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Published: 23:17 GMT, 16 January 2015 | Updated: 23:30 GMT, 16 January 2015DEAR BEL,
I’m the wrong side of mid-30s and my husband and I are both infertile. Recently we went through an unsuccessful round of IVF.
Now I’m struggling to deal with my feelings, mainly the overwhelming sense of failure.
Our marriage is very happy: second one for me, but first for my husband. We went through obstacles to be together and I am certain he’s my soulmate.
This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.
The Dalai Lama
Neither of us is particularly bothered about having a child in our life. Yet I’m upset by the outcome.
To think I will not experience pregnancy — even though I’m not bothered about having children. The fact I cannot even do the most basic thing a human body is supposed to be able to do — procreate — makes me feel like a failure.
Alcoholics and drug addicts can get pregnant, but not me, a normal person. I hate the fact I was denied the choice not to have children.
I find myself jealous of pregnant women — how easy it must be for them! But I don’t feel the remotest jealousy of women with children.
So why IVF? I think I wanted a legitimate excuse to explain why we have no children.
Now as we are going to be labelled as a selfish couple, I fully intend to travel around the world, buy a nicer house and so on with my husband.
Yet at the same time, I fear the criticism that will come our way.
'You won’t be isolated from colleagues and friends with children if you show warmth and sympathy to their family demands' What annoying comments I get from those with children, such as: ‘If you don’t have one, you’ll be lonely in your old age.’
Well, having a child doesn’t guarantee a good relationship with said child.
I prefer the love of my husband (we both work hard to keep our relationship loving and good) rather than what I’d take for granted from a child.
I’ve already lost touch with people I was close to because they now have children so we can’t relate to each other.
Recently a male colleague made snide comments about my ‘child-free lifestyle’. I believe he was having a difficult time with his own children and, perhaps, felt envious.
I got incredibly upset and reported him to my manager. Is this what I’m going to have to put up with for rest of my life?
How can I get over this feeling of failure and fear of isolation?
BLOSSOM
There is a tone about your letter which troubles me. It is rather disturbing to be reminded that for some people having a baby is almost akin to buying a new ‘designer’ accessory — something to enhance the image they present to the world.
Some women get pregnant without thinking it through — not just those with problems you mention, but ‘normal’ people too.
Let this be written across the sky: a newborn baby is an infinitely precious soul, and taking care of it must mean a lifetime of sharing and sacrifice. This is serious — and far more than a matter of ‘lifestyle’.
I do understand your instinctive sense that it’s somehow a badge of success as a woman to get pregnant and bear a child.
Many years ago I shared that primitive feeling, believing I had ‘failed’ my natural role when I couldn’t bear a healthy baby.
By the way, you must never be so superficial as to look at a pregnant woman and assume it must have been ‘easy’ for her.
A little more imagination and empathy is called for in these matters. Those are the very qualities which enable you to take on the loving burden of motherhood.
Although a part of me understands the feeling of failure, understanding is not the same as condoning what appears to me to be a self-centred impulse behind your letter.
You wanted to get pregnant just to prove that you could and (bizarrely) you went through IVF to justify your childless state.
There are plenty of contradictions here. I have met many women whose longing for a baby consumes them — those who have suffered miscarriages, for example.
They are never interested in parading round showing off the bump to say, ‘Look at me!’ They pine for a real squirming, crying, puking, pooing baby to care for.
Since you have no wish to have a child in your life then, forgive me, I can’t be sorry this has come to pass. Don’t you think it was petty to report your colleague for his silly comments when you guessed a reason for them?
It might be better not to parade the joys of a sexy, childfree life, and also to stop being concerned about the labels people give you.Yes, they can be insensitive, but you must learn to deal with it.
You won’t be isolated from colleagues and friends with children if you show warmth and sympathy to their family demands — and also rustle up an interest in the offspring of those you once cared for.
People will love you for that, you know. You will be such a success as a human being, as a woman, as a friend, as a colleague. Be grateful for your life with the man you love, but start reaching out to others as well.
How can I make my daughter move out?
DEAR BEL,
I’m feeling incredibly nervous about how to approach the next step with my daughter.
She’s 31 with a very patchy work history. Having fallen out with several employers she shows no signs of making moves, but is living at home with me and I’m feeling exasperated.
She has a top degree and teaching qualifications and is currently coming to the end of a temporary part-time contract.
She began a PhD in October 2013 and spent a year away, but complained about her supervisors continually.
She re-registered this academic year and has accepted this term’s payment of £4,000, but has submitted no work, saying she was too busy.
The money situation is complicated — but this is the main issue: I don’t want her to stay living here. She sleeps till after midday on days she’s not working and cooks after 11pm, which wakes me up.
On the days she works she comes home at 6pm and immediately goes to bed for one to two hours then complains about not being able to sleep.
She seems unable to find a direction — despite seeing about five counsellors over the years.
When she was 14 I left her father, who’d used us to hide being gay and is now married to a man 20 years younger.
She’s been unable to come to terms with this or let go of the victim narrative. I was determined she wouldn’t suffer as a result of me leaving and endlessly felt single parent pressure.
Now I’ve been as supportive as I can, but have to think about me — perhaps for the first time. I’ve been as empathic as possible and have challenged her appropriately.
But although I have an MA in counselling and psychotherapy, she has used up everything in my toolbox and now I feel disabled.
Six years ago I had brain surgery and I crave some sort of peace. I suspect my reluctance to broach the next discussion is fear of her very strong reaction and temper.
She once started to throw glasses in the kitchen and I had to call the police. So it’s fear and guilt that stops me arranging my life the way I need to for me. I’d appreciate a strategy.
SHONA
Many readers will no doubt respond to your letter with a call for ‘tough love’. It’s a natural instinct, and I’ve often suggested that parents are stronger, tougher in laying down the law.
Yet I can hear exasperated and exploited parents respond, ‘That’s all very well, but it’s not so easy.’
And of course they’d be right — because the seeds of the present situation were sown in the past, and it’s very hard to fight your way through the thicket that’s sprung up as a result.
So here we are. You are a woman with (as you say) a ‘toolbox’ of training and resources at your fingertips, which the vast majority of people do not have.
Yet you don’t know what to do. Looking back, you might have done many things differently, starting with not allowing your daughter to even start writing a ‘victim’ script for herself.
But you felt guilty, and almost certainly fussed over her too much. I suspect your ‘appropriate challenges’ came rather too late.
To be frank, I have no patience with an able-bodied 31-year-old squandering her life and ‘using’ her mother. This PhD nonsense is a money-wasting way of postponing the time when she has to pull herself together (good phrase, that) and knuckle down to work, as the rest of us have to.
Your daughter is highly educated (how fortunate she is) and should know it is shameful to be sponging off a mother who has been sick and wants a break.
What’s more, if she has seen ‘about five’ counsellors over recent years, then those people were practising the wrong sort of therapy. I often suggest counselling to readers; sadly, this sort of story gives such advice a bad name.
As for the story about breaking glasses and you calling the police — that’s intolerable behaviour.
It pains me to read a letter from a mother who is so obviously terrified of her adult child, so now you must be stronger and change this pattern. But you need to bring in somebody else from outside.
Do you have a close relative or family friend (perhaps a former colleague) who can mediate? After all, your daughter won’t listen to you; that’s the way it goes in families.
You need to invite the third party round at a time you know your daughter will be there, and then ask her to join you for a meeting about your health. Put yourself at the centre of events. It will do her good.
Tell her you’ve been feeling anxious (true, after all) and need to move on to the next stage of life.
Run through the options. She needs to move out, but how? Can she share with a friend? Do you know somebody who wants a lodger?
There are no alternatives to her going and none must be offered. Can you put your home on the market so you can downsize?
The key thing is for you to be calm and decisive. You must not let your guilt at walking away from a non-marriage 17 years ago turn you into a victim now. This can’t go on. This daughter needs a touch of — yes! — tough love, for her sake as much as yours.
And finally: Love is the true test of humanity
Some weeks set you on the rack and this was one. Like millions of others I felt deeply afflicted by the evil carnage in Paris.
At the same time my mother was in a busy hospital ward, ready to be sent home to my father, who is in poor health himself.
Luckily, they live only 15 minutes away, so now it’s all systems go. People in their 90s deserve maximum family care — and this my parents are going to get.
Then came the morning when my husband discovered the fox had got into our hen house and slaughtered seven of our eight clucking girls.
Bel answers readers’ questions on emotional and relationship problems each week.
Write to Bel Mooney, Daily Mail, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT, or email bel.mooney@dailymail.co.uk.
A pseudonym will be used if you wish. Bel reads all letters but regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence.
Later that day he heard the sharp keening of a distressed animal by the river. It was an otter cub, running hither and thither, looking for its mother.
What to do? Expert advice tells you to leave the animal, because mum won’t return while you are there. Sure enough, he went out on patrol later but heard no noise. We were glad.
But next day we opened the curtains to see the baby otter lying on the grass. Perhaps the mother had been killed, perhaps she’d abandoned her cub.
As we looked sadly at the little animal, my husband became convinced he saw it breathe. So we took it inside and in the warm kitchen I instinctively tried to massage its heart, covered it, gave milk through a dropper, stroked the soft head and willed it to live. Was that a movement..? But no. The otter lay wrapped in its own beauty — dead.
Of course, one tiny animal life snuffed out leaves not a mark in the chronicles of the universe. No comparison between the horror of loss of human life in a wicked world, and the health problems of beloved family members. Of course not.
Yet compassion is not a cake, to be apportioned and used up. No, it’s a muscle that grows stronger with exercise. To reach out heart and imagination towards a single creature is to treasure life itself — and that love of all living things, known and unknown, is the truest test of humanity.
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