Recently I was using my mom’s iPad (with her permission), when she must have accidentally synced all her devices or something, because all of her texts started popping up on the screen. That’s how I found out she was having an affair with a woman. As soon as I realized what I was reading, I shut the iPad down, but I still saw enough, and I don’t know what to do. I feel like my dad should know. But I don’t know if it’s my place for me to tell him, or if I can tell him without outing my mom. I don’t want to out anyone, no matter who they are. But I feel like I’m part of the secret if I keep this from him. I obviously don’t want my parents to get a divorce either. I don’t want to cause it, if it does happen. What’s the best way to approach this that won’t cause any harm?

—Lost Privacy

France’s government wants to set the age of sexual consent at 15 and make it easier to punish long-ago child sexual abuse, amid growing public pressure and a wave of online testimonies about rape and other sexual violence by parents and authority figures.

“Finally!” was the refrain Wednesday from victims and child protection activists who have long pushed for tougher laws and greater societal recognition of the problem.

“An act of sexual penetration by an adult on a minor under 15 will be considered a rape,” Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti said Tuesday on France-2 television. Perpetrators could no longer cite consent to diminish the charges, he said, though exceptions would be made for teenagers having consensual sex.

I have a daughter who is very depressed and suffers from anxiety and outbursts of anger. She is trying medication and also sees a psychologist regularly. We are just trying to manage things the best we can for her. We even welcomed a puppy into our family to hopefully help lower her anxiety. However, most interactions, even the most basic of topics, are strained and difficult with her. She is always seeking out any way possible to push back on everything we say or be argumentative. She is a smart, beautiful girl and is quite developed for her age. My question is: What is the best way to discuss dressing appropriately with her? She makes fairly good choices for school except for the odd midriff (which is not worth the argument). At home she dresses in short shorts that are far too revealing and often a shirt that is low cut.

We have always had the family rule that we must always be dressed or wear pajamas around the house for the respect of ourselves and others in our family. My sons have both said they are uncomfortable when their sister wears this inappropriate attire. Our family is quite progressive, and we want to see the societal norms around labeling women by how they’re dressed change for the better. When we have brought up our daughter’s dress, she has sharply retorted that how can we judge her for having legs, and why should she have to cover up her perfectly natural body. In some ways, I agree, but that is the perfect attitude for living alone, not in a small house with four other people. Please help me with the right words to reach her.

—Mystified Mother

Four years ago, I had an affair with my cousin’s husband. The fallout was exactly what you’d imagine: godawful. I felt terrible about it at the time and apologized immediately. My cousin severed ties with me and most of my immediate family. Recently our grandmother died from COVID, and we were all together for the funeral. My cousin was perfectly polite, and I was reminded of my immense guilt that I hurt her and broke up her marriage. I would like to send a note apologizing for my part in the dissolution of her marriage but am not sure it’s a good idea. I also realize sometimes it’s better to let sleeping dogs lie and don’t want to bring up a painful memory for her unnecessarily. I would ask my parents, but I don’t want to open an old can of worms with them. We’ve moved on, but I know they feel pain at losing their niece at my hands. Any advice you can give would be appreciated.

—Family Fallout

Dear Prudence,

To celebrate a milestone, my girlfriend dressed up as a 100-year-old lady; apparently this is fairly common. However, she didn’t stop there. She has now created an elderly alter-ego and expects to be treated as a grandmother while in this mode. She said it’s like crossdressing and even suggested that I dress up so that I can be her “granddaughter.” She has previously made me up, but it was only a costume; I never felt like a different person. She said that it would be fun to go out as grandmother and granddaughter, with me holding her arm or pushing her in a wheelchair. I feel like that might be disrespectful to actual old or disabled people. But I always want to make my girlfriend happy. Should I participate in this?

—Ancient Alter-Ego

A team of researchers from Johns Hopkins University got more than 500 people to complete a behavioural survey on their sexual activities over several years. About a third of participants had been diagnosed with HPV; about two thirds hadn’t. Main points of interest included an individual’s age, their total number of sexual partners, the age of their “sexual initiation”, and the number of people they performed oral sex on within a short time period.

The findings, published in the American Cancer Society’s peer-reviewed journal CANCER, indicate that having 10 prior oral sex partners is linked to a 4.3-times greater likelihood of contracting HPV-related cancer of the mouth and throat, and that having oral sex at a younger age and more partners in a shorter time period are both associated with higher risk.

Participants who had older sexual partners when they were young and those with partners who engaged in extramarital sex were also more likely to have contracted the cancers, while those who had never engaged in oral sex were less likely.

In October, as the pandemic’s winter surge was beginning to take shape across the U.S., California’s public-health researchers and officials expressed measured optimism that the nation’s most populous state could avoid a disastrous rise in cases. During a press conference on October 19, Governor Gavin Newsom pointed to declining hospitalization rates as a sign of the state’s success, but also warned that the decline was slowing. “We’re beginning to flatten out, plateau, as relates to hospitalizations,” he said.

For a moment, such a plateau seemed like the most likely outcome. A week after Newsom’s press conference, the state had 2,991 people hospitalized with COVID-19, its lowest number since April 10. But the trend quickly reversed, and by November 23, the state’s hospitalizations had doubled to more than 6,000.

What’s happened since is a worst-case scenario. While California’s per capita hospitalization rate is nowhere near New York at its worst—with 39.5 million people, the Golden State is about twice as populous as New York—the sheer number of patients in the hospital is still a sign of how badly California is doing right now.

Worse yet is how quickly the state reached nearly 18,000 hospitalizations during its current surge. When New York reached its record, it represented a 12 percent increase over the week prior. In California, by contrast, hospitalizations are up 27 percent over last week. With cases in California continuing to rise, more hospitalizations will follow.

Things are much worse in some parts of the state than others. Southern and central California are driving the current surge: 34 percent of the state’s hospitalized patients are in Los Angeles County, the nation’s most populous by far. Yesterday, 620 people per million were hospitalized with confirmed COVID-19 there, the fifth-highest rate among California counties.

Early in the coronavirus pandemic, California was celebrated as a beacon of common sense in a country on the brink.

By early summer, however, the pressure to open back up rose. Officials discovered the state wasn’t immune to the national fatigue with social distancing and mask-wearing. Amid a patchwork of haphazard rules and guidelines, cases crept up.

Los Angeles county last week passed the disturbing milestone of 10,000 new Covid-19 cases a day, and officials there fear a spike in infections resulting from the Thanksgiving holiday could send hospitalizations surging further. LA officials said that one person is now dying of Covid every 20 minutes, and the county’s public health director, Barbara Ferrer, broke down crying at a briefing while talking about the “incalculable loss” of more than 8,000 deaths.

A new TikTok trend has users sharing the “craziest” ways they’ve discovered they were being cheated on.

The trend started on Nov. 27 when user Mandi Kay Bowles asked her followers the question, “What is the craziest way you guys found out that somebody was cheating on you?”

One user named Brittany revealed in a now-viral TikTok that she found out a guy who she’d been seeing for three years was cheating when he gave her a very specific type of UTI caused by E. coli in her urine.

“I was like, ‘There’s no way, I’m always clean.’ Well, turns out my boyfriend actually didn’t go to the gym; he was having sex with another man,” she explained. He had sex with her immediately after having sex with another man, which gave her the UTI.

A Utah teacher has admitted having an inappropriate relationship with a 14-year-old pupil — even sneaking her into their school in a large storage bin, according to an affidavit.

Father of four Lucas Sloan Talley, 38, had “personal contact via text message and email with multiple young girls” during his 12 years at South Hills Middle School in Riverton, according to the affidavit obtained by Deseret News.

That increased when the school shut down because of the pandemic and he “struggled” with no longer getting the girls’ “validation” that he “thrives on,” he told investigators, according to the affidavit.

People infected with COVID-19 may be likely to suffer long-term health effects from the virus, including erectile dysfunction among men, according to medical experts.

Infectious disease expert Dr Dena Grayson says there are now fears the disease could affect a man's ability to perform in the bedroom even after they've recovered.

'There is some real concern here that men could have long-term issues of erectile dysfunction from this virus because we know that it causes issues in the vasculature,' Grayson told NBC Chicago's LX this week.

My husband and I are in our early 50s and married for nine years. I hate to say this, but the way he dresses embarrasses me to tears, and it’s hurting our relationship.

Is it acceptable for a man to wear tights and nothing else? I’m not talking yoga pants; I mean ballerina dancer sheer tights that leave NOTHING to the imagination. He mainly wears them in our garage (where people who drive by can see), but lately I’ve caught him standing talking to neighbors like that. Am I overreacting by telling him he can’t wear things like that outside the house? If it isn’t the tights, it’s skin-tight biker-type shorts or shorts made from a mesh material that shows it ALL if there’s a light source behind him.

We have gone rounds over this almost daily. He promises he will stop, but it’s only a matter of hours before he’s back in costume. Is it OK to wear things like that now? I don’t see women wearing tights that show off as much as his do. I’m at the point I want to gather up all offending clothing and head to the dumpster. If you say let him wear what he wants, I will, and I will keep my eyes and mouth shut. -- MORTIFIED IN CALIFORNIA

Parents and students at an Irish preparatory school are blasting administrators after female students were told not to wear tight clothing that could “distract” staff members.

Last week, female students at Presentation College Carlow in Carlow, 53 miles south of Dublin, reportedly were told at an assembly not to wear revealing clothing, including tracksuit bottoms and gym leggings.

A petition called the policy sexist and noted that male students’ attire was not discussed.

“Today all the girls from each year in Presention [sic] College Carlow were called out by their Year Head/ Dean of discipline and were told that they were not allowed to wear leggings or tight bottoms for PE as they cannot show off the ‘female anatomy’ as it is distracting to the female and male staff of the school- not the students,” the petition description says.

I love to eat (ever since I got over my fear of eating). I tend to eat until I feel sick. Similar to how people test their alcohol consumption to see how much they can drink without puk­ing, I’ve tested how much food I can eat and still fuck. On nights I know I’m going to be having sex, of course I eat less, which is annoying but in the end it’s worth it, because you get to have sex and feel good and not bloated while having it. This — and the fact that you shaved for no reason — is why being flaked on sucks, especially for girls, because in antici­pation of hanging out, we ate just one piece of pizza instead of the regular four, and now it’s late and we’re hungry and we didn’t even get laid. Although not eating and then getting flaked on is still preferable to the times where we eat a shit­ load and then randomly get asked to hang out. This is most distressing because there is almost nothing in the world we wouldn’t drop to spend time with our crush. The only rea­son we will say no to a spontaneous hang is because it’s after dinner and we don’t feel hot. It will pain us to say no for this reason, but trust me, we will.

A few weeks ago, I was supposed to take my sons to an outdoor activity that ended up getting canceled due to weather. We found out about the cancellation when we were halfway there. Before I turned around, I texted my husband that we would be heading home and never got a text back. This wasn’t unusual, as he usually puts his phone on “do not disturb” while he’s working. When we got home, I opened the door to find my husband and his best friend, “Ryan,” completely naked, and having fairly rough sex on our dining room table. They had music blaring, so they didn’t hear us come in, and my sons and I were all in shock and just stood there for a good 30 to 60 seconds before I was able to shut the music off, and they realized what was going on and could cover up. Obviously, this is a bit of a chaotic situation.

Ryan is like an uncle to my kids, has dinner at our house several times a week, has occasionally lived with us, and he and my husband actually work together. My husband and I are planning on staying together and are still trying to figure a lot of things out. Here’s the problem: My younger son (6) is pretty oblivious and thought Uncle Ryan was wrestling with his dad. My middle son (9) is very confused about the mechanics of what we saw (we’ve had the sex talk with him, but in hindsight, we made the mistake of only talking about heterosexual sex). My older son (12) is having a very difficult time. My middle son has a lot of questions that I’m not really sure how to answer, and I’m not sure how much detail I should be going into, and who should be leading this conversation (me? my husband? a doctor?). I’ve been getting phone calls home from my older son’s school. Ever since the incident, he has apparently been making derogatory remarks about gay people, using slurs, and is also refusing to speak to his father (they were previously pretty close). The school is threatening to expel him. We’re on the waitlist for individual and family therapy, but I was wondering if you guys had any advice about what to do with my two older sons?

—What Now?