Dear Bel,
I live 100 miles away from my daughter but we speak every day.
She has a good job and has been an excellent mother to her children, who now both live in Asia and she misses them very much.
She has been married twice, her last divorce being seven years ago.
She’s good-looking, sociable, popular, has her own house and car and plenty of friends.
She has a partner (of three years) who also has a terrific personality and lives on his own in the same village.
He’s been married three times and sees all his six children often, the youngest being teenagers who she doesn’t find friendly, as they are introverted and can be sarcastic and even downright rude.
The problem is her partner is very overweight, at around 20st. She encourages him to eat healthily but he has no intention of doing it. He uses weight-loss jabs but still drinks pints and eats cakes, buns…
One of her main complaints is that he is so lazy, whereas she is very fit. She tells me he urinates in the garden as he’s too lazy to go upstairs, farts in company, is never embarrassed and has awful hygiene habits.
Also, he supposedly had an accident before they met, which means they can’t have sex. He is very affectionate and kind, but I think she is selling herself short.
He now wants to look for a property for them to buy, but she wonders whether she would be better on her own.
She says sometimes she finds him repulsive and doesn’t fancy him, but does enjoy his company. Is she throwing her life away?
Francine
Do men reckon women will be so desperately grateful for their company they’ll gladly put up with bad breath, vast protruding bellies, sweat, moobs, nose hairs and grubby underpants? asks BEL MOONEY
Bel Mooney replies: From where I’m standing, this man certainly doesn’t sound like much of a catch.
And I’m standing mercifully very far from that whiff of ammonia drifting up from soil where the daffodils are less yellow than the showers of male wee-wee that water them. Oh yuk!
Worse… I’m now imagining him rolling in from the garden to where your daughter is having tea with friends, letting off a thunderclap, waving a paw in dispersal, then settling into a creaking armchair to stuff his face with cake.
Yes, I know that sounds horrid. That’s because it fits the behaviour. In January, I published a letter from ‘Fiona’, repelled by her partner’s disgusting personal habits. And recently I had a chat with a woman who finally left her husband because she felt utterly repulsed by his complete lack of attention to matters of personal appearance and hygiene.
Why don’t these men realise it matters? Do they reckon women will be so desperately grateful for their company they’ll gladly put up with bad breath, vast protruding bellies, sweat, moobs, nose hairs and grubby underpants?
We women can’t move for articles telling us about weight-loss jabs, make-up tricks, clothes suitable for our age, shapewear, getting ‘beach body ready’ and how to keep sexy in our 70s – as if our very souls depended on all that kerfuffle.
If we are generally expected to make such an effort, why shouldn’t the blokes? (Here, I should emphasise that fortunately I’ve only ever had personal experience of fragrant chaps, but feel justified reporting what I’ve been told, plus my regular observation of middle-aged men with dreadful old T-shirts clinging to beer guts – all dressed down for a night out.)
In your place, I would advise my daughter to stay in her house, retain every scrap of social independence and tell her jolly boyfriend to continue living in his own place where his children can visit (and sulk) at will.
I’m sure that, if asked, her adult children would prefer her not to bestow six half-siblings on them.
Taking on the shared financial burden of a new house will inevitably complicate things. Why make life potentially more messy than it has been already, in the past histories of both your daughter and this chap?
Your daughter sounds a terrific woman, but if she is clearly embarrassed as well as repelled by this man after three years of living under separate roofs, how can she possibly imagine his habits will change if they were to move in together? They won’t. She would just have no escape from them.
He may be ‘affectionate and kind’ (and I believe it), yet those feelings don’t extend as far as wanting to please her by looking after himself or eating well, do they?
If you love someone, you should consider their feelings and wishes – always. And if she were to sell up and buy a place with him, she’d lose any future chance of meeting an attractive and attentive man who would sweep her off her feet.
You never know, do you? She should retain her independence at all costs.
How do I grieve the loss of a brother I’ve never met?
Dear Bel,
Yesterday I received the distressing news that my future hopes of meeting with a recently found brother, C, were never going to happen. He died suddenly last month.
Last September, my daughter’s and my DNA profiles located him (via the Ancestry site) in north-west America. When we got in contact, we shared a whirlwind connection.
He was the most welcoming of three newly found half-siblings, the sons and daughter of my biological GI father.
The others were pleased to hear about us but more hesitant about carrying it forward. We had been prepared for disappointment as I had experienced reluctance from my maternal birth family some years ago.
So we were thrilled and excited when C welcomed us into his family with photographs, family stories, hobbies, etc. They were as eager to find out more about us as we were about them.
We sent our life histories and photos, and C’s son has told us how much they were enjoyed.
We had lots in common despite the ocean that separated us. So we felt we had known him for much longer than we actually had. I am so grateful for all of this.
His son has been so kind in his words to us when he must be suffering greatly. He understands that we need to know they are concerned for us, too. C and I were planning to meet and spoke of sharing a special hug. It seems very cruel that’s been taken from us.
I know this makes me sound selfish and it takes nothing away from how terribly sad and devastated his family are feeling, but my life circumstances make it feel especially so.
I am very fortunate to have a wonderful family, both immediate and the wider adopted one, and have always felt secure in their love.
But I don’t know whether people who haven’t been adopted can have any real understanding of how strongly rejection/abandonment figures in our personal make-up.
Death has to be the ultimate rejection. Other rejections can be set aside with the hope that change may happen. But death is final. Doors closed. No hugs – ever.
The warmth of C (and his immediate family) was the exception in both my birth families and the loss is greater because of that.
How do you grieve the loss of someone so essential whom you have never met but longed for?
Lucy
Bel Mooney replies: I’m so sorry. Your point about the lack of understanding in people who haven’t been adopted is very well made – and all my instincts tell me you are right.
Unpicking your story, it’s clear your mother was made pregnant by an American GI and felt unable to keep her baby, so gave you up for adoption.
You also emphasise that your experience of adoption was good and you have been supported by that family.
But like so many adopted people, you wanted to know who you really are, i.e., the identity of your biological parents.
Again, as is quite common, you discovered your mother’s family were unwilling to develop a relationship with you, so that when at last you traced your father’s family, you had one half-brother, C, who was thrilled to be found. The sheer joy at this late contact just jumps off the page.
But the subject line of your email reads, sadly: ‘Lost, found, and lost again.’ Such heartbreak is contained within those words.
I can imagine how excited you both were, and the delight in discovering you had things in common, as well as a shared joy that his immediate family was pleased to have found new family members.
At this point all you can do is remember all that surprise and pleasure and celebrate the fact that you and C ‘met’ each other across land, sea and air. You did find each other, so I hope you can focus on the miracle of that.
What’s more, even though C and you will never have the chance to share that hug, don’t forget that he has a family.
You ask how mourning is possible, so my suggestion is that you now try to plan a pilgrimage to America – not immediately, of course, but in a few months.
C’s family is closely connected to you: you have a nephew and your daughter a cousin.
Never mind the ‘half’ stuff; you are all family. You could meet C’s son and other relatives, and (of course) you could visit C’s grave.
I can only imagine his son would be honoured to accompany you, share your tears and tell you more stories about his father.
I believe such a visit would give you a moving, deeply meaningful sense of closure. Or discovery after loss, if you like.
And finally… Why I’m so proud to be a Christian
Guess what I’ll be doing tomorrow morning? It’s Palm Sunday, when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, greeted by throngs cheering and waving palm branches.
Of course, that adulation soon changed to cries of ‘Crucify him!’ – such is the perennial fickleness of crowds.
Palm Sunday remains a special day, traditionally marked by processions to signify faith. So that’s what I shall be doing.
Yes, walking proudly though our village with other members of our parish church, all of us delighted to be following a real donkey this year.
Some of you might think that’s a bit daft. Even embarrassing. I felt that way once, before reaching this freedom of not caring what strangers think.
Back then I wondered why people had to make such a display; now I am more than happy to proclaim allegiance to everything I revere in our great Christian culture. The list is very long.
I mean, if thousands of Muslims can fill a famous space like London’s iconic Trafalgar Square, prostrating themselves in prayer, why shouldn’t groups of Christians display their faith in the street too? Because as far as I’m concerned, this is still a Christian country. I’d go to the barricades for that.
Oh, I know people don’t go to church. It’s a shame the gods most worshipped are Consumerism and Celebrity. But just ask people why they love to pack the church for Christmas carols, or whether they want our magnificent, sacred buildings – our heritage – to become mosques, then the answer might reveal something deep in the soul.
Even an atheist can acknowledge the humanity and glory of the Judeo-Christian culture that’s the basis of our precious civilisation – and want to preserve it. But not in a museum. In public.
