Dear Abby: I’m a woman in my 50s and will be going to my high school reunion in a few months. I recently reconnected with one of my high school teachers, whom I greatly admired. (OK, I’ll admit I had a schoolgirl crush on him.)
He is 10 years older, and we had a friendly relationship “back in the day” with extracurricular school activities (he was a sponsor) and even some outside socializing (dances and such), though there were no lines crossed as far as impropriety. We were both engaged to other people (who both happened to live a good distance away) at the time, so there was no thought of a romantic relationship.
Fast-forward 40-odd years. We are both single (I’m divorced; he never married). We have been emailing back and forth for a couple of months and making plans to get together at the reunion — maybe before. We have discussed a lot of things, but he never mentions dating or his former fiancee, so I sometimes wonder if he might be gay.
I have two questions: (1) Would it still be crossing a line if we started a romantic relationship because I was once his student? (He’s long retired.) (2) How do you ask a man or find out if he’s gay before you embarrass yourself by trying to start a romance?
Torn in the South
Dear Torn: It would not be crossing a line if you and your former teacher were to start a romantic relationship at this point in your lives. However, before you embark on that campaign, it is important that you understand why he has been single all these years. A way to do that without embarrassing yourself would be to pay him a compliment by saying, “Why is it that such a great guy like you has never married?” Then listen.
Dear Abby: Have you ever heard the saying, “A daughter is a daughter all of her life, but a son is a son ’til he takes a wife”? Our son and his family have never spent a single Christmas Eve or Christmas Day with us during the entire 17 years they have been married. A Thanksgiving with them is very rare.
They live an hour away. We and his in-laws live in the same small town, but they spend every holiday at the in-laws’. Their children have no memories of us on the holidays. When I talked about it with our friends, they said they have the same problem. All of their sons go to their daughter-in-laws’ parents’, too.
With the holidays coming up, I hope you may have something to say about this. When we spoke to our son about it, it just caused bad feelings.
Same Problem
in Minnesota
Dear Problem: My heart goes out to you and other parents who experience this. However, there is nothing I can do to change the behavior of adult children, as regrettable as it may be. The best advice I can offer is for you — and your friends — to spend the holidays doing things that you enjoy. Take a trip, gather with these friends and celebrate. It would be a lot healthier than sitting around brooding about something none of you can control.
P.S. It’s regrettable that although you live in the same community as the in-laws, you have not been asked to join them for a holiday meal at their table. After all, marriage is supposed to unite families, not divide them.
Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, also known as Jeanne Phillips. Contact Dear Abby at www.DearAbby.com or P.O. Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069.
