Can I escape my hectoring husband?

DEAR BEL,

AT 60, I need to turn my life around again before it’s too late. I spent years very happily married to the most amazing husband, Phil — the love of my life. We had known each other since I was 17, but didn’t get together properly until my 30s due to other relationships.

Then he was diagnosed with a rare lung disease, which gradually made life very hard. On September 30, 2009, he collapsed and died at home.

I only got through the next few months because of love and care from friends and family. Moving on, three years ago, I remarried and now know it was the biggest mistake of my life. My husband is a control freak.

He dictates what we should do and how I clean the house etc. Two years ago, he allowed me to have a little dog (as he knew he would lose me otherwise), but she’s restricted to the kitchen/diner and a part of the garden.

We’ve split up a few times, but he talks me round. Our rows are so nasty; he calls me all sorts of names and accuses me of not showing much affection. A lot of my feelings probably died with my last husband.

Now I feel I don’t really love my new husband or even like him sometimes. Our sex life stopped nearly a year ago.

I feel I should move on (scary as it seems) because I’m so unhappy. I want the rest of my life to be happy and fun. We have a house together (another hurdle), but I’ll be able to buy somewhere on my own and finally have some peace.

I feel better having written this. Should I try to make this work or is it time to walk away, having realised we just don’t work as a couple? HILLY

HAVING got this off your chest, it’s good to know you feel better, but now I hope you follow up words with action. Needless to say, it is predictable that a besotted dog-lover like me is going to feel her hackles rising, to read that your little dog is so restricted. You’ve picked the very thing calculated to make me shriek: ‘ Leave this horrible man!’

Seriously, it doesn’t take a dog-lover to recognise there’s something very wrong in the sentence: ‘he allowed me to have a little dog.’ What? Your husband ‘allowed’ you to do something you very much wanted to do?

Was he a prison governor in a previous existence? Did he feel he was giving you a privilege, only to then stipulate conditions? That is no way for any couple to live — although I must add (somewhat bleakly) that plenty do.

In your unedited letter, you tell me you enjoyed a terrific career travelling the world as cabin crew and then coming home to your wonderful marriage, so it must be galling to find yourself, at this stage in your life, living with a man who seeks to curtail all your freedoms.

having known what it’s like to live with ‘the most amazing husband’, it must be unbearable to be spending your life with this man who criticises and controls. I mean . . . how dare he? I need you to be clear about one thing: a situation that feels intolerable does not have to be tolerated. Not by you.

Plenty of poor and desperate and unhappy people the world over have no control whatsoever over their lives — so I’d like you to reflect on that point, then take a deep breath and give thanks for your own choices.

You must not betray yourself by being afraid to act. It seems obvious you have been browbeaten into going back to this man after those previous splits and also feel scared of being on your own again.

But the last time you were alone you had no choice — hit, as you were, by a terrible bereavement. This time you do have a choice. hilly, to remain under the same roof as a man who calls you horrible names and makes you miserable is — yes, you said it — a big mistake.

When your husband died, you were fortunate in the ‘love and care’ you received from people who love you. Do they realise what’s going on? have you been anxious about telling them, in case they judge you for remarrying?

My first advice is for you to come clean to them, so they can offer full support again. Then make an appointment with a solicitor, take advice over the house and anything else, and find out about obtaining a judicial separation.

After that, tell the control freak what you are doing. Which is taking control. And remember, with that little dog you won’t be alone, but can step out with all your old style and start a new life.