Ask Amy: Woman wants her guy's OK to roam

Dear Amy: I am a woman in a sexless relationship, which also is lacking in affection. We're not married, but we've been together off and on (mostly on) for 25 years.

Our relationship is just sharing a home, which he owns, and I pay half of the expenses. With housing so expensive, this system enables us to have a decent home.

I have spent the last 11 years trying to get him to be intimate again, and he will not. He says it's his ED and COPD. He has no desire to give or receive any affection, except for an occasional hug and a peck on the cheek. I've given up and have a lot of anger over it.

During a trip to Las Vegas in 2009, I met a guy and had the best sex ever. We have remained in touch. He's on the East Coast, and I'm in the Southwest.

I want to visit the other guy, and he also wants me to. I love the man I live with, but I no longer feel "in love" with him.

I'm relatively young, healthy and pretty. I have a lot of need for physical intimacy and would like to have it again. How can I tell the man I live with that I need to make this trip East?

Amy says: You and your partner have settled into a mutually beneficial roommate relationship.

You do not need permission to assert your own freedom to make choices, as long as you come to terms with the possible consequences. Understand the stakes for you: Your partner owns the home. He might insist that you find other housing.

Dear Amy: I live in Southern California. The state is encouraging people to bring their own bags to the store, but if you don't have bags, you can purchase one from the store for a dime.

The store I was at has an employee watching over the self-checkout. They will hand out bags to those who need them.

Today I was using the self-checkout register. A man next to me reached into the employee's kiosk area and took a bag for his groceries. The store employee hadn't seen what he'd done. She did ask if he needed a bag, and he said no.

Should I have told the employee what I'd witnessed? Someone I told my story to said that it was only a dime, so it's not a huge deal. My response was that stealing is stealing no matter the amount involved.

Amy says: The man told the clerk he didn't need a bag because he'd already helped himself to one. Perhaps he didn't know that at this store he was supposed to wait for the clerk to hand him one. And perhaps you should assume that, when prompted, he added the cost of his bag to the total before paying.

To answer the question of whether you should turn someone in if you think they might have taken a dime's worth of merchandise, no, I don't think you should. Petty dishonesty has an amazing way of nudging the Karmic wheel. That dude's bag might have split on his way to the car.