A garden shed sounds like it might be one solution. Or slip 20 quid to the removal men so that they ‘lose’ a couple of boxes in transit. Whatever improvements you and the Smurf-lover manage to make, it will never be as Homes & Gardens as you’d like. Focus on what you love about him and try to find it in your tidy heart to forgive him for making you live with the contents of a Tesco Value Christmas Cracker.
Dear Graham,
I’ve been with my new boyfriend for only a couple of months but already things are going pear-shaped. Our first month together was a whirlwind of marvellous dates and general couply in-loveness. He was up for seeing fringe plays, obscure French films and even going to galleries on Sundays. I thought I’d met the man of my dreams! Football was never mentioned, we never even stepped inside a pub and he appeared to like Middlemarch as much as I do. How wrong I was and how easily I fell into the trap.
It appears my new boyfriend doesn’t have a cultural bone in his body. He was just pretending in order to get me to go out with him. Now he’s ‘got’ me, he makes very little effort and most days I can’t prise him away from the television screen.
I find the same pattern repeats itself with every boyfriend. The wooing part is always tragically brief and before I know it I’ve sunk into a depressing Darby-and-Joan scenario – and I’m only 28.
Louisa M, Buckinghamshire
“Just as there is joy to be had from a French film about a housewife trapped in a lift, so there is a certain fun to having your boyfriend hold your hair back while you vomit outside a Slug and Lettuce.”
Dear Louisa,
I can only imagine how hot you must be. It’s only for the most top-quality lovely that any man would endure the string of hellish dates you describe. You have clearly seen one too many Woody Allen films and the women in those all end up sleeping with him. Self-improvement and high culture are all very well, but in moderation.
You seem to be one of those people who go through life as if you’re going to face an exam when you die. Surely the greatest joy of life is that living is one of the very few tasks we can’t fail at? We can do it differently, but just as there is joy to be had from a French film about a housewife trapped in a lift, so there is a certain fun to having your boyfriend hold your hair back while you vomit outside a Slug and Lettuce.
No one is watching you and no one is impressed. Relax and learn to find pleasure in the simplest of things. Do you like this new boyfriend? If you do, then surely spending time with him is reward enough without having to read subtitles when you’re with him.
The reason all your boyfriends become housebound slobs is because going out with you is as much fun as a vegetarian meal with an opinionated know-it-all without wine. Give and take with the men you date. You may be only 28, but continue on your current path and you will morph into one of those poor creatures on Newsnight Review. When was the last time Allison Pearson went to Alton Towers and laughed and screamed at the same time? Mix it up, Louisa!
Dear Graham,
My sister-in-law (who is single) has a really noticeable moustache. Since we don’t exactly see eye to eye on many subjects, part of me is delighted that she looks like Magnum PI, but I feel that I should say something. What would you advise?
Annie G, Sheffield
Dear Annie,
What a delicious problem to have. You can pretend to be a nice person by torturing your sister-in-law and her Groucho Marx special. I have so many suggestions I hardly know where to begin. If you want to go the überbitch route, tell her that female facial hair is going to be huge this autumn and you’re jealous of her because you find it very hard to grow. A gentler approach would be to complain how sore your upper lip is after waxing, then to ask what method she uses.
Sending an anonymous gift certificate for a free hair-removal session at a fancy spa is another slightly subtler way to stop people mistaking the poor woman for Des Lynam. Finally, a sister-in-law-running-in-tears-from-the-room approach is to take some photographs and then have them digitally altered so that her moustache is very visible. Don’t go for a comedy handlebar style, because this will just make her angry. Be subtle and watch her sob into her shaving foam.
Of course, all of this effort may be for nothing. Your hirsute sister-in-law may simply be a radical lesbian. Now who’s laughing?
Dear Graham,
My boyfriend came out of a rehabilitation centre (for alcoholism) six weeks ago. Unfortunately, during his time there he fell in with a really druggy crowd, who seem to have escaped the law by the skin of their teeth.
All of them treat me like a sort of earth mother and on Sundays I find myself spooning caramelised parsnips on to the plates of former junkies. They are all insidiously charming, eloquent people – the situation is utterly surreal. One of them, a recovering heroin addict, even has to have his food cut up for him.
I understand that they share an important bond from their time in rehab, but I would rather not have them in my house.
My boyfriend has sworn not to drink again and so far he has stuck to his promise. I want to support him, but must I take up his friends, too?
Lily U, London
Dear Lily,
I’ve never been to rehab – yet – but I imagine the friends you make there are a slightly more intense version of friends you might make on a cruise. You’ve been through it together and can talk about things that other people cannot fully understand or share in. On the one hand, a battle with personal demons; on the other, how they ran out of king prawns on the Tropicana buffet. You get my point.
Eventually, your boyfriend won’t need these people around and they won’t need him. You and your sober partner can walk towards the future in a straight line. I have no idea how long this will take, but it will happen.
A word they use a lot in rehab, I’m told, is ‘enabling’ and right now you are enabling your boyfriend and his posse. They treat you like an earth mother because you behave like one. Enough with the caramelised parsnips. Make plans on a Sunday, not a medieval feast. Cook it and they will come; stop and so will they.
Try to be patient, though. If you want your boyfriend to stay off the sauce, then accept that these creatures, as unappealing as you may find them, can give him a kind of moral support that you simply can’t.
It has only been six weeks and you are working towards a lifetime. Good luck.
Dear Graham,
I’m desperate to be a grandmother but my 38-year-old daughter (and only child) is being rather selfish. She doesn’t seem to care when I point out that it’s high time she got on with it.
What’s wrong with all these young men? Why can’t my perfectly attractive daughter find someone? There she is with a good job in London and a lovely flat on the river, and there never seems to be any kind of man in tow. Where did we go wrong? Did we over-educate her? She can’t be happy alone – or is this generation different? Could she be a lesbian?
On a serious note, it’s not just a matter of my wanting grandchildren; I worry that she’s missing out. But if I talk about it (assuming I can get her on the phone, because she is constantly out), she just thinks I’m nagging.
As a last resort, I have started a computer course in the hope that my daughter and I can start exchanging emails. Any advice?
Vanessa T, Tunbridge Wells
Dear Vanessa,
If your daughter doesn’t want children, perhaps it is because she fears she might turn into the same sort of mother as you. Maybe she wants children, maybe not, but whichever direction her life takes she must do it for herself, not you.
You say that you worry she is missing out, but on what? After 38 years, the poor creature still can’t please you. If you don’t want to lose the child you have on top of the imaginary grandchildren, then you must allow your daughter to live her own life in a way that suits her.
Don’t you realise that she isn’t out all the time but is just screening her calls? Who can blame her? With your daughter’s biological clock ticking louder and louder, the pr
essure you are piling on her is about as useful as an anti-war protester living in a tent outside the Houses of Parliament.
Your baby girl is all grown up and what she needs is for you to be a shoulder to cry on, not a pain in the neck.
Dear Graham,
My boyfriend, a retired racehorse trainer, is in his early seventies and I’m in my mid-thirties. I’m desperate to have a child. He isn’t. I never expected to fall in love with a man so old but I did. In addition, I’ve managed to pick someone not just with baggage but also with a long line of ex-wives and children trailing in his wake.
Although he’s only a couple of years younger than my father, I’m totally smitten and can’t imagine being with anyone else. I couldn’t care less about his money, though his exes think I’m a gold-digger. I just want commitment and the chance to start a family.
Should I give him an ultimatum? Try to get pregnant ‘by accident’? Or just hold on tight in the hope that he eventually comes round to my way of thinking?
Hatty L, Northamptonshire
Dear Hatty,
I’m not sure waiting for your ‘boyfriend’ to eventually come round to your way of thinking is really an option. I’m in no position to judge anyone for having a May–September relationship – we all find love where we can – but you can’t just pretend that it’s the same as going out with someone your own age.
Your boyfriend is fast approaching 80 and he’s retired. Why on earth would he want a screaming baby in the house? Whatever the joys of fatherhood may be, he’s had them already.
Michael Douglas might have put up with late fatherhood for the sake of his Welsh lovely, but I’m guessing he didn’t even bother putting a stair-lift in the nursery wing of the mansion.
It’s selfish of you to think that a new baby is the right thing for your relationship. You need to decide: motherhood or the last of the summer wine? You can’t have both.
Of course, looking on the bright side, if you do stay with your man, it won’t be that long until your life is all about mashing up food, bibs and the smell of pee anyway.
Life has a funny way of working out.
Dear Graham,
Pepe, my Spanish boyfriend, is a last-minute sort of person, who likes to improvise. His spontaneity is part of why I find him attractive (he’s so much more fun than your classic risk-averse Brit), but at the same time it drives me nuts that we can never make proper plans. More often than not we get to cinemas only to find the film has sold out. And when we go on holiday, we’re always the sad losers paying through the nose to fly easyJet or Ryanair, having left the booking to the very last minute.
Apparently in Madrid, when you throw a party it’s quite normal to invite everyone on the day. But in Manchester, if you don’t plan ahead, things tend to go pear-shaped. I don’t want to change him but sometimes I wonder whether this aversion to planning hints at a deeper problem and isn’t about being Spanish at all.
What do you think?
Bella S, Manchester
“‘At first, I loved her disciplined love of order and planning, but lately it is like living with General Franco in a bra.’”
Dear Bella,
I think it is fair to say that what we at first most love about a new partner is in the end what we most hate. Crazy European spontaneity that once made you feel like you were in an exotic sub-titled art-house film now appears like lazy incompetence that makes you feel like you are living with John Candy in Planes, Trains & Automobiles. Pepe, if he wants to, can change, but you must let him know how annoying you find his behaviour.
But be warned, if you really do insist he change, then I can imagine him composing a letter to a Spanish newspaper to ask some Señor Grahamio what to do about his girlfriend. ‘At first, I loved her disciplined love of order and planning, but lately it is like living with General Franco in a bra.’
Camels’ backs have been broken by less and I wonder if one more visit to www.lastminute.com won’t result in www.finalmoment.couple.
Dear Graham,
I met my new boyfriend on the internet. We are both divorced and in our mid-forties with children away at university. In many ways, things are perfect between us – he is loving, funny, attractive and generous – everything, in fact, which my ex-husband wasn’t. The problem is I appear to have fallen in love with a man with next to no libido.
I’ve never considered myself to be highly sexed, but, now that I don’t get much of it, I do miss it. Needless to say, he’d rather peel 1,000 Brussels sprouts than talk about it. Whenever I bring it up, he skilfully changes the subject, or teases me affectionately about my ‘voracious’ sex drive. I have, of course, tried all the usual feminine tricks – to no avail. Perhaps we should volunteer for a Trinny and Susannah makeover?
Becky P, Grinstead
Dear Becky,
You are in your mid-forties and have one failed marriage behind you. Surely by now it might be beginning to dawn on you that no relationship is perfect?
True, it can be depressing living with someone who, it seems, doesn’t find you sexually attractive. But, so long as he isn’t finding an outlet for his libido elsewhere, perhaps his other assets can suffice.
Do you really want to give up this man for sex? Sex that will tail off after a couple of years anyway? It sounds as though you are always the one trying to initiate the love-making, hence his description of you as ‘voracious’. Back off for a bit and see if he comes to you.
If he doesn’t, then try to talk about it once again. He might never be enough for you in the bedroom department, but remember how funny, generous and attractive he is and how available vibrators are. As for Trinny and Susannah… please. I think their taste is seriously suspect now. They thought they’d look good on ITV. Wrong.
Dear Graham,
I’m always getting rejected. Getting dates isn’t a problem, but somehow I never seem to get beyond a first or second rendezvous. Is the modern male lethargic?
One friend says that extended periods of peacetime kill the male libido and it would be a different story if we were living in a war zone. I wish I knew where I was going wrong. My New Year resolutions (to lose weight, drink less, do more cardio) have long since fallen by the wayside and I’ve been feeling so discouraged that I didn’t give anything up for Lent. What’s the point when men are so picky and unenthusiastic? Please tell me how to get a man interested – and keep him so.
Milly C, Tooting, south London
Dear Milly,
I fear I have bad news. Look at the bigger picture. You can’t get a second date. For this you are blaming all mankind. Is it not a little more possible that the problem is not every man you date, but you? Other women manage to date, get married and have children without having to start a third world war.
If this letter was from a man, I would suggest that he was choosing the wrong women to date, but these men are selecting you. I don’t think people can be called ‘picky and unenthusiastic’ when they bother to pluck up the courage to ask you out on a date.
There is clearly something that initially attracts them and then, upon closer examination, repels them. Your girlfriends are not going to help you if the ‘move to a war zone’ advice is anything to go by, and yet you must do something.
The only plan I can think of is extremely painful and borders on humiliation. Deep breath, Milly. Try contacting one of the men who rejected you. Choose one that you thought really liked you.
Explain that you are fine about the date not going any further but you would like to know why. Assure him that you don’t care how personal or possibly hurtful the reason is but you’d just like to prevent it happening again in the future.
I’ve no idea if this will work, but the bottom line is either you change or you just wait for the very rare lid for your quirky pot to come along.
Dear Graham,
I’m feeling a little crowded by my new girlfriend. I was struck down with flu the other day and not only did she bombard me with food parcels, she also deluged me with phone
calls and text messages offering to come round and look after me. Yesterday I got back from the doctor’s surgery to find a cardboard box on my doorstep containing three lamb chops (from a dinner party I failed to make), an enormous slice of plum tart and a gushy note.
It’s all a bit much and I told her to back off, which she has, but I’m worried her OTT behaviour is a signal I should beat a hasty retreat.
What do you think?
Oliver U, London
Most young men are desperate to be mothered, but if you want to lie in bed shivering with flu, picking at a lukewarm Pot Noodle, who am I to stop you?
Dear Oliver,
Truly one man’s meat is another’s poison. I can think of few things that would make me happier than coming home to find lamb chops on my doorstep, but clearly you are happier finding nothing juicier than cards for a local minicab firm and a leaflet for cheap pizza.
This young lady has done nothing wrong. She has feelings for you, so, when you were ill, her natural inclination was to care for you. When she discovered that you found this a bit suffocating, she did what you asked and backed off. So far, so blameless.
I think the real problem here is that you simply don’t like this woman very much and your flu has just fast-tracked the issues. Good. End it as soon as possible. All over London, young men are desperate to be mothered and to trip over meat. If you want to lie in bed shivering with flu, holding a silent phone and picking at a lukewarm Pot Noodle, who am I to stop you? Enjoy.
Ask Graham Page 6