I’m a married man – would it be wrong to start a gay relationship with a friend from my university days? BEL MOONEY answers our reader’s ‘Brokeback Mountain’ dilemma

Dear Bel,

My friend and I were in college The students share the same room together and quickly become close friends.

After a night out drinking, we returned to our room and crawled into bed together. We stayed together for three years during our course and had sex occasionally, although we both had girlfriends.

Fast forward 15 years and Edward is living in the southwest of England with his wife and three children. I live in the Northeast with my wife and three children, and we haven’t seen each other since we left college.

Recently Edward said he wanted to meet. He suggests we get together to watch an international rugby match, which means an overnight stay. He says it will be a chance to ‘relive the good times’.

I haven’t had a gay experience since college, but I’m actually very keen to ‘relive the good times’. Would it be wrong if I started a gay relationship with him? This is not something I can discuss with my wife or even mention to her.

PETER

When I read your letter, I was reminded of the 2005 movie Brokeback Mountain, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and the late Heath Ledger.

It told the story of two men, both handsome young farm workers, who had no idea they were gay until one night of drinking while camping on Brokeback Mountain.

They both marry handsome women, but they do not lose the memories of those passionate nights that they will repeat years later.

Is this a bit like you and your friend? To me the obvious answer is ‘only so far’.

Your description of the comfortable sexual relationship between you and your friend is interesting. You were both quite happy to have discovered your bisexuality and continued to have secret sex ‘from time to time’ and also had girlfriends. So why not?

I suspect many more people are attracted to the same sex than you might admit. When people (especially men) harbor fierce hostility towards homosexuality, I sometimes wonder how they might act if they found themselves on Brokeback Mountain.

The most interesting part of your story is that when your college days ended, your friendship ended too. Meeting even once was not enough.

So 15 years later, Edward wants to ‘relive the good times’, even though he’s never suggested it before. What’s going on? Maybe his marriage is in trouble. Maybe he tried to reveal his gay side and brought back memories of the nights he spent with you. Who knows?

The huge difference between your experience and my reference to Brokeback Mountain was that the movie was a love story, not an opportunistic sex story. This was both its beauty and its tragedy. The characters couldn’t give up on each other even if they wanted to.

But you haven’t seen Edward in 15 years because neither of you wanted to. So if you do date, it will be impossible to recapture those days of student sex.

The ‘good times’ cannot be relived because time has passed and people have changed. Sure, it could be good, but something tells me you’re more likely to see it as a serious disappointment. Is this important? Since you are consenting adults, one answer is ‘No’.

On the other hand, you are both married men with three children; This is where ‘Yes’ comes into play.

If you encounter the unspoken expectation of sex, you will be cheating on your partners as if you were each meeting another woman considering illicit sex. Lying by omission is still lying. You may find it impossible to keep a secret, and a guilt-ridden remark can potentially change lives for the worse.

You’re asking me if it would be ‘wrong’ to have a homosexual relationship with Edward. I think the wrong thing to do would be to deceive your partners and potentially jeopardize your marriages. Also, considering that you live at opposite ends of the country, this would be quite inconvenient.

Going back to an irresponsible past and trying to recapture it is a fool’s game. It is much wiser and better to think about the future, especially the potential consequences of the action.

Dear Bel,

I can’t sleep at night worrying about the world my kids are growing up in. This is not a vague anxiety, but a deep fear that something fundamental has changed. I actually prepared this before the final conflict. Iranian It broke out, but isn’t it possible?

Everywhere you look in the world there is hatred, conflict and murder. Every day brings news of political instability and rapid technological change that is both breathtaking and terrifying.

Wars are getting closer, and political debates are getting harsher every day. The Rise of Artificial Intelligence (artificial intelligence) makes me wonder what kind of jobs or goals my children will have.

I try not to show this concern, even though it seems to bother me day and night. My kids are 13 and 11, and I want them to feel safe and hopeful. But privately I wonder whether optimism is naive.

We teach them that if they do their best, work hard, and treat people well, they will have a good life. We tell them the world is their oyster, and we want to believe it, but the future feels increasingly uncertain.

I’m old enough to remember my liberal parents saying progress was inevitable and that each generation would be better off.

People my age (mid 40s) have grown up learning to be tolerant and to believe in equality, peace and love. That was the way to live. But such beliefs no longer feel solid.

Instead, I worry that we are raising children to be adults in a world we barely understand, let alone know how to prepare them for. I don’t have the strength to deal with it. A future governed by artificial intelligence.

I’m so worried. Can you advise me how to manage this fear while celebrating the joy of my children, their cousins, and their friends?

I feel so scared for them when they talk about their dream adult lives that the careers and lives they talk about won’t exist when they’re my age.

I’m normally a positive person, but the weight of the responsibility to give them the best future feels overwhelming.

I doubt you can give me any advice but I feel helpless for some right now.

KATE

It’s vital that I’m honest in this post, and so I’ll candidly admit how difficult I find it to respond to you with any helpful advice – simply because I have the same fears.

Although you are of a different generation, I can repeat everything you wrote, but substitute grandchildren for children. And you can be sure that the millions of people reading this, of every generation and of both genders, will be nodding their heads as they read your concerns.

This morning a man came to fix a small problem with our TV. He was young, long-haired, attractive, and he told me he loved Bob Dylan’s angry song Masters Of War, written in 1962-63 in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis, when I was an anxious, pacifist teenager and the world was on the brink of nuclear war. He said: ‘The protest song is just as relevant now.’

My only advice is simple: Be aware and live in the moment. There are so many things you can’t influence, which means focusing intensely on the things you can influence, writes Bel Mooney

Yes, I said, and this has been true of humanity since recorded time, because people (especially men) will always attack each other because they are greedy for land, money, power, weapons, and each other’s mates. Everything.

There is nothing new in what we see on today’s television news; That’s why I’m so exhausted and tired.

How to combat this? By holding on to the beliefs you mentioned.

What happened does not deny them; like when I joined the CND or when my grandfather was wounded first in Flanders during the First World War and then at Dunkirk in the Second World War.

No, not rejected, just seriously challenged – as always. Bob Dylan talked about the ‘fear of bringing children into the world’ – and yet people still say it. The human race continues to stumble on its way despite all the evil.

I’m not being Pollyanna about this. I hate the narrow-minded narcissism and stupidity of our politicians, the lies they tell, their lack of common sense, their willingness to metaphorically ‘knee down’ to every fashionable belief, as well as the belief that they are right and compromise is not necessary – and this goes for the entire Blob institution too.

I watch the world in thrall to artificial intelligence and feel disgusted and horrified. But I’ll stop here, or I’ll have to lie in a dark room and beg someone to give me advice.

Individual struggle is against despair. We can and must do this. My only advice is simple: Be aware and live in the moment. It means focusing on what you can influence, since there is so much you can’t influence.

So – the kids’ homework, the way they brush their teeth, their upset over their friends or their exam grades, their enjoyment of a new K-pop song, taking them bowling when you really don’t want to, saying ‘No’ when you have to, happily saying ‘Yes’, and meaning both.

This is living each day as the fresh miracle that it truly is.

That’s all you can do. And that’s all I can do. Although I pray too.

And finally… The power of love and laughter

What a week it was. I went to London for a party (it happens a lot less these days) to celebrate the sixth anniversary of the brilliant Freedom of Expression League, which is doing vital work to combat attacks on our individual freedoms. Research and join!

The good conversations were encouraging; It’s always a pleasure to be among kindred spirits.

There was a particularly nice chat with the very civilized, intelligent former MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, who is a total loss to the House of Commons. Such fascinating brilliance is currently in short supply there. Bring him back… please.

‘The Mogg’ and I couldn’t come from more different backgrounds. So what?

Immediately afterwards my husband and I set off for Crosby, north of Liverpool, to spend some time with my beloved family up north.

I’ve lived in the south since I was 14, but I know where my roots are and I’m glad my soul was shaped by the gentle wind blowing off the river.

Mersey. Talking to my close cousin Gina about our shared past was so meaningful that I swear the souls of our beloved dead were in the same room with us, sharing the warmth of those ordinary memories.

What rocked my week was the news that a dear friend of mine had inoperable cancer. I’ve known him for decades, his wife is my best friend, and we’ve had so many good times and such wonderful festivities at birthdays and Christmases that our lives have been shaped by that friendship to a significant degree.

We went to visit them after Liverpool and sat at the kitchen table to talk. What’s next? Knowing that everything will come to an end, planning for what is possible in the time we have left – but oh, the echoes of laughter and the power of love are endless.