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THE QUESTION

A dear friend who has two kids lost his wife last year. He is involved in a volunteer church group that I direct. Since his spouse passed away, he has been involved with three different women, all from my group. It is very difficult to recruit women for this particular group, and their input is always cherished. But now, none of these women want to come back to our group (or to our church!) because of their involvement with my friend. I feel for him, as his wife died within months of being diagnosed with cancer. He would be absolutely devastated if I said something like "please don't date any more women in my group - I need the ones I have." How can I tell him to cool his jets, and still keep my group intact and functioning? Or am I just being petty, putting my loss of volunteers above my friend's pain?

THE ANSWER

Hail to thee, church lady, and welcome to the column.

It's refreshing to have an upstanding citizen of your religiosity and moral fibre step through our Gothic arches and into Damage Control's fiery, brimstone-filled world of Jezebels and ne'er-do-wells.

(And I count myself among that number, I'm afraid, madam. For it is written: Let he who is without stones act all like he's without sin.)

You're asking how to request diplomatically that your widower friend stop becoming romantically involved (or even sexually, hmm? Yeah, baby!) with the other ladies in your church group, so they'll stop leaving when it all ends in tears.

Truly an excellent question.

First let me say this: I've learned through the patient study of the example of others that it's possible to say anything to anyone, as long as you phrase it the right way.

Me, I'm the bull-in-a-china-shop type. I tend to blurt things out undiplomatically and get into all kinds of trouble - and then I have to do damage control.

That's why I'm so good at it: practice, practice, practice. In his new book, Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell says it takes 10,000 hours to become good at anything. I think I'm there. I've probably spent that much time apologizing to my wife, Pam, alone - or at least it sometimes feels that way.

But I'm slowly learning to be more diplomatic - thanks in large part to observing Pam's example.

She says the most unbelievable things to people, but they never seem to mind because she says them with such obvious compassion and good intentions.

For example, over the years she has told me, I would say, at least two if not three dozen times at a conservative estimate, that she thinks I'm getting a little chunky and could stand to lose a few pounds.

But somehow Pam manages to slip this stiletto between my ribs without causing pain or prolonged suffering.

Her technique varies. Sometimes she will cloak her little message in a faux health/love-MacGuffin: "Dave, it's not healthy to be heavy, and I want us to have a long and happy life together."

Other times, though, she'll just do it prison-shower-shiv-style, quick and dirty: "Dave, you need to lose some weight."

You, madam, must pray to the Lord to reveal to you which of these approaches would work best for your particular situation.

Me, I like the prison-shower-shiv approach. Painful, may leave a scar, but should be a clean wound that heals quickly.

And "straightforward" tends to be the form of communication men understand best.

Now, you say you believe your man will be "devastated," and you're worried about adding to his widower's pain.

Well, with all due respect, it sounds like he's making a pretty healthy recovery to me. (Reminds me of a woman's snide crack about a recent widow in an Oscar Wilde play: "I hear her hair has turned quite gold from grief.")

I'm sorry to sound cynical but I wouldn't be surprised if he were cashing in on his grief, playing the heartstrings of the softies in your church group like a Stradivarius.

Him, sobbing: "I ... I ... just miss her so much."

Her, also sobbing: "Oh, you poor dear! Here, let me help you with that, the clasp's a bit fiddly."

(I'm sorry! I apologize. I know he's your friend. But I warned you - I'm the blurtaceous type. I just blurt things out, then apologize later.)

I have a funny feeling this "fragile flower" will be able to handle whatever you throw at him. As long as you make it clear to him, as you did to me, that you are only approaching him after quite a bit of agonizing, and you wouldn't be doing it if his nocturnal activities weren't having an impact on your daytime ones.

But are you sure you want to have this discussion at all? Are you sure it is your place to say anything?

I would have to guess, madam, that in 2008 whatever sins he and they might be guilty of were committed with eyes open, knowing full well what they were getting into.

They are God's children, but in the end they're also consenting adults.

Now, I know there's a long history of the church trying to boss people around in the bedroom.

But any student of history knows there's also a long history of people ignoring what the church has to say and having sex anyway.

And I have a feeling that could happen in this case. You beg him not to shag any more church ladies. He ignores you and continues to shag church ladies. Net effect on the behaviour of church guy: zilch, except it'll make him mad at you if your attempt to broach the subject with tact, compassion and diplomacy misfires.

No, what I would do is, like God, kick back, remain silent and let these frail and fallible mortals make their own mistakes and learn their own lessons.

All you can do is pray for them, sister, and hope they find inner peace, and lasting and meaningful relationships - relationships that don't end in tears and bitter recriminations and church-group defections.

David Eddie is a screenwriter and the author of Chump Change and Housebroken: Confessions of a Stay-at-Home Dad.

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