Dear Bel
I'm 35 and have been married to my wife for seven years. She is 33 and an absolute stunner.
I work abroad half the year with an excellent salary and yearly bonus, and spend weeks in strange cities living out of a suitcase in a hotel room, while she works part-time in a company with lots of friends. We decided right from the start not to have children, so I got a vasectomy.
When we are together we get along great, with a fantastic sex life. The problem for me is that sex is still fantastic for my wife when I'm absent.
At first I didn't know about her numerous affairs, but she's become increasingly less discreet. Every week or so I'll get a WhatsApp message from some friend with a picture of my wife snogging some guy in our local pub.
At first she denied everything but eventually started being honest. Much to the annoyance of all my male friends, I began to accept this is a feature of our marriage which – if I loved her and wanted to stay with her – I'd have to accept. I don't have affairs myself. The only person I want sex with is my wife.
She doesn't have affairs when I'm home. How do I get my friends, my family and every meddling person in my life to stop bothering me and demeaning me because I'm willing to embrace a different sort of marriage?
JAMIE
Bel Mooney replies: Jamie, I know what I write will run the risk of being called 'meddling'. But you ask how to stop family and friends expressing affection and real concern for you.
Can you understand how hard it is for them to witness what's going on – when every word of your email is enough to make a stranger like me anxious for a man surely heading for heartbreak?
I'm sorry, but it doesn't sound to me as if the wife whose beauty makes you so proud is much of a 'stunner' on the inside. You're paying a high price for her sexy looks, and if you were my son I'd be worried about your future.
Deciding not to have children is just fine – but you had the snip while still only in your 20s. Did your pleasure-loving wife lead that decision? What if this marriage fails and you end up falling for a lovely, loyal lady who longs to be a mum? What if, by then, you long for stability, for normality?
Vasectomy reversal can be attempted even if several years have passed since the original procedure – but the longer it's been, the less likely it will work.
In the meantime, I hope your wife doesn't get pregnant with another man's child. It can happen. Or what if she becomes crazy about one of her flings? That can happen, too, especially as you work away for so long.
Say she falls in love and then decides that, after all, she wants to have a baby by the new passion? Where would that leave you – apart from heartbroken and angry? Pessimistic it may be, but this marriage sounds like an accident waiting to happen.
Openly snogging other men in the pub which you go to? That's thoughtless to the point of cruelty. Does the bartender grin with amused pity when you rock up, after a long stint abroad, earning the money to spoil her with? (And I bet you do).
Your male friends obviously hate to think of you being publicly humiliated – and I'm right with them. Honestly, they are not the ones 'demeaning' you.
The 'different sort of marriage' may sound liberated, yet the freedom is all one-sided. Some might say you're being scammed, even if some women applaud your wife's free-wheeling style.
You're being treated with neither fairness nor respect, and I fear that one day soon (in a lonely hotel possibly?) you will find your remaining self esteem at rock bottom.
This is the point at which somebody out there will call me 'judgmental'. Or, as you might say, 'meddling'.
What else can I be – even if, as an adult, you say that you've made a free choice?
It would hardly be kind or honest of me to tell you to live your own truth (or similar guff) and that since you are OK with being cheated on publicly, your friends should mind their own business and shut up. I just can't do that.
Nor can I help but wonder how long this sad state of affairs (literally) can continue, before you realise it's highly unlikely to make you happy in the long run.
My son's f*ckless and my mum is frail
Dear Bel
I don't know where to turn. I'm being squeezed from both ends of my family – a 37-year-old son and 88-year-old mother – until my own life is of no consequence.
There's no answer to their problems but I need help to keep my own sanity.
I'm 66, happily married, we own our home and family is all; three children and five adored grandchildren.
Our younger son had a child at 19, whom we pretty much brought up for years until the mother sorted herself out. We then still had him over half the time.
My son met someone else, had two more children but the relationship failed three years ago. He was left with the boys until that lady also decided she wanted to be a part of their lives and has them three days a week.
He managed to keep the house with huge help from us – for the boys' sake. We're on a pension and doing fine, but have to think of our future.
Meanwhile, my husband wants to retire and leave the business and machinery to our son, who's working with him and learning. The problem is he arrives at 11, takes a lunch break, then leaves to pick up the boys.
We've tried everything – pick them up three days a week and look after them in the holidays – but he still won't work a full day.
The business, just handed to him, is now failing and he's asking for more money. This has been going on for 18 years. He is very charming.
The other end... my father died three years ago and I've done everything for my mother since. She has no interest in anything and never cooks. One might think she's depressed but I think it's just apathy. She's been diagnosed with Alzheimer's but is still very well.
My difficulty is how she treats me, and tells everyone I'm awful and never visit — but my brother (who does very little) is 'marvellous'. I need advice on how to cope with all the stress.
BARBARA
Talk frankly to a good friend about your anxiety. Offloading can really help, writes Bel Mooney (file image)
Bel Mooney replies: One of these problems feels easier to deal with than the other, although I can easily understand why both cause you immense stress. Both must be very frustrating, although my guess is that the situation with your mother is the least agonising.
She is nearing the end of her life, whereas your son has the rest of his before him — and it's not looking like a very steady or happy prospect.
As a daughter you're exhausted and often irritated; as a mother you probably wonder what went wrong to make this son so charming but f*ckless. Did he get away with too much?
You trace it back to that first baby he fathered at 19, 18 years ago. Since both the mother and father were irresponsible, you and your husband stepped in. I wonder if you had a history of making allowances for, and bailing out, that son in the years before, as well as since.
He sounds pretty entitled. Your longer letter says you think he has undiagnosed ADHD, which might go some way to excusing his lack of focus – but far from all the way.
What puzzles me is why – knowing his character flaws – your husband decided to hand his business over to a son who almost certainly showed no signs of buckling down to anything.
Has this now happened lock, stock and barrel? I hope not – because I'm suggesting tough love here. How come a 37-year-old father-of-three 'won't work a full day'?
It's outrageous! You've helped keep a roof over his head and money in his pocket, as well as looking after his children. Is it too late for your husband to postpone retirement and take his business back? I hope not because that's what should happen.
It's surely not too late for this son to get a short, sharp shock. Since he needs money for the children, wages should be leverage. I think your husband needs to get very tough indeed (even to the point of a big row) and leave you to deal with mother.
I suggest her behaviour, though hurtful, is indeed the result of depression as well as Alzheimer's. Because I've so recently experienced some of the difficulty and occasional hurt of caring for a very elderly mother, I can only advise stoicism. It will pass; you have no choice but to tell yourself that.
Make sure you carve out time for self-care: deep breathing, massage, beauty treatments, or whatever else can make you relax and think of yourself. Some people scoff at so-called 'pampering' but those moments can really help put stress into perspective.
And talk frankly to a good friend about your anxiety. Offloading can really help, because so many people identify with such family issues.
And finally: Dig deep, just like our Olympic stars
I have tried to catch some of the Olympics and it was during one of the women's cycling pursuit heats that the commentary caught my attention.
Mentioning the grim determination required, the commentator said: 'You ask – how much can you hurt yourself? Have you got any more to find?'
There was an important life lesson just waiting for me as the cyclists zoomed round the velodrome.
Athletes and sportspeople have no choice but to push themselves to the limit, to the point of agony. Then, once they have reached that point of 'hurt', they have to 'find' still more muscle-stretching, breath-burning strength from somewhere. They have to dig deep and then deeper still.
You could see it in the expression of Team GB's Keely Hodgkinson as she reached the last part of the 800 metres, every sinew stretched, face contorted, mind pushing, pushing, pushing her on – until elation lit up her features as beautifully as a gold medal gleams in the light.
Great Britain's Keely Hodgkinson running the women's 800m final during Paris 2024 where she won gold at the Olympic Games
But let's not forget the shining eyes of those who miss, who fall, who gulp and tell themselves that maybe next time they will stand on that podium. We can learn from them, too.
Children aren't taught enough about failure, nor about the punishing effort needed to be good at anything. The feebleness of the 'all must have prizes' brigade has done great damage to our young people, as has the side-lining of competitive sport.
The lessons of what's difficult should never stop – in all our lives. Tired in mind, body and spirit, broken-hearted even, we have to 'dig deep' – and then delve some more, determined to survive.
And when you realise you do have 'more to find' – yes, in spite of the pain - elation at your own toughness is both the goal and the gold.
Bel answers readers' questions on emotional and relationship problems each week. Write to Bel Mooney, Daily Mail, 9 Derry Street, London W8 5HY, or email bel.mooney@dailymail.co.uk. Names are changed to protect identities. Bel reads all letters but regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence
