Dear Author

Today's advice column was about a woman who was 70 and married to a man who was 75. A 50 year old woman moved in nearby and the wife noticed that her husband was crushing on the younger woman. The writer said she'd tried to talk to her, but she was unfriendly, but she'd seen her huband text her younger neighbor, look fondly out the window at her house, and more. It made the wife super jealous, but the question of whether or not she should pull the plug on her whole life was giving her pause. She was asking the agony aunt what she should do.

This time, the agony aunt's advice was fine. Which was to let it go until something concrete happened in order to save a 40 year marriage.

There's nothing wrong with that. That's great. A person should always pause before throwing away a marriage.

Even though the agony aunt's advice was fine, I still found the article to be incredibly interesting because I have been the 50 year-old younger neighbor with an older married man crushing on me and I have a different perspective. Although I am not 50, the man in question was about the same age as the fellow in this story.

So, I moved in. He came over immediately to introduce himself and then he came over for literatally any reason he could think of. His wife was wildly unimpressed and eventually, they even took to fighting in front of me. He was just trying to be around me, and she took every opporunity she could to belittle him and basically abuse him in my presence.

Can I go now?

I absolutely did not know how to tell her, "Lady, in a romantic context, I think your husband is disgusting. I don't want him coming over. He's annoying. I never come over to your place because I don't want anything to do with either of you. The only thing that's going on here is that I am trying to be polite because mature adults don't burn bridges with their neighbors, make the neighborhood toxic, or move everytime they have annoying neighbors. They learn to deal with it and I'm trying to learn to deal with you, but neither of you are making it easy for me. I'm playing the long-game and I'm hoping one day he'll realize that I do not want to nurture a friendship with him and leave me alone."

When I read that the 50 year-old woman had been unfriendly to the wife, I guessed that she had also been unfriendly to the husband. He just didn't see it because he didn't want to. So, why did he have her number? She probably gave it out in the spirit of neighborhood unity, not because she liked him.

I was never nice to the guy in my story. I was tolerant. Apparently, that's all some men need to start a crush on a woman who is a little pretty.

So I were giving advice to this wife, I'd start by telling her to march over to her neighbor's house and say (in one sentence so she couldn't interrupt), "Is my husband bothering you? It's okay if you tell me that he is."

The agony aunt didn't flip the story around to show the perspective of the 50 year-old neighbor. Because, let me tell you, if I were 50 years old and single, I would not be interesting grave robbing someone else's husband of 40 years. You know what I would be doing? That's right. Literally anything else. It's just so hard to say that the agony aunt couldn't say it either, but here's the truth.

NO ONE THINKS YOUR 75 YEAR OLD HUSBAND OF 40 YEARS IS DESIREABLE BUT YOU.

No one.

A lot of older men talk to me and when I say they talk to me, I really mean that they talk down to me. It's not attractive. I smile and nod and try to weasel out of the conversation. They are so desperate for someone to think they're a wise old oak who's clever as a fox and still attractive.

So, Wifey-Poos of the world, treat your husband like that. He may still look for it in other places because some people are insatable when it comes to approval, but at the very least, he should be getting it from you.

And do not pin your husband's crush on the 50 year old neighbor without significant evidence (which the wife in this story didn't have).

Chances are, he's doing it all on his own, not because he doesn't love you, but because he's wondering what other lives he could have led while his current life is drawing to a close.