Q: I struck up a close friendship with a man. We take longs walks or simply talk for hours. I trust that our somewhat intense relationship will remain platonic because he is married and I am in a committed long-term relationship. Yet this feels like a nonsexual affair, because we haven’t told our partners about it, an omission that feels like a sort of betrayal. May we continue to see each other in this way? — Name Withheld
A: That you feel you are betraying your partner is sufficient reason to make a change. What is unsettling is not that you’ve done anything discreditably lurid but that you are keeping a significant secret from your partner.
It is your own language that is disturbing — “affair,” “betrayal.” As you imply, it is possible to have a dangerous liaison even with your clothes on and despite your intentions for the future. You ought to be true to yourself, heed the dictates of your conscience and honor the implicit agreements of your relationship. That means either coming clean to your old partner or breaking it off with your new friend.
Update: She (as it happens) spoke to her partner and says, “While he does not attribute any good/neutral intentions to the other man, he has expressed his trust in me and my decision whether or not to continue meeting my ‘friend.’ ” She has not severed that connection.
Q: I am a student intern at a nonprofit theater. In researching a new play, an assigned task, I discovered that many passages were taken verbatim and without citation from various sources, ranging from websites to literary journals. I would like to alert the theater’s artistic director, but I fear tensions and recriminations. Must I take that risk? — Name Withheld
A: You must. As a novice, you are understandably reluctant to incur the kill-the-messenger wrath of more senior and influential people who can affect your professional future, but that should not deter your speaking up. Better that this comes out now than on opening night: Critics can be harsh; lawyers, harsher. By acting promptly, you can protect the theater and thus do your duty.
What you’ve discovered might be not deliberate deceit but a careless failure to cite sources. The artistic director can talk to the writer and work out the best next step.
Another possibility, as you most likely know: The author intentionally used diverse material to construct a collage play, and nothing wrong with that, as long as he or she meets all legal and ethical obligations to the audience and the original authors. As an ethical matter, the audience should know what it is getting, and sources should be acknowledged in the program.
Write Randy Cohen at Universal Press Syndicate, 4520 Main St., Kansas City, MO 64111, or ethicist@nytimes.com.
