What to do about co-worker's minor bad habit

DEAR AMY: I share an office with a co-worker who started working at my company about two months ago. She is very sweet, and we generally coexist smoothly in our shared space, with one exception. Often when she writes she will whisper aloud to herself what she has just written. It's distracting. I prefer to work in relative quiet. Is there a polite way to ask her to stop doing this?

Crazed Co-workerDEAR CRAZED: The polite way to address this is to be kind, respectful, clear and direct.

So plunge in and say, "I really like working alongside you. I think we probably both have habits that affect the other person, and so can I tell you about something you do that I find a little distracting, and then you can tell me about things I do that distract you?" If she cannot correct it, you should learn to live with it and consider yourself lucky that she doesn't munch baby carrots throughout the day.

DEAR AMY: I can almost identify with "East Coast Dad," who wrote to you about his sexless marriage. The difference is that I am a woman - a woman who had a strong, healthy libido. Twenty-five years ago, my husband rejected me intimately, and I have been unwillingly celibate since then. I am now 80 years old, still in a 50-year marriage and still suffer from the stress, the loss of self-confidence and self-esteem produced by that rejection. I did all I knew, read the books suggested and worked hard to bring intimacy back into our marriage, but it never happened. I wish, now that it is much too late, that I had left the marriage to begin life anew rather that suffer through the hurt and tears, even to this day. I see little hope for East Coast Dad and would advise him, difficult as it will be, to leave the marriage - as I so wish I had done.

Depressed in Denver