Tara C, Herts
Dear Tara,
In the time it has taken me to read your letter, I have run out of patience with this man. He has obviously been indulged by so many people over the years that he has learned that this behaviour is acceptable.
It is your job to teach him that it is not.
Don’t make a scene or raise your voice, but simply inform him that you aren’t going to go to Paris. If he questions why, explain that you don’t fancy hanging around the most romantic city on earth by yourself, so, until he can arrange a time when you can go together, you’d prefer to postpone the trip.
Similarly, if you can’t be sure if he’ll show up for a date, then always make another plan. Arrange to meet friends at the same time and place as you’ve arranged to meet him. If he does show up, he will be put out and probably claim you are exaggerating when you tell him why you double-booked yourself. People like this man always claim that it only happened once and they had a really good excuse. Again don’t lose your temper; simply spell out the facts as you see them.
He may see the error of his ways and try to change, in which case you could start to indulge him a little. But what is more likely is that he will go into a major sulk from which he never emerges.
In the end, being late is all about power. He is testing you and pushing you further and further to see how much control he has over you. Once you push back, he may respect you more and everything can start to move forward, or he will run a mile.
Either way, you won’t be spending hours sipping a drink you didn’t want, staring at a clock that doesn’t move and avoiding the sympathetic stares of strangers.
Don’t be fooled – he isn’t chaotic, disorganised or eccentric. He is simply selfish.
Dear Graham,
My husband and I are about to celebrate our first wedding anniversary.
We were friends for a long time before we started seeing each other and I have become retrospectively and irrationally jealous of his female friends, one of whom he was particularly interested in (she didn’t fancy him but strung him along).
Whenever we go out, I become plagued by imaginings that he would rather be with her than with me, and that she is prettier and more fun. I become consumed by my own insecurity, especially after a couple of glasses of wine.
Please give me some straight talking and stop me ruining my relationship with my husband.
Eva M, north London
“Avoid being high maintenance. Men may enjoy working on things around the house, but their wife isn’t one of them.”
Dear Eva,
Male eyes roam. Accept this now or be unhappy forever. This other woman may have been a focus for his attentions at one point in time but you are the one he proposed to.
When you said yes, you both drew a line under previous relationships. I fear he could become very irritated if you get clingy and paranoid every time you have a drink.
There is no shame in explaining – when sober – that you have certain insecurities. Perhaps suggest that he be a little more attentive when you are out.
After only one year of marriage it is natural that there are things you are both still discovering.
Be patient with yourself and your husband but, whatever you do, avoid being high maintenance. Men may enjoy working on things around the house, but their wife isn’t one of them.
Dear Graham,
As a recovering alcoholic, I recently went on a weekend retreat in an old abbey in the West Country. The problem was that the retreat was overrun with Obsessive Eaters Anonymous, largely female. I made it quite clear that I’m with someone (my girlfriend is about to have twins) but one woman pursued me all weekend, flashing her gigantic bosom and planting her vast frame between me and the door.
Although I did manage to give her the slip on the last day and leap on to a train home, somehow she has got hold of my mobile number and keeps leaving flirtatious texts on it, suggesting we meet.
I’m not worried that my girlfriend will see them. I’ve told her about the woman and she just thinks it’s funny. I just want to get rid of this woman politely without tipping her over the edge into a morbid state of obesity.
Any tips?
Nick H, Suffolk
Dear Nick,
Because I’m a nice person, I’m going to gloss over the ‘somehow got hold of my mobile number’ portion of your letter and move swiftly on to my advice. Ignore her. Any response from you, be it good bad or indifferent will simply feed her unhealthy appetite for you. Starve her and she’ll move on.
The problem is that on some level you enjoyed her attention and are still flattered that this woman is obsessed with you. Shut it down. Change the number she mysteriously found if you must, but don’t respond in any way. Should she find your home address and show up on the doorstep refuse to see her and don’t react to her no matter how hysterical she may become.
I can only imagine how wildly attractive you are, Nick. But, trust me, your biggest fan will find other fish to fry. As for you, well, soon you’ll have your hands full with two big actual babies.
Good luck!
Dear Graham,
My fiancée and I have just bought a house together. But what should be an exciting and romantic adventure, where we lovingly position our cushions, is being ruined by our radically different tastes.
I’m what you might call ‘traditional antique’. I like heavy, dark woods, velvet drapes, hunting pictures and pewter mugs. She prefers an edgy, minimalist look. Her old flat was full of stark white furniture and modern ‘art’ – the kind of thing my three-year-old nephew could knock up. She also has a collection of obscene carved figurines that we’ll have to hide every time my parents visit. How can we marry our tastes, let alone each other?
Jamie C, Northumberland
Dear Jamie,
Let’s get real – hunting pictures? Pewter mugs? Why don’t you just move to Albert Square and live in the Queen Vic. No one wants to live in a house where the only thing you can serve at a dinner party is a hearty ploughman’s platter or scampi in a basket. Why don’t you get a garden shed and style it in sticky-carpet, full-ashtray chic?
On the plus side, you have agreed on a house to buy. That is an enormous decision and one that brings many couples crashing to the ground.
I suspect that you are both being unreasonable. Take a long hard look at the house and let it talk to you. Let it tell you how it wants to be decorated. If you can’t hear anything, why not get a decorator involved so that you and your wife-to-be will be united in your hatred of its interior design? All I know is that if you are finding it this hard to decide how to decorate a few rooms, good luck with your wedding arrangements!
Dear Graham,
For the past six months, I’ve been going out with a guy who had a messy divorce two years ago. I’ve discovered that, despite almost moving in with me four months ago, he is still wining and dining two other women. I don’t make a habit of snooping but in a weak, nosy moment had a look at the ‘sent’ box on his mobile,
where I found various larky messages with kisses attached. When I confronted him, he didn’t deny he’d been taking other girls out but said that they were ‘just friends’.
He promised to stop and said the reason he continued to see other women was that he was frightened about closing off all options.
Unfortunately, I’ve discovered that he hasn’t stopped seeing them. What should I do? I don’t think he’s sleeping around, as he’s with me most nights, but I feel really insulted. I love him and would hate to lose him, but I’m feeling increasingly miserable. It’s as if I’m not really good enough.
Kimberley A, Roehampton
Dear Kimberley,
I fear this may be a case of right guy, wrong time. It’s very likely that he is telling you the truth when he says that he doesn’t want to close off his options.
After the pain of a divorce, I think it’s understandable that he’s nervous of total commitment.
I realise this doesn
’t help you very much but at least he’s being honest with you rather than making up some story about an old friend of his mother’s being in town. Everyone wants to be loved completely and without question, but right now the man you are with isn’t capable of that. I worry that the longer you stay in this relationship, the more damaged you are going to become. It’s not this man’s fault but you do deserve better.
It’s all very well him telling you that he isn’t sleeping with these other women, but in a post-Bill Clinton world it is very hard to know what constitutes cheating. In the end, the most reliable test is how his behaviour makes you feel – and it is clearly making you very unhappy.
Perhaps if you leave him it will be the catalyst for him to realise how much you do mean to him and you could start afresh with his head and heart in a better place.
Of course, he may just be a two-timing scumbag blaming his divorce for his wandering eye, but either way I fear you need to get out.
Dear Graham,
I am in that post-fling limbo of wondering whether to end things or soldier on. The girl in question is a very beautiful 26-year-old redhead called Flora but I fear she might be mad. I recently made the mistake of agreeing to go to dinner at her godmother’s. Flora behaved rather oddly throughout the evening, most of which she spent examining the pattern on the carpet, arguing that it was ‘really quite interesting’.
She didn’t have any of the food (gazpacho followed by fish pie – both barely edible) but instead bit into three apples, all of which she abandoned half-eaten. Noticing my startled expression, her crêpey-bosomed godmother leaned across the table and whispered: ‘Don’t worry about it, darling, she’s been to art school.’
My question is this: is Flora a bonkers artist or is she excitingly creative? Is this normal behaviour for arty girls? (I work in a bank.)
Hans P, Swiss Cottage
Dear Hans,
You can’t believe she’s not a nutter? Trust me, the only option open to you now is to have as much sex as possible with the apple-munching loon and then get out of there as quickly as you can. In truth, it sounds as if she isn’t really mad, just a pretentious loser, or perhaps a nice woman who is trying everything she can to make you dump her.
Her mental state isn’t really the issue here, is it? Your name is Hans and you are a banker who lives in Swiss Cottage. She is a failed artist who enjoys staring at the carpet and having dates that include her godmother.
Even an ITV sitcom writer would think twice before trying to pitch this as a zany ‘opposites attract’ scenario. Accept that you are probably quite a dull man and date accordingly.
Dear Graham,
I’m suddenly back on the market after a horrible divorce and I’m finding it much tougher than I expected to find a new man. I’ve always been the kind of woman who turns heads. Other women might be cleverer or funnier, but I’m the one men usually go for. Even when I have unwashed hair and wear any old rubbish, men always fall over themselves to get my number. Now it’s a very different story. No one seems to notice me any more and there’s a raft of attractive, unattached women, many of them a good 10 years younger than me (I’m 46), who are intent on nailing a man of my vintage.
Perhaps it’s a hard thing to sympathise with and I sound like a spoiled, self-regarding cow. But when you’ve once been beautiful, with the power that goes with it, it’s terribly hard to accept that your allure is waning. If I’d been a plain Jane all along, I’m sure ageing wouldn’t bother me much, but before I married, 15 years ago, I had the world at my feet. Throughout my marriage, other people’s husbands were always flirting with me, so I had no idea I’d lost my old magic.
I’m finding it tough to accept and it’s making me utterly miserable.
Jane P, West Midlands
Dear Jane,
I bet you are the sort of driver who runs out of petrol all the time because you forget to check the fuel gauge. How did you not see this coming? Rail against the gods as much as you like, curse men from the highest mountain you can find, but it is just the law of the sexist jungle. Put very bluntly, Jane, it is very hard to go to market with no eggs in your basket.
Obviously, it is possible for older women to still find partners, love and sex, but before you are able to, you will have to learn a new way of relating to men. A very pretty friend of mine was talking to a man at a party recently and told me after it was over that she thought he was gay. Since he clearly wasn’t, this surprised me and I wanted to know why. ‘He didn’t flirt with me,’ was her reply.
Don’t think a conversation is going badly just because a man’s eyes don’t drift to your cleavage. As men become less immediately interested in you, you may have to be a bit more interested in them. Try to find things you have in common beyond the fact that you both think you’re gorgeous.
But far more important than finding new ways of talking to men is finding new ways of having fun without men. If you don’t discover a life where you enjoy being by yourself or hanging out with girlfriends, then I fear you’ll spend your evenings crying over old photos of yourself in a bikini. Don’t think of your new life as worse – it’s simply different.
By the way, the days of not washing your hair are firmly over, but I’m guessing you knew that.
Dear Graham,
I am 52 and have been happily married for nearly 30 years. We don’t have children but we do have two chocolate Labradors, which, I admit, are probably child substitutes. The dogs have always slept on our bed, but unfortunately they are not quite as fragrant as they used to be. My husband, who is not as doggy as me, now wants to ban them from the bedroom. Although I love my husband dearly, he is a terrible snorer, and I would rather it were he who decamped to the spare bedroom anyway. How can I achieve this without him thinking I have chosen the dogs over him?
Meredith W, Cumbria
Dear Meredith,
I think it’s going to be quite difficult to prevent your husband thinking you have chosen the dogs over him, because that is precisely what you have done. You have coped with his snoring for 30 years, so I’m not sure why it should suddenly have become unbearable. If it really is, why don’t you move into the spare room?
As for the dogs, here’s an idea – wash them. Dog deodorisers are available in any decent pet shop, so get spraying. You say that they are child substitutes, but if your children stank I don’t imagine you would be choosing them over your husband. The man is a saint and you need to get a grip of reality.
Dear Graham,
My partner and I are ambitious professionals in our mid-thirties who don’t want children. We have 10 godchildren between us and lots of much-loved nephews and nieces, but we have no desire to become parents. For some reason this seems to upset and infuriate people. Our families and many of our friends (all married with children) have made it clear they don’t approve.
It seems we are breaking a sacred code by choosing not to reproduce and are making others uncomfortable. Not a day passes that we don’t find ourselves at the receiving end of a barbed remark about our ‘lovely luxury holidays’ or our ‘endless trips to restaurants’. Although we are generous to all the children in our lives, sometimes to a ridiculous degree, our decision to opt out of parenthood is viewed as selfish and unpleasant.
I’d like some advice on how to handle the situation. We try to ignore the criticism, but I know that my partner gets rattled every time the subject comes up.
David G, Newcastle
Dear David,
Ah, the joys of being gay! The only voices of disapproval we hear are when we suggest that we would like to have children. What a pity you chose to combine your life of conspicuous consumerism with heterosexuality.
I imagine that your partner, as she’s female, feels the barbs and digs more deeply than you do. Sadly, the only remedy to this situation that I can see is time.
Eventually, family members will give up hoping, as the ticking of the biological clock becomes fainter and fainter and then stops. As for your friends, you’ll f
ind yourselves growing ever more distant as their lives revolve around nothing more than loading and unloading buggies and nappy bags from SUVs, with a few trips to A&E to break up the monotony.
You have made a lifestyle choice, so get on with it and stop expecting other people to approve or accept it. When we walk, we shake our fists at car drivers; when we are behind the wheel, we scream at pedestrians. Life’s complicated like that.
Have another holiday, but remember that no one will want to see the photos.
Dear Graham,
I’ve started going out with a 35-year-old guy I met through a dating website. It’s all going unexpectedly well. We’ve just got back from a week’s skiing in Val d’Isère and we’ve already met each other’s siblings and parents. But I recently went back on to the website and found he’s put his membership on ‘passive’, whereas I’ve taken mine off completely. When I asked him why he was still on there, he said he’d paid for a whole year so he thought he might as well stay on in case things didn’t work out.
Are men less romantic and more pragmatic than women? I’m upset that his profile is still on the website when he’s not available any more. I don’t know how to broach the subject again, but it’s niggling away at me. It makes me feel as if I’m being put through some kind of exam and I feel resentful and unable to relax. Am I unreasonable to mind?
Imogen R, Hastings
Dear Imogen,
The short answer is yes, but that’s not what they pay me for, so let me expand. A year is a long time and you don’t tell me how long you have been dating him, but what would your new man gain from taking down his profile? It’s not as if he is still actively looking, or spending any extra cash to stay on the website. Although it’s easy to do, try not to confuse being unromantic with being lazy.
Ask Graham Page 19