Agony Uncle

Dear Richard Should my daughter come out to her 98-year-old granny? Q

A couple of years after divorcing her husband, our daughter told us she was gay, and was in a relationship with a woman. We would never have guessed, but we reassured her of our unconditional love and support, and we all just got on with our lives.

Gradually we told our friends and family, and they have all been loving and positive. However, my mother, who is 98, adores our daughter but simply cannot understand why she divorced, nor how she can possibly cope on her own. At the time we decided not to tell her that her beloved granddaughter was in a relationship with another woman.

Now three years have passed and our daughter is to marry her partner. This feels like a good moment to tell my mother the truth, though she is unlikely to be able to come to the ceremony. But for my daughter’s sake I dread her reacting negatively; and I guess I don’t want to risk causing my mother sorrow at the end of her life. What do you think?

–Anon. Worcs

Dear Anon A

You might be surprised – and pleasantly so – by your mother’s reaction to being told that her dearly beloved granddaughter has found serenity and happiness with another woman.

You say she is deeply puzzled by the breakdown of your daughter’s marriage – of course she is; she’s missing a vital piece of the jigsaw. You yourself were taken by surprise when your daughter came out to you, remember? Why should your mother have somehow guessed the truth?

Yes, she’s 98. But she’s not some relic from the Victorian era. She was born in the “flapper” decade of the 1920s. She was a young adult in the 1950s and 1960s, a time of huge social enlightenment and change. She was barely middle-aged during the 1970s. You don’t tell me whether she has ever expressed any negative views on samesex relationships, but if she had, I’m sure you’d know by now – and I suspect you wouldn’t be writing to me.

My advice is to grasp this opportunity. Make sure your daughter’s on board with the plan first – again, if she were minded to keep the truth from her grandmother, I doubt whether we’d be having this correspondence.

If it were my mother, I would probably initiate a conversation about samesex relationships and marriages, to gauge her opinion. Take a positive line; say how wonderful you think it is that the old shibboleths are (mostly) in the past, and people can choose whoever they want to marry and settle down with.

Unless her reaction is hostile – and I sincerely doubt it will be – break the news to her. And it’s good news, isn’t it? One of the people closest to her heart has found happiness. Better still – there’s going to be a wedding! Even if she’s too frail to attend, she can look at the pictures, and I’m sure you’ll save her some cake. What’s not to like?

Dear Richard My girlfriend claims she used magic to make me fall in love with her Q

I’ve met a great girl and it was going really well between us. I knew she was a bit New Agey and into crystals, but I didn’t think about it much.

Now she has told me that after our first date, she did a magic spell to make me fall in love with her – she was quite funny about it all but she said things I found a bit weird, like I “belong” to her now.

I don’t feel great about the idea that she thinks I am with her because of her “spell” and not because I chose to be. It makes me feel that her grip on reality is less tight than I had thought, and also as if I don’t really matter to her as a person.

Is it just a harmless bit of fun, or should I feel alarmed? She is really funny and beautiful and I wouldn’t give her up lightly.

–Anon, via email

Dear Anon A

You’ve been spooked, haven’t you? Nothing like a bit of witchcraft to unsettle the senses and waken the superstitious elements that

lurk within us all.

Stop worrying. Of course it’s harmless fun. If there was any sinister intent, your girlfriend wouldn’t have told you about it, would she? She’d be casting her spells and muttering her incantations in secret.

I have no idea whether she genuinely believes that she holds magical powers, but here’s a newsflash for you. She doesn’t. Magic doesn’t exist, in the sense that there’s no rational basis for believing in any of it.

Magic is, in reality, all about psychological manipulation, whether it’s a conjurer convincing us he can make a rabbit vanish, read our minds or pluck the ace of spades from our ear. Your girlfriend is, in the most innocuous way, messing with your mind.

Of course, in one sense she has cast a spell on you – like the song says, what is love but a kind of witchcraft? And

what’s wrong with a spot of saucy sorcery? But that’s as far as it goes – you know you’re with her of your own free will, and that’s what counts.

You say she’s funny and beautiful, so I think you should accept these quirks as part of the package. Whether she literally believes in her occult dabblings or not, she sounds a lot of fun and I predict that life with her, if you stay together, will never be boring.