WHY DO I FIND HIS ACCENT SO OFFPUTTING?

QI have been in a relationship for three years with a lovely man. He is kind, generous and wonderful with my daughter.

He is fun to be with, a dream, but one thing bothers me. I get niggled by his lazy language: he pronounces ‘th’ words with ‘f’. So ‘think’ becomes ‘fink’, ‘thanks’ becomes ‘fanks’. It really spoils his demeanour. He has a good job, and I often wonder what people must think when he is in meetings. I find it offputting. Why is this bothering me so much? I can’t get past it.

AIt might help if you reframe your thinking a little. You call his language ‘lazy’ but it isn’t laziness. Rather, his accent is a reflection of the area and culture that he has been brought up in. I wonder if you are embarrassed by it (especially if it is different from most of the people you know), but please don’t fall into the trap of thinking that a difference in accent means that someone is less intelligent. Only you, however, will know if this will be a deal breaker. So, if it really bothers you, you could try gently mentioning it to him and see if he would be averse to changing it a little. Be sure to do it non-judgmentally and acknowledge that the problem could be partly your perception. But he sounds lovely. Wonderful step-parents don’t grow on trees and if you ended this relationship because of this small detail, I think you could find you regretted it. Perhaps you are too worried about how other people might view him when you need to look more at who he really is. As for what his colleagues think, he is clearly valued at work and, from your description of his character, I suspect it might be: ‘What a nice guy’.

CONTACT CAROLINE Write to Caroline West-Meads at: YOU Magazine, PO Box 5332, Dublin 2, or email c.west-meads@youmagazine.ie. Caroline reads all letters but regrets that she cannot answer them all personally. DON’T FORGET: BEL MOONEY’S ADVICE COLUMN APPEARS EXCLUSIVELY IN FEMAIL EVERY THURSDAY – ONLY IN THE IRISH DAILY MAIL