Dear Mariella / Strangers in the night

Man in night
by Maria Karalyos

DEAR MARIELLA

Strangers in the night

The only women he feels happy with are prostitutes. But the price he's paying is higher than he knows

Mariella Frostrup

Sunday 15 February 2004

I am 40 and have never had a long-term serious relationship with a woman. The relationships I have had have been very mixed - those in which I met the women socially and got to know them as friends initially were a lot more successful than those I met through personal ads in newspapers.

I find myself going to clubs and just standing there all night, not having the nerve to talk to women. I have resorted to prostitutes and sex phone lines to try to get some sexual closeness without having to make the effort to get to know people. I went to a counsellor, but I ended up not telling her when I continued to use the sex lines and internet sex sites. I know the answer lies in me beginning to be more positive about myself and not being frightened to fail. I hope to ask my doctor to recommend me for more counselling. I just wonder if there are many men in my position, and what you might suggest.You're lucky I'm not single any more, or you'd be in for a savaging. I don't want to burst your bubble, but guys like you are 10 a penny in the dog-eat-dog world of the dating singleton - afraid of intimacy, incapable of commitment, unable to view women as real people, only able to see sex as a conquest and never as an essential part of a blossoming relationship. You ask me if there are many men in your position; you better believe it. Though why that would be of any comfort to you is a trifle disconcerting. There are plenty of men out there, publicly jubilant that they've managed to stay emotionally unattached for so long, but in the privacy of their homes surfing internet chat rooms and porn sites while cradling their Pot Noodles and wondering why their lives feel empty and lonely.

I'm not tarring you entirely with the same brush. Instead, I suspect there's just a light undercoat of that form of dysfunction, making it hard to distinguish between you and the truly hopeless cases. You have attempted to seek help, even if you decided to lie to your counsellor. You are not alone in that course of action either. Generally speaking, the human desire to be liked far exceeds the human desire to be understood. Hence the reason people spend fortunes in therapy trying to get their shrink on their side. I had a friend once who used to tie herself up in knots conjuring up interesting things to say to her therapist in order to keep him amused for the full hour and avoiding what she described as 'awful silences'. She wasn't at all impressed with my suggestion that the silences were there to provide time for contemplation. Anyway, you didn't help your counsellor and, in turn, she was unable to help you.

It's clear from your letter that you're aware of your shortcomings. Now you just need to stop acting like an idiot when it comes to your behaviour towards women. You're a smart guy, you know that the road to fulfilment doesn't lie in prostitutes and phone sex lines. Your current behaviour is committing you to a lifestyle where intimacy and real emotional contact are both absent. I'm sure you are aware that this is not the route to happiness or a fulfilling (and, indeed, less costly) sex life. You don't sound like the sort of man who is insensitive or misguided enough to let that happen.

This may be a step too far for you, but have you thought about giving up sex, let's say for six months? So far, it doesn't seem to be getting you anywhere you really want to go. You talk about a fear of failure, but if you're not out for a result then you can't fail, can you? By backing out of the business of seduction for a while you may find the process of getting to know the opposite sex takes on less onerous dimensions. Try communicating without focusing on an end goal and you might actually find you can form relationships (I mean friendly relationships) without failure as an option.

It's time for a radical rethink of your approach to womankind. You are being shortchanged if all you're using us for is sex. We're perfectly capable of putting on a good show in the sack, but we can also be amusing, loving, caring friends. Often, you don't even need to take your pants off to enjoy those latter delights. You are deluding yourself if you think you are achieving sexual closeness with strangers - that's just your basic, rudimentary sex. Getting to know people doesn't require that much effort. All it takes is a readjustment of your priorities and a little bit of Dutch courage.

I suspect you're in for a pleasant surprise.

THE GUARDIAN

Dear Mariella / I'm having an affair

Dear Mariella

RELATIONSHIPS

I´M HAVING AN AFFAIR

I'm having an affair with a man who is in an open 

marriage. He doesn't love his wife, but now I've 

discovered he doesn't love me either. What should I do?

Mariella Frostrup
Sunday 18 January 2009

The dilemma: I am in my early 50s, married to a kind but preoccupied man who has worked away from home for some years, with two children, the youngest of whom has just gone to university. Six months ago a warm and attractive friend, R, and I began an affair. He has had an open marriage for most of his 35-year relationship, but hasn't had sex with his wife for 20 years. Their way of coping with this has been for her to "allow" him to have affairs - but I have lately learned that these affairs are ruled by strict parameters. The problem is that before I knew this I began to fall in love with him. When I told him this, his response was that I was a wonderful lover but he did not love me. The woman he loves - and will always love - is someone he had a relationship with some time ago, and whom his wife has forbidden him to see because he made the mistake of telling his wife he loved this woman. He still takes risks and sees her very occasionally, although they no longer make love because of the ban his wife has put on this - and because it would be too hurtful to the woman. He still wonders whether he should have left his wife for her. When I am with R it does feel right - I feel more alive than I have for years. Doing nothing and letting things continue as they are makes me feel powerless. Part of me wants to blow all this open - let his wife know how hurtful it is to use women in this way and that the other woman is still "on the scene" emotionally, if hardly at all in any other way. But that could backfire and hurt me more than them.

Mariella: Indeed. You're clearly hell-bent on some form of vengeance - I'm just wondering against whom and for what? I'm struggling to see who has wronged you here. You appear to be blaming R's wife - which makes two of you! Most of your lover's excuses for his behaviour seem to depend on the acceptance of the premise of a complete lack of free will and total obedience to his wife. It's unlikely that he adheres to her rules to the degree he'd have you believe - indeed, when it comes to what he really wants to do (like see his ex-lover) he clearly does exactly what he wants. As usual, you are doing the sadly predictable female thing and blaming the other woman, or at least one of them. In this case it really does seem ridiculous. If she and her husband have developed an understanding that allows them to remain together while maintaining an "open relationship", then their rules of engagement are their business. You're just a ship in the night; they're the ones who will remain long after your affair is over. It may be inconvenient to you that you fell in love with R, but it's hardly anyone's fault. You were having an affair with someone else's husband, so at best he was on loan; there was certainly no guarantee that he would be yours to keep. The only person to blame for getting your heart all tangled up in this sorry mess is yourself. I really don't think you can keep a straight face while blaming his wife!

The only deceiving going on around here is your own self-deception. In fact, the whole situation is unique in its lack of duplicity. Not only is your lover married to someone else, but he's also made it very clear to you that his heart is otherwise engaged. So what exactly do you want to tell his wife, and do you honestly think it's anything she doesn't know already? And what sort of outcome would you be hoping for? The three of them will certainly wash their hands of you, and you'll be left seething back in your own home with your "kind but preoccupied" husband. Perhaps, most importantly, how would you prevent such action from making you look like a complete fool and being utterly humiliating? If anyone is the victim here of her own choices, it's you. Your friend R and his wife may have a strange set-up, but at least it's relatively straightforward. What on earth are you doing lingering in this quagmire? Forgetting the morality or not of committing adultery, have you no pride?

This man is in love with one woman, married to another, and having sex with a third. In these days of increasing unemployment I admire the zest with which he spreads the work around, but quite clearly you are at the bottom of the pile. You say doing nothing "makes me feel powerless". In what way would this proposed illumination of his wife on matters that really don't concern you make you feel powerful?

If you want to take back control of your life, I suggest you extricate yourself from this ridiculous ménage à quatre - three's a crowd, but four is positively overcrowded. Your kids have left home - that doesn't mean you need to start behaving like one. Show a bit of dignity and leave them to their amusingly sordid scene. You've clearly got yourself too deep into someone else's affairs, and I mean it literally. If you need a lover, try to find one who's available or at least interested in your pleasure, not just the role you can play in his. Sorry to be brutal, but I really want to get you out of this situation before you do something you'll regret. There are much better ways to pursue personal satisfaction - on every level.

THE GUARDIAN

Dear Mariella / Out-of-date casanovas

Casanova by Louis Icart, 1928

DEAR MARIELLA

LIFE AND STYLE

Out-of-date casanovas

Her long-distance lover is a duplicitous serial seducer... Why does she still want him?

Mariella Frostrup
Sunday 5 October 2003

Recently, towards the end of yet another lovely date with a man I've known for 18 months, he began commenting on the bodies of women around us, and their likely sexual performance. This was out of character (having previously told me I was the only woman he'd slept with in the time I'd known him) and so was his telling me about the sex he'd had with six women that he had dated in the six weeks since we'd last seen each other.

Back at his flat he gave me the doorstep chat-up lines he'd used and told me how once they were on the stairs to his flat he would 'know he had them'. An argument ensued in which he became abusive, and having travelled from my home city to see him, I left at 3am to find a hotel. As a result he says we need some space. I don't want to expose myself to similar humiliating behaviour but I'm feeling deeply sad, as we otherwise have a really great time together. It is years since I have felt as strongly for a man with whom there was some reciprocity. Did I behave as unreasonably as he seems to think?

What a jerk. This idiot you've been dating thinks he's clever because he can get laid. It's a boast that's barely worth the breath used to utter it. Nowadays sex is as easy to find as the name Smith in the phone book. The sexy thing to do is to be seen to avoid it. What you should be wondering is why it's taken you 18 months to see through his smarmy exterior to the serial seducer within. And if the word 'seducer' carries any poetic resonance for you then it's time to work out why. In your necessarily abridged letter you say you two don't yet have 'a committed relationship'. Why on earth would you want one with this out-of-date Casanova? He's as unfashionable as those Juicy tracksuits everyone was wearing last year.

There was a time when the world admired a 'bounder'. In Victorian days, when the flicker of an eyelash was considered coming on too strong, the notion that there were people out there breaking down sexual taboos was quite impressive. In an era famous for its explorers, these men were pioneers in their chosen field, taking brave steps for mankind into unmapped erogenous zones in pursuit of emancipation for both sexes. In retrospect they could be viewed as pioneers in a sexual desert, fighting for our right to claim our bodies and what we did with them as a basic human right.

'Bachelor' was a label to be admired, signifying a man who wasn't prepared to compromise his principles for the sake of social mores. Plenty of women would doubtless have liked to join those ranks and indeed a brave minority did, but theirs was much more challenging terrain. To this day there's a stigma involved in being a single or sexually active woman that men are only just beginning to experience.

In the 21st century, one of the greatest day-to-day challenges of those of us in the 'free' West is escaping sex. Whether it's in movies, via the internet, in a magazine, or in your own bed, the sheer abundance of it is enough to turn us all into sexual bulimics. I'm not suggesting we all take a vow of celibacy, but honestly, where's the challenge in getting your leg over? Finding love hasn't become any easier, but if you're prepared to compromise, pay or just put out, any idiot can pick up a lover. For those reasons alone this man of yours looks tawdry. He's not mature enough to have a serious relationship so he tries to disguise his inadequacy with an abundance of 'conquests'.

He obviously zooms in on long-distance lovers as the perfect route to keeping things casual and when he feels he's getting out of his depth exposes himself for the duplicitous weakling he is. This is a double-pronged attack that avoids any real action from him and also winds up the affair, or worse, extends it on his terms. In an expert move, he's left you feeling a little guilty for being unreasonable but unenthusiastic about a return to the status quo.

Now he's hoping your lack of self-esteem will deliver you back to him, bullied out of having reasonable expectations and hating yourself for being weak enough to accept it. If you go back he'll have you exactly where he wants you, at arm's length, to toy with as he pleases. Don't give him that opportunity.

Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew might offer you an insight into his tactics. You talk about reciprocity, but if this sort of behaviour is your idea of sharing then I suggest you get a little more demanding. There's no downside; if you regret dispensing with him you'll find another volunteer just around the corner. Believe me, guys like him actually do grow on trees. Then again, maybe he was just trying to impress you.

THE GUARDIAN

Dear Mariella / My partner is a heavy porn user

Dear Mariella

Pornography

My partner is a heavy porn user

Mariella Frostrup
Sunday 20 March 2011

My partner is a heavy porn user. When he stopped, our sex life got better. Now he uses porn again and our relationship is falling apart mainly because of my anger. Porn has robbed him of the capacity to find me attractive. Do we have a future?

THE DILEMMA I've been in a relationship for almost four years; we're both in our early 40s. In the first year and a half we had sex about three times. I figured out that he was a heavy porn user. I explained it was hurtful. He stopped and our sex life got better. Then he became involved in online comment sites, spent all day flirting with strangers and we split up. I got back with him when he agreed to limit his time online. Now he uses porn again and our relationship is falling apart mainly because of my anger. Porn has robbed him of the capacity to find me attractive. At least I hope it's the porn, I wonder if he ever found me attractive. Do we have a future?

MARIELLA REPLIES In short, no. More importantly neither will any other relationship you embark on until you learn to place a higher value on yourself. Where does what you want figure in all of this? It appears to be not just sex you're short of but any sense of your own worth. Both of those virtues are essential ingredients for any long-term human coupling: if someone fails to value and respect you then you're not having a proper relationship with them. There you are worrying about whether he ever found you attractive when what should really be concerning you is why you still fancy him. Why would you pursue a future with someone whose own needs are clearly far more of a priority than yours?

The guy is a loser. He's lost in cyberspace while the planet spins on. He's not alone. Have you watched The Social Network? I was struck by the irony of social-networking addicts like Zuckerberg, whose real-world relationships dwindle at the same speed as their cyber life takes off.

Despite what may sound like a negative attitude to technological advances I've recently upgraded my feelings toward to the whole tweeting, blogging world. Like the printing press before it, the internet has incredible potential for the good of mankind, but not if all we ever use it for is surfing porn, swapping gossip and sharing holiday pictures. While we continue to bumble along in our celebrity- and sex-obsessed torpor, the developing world is waking up to the positive benefits of instant global communication. Watching how these mediums have played such a powerful role in the pursuit of democracy in the Arab world only a fool would deny that at its best technology really can give "power (back) to the people".

The recent mass demonstrations and peaceful overthrowing of non-elected governments using such social-networking facilities make your boyfriend look like a tragic dinosaur, sat there at his PC practising his web onanism. He's like the Neanderthals who once thought emancipation meant more sex, less responsibility. And yet here you are all but apologising for not being more understanding of his predilection for watching strangers have sex and his inappropriate cyber relationships.

Wake up, be angry. You're not the one behaving badly. Before I start a tirade about real relationships requiring multi-dimensional participants of flesh and blood not the one-dimensional fictions we create online, let's talk about porn. A great triumph of spin has occurred since the 70s, when feisty feminists briefly succeeded in sending pornography to the top shelf or under the mattress. These days if you speak out against pornography you're so, like, 20th century! I realise it's not cool to frown on sexualised images of (mainly) women, but I really do struggle to see what they have to offer my sex apart from mild titillation. Don't get me wrong: I'm all for being turned on. But forced to chose between my own fleeting pleasure and the insidious impact of hardcore pornography on global attitudes to my sisters and there's no contest. In a world where one in five of us will be raped in our lifetime and sexual violence continues to be a weapon of aggression in war and peace, just saying no to anything that might contribute to the continuing objectification of women seems the most sensible option. Most porn isn't made with us in mind anyway judging by the endless pumping, grinding scenes of copulation where severe cystitis rather than an orgasm are the most likely outcome for the female of the species!

My advice is chuck the man while you still have your own teeth! It's a cliché, but no less true for its ubiquity. You have one life. Don't waste it on a relationship that fails to live up to acceptable standards.

The situation you currently find yourself in is in no way a reflection of your physical attributes, but remaining with a guy who so clearly has his priorities skewed would suggest a serious malfunction with your mental faculties. You can have thousands of friends in cyberspace, but if you haven't got a friend who's in arm's reach you're a sad case. This man insults you with his reliance on porn, absents himself from the daily interaction a relationship requires and squanders his time on virtual strangers. Who's the loser?

THE GUARDIAN

Dear Mariella

Relationships

My husband left me and our kids and is now with another woman

A new relationship will long outlive – and swiftly obscure – the heartache you’ve been through, says Mariella Frostrup

Mariella Frostrup
Sunday 27 January 2019

The dilemma Eighteen months ago, my husband left me and our children, who were both under five. We had been through a rocky period, drifting apart a little. I put this down in part to the demands of our jobs and my second pregnancy (severe morning sickness meant I lost my sex drive). But to him the spark was gone. There was already strong evidence of affairs and he was in an official relationship with one of those women within months of our split. They moved in together and she now sees my children during my ex’s contact time. I thought the shock would kill me, but I have coped through the hell of my heartbreak and have come to the conclusion I am better off without him. But I’m still in so much pain. Seeing families at the school gates literally hurts me. My ex’s family accept his new partner (they also still see me and are supportive, which I’m grateful for).I can’t contemplate a new relationship. I’ve had some casual dates and even sex, but it all meant nothing to me. I feel my trust has been damaged forever. If my own husband can’t stay with me, then who will?

Mariella replies A better man. It sounds like you are well rid of your ex, who I hope will learn how lucky he was to have married such a reasonable woman in the first place. Reading your letter, the first thing that occurred to me was how balanced and clear-headed your description of your marriage breakdown is. Despite the pain you have endured. There’s no indication of the histrionics and bartering over children that are all too often the staples of such a separation. It sounds, too, as though you’ve accepted the children maintaining a close relationship with their father, including seeing him in the company of his new partner. That will have increased your own suffering in the short-term, so it’s yet another reason why you should be extremely proud of yourself.

It’s hard to go through the seismically elevated emotions of separation, but it sounds as though you’re a prime example of magnanimity. Occupying the high ground may not reap immediate rewards, but sleeping soundly at night, knowing your behaviour has been exemplary and your conscience is clear, should be the pleasurable position you find yourself in. It’s certainly not the tranquil place your husband’s subconscious should be taking him in the dark hours.

Love, by its very nature, is unreliable and yet we invest all our hopes and dreams in this entirely subjective state that ebbs and flows as naturally as the ocean. You describe the wear and tear on your marriage through two children and it’s a picture many will recognise. It’s a constant struggle to keep the connection between two lovers strong and resilient, and all too easy to opt for co-existing in resignation rather than keeping fundamental communication alive. It’s probably why so many second marriages work better than first ones – learning how important it is to maintain a degree of union when the forces of daily life seem set to push you apart is something most of us understand too late.

If one of you chooses the easy option of seeking solace outside the relationship, there’s little that can be done to pull them back. Falling in love, and the ecstasies of discovering each other, is matched in emotional intensity only by its opposite – the torturous tumble we take when that same emotion becomes a negative force. Rejection is the most painful of experiences, bringing to the fore all our insecurities and compounding our tendency toward low self-worth.

You have taken a big knock and it will certainly take further time to restore your confidence and re-instil the trust you need to embark on your next romantic excursion. I’m glad you’re making attempts at re-entry into the dating game, but forcing yourself into intimacy before you are strong enough can be detrimental. That numbness after a sexual encounter can simply serve to confirm your sense that nothing will be as it was again. That’s where you are wrong and the law of averages and accrued experience can be relied upon.

There’s no crystal ball required when I say you will meet someone and fall in love again. You’ll even, eventually, be delighted that you have been given the opportunity for this better relationship and there’s every reason to presume that it will long outlive (and pretty swiftly obscure) the heartache you’ve been through. It’s a waiting game, but one where keeping focused on all the other ingredients for a healthy life will mean you’re better prepared when you’re again knocked off solid ground and up into the elevated heights of love.

You need to remember how transporting it is to love and be loved and look forward to the day that becomes a reality. Meanwhile, keep in mind that all any of us have is transitory, so envying those who appear to have what is absent in your life doesn’t deserve to be lingered on. The most important thing to keep focused on when life is at it’s most challenging is the knowledge that in the depths of winter, it’s sunny days that lie ahead.

THE GUARDIAN

Dear Mariella / My husband has sex with me, but never says I look nice

Dear Mariella
RELATIONSHIPS

My husband has sex with me, but never says I look nice

A woman whose husband no longer compliments her says it’s getting her down. Mariella Frostrup suggests she initiates change herself

Mariella Frostrup
Sunday 19 November 2017 06.00 GMT

The dilemma My husband and I have been together for just over 10 years, and have a young child. He’s a kind, intelligent person and a loving father and husband. He used to compliment me quite often up until a few years ago, when we began fertility treatment in order to have our child. That was a stressful time and it involved some serious and painful medical issues for me. I also had to face an emergency c-section, which I found traumatic.

My husband and I have regular sex, which he usually instigates and I think in his mind this is all he needs to do to show he is still attracted to me. But I feel less and less like having sex because of this. He never says I look nice or compliments me any more. I’ve told him I would really appreciate it if he would, but it doesn’t sink in.

I was very insecure in my teens and early 20s and it took me a while to be happy with the way I look. I realise there are people with much greater problems, but this is really getting me down.

Mariella replies In the agony business, size really doesn’t matter. Let’s celebrate the good stuff first. You’re happily married with a healthy child you worked particularly hard to conceive. Despite what was clearly a traumatic time for you both, getting pregnant and then again during the delivery of your baby, you’ve succeeded in your goal of becoming parents. Alongside that and even more miraculously, you’re still having regular sex! If we were in the same room together I’d be bursting into spontaneous applause.

I do appreciate that just because the extent of your good fortune is obvious to others it doesn’t make it any easier to appreciate yourself. It’s hard to settle for the seemingly diminishing returns of once-rewarding relationships. Couples who manage to maintain early levels of passion are in a distinct and small minority and, frankly, often a little bit creepy with their theatrical (and downright suspicious) displays of physical desire. I’m sure I’m not the only one who wonders what they’re trying to hide.

For the rest of us, the sort of romantic impulses and displays of physical attraction, the hand-holding and street-corner kissing, the “baby you’re beautiful” sadly metamorphoses into something more workaday. It’s the reason songs like Lady in Red by Chris De Burgh or Eric Clapton’s Wonderful Tonight strike an inexplicable emotional chord despite our better judgment, The compliments and attention that thrive in the first glow of mutual adoration are certainly a loss, but do seem fairly exchanged for other attributes of long-standing union – easy familiarity, comfortable co-existence, the ability to dispense with artifice and be totally yourself.

Verbal affirmation is a tiny element of a much bigger picture and yet, in many cases, it seems it’s the proverbial straw that can break the camel’s back. It’s a minor niggle that can be blown into ludicrous proportions when we adopt a position of intransigence, holding back from precipitating the change we want to see, because we’re convinced it’s up to our partner to do the legwork.

You say your husband generally initiates sex. I wonder how sexy he’s feeling. He’s been through the same challenging process as you and, I daresay, found himself sidelined, like many men, during the earliest stages of being a parent. Yet there he is, as predictable as Big Ben, desiring you as fulsomely as if you’d just walked into his life. If that doesn’t bolster your confidence it certainly should. Instead, on top of affirming his physical attraction for you with his desire to make love, he’s having to contend with your need for further demonstrations of your desirability to him.

It’s hard to banish the insecurities of youth and accept yourself for who you are and I don’t think you should underestimate what an impact turning sex into a chore will have had. Changing the dynamics of a situation is as much about changing your own behaviour as it is about prompting change in others. Whether it’s compliments or kindness, an impromptu gesture or a surprise moment of communion through shared experience or laughter, there are always elements to crave or mourn the passing of.

As you point out, it’s not a unique dilemma you’re facing and the solutions are as obvious as they are hard to live up to. There’s nothing romantic or stimulating about having to work to conceive, and once you are parents it requires further commitment to remember that you are lovers, too. I’m pretty sure that if you could muster the wherewithal to start initiating sex and make your husband feel equally desired, compliments would flow without further prompting. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you’re the only one nostalgic for times past. We all have needs and desires that get overlooked as the decades fly by, and it’s up to each of us to work to maintain what we can’t bear to lose in that equation.

THE GUARDIAN