Should I have run away with the love of my life?

DEAR BEL,

I’VE been with my partner for 12 years and we have two young children. Though happy with my family, I’m no longer in love with my partner.

My wants and needs have changed. If we didn’t have children together I wouldn’t choose to spend my life with him.

We’ve had a very up and down relationship (he didn’t treat me well) and broke up more than once, last time because he didn’t want children.

I left and got back in touch with an old friend I’d been very close to for nearly ten years — soulmates. He’s an amazing person: kind, caring, ambitious and trusting.

But he’d just started seeing someone new and it became serious. Eventually I went back to my partner who convinced me he’d changed and now wanted to get married. I was happy and we had a baby but I knew deep down my partner was not my soulmate.

Two years later, I bumped into my friend and afterwards he sent several messages saying he loved me, missed me and thought about me constantly.

I couldn’t understand why he was telling me that, since he was still with his partner. I kept thinking about him, but then he told me he must cut contact for the sake of his relationship. I understood, but it broke my heart.

I had another beautiful baby. I was contented but deep down still not entirely happy. Four years passed and I bumped into my friend in a car park.

He told me he was sorry for cutting our friendship, became really emotional and said he was about to become a father himself. Then he said he still loved me and I must always remember that was how he felt. He then walked away and I knew that was it.

I’m left feeling so hurt. I made a mistake by not having a relationship with him all those years ago and feel weak for going back to my partner, although since the children have come along things are better. I feel I’m in love with someone I’ll never be able to be with.

But if I hadn’t got back with my ex I wouldn’t have my two beautiful children. I know I should be grateful. But why do I feel this way? Will I always wonder . . . what if ? JADE

JUST think of all the doorways in a single life: splendid portals; doors into other destinies; gates into unknown gardens. Roads not taken, which might have made all the difference.

What if I (or you reading this) had married my first love? Would we have been happy? Or supposing I had moved to that city, done

that course, taken that job? Would life be better? The imponderable question ‘What if?’ will always whisper in your ear.

The thing about fantasies is they’re usually far-fetched because, of course, in reality you might have opened a door to discontentment or pushed open that enticing gate into a garden choked with weeds. In fiction, life and through this column I have known stories of marriages destroyed (and children damaged) because the grass seemed so much greener... then turned out to be full of stinging nettles. What is to be done? It’s true that some people recharge themselves by deciding to change, even if that change will take a while and cause great stress.

If it involves passion, the process can easily be glamorised by romantics but, believe me, the pain can be almost intolerable. It sounds as if it would have been quite easy for you and your friend to run away together, Jade, so we have to ask why you didn’t.

He was in a new relationship; you were momentarily away from your partner, yet not far enough not to go back and start a family. So the hankering wasn’t strong enough. That must be significant.

You don’t disclose whether or not your friend and you ever made love, but it’s hard to believe you didn’t.

No matter; surely if you were ‘meant’ to be together that would have been the time?

Were these meetings really accidental, or did you keep in touch by text? I feel there’s something missing here.

But we should move to the present — and your real life. You have two beautiful children you adore and a partner who’s much better than he was. He loves the children, too, and presumably loves you.

Never mind this ‘soulmate’ stuff; the pair of you are now entrusted with two little people whose happiness and welfare has to be regarded as far more important than any hankering after a fantasy other life.

This is the truth and you know it. You need to stop dreaming and work on making this relationship — and your parenting — as good as it can possibly be.

To be honest, I think it was self-indulgent and not very friendly of your ‘friend’ to leave you with the useless thought that (cue Dolly Parton), ‘I will always love you.’

He was playing with you. Think about that.