Now I’m 18 and have a little sister. Just like with me and my older brother, Mom breast-fed her really late, and now at 9 years old, my sister still likes to feel my mother’s breasts. My sister is my mom’s last child, and so in several areas Mom persists in regarding her as a baby.

I try to understand my mom. I realize the idea of her last kid growing up must be scary and depressing. But this behavior is disgusting to watch or even to know it is going on when you’re not there. Additionally, it’s delusional and perverse to excuse, and even encourage, such behavior in a growing young woman on the grounds that she’s an infant. Who knows why I wanted, and now my sister wants, to touch my mother’s breasts at age 9? Certainly not because we wanted to breast-feed. But Mom’s so convinced of my sister’s innocence that she refuses to consider she could be encouraging inappropriate impulses that my sister is too unaware to understand.

I know those impulses are there. It happened to me. But for obvious reasons, I can’t tell my mother that.

What I do tell her? That I’m grossed out and that my sister is too old? Mom won’t listen. My sister, of course, listens to Mom over me and gets mad at me for saying anything. So I’m at a loss for what to do, and I don’t want my sister to turn out with the revulsion of her own memories and the confusion of her feelings that I suffered.

I’m so disgusted it’s keeping me up at night. I’m angry and stressed.

What should I do?

Revolted

Dear Revolted,

I want you to consult with a psychotherapist. Look for someone who has helped others with experiences similar to yours.

You could read and study about this. It wouldn’t hurt to get a basic understanding of child development and how such experiences can later affect us in troubling and unexpected ways. But knowledge alone will not be enough to avoid the later effects of this early experience.

The best thing you can do for yourself now is to find a therapist who can respond to you in a clear, responsible and nonjudgmental way and sit with you, week after week, as you tell your story. That would also be the best person to advise you on how to talk with your mom and your sister should you choose to do so at some point.

You are in a great situation right now. You know what happened, and it is still fresh. You have not distorted what happened or rationalized it or put it out of your mind. So this is the time to act.

You will meet obstacles in your search for the right psychotherapist. So consider this a quest of monumental importance. It may be the most important thing you ever do — more important than your education or your later occupation.

Feelings of guilt and self-hatred may arise. As such feelings come up, remind yourself that they are not helpful. They are, in fact, the direct result of this experience that has left you feeling troubled and conflicted.

You may also hear voices telling you that talking about it is taboo or will expose others to harm. That is why the confidential setting of a psychotherapist’s office is the ideal space in which to tell your story. You will not be “outing” your mother or have to confront her; you will not be causing family conflict. All you will be doing in therapy is resuming, as a slightly older person, the course of development that was sidetracked at an early age by these unusual experiences.

You have the chance to live a happy, productive life, unburdened by this. Moreover, once you attain some understanding of this, you can be of use to others who have had similar experiences.

Now, I believe that a rich country like ours ought to provide for its people in certain basic ways. One of these ways is in medical care. Psychotherapy is a kind of medical care. So I believe that high-quality psychotherapy and psychiatric care ought to be readily available to people of all income levels.

This is not currently the case in America. Instead, we  must be creative, energetic and insistent to get the care we need. This is cruelly paradoxical, because it is precisely at moments when we are most burdened that we are called upon to be entrepreneurial and creative in our search for care.

You will need strength and resilience as you search for the right therapist. To keep on your quest you may need to repeat to yourself that this is indeed a life-or-death matter. People who have such experiences can later fall into depression, suicide and addiction. We don’t want that to happen to you.

Some people are uncomfortable with this topic, so they snicker and make childish jokes. Beware of shaming remarks. It would be great if they could just slide off your back, but the truth is that such remarks often do sting. Do not pretend that such remarks are not hurtful. Instead, feel the sting and wait for it to subside, like the sting of a bee. Accept that the world has many cruel and ignorant people in it, but you can survive and live a happy life.

Don’t listen to anyone who says to just get over it. We humans don’t often just “get over” stuff like this. Not without help. So get help.

You can find the help you need, and you deserve it. It’s not your fault what happened when you were just a kid.

I hired an archival researcher and a private investigator but no one can help me. Can you help me? I found out that many people came from all over the U.S. to attend this school and all I need is a list of names from around November 1961.  Please, please help me.

Into the Past

Dear Into the Past,

I love a mystery. I’m tempted to begin investigating myself. But I can’t do that. So you will have to keep at it.

It is hard to sustain a search without regular encouragement. So while I can’t fly there and help you look, I can offer encouragement to keep looking. Setbacks are to be expected. It will be slow going. You have to keep moving forward.

You may have begun to feel hopeless and want to give up. But if you give up you’ll never find out. At least if you keep at it until you have exhausted every avenue, you will have an answer. The answer may be that this man’s identity will never be known. At least that would be an answer. You will want the satisfaction of knowing you have done everything possible. So keep at it. If you become discouraged, take a break. Find elements of the investigation you can perform without expending much energy. But keep it going.

Be ready for your mind to play tricks on you. If discovering your biological father’s identity evokes any fear or uncertainty at all, then you may feel tired or discouraged because part of you does not even want to know. You may have thoughts like, Oh, who cares! Why bother! Beware of such thoughts. Your feeling that no one can help you may be one of those thoughts. Beware of the voice in you that says it is hopeless. That is the voice that really does not want to know.

But the real authentic you does want to know. Knowing where we come from is a deep human longing.

You hired an archival researcher and a private investigator. If their initial work turned up nothing, that is not so unusual. Such an investigation requires dogged thoroughness, going over ground already covered, doing things by rote even when it seems senseless, beginning yet again, trying illogical options on the off chance that something may lead to something. It can be maddening.

But there must be an answer! How many people can there be who attended ammunition-inspector school in Savanna, Ill., in November 1961?

The military keeps records. If this was a military operation there must be records. If there are records then they can be found. If you keep looking you will find them.

This column has many astute and creative readers. Perhaps one or more of them will have ideas or knowledge that may be helpful.

Good luck on your quest!

Now there is this new person in my life, and the usual thing has happened where I decide that I fancy them, and I have to work out what that means. This time I would like to proceed differently — you know how things often proceed in cycles with different relationships and friendships? Every time a situation comes round, it seems to turn out a little better — or at least I seem to learn a new thing each time I recognize that pattern remodulating itself.

This other person is pleasant, cute, older but not to an alienating extent. He’s a bit more in touch with his physical expressions than I am. I apply slightly more logical rigor to our conversations. He encourages my introverted, whimsical side. I delight in the strong, lively intellectual interplay between us. There’s a mutual physical attraction — personal spaces keep getting crossed in a way that gets more and more blatant. It’s already obvious to my life partner, who knows all about my proclivities and finds this whole story hilarious and adorable. But nothing has been explicitly acknowledged. Yes, it’s at that awkward stage!

On an emotional level, I have preserved enough awareness to realize my “just good friend” and I don’t go about things in the same way. I often find myself sort of “bearing with” his theories about personality and social interaction. It’s no huge ideological disagreement, I just recognize that we are not soul mates — we don’t have a tight, unconscious bond like the one I have with my life partner or even with some of my old lovers. I’m still deciding if that’s a good thing. I think on balance it will be, because I can really pick out that point of difference, the very deep and years-long connection with my true partner versus this scholars-with-benefits fling — it will help me be poly in a way that keeps everyone happy and reassured. Of course the question is, is that what I want …
A real source of annoyance is that while all this is going on, I know this person has a life of his own and a partner of his own. Now I’ve no idea how his life is arranged — we move in these liberal circles and perhaps he is free to go wander as he likes. Maybe all’s fair if nobody knows the particulars, or maybe he has the official blessing to do whatever. Most of me doesn’t care; that’s his business, I am going to let him do what he does and I won’t shoulder any moral burdens. But you know how life is in little arty circles — things get really insular — I am cautious. Actually I can’t pinpoint the precise reason for the cautious feeling. It’s not the force of moral convention. Do I stand to lose power or agency somehow? I’m not scared of rejection. Maybe it’s that uniquely feminine kind of retroactive self-doubt in action. I lack the intuition to work it out.

The options that I keep seeing before me are these: I can’t sit in limbo and flirt and pretend we are both unaware of what’s happening. That’s insulting to my intelligence and frustrating. I could make him back off a little, insist that what I’d like is a friendship uncomplicated by chemistry. I would actually accept this quite readily if I had no other option — there’s plenty going on between us as friends that enriches both of us, it’d mean fewer dramas, it wouldn’t change much in the friendship as it stands. But to have the choice in my hands is awful. I can’t let go of this atavistic feeling. It would also feel like I’d be denying my poly identity somewhat. The other thing I can see happening is that awful inevitable moment that so often happens — you know, the one where you both have a few too many glasses of wine, or you get down on your luck, or whatever the relevant excuse is to get into bed with each other. And I really don’t want that. Playing the dance of unconscious attraction is going to lead to that situation, I’ve seen it and I’ve been that person and … yuck. I’d find myself trying to justify it afterward and generally being a hypocrite. Nope, I’ve got to be at least a little true to myself.

So, what should I do, where’s the third path I’m not seeing, and how do I keep all this from turning into one of those awful crushes? I’m doing as much as I can right now not to fret — acquiring hobbies and new friendships at an alarming rate, doing the art thing and as you see, the writing thing — but that all feels like an attempt to stall the wheel of causality before history comes round for another pass.

De profundis etc.

Sincerely,

Ms. Moppet

Dear Ms. Moppet,

One thing you could do is to say to him, “I am going to make a decision by the end of today whether to sleep with you or not. What do you have to say in favor of my sleeping with you or in opposition to my sleeping with you? Do you have a position?”

If he hesitates, you might say, “This is called ‘giving you an opening.’”

See what he does. If he is truly enlightened, he will not circumlocute. He will make an answer.

He may say no. He may say yes. But he will give an answer.

If he engages in circumlocution, then he is not enlightened and you should not sleep with him.

However, as long as his answer is quick and clear, the matter remains open. You then have to decide what you want.

It doesn’t need to be hard. It’s like standing at the candy counter. Other people are in line so you have to choose. Your choice is not going to change the course of world events. You just have to decide: Either choose a piece of candy or walk out of the store. Just  do something. By the end of the day, as you have already promised him, make your choice about what you want.

There are four possibilities:

1. He wants, you want;
2. he wants, you don’t want;
3. he doesn’t want, you want;
4. he doesn’t want, you don’t want.

The fourth possibility should make things simple. Neither of you wants to have sex with the other. Actually, though, that can be the most dangerous of all. You may let your guard down and get drunk together. That would call into question the truth value of your avowals. But let’s move on.

The next-simplest is the first one: he wants, you want.

If you decide you want to sleep with him and he wants to sleep with you, arrangements should be straightforward.

If, however, he says he does not want to sleep with you, or does not think it is wise, but you want to do it anyway, then it becomes interesting.

You will have some work to do.

Fortunately, such work is pleasant. It involves breaking down his resistance by creating pleasurable enticements. There is nothing strenuous about such work. The only problem is that even your enticements may not work and then you will feel disappointment. But even this disappointment need not be soul-crushing. It’s just a matter of recognizing that you didn’t get something you wanted. At least failure will be clear: You decided you wanted something and were going to attempt it, there was a certain probability of success and a certain probability of failure and success was not yours.

Oh, but there is this: If you make your enticements in bad faith, you also risk ruining the friendship. That is, if you pretend the reason you are taking off your blouse is because it’s just too hot in here, that’s not fair. You have to be upfront and say that even though he does not want to sleep with you, you are going to try to make it happen anyway. That way, he knows the danger. He knows you are out to seduce him so if he really wants to not sleep with you he can take appropriate measures.

You have to be upfront about it: I understand that you don’t want to sleep with me but I am going to try to make you change your mind and here is how. Then he will know you are taking your blouse off not merely because of the weather. Then you can begin your program of subtly escalating enticements, secure that it is not a subterfuge.

If he can’t resist you, that’s his philosophical problem.

Nothing in this should be a barrier to honest friendship. It is more in the area of a friendly contest. Can he resist? Let’s find out.

Now, should he say he wants to sleep with you but you decide you do not want to sleep with him, that’s a different matter. He may be quite as determined as you.

If he wants to sleep with you and you do not want to sleep with him, your resolve may need buffering. When we find that having made this or that decision we cannot later stick to it, we must examine the conditions under which our resolve falls apart. Often, if we are honest, we will see that our resolve falls apart after several glasses of wine.

So if you decide you do not want to sleep with him but he wants to sleep with you, you will have to not drink with him. Drinking leads to sleeping with people. That is why we like it so much. Alcohol affects the ability to carry out a plan when the plan requires resisting impulses.

That raises the question, What does “want to” really mean? If you decide you don’t want to sleep with him but then you get drunk and sleep with him anyway, does that mean you really did want to sleep with him? Maybe it’s not “wanting” we’re talking about but “making a plan.” “Wanting” is not a static quality, but a fluid reality that shifts with our movements. When we say “decide what we want” what we’re actually talking about is “making a plan.”

Drinking changes how we regard our plans. What seemed ironclad and sacred earlier in the day now looms like some tiny and abstract prohibition scarcely worthy of our attention.

Anyway, that’s the practical side of it.

As to the larger question of consciousness and being, well, I suggest that you give some attention to the states of being that give rise to your questions. When we are agitated or anxious we formulate text strings with question marks attached. This activity is a result of our agitation. It does not mean that these text strings terminated with question marks have answers.

Anyone can construct such a thing? It doesn’t mean that human effort ought to be expended constructing the corresponding text string terminated with a period that would be considered an answer. I can do things like this? I can end sentences with these marks? It doesn’t mean there’s an answer to them? Does it? Which ones are legitimate questions? Which ones are merely text strings terminated with question marks? I’m fairly sure I know the answer? I think you do too? But how to implement it? That seems to be the question? No?

So if I were you I would concentrate on the quality of my consciousness by increasing my meditation. When I find my consciousness filling with these text strings terminated with question marks, I would return to my meditation. I would view them as random objects of consciousness, like noises and bird songs.

I would look for questions that have immediate answers, like, What am I going to do next? I am going to go into the house and make some tea.

Other questions I would consider as noise.

And, again, the important and interesting question to ask this person is, Are you in favor of, or against, us sleeping together?

Then make your own decision by the end of the day and stick to it for at least a year.

At the end of the year, you can revisit the question.

Unsure

Dear Unsure,

You may have thought and read about conflicts of interest and imbalances of power but are you ready to find, in the agonizing grip of an affair, a visceral unhappiness unlike anything you have ever known? Can you handle wanting to scream or grab a crowbar while also wanting to weep and beg forgiveness?

Are you ready to find yourself, as if living in a pre-feminist era, driven to a gradual, crippling compromise by your desire for some man who for all his fine words still seems to secretly enjoy unassailable privilege? Are you ready to be emptying ashtrays and making tea and realize, holy shit! You secretly expected his prestige and power to rub off on you but nothing has really changed! Are you ready to realize you allowed yourself to indulge in some 19th-century claptrap and did it with your eyes open and your finger on the page in this book right here where it says women are powerful and things have changed and you control your own destiny, which is sort of true in lots of ways except for the ones that really matter?

Except where actual privilege lives its actual life?

Actual privilege is nice and attractive. It just doesn’t have much of a heart.

I’m not saying be a good girl and never act on your impulses. And I’m not setting it up for I Told You So And Now Don’t Come Crying to Me or some such. I’m saying, do some research on him. Does he have a girlfriend? Is he married? Does he spend time with lots of students, or mainly with his peers? Watch him. Study him.

You are vulnerable here. Maybe you are capable of handling this. But maybe not. It wouldn’t be the first time someone thought she knew what she was doing.

So do some courageous self-assessment. Share your dilemma with your women friends. Don’t just walk in there with your eyes shut and open up for him. Power and privilege still break women’s hearts and psychotherapy is expensive especially if you didn’t get that tenure-track job even though he promised to go to bat for you in the committee and now that you think about it, weirdly enough, he didn’t really support you as energetically as you thought he would.

I mean, Are you ready to want what you didn’t think you wanted, and want it more strongly than you thought you could want anything, and then find out that no matter how much you want it you’re never going to get it because somebody else already took it and she wears weird eye shadow?

That is what happens when your lust is only a thin covering over a deeper, global longing that you don’t even know you have until after it’s driven you crazy.

Are you ready to realize that you’re the one who said all these empowered, knowing, independent-sounding words and now all you want is for this man to just stay right here and not go teach his next class while you embody your desire in the form of another cup of green tea and an omelet, which he consumes but does not appear to taste, and when you ask him a question about his work he waves it away as if it were not phrased properly and when you see him with other students, you notice a pretty young woman student who has this adoring look on her face that seems eerily familiar …

And if it comes to that will you be able to accept that he has another young student who finds him as irresistible as you do and he may be seeing her tonight, and he may lie to you about it or not tell you anything, or disappear for weeks at a time with no notice, or break a date with you without warning or explanation, or suddenly seem distant and petty and not at all interested in you and what you have to say, or become critical of you and your life choices or not want to meet your friends and family or find fault with your apartment, which is too small, or the color of your toenails, which is too bright, all of which makes you scream at him but you don’t because you don’t want him to see your juvenile, screamer-bitch side, which you only so recently thought you’d completely left behind.

Because you are a graduate student at a distinguished university and it wouldn’t be right …  after he fails to show up yet again and you are left sitting at the bar wondering why you didn’t heed the warning signs.

You could have read about this in a book. You don’t have to actually fall off a cliff to know why it’s good to stand back from the edge.

Maybe you are very tough and self-reliant and just want an adventure. I don’t know you. But if you are so tough and self-reliant, why are you sharing this with me?

I think you know there is something dangerous about this and what you really need is for someone to say, Slow down. Examine your motives. Examine your hungers. What are you really looking for?

Recently, we were tipped off through the school PTO grapevine that she has a criminal record and is an addict, and that stories about her have appeared in the town paper, and also that she has been banned from volunteering in the school because of this.

I didn’t believe it, but asked a librarian if there was a way to find out. The librarian gave me a link to a criminal records database for our state. All I had to do was type in her name. A long list of arrests came up for both the baby sitter and her spouse. Most were driving without a license or marijuana possession. Two were for domestic violence. I called our police station to ask if I could find out more about someone’s arrest on a domestic violence charge. I explained I wanted to know if a rumor about our baby sitter is true. The police gave me a copy of one of the domestic violence case documents. The date was just over a year ago.

It’s pretty bad: She and her husband were beating each other up in front of their kids, blood was spattering all over the kids’ toys, they were swearing at each other. The mug shot was awful. I guess mug shots usually are, but she doesn’t look at all like the person I know. I mean, it’s definitely her, but she has a weird look in her eyes.

This is as far as I got with what to do: I am not comfortable having her as a baby sitter. Whether that’s right or wrong, I am OK with my decision. I know some people might focus on her kindness and think she has moved on from her troubles, especially since there’s no record of arrests within the year.

I got halfway to this: I am ethically required to tell the people I recommended her as a baby sitter to about this. (I’ve told some of them, but only the ones I trust to not gossip.) Do I need to tell everyone?

I am completely stuck on this: Should I tell her what I know? Would she want to know? Or would it just be rude and unnecessarily confrontational of me to bring it up? She still thinks we are friends. And I guess we are. But I have stopped asking her to baby-sit (obviously) and also have stopped asking her for medical advice. I never reach out to her anymore. She is a nice person. She is kind and smart. Her arrests are from over a year ago. Should I, as her friend, let her know that the PTO grapevine is sharing her criminal record info with the rest of the town?

Thank you for reading and considering my question. I value your advice!

Need a New Sitter

Dear Need a New Sitter,

When you ask your daughter where she picked up that new vocabulary and she says, “It’s prison lingo, Mom,” it makes you feel kinda funny inside.

So I completely understand your decision to stop using this baby sitter.

There’s just something about the person who’s making sandwiches in the kitchen while your kids are watching TV that doesn’t go with “mug shot.”

Generally, when I find out somebody has an arrest record, I give them the benefit of the doubt.

But parents are funny. They’re really touchy about who tucks their kids in at night. While they’re out having dinner, they like to imagine some clean-scrubbed honors student doing her homework on the couch while the kids are watching TV or tucked into nice, clean, warm beds.

So yeah, sad as it is, I think you gotta be the snitch. You got to drop a dime on this character.

You gotta tell. Seriously. You may be depriving this person of work, but hey.

The Buddhists say we ought to seek our right livelihood. Baby sitter isn’t the right livelihood for this person.

Nobody loves a snitch. But your reputation would suffer more if it came to light that you knew about this and didn’t tell anyone. It’s like you’re endangering their kids. So tell.

Domestic violence is a definite no-no for baby sitters. Sure, she’s innocent until proven guilty. But a baby sitter can’t afford to even get arrested for such a thing. It’s a well-understood professional liability and a common-sense deal-breaker. She should find a new line of work that’s not “domestic” anything.