Dear Coleen

MY wife and I are both 76 and have six children, aged between 53 and 38. In our time together we’ve always had a healthy and active lifestyle, the result of which, even now, is that we still regularly make love.

A few weeks ago, our 38-year-old son and his wife came to stay with us over night, so they could attend a nearby party that one of their friends was having.

The morning after, my wife and I were making love at the same time as my son and daughter-in-law happened to be going downstairs.

They heard us and when we came downstairs, our son, who was in a really bad mood – probably due to a hangover – told us it was totally out of order for “two old relics” of our age to still be having sex and that we should be ashamed of ourselves, especially with other people in the house.

My response was to remind him that, when he was only 18, he got two young girls pregnant, within a week of each other, and then refused to take on the responsibility of being a father, and never showed any remorse or shame.

Our daughter-in-law went mad at our son because he’d kept this a secret from her, and she was especially angry because he knew she’d never known her biological father, who did a disappearing act before she was born.

Since then our son and daughter-inlaw’s relationship has gone downhill because, even though she’s told him to man up and apologise to us, he remains insistent that I’m the main cause of their rift.

Even though I feel reluctant, should I be the bigger person and try to repair the damage by apologising to our son, or wait until he does?