Dear WholeFamily Counselor, I feel silly sending e-mails with a problem, who knows who's getting it. Still with no one I can really talk to, I suppose I'll try your good self. I am 28 and my wife is 27 years old. We have been married for 2 and a 1/2 years and have a wonderful baby girl of 18 months. Before I was married I'd had no real time on my own, I always needed to be loved and have someone there by me.

Dear WholeFamily, I am about to file for divorce. Searching for help I came across your address. I have to say that the advice that you gave the lady with the problem about x-mas was good but in the same breath and in the next thousand I have to let you know that people with far deeper problems (not to minimise the others) can't find the help we need. I need. I have been married for ten years, together for fourteen, the last nine years have been awfull, and the last seven even worse.

Dear WholeFamily Counselor, I feel like I am going to go crazy! I teach engineering in college and I am a training officer in law-enforcement. I am a combat veteran, saw lots of action and was listed as killed in action for few days. I have traveled extensively and been through lots, then met my wife and fell in love with her. My problem is friends and family and my wife's tantrums when they're around. If I have a friend over she will make an issue out of it.

Dear WholeFamily Counselor, My husband says he only loves me sometimes. He doesn't even want to come home, even when I am not at home! When I am at home he says the reason he does not want to come home is because he "does not want to put up with me." He says one day that he wants a divorce, and the next day he doesn't. I do not want a divorce, I love my husband very, very much. I would like him to love me again! Please help me if you can.

Dear Whole Family Counselor, My husband is a very good provider and is a good man in many ways, but I am very unhappy in our marriage and I need your help. He has been verbally abusive with me for a long time. This is his nature, just the way he talks to people in general. He has done the same with our 2 children, now preteens. For years, I made excuses, said "that's just the way he is", talked to him about my feelings and my needs, gone to counseling (alone, he wouldn't go)

Dear WholeFamily Counselor, My wife is leaving the house to move down the street to live in an apartment. She says that she is still going to meet all her responsibilities to our two boys, David (13) and Jeffrey (11). She claims she can't live with the children's father anymore and this means me. The biggest reason she gives is that we fight all the time and she has told me this many times through our marriage. I think the last fight I had with her was sometime in 1997. My wife was brought up in a family with a father who was an alcoholic. From what I understand, she battled with him for several years.