BEL MOONEY: Why do I keep losing men for not wanting a threesome?

Dear Bel,

I’m 43 and sitting here desperately sad as another relationship has just ended. I’m at the end of my emotional tether and don’t know what to do.

The three relationships that have been the most important to me have happened over the past 20 years, with one leading to an engagement. But all three have ended for one reason — my reluctance to engage in a sexual threesome.

Am I so out of touch in this over-sexualised world that I have become frigid and uninteresting and narrow-minded? Do I bow down and just give in to whatever desire — just to keep a man?

I fall at the final hurdle time and time again, so have to ask myself this: am I being unreasonable, or are they? I’m a fit and reasonably attractive woman with a healthy relationship with sex. I enjoy it very much and am always keen to improve my sex life.

But sex is an emotional as well as physical thing and I cannot bear the thought of sharing my partner with anyone, least of all in a threesome setting.

Yet time and time again I have found myself forced to deal with the thorny issue of threesomes. Why are men obsessed with this type of behaviour? Why am I not good enough on my own for anyone — in the sexual sense?

I’m a loving and generous person in all aspects of a relationship — fair, level-headed and able to listen. Why isn’t that enough?

I have given a great deal of thought to just gritting my teeth and getting on with it. But I strongly feel that once that door is open, it will lead to more and more sexual acts I may not be keen on.

Yet the lonely person inside just wants to be loved and the loneliness is killing me. I’m so desperately sad at my own failings. The failings that leave me on my own.

Will it always be like this, Bel? As I sit here on my own grieving the end of a relationship, I’m haunted by thoughts of him happily in bed with two younger women, having the time of his life, while I feel dried up, old and an absolute failure.

I know we now live in a ‘Tinder’ world. I just am not made to be part of this. So does that mean I’ll forever be left on the shelf, denied pleasure and intimacy? I wish you could help me figure this out.

MANDY

Mandy, it amazes me that you’ve been so unlucky as to fall in love with three men who turned out so weird. I’m sure the majority of readers will join me in being rather surprised that a sexual threesome is such ‘a thing’.

Mind you, compared with men and women ‘dogging’ (that is, having sex in dark, cold car parks, watched and joined by strangers) a little threesome is at least . . . well, cosy.

You ask me why ‘men are obsessed with this type of behaviour’. But are they?

‘Not all men’ would surely be the riposte of a majority of guys. The saddest thing about your email (apart from the saga of bad luck) is you seem to be thinking this is somehow your fault. That your wish to be alone in bed, having mutually pleasurable, caring sex with someone you love is somehow ‘unreasonable’.

Honestly, to give a moment to such a notion is almost brainwashing. Any partner who told you that rejecting a threesome is narrow-minded needed kicking out of your life.

I just wish you felt like the strong one, not the victim. No person, male or female, should ever feel coerced into sexual behaviour they dislike.

The fact that nowadays so many young girls have this vile experience is one of the horrors of our age — and I really do mean that.

I feel great compassion for your lonely sadness and bewilderment, but please stop pathetically assuming there’s something wrong with you. What on earth are your ‘failings’? You should value yourself more than to be grieving for the kind of selfish pig who could dump you because you wouldn’t comply with his sexual wishes. Good riddance. If he values mature love so little, then he deserves to be hurt badly by the nubile young things who briefly share his bed. I predict he is the one who will end up ‘dried up, old and an absolute failure’.

Let’s hope so. Meanwhile, you deserve happiness: but won’t find it if you keep hankering after men who turn out so cheap. Personally I’d rather be ‘on the shelf’ — that is living as a proud, independent woman. It’s time to start rebuilding your life in your own image, not giving into any demands.

My lovely son watches nasty videos

Dear Bel,

I’m sad after an argument with my teenage son.

He and I are very close. I brought him up alone and he’s kind, considerate and helpful. At 19, at university, he’s starting to explore all that life can offer.

Last night, he showed me some videos he was watching online. The first showed a man sitting at a cafe when the wheel of a passing car came loose and mounted the pavement, hitting the man with such force it knocked him right out of the picture.

My reaction was one of horror. Was he seriously hurt? Did he die? My son’s reaction was to shrug: ‘Dunno.’

The second showed two young men facing each other. One took a run at the other and knocked him flat out on the ground with a dropkick to the head. It looked like one of those ‘dare’ videos.

Again, I was absolutely horrified. My son’s reaction was to laugh: ‘Aren’t they idiots?’

I explained why I felt disturbed by his reaction to this as entertainment. He protested he was not supporting such content, since the creators did not get paid for it and his viewing did not increase total clicks. I said that wasn’t the point; such videos are nasty and damaging.

His response was that it was nothing to do with him and ‘morality is subjective’.

I tried to explain the impact of aggression and violence, but he reacted like I was being an emotional idiot.

The conversation descended into a debate which went nowhere and didn’t end well.

I don’t expect my son to adopt all my values — which I know I can’t impose. But I feel upset at his apparent lack of empathy for those hurt in these videos and his lack of understanding of why it’s wrong. Surely some things are moral truths?

Am I upset because he was defiant in the face of reason? I fear his lack of insight and empathy — and arrogance — will make him vulnerable to the hurts of the world. How to protect him? Am I over-reacting? Am I the only parent who feels like this?

SALLY

Thinking your children exist on another planet is quite normal. Even when they enter their 40s you can find yourself becoming rather testy because they don’t agree with you, when you know yours is the voice of reason!

Of course, if you’re wise, you’ll keep silent. But with a teenager? Maybe not. The trouble is, the kids are bound to think their parents are fogeys, just as we thought our own needed educating. Isn’t that the way the family wheel turns?

You feel upset because this young man you love so much — and praise to the heavens — is laughing callously at videos in which people must clearly be hurt.

That I can understand. Even the ‘normal’ online world is full of appalling behaviour. One of my Facebook friends recently shared the fact that she’d had a foolish accident in a car park, which upset her greatly as she was alone. Nobody around came to help because they were all busily filming her distress. Isn’t that just horrible?

When people behave in that way, the rest of us are right to express acute dislike and to judge their callousness. When your beloved son expresses indifference to people filmed being hurt, he displays an insensitivity common in his generation. It’s because people become desensitised to pain that online pornography has become so violent and utterly disgusting.

I am not suggesting he watches that kind of thing (though it’s likely, I’m afraid), but that it’s part of a continuum and bound to distress me and you.

You pose a vital question when you write, ‘Surely some things are moral truths?’ Of course the answer is ‘Yes’ — because without that assent we lose hope of living in a civilised society.

The Ten Commandments in the Old Testament and the Sermon on the Mount in the New both seek to codify human behaviour; rules in other religions as well as tribal taboos in many cultures are ways of ensuring social harmony.

I believe you were quite right to point out to your son values he might never have associated with online behaviour. Even if he rejects your views now, he may later reflect on your words and wonder whether you’re right.

It’s quite odd that you worry about protecting him when surely he’s able to look after himself? These days, in a very tough world, it’s essential to grow a thick(ish) skin to be able to cope with life. So keep all lines of communication open, let him learn in his own way and don’t worry so much.

You’ve already given him a good grounding for life by being the strong mother who brought him up and now feels proud of him. One day he might cringe when he remembers things he said and did — just like we all do.

And finally… It’s great to be rockin’ all over the world… 

Do you ever feel tired, worried, stale, even old? Well, do something completely different!

That’s why we found ourselves last weekend at the Status Quo Fan Club Convention, at Butlin’s in Minehead, Somerset.

I’d been invited by perennial rock chick Gillie Coghlan, Facebook chum and wife of the founder drummer of Status Quo, John Coghlan.

I’d not met either of them before, but the veteran percussionist’s terrific band, John Coghlan’s Quo, was headlining on Saturday night — so, hey, let’s go to Butlin’s! Wave hands in the air, punch fists in time to that driving rhythm, and pretend it’s 1970 again.

It won’t surprise you to know that most of the crowd was my generation, though those girls head-banging next to me must have been in their early 40s.

What does it matter what age you are? In a world that can seem strange and troublesome, you shake hips and hair in front of cool musicians playing the songs you knew when you were young — so loud you feel the vibrations up through your feet — and know you’re with your tribe.

Now, I happen to fit with fans of jazz, blues, sacred music, 1960s girl groups, symphonies, reggae . . . you name it.

Sing Whatever You Want — and know live music is good for the soul.

So it did me good to be with all the grizzled geezers wearing their Quo T-shirts, yelling all the words to all the songs. Who cares if you’ve lost a lot of your hair and you’ve sized your jeans up since the good old days?

Who gives a damn if you’ve got a dodgy knee — when those banging vibes are bound to do it good?

This isn’t just nostalgia, this is a permanent ‘now’. Elvis was my first love and I saw Cliff at the Liverpool Empire on March 22, 1959 — and it felt great still to be ‘rockin’ all over the world’.

This was John Coghlan’s last gig with his band. But old rockers never retire, their music goes on with every beat of the crazy heart.