Relationships

Continuing my series of responses to the New York Times', The Ethicist, here is my take on today's post, "My Wife Found My Sexy Phone Pics and Won't Let It Go," My wife and I have been married for just a few years. Early in our marriage I started chatting with a female acquaintance, and things got verbally sexual and eventually led to sexual pictures between the other woman and me. I saved some of the photos to my phone and inadvertently saved them to my computer, where my wife found them and downloaded them to her phone. We've gone through marriage counseling together and are working things out. I have since deleted the photos, but my wife still has them. I'm ashamed of the…

Continuing my series of responses to the New York Times', The Ethicist, without imposing values, here is my take on today's post, "Should I Help an Unjustly Fired Co-Worker?" A work colleague, a level below me, has managed to succeed despite a pattern of bad performance. She doesn't seek feedback early or take it well, so her projects consistently become last-minute scrambles that others must fix. She has also been dishonest about timelines and obtaining input from the right people. The pattern continues because she reports to a powerful executive who has not held her accountable for this behavior despite complaints from many co-workers, including me. Recently, she fired a competent, young, lower-level employee in her group who tried to improve these processes. To fire…

Continuing my series of responses to the New York Times', The Ethicist, without imposing values, here is my take on today's post, "Should Parents Be Expected to Donate to a Public School?" Our granddaughter is in kindergarten at a highly ranked elementary school: Test scores average in the top 1 percent of the schools in the state. Only 1.2 percent of the students are on a free or low-cost lunch. A sheet is passed out to parents of all students in the school from the parents' organization at the beginning of the school year. Last year they pressured parents to donate $600 per year per student enrolled. This year the amount has been raised to $1,000. The parents' organization keeps the books and clearly knows…

Continuing my series of responses to the New York Times', The Ethicist, without imposing values, here is my take on today's post, "Is It O.K. to Find Sexual Satisfaction Outside Your Marriage?" I am married and have three children with my husband. For the most part, our lives are happy. My husband and I have a good relationship and are active in our children's lives. However, I am utterly unsatisfied sexually. I need a bit more than occasional vanilla sex to feel content in that area (nothing too crazy, mind you). When my husband and I first started dating some years ago, I gently brought this matter up to him a handful of times during the course of regular conversation. His answers to me seemed…