Can I get back on track with cheating girlfriend?

DEAR Bel,

If a man sits long enough, sorrowful and anxious, bereft of joy, his mind constantly darkening, soon it seems to him that his troubles are limitless… [but] Time has passed since then, and this too can pass.

FROM DEOR, A 10TH CENTURY ANGLO-SAXON LAMENT

AMY and I have been together for about 33 years, first distant friends, then boyfriend and girlfriend. When we first met she was having a relationship with a married man. She ended it, and we were together, but then one Christmas he rang her and she told him again it was over. I didn’t ask but she told me.

Moving forward a few years: I moved to her town, we have two children and live in the house she shares with her mum. Amy doesn’t work but runs the home. It can be trying and sometimes I feel like an outsider. Our sex life dropped off to virtually non-existent, which was an issue for me.

Then my widowed dad moved in, which put more pressure on us. One weekend I saw a text on her phone complaining to somebody of another wasted weekend; when I looked at the bill I saw many texts and calls to somebody who turned out to be the old married lover. I confronted her and, after a lot of tears, we managed to move on. But our sex life was still rare.

My dad and Amy’s mum both passed away - and I admit I had been detached and just let Amy get on with it. Then, looking for change in her handbag, I found a secret phone with texts to the same man saying she loved him and wished she was in his bed. I was devastated. She said I had driven her to contacting him again. We called a truce.

Last year, with a pretty good idea that they were still in contact, I felt justified to search, find the hidden phone and read the messages. It was clear that they were meeting. In November I found a new phone, but when I confronted her she said she was stupid and it was over. But I know they are meeting up.

I don’t know what to do. Recently, I asked if she would leave me and she said no. If I give her an ultimatum, I am scared she will choose him and I will end up alone as I’m not confident the years we’ve spent together will count for anything. On New Year’s Day I asked her if this could be the year we finally get back on track. She said she will see - but I was not to try to force it.

We kiss and hug before bed in separate rooms and I say I love her and she always replies that she loves me, too. But I think that’s a lie because she likes the status quo.

LAWRENCE

YOUR original email (nearly three times as long) describes in detail the slow start of your relationship with Amy at the time when she was seeing her married lover.

You confess that you ‘backed out’ of many plans, leading her (you suspect) to give up on you before you finally got together.

Only you have the power to look back and analyse that reticence. What were you afraid of?

Your anecdotes lead me to suspect that you remained a pretty passive partner which may (I’m guessing) have become a source of frustration to Amy.

You admit that you stepped back and let her do all the heavy lifting when your father and her mother were reaching the ends of their lives. How did she judge that lack of involvement?

Was your detachment a manifestation of the same passivity which set your relationship off to such a slow start - enabling her, therefore, to continue with the married man she loved? Could it be that she was longing for a means to escape from his fascination, and wished you had been much more proactive?

Did you help yourself during those years? I’m asking these questions to try to make you think about the past in order to shed light on the present. After 33 years, most married couples find that their sex lives tail off and that’s without sharing a house with one parent and (later) a bedroom with a child. Lack of sexual intimacy becomes a habit, especially when you are in separate bedrooms.

It may be that, as you grow older, what you describe in your longer email as your ‘high sex drive’ becomes less important than being cherished by your wife. Think about it. At the moment, you’re dealing with the horrible suspicion that she’s seeing her old lover and will leave you for him - if he is now free. You are provoked - but still, your language of ‘confronting’ and ‘ultimatum’ is not the way forward.

You sound isolated, suspicious, deeply unhappy and afraid, and the only way to face those feelings is to be brave about how you can move forward as a couple.

Perhaps Amy is secretly longing for you to be more positive, just as she probably wished you were all those years ago. Would she agree to attending a few sessions of couple counselling with you?

It would almost certainly help you both to pick your way through the situation and therefore I recommend it.

You say that you are ‘scared’ and ‘not confident’ and your last sentence is defeated - and defeatist. These are the wrong signals. Your marriage is at a crossroads; if you still love your wife and want to grow old with her, you must let her know. It is about giving her language she can ‘mirror’. That means a real, expressed faith in the value of what you have shared. Letting her know, without doubt, that you believe in your own ability to look after her and make her happy would be a start.