QUESTION: I'm a single, divorced woman of 35 and I've got a good - and eccentric - friend, aged 78.
He's a platonic father figure - he's very supportive and gets on with all my friends, even though we only see each other a couple of times a year.
But recently, we were at a party and both got rather drunk. As I was bending over, he pinched my bottom. I exploded and the next day he rang and said he was sorry, it just came over him. But he didn't realise how humiliated, violated and abused I felt.
Despite his apology, I feel I never want to see him again. He says I'm being ridiculous. What do you think?
Yours sincerely, Carole
ANSWER: If you sat next to an exuberant Italian musician in his seventies, and he kept hugging you, and holding your hand while he expounded on the marvellous Roman ruins in Sicily, would you find that offensive? If a girlfriend were to slip her arm through yours while out on a walk over the hills, would you feel abused? If a child of two were to beg to sit on your knee, would you feel your boundaries had been invaded?
No, you wouldn't. Culture and context are all. And if you can bear to put the very unfortunate and inappropriate gesture made by this social dinosaur of a man into a cultural context not of our time, could you find it easier to forgive him?
The past is a different country. And yet this ancient old croc seems to be living in it. He sounds like a remnant in a 1950s rock pool, a time when chaps would pinch women's bottoms and not just get away with it but be seen simply as saucy young jokers. Indeed, in those days it might even have been seen as a compliment - a pat on the bottom, or a wink or a peer down a cleavage was seen not as disgusting and the sign of a filthy old man but, rather, a daring and naughty gesture of someone just wanting to give a thumbs up to a woman's femininity.
This chap obviously, at least when drunk, went back into the dark ages when it came to appropriate behaviour. Not only should his age have prevented such a move, but also the fact that you and he are platonic friends, not to mention the knowledge, which surely he must have if he's not living in a time-warp, that what was considered OK in those days isn't necessarily OK now. For instance, in the 1950s, it wasn't unusual for anyone who wasn't working-class to refer to the rest as “common”. People got away with racist remarks that today would have brought them before a judge.
This man is living in the past. Part of his charm for you may actually be his old-fashioned, gallant ways: walking on the outside of the pavement, opening doors for you. But you don't like the other side of this behaviour. This man just doesn't have a clue as to what has happened since the days when he was young. But now you've told him off in no uncertain terms and he's apologised, even though he clearly hasn't got the empathy to comprehend why you feel, understandably, that you've been subject to a very unpleasant instance of inappropriate touching.
Try to forgive him. But if he ever does anything like that again, I can see why you might not want to have any more to do with him. You've said you don't like it. That's enough. He should respect your feelings, however “ridiculous” he finds them.
The Independent