I appreciate your compassionate intentions but you just responded to a CL column about how objective reality matters by telling CL she should omit objective reality.

I’m only telling my particular story here but I was never suicidal until I learned that my now-ex was having a long term affair with someone I knew. But I’m not a hysterical idiot like that and I’m not going to just make up shit to try to smear people who disagree with me. In my case had someone even dropped me a line, at the very least my hackles would have been up and I would have likely started doing a little watching.However, I am convinced in hindsight that what my fw was actually doing in his diseased mind, was confessing to me to clear his own conscience. They would’ve understood that WHEN we would find out that we would be absolutely devastated and traumatized to the nth degree… at least that’s what I thought, every time I felt an attraction to another man. A crappy person is never worth it, but this garbage human mentality and emotionally abused her husband.

If that’s love to you, then you’re a monster who isn’t capable of love and can’t even understand what love is. Who’s betting that Mr Mechanic was all, “my wife doesn’t understand me boo hoo” and they just decided to entertain each others’ batshit delusions (until they break up in about 18 months and decide the other one was crazy). I also ask that you lightly edit the letter to remove the specific details of the means and methods and replace it with “died by suicide”. The creepy ABC News producer who used to follow me around when I was an intern to ask if I wore that outfit just for him?

I don’t believe people cheat because of midlife crises, which descend on former church deacons like a toxic cloud of musk cologne.

If I found out that someone knew and didn’t tell, I would cuss them out up one side and down the other. If you let this pain crack open your heart and you accept the vulnerability and chaos, you’re going to be a better person for it. Now it’s time to be this better person by advising your friend that her choice of actions is contrary to your values and character because hurting others with lies, deception and betrayal will harm others and cause destruction to many lives.If your Cheater’s not checking the right boxes on this list, then go ahead and rid yourself of the “what-ifs” and “for better and for worse” thoughts and grant yourself permission to protect yourself from abuse. We can rightly imagine the perceived losses that would keep a victim of sexual harassment or assault quiet. I’ve done a lot of work on myself and speak very publicly about the suicide idealization I was diagnosed with.

Why would you want to be friends with someone who lies about the damage done to the one person they owed honesty too? And I say this as someone who was deeply affected by a friend’s suicide (Ed Murphy, who I’ve written about here), who killed himself in exactly the same manner. I am being told by her parents and even a close friend of mine that I need to be supportive of her and let her make her decisions.

And then I wish I would have had someone say that each day the pain will lessen but you MUST go out and live. A lot of us may have had friends who cheated and we knew at some point and did not end the friendship ASAP. I was using hyperbole because I found your posts a little hysterical and missing the point, which is about sensitive reporting of suicide. What you are objecting to is not at all comparable to a cheater who says cruel things and justifies it with “I can say what I want. That was actually one of the dealbreaker moments for me– he had so little respect for me (and for himself) that he didn’t bother to use a condom.