Unfaithful ex broke my heart – now I’m the cheat

DEAR Bel, I’m in a longterm relationship and I’m having an affair.

My partner moved in with me a year ago and for six months it was great. But in the past few months I want my space back.

He’s caring, funny, all my friends and family think he’s great and he’s just an all around lovely guy.

I really fancy him but I’ve never been sure if I love him in the way I should – with the same intensity that I have felt in the past.

He has abandonment issues and it consumes him. I’ve tried getting him to talk to a counsellor but he won’t.

I think he believes that nothing will ever make him feel better about what his parents did – except having his own family.

He says I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to him.

Also, the major issue in our relationship is that he has a physical disorder which impinges drastically on our relationship.

We’ve been waiting over a year to see another specialist but to be brutally honest, I’ve had enough.

We sleep in separate bedrooms and the intimacy in our relationship has waned as a result. And I’m the main breadwinner.

Six months ago I met another man and the attraction was instant. We’re now having an affair.

He works in the same field, is emotionally mature, and financially on the same page as me. We are both career driven. And, yes, the sex is amazing.

My best friend thinks he’s “the one”. I can just be a woman and be taken care of for a change. I don’t have to be the one organising everything. I don’t have to be the strong one.

But 10 years ago, a man that I still consider the love of my life shattered my heart by cheating on me.

Yet here I am doing the one thing that I was so opposed to.

Who am I and what have I become? A lying cheat. How could I inflict the pain I felt on someone else?

I feel terrible. I just don’t know what to do. One day I want to make my relationship work. And another day I’m daydreaming of a life with someone else.

Please help me to make sense of this confusion.

RUBY A: YOUR very long email gave me many details about your partner’s family history, his illness and other things, too – which I am respectfully keeping private, as you wish.

But I want those readers who will rush to condemn a two-timing woman (as they might say), to realise that life has been tough for you in this relationship.

Your life with your partner is complicated, and it seems to me that quite a burden has landed on your shoulders.

In any case, how could anybody possibly judge you more harshly than