DEAR JANE: My adult daughter discovered something ‘twisted’ about my sex life and now she won’t let me see my grandkids

Dear Jane,

My husband and I have had a loving marriage for over 35 years.

Before our children were born, I had a job that took me away during the week. To keep our romance alive, my husband and I wrote letters to each other every day. Our sex life has always been fairly active, so let’s just say the letters were honest steamy.

I saved every letter we sent to each other and kept them in my dresser drawer so I can always remember that time in our lives.

Recently, my now adult daughter went into our bedroom to get one of my shirts to borrow, and she accidentally opened the drawer under the drawer that I had told her to open.

Dear Jane: My adult daughter has discovered something “twisted” in my sex life and now she doesn’t want me to see my grandchildren.

The drawer contained all our letters, as well as our collection of toys, of which there are quite a few.

She read some letters and then appeared downstairs, looking completely shocked.

Now I realize that children – even those who are now 32-year-old mothers of three – don’t like their parents having a sex life, and that ours is probably more active than most people our age. (You see, as retirees we have all the time in the world to spend with each other, so we usually get together two or three times a day.)

But now my daughter refuses to let us see our grandchildren alone, because apparently we are ‘perverted’ and ‘harming’ them.

I really don’t know what to do or say. We love our grandchildren and miss them terribly, but we cannot unsend the letters. They’re steamy, yes, but nothing special. Although, according to her, only the most “twisted” people would indulge in the practices described in our correspondence.

I can assure you that there is absolutely nothing “twisted” going on, then or now.

Do you have any advice on how to reopen the lines of communication?

International bestselling author Jane Green provides sage advice on readers’ most burning issues in her column about Aunt’s agony

By,

Young at heart

Dear young at heart,

I must confess that I am astounded that your daughter has no remorse in going into your private drawers and reading your private correspondence, and furthermore that she now has the audacity to punish you for her own transgression.

Snooping is a terrible thing.

We’ve all done it, but most of us quickly find out that nothing good ever comes from it. We know we can’t ask our loved ones about the messages we find, or the strange search histories that show up on the computer, because we weren’t meant to search.

But actually, this isn’t about your daughter’s bad behavior. What a terrible indictment of this supposedly accepting modern era that a healthy sex life between a married couple could lead to something as extreme as being denied your rights as grandparents.

It’s a terrible thing to keep your grandchildren from you – unless of course there is no information here.

If it’s simply that you and your husband are having sex—and honestly, I don’t care what inclinations that entails—it shouldn’t have any impact on anything outside of your marriage.

Unfortunately, the only thing I know to be absolutely true is that you can’t reason with unreasonable people.

This is a tricky one. Your grandparent visitation rights vary from state to state in the US. Grandparents do not always have an enforceable right to see their grandchildren, especially if those grandchildren are part of an intact family (that is, their mother and father are still together).

Either way, it sounds like professional intervention would be helpful here. Perhaps a first point of contact is to suggest a family therapist for you, your husband and your daughter. If she has a partner, they should be involved too.

Keep talking, and especially: listen to how each of you feels about what happened with a professional in the room who can handle extreme feelings seems like the right way to proceed.

You can discuss how you feel about the violation of your privacy. Your daughter can talk about confronting the inescapable fact of her parents’ sexuality and, most importantly, how she thinks this will affect her children.

There is still far too much shame attached to sex. It’s great that you and your husband have such a healthy sex life – I hope you can continue to enjoy it.

And I also hope that you can solve this as a family.