He’s just told me he’s married – can I still trust him?
I didn’t have cosmetic surgery because, frankly, I’m afraid of it. And I cannot reconcile Botox with eating organic!
IN THEIR column for Inspire, TV’s Steph and Dom Parker, 51 and 53, draw on 20 years of marriage to solve your relationship problems . . .
QSIX months ago, I met a lovely man online. We got on immediately and everything happened very quickly between us. He’s kind, funny and successful — so I was totally devastated when he told me he was married.
He is separated from his wife — he rents a flat in London, while she lives in the family home in Surrey.
He said he didn’t want to tell me at first as he was worried I wouldn’t give him a chance, which is why he waited until things were serious between us. He says he is going to get a divorce; they just haven’t started proceedings yet. He only moved out a couple of months before we met.
I really love him, but it’s such a big lie. What do you think I should do?
DOM SAYS:
My wife doesn’t understand me. we’re separated, but still live together for the sake of the children. Divorce is so expensive. She won’t give me a divorce . . . how many times have women all over the world heard phrases like these?
i’m so sorry for you that, through no fault of your own, you have become one of them.
The sad situation is that you can no longer trust him, even if he is telling the truth. you should have been told at the start, but i understand that people do sometimes hold back information for fear of the results — and this may be the case here.
i don’t know anything about online dating, but i’d guess it might not be good to admit that you’re married.
He may have found himself in a tricky spot. He has fallen for you and must now let you know before things go wrong. However, it is extremely important information that should have come out much sooner. There is no shame in a failed relationship.
But that is giving him the benefit of the doubt, and i’m not sure he deserves it. The other possibility is that his unsuspecting wife is sitting at home, totally unaware of what is happening in London in the week.
Plenty of men work in town and only go home at weekends, and most are faithful to their wives. But there are also plenty who run two entirely separate romantic operations.
Have you been to his house? Until you have, you have no idea whether he is being honest.
And here’s the thing. even if he’s not lying to you, he may be hinting that there will be issues in the future that prevent your relationship from becoming permanent. i knew someone who spent 15 years saying his wife wouldn’t give him a divorce as an excuse not to marry his girlfriend. He simply didn’t want to commit.
Lots of men do this. They say the timing will be right soon — but soon never comes. By telling you now that he is married, he could be trying to have his cake and eat it. in future, you won’t be able to say you didn’t know.
So. what to do? i say, flip a coin. Heads he stays, tails he goes. well, not quite. i want you to go with the gut feeling you get with the result of your coin toss, not the result itself.
if it’s tails-he-goes and your gut doesn’t like it, then he stays. True love is worth fighting for. But if you do decide you want him to stay, he must immediately prove he is not lying and win back your trust.
failing that, dump him. STEPH SAYS: THiS is very common. But just because it’s not unusual doesn’t make it acceptable. The whole thing is deeply duplicitous. And it raises a host of questions. He’s married, so why was he on a dating site in the first place? i don’t believe for a second it was because he was looking for a real relationship. what man wants to jump immediately from a marriage to a serious relationship? Surely he was just looking for a fling. That doesn’t bode well. That he’s not being honest with you about this makes me doubt his sincerity. Not only did he lie to you by omission at the start, but i don’t think he has stopped doing so. what else is he lying about? even if you accept that he has left his wife, how do you know he’s not seeing other women? And if he isn’t now, well, you know the saying: ‘ when you marry your mistress, you create a vacancy.’ But supposing there is no further infidelity in the future, how do you feel about the fact that he duped you? Should your relationship continue, there will inevitably be all kinds of drama with a looming divorce — even more so if there are children involved. i’ve watched friends go through messy splits like this and it can be a nightmare. Had you been given the choice, you might have decided to spare yourself the pain. But he didn’t give you that choice. He lied to you until you were already involved, and now you’re stuck with your feelings — but you don’t have to be stuck with him. i know you’re hurt, but don’t let it dent your confidence. you are clearly a sincere, honest person and you should absolutely expect the same from the person you’re with. He fell for you, and so will someone else, but that person needs to be someone you can trust 100 per cent. The cornerstone of any relationship is total honesty. it can cause the most almighty rows, but it’s the only way any of us ever know if what we feel is real. if somebody had lied to me like this, i’d have blown them out of the water. Summon up your courage and walk away.
Solve your sex, love & life troubles
tried Botox? ‘I have an organic farm,’ she replies. ‘I eat organic food not to look younger, but to preserve my health. I use good creams to take care of my skin. I cannot reconcile eating organic food and doing Botox [or Bott-ox, as she pronounces it].
‘Some of my friends do yoga, eat organic, avoid alcohol, but they do Botox. I say, how can you live with that? It’s a total contradiction!’
Her beauty routine is minimal. ‘Every day, I use a cream, a lipstick and a perfume,’ she says. She even wears a slick of lipstick on the farm.
I sneak a glance at her hands, which look well-kept, with light liver spots on their backs. Her fingers are surprisingly long and strong-looking, with short, practical nails adorned only with clear varnish. They are the sort of hands that are good for working with animals. She will wear more make-up when she is meeting people but, day-to-day, she likes to keep things simple.
Besides, she adds, her mum was Scandinavian and they are much more focused on a healthy, natural type of beauty.
Ah, yes, her mother, the actress Ingrid Bergman, widely regarded in her day as one of the world’s most beautiful women. Wasn’t it difficult growing up in her shadow? She shrugs.
‘She was my mum! She was fun to be around. I liked to hug her and play with her. I didn’t look at her and think: “Wow, she’s such a beauty.” ’
And what about Rossellini’s non-identical twin sister, Ingrid? Has she ever been resentful that her sister stole the beauty genes?
‘Well, you know, we are 65,’ she says, in an amused, “get real” sort of tone. ‘ My twin is a scholar and she is incredibly shy. She couldn’t care less about my looks. She has always had completely different interests.’ TogETHER
with their siblings, the twins had an extraordinary upbringing. Ingrid Bergman was already married, with a daughter, when she fell for film director Roberto Rossellini (also married, with two children) while filming Stromboli, in 1950.
The scandal intensified when she gave birth to Rossellini’s son before leaving her husband. They married — Isabella and Ingrid were born in 1952 — but, four years later, the marriage was already falling apart. After that, all the siblings lived first in a hotel in Paris, then an apartment in Rome, looked after by nannies, while their parents flitted in and out for work and argued about custody.
But it didn’t make Rossellini think any less of her mother. Far from it: ‘She was one of the first women to have a huge career and be the breadwinner and still be at home,’ she says. ‘She gave me a wonderful example of how to reconcile work and family.’
Rossellini herself has married and divorced twice — to director Martin Scorsese and modelturned-Microsoft exec Jonathan Wiedemann, with whom she had a daughter, Elettra, now 34, before later adopting her son, Roberto, now 24.
Just weeks ago, she became a grandmother for the first time. She had been in the delivery room with her daughter, hoping to help, ‘but I was really bad’, she admits with a peal of laughter.
‘The delivery took 24 hours, but I fainted within the first two. I didn’t know emotion could be so strong that you could faint.
‘When I came to, my daughter said: “Mama! You’re fired!” I had to be taken home.’
She was allowed back the next day and promptly Instagrammed a photo of herself, without a trace of make- up, exhausted, but beaming, a picture of happiness cradling her new grandson.
When I ask whether she sees herself as beautiful, she laughs so much she can barely answer.
She once said she felt like an impostor with her looks and had to put on lots of make-up to go to parties so that people who had seen her pictures wouldn’t be too disappointed.
‘Well,’ she says, in a kindly tone, when she finally regains her composure. ‘ You know those photos take three hours of makeup, the best lighting, the best photographers . . . sometimes, when people saw me, the real Isabella, they would say: “You have the most beautiful sister!” ’ — and off she goes again into another gale of laughter. SHE
is truly puzzled as to where her appeal lay (‘I just thought: “How lucky I am!” ’), though others could certainly see it.
She went into modelling late, at 28, but almost instantly won the cover of Vogue, notching up another 22 Vogue covers over the years. When she asked the magazine why, they told her a simple fact: more copies were sold when she was on the cover.
During this time, she worked extensively with Bruce Weber and when, earlier this year, the photographer was accused by 15 male models of subjecting them to ‘unnecessary nudity’ and ‘coercive sexual behaviour’ — allegations that he denies — Rossellini was quick to leap to his defence. What troubles her about the Me Too and Time’s Up movements, she tells me now, is that people like Weber, her friend of 40 years, have lost their jobs over accusations of sexual abuse, without due process.
‘He might have done something wrong, but innocent until proven guilty, and then, if guilty, you are given proportionate punishment.’
Certainly, Weber’s shots of her were stunning, but then, so are the latest campaign images, albeit in a very different way.
Rather than that unattainable Eighties perfection, the new shots, by photographer Peter Lindbergh, look refreshingly real.
In one, she is leaning on her elbows, her face resting on one hand. If you try this pose at home, you’ll see it distorts the cheek you’re leaning on. You can see this in the Lindbergh shot.
You can also see the pigmentation marks on her forehead, neither masked with foundation, nor blanked out by strong lighting, and the shadows under her eyes.
And yet, goodness, how her face draws you in!
Now, her looks still have power, but the years have softened them into something more accessible, to which other 60-year-olds might relate. And that, surely, is where her magic lies for Lancome.