I get letters. Lots of letters.

The vast majority of the letters are from women. A few are not. Most letters are from women who are depressed. It is abundantly clear that the reason they are depressed is that they are in miserable relationships.

Most have fallen into relationships with men who are egregiously unsuitable partners. Not men who changed and became difficult, but men whose behavior from the beginning was a blinking neon sign warning Bad Mate Material. These men had had affairs, sometimes with other men; they were drinkers or drug users; they had personality problems; they lied about themselves; they couldn't hold a job. That kind of thing. Serious stuff.

And often enough, no matter how loutish or just plain inappropriate the partner, leaving isn't an easy option. Sometimes they're still struggling to make the guy pay attention to them. Or they don't have the financial independence to break away. Or there are children they need help with. Or the depression is so severe they can't see out.

This is not a judgment on my part. Allow me to share some of their own observations.

"I've been dumped by my married boyfriend after having an affair with him for almost five years. How do I get over my obsession and let go of my intense emotional attachment to him? I've reached the depths of a profound depression because I've made him the focus of my life even though I know he's a chronic womanizer and a cheat."

"My boyfriend of seven years and I have a beautiful daughter together. I'm in love with a man who's gay and is using me to disguise it to the world. I still love him and it's killing me that he has no thought of my feelings. The situation sickens me and I can't stop crying."

"With all my experience and age, I still fell for a dishonest and untrustworthy man deep enough to marry him (it took me two years to agree). I am now suffering the consequences. Somehow these people have a way, a special charm, a special way of covering up."

These matters come to mind because there is so much evidence from so many quarters that women are especially attuned to relationships and take much of their meaning from them. And, in turn, the problems that develop in relationships are great fuel for rumination, the obsessive overthinking that gets increasingly negative and often pulls people down into depression. Women are more likely to ruminate over their problems than men are.

The letters make it clear that the women fall for the guys quickly, then spend a long time in struggles to transform their mate before coming to rue their choice of partner.

A good friend of mine, a well-known mental health professional, a social and political liberal, voiced an observation to me that makes her sound, to an outsider, like a screaming put-the-genie-back-in-the-bottle conservative. No, she wouldn't reverse the sexual revolution. But she did confide that she wished women wouldn't jump into bed too fast.

My friend wasn't spouting politics. She was talking biology. Biochemistry inclines women to emotionally bond to the men they have sex with. In other words, women often get attached before their cognitive machinery is up and running at full throttle.

So if it isn't too late, I'd like to offer women one little bit of advice that just might go a long way to averting obsessive overthinking, depression and the problems that come with it.

Choose a partner wisely and well. We are attracted to people for all kinds of reasons. They remind us of someone from our past. They shower us with gifts and make us feel important. They have money or cars we don't.

But you'd be better off evaluating a potential partner as you would a friend: look at their character, personality, values, their generosity of spirit, the relationship between their words and actions, their relationships with others. Know your partner's beliefs about relationships before you get in too deep. Most of all, don't confuse sex with love.

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