Dad’s betraying mum’s memory... with his secretary
STEPH & DOM Solve your sex, love & life troubles
TV’s Steph and Dom Parker, 51 and 54, draw on their 20 years of marriage to solve your relationship problems . . .
QI’M AT a real loss. My mother passed away this summer after a long battle with breast cancer. She was 65. It hit our family hard, especially my father, who looked after her throughout. Yet, I recently found out that he has started seeing a woman from work. It is barely four months since the funeral.
She has been his secretary for as long as I can remember. How on earth can anyone move on so fast from the love of their life? My parents were married for over 40 years. He should still be grieving that loss, just as much as the rest of us. The more I think about it, the angrier I feel. A part of me also wonders how long this has been going on? Was he having an affair? I feel like he is betraying my mother’s memory. What should I do?
ADOM SAYS:
First, i’m terribly sorry for your loss. i feel for your grief — and for that of your father. A death in the family is always perfectly hideous, it must be awful for you. But it must also be terrible for your father to have lost his wife and partner of 40 years.
i agree with you that four months is a very short amount of time. i see that it doesn’t look good. We all deal with things differently and your father has a right to deal with his grief in his own manner, even if it’s inappropriate and makes you feel awkward and embarrassed.
there’s a lot of anger in your letter, and i have to say, i fully understand it. But you need to do so, too. You are angry with your father because he’s not managing his grief in the way that you would like him to.
But to love someone for 40 years and then to lose them must really mess with your head. He’s been seen out and about with his secretary, but you don’t know how close they are.
the reality is that over a working life a man can spend more hours with his secretary than his wife, and it can, of course, lead in one direction, but it can also lead to friendship. Perhaps she was a rock for him during your mother’s illness?
But it’s also true that grieving people can make bad choices, so i think you owe it to your father to explain your feelings and suggest he changes his behaviour. that is to say, to change his ‘public performance’. You are right that this is a little unseemly — society kind of dictates a year goes by before a new relationship is made public.
He has been an honourable man towards your mother — and you may find he’s very keen to avoid upsetting you, and consequently the problem might disappear from view.
if, as you suspect, he’s been ‘skulduggering’ around for years, then it’s not too much to hope that he might return to quietly conducting his business away from prying eyes and, more importantly, away from you. STEPH SAYS: tHis is quite a delicate one. i lost my mother 11 years ago and my father has been on his own ever since. For him, there was never any question that he wouldn’t be on his own. But losing your partner in your 60s is very different to it happening in your 70s. i know someone whose wife died in her early 50s and he was remarried within a year. People will raise eyebrows and see it as a reflection on how much he loved your mother. But the reality is, as with everything in life, we have no idea what goes on behind closed doors. i’ve talked to Dom about this: if i died first, i absolutely wouldn’t want him to be alone. some men are very capable and quite happy on their own, but others need the guidance and security of having a woman at home. You mustn’t see this as a judgment about the love that your father had for your mother. it isn’t. Your mother was the love of his life, but that doesn’t mean he can’t love again. He has a lot of living to do, and everyone has a right to be happy until their dying day. the memory of your mother will always be there — a new woman in his life will not diminish it. Your mother’s memory is untouchable. You have to adapt to this, and there are two things to consider that might help you in that. the first is practical. Project into the future and understand that you might be grateful that your father is not alone. that he has someone to keep him company and help take care of him, as he did your mother. it might be hard to imagine now, as your grief is so raw, but try to think what this picture looks like ten or 20 years down the line. the second thing is this. remember what i said before about nobody, apart from the two people in the couple, really knowing what goes on between them? Well. How do you know that your mother didn’t tell your father to do exactly what he’s doing? she knew she was dying, after all, and it’s possible that she told him to find someone to make him happy. she may very well have said: ‘Don’t you dare sit alone and watch tV all day.’ this relationship may actually have your mother’s blessing. Disapproval is hard to hide — don’t ruin your relationship with your father, when you could be enjoying your time with him. tell your father you love him and you want him to be happy and put your suspicions about the relationship to one side — remember, never ask a question unless you know what you’re going to do with the answer. IF YOU have a question you’d like Steph and Dom to tackle, write to: stephanddom @dailymail.co.uk