He sat across the restaurant table from me, with an angry yet sad look on his face.  He was fifty-seven years old, neatly dressed in an expensive suit, but reminded me of a pouting little boy.  His hair was thin and receding, and he was not really what you would call handsome.  His face bore extensive marks of aging, and was rather plain.  His skin was pale and pasty.  His voice was deep and husky, with a touch of bitterness.  Glenn was a successful financial planner for a national firm.  He had lots of money, but he was miserable.

His only marriage had ended years ago, an unhappy one which produced three children.  When I asked him to describe his relationships with his children and other close family, he replied he rarely saw any of them.  They were all close by, but not close.  He said he couldn't stand his mother or his siblings.

About two years ago he met Sharon.  Sharon and Glenn met through an internet dating service.  She was his age and her two abusive husbands had died on her.  As a neurology nurse, her doctor employer had pressured her into the second marriage.  More than once Glenn told me he saw both Sharon and himself and very co-dependent.

They had a passionate but highly conflicted relationship.  He vividly described how they had "fucked" all over his condo; on the couch, the floor, in the shower, on the kitchen table, and other places I can't recall.  Five times she had left him, only to return.  She didn't trust him one iota, and monitored his computer's memory, email, and phone calls.  Sharon called Glenn, "Mr. Quick Fix," because of his addiction to internet pornography and dating services.  As soon as she would uncover another of his "slips," into his sex addiction, away she would go.  This time, the sixth, was to be it!  He would have to choose between her and addiction.  There was no middle ground.

Sitting across from me, his 12-step sponsor, he was in agony and extreme emotional pain.  His face had the expression of someone who had lost everything.  When I commented, "Sharon has become your universe," he quickly snapped, "Fuck you!"  I thought I had touched on the painful truth.  I was sure I had, but then worried I had been too blunt, too soon.

"Boy, you've got it bad, but I do understand what you're going through."  I had experienced this awful romance and relationship addiction myself.  It could be sure hell on earth.  He paid the bill and we each wished each other a good Memorial Day weekend.  Actually, I knew his wouldn't be good.  It wasn't.

I told Glenn my wife and I would be spending the three-day weekend two hours south, with our son and his family.  When I checked my phone messages the morning after our Friday night arrival, there was Glenn telling me he didn't know how he could make it "without that woman."

That weekend, when I used my son's computer to check my email, there they were, two or three desperate messages from Glenn:  "I can't stand this any longer.  I've got to see her.  I drove by her condo, didn't see her car, but also didn't see a for sale sign."  (She had told him she was moving four hours north, to be near her grandchildren and get away from him.)

After more email vividly listing his physical and emotional agony, I replied, "It is called WITHDRAWAL."  His response?  "I want to withdraw with Sharon and make her my wife for the rest of my life."  This is a fifty seven year old successful financial planner? Yes, but a very sick one.

On Thursday I emailed Glenn a daily devotional from Hazeldon, a 12-step publisher.  It was in regard to the third step:  "Turning our will and life over to the care of God.  I will rest knowing my life is in God's hands."

His reply mentioned his therapist had to cancel their weekly appointment, because her daughter was having major surgery, lung replacement.  I was glad to see he realized how that put him into perspective, as to how minor his problems really were.  But then he wrote, "I do know for a fact that Sharon is reading my email.  I am hopeful."  I could only respond, "Is she toxic?"  I felt she was toxic to both of them.

After sending this, I set thinking for some time.  If she is reading his email, that means she is stalking him electronically, and he is letting her do it.  It also means she can read the email which goes back and forth between Glenn and myself!  Was I allowing myself to be drawn into the web of their dysfunctional relationship?

"Glenn, you are encouraging her to stalk you electronically.  Do you enjoy it?"

"Lo!  We're a cute couple . . . don't you think?"

"Her reading my mail gives me hope she is still connected and vested . . . yes . . . I get something from that."

When I got home from my athletic club, there was a message from Glenn, to call him.  But, I'd had enough of this for one day.  I decided to think about this, and probably call him the next day.

I called him at his office, and because his secretary was near by, he couldn't say much, but instead listened to my thoughts from thinking and praying about him.  He said he had sixty days of sobriety from the "sex" part of his addiction such as internet pornography and sexual dating services.  He did not have a time of sobriety from his relationship/romance addiction.  In fact, that very morning he had left a message on Sharon's answering machine, asking her not to read his email.

"But you could stop that by simply changing your password."  His reply was something to the order that that would erase any hope he had of their relationship continuing.  Here was a "relationship" between two fifty-seven year olds which was in it six breakup in the last eighteen months!

After the phone conversation, as I was thinking about Glenn, a popular song from my teens came to mind, "Mr. Sandman."

I found myself changing the lyrics to:

     "Mr. Quick-Fix give up your dream,
     She's not all those peaches and cream,
     You've got to see life more as it is,
     All this sex and romance has lost its fizz,

     Mr. Quick-Fix you must stay away,
     From Sharon's alluring ways,
     Please change your password, and let her go,
     Mr. Quick-Fix, please learn to say no."

I also decided the next time Glenn emailed me, I would tell him, that except to acknowledge I had read it, I would not respond with an actual message.  I would not contribute to he and Sharon's sick relationship, until she no longer knew his email password.

He called me the following Monday, to tell me that he had listened to a four hour CD on romance/relationship addiction, and discovered he and Sharon's relationship was in so many ways a toxic one.  That's what I had been saying to him for some time, but I just listened and didn't say, "I told you so!"  Before we hung up, I suggested he seek treatment at a center in Arizona, run by the sexual addiction Guru.  He told me he had been there for one week last year, and didn't come back feeling much better.

After this phone conversation, it came to me of how the "graying of America" could mean millions of seniors who are relationship/romance addicts.  With so many living to their eighties and beyond, we will need hundreds, no thousands of therapists who can help these dysfunctional, co-dependent seniors.  Will there also be a need for 12-step recovery groups for sex and romance addicts sixty-five and older?  Will the elderly need their own divorce courts?

I didn't hear from Glenn for about a month, and had decided it was time to leave him more on his own.  As his sponsor, I didn't want to try and control his recovery/healing, but hopefully let it happen between God and Glenn.

The following Monday during lunch the phone rang.  It was Glenn's attorney son.  Glenn had shot and killed himself two days earlier!  There was no suicide note.  The son had gotten my name and phone number from his father's secretary.  The memorial service was Friday.

Mr. Quick-Fix had done it.  He had quickly fixed all those years of emotional pain and addiction.  He would never feel anything again.  He would no more wake up each day his mind screaming, "Sharon, come back to me!"

I hung up the phone and stared out the back window at the yard and lawn, and then I cried and cried, like a baby.  Had I failed, or was this best for Glenn?  Was Glenn experiencing a peace he never could have in this life?  I sure hoped so.