My wife and I have been married for just a few years. Early in our marriage I started chatting with a female acquaintance, and things got verbally sexual and eventually led to sexual pictures between the other woman and me. I saved some of the photos to my phone and inadvertently saved them to my computer, where my wife found them and downloaded them to her phone. We’ve gone through marriage counseling together and are working things out. I have since deleted the photos, but my wife still has them. I’m ashamed of the photos and don’t want to see them, let alone have my wife keep them. I’ve tried to delete them from her phone, but the photos keep showing up. When my wife is mad at me, she changes her lock-screen image to one of the photos she’s keeping of the other woman.

I’ve felt emotionally abused by my wife — before, during and after the affair — but I love her. I don’t think it’s a very healthy relationship, but it’s what I’ve got. I feel that her keeping the photos is a way to keep her power over me.

I know I was wrong in the past and would like to move forward, but I find it difficult when my wife keeps the photos. Should I confront my wife or just let it be? Name Withheld

What is it to forgive someone? It can’t simply mean that you were angry at the person, for good reason, and no longer are. That could happen because you were conked on the head or simply forgot the offense, neither of which qualify as forgiveness. And it can’t mean that you’re now O.K. with the offense; then there would be nothing to forgive. (Suppose I were mad because you scrawled graffiti on my house, but then I learned that you were forced to do so at gunpoint. Because I’ve come to realize that you weren’t blameworthy, I don’t now say, “I forgive you.”) The philosopher Jean Hampton thought that forgiveness involved, first, giving up spite and transcending resentment and, second, viewing the wrongdoer in a more positive light. You still disapprove of what the person did — you don’t condone the act — but you no longer disapprove of the person. That sounds about right. And it suggests that forgiveness can’t be demanded in exchange for apology, as if you were at the counter of some moral bureau de change, eyeing the latest exchange rate.