Published: 01:11 GMT, 14 February 2015 | Updated: 01:49 GMT, 14 February 2015
Dear Bel
My children (12 and nine) are becoming increasingly aware that our family is not the ideal you see on TV ads. It’s just the four of us — which makes me sad. They’ve never been to stay with their grandparents or taken out for the day. The grandparents don’t send presents, (just cheques) and show no interest in school plays or sporting prowess. We’ve moved to Cornwall but when we lived 30 minutes away they were the same.
’Tis not the lily brow I prize, nor roseate cheeks, nor sunny eyes — enough of lilies and roses! A thousand-fold more dear to me is the look that gentle love discloses — that look which love alone can see.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
Mother-in–law is now in a home but even when more active she would ignore them. Sadly Father-in-law died when my daughter was just two as he doted on her.
My own mother and father are a nightmare — self-absorbed, retired and divorced. We haven’t seen either for a year. I invited each down before Christmas but my father said it was too far — even though he’d just returned from a holiday in Arizona and boasted of the miles he’d driven. He’s also ‘far too busy with church activities’.
My ‘tired’ mother has one health crisis after the other. At Christmas she usually stays (not paying much attention to the children) but this year she wouldn’t travel, nor send presents — which the children couldn’t understand. Their friends’ grandparents go to school plays and take them out. It seems so unfair they don’t have this.
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'How I sympathise with your longing for the ‘ideal’ family, but how I wish you could accept that the idyll rarely exists' I wanted my children to have input from the older generation — and I too could do with some support. But because the divorce was far from amicable the family isn’t close; I rarely see my brother and sisters, as lots of untruths were told.
It’s impossible to talk to my mother because she has depression and anxiety. If I say anything to my father he accuses me of always causing trouble like my mother.
I know I need to build a circle of friends to fill this hole but (quite shy) I’m finding it a slow process. I just long for my family to be like others.
I went to a few counselling sessions but I feel I need some practical suggestions, not just a listening ear!
AMY
How I sympathise with your longing for the ‘ideal’ family, but how I wish you could accept that the idyll rarely exists.
The opening words of Anna Karenina have become rather a cliché: ‘All happy families are alike but an unhappy family is unhappy after its own fashion.’ Perhaps the great Tolstoy didn’t know many so-called ‘happy families’ but he’d have understood the family pain behind your letter.
I want you to focus on the rarely-quoted closing words of that great novel: ‘. . . my life now, my whole life, independent of anything that can happen to me, every minute of it . . . has a positive meaning of goodness with which I have the power to invest it.’
This is how we can escape our family fortunes — by understanding that no matter what our parents have done we still have the power to seize our own lives with both hands and make of them what we determine. Parents and children hurt each other; these pages are full of it. But we can all decide to create a good, strong life in our very own image.
So your mood of wistfulness must be banished. Of course I understand it, but it’s doing you no good. What’s more, I worry you will foster it in your children too. None of us can change the people who raised us; it’s too late for that. All we can do is try to come to terms with their failings and vow not to let the past spoil the present.
At the heart of your letter I sense sadness for yourself, rather than for your children. After all, kids go to school, make chums then grow up and create families of their own. But you have been wounded by family discord beyond your control and now feel very lonely, as well as needy. Of course you’re right that you have to create a circle of friends to fill the ‘hole’ where your family should (oh, what a weighty word!) be. So — how to start?
Speak to your children thus: ‘No present from Granny? No matter, darlings — she’s not well, and anyway, look at this instead.’
They have to live with what is — and you must show them how. And it’s vital for you to get out and about, instead of fretting for what you can’t have. You live in a beautiful area (I have a postal address) with lots going on, for adults and children.
I notice your village has a yearly festival which always needs volunteers. What a wonderful way to make friends and be useful. There is a ‘shop walk’ in July where you can meet people interested in local history. I think the local food bank needs volunteers.
As for ‘input from the older generation’ — you could go to the church and try to find out if there are local elderly people who need company and get your children involved in visits, bearing their home-made biscuits.
And why not contact your local Age UK (it’s ten miles away in Plymouth; call 01752 256020) to discover ways to volunteer, as part of their ‘befriending’ service?
There will no longer be a hole in your life if you pick up that spade and work to fill the vacancy.
Can our age-gap romance survive?
Dear Bel
I’m 48, separated for two years, with two children aged nine and five — their primary carer and a very proud dad.
After the birth of our second child my wife was diagnosed with postnatal depression. It had taken a while to get her to go to the doctors. She was prescribed medication and told to go back in six months.
But instead of medication she opted for red wine. After time (and some unpleasant incidents) we decided to part and so she moved out of the family home.
I work full time in a demanding job, but manage with the help of an amazing child minder, family and friends. The children have been my focus so I’ve kept my head down.
However, back in October I started seeing a lovely young lady at work. She’s 32. For some time we’ve had mutual respect and strong feelings for each other, but have been taking things very slowly.
We get on so well and have similar interests and want the same things in life. At the beginning of last month I instigated divorce proceedings.
Marie wants children and I’ve always said I would have more if/when I met the right lady. Things have been fine until now — but we’ve reached the point when, during a family weekend, she told her father and uncle.
Her dad is not happy with her choice of boyfriend and has made his feelings known quite strongly. I always thought this would be an issue.
The problem now is that Marie doesn’t know what to do. She told me how her father feels but doesn’t want to go against him. Despite her strong feelings for me she is torn.
We both know relationships take hard work and even last week she was saying she doesn’t care what other people think. I want to make this work for us and will fight to keep us together. Any advice?
DAVID
You marked your email ‘URGENT’ yet I advise real caution. By thinking of it in that way you are working yourself up into a panic, which will do your relationship no good at all. You need to step back, take some deep breaths and talk to yourself calmly about the situation.
You always suspected the age gap between you and your girlfriend would be an issue with her family — not to mention the fact that you are a not-yet-divorced father of two. You can imagine yourself in Marie’s father’s shoes, perhaps thinking how you’d feel if your daughter was in the same position.
You’d almost certainly warn her against the relationship and wish she could find a more ‘suitable’ boyfriend — wouldn’t you? Taking on a man 16 years older with two children who have suffered the loss (on so many levels) of a mother’s presence would be a real challenge for any young woman. It requires maturity, determination, tolerance and great love.
Regular readers may remember that I don’t consider large age gaps in couples necessarily a problem. My husband is a lot younger and I have known more than one happy marriage with a large age difference. No, my concern here is with the speed of things. You and Marie only started your relationship last October (even though you’d known each other for longer) so it’s too soon to even dream of a long-term future, with children. Especially in the circumstances.
I do understand that for the past seven years you have had a very tough time. Your poor wife’s postnatal depression was not treated in time (not your fault) and she chose to go down the terrible route of alcoholism — then agreed to leave the home. Such tragic events will have scarred everyone concerned. You don’t tell me any thing about her current role in the children’s lives. But, David, that is all the more reason not to rush into this — for your sake as well as Marie’s.
Your girlfriend is torn between her father’s demands and yours. I’m sure she loves you (not a word you use, I notice) but how can she discover what she really feels and wants when you are putting the kind of pressure on her your desperate email indicates? Talking of a ‘fight to keep us together’ is not helpful. What you need to do is precisely nothing. You need to let things be.
Go on focusing on those children who need you while enjoying as much time as you can with this lovely lady who shows you that there are still wonderful possibilities in life. Relax, be fun to be with and never ask what her family has said. Meanwhile Marie will gradually get to know your kids, so you can all have good times together. Don’t see this as a struggle but as an evolving joy.
If it is ‘meant’ to be that you have a future, then it will happen because she will make it — and you will have proved your constancy, like a knight. And, you know, if the relationship doesn’t work out, the experience will prove the training you needed to keep your head high in hope, and to find a new love in the future.
The day of red hearts is here again. So here are 14 lives in my life (in rough chronological order) to suggest that love transcends romance:
1. My mother and father
2. My three teddy bears and my first books- beginning a life-long passion for possessions
3. My first unrequited crush at Northway Primary School, Liverpool. I haven't seen him since we were 12 but Peter F. (unreconstructed left-winger) and I (now cosily right of centre) interact congenially on Facebook. Let him stand for various (unspeakable) chaps in my later life!
4. Philip P. The boy next door and my first real love. He was super-intelligent and we read poetry together. What happened to him after I broke it off in 1967?
4. Literature. Can't thrive without it. Just can't
6. Art. for me, few things can match the thrill of entering an art gallery
7. Jonathan- my first husband. We married as students in a whirlwind in 1968, stayed married for 35 (sometimes turbulent) years and for the past 11 years we've loved each other under separate roofs. Which is quite a result really
8. My home. I've truly loved three of them in my adult life and regard home-making as one of my life's great joys
9. My children. Daniel (born 1974) and Kitty (born 1980). I'm still potty about them- and very close
10. Gaynor R. We met making BBC programmes in 1987 and she'd the sister I never had. But she also symbolises wonderful female friendship with which I've been blessed
11. Bonnie- my Maltese dog. I got her from the RSPCA home in bath in 2002 and she's inspired six children's books and one memoir. I adore her but feel sadly aware she's now 13
12. Robin- my second husband who is the kindest, most easy-going and fun-to-be with man I have ever met. He can also fix anything!
13. You're reading it. My work.
14. Grandchildren Barnaby and Chloe, both born in 2012. To hear them shout 'Bibi' (Swahili for Granny) beats all the schmaltzy love songs in the world
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