WELL said!  Thank you.

I’d like to recommend that LW1 (and actually, many of the women who write to Margo here) find and read this book:

Living With the Passive-Aggressive Man; Coping With Hidden Aggression - From the Bedroom to the Boardroom, By Scott Wetzler PH.D.

Chapter 10 is titled: The Mine Field - the Passive Aggressive Man at Work.  
The book is available for online reading of excerpts at google books.  I can pretty much guarantee that some of its content will be a revelation, and only wish that I had discovered it years ago. Best of luck.  

Poor dog!  Terrorized in it’s own home, completely unacceptable.  If anyone brought a child to my home and it throttled one of my dogs, the brat and their idiot parent would be told to leave immediately and not to return.  Allowing your child to disrespect someone’s home and torture their pets is not being "a good friend", and I personally wouldn’t tolerate that behavior from anyone.  One of my brothers had monster children who were allowed to run wild, but they were never that bad or I would have dealt with it on the spot.  

Would LW1 take this more seriously if the kid had gotten to and tried to choke or hit her baby?  It may just be a matter of time, and I wouldn’t worry about offending the clueless one, or ruining what’s become an abusive "friendship".  The child is giving clear warnings by savaging pets and other children, and she may be dangerous to others.  LW1 would  be doing this woman a favor by telling her in no uncertain terms that she needs to get that child some help before she does serious harm to someone else’s child, pets, or property.

"and we are Oprah."

LOL Margo, that is (unfortunately) SO TRUE!

Judging from some of the comments here, "we" are apparently also Jerry Springer and a few more much less savory talk show hosts.  Also unfortunate, but it appears to be the way that the web is going.

Thank you for sharing that Rose, written from the heart and it shows.  In my opinion, nothing can compare to the love and devotion of a dog.  

If you’ve not read it, I’d like to recommend the book Travels With Lizbeth by Lars Eighner, another true life account of a dog traveling with a homeless person who wouldn’t give her up for the sake of the system.  It’s a wonderful book but disturbing book which says a great deal more about homelessness and our society than I think many people might care to read.

I’m happy that you and Baby Girl found a home, bless you both.   

"At the time, I asked him to make it official and he turned me down." Sounds like "making it official" was/is the key to…. well, to her heart, so to speak. 

BF1 who won’t commit loses GF to BF2, who does promise to commit.  GF marries BF2, who becomes her husband on the grounds of his commitment.  GF-wife commited to a wedding but now can’t commit to monogamy or a marriage and goes back to having sex with BF1, who wouldn’t commit to her. 

BF1 gets his and still doesn’t have to commit, GF-wife doesn’t have to either, BF2-husband-AKA-cuckold doesn’t have a choice.  There’s some sort of cosmic irony here, but it escapes me at the moment.  Maybe it will play out if and/or when she leaves the object of her wedding for a guy who still may not commit to her.  

I’ve always liked what George Santayana said in the introduction to his Interpretations of Poetry and Religion:

"….religious doctrines would do well to withdraw their pretensions to be dealing with matters of fact.  …. when it seeks its sanctions in the sphere of reality, and forgets that its proper concern is to express an ideal."  

My neighborhood back in suburban Jersey was plagued with church groups and many of the people who came were very persistent, not taking no for an answer.  We finally hung a sign on the front door which read: "No Preaching, No Proselytizing, Peddle The Word Elsewhere."  The next time they were in the neighborhood no one knocked on the door, but I just happened to glance out the window to see a group of people with bibles standing in the street talking in front of the house.  Several pointed at our place, then they all prayed, apparently for us.  I laughed.  No one ever knocked on our door again.  A friend of mine there used to answer the door naked, he said it worked well too, but it wasn’t a permanent fix. 

Have only had 2 or 3 groups in 5 years venture this far out where I live in WA state, it’s the back country hills and they have to drive to get from house to house.  There has been absolutely no problem here telling them "No thank you" and shutting the door.  Never take their literature and am not sure what groups they represent, but they’re always very respectful and leave politely. 

I call them ‘the haters’.  Right or wrong, it’s been my experience in the last 20 some years online that this is the way of the internet.  From the old BBS’s to the newsgroups to modern day blogs, bullies are just as prevalent online as they are in real life, and it’s really easy to judge someone else and make negative comments about them in a place where people can’t see you.  There are a lot of reasons for it, but it’s been my ongoing observation that there are people who are nasty just to amuse themselves with the drama that they create by trying to upset others.  (Please see the definition of LULZ, it doesn’t just apply to hackers.)

My stating that is judgmental and arrogant in it’s way too, and absolutely reflects my own issues.  It’s tiresome to see the haters sometimes, and it can be hard to keep in mind that it really has nothing to do with me and my experiences, comments, or how I live my life, but with them.  Abuse is something that I’ve lived through too and I simply have a different perspective.  I’ve managed to move past it, for the most part, by working on how I think about it, but it’s been a long and difficult process.  I’m not through with it yet, and realize that it’s not possible for everyone, especially someone still stuck in the systemic cycle.  Saying ‘do what I did’ is useless, individuals differ and there’s no one thing that works for everybody.   

All that I can offer anyone speaking of their abuse here is my understanding, my compassion, and my sincere wishes for an end to the hell that they’ve lived or are living through.   I know that it can be hard to feel misunderstood, but would sincerely hope that anyone who needs help with abuse wouldn’t take a stranger’s comments online personally.  For my part, I’ll be forwarding the url for this column to all my friends, with the rare (for me) request that they pass it on.   Thank you for publishing this, Margo, it needs to be heard.

Lucy Lawless has also been playing LAPD Sergeant Mary Beth Duffy, investigating the death or murder of Mia Kirshner’s Jenny Schecter character in whatever the heck Showtime has been doing with "The L Word".  The series has officially ended, but she appeared throughout the final season, and is now a main character in "The Interrogation Tapes", which they’re releasing on the web (may be on TV too, I don’t have one).  No official word on what is actually going on in the future in terms of a continuation of the characters in the show or whether she’ll be part of it.  

Some other trophy wife recently said: Marrying for money is hard work.

Personally, I wouldn’t know.  

OMG that is SO funny!  Great observation, thanks. It’s been bothering me too. 

Wowowow for sure, maybe it’s no wonder so many people trusted him.  

Duct tape is no joke, but it can be highly effective LOL. Had this kind of man, but to a much greater degree, married him anyway and coped with it all by just shutting down a lot. In many ways he was perfect, but hindsight being the immaculate mirror that it is, I also prefer quiet and would NOT recommend that anyone else try to cope with someone like this, at least not without minimal therapy and/or a battery of diagnostic tests up front. A physical disorder can maybe be fixed, an obnoxious personality, maybe not. This guy doesn’t see a problem, and my personal experience has been that you need to virtually bludgeon someone like this to get them to even shut up long enough to listen, and it seldom does any good when or if they do.