We all hope that any advice we give is taken and enriches someone’s life. As someone who gives advice every week in these pages, I sometimes (but not as often as I would like) get to hear what happened next. When the reader writes back to say that my reply was helpful and how it has changed their life, even in a small way, it makes me feel very happy. Who doesn’t like to make a positive difference?
Some years ago, a reader, a mother, wrote in to say that she had recently found herself in a difficult relationship. She had been with her boyfriend for two years, after separating from her son’s father. Although the reader and her boyfriend loved each other very much, she said, and there were seemingly many good parts of their relationship, her partner had a hot temper and could be verbally very aggressive and harsh with her little boy, who was only six. The reader and her partner were making plans to move in together. Her son had said he didn’t want this to happen. A brave boy. What should she do, she asked? My advice was to listen to her son and to reconsider the relationship and read up about abusive relationships, which is what I feared hers was, if not already, then certainly becoming.
Recently the reader wrote back to me to say this: “I knew that I needed to end the relationship but I was quite vulnerable, still very damaged from the breakup with my previous long-term partner, and I was petrified of my son losing yet another male figure in his life. I was also worried about falling into a pattern of failed relationships and the impact that this would have on my son. I remember that your advice was calm and measured, but you did suggest that this was not a healthy situation for my son and I to be in. I did end the relationship some months later, after things got even worse, and it was the best thing I could have done. Your advice meant an awful lot to me. I’m happy to tell you that, a couple of years after ending that relationship, I met a wonderful, kind man who has turned out to be the love of my life and we are very happy together (and he and my son get on really well).”
There’s another problem I remember very well. A man wrote to me to say that his wife couldn’t have any more children. They had one child whom they loved very much but they were finding it hard to mix with people who had two or more children, as it was too painful. I tried to be gentle and counsel them that this was not a great idea and maybe they needed to explore and acknowledge their loss. Privately I dared to write to him to say, “Are you sure your wife can’t have more children? Doctors get it wrong sometimes.” (At the time I was writing a piece about fertility and obviously fancied myself an expert.) The letter was published and a few months later the man’s name popped up in my inbox. I steeled myself a little for a rebuke. “You’ll never guess what,” he said, “my wife’s pregnant.”
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