My husband keeps ogling a young mum
DEAR BEL I AM at my wits’ end. I am a very attractive woman in my 60s and my husband is ten years older. He is obsessed with a young woman in our street who is in her 30s.
Every day he looks out of the window in order to see her. He knows what time she takes her child to school and when she will be fetching him. So then he’s there, staring out of the window.
He makes sure that if he has to go anywhere it coincides with her times, so that he can go past her. He comments on what a lovely person she is. This is making me feel totally betrayed and I am slowly losing my feelings for him.
Can you tell me what to do? He doesn’t know I suspect him but if I were to mention it he would totally lose his temper.
Why aren’t men happy with what they have? I’m thinking of Tess Daly and her husband: she is such a beautiful lady but he has to go off looking at other women. Please help. JULIA
YOu know, if there was an answer to your question about men being happy with what they have, much advice column material would vanish over night. But it isn’t just men, you know. Women look, and lust, and stray, too. Do you remember a television advert where a whole bunch of elegant women rushed to a window to watch a bare-chested hunk swigging a soft drink? Call it admiring the scenery, if you like; that is no sin.
I hope that when I am very old I’ll still have it in me to glance at a young man and think, ‘Cor!’
On the other hand fancying, the nastier sort of flirting and actually being unfaithful are very different things.
unfortunately, for many men and women, the grass is greener over the fence — and the very existence of the fence makes straying all the more exciting to them.
But this is not your husband, is it? A man in his 70s has a bit of a crush on a young woman in her 30s and likes to look at her. It’s a bit sad and he should certainly be careful because the young woman in question could notice and think this very creepy indeed.
You don’t make it clear whether he actually knows this person enough to speak to her. That would make a difference, surely?
Sneaky ogling at a stranger though a window twice a day would be seen as a tad odd with no neighbourly acquaintance.
Nevertheless, when you say you ‘suspect’ him and feel ‘betrayed’ it seems to me you need to take a few deep breaths and examine those feelings.
I had a wonderful, merry friend (now dead, I’m very sad to say) whose partner had a jokey eye for the ladies. She used to shake her head in mock-pity, shrug, then grin as she said, ‘It’s like a dog chasing a car — if it caught up, it wouldn’t know what to do next!’
Her attitude was perfect. Her partner would smile, too, and nobody was jealous, or hurt. A little lesson for you there, perhaps. You say your feelings for your husband are threatened; this behaviour hurts you, irritates you and makes you feel less good about yourself. That’s enough to make me think something must be done.
Do you know the young woman to speak to? If not, then I think one day you should happen to be walking near the school and introduce yourself as a neighbour, chat about her child and suggest you walk back together. Be friendly, and make sure you encounter her again.
As you approach your place, wave to your husband cheerily, then whisper that if ever she sees him at the window, please excuse him: it’s just that she reminds him of somebody he knew long ago.
Look sad, as if there is a real story there, and that should deflect any problem with twitching curtains, and it should defuse the whole situation in time.
This will pass, but only if you put yourself in control and don’t make too much of his helpless admiration. Many people dream of that lost youth we glimpse in the beauty of others.