Dear Jane,
My husband and I have been in a loving marriage for over 35 years.
Before our children were born, I had a job that required me to be away during the week. To keep our romance alive, my husband and I wrote letters to each other every day. Our sex life has always been pretty active, so let’s just say the cards were pretty steamy.
I saved every letter we sent to each other and hid them in my dresser, so I could always remember that moment in our lives.
Recently, my daughter, now an adult, came into our room to look for one of my shirts and accidentally opened the drawer under the one I had told her about.
Dear Jane: My adult daughter discovered something “twisted” in my sex life and now won’t let me see my grandchildren.
The drawer contained all of our letters, as well as our toy collection, which is quite a lot.
She read some of the letters and then appeared downstairs, looking completely horrified.
I realize now that kids – even those who are now 32 and mothers of three – don’t like the idea of their parents having a sex life, and ours is probably more active than most. of people our age. (You see, as retirees, we have all the time in the world to be together, so we typically “get together” two or three times a day.)
But my daughter now refuses let us see our grandchildren alone, since apparently we are “perverts” and could “hurt them.”
I really don’t know what to do or say. We love our grandchildren and miss them dearly, but we can’t undo the letters. They’re smoky, yes, but nothing particularly strange. Although, according to her, only the most “twisted” people would indulge in the practices described in our correspondence.
I can assure you that there is absolutely nothing “twisted” going on, then or now.
Do you have any advice on how to reopen the lines of communication?
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Of,
young at heart
Dear young at heart,
I must confess that it baffles me that your daughter has no remorse for entering his private drawers and reading his private correspondence and, furthermore, that she now has the nerve to punish him for his own transgression.
Spying is a horrible thing.
We’ve all done it, but most of us soon learn that nothing good comes of it. We know we can’t ask our loved ones about the messages we find, or the strange search histories that appear on the computer, because we weren’t supposed to be searching in the first place.
But, really, this isn’t about your daughter’s bad behavior. What a terrible indictment of this modern era that supposedly accepts that a healthy sex life between a married couple could lead to something as extreme as denying you your rights as grandparents.
Keeping it from your grandchildren is a terrible thing, unless of course there is information missing here.
If it is simply the case that you and your husband have sex (and frankly, I don’t care what kind of inclinations that may include), that should have no bearing on anything outside of your marriage.
Unfortunately, however, the only thing I know that is absolutely true is that you cannot reason with irrational people.
This one is complicated. Your visitation rights as a grandparent vary from state to state in the US. Grandparents do not always have the enforceable right to see their grandchildren, particularly when those grandchildren are from an intact family (i.e. their mother and father They are still together.)
Either way, it seems like professional intervention would be helpful in this case. Perhaps a first option would be to suggest a family therapist for you, your husband, and your daughter. If you have a partner, she should participate too.
Talk and, most importantly, listening How each of you feels about what has happened with a professional in the room who can handle extreme feelings seems like the right way to proceed.
You will be able to discuss how you feel about the violation of your privacy. Your daughter can talk about how she is dealing with the inescapable fact of her parents’ sexuality and, most importantly, how she feels this will affect her children.
Sex still carries too much shame. It’s wonderful that you and your husband have such a healthy sex life; I hope you can continue enjoying it.
And I also hope that you can resolve this as a family.