The travel troubleshooter Kathy Lette on how to deal with jealousy and poor plane etiquette. LETTE’S BE HONEST.

Question: I’m emailing you having just got back from a holiday on St Lucia in the Caribbean. The scenery was amazing, the hotel food incredible and my husband and I should have had the time of our lives. Except we didn’t, because he let slip on day one that he had been to the hotel before with his ex-wife. We’ve been together for about eight years and this has never come up in the past. Why would he mention it while we’re actually there and not before? The holiday cost a fortune  about £10,000 between us. Things are still frosty; it just feels really disrespectful to me. Am I being unreasonable to be quite so upset?

Answer: My question is does green suit your complexion? That particular hue clashes with my colouring, which is why I try not to be envious.

Not to say that I haven’t suffered. A few torturous months after an ex-boyfriend ran off with my best friend I felt I was finally getting over the crippling jealousy  OK, I may have been hiding behind a shrub outside their apartment, watching them through binoculars before going through their garbage to see what they were drinking (Krug) and eating (lobster), but I hadn’t been given an injunction not to go within a ten-mile radius of their residence, so

Carry and pot file for that was a step on the road to recovery, right?

Jealousy is like stabbing yourself in the heart and expecting the other person to say ouch. So why exactly are you going for a medal in the women’s long distance cross-bearing? Yes, it would have been preferable if your partner had mentioned that he’d holidayed in St Lucia with his ex before take-off then you could have pulled the ripcord. But can’t you just be pleased that he feels comfortable enough in your relationship to be able to share stories about his past and that he also wants to share a place that’s important to him?

I am wondering whether there’s another reason you feel so insecure. I wouldn’t categorise sulking your will divorce your condition as chronic low self-esteem, but you seem to have an inflated idea of your own irrelevance. And clearly your other half loves you and thinks you’re fabulous or why would he want to whisk you off for a romantic holiday?

Keep up hostilities and the UN may soon declare your love life a disaster area. Carry on with your jealous sulking and even your pot plants will file for divorce.

There’s only one way to make sure that you don’t end up a romance fatality, a chalked outline in the wreck of your marriage  Book another holiday, somewhere really hot, to thaw out all frostiness.

MAKE IT HAPPEN You don’t have to spend £10,000 to find paradise beaches and romantic sunsets, but for your sanity’s sake avoid the Caribbean again. It’s hard to argue with  or, indeed, argue in  the Maldives. A 15-minute ferry ride away from the airport at Malé and set in its own lagoon, Bandos Maldives is one of the region’s bestpriced resorts; seven nights’ all-inclusive from £2,024pp including flights and transfers (virginholidays.co.uk).

Question: On a recent flight I was in the middle seat in economy (business class isn’t for me), next to a man who was occupying the window seat. He took off his shoes and socks and contorted himself into a yoga-like position, leaving his legs resting up against the chair in front, at 90 degrees to his body. I had to cope with wafts of whiffy feet for several hours and some unsightly corns. How do you handle people who just don’t understand plane etiquette?

Answer: Humans have a bad habit of being annoyed by other people’s bad habits. The trouble with flying is that you can’t exactly move away, can you? Oh, how you must have longed for an ejector seat.

Of course, what you’re supposed to do is have a discreet word with the crew. I once sat near a group of very pongy backpackers on a flight home from Turkey. Fellow passengers were reeling, eyes smarting, lungs scrambling for oxygen.

The staff saved our nostril linings by wandering past at regular intervals sending wafts of lavender mist our way, which kept mutiny at bay.

So, yes, you could send out an ocular SOS to the air stewards. But, being mischievous, I’d be more inclined to have some fun with your sockless fellow traveller. My Sockratic wisdom would be to fake a few annoying habits of your own. Pick the skin on your feet. Dig out earwax to make tiny sculptures. Practise drum paradiddles on the shared armrest. Blow spit bubbles. Sing an operatic aria out of key  When he begs you to desist, you can do a tradeoff: if he loses the sockless yoga contortion, you’ll stop yodelling. My list of annoying people to sit next to on a plane is revoltingly long; nosepickers, snorers, the flatulent, chatterboxes, fact regurgitators … Then again, is there anything more annoying than someone who points out all the annoying habits of other passengers  without noticing any of her own?