Asking does not mean ye shall receive

What we're owed, and what we can expect to receive are two decidedly different things. Especially when you're dealing with someone who's allergic to the truth.

My mom and stepfather had been separated for a little more than a year when he asked me to visit him in San Francisco.

The card was dated Nov. 11, and it began, “I want to invite you (at my expense) to join me for a holiday (meaning love) dinner during the upcoming season.”

He listed three different dates to consider in the weeks leading up to Christmas and provided an email address where I could RSVP. I was 27 years old at the time, living in Seattle. While I had some guesses at what had precipitated the separation, my mom had not shared much in the way of specifics. I didn’t know if they were headed toward a divorce.

I wrote him back, saying that before I visited him, there would need to be an honest conversation about what had happened within our family.

He did not respond.

Totally ghosted me, and for the next 20 years, I would cite this refusal as a justification for the anger I harbored toward him.

I was reminded of all this when I read the most recent edition of “The Ethicist” in The New York Times Magazine.

“What he owes you,” Kwame Anthony Appiah wrote, “and what you can profitably seek to extract are, alas, separate matters.”

• My partner lied about his marriage and then dumped me, should I go quietly?

  Kwame Anthony Appiah | New York Times, Aug. 1, 2026

(Quick note: I’ve begun considering submissions. If you have a grudge you’re willing to write about, here’s the instructions for pitching a piece and the rate.)

The case: A woman had a years-long relationship with a man she knew to be married. He had told her his marriage had become a friendship and financial partnership with no sexual component. He said his wife encouraged him to “seek romance elsewhere.” They planned to “amicably separate” at a future date. He characterized having a relationship outside his marriage as “ethical nonmonogamy.”

(Now at this point, if you’re like me, you’re shaking your head and saying, “Oh, honey!!!!!”)

Sure enough, years passed without any detectable movement toward the ✌️amicable separation✌️. When pressed on the matter, the married dude ended the relationship.

The spurned lover, quite understandably, wanted a little more clarity. She also wondered how ethical his nonmonogamy had been. Did his wife know?

Her letter to The Ethicist concluded with a question: “When a relationship was built on claims that later fall apart, what, if anything, is the deceived person owed by way of explanation or apology?”

Owed.

It’s a telling choice of words, and one that resonates very deeply with my experience.

When accountability is a myth

I thought my stepfather owed my family an honest explanation.

My mom had trusted him with her family. I was the oldest of her three kids. Our father had died at the age of 38.

I was 15 years old when she married. I called my stepfather “Dad” because I understood that was the expectation. It was clear we were to treat him as a full-fledged parent.

I wouldn’t say I liked my stepfather. I found him to be stern and self-righteous. I was also a teenager. I always believed he was a good partner to my mom.

Twelve years into their marriage, it unraveled.

On a professional level, my stepfather resigned from his job as a public-school superintendent in San Jose after scrutiny of spending practices he oversaw. He was driving an $80,000 BMW sedan the district purchased for his use. He’d expensed travel to England and Cuba. There was also a Cartier fountain pen that was charged to the district at a cost of $468.72. The San Jose Mercury News published multiple news stories about this. He even made the front page one day! The local ABC affiliate aired a 7-minute report complete with a contentious interview with my stepfather.

On a personal level, my mom suspected he’d been unfaithful. When she asked him about this, he denied it repeatedly. He then moved out of the house they shared. On her birthday.

Fourteen months later, I received the invitation to visit him, and I asked for an honest conversation.

At first, I found his lack of response puzzling.

I thought I’d handled it in a fairly mature way. No posturing or grandstanding. I had spelled out a boundary: If he wanted to host me for a family event, we needed to talk about what had happened.

I thought it was fair.

I still think it was fair.

I never really considered what you’re supposed to do when the other party is unwilling to offer any semblance of accountability.

So here’s what I did: I stayed very, very mad.

My anger over the way he’d hurt my mom compounded with indignation over his lack of accountability.

He’d been strict as my stepfather. When he lectured me, the most common theme was how selfish I was. He said he’d never dream of being as indifferent to the needs of his family as I was to mine.

This turned out to be rather rich given how things turned out.

I began to imagine ways that I might force him to feel an appropriate level of regret or remorse. I pictured myself staging a confrontation.

I felt that to let go of my anger, to give up this grudge, would be allowing my stepfather off the hook. I would be letting him escape without owning up to what he’d done.

It’s a feeling that The Ethicist captured in his response with a line that caused me to audibly gasp upon reading it.

“You’re not obliged to prosecute the case merely because he deserves prosecution.”

That is exactly what I wanted to be: The prosecutor in the case against my stepfather.

But he ignored my summons, and it turns out there are very limited enforcement options when this occurs.

Unlike the criminal justice system, which is made up of two separate but equally important groups, there is no agency designated to investigate ethical lapses and amoral assholery.

Finding closure

“What he owes you and what you can profitably seek to extract are, alas, separate matters. You’re entitled to the truth. Given what you’ve learned about him, you have no reason to think he’ll provide it.”

— Kwame Anthony Appiah, The Ethicist for the New York Times Magazine

I can nod my head in agreement now, but it took me every bit of 20 years to get here. It also came with a cost.

I had to give up any expectation I had that my stepfather would ever take accountability for his actions.

I had to get over my belief that letting go of my anger was an act of surrender.

I had to accept that this particular chapter of my life wasn’t going to end the way I thought it should: with him feeling bad.

It wasn’t easy. It took me 20 years and four different therapists to get there.

Now that I’ve done it, I feel not just better but fortunate.

My stepfather was never going to give me what I wanted most. He was never going to acknowledge the ways he hurt my family, the ways he hurt me, let alone apologize for it.

From a psychological perspective, I’m not sure he’s capable of that.

I wouldn’t say I’ve forgiven my stepfather. I still occasionally feel angry over what happened.

I’m no longer ruminating about him, though. And I feel a sense of peace about everything.

I spent a very long time believing very deeply that my stepfather owed me something, and while I don’t think I was necessarily wrong about that, I was mistaken to think that this was something I could — in the words of The Ethicist — “profitably seek to extract.”