Dear Bel,
My lovely wife passed away two months ago after suffering from a variety of ailments over the past few years. She had become increasingly dependent on me for many domestic issues, but I didn’t mind.
We were true ‘soul mates’ and had a really loving relationship as well as being best friends. We were together only 22 years but it seemed like a lifetime because of our close happiness.
I have no children of my own but two lovely stepdaughters I get on well with. Now – I know this might sound silly – but I have really fallen for one of them and can’t stop thinking about her. She has been so very kind to me since my wife, her mother, died.
A few years ago she also experienced bereavement when her husband died suddenly so she is very understanding. Now she has a regular partner whom I get on well with when he is around. But I notice she never talks much about him.
My problem is I am concerned about expressing my feelings to her as I do not wish to damage the friendship we have.
I am still grieving badly for my wife and this is adding extra stress and anxiety for me. Am I suffering from acute lovesickness? Should I tell her about my feelings? I don’t know what to do.
I could not possibly mention this problem to anyone else and so I would so very much appreciate your opinion and advice.
HOWARD
Death has taken the woman you love from your side and there is nothing that can ever assuage the grief you feel at this moment – the terrible sense of permanent loss that made you write to me.
You have been knocked sideways and then trampled underfoot and kicked savagely by that terrible enemy which none of us can come to terms with, let alone beat – the implacable foe called mortality.
This has to be stated and taken on board – so whatever you do, close your ears to any foolish person who suggests that, after a couple of months, grief might have eased a little and things might become less painful for you. It’s not true.
The denial around death rises from humanity’s absolute terror of it – unless they belong to a religion which teaches them that ‘death is nothing at all’, as the over-rated ‘poem’ by Canon Henry Scott Holland tells us.
I feel so sorry for you at this time of overwhelming sorrow and understand exactly why you have written. It’s not because you have a sort of ‘crush’ on your stepdaughter. No. The subject line of your email was ‘Dealing With My Recent Loss’ – and that’s what we need to weigh.
You say ‘I am still grieving badly for my wife’ and there you encapsulate the problem. Of course you are suffering appallingly from ‘acute lovesickness’. But the source of that heart-breaking malady is your grief, not these sudden feelings for a younger woman who has been so wonderfully kind and understanding you’ve had to stop yourself falling on her neck and weeping in gratitude.
You are clearly feeling very confused and not a little ashamed to have ‘fallen for’ your stepdaughter. Both of you have been pouring out your hearts in shared sorrow for the same person, the woman you both loved.
In your abject loneliness, with the aching gap inside you, you have quickly started to depend on this lady as never before.
In your vulnerability and need it’s hardly surprising that your feelings have become warmer than is appropriate.
You can’t help it. You loved your wife so much a psychological process of transference is telling you that you are falling in love with her daughter. But you are seeing your wife in her. You ‘can’t stop thinking about’ them both.
This is the beginning of a dark and difficult journey, Howard, so it comes as no surprise that you long for someone to help you along the way.
So far it’s been this kind stepdaughter and I’m sure she will be there for you when you need somebody to talk to.
But that is all. I beg you never, ever to reveal to her how your feelings of yearning for what you can never have again slid into a strange longing for somebody else – her – who seemed to embody the lost love of your life.
Your stepdaughter knows what it is to feel grief, but also what it is to pick up life again and start a new relationship.
You should consider that she ‘doesn’t talk about’ her boyfriend simply because when you are together she is focusing on your troubles, your needs, and senses that you don’t want to know.
Please don’t spoil this. You have to slowly try to rebuild a life without your soul mate.
Perhaps seek out a bereavement group – you could try the charity Cruse – where you might meet others to talk to.
Look at the website for GriefChat. Be sure you see old friends who spent time with you during your marriage, and make allowance for them if they aren’t that good at talking about her.
Meanwhile, be glad of your stepdaughters’ support. Step forward, Howard. Your wife is holding your hand.
I feel trapped by my husband’s heavy drinking
Dear Bel,
I always read your letters and your replies and you have featured similar problems to mine. That’s why I write, thinking other readers will understand me.
I have been married for more than 40 years and stopped drinking four years ago as I realised how badly it was affecting my health. Nevertheless, even though I stopped, my husband still drinks far too much. I often have to put up with him falling asleep while we watch the TV, and this is just in the early evening!
I know it is me who has changed but we have no sex life anymore, and on the odd occasions we try, it ends in disaster due to how much he has had to drink. He knows this is why there is a problem, and it’s not a situation I want.
I sometimes wonder about getting a divorce as I think I might be happier on my own. Life is short and nobody’s getting any younger. I want to do more things and go to more places – but he is quite happy at home not doing much.
I simply don’t know whether I should accept the life I have with my husband and, at the same time, start doing things with girlfriends, like going away.
Or should I end the marriage, and potentially end up a lonely person?
MARION
It often does help readers to write things down, because putting a bothersome issue to paper can help you identify issues with more clarity than when they whizz around in a worried mind.
I do recommend the process to you all, even if you’re not actually writing to me.
But Marion, I’m suspecting you just made yourself even more uncertain, because it doesn’t sound as if you want to leave your husband, in spite of the drinking problem that bothers you so much.
Yet writing the problem down will surely have reminded you how distressing it is to see him wasting his life in the way you describe.
There is, of course, Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), as well as advising you about Al-Anon UK (for family members). But I don’t think you will follow any of that as you don’t seem angry or despairing enough.
I could be wrong, in which case you should do your utmost to help your husband acknowledge alcoholism and perhaps make his doing something about it a serious condition of continuing with your marriage.
Like many women in long marriages you have tried to imagine what life would be like if you were living alone. You would watch the TV programmes you wished, make arrangements to meet girlfriends for drinks and movies, take trips when you liked… all such things are possible. But might you be lonely?
Well, yes, you might – for a while, at least. The unknown is very intimidating, which is one reason why so many in less-than-happy marriages plod along, accepting the shortfall in happiness until they die. But isn’t there possibly some wisdom as well as compromise in that? I say that as a pragmatist who considers the chasing after the fantasy of ‘happiness’ to be a source of much unhappiness in our culture.
What would be a compromise for you? If you do decide to stay (and I think you will), it would surely involve spending more time with girlfriends, as you say. Why shouldn’t you go for fun weekends with congenial mates? Even book a week’s cruise?
If your sozzled husband doesn’t like it then he will have to lump it, as they say. Or – and this is very important – realise, in your absence when he is lonely, that he wants to do something to save his marriage. And that is when you give him the ultimatum of seeking help from AA.
That’s if he wants to stay married. You need to get tough.
And finally… Why I’m happy to trust my gut instincts
These days I watch the news and read my beloved two newspapers every day with a jaded sense that I’ve seen it all before. Some older readers must feel that way, too.
Let nobody believe there’s anything new about political shame and scandals – the sneaky double-dealing, the vain and greedy jockeying for power, the hot-house gossips and doomy naysayers. The Seven Deadly Sins rule.
And don’t imagine there’s anything new about international events casting a pall over our everyday lives.
I grew up worried sick about the Atom Bomb and the horror of Vietnam – and I don’t see any improvements in today’s world. Corruption? Warmongering? Fear? Same-same but different.
During a long career, I’ve travelled a lot and met many famous people, some really admirable, others not so. Sometimes I formed judgments which, in hindsight, I discovered to be spot on.
For example, many years ago (some time during the 1990s) I accompanied my first husband to a smart BBC dinner given by the then director-general John Birt.
I was seated between two men I’d never met before, which was fine. I don’t know what it is to be shy!
But after a nod, the man on my left turned his back on me throughout the whole meal, busily talking to the (male) broadcaster his other side, clearly far more important.
The guy on my other side was perfectly OK and made small talk when he could, but all the time I was dismayed by the colossal rudeness of the man on my left, who ignored all social rules of politeness.
From time to time, over the following years, I met the back-turner at other events and my dislike of his apparent superiority increased.
His name was Peter Mandelson. I’ve always trusted my gut about events – and people.
