It’s not easy to love thy neighbour

READER responses matter very much to me, so let’s cut to the chase: some of you felt cross about last week’s response to ‘Jennifer’, who has moved twice because of bad neighbours and is suffering again.

My critics thought me unsympathetic, although they were all writing from a position of having experienced bad neighbour issues. Which is entirely understandable — and (as I said) I do realise selfish neighbours are a problem in communities.

Perhaps I was wrong to suggest that the writer ‘needs serious help from professionals’ at the start of my reply, but this wasn’t meant as a criticism, just a painful truth.

If she is continually so genuinely ill, unhappy and angry with her neighbours, what advice can be given? Regular readers will know I am not a harsh person but experience has taught me that saying, ‘Oh, poor you’ is rarely helpful — even if it’s easy.

Years ago I had a letter from a lady who was miserable and lonely in her village. Knowing its name, I spent ages researching activities available all around, even to the extent of looking up local buses. All this I printed in the kindest tone imaginable.

My reward was an abusive tirade for daring to suggest she could be proactive. She said I’d made her feel ‘worse than ever’. It was a lesson to me (still then rather green) that some people do indeed ‘carry the seeds of unhappiness deep within’.

One reader made the constructive suggestion that the lady would be better moving to a sheltered community. That was the setting for last week’s second letter (the elderly man who liked touching women) and one reader reprimanded me for being too kind to the man!

Praise came for my ‘bad neighbours’ reply (‘a masterclass... insightful and humane’) from someone who has the job of assessing police recruits. He explains these issues often consume police time and while the ‘older person/awful family next door’ situation is sadly common, it can be hard to assess who is at fault, or ‘who is judging whom’.

■ Bel answers readers’ questions on emotional and relationship problems each week. Write to Bel Mooney, Scottish Daily Mail, 20 Waterloo Street, Glasgow G2 6DB, 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.