Dear Bel,
My wife and I have been married for 28 years. I’m 56. We’ve brought up two wonderful children (now left home) worked hard, paid the mortgage and looked after elderly parents along the way.
We’ve had the usual ups and downs that come with family life, but we’ve always managed. Looking back, much of our marriage seems to have been spent making sure everyone else was all right.
Somewhere along the line, I think we forgot about us. Our conversations revolve around practical things. Has the boiler been serviced? Which supermarket has the best offers this week? We work well as a team, but that’s how it feels now – a team rather than a couple.
What we don’t do is really talk.
When we were younger we’d sit in the kitchen long after the children had gone to bed, putting the world to rights over a cup of tea or a glass of wine. We’d laugh, make plans for holidays we couldn’t really afford and sometimes stay up far later than we should.
Now she watches television upstairs while I read the paper downstairs and we haven’t been physically close for over three years.
At first I told myself it was just part of getting older. Life gets busy, people get tired and bodies change. But lately I’ve started wondering whether that’s an excuse because it’s easier than admitting something has quietly slipped away.
The strange thing is that I’m not unhappy all the time. We still celebrate birthdays, go out for meals occasionally and spend Christmas with the family. We never argue. In fact, I can’t remember the last proper row we had.
Friends often say we’re lucky because we’re dependable. One couple we know seem to be forever threatening divorce, while we’ve never come close to anything like that. A few months ago I suggested a weekend away. She said it seemed like an unnecessary expense.
I mentioned counselling one evening, trying to sound casual. She looked puzzled and asked what on earth for. As far as she’s concerned, nothing is wrong.
I’m not angry with her. If anything, I feel guilty for wanting something more when we have a comfortable life and so much to be grateful for.
At our age, perhaps contentment is supposed to be enough. But I can’t help missing the woman who used to sit across the kitchen table from me until midnight talking about absolutely everything and nothing. Am I mad to want happiness as well as stability?
STEPHEN
Bel replies: It makes a change to receive a problem letter like this from a man, because I’m more used to such a complaint from female readers. (On August 15, I published one from ‘Rosemary’, who felt left out because of her husband’s golf habit and no conversation.)
Your measured letter does suggest a full awareness that your feelings about this marriage are quite common – but I want to assure you that doesn’t make them ordinary.
On the surface, your wife is quite correct that there’s nothing ‘wrong’ between you. But that doesn’t stop your feelings flaring like a torch in the night – a beacon to a universal dream of happiness rarely achieved.
You have different ways of describing that dream. You want conversation and companionship and closeness, all of which you associate with a more youthful time when you didn’t care a hoot about supermarket offers and knew you’d snuggle all the more if the boiler conked out.
But having kids puts an end to the ‘first fine careless rapture’ (as the poet Robert Browning described it) because the young need feeding and keeping safe and warm – the duty of parents everywhere, for ever.
Everyday requirements and routines inevitably take the place of romance. People don’t sit up late talking if they have to get up at first light to see to the little ones’ cries, nappies and breakfasts.
I know you know this . . . As you mentioned, it’s ‘just part of getting older. Life gets busy, people get tired and bodies change’. Yet that doesn’t stop the yearning, does it?
In your final question you seem to set ‘happiness’ and stability’ in opposition. Why? I think they form a glorious mix which comes along with maturity. So please give this self-pitying mood a shot of positivity and imagination.
I certainly don’t think you and your wife need to go for counselling, but I don’t understand why you are being so passive and defeatist about something that matters to you so much.
Come on! What on earth is stopping you taking control and changing the things you don’t like about the status quo within your marriage?
Why not say you want to watch TV with your wife? Instead of suggesting a weekend away, why not go ahead and book one as a surprise birthday/anniversary/Valentine’s/whatever present? Instead of a feeble little bleat about ‘counselling’, why not tell her you’ve decided you both need a weekly outing to spark you both up again.
Say you’ll take turns finding what’s on and choosing – and it’ll be fun. You need something to talk about!
So if I were you, I’d get pro-active instead of mooching about feeling sad about a time that can never come again.
I’m so worried about my lovelorn son
Dear Bel,
I remember having chats with older friends who warned me that even when your children grow up they never stop causing you problems.
At the time my two were at school and doing well. Our home life was stable – my husband and I get along very well, both with well-paid careers.
Now I find myself awake most of the night worrying about my son, Jake. After graduating and interning he was lucky enough to find a good job.
The trouble is, he’s just too sensitive and is madly in love. He met her on the internship, but she now works for another company.
He’s 22 and she’s 25 – and is the dominant one. She blows hot and cold – she arranges to meet, then cancels one hour before with no explanation; she tells him she thinks of spending her life with him, then breaks it off for a week; she has temper tantrums. He’s gentle and longs for a settled life.
I’m lucky because he does confide in me. The other day, he mumbled he has ‘dark thoughts’. I don’t think he’s suicidal, but as a mum you can’t help worrying.
I’ve met this woman (let’s call her Caroline) and while she’s pretty I find her too cool. I want to help. But what do you say to a lovelorn young man who wants to move in with her?
EMMA
Bel replies: Honestly, you have no idea just how much your letter has resonated with me. As the mother of a 52-year-old and a 46-year-old I can absolutely confirm that you never stop worrying about your children, and the ‘problems’ they continue to cause you (even inadvertently) are many and various.
(Here I’ll add that obviously this isn’t the case for everybody; I’ve known parents more independently remote from adult offspring than I am. But I don’t envy them.)
Those problems are certainly not age- related. You can become hopelessly lovelorn at any age, and the pain is not lessened because you are (say) in your 50s.
Nevertheless it’s obvious that a young man of 22 can’t have accumulated enough life experience and inner resources to deal with such an intense emotion.
The French term coup de foudre is used for immediately falling in love. It translates as ‘bolt of lightning’ or ‘thunderbolt’ – perfectly describing how the shock of sudden love feels to its victim.
My son has met a woman, but… She blows hot and cold – she arranges to meet, then cancels; she tells him she thinks of spending her life with him, then breaks it off for a week; she has temper tantrums. He’s gentle and longs for a settled life (posed by models)
Why use the word ‘victim’? Because any such intense emotion can render you so vulnerable that you will be able to remember the passion and the pain 50 years later.
Thank goodness your son is talking to you about his feelings because that’s vital. Encourage it all you can, even if sometimes you feel rather exasperated.
Parenthood and saintliness are not synonymous, but it’s obvious that your son sees you as a confidante he can trust. That is a precious gift to you both.
Therefore, I hope you haven’t given him any hint that you find his girlfriend remote, because if he were to suspect that his family is none too keen on the person he loves, he could withdraw from you. Which would be a disaster.
Thank goodness he’s still at home because you can watch for any ‘dark thoughts’ and be wary. Gently dissuade him from moving in with Caroline and refuse financial help.
You’re so close it’s hard for me to advise you to do more, other than assure him that our lives go in stages, that the bad times will certainly pass, that it’s a mistake for any of us to let our happiness depend totally on the whims of one person, that he must not become Caroline’s ‘victim’ because she will lose respect, and that he mustn’t be distracted from his career and his friends, because he needs both.
Good luck.
And Finally: Why I Despise The Culture Of Victim Blaming
On September 11, 2001, I was on a plane to Chicago for a magazine assignment. When the pilot announced we had begun ‘our descent to Toronto’ I thought he was joking. But that sombre voice? Anxiety swept through the cabin.
Once on the ground, Americans switched on their phones and ‘The World Trade Centre’s gone’ became a crescendo of shock.
For me, that was the beginning of a month travelling in the mighty land I loved, a USA in mourning, where the Stars and Stripes flew at half-mast everywhere.
But when I got home I was appalled to see British intellectuals (classicist Mary Beard was just one and I was close to others) blaming the victim, asserting that America ‘had it coming’ (and more heartless bilge) as if the sight of terrified, innocent people jumping from the Twin Towers was but a mirage in their dangerous desert of right-on, Leftist opinions.
‘Anti-imperialism’ was the stance, and it still blinds the ‘Blob’ to who our real allies are in this dangerous world.
Victim-blaming also happened last year, on September 10, when Charlie Kirk was assassinated, with the word ‘Freedom’ on his shirt.
I admired Kirk, an evangelical Christian I saw as a force for good (meaning free speech and patriotism) in a country that needs both.
But predictably his vile murder was celebrated by those on the Left (plus their sympathisers) who would burn both the American and the British flags. I despise them more than ever.
Please don’t tell me this column isn’t political. The ancient Greek word politeia means ‘citizenship’ – that’s all of us affected by governments and terrorists alike.
Citizens who realise they have little power become depressed – and/or very angry.
I hear about helplessness and despair – called ‘mental health’. Meanwhile, anger is taking to the borders.
Bel answers readers’ questions on emotional and relationship problems each week.
Write to Bel Mooney, Daily Mail, 9 Derry Street, London W8 5HY, or email bel.mooney@dailymail.co.uk. Names and details are changed to protect identities. Bel reads all letters but regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence.