BEL MOONEY: I feel sexy and young, but all my man wants is a cuddle 

Dear Bel,

My partner and I have been together for 11 years. We had a very loving, physical relationship full of laughter and happiness.

Life-changing illness hit us hard, but he recovered with stoic determination and humour and I was touched by his courage.

My problem is, I love him, but I’m not ready to feel like an old person!

I’m 67, youngish-looking, interested in fashion and make-up, slim and used to be considered attractive.

We decided to move to the countryside for a new start: peace, quiet and quality of life.

It was hard for me to leave family and friends, but I felt I needed a break. We enjoyed our new life, but it no longer included a physical relationship, as his medication had caused a complete loss of libido.

I found this so difficult. All the fun has disappeared, all the passion. We are just like brother and sister.

He will give me a cuddle and a kiss with no sexual element and he gets upset if I try to discuss it. He thinks I should just accept it.

We had counselling after hospital, but he gave up after one session. I continued for six months. Also, I do almost everything on my own. He’s contented at home and in the garden.

I like walking, dancing, still feel young and want to make the most of my life. I miss my old friends and family, but he’s adamant he won’t move back. He loves our new home — and it is lovely.

I try to see my children as often as I can, but feel guilty about leaving him. He says he’d do anything for me, but clearly won’t.

I feel unattractive — as if just marking time until I die. I do voluntary work and try so hard to keep my spirits up.

I know he loves me, but our life consists of shopping, cooking, TV and gardening.

Am I expecting too much? I feel like a young person in an old age pensioner’s life.

KAYE

The question posed here, ‘Am I expecting too much?’ put me in mind of that quotation by the 19th-century American writer, Henry David Thoreau: ‘Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined.’

I used to have it up on my wall, but took it down a few years ago. Why? Because writing this column convinced me that dreams can do damage.

Yes, the freewheeling romanticism of Thoreau’s words is appealing — especially when you are young. Of course, aspirations are good, but not if unrealistic. The trouble is, nagging discontentment can be so corrosive — which is why (now I’m older and wiser) I am in favour of making the most of the life that you have.

What you rarely see quoted is Thoreau’s next sentence: ‘As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.’ That part is much less obvious. Is living simply truly going in ‘the direction of your dreams’? I suspect many people would find a contradiction there — including you, Kaye.

You and your husband decided on ‘peace, quiet and quality of life’ — yet now you are chafing at what you see as the dullness of this existence.

It so happens that the country life you complain of just about sums up the way my husband and I love to spend our time — and millions of others would think it sounds perfect. Which fact will be no consolation to you, but just worth thinking about.

The lack of physical affection is, of course, at the heart of your discontentment — and must surely fuel the more general sense of loneliness. I’m wondering whether reigniting a sex life would serve to compensate for not sharing activities, or whether the latter might ultimately prove to be more important as you grow older.

It must have been acutely shocking and humiliating for your partner to realise that because of his necessary (and ongoing) medications his libido had gone. No wonder he doesn’t want to discuss it: he sees no way out, feels your disappointment acutely and closes down the conversation.

You explain (in your longer email) that if you try to touch him sexually, he makes a joke of it. I have to be honest and say I don’t blame the poor man.

If I suggest the only alternative to accepting the situation (as he wishes you would) is to have an affair or move back to town and end the marriage, then you might ask yourself how important the lack of sex really is.

Does a life ‘full of laughter and happiness’ have to come to an end because a man can no longer perform? If so, that’s sad.

It surprises me when women need to be desired by a man in order to ‘feel attractive’. What’s to stop you getting a new hairstyle, make-up and new clothes, just for yourself? But that aside, I entirely sympathise with your wish to have fun together.

Do you have friends to stay? Do you put on old tracks and dance in the kitchen? Honestly, that can lift your spirits like nothing else.

If he loves the garden, have you shared in suggesting replanting?

You see, it worries me you’re complaining about all aspects of your life with this ‘wonderful man’ — allowing unhappiness to blind you to ways it could be improved. Imagine if his illness had ended his life . . . where would you be?

It could be that Thoreau’s ‘laws of the universe’ are leading you towards an understanding that the life fate has bestowed is blessed in ways it is your quest to discover.

 I’m fed up caring for my cruel mum

Dear Bel,

Until 18 months ago, I was a happy teacher with more than 30 years’ experience. But four years ago my mum was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

I lived 100 miles away. She’s pushed all her friends away with her cantankerous behaviour (this a friend’s word, not mine) and has no contact with neighbours. She has always been difficult.

I decided to give up the job I loved. Even with support from social services there seemed no choice. So I left my lovely home, my two grown-up daughters (aged 29 and 27 now) and moved closer to Mum — still 50 miles away, unable to move closer because of my husband’s job.

My girls and my husband give wonderful support. I see Mum every other day and she has a carer twice a day. I am looking at residential homes where I believe Mum will be safe and happy later. But I often find myself so full of anger and frustration I can’t breathe. Mum and I have never been close. Her behaviour to me — in particular the past 12 months — verges on cruelty.

Caring for someone you are incredibly close to is hard enough, but though I love my mum, I don’t like the way she treats me most of the time.

My resentment can be overwhelming, yet still I go on. What about the carers who do not want to be carers? We live in silence. If you admit how much you hate the role of ‘caring’, then people look as if you’re breaking a taboo.

All my wonderful female friends were or are very close to their mothers, so I can’t say how much at times I resent mine. I hope you might be able to advise me in some way.

SUZANNE

Your letter will resonate with innumerable readers, as it is truly a problem for our times. It is estimated that by 2021 there will be more than a million people living with dementia in the UK, and their story inevitably involves those who are looking after them — roughly about 700,000 unpaid, exhausted, frustrated, dutiful carers.

And many feel as you do, Suzanne. I am sure it did you much good to write it all out to me, in an original email much longer than this.

But here is the unusual aspect of your situation. I want readers to know you have mined your depths of frustration and love and written an extraordinary play about this painful, but all-too-common situation. You sent it to me, I read it — and was deeply impressed.

So if an imaginative Radio 4 drama producer or any theatre producer would like to get in touch with me, I will gladly send you this terrific piece, called An Absence Of, because I believe it could be turned into something powerful. Please do.

In the meantime, you tell me you are also writing stories. Giving up the teaching job you loved in order to help your difficult and often nasty (yes, it must be said) mother has taken you into a painful world of simmering resentment harnessed by a sense of patient duty, but it has also released you into creativity.

The tension between what you want and what you feel you must do, between honesty and silence, between love and guilt, love and ‘hate’ — all this is pulling you in many directions, but you are expressing this in words.

I know you will agree with me when I suggest to others in a similar situation that writing feelings down can be therapeutic.

Not everybody has the talent to write a play, but to buy a notebook and scrawl down frustrations can be useful.

The website carersuk.org contains a lot of information for people in your situation as well as an online forum, which must be useful for those who feel isolated by their caring role.

It’s so important to know that others share your feelings — which is why, Suzanne, I hope your writing finds an audience.

 And finally… The wise words of a 6-year-old

‘Out of the mouths of babes … ‘ they say, and many of us will know that children can utter little gems of truth, even ones we don’t want to hear.

But I was delighted when my daughter sent me a picture of my six-year-old granddaugter Chloe’s school exercise, called The Human Life Cycle. With illustrations, it filled the page like this (spelling corrected, by the way!):

When I was a baby, I slept a lot and cried.

As a toddler, I crawled and talked.

As a child, I dressed and walked.

When I become a teenager, I will stay up a lot and have fun.

As an adult, I will marry a man and have a baby.

When I become elderly, I will laugh a lot and play.

Now I rather prefer this to Shakespeare because the end is better! In As You Like It the melancholy Jaques delivers his speech: All the World’s a stage.

He gives us the ‘mewling . . . puking’ infant, the ‘whining schoolboy,’ the lover, the soldier, the judge (‘justice’), the skinny old man, and at last: ‘Is second childishness and mere oblivion, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.’

Those who know very old people will recognise truth in that, but let’s forget the sadness for a moment. For aren’t Chloe’s six ages more appealing?

I love that confident prediction: ‘I will marry a man and have a baby.’ Mercifully, nobody has got to her about gender stereotypes, though tedious busybody think-tanks suggest children are taught about them at the age of two.

Oh, let the children be children, for heaven’s sake! Preserve them from ideology and let them play.

It’s also marvellous that she gives the idea of ‘having fun’ to just two of the periods in the lifecycle: teenage and what I choose to call the Golden Age.

Thanks, darling granddaughter — and let the teens and the oldies stay up late, party and laugh while there’s life left. Preferably together.