Whatever you do should make her want to be quieter. Perhaps make it clear that you are listening to every word. If she cracks a joke, laugh way too loudly. Should she offer any opinion on something, shout over the partition: ‘You’re right there!’ In the kitchen, always talk to her about her phone calls, starting every conversation with: ‘I couldn’t help but overhear…’
Eventually, she will grow self-conscious and turn down the volume. If she doesn’t, rip your computer from the desk and throw it at her. You will be sacked, but the security camera footage will make you a YouTube star!
Dear Graham,
Why are women so messy? My girlfriend, like all my exes, lives in a state of permanent chaos, which she calls ‘bohemian’ and which I think is more like ‘freshly burgled’. Remember that ad on the telly? It should have been the other way round, because in my view it’s women, not men, who are the messy ones.
I’m not guilty of any of those crimes that men are so vilified for – wet towels on floor, dirty pans in sink, lavatory seat left up – but you don’t even know the half of my girlfriend’s squalid habits. We love each other and get on brilliantly, but I get exasperated with all her mess. Tissues, Post-it notes, knickers, felt-tip pens with lids missing, bank statements, lipstick – somehow the whole lot always end up on the floor or inside the bed.
In her flat, she has a boxroom stuffed to the rafters with her mess. The vacuum cleaner lives in there, as does an old Amstrad computer. How can she bear to live like that?
Marcus S, Bath
“I don’t think you have a right to complain or use the word ‘messy’ until a friendly rat is helping out with the washing-up, or that strange moving pattern on the carpet turns out to be a talented group of line-dancing cockroaches.”
Dear Marcus,
I am a gay man who lives alone and even by my standards you sound as if you are on the wrong side of Anthea Turner home management. Lipstick and bank statements are simply the normal debris of any human being getting through each day. Well, maybe not lipstick, but you get my point.
I don’t think you have a right to complain or use the word ‘messy’ until a friendly rat is helping out with the washing-up, or that strange moving pattern on the carpet turns out to be a talented group of line-dancing cockroaches. Try to relax a little. The minute someone else starts spending time in your space, it will cease to be exactly the way you want. You could provide the adult equivalent of a toy box where you stash any of her stuff that you find lying around your home. I warn you now that your girlfriend will find this wildly annoying, but it may save your sanity.
I urge you to seriously consider your future as a heterosexual, because, if you think your girlfriend is bad, I fear that children may make your head explode.
Dear Graham,
What’s the gentlest way to end a relationship? I have been chucked twice, including once in the middle of an Alpine snowstorm. But I now find myself in the position of having to end things myself. My (soon-to-be ex) boyfriend is handsome, thoughtful, rich and titled, but as dull as ditchwater. I cannot face another weekend in his stuffy French family’s crumbling château, drinking stale port and talking about the weather.
I have no wish to behave like the cowardly men I’ve dated. Is there an elegant way to end things?
Jessica P, Paris
Dear Jessica,
Rather late in the day, it seems you have stumbled upon a universal truth: there is no good way to be dumped. Even if (and I speak from experience) you have been praying that your boyfriend would end things, it is still about as welcome as a shoe full of vomit. Key things to remember when dumping are: keep it short and blame yourself for the relationship failing. Truth in this arena is neither helpful nor appreciated.
Avoid doing it over dinner: there is no need to waste another evening on this corpse of a romance. A mid-morning coffee seems about right. Not a word about his dullness or the rural crusties. Talk about past relationships still having a hold on your heart, or how your parents’ awful marriage has left you phobic about commitment and how unfair that is on such a great guy. And insist on paying for the coffee.
Dear Graham,
I seem to be out of sync with my generation. Everyone I know is obsessed with their position on the ladder but I’m just not ambitious. I don’t want a job where I have to be clever and on top of my game. All I want is to be paid to phone someone up and ask when they are going to post ‘that thing’ (or whatever).
At the moment I’m working as a picture editor, calling in pictures from libraries, clocking off at 5pm on the dot and tootling home on my bicycle. But my City-based friends make me feel inadequate and ashamed to be doing such mundane, menial work.
I have lots of time to read novels, bake cakes, entertain friends and just have a good time but I’m made to feel like a lesser mortal for not wanting to thrust my way into a trendy media job or a large London bank.
Am I?
Verity S, Stow-on-the-Wold
I have time to read novels, bake cakes and tootle around on my bicycle, but I’m made to feel inadequate by my City-based friends.
Dear Verity,
Somewhere in a parallel universe, someone is writing a letter to an agony aunt describing a friend who bakes cakes and reads novels and makes them feel awful about wanting to build their career and earn more money. Life is all about choices and when our friends make ones that are very different to ours we are disconcerted.
Reassure your friends, praise them for their ambition and marvel at their success in tackling the corporate ladder. In turn, they will pretend to envy you your simple flour-covered life. For a while, this may keep you all fairly close but, as business trips to Hong Kong and expensive skiing holidays begin to dominate their lives, I’m afraid you may be forgotten.
The truth is, you’ll start to make them feel uncomfortable. ‘Did anyone remember to invite Verity?’ or ‘How can I get out of going to Verity’s on Sunday?’ will become questions heard more and more frequently. This isn’t a bad thing because you’ll soon grow tired of going round to see someone’s new integrated sound system or sitting mute while everyone else talks about an uber-hot new restaurant that you will never go to.
Soon all you’ll have in common is that you used to be friends and your only contact will come at weddings and christenings followed by a bit of a gap and then funerals.
This isn’t meant to be some bleak A Christmas Carol-type warning. The point is that there is more than one recipe for a happy life. You’re lucky that you’ve found one that works for you. Lick the plate.
Dear Graham,
We are in something of a diplomatic quandary. My wife and I are great friends with a couple who were at university with us. To our surprise and sorrow, they got divorced a year ago. Over the past few months, we’ve made a big effort to keep up a separate friendship with both of them, inviting them to dinners and parties at our house.
Our male friend has just announced he has met someone he would like to introduce to us. We would, of course, love to meet her, but are worried this would upset his ex-wife, who remains the aggrieved party. My wife thinks it would be ‘disloyal’ of us to have the new girlfriend over and we can’t be certain she won’t hear of it. What would you advise?
Nigel A, Wiltshire
Dear Nigel,
No matter how hard you try there will always be some situations in life – like running over a neighbour’s cat – that are socially awkward and this is one of them. Someone is going to get hurt and if I were a betting man my money would be on everyone.
Seize the nettle and be honest. Call his ex-wife and tell her that you have invited the new woman over and that you didn’t want her to hear about it from someone else. If you wanted to, you could throw her a bone by agreeing that it does seem way too soon, but you don’t want to be seen to be taking sides. The important thing about the call is that you are telling her what’s going to happen and not asking her if it’s OK or if she minds.
If you ever feel they ar
e asking you to take sides, then step away from the friendship. Unlike the CD collection or the Christmas decorations, friends cannot be simply divided in a divorce. Perhaps if you accept the new girlfriend, it will help your friend to accept her, too, and move on with her life.
“There will always be some situations in life – like running over a neighbour’s cat – that are socially awkward and this is one of them.”
Dear Graham,
The other day I went to a lunch party where all the guests were married apart from me and an interior decorator with boyish looks, who was my age (36). Everyone kept teasing him about a 21-year-old girl he was wining and dining who lived at home with her parents. I suggested – gently – that he might do better if he focused on his own age group. His reply? ‘Oh no, my cut-off point is 29. Any older and they want to move in after two weeks, get married and have babies. And they expect to be taken out for expensive dinners.’
I told him I thought that was ridiculous and he said you had to think about ‘CPI’. When I pressed him, he told me it stood for ‘cost per insertion’. Have you ever heard anything more vile? It’s a horrible way to look at women. I went home in floods of tears and thought, ‘Is this all that’s left on the market?’
Do all men think like this when they take women out – but they just don’t say it? Am I doomed (and naive) to expect better? Gabi S, London SW7
Dear Gabi,
An interior designer with boyish good looks who speaks like that about women in mixed company? Have you met my friend the closet homosexual? This guy is a joke with his posturing and meaningless macho mantras. Presumably he can only date kids because anyone else would just politely ask him to stop the car and get out.
I’m sure guys laugh about CPI up and down the land but usually in locker rooms or down the pub – not at lunch.
I can only imagine that the amount of wine consumed led to his obnoxious remarks and you leaving in floods of tears.
Seriously, why would meeting one jerk at a party upset you so badly unless, of course, you fancied him? It’s only in fairytales that frogs turn into princes – in reality it’s usually the other way around and this is one slimy toad. Forget this guy and his sub-Jeremy Clarkson bons mots. Men may not be very nice but it’s safe to say that most are better than this.
Dear Graham,
My problem is a small but distressing one. I blush all the time. I have the kind of pale, thin-skinned English rose complexion that shows every emotion. Whenever boys talk to me, I go red. Whenever I’m embarrassed, I go red. Sometimes I go red for no particular reason. I feel the heat rising up my neck and cheeks, and if other people notice – usually a cruelly delighted ‘You’re blushing, aren’t you?’ – I go an ever-deeper, shaming shade of magenta. If I’m about to go into a potentially blush-inducing situation (meetings at work, parties and suchlike), I wear lots of foundation, but the flushing is so bad that it storms through even the thickest war paint.
Other people think it’s rather sweet, but I find it humiliating. It means you don’t have the same armour – the veneer of cool sophistication – that other people have. No matter what I say or do, my rosy Anglo-Saxon complexion lets me down.
Will I blush till my dying day? (I am 29.)
Lizzie H, Framlington
Dear Lizzie,
Presumably you have already sought medical advice for this problem, so all I can suggest is that you learn to live with it. Some people have big ears or a laugh that sounds like a drunk dolphin, but their lives go on. Think of your blushes as something that makes you special rather than the mark of a freak.
The only other thing you could do is live your life in a permanent state of embarrassment, so that people understand why you are blushing. Try always tucking your skirt into your knickers before you leave the house, or perhaps attaching some lavatory paper to every pair of shoes you own. Just imagining how grateful you are to read these wise words is making me blush!
“Some people have big ears or a laugh that sounds like a drunk dolphin, but their lives go on.”
Dear Graham,
Am I a lost cause? I’m 19 and like to think of myself as an optimistic and outgoing person, but I’m not really. I often feel low and unsure about my future. When I think about what I might do in life, I get these great ideas, but then give up, convinced I’m bound to fail. I say to myself: ‘Look at the statistics – what are your chances of being remotely successful?’ Meeting people is another problem. I rarely socialise because I’m afraid of how others will respond. Will they be mean? Will they be nice?
What will they think of me? How do I step outside myself, shut down my negative thinking and just go after whatever it is that I want in life?
Nicole M, no address supplied
Dear Nicole,
Being 19 is truly fabulous and seriously awful at the same time. Your whole life is ahead of you and filled with possibilities, but the thought of actually living it seems exhausting and filled with pain. I know there is very little more annoying than middle-aged people telling you things they wish they’d known at your age, but I’m going to do just that.
This too shall pass. That’s it. All you need to know. When you are in a funk of depression, it is impossible to imagine that the sun will ever shine again or you will laugh out loud without a care in the world but of course you will.
Similarly, when you are giddy with joy, remember to treasure it because storm clouds will gather once more.
Life isn’t lived in a straight line because that would be boring. It’s more like a series of peaks and troughs, some higher, some lower, some brief, some long, but the point is nothing lasts for ever. When it comes to success or failure, I think you should fill your life with smaller goals.
If you set yourself the challenge of becoming prime minister (you think you feel bad now!), that will seem impossible, why not start with getting a letter published in the Telegraph. Don’t decide to read the complete works of Shakespeare – pick one play and finish it. Life isn’t a firework, it’s a slow burn with flashes along the way.
Of course, none of these words will actually help you – only experience will teach you that when you were 19 you shouldn’t have been so down on yourself. If the clouds in your life are stubborn or seem to be getting darker and darker, don’t be shy about asking for help. A professional counsellor will be able to help you in ways a man of telly who is very jealous of your youth simply can’t.
Trust me, there will be a day when you won’t even recognise the woman who wrote this letter. Strangely, that will make you a little sad.
“Life isn’t a firework, it’s a slow burn with flashes along the way..”
Dear Graham,
My boyfriend and I are considering moving in together but I am worried about his Siamese cat, Britney, whom he adores. She follows him around the house, eats off his plate and often sleeps on our bed – in fact, I have woken up to find her snuggled up on his pillow. I am sure that she sees me as a threat – she has shredded two of my cashmere sweaters – and quite rightly, because, although I love cats, I want to ring her scrawny neck. I really think it’s her or me, but which one will he choose?
Sophie F, St Andrew
Dear Sophie,
Read this aloud: ‘I am going to move in with a man who owns a cat called Britney.’ Repeat it a couple of times. Now, ask yourself, does that really seem like a good idea? The problem is not the cat, it’s the bloke. Leave any cashmere sweaters you have left where they are. Moving in with him isn’t just covered in cat hair, it also has disaster written all over it.
Dear Graham,
My father had a heart attack a year ago and was rushed from his office to hospital. I raced to his bedside, along with my mother and two brothers, only to discover that a whole unknown family had already gathered there: a woman, roughly the same age as my mother, and one boy and a girl, both in their twenties. The girl looked oddly like me, just a slightly younger version with a different haircut. But the resemblance isn’t a freaky coincidence
, she is my half-sister.
It turns out that, all through his marriage to my mother, my outwardly conventional father has had an established mistress in London and fathered two other children. And do you know what really rankles? He didn’t even bother to give his second family different names. The son is called Adrian, just like my younger brother, and the daughter has my name – Eleanor.
When he was discharged from hospital, my mother refused to let my father come home. She has since changed the locks and cut off all contact with him.
My father is in his mid-sixties, recovering well according to his doctors, but still very frail. None of us is speaking to him. I have no idea what the situation is with his other family, but presumably they are more forgiving, given that his mistress must have known he was married. Perhaps he has moved in with them and they are all playing happy families at last?
I’m very, very angry but I miss my father, even though I’m not sure I can ever forgive him. But I’m tortured by the thought that he might have another heart attack – this time a fatal one – and I won’t even have said goodbye to him.
Eleanor P, Hampshire (all names have been changed)
Dear Eleanor,
I know I’m supposed to be an agony aunt but agony doesn’t even begin to cover the sort of pain you are feeling. To discover such betrayal and deception at any time would be devastating, but to learn about it as you rushed to hold the hand of a father who might be dying is almost too much to bear.
The only good thing is that you have found out now rather than, as many families do, standing by the side of a grave looking across a muddy hole at people who aren’t quite their mirror image. Your brothers, your mother and yourself must all decide how best to react, particularly as time may be of the essence.
Ask Graham Page 14