DEAR BEL,I’m writing in hope that you can offer some clarity. I’m 32 and soon my mum (my only family) will pass away after a long illness.
This in itself is incredibly distressing, yet the reason I write is selfish and I feel ashamed to admit it.
I have never been involved in a romantic relationship. No man has ever shown any interest in me, other than one time when I had just started university, when a friend said that he liked me (I just didn’t feel the same way).
At school no boy would look at me — a trend that has continued.
'I have never been involved in a romantic relationship - no man has ever shown any interest in me'
Also, I live in a small town where the opportunities for meeting men are very limited.
Without wanting to sound vain, I just don’t understand it, as I’m not ugly, though not attractive. A classic ‘Plain Jane’, I suppose.
There’s just no beauty in my features, nothing to entice.
I regularly go out with my friends, some married, some single. Not once has a guy approached me on the dance floor, come up to talk to me, anything.
In fact, when a group of men join our group I’m usually totally ignored. I try to break into the conversation but it soon ends once the time for polite response has passed and the gentlemen can resume chasing my friends.
I’m so scared of being alone for the rest of my life. I’ve tried dating sites but no one ever seems to write except men who are much older.
My GP put me in counselling but while that helped how I felt about myself, there has been no change in getting people to notice me.
I don’t have a lot of friends as I recently stopped spending time and energy on people who didn’t offer their time to me unless they needed something.
As a result I have only a couple left (though I know they’re true friends and I’m very grateful).
This only serves to increase my sadness at the prospect of loneliness once my lovely mum passes.
The thing that’s most difficult to bear is that now people have no expectation that I might have someone in my life. I seem to have entered the realm of an 18th-century spinster, doomed to be alone with cats and knitting needles.
I understand that there must be a fault in how I behave — something I emit that says ‘go away’.
If so, I don’t know how to correct it. My friends say I’m smiley and friendly. Is there any advice you can give me?LOUISE
Back in previous centuries, a woman unmarried at 32 certainly would have been considered on the shelf, but we’re not like that now, so forget cats and knitting (unless you love both) and throw this defeatism out of the window.
More from Bel Mooney... BEL MOONEY: Even when I beg, my husband refuses to have sex with me 01/06/13 BEL MOONEY: Should I let my drunken, vicious ex-lover be a father to our baby? 24/05/13 BEL MOONEY: Should I boycott my mother's wedding to this ghastly gold-digger? 17/05/13 BEL MOONEY: Can I cure loneliness by selling up to be near my new love? 11/05/13 BEL MOONEY: I'm crying out for love but can't escape this black hole of despair 03/05/13 BEL MOONEY: We haven't had sex for 19 years but I can't escape my cheating husband... 26/04/13 BEL MOONEY: I've nursed my husband through cancer but now I want to leave 19/04/13 BEL MOONEY: I'm in love for the first time but not with my husband... 12/04/13 BEL MOONEY: I feel guilty my son is in nursery all week so I can work 05/04/13 VIEW FULL ARCHIVEBelieve me, I am not minimising the sadness in your letter.
It’s very real and I feel nothing but compassion for your plight in terms of relationships and for your fear of loneliness. You are by no means the first to write in this vein, and you won’t be the last.
There are so many people who are desperate for a meaningful relationship and terrified that they’ll always be alone. I tell you sincerely that it makes me very sad to read such letters, but they keep coming.
All we can do is stop, take some deep breaths, throw back the shoulders and try to break down the situation into smaller parts so that it’s not overwhelming. This is always good advice: to forget about next week and concentrate on making a manageable plan for tomorrow.
If you write ‘change my life’ at the top of a to-do list, the sheer impossibility makes you want to take to your bed in a darkened room and weep.
But make a short list for tomorrow which includes ‘book hairdresser to create new style’ or ‘call Jenny (one of the friends you no longer see) and make a date for coffee’, and you will have a sense of satisfaction that will take you through to the next day.
It seems to me that the first thing you must do is come to terms with your feelings about your mother’s condition and impending death.
You are not being selfish to fear loneliness when she has gone, so don’t be ashamed of expressing your grief in advance in this way — because I suspect it is this that is exacerbating your long-term sense of being unloved.
The forthcoming loss is a huge thing in your life and you have every right to feel sad and afraid. Spend all the time you can with your mother because you’ll regret it if you don’t.
The second thing is to realise that the counselling you have had is only the first step, so don’t expect miracles or else their absence will make you feel you have failed.
In the coming months, when your mother has left you, it will almost certainly be a good idea to return to counselling to try to make sense of your feelings and help you to look forward. Be quietly resolved to do this, because I think you will need it.
Third, I want you to realise that the ways you’ve been trying to meet men (in crowded places with your prettier friends, or through dating sites) are not necessarily the best for you. I’m sure of this.
Until I am too decrepit to write any more I will repeat that for many, many people the happiest way to make friends and meet potential partners is through familiarity. That’s why the old advice columnist’s stock-in-trade of ‘try joining a club or learning a language’ is perfectly sensible.
I’m sure you’re a lovely person but a bloke isn’t going to recognise that in a noisy place when you’re sitting with your friends. So you must try to shake up your life and try new things, concentrating on the means, not any wished-for end.
You must also be flexible (my reply to 13-year-old Ellie below is relevant to you). You complain that only older men were interested in you. Well, I happen to think that age gaps are irrelevant. Your soulmate might be 52, you know.
The message you probably convey is that you’re sad and defeated. But that won’t always be the case, so take courage and remember that this is a new year which will bring sorrow but will also (like it or not) be the beginning of a fresh phase in your life.
I've been abandoned by my best friendDEAR BELMy mum found one of your articles in the newspaper and gave it to me because I have had a lot of arguments in my life. I’m 13 and at the start of secondary school I made a friend called Amy.
We were really good mates until Jade joined our school. One day I waited for Amy at the bus stop as usual, feeling worried because if she was ill she’d text.
So I asked if anyone had seen her and found out she was with Jade. Suddenly Jade was with us always. As the weeks went on it wasn’t me, Jade and Amy but just Jade and Amy.
I wasn’t too upset because I thought I had other friends, but I’d been spending too much time with Amy, ignoring the others.
My old best mate from primary school, Callie, decided I wasn’t interesting enough and started to ignore me.
The others talk about things I’m not involved in, like Guides and clubs.
There are lots of friendship groups in my year and I’m quite popular really, but I feel I don’t quite belong anywhere. How can I stop feeling that I don’t fit in?ELLIE
First of all, it’s so good you can talk to your mum and she showed you that article (I wonder what it was about?) because it proves that this newspaper and I can reach out to people your age.
It also shows that she’s trying to understand your problems. You say that you have ‘had a lot of arguments’, which makes me wonder if these are with family as well as friends.
Perhaps you take it out on your family that you are hurt by friendships.
Now you are 13 it's important for you to start thinking about other people's feelings as well as your own. Posed by modelWe all do that: transfer how we are feeling about one thing to something else — so a man whose boss was horrid to him at work goes home and shouts at his children.
But now you are 13 it’s important for you to start thinking about other people’s feelings as well as your own.
Teenagers are famously self-centred, but that doesn’t mean they can’t have that fact pointed out to them!
You see, I’m thinking of the way you dropped your once-best friend Callie when you met Amy, and the way you concentrated on Amy, dropping other friendships along the way.
Most of us, at some stage in our life, will learn the truth of the saying that ‘what goes around comes around’ — and I think you just did.
You’ve also learnt that unless you involve yourself in a wide range of activities which bring you into contact with many different friends, you might be left feeling that you don’t fit in anywhere — not because you ‘aren’t interesting enough’ but because you are not interest-ed enough.
Look at that word ‘interested’ and think about what it means.
Believe me, I have met so many adults who never ask a single question about other people, but exist within their own narrow world — and I find them not only boring but irritating. You don’t want to end up like that, do you?
What’s holding you back at the moment is hurt, because this friendship that was so important to you has gone, and that’s like the end of a grown-up love affair.
What’s to be done? Focus on other people. Maybe you should get involved with some of those clubs and then you will have something to talk about.
I want you to understand that this advice will stand you in good stead for the rest of your life.
You will meet many people (probably forgetting Amy’s name along the way) but unless you allow yourself to grow with them, taking a real, deep interest in who they are and what makes them tick, they won’t want to be your friend.
But if you do as I say, you’ll be happy — and you’ll understand the meaning of that famous Beatles line: ‘And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make.’
And finally... From one granny to anotherYou might have missed my column last week (I do hope so) and a few readers have contacted me through Facebook to say that they went through the paper twice looking for this page. Sue W was ‘afraid you’d suddenly given up’.
Well, I’m sorry that due to an oversight, the usual note that a columnist is away was omitted from the paper —but here I am again, and it will be a long while before I take more time off.
I always miss writing the column, but please don’t imagine that I spent my week away carousing in the Caribbean or frolicking in Florida. It’s true I was in the smart ski resort of Verbier, in Switzerland, but for one purpose only: babysitting.
TROUBLED? WRITE TO BELBel answers readers’ questions on emotional and relationship problems each week.
Write to: Bel Mooney, Daily Mail, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT, or e-mail bel.mooney@dailymail.co.uk.
A pseudonym will be used if you wish.
Bel reads all letters, but regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence.
As I don’t ski, it was no loss. While all the smart, sporty people swooshed on powdery snow, I fed my granddaughter, dangled coloured plastic objects, read her a four-page book and crooned baby talk. Joy!
Already I’m learning a patience that I lacked when my two were babies.
This new stage of grandmotherhood is one of the most exciting adventures I’ve had: enthralling and renewing.
But I know it won’t always be easy — which is why I was delighted to receive an email from a reader called Kath, who apparently worked along the corridor from me on a national newspaper in 1979, although I never met her. Now she is kind enough to give this advice columnist the benefit of her own wisdom:
‘I want to give you some advice (if I dare). I have four children, 11 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.
'Our grandchildren have been our pride and joy and I am so lucky that they all keep in touch with me even though one lives in Holland and two in Ireland.
‘My advice is this: love them as much as you like, but always remember they are not your own. You can spoil a little but be aware of the rules laid down by the parents.’
There we are: simple but true, like most of the best advice.
