passion in your life (because passion seems to give your life its greatest meaning) is very dangerous, because you won’t be able to satisfy that need without pushing yourself to do things that will threaten your commitments, promises, partnerships, and sense of yourself as a good person. Your desire will make you cross the line (including, but not limited to, the “sex line,” per your description).

Politicians are supposed to be cool and calculating, but, if you are, it’s because you’re also abnormally driven by excitement, adrenalin, and need. Which means you’re abnormally prone to getting into trouble, particularly if you think excitement is what you’re supposed to be looking for. Which is why you’re one of a fine fraternity of politicians who just can’t keep it in their pants.

Give some thought to whether passion is as important to you as you think. It’s true, passion will put bounce in your step, joy in your heart, and inflate your air-mileage points, and the public may forgive if you they don’t think you’re too hypocritical.

On the other hand, it will also make you a self-centered and unreliable asshole, particularly to anyone who needs you as a stable parent or partner. That’s where you and the Kennedys have more in common than you think, except that John Sr. never waved a Bible around, so he was much less vulnerable to self-deception.

If you want to restore your marriage, you need to revise your idea of the importance of passion in your life, much as an alcoholic must assess the impact of alcohol. You must decide whether you can give up the thrill of a good sparking and just endure the common, humiliating irritations that always crop up in long-term relationships and families.

You must also decide whether it’s meaningful for you to put yourself through withdrawal, abandon your role as Bible hero and poly-soul-mate, and embrace being blamed by wife and kids for common domestic frustrations. Unless you find it meaningful to embrace this goal, nothing will change. And you’ll be down one wife and one shot in hell in 2012.

If you do decide to subordinate your passion to other values, you can’t expect to get off easy. Your passion won’t give up. It will push you to touch others, talk more, meet yet more soul-mates, speak to the crowd, and avoid the ordinary. You will need to build great strength to keep it from controlling you, and keep up your vigilance one day at a time.

Take some solo time to think about it, maybe in the woods off the Appalachian trail, to think about it, and then let me know whether or not that’s your goal.

STATEMENT:
If it is, compose a statement to help you manage your “my feelings, myself” instincts. “I value my political gifts for everything they give me, and they’re a big part of who I am and how I function, but I can also see they are particularly good at getting me to be a jerk. If I want to be a good guy and claim the kind of self-esteem that comes from doing the right thing rather than from surfing the high of relationships, I’ve got to work harder than most people to examine the consequences of my most basic yearnings and desires and accept the pain of frustrating most of them most of the time. That’s the cost of my goal, not of being true to my feelings, but of being my own man.”

My husband used to be my best friend, and I would have told you we have an exceptionally complete marriage, because we worked hand-in-glove in his job as a politician, for which I managed his campaigns, and as friends and parents of terrific kids. I always saw him as a man of integrity until he told me, recently, that he’d fallen in love with another woman and couldn’t stop thinking about her. He promised to stop seeing her, and then lied about that, and then the whole thing became public, which was a huge humiliation for the whole family. I’m pretty tough, so this hasn’t slowed me down or destroyed my confidence, and I really know I didn’t cause this by doing something wrong, but my goal is to put my marriage back together.

You begin on solid ground, because you’re not trying to figure out what you did wrong (except marry a politician). Still, it’s always unwise to make it your goal to put a marriage back together without first considering whether you really can, and whether it’s a good idea.

You and your husband would like to consider the marital problem as something he can control by taking the time to recover the loving feelings he once had for you; but the kind of loving feelings he’s looking for are probably not in his power, or yours, to recover, whether you seek them through prayer, therapy, or the long, sunset walks on the beach with a side-order of groveling.

That’s because those feelings depend on a relationship’s being new and unencumbered by mutual responsibilities, like kids, and things that go bad and smell bad and keep you from doing what you want. So seeking renewed passion seldom revives marriages, even if you find the secret of his sexual joy (hint: you might need to purchase a lot of self-tanner).

On the contrary, the priority of intense loving feelings is usually antithetical to marriage and bodes ill for your reconciliation or the longevity of his future liaisons, particularly if they involve living together and sharing kids and a bathroom.

So don’t make it your goal to salvage your marriage—though that’s a good wish—nor to summon up forgiveness. Instead, work to assess whether your husband’s values have changed and whether he wants to establish a kind of control he’s probably never had before. Or, if control looks unlikely, you need to decide whether the marriage is worthwhile, anyway.

Once you’re ready to accept the fact of his bad habit, it’s not hard to assess the likelihood of his getting stronger. It’s the same as assessing an alcoholic’s likelihood of recovery. He’s more likely to recover if he owns up to the problem as chronic (not one-time), and likely to be repeated regardless of remorse.

If he thinks he has to feel like recovering before he can recover, he won’t recover, because feelings (blech) like his don’t change. He has to decide that his values are more important than his feelings before there’s a hope of change.

Fundamentally, he needs to admit that his impulses will never be completely under his control, and that, regardless of his shame, he’ll be honest about them with you, and watch out for them every day of his life until his testosterone dries up, and then probably longer.

Lady Bird Johnson, LBJ’s wife, would probably challenge you to ask yourself whether it’s worth breaking up your marriage, even if you decide you can’t trust him to stop having affairs. Try to put aside your hurt because you know his infidelity isn’t personal, it’s just the way he is. That was the path another former-first lady took, and she’d argue that getting to be Secretary of State was a pretty fair trade-off.

If you can still be together, still work together, then your goal is to make the best of things for your family, not decide whether you’re angry enough to leave.

STATEMENT:
Compose a statement to protect yourself from anger, hurt, and self-doubt. “My husband’s infidelity does not detract from the fact that we’ve worked well together to do a lot of good, including his political work and building our family, and it certainly says nothing negative about the quality of my love. It’s a problem he has that has caused all of us much pain. I’m not sure he can control it. I need to assess whether he can stop and what our marriage will do to our family if he can’t. I’m determined to do what’s best for the family, regardless of my hurt and humiliation.”