BEL MOONEY: Should I forgive my husband for sending flirty texts?

Dear Customer,

MY HUSBAND and I are in our 60s and have been married for 30 years, but I found out a couple of months ago that he had an affair online. What I read on his phone was flirtatious and affectionate, with sexual overtones. I was devastated!

When I confronted him, he didn’t deny it, but said that it had ended about three months ago.

He said he didn’t realize it was an affair until I said so. He said he started innocently enough at work, then a few days later they met for coffee.

Apparently he ‘opened up’ to her about problems at home etc. They then kept in touch (on WhatsApp) for about three weeks.

There was no further contact for over a year, when she contacted him again for help with the car repairs. Or did she make contact again? She can’t remember.

This was at a time when my husband and I probably didn’t get along as well as we should.

We were both stressed out and spending a lot of time away from home and with each other. Also, he had had a heart attack and hadn’t felt well for about 18 months, which I think was a factor.

I’ve also been pretty sick since it happened. It seems like they were both getting more and more flirtatious and getting carried away and it took my husband almost a year to figure out what was wrong and stop it.

A whole year! How can it be?

He has assured me that he did not speak to her on the phone and that they never saw each other again, but he believes that if he had continued, they probably would have. He tells me that he is very sorry for what happened and that he doesn’t know why. He has also told me how much she loves me and she wants to stay together.

He has been trying very hard to be kind, helpful, and loving, and I am also trying hard to do the same, although at times I have had doubts as to whether this is what I want. I find that I am unable to accept what he has done and forgive him.

One day I’m fine, then everything will come back and I feel terrible.

My husband says that he never had any intention of leaving me or being with another woman and that he is bitterly sorry for what happened.

I would like to know your opinion: do you think that I expect things to improve too soon or am I exaggerating?

DIANA

Here we have evidence of a significant difference between men and women. For her husband, a flirtation carried out online for many months, but without clandestine sexual encounters, is obviously not ‘an affair’.

To you, reading ‘flirty’ messages on her phone (sent in two batches over, in total, an extended period) is simple disloyalty in action, and by ‘disloyalty’ read ‘betrayal’ or ‘infidelity’.

I have warned in the past that if a man or woman has lunch/drinks/dinner more than once with a co-worker and deliberately keeps this a secret from their partner, then it is a slippery slope, even if there is no sex. involved.

It must have been a terrible shock when he saw the emails. I understand that and am sorry for the loss of trust from him and the pain in mind, body and spirit that he must have been involved with. But now, unless you see clearly, you will make yourself much more miserable than you already are.

Why did it all happen? He had been ill, chatted up an attractive colleague at a time when the two of you were having a hard time, enjoyed the fun and flirtatious contact, then realized it was a bad idea and stopped it.

Nobody had sex. No one died. A man and a woman flirted and on the flirting scale it was pretty mild. This was definitely not the end of the world.

Don’t think me unsympathetic, because I know how these things can hurt for months or years and I worry about any reader who is deeply unhappy and unable to see beyond that feeling.

But you say that even though your husband is trying very hard, ‘I don’t think I can accept what he has done and forgive him.’

Okay, so what’s the alternative? That you break away and face the rest of your life alone? That you add to the bitterness and forever punish him with resentful silence and tears for his heinous crime of wanting to flirtatiously ‘talk’ to another woman online?

Surely you don’t want any miserable results? In that case, you have to get rid of the word ‘incapable’ and acknowledge that you are, if you will, perfectly capable of seeing this for what it was. He wasn’t happy and that’s why he was looking for a little pleasure in the words exchanged with another person.

Honestly, just modify the scenario and imagine that it could have been you doing the same! Would you expect to be ‘forgiven’?

You now have the option to let it damage you permanently or not. If I were you, I would do everything I could to get to the bottom of why they were both so unhappy at that moment and I would swear to never let it happen again. Talk, talk, talk and then talk some more.

Consciously start doing things together. Work in the now with a view to a future that you share.

Oh please . . . move on before it’s too late.

Can I exorcise my toxic dead mother?

Dear Customer,

I once wrote to you about my abusive mother.

I had no relationship with her at all – she was a completely toxic woman who never said a kind word to me or my brothers and hit us for no good reason.

She died last summer, and because I hated her every day she was alive, my feelings haven’t changed. I hate her under the grave.

I wanted to write him a letter to tell him how his treatment of us made me feel, but I never did.

Now that she’s gone I feel like there’s no closure and I still hate her like she’s still here. I know it’s useless and I can’t change anything, but she’s consuming me.

What I can do?

JANINA

My short response to your brief but heartfelt email is: please don’t ruin the rest of your life by hating.

You must have known that I would say that, just as I have suggested in the past that people like you write a letter to the dead person who made their life a misery.

Pour it all into a letter: hold nothing back and write carefully on real paper, then put the page(s) in an envelope, then destroy that letter by burning or burying it. . . yes, I’ve heard that it can really work.

Such a careful procedure can bring “closure” and it is never too late to try it.

Those who perform the ritual (because that is what it is, and actually a form of magic within the human psyche) have reported feeling lighter in spirit afterward.

If you continue to hate, then you are effectively allowing that woman to haunt your days.

If you exorcise her now, you will own your life.

My fears for trans teens

Dear Customer,

I am a transvestite in my 60s. My partner and I don’t live together but when I tell her she accepts and encourages me to do it from time to time.

I’ve been like this since my teens, keeping it a secret. I read biographies of April Ashley, Caroline Cossey and Jan Morris and felt like I felt more feminine too.

I was wondering about the transition, but I didn’t. Instead, I got married and had children and now grandchildren, which I never would have had if I had chosen to have surgery.

Now I enjoy the best of both worlds, although I do not go out as dressed as I would like. But I’m glad to have an understanding woman to help me.

What I am saying is that I am concerned that many young adolescents these days are encouraged to transition before they are old enough to really understand.

Yes, I know there are many who actually suffer from gender dysphoria, but I know from experience that it can be more complicated. I could have made a serious mistake and I’m glad I didn’t.

Thank you very much for writing this very timely email, which will interest the thousands of people who are deeply disturbed by aggressive ‘trans’ activism, especially Nicola Sturgeon’s determination that 16-year-olds should be considered old enough to address the complex problem and make mature decisions.

In my opinion, that resolute obsession is the polar opposite of ‘nice’, because it could ruin the lives of many young people. His letter suggests only one reason why. Nowadays you would be pressured to call yourself a ‘trans woman’ and maybe even take the (often painful) route of hormones and surgery.

Instead, he acknowledged his penchant for cross-dressing and led two lives, one as a conventional family man and the other as someone who was happy wearing feminine clothing whenever possible.

I see nothing wrong with that. Your email provided a male name, but you signed in with the female version of that name. So I’ve chosen for you an abbreviated pen name used by both men and women, and I wish you the best of luck with whatever character you’re in when you read this.

And finally… Work out and hit a punching bag!

Every Tuesday morning at 10am I go to a small local gym for a session with my cheerful trainer, Jenny.

I’m progressing so much that I can deadlift 15kg ten times and shoulder press two 5kg dumbbells again ten times. And do both sets three times. That’s why I can’t tell you enough that it’s never too late to start exercising.

Every week before I start boxing, Jenny asks me if I’m feeling aggressive. I always am! The harsh sound of my gloves hitting the pads she’s holding is so deeply therapeutic that it always makes me feel better. But why?

Aggression is the cause of so much suffering and pain in the world. It’s an ugly thing: outside a pub on a Saturday night when the fists start flying or right there in the Kremlin. I hate aggressive people who get you into arguments to look for a ‘fight’.

And the kind of hysterically opinionated anger you see so often on social media is horrifying. Why, then, is it okay for me to think of someone/something that makes me angry and imaginatively want to hit them every week?

Maybe it’s because that particular exercise can keep you from feeling helpless. Although you may think that journalists are lucky to have a ‘voice’, I can assure you that we feel just as frustrated and powerless as most people.

For example, I go to Bath and have to pay for parking with a phone app that I can’t get to work: blow to the tyranny of technology. I have to cancel a visit to London to see a friend with cancer from the rail strikes: thwack at strike-contagion.

As a keen observer of politics, it saddens me that there is now no party I can give full allegiance to – bashing weak and awake politicians who have lost my vote.

I read that elementary schools have guidance from the trans-activist group Stonewall that babies are ‘given’ a sex at birth: fuck all the nonsense that says biology isn’t real. And so.

Yeah, that feels better. . .