Should she and needy ex stay that way?

DEAR AMY: About five years ago, my husband of 15 years left me and moved on to a relationship with another woman. After the split, I found out that he had cheated on me during our marriage. The split hit me hard, and I went through a depression for which I got counseling. Despite this, we have remained on fairly friendly terms. We have three children together. He was injured on the job recently and is off work for six weeks. Shortly after his injury, he told me via text message that his girlfriend was leaving him. He suggested that we sit down and discuss what went wrong with our relationship (something he refused to do when we first split up). He said he wanted to try to mend some bridges. He also implied that maybe we could eventually become "more" than friends. Part of me still loves the guy and would love to get back together, but do I really want to go through that heartache all over again? "Once a cheater, always a cheater," I think. All the same, I am so confused. Dazed and Confused

DEAR DAZED: This is your opportunity to finally take the wheel. Definitely mend any bridges in need of repair. But do so over coffee, and from across the room. This is a guy who doesn't want to be alone.

DEAR AMY: The letter from "Concerned Parent" prompted me to write. The son was extremely slow to perform tasks. This boy sounds like me when I was his age. I was a below-average student until I took physics in high school. I got an A without much studying. After flunking a couple of subjects in college, I enlisted in the Air Force, rose to the top of the class and received outstanding achievement awards. I believe the key is that I was presented with something that caught my interest and made sense. Traditional education seems to follow a "one size fits all" pattern. The task of parents, educators and counselors is to uncover the child's interests and help him explore. Been There