Don’t make too much of it unless he makes a further move on you. Mariella Frostrup advises a woman who questioning a husband’s attention
The dilemma While I was off work recently with a chest infection, my friend’s husband emailed me with the contact details of a builder I’d asked him to recommend, and I mentioned I was ill. On his way home that evening he dropped off a bunch of flowers. It wasn’t an expensive bunch and he didn’t come into the house, just handed them over on the doorstep. He is a thoughtful person so this gesture didn’t feel out of character. However, a few days later he sent me a message and asked me not to mention the flowers at a meal I’ll be going to with them and their grown-up children. This made me uncomfortable. On the one hand, he is devoted to my friend and I am gay so there’s nothing inappropriate about our relationship. On the other hand, the fact that he asked me not to mention it makes me think that it’s something my friend would be upset by. I don’t want to blow the incident out of proportion, but I also don’t want to be a bad friend. What should I do?
Mariella replies Hold fire. So far we’re looking at a questionable gesture rather than an all-out affront on your dignity. We’re all paranoid now, Catherine Deneuve suggested in response to the #MeToo campaign (before apologising to those she’d joined in critiquing). According to the French 100 she lent her name to: “Men have been punished summarily, forced out of their jobs when all they did was touch someone’s knee or try to steal a kiss,” missing the point that many more women have been forced out of employment for refusing such advances. The suggestion was that the overreaction of hysterical women has left us with barely a red-blooded man prepared to slide his hand lasciviously up a woman’s thigh, let alone pop round with a bouquet.
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