BEL MOONEY: My daughter lied about going to parties and hid her sexy clothes. Should I confront her about it? By Bel Mooney Published: 12:03, 27 July 2024 | Updated: 12:03, 27 July 2024 e-mail Dear Bel, I have a problem that is affecting me profoundly, and I don’t know what to do. My daughter is at university a long way from home.
One Saturday last year she called me and during the conversation I asked, ‘Are you off out to a party tonight?’ She told me she never goes to student parties. But last month we went to move her to next term’s shared house. As she was cleaning out her wardrobe I saw her try to conceal a rather sexy piece of clothing.
When I asked about it, she told me she wears it for parties. So she’d fibbed to me about parties and clearly dresses for a good time. Since I discovered this deceit, I have been having problems eating and sleeping, wondering what else she has been lying about? She has a history of being economical with the truth over what she’s been doing, and I once caught her texting boys to come to the house at midnight.
How many times has she told us she is revising for an exam when she’s already dressed ready to go out clubbing? She has already said she isn’t coming home so much next year, as the second year is very intense . . .
I don’t buy that at all. She is moving into a house share with seven other girls, and I think she won’t be coming home so much as Friday and Saturday nights are for clubbing and who knows what else? I haven’t told my wife what’s on my mind, but as the worry is affecting my sleep and appetite, she knows something is wrong. She says I’m depressed.
I think I’m mourning the loss of a daughter I used to know and love, now replaced by a young woman I no longer recognise. She has never spoken about any experience at uni. The dilemma is, as she will be so far away, I can’t do anything about what she did last year, and what she’ll be up to next year.
Give me advice please. I don’t know if I should talk to her or keep quiet and live with it. NICHOLAS Bel Mooney replies: August will soon be here and already many teenagers will be feeling excited about the next stage in their lives: university or college.
Meanwhile, many of their parents will be full of trepidation, knowing what a perilous world it can be out there, in so many ways. After this email you sent a second one, asking me not to publish because you suspected yourself of overreacting. Then, at my request, you gave permission — and I’m grateful, because many fathers find this stage in their daughters’ lives very hard.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK To keep your marriage brimming, With love in the loving cup, Whenever you’re wrong, admit it; Whenever you’re right, shut up. Marriage Lines by Ogden Nash (American writer, 1902–71) Advertisement Although all the attention tends (understandably) to be on the young stepping out into the world, their poor parents so often discover the truth of that touching country song by Suzy Bogguss: ‘It’s never easy . .
. letting go.’ Your letter is serious, heartfelt, honest — and wrong-headed, too.
Let me share a quiet, rueful smile. In 1966, my mother cried all the way home from dropping me off at University College London , while my father could only express himself by getting furious (a bit nasty, actually) about my short skirts and black eye make-up. Jump to 1998, when I was helping my own daughter unpack in her room at Warwick.
I pulled out a terrible, cheap, pink, glittery, sexy dress I’d never seen before, rowed with her over it, then wept all the way home because my little girl had gone. Parents, eh? Your daughter didn’t ‘lie’ to you, she probably thought it better — for your sake — that you didn’t know she’d be out partying that night. She probably also decided it wasn’t Dad’s business.
And, of course, she was right on both counts. When I read your email I said aloud: ‘Woah, sir, you’re getting it all wrong!’ A sense of loss is normal, but you’re getting too het up about this rite of passage. It’s quite natural and normal for any parent to be concerned for a child’s welfare when he or she leaves home, but not to think you can continue to control their lives.
You’ve been honest with me, but there’s no reason at all to be as honest with your daughter. No need to talk to her about sexy clothes, clubbing, boys, etc. No, no, no.
It will come out all wrong and make you sound almost jealous. Not good at all. Yes, you can remind her to be very, very careful about accepting drinks in clubs and to make a pact with friends never, ever to get separated.
But sensible warnings should be given in the same tone of voice used for suggesting she’s never late with assignments. If you turn into a dour and doomy nag instead of a loving Dad who wants her to enjoy university, then you can be sure she won’t want to come home, let alone ever confide. Teenagers, eh? They worry us so much and then — trust me — they reach their 20s and 30s and still worry us, and then it goes on.
We love them with all their faults yet often wish they would change, too, because our kids (adult ones as well) can be a pain in the neck, and hurt/disappoint us. Family life is always complicated and so (please listen to somebody who’s been through it all) you just have to find a way of coping with your own rite of passage. You need to sleep, so talk to your GP as well as being honest with your wife.
The important thing is to realise you still love your daughter very much (no ‘used to’ about it!) but have no choice but to let her go. I feel so guilty about my married lover I’m having an affair with a married man and I know this is wrong but I’ve fallen for him . .
. he says he loves me and will leave his wife when his parents have passed away. At the moment, because they are in their 90s, his wife helps with their care.
I go from wanting to be with him and then trying to make myself not. Obviously there is guilt about his wife — and then there’s the problem of my four children . .
. I’m a widow (my wonderful husband passed away 14 years ago aged 50) and my kids would not accept the situation I am in. I know this for sure.
Do I put myself first or do I do the right thing? I’d value your opinion. ANGELA Bel replies: Even though I added a few words (to clarify) this remains the shortest, simplest letter I’ve ever received about a subject so agonisingly complicated it’s caused untold pain, conflict, rage, guilt and deep grief for centuries. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about, through personal experience, as well as the pain and anger recently endured by people I know well, and (of course) the years of writing this column.
These stories always involve many tears — and sorrow is, I feel, the essence of the human condition. To cut to the chase, I am now haunted by the vision of a mature married woman, after years of helping her husband give loving care to his nonagenarian parents, being dumped by him for his secret mistress as soon as the old folks are in their graves. It doesn’t sound very nice, does it? No — and that’s because it’s not.
Read More BEL MOONEY: My leering husband makes me despair for all women Please don’t think I write that to make you feel guiltier than you do already. The only reason I can think of for you mentioning your own four adult children is because you only have to imagine how they’d judge your affair, to feel even more guilty. Shame is useful.
It can stop us — even on the brink — from becoming the worst aspect of ourselves. But — and let’s leave his wife and your own family out of it — surely the question to ask at this stage is whether continuing with this affair is likely to make you happy? You know what it’s like to experience a happy marriage (to that ‘wonderful husband’) and now you understand the thrill of a forbidden relationship, but I wonder if the first can give you any insight into the meaning of the second. You’ve ‘fallen for’ a man who constantly lies to his wife while exploiting her kindness.
Is he somebody you would call ‘wonderful’? Think about that. Married men unfaithful to their wives have a habit of promising their needy lovers they will leave their wives when this or that or t’other happens in the rosy future. It’s a good ruse — one which works again and again as the poor old spouses carry on their domestic lives in ignorance and the deluded mistresses spend another weekend or Christmas feeling sad and lonely.
These aren’t necessarily ‘bad men’; they are just fallible humans who want it all and justify their behaviour in so many ways, from ‘My wife doesn’t understand me’ and ‘You are the first to make me feel as happy as I am when with you’ to ‘If only we’d met years ago’. I think your question, ‘Do I put myself first or do I do the right thing’ presents a false alternative. What if I were to suggest ‘doing the right thing’ might well be the most effective way of ‘putting yourself first’? By that I mean by deciding you no longer wish to collude with your lover in cruelly deceiving his wife (and family?), you might be saving yourself much unhappiness further down the line — the day when he tells you, with a tear in his eye, he can’t possibly leave her now because she’d be lost without him, especially after all her years of self-sacrifice.
Yes, these stories always involve tears. And finally..
. magical and simple sense of belonging What was so magical about that day? Last Saturday’s jolly, generous, noisy wedding, in a field just yards from our house, helps me believe ‘all is right with the world’. Our next-door neighbours’ beautiful daughter Jade married her handsome long-term partner Jordan, with their two adorable little girls in attendance.
Bride and groom used to earn an exciting living riding horses, so it was fitting that they arrived and left our parish church in a carriage-and-four. The sound of hooves in the village was timeless and oddly moving. Which connects to my sense of what made this wedding so special.
It’s hard to put into words, but I’ll start with ‘belonging’ — when contentment means the here-and-now. In a previous London life, I knew people who called themselves ‘international’ — an ambitious, successful, privileged elite, usually from the same social group, and all sharing identical liberal-Left ideas. At posh dinners, book launches, TV lunches, receptions for the arts and media events, I hobnobbed with the kind of people who feel entitled to that lifestyle yet display no love of roots — either of locality or country.
At the wedding there was a powerful sense of ‘belonging’ — both to our neighbourhood (precious green belt between Bath and Bristol so hands off it!) and to each other and to this land. People are born, live and die in this area, go to local schools, love the certainties of family life and of horses, dogs, trees and meadows — and live according to those good certainties. How a horse is shod matters as much now as it did centuries ago and it’s natural still to live down the road from Mum and Nan.
Jade and Jordan’s wedding reminded me of what’s eternally true — and that the ‘happy ever after’ will always be possible. Advertisement Bel answers readers’ questions on emotional and relationship problems each week. Write to Bel Mooney, Daily Mail, 9 Derry Street, London W8 5HY, or email bel.
[email protected].
Names are changed to protect identities. Bel reads all letters but regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence. Share or comment on this article: BEL MOONEY: My daughter lied about going to parties and hid her sexy clothes.
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