Having severed all ties to her mother in iambic pentameter, then confounded her fans by explaining away her umbrella rampage as an overzealous Method exercise, an increasingly scrambled Britney Spears would appear to be in desperate need of someone she can trust. She may have found that in AA counselor John Sundahl, hotly rumored to be a front-running candidate for Ill-Fated Marriage #3. (Not to be confused with her first rehab boyfriend, a guitarist from a lesser known rock band who rode the alleged affair for all the publicity it was worth.) Those rumors now appear to be true, as Sundahl briefly lapsed on the "anonymous" part of the AA equation to gush about the relationship in Page Six:

The recovered alcoholic says Britney chatted him up at their Alcoholics Anonymous meetings before asking him out more than two months ago. [...]

"We are dating right now. I mean she is not moving in or anything but we are dating," the 38-year-old real estate developer said last night. "It is serious." [...]

He also claimed Spears has not fully beaten her alcohol problems and claimed that, despite her trip to Promises rehab center, she is a "practicing alcoholic." Sundahl refused to comment on how far the couple's physical relationship has gone and waved off the 13-year age gap.

We'd hate to so early in the affair have to raise the red flag, but Sundahl's assessment of the singer as having one foot dangling precariously off the wagon directly conflicts with Spears's own claims on the matter—namely, that she was a misdiagnosed alcoholic, admitted against her will to a celebrity detox facility by a cabal of nefarious, baby-craving relatives and handlers. If the new man in her life expects things to truly get "serious," he might want to at least get the story straight—unless he too wants to find himself on the receiving end of one of her hand-delivered, vituperative kiss-off limericks.

• BRITNEY'S NEW BEAU [NY Post]