I NEED TO TELL MY PAL HER FIANCE IS DULL

DEAR BEL,

I HAVE a lifelong friend known since school. We’re now in our mid-40s. I was a terribly timid child and always the odd one out, while she didn’t care what anyone thought of her, and was so witty and vivacious she sucked everyone into her orbit. She took me under her wing, and we’ve been the closest of confidants ever since. I’ve always looked up to her as my glamorous and exciting friend. While most of our circle married solid and dependable men and had children (me included), she’s had a string of boyfriends. She’s very good-looking, and the life and soul of the party. Men have never been able resist.

Throughout the time I’ve known her she’s had a number of boyfriends, all of whom have been as equally charming as she is, but despite how fun and interesting their love affairs seem, they have never lasted. The last man before her current partner was a successful artist whom she’d been seeing for two years, but who broke her heart when he left her for another woman.

Her new boyfriend, whom she started dating just a few months after this heartbreak is very boring, not that good-looking and appears to have no sense of humour. I thought he’d be temporary, so imagine my shock when she announced she had got engaged to him after just a year together.

I can’t help but feel her heartbreak has led to her ‘settling’ for her incredibly dull new husband-to-be. KIRSTEN

MANY people witness loved ones start relationships with people who seem all wrong, but it is never wise to interfere.

Obviously, should you discover something serious (like a history of gambling or infidelity) about a loved one’s partner, then the impulse to reveal all will be understandably strong. But in your case you just judge the man as dull, plain and unworthy of your brilliant friend.

Is that fair? No, it’s not. It would be wise for you to try to make the imaginative leap and see that at this stage of her life she is probably longing for stability and decency. What if she feels that within the heart of this quiet man she has found a new home?

Read Far From The Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy, or (if you’ve no time) watch the classic film starring Julie Christie, Alan Bates and sexy Terence Stamp. At the beginning of the novel, Bathsheba Everdene turns Farmer Oak down, because he’s just too ordinary. By the end she realises there can be nobody else to heal her bruised heart. Or read Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, to understand exactly why the dull, dependable Captain Dobbin got his love, Amelia, in the end.

It could help you realise that criticising this man you hardly know might lose you a very dear friend.