My girl’s marriage break-up is ruining my life as well

DEAR BEL, IN 2016, my elder daughter told me about problems in her marriage. She’d been having an affair with someone with two small children.

She was always headstrong in her teenage years, but at university she met someone who was good for her. I couldn’t wish for a better man: a lovely, caring, friendly personality I can’t praise enough.

He is the son I never had and I love him. My younger daughter says he made her sister a better person, but he let her have her own way all the time. I never liked how she’d treat him at times. He would wait on her, fetching drinks and so on.

Why has this marriage broken up? She says he’s not been there emotionally for her as he’s very ambitious and works long hours — and also to provide well for my daughter, who likes to shop, shop, shop. They had an extravagant lifestyle, but now she says this never made her happy. Well, she seemed very happy for ten years!

Yes, she and her husband had some problems, but instead of sorting them out she turned to someone else. Fast forward to today — my son-in-law lives in a rented flat, nearby.

My younger daughter’s husband is very good friends with him. My daughter and he still meet. He’s hoping they can get back together.

She knows I love him and want him to be a part of my life. Their old house (40 minutes’ drive away) sits empty most of the time because she stays a lot with this married man, who left his wife and kids.

She is now involved with his children, when he has them. She won’t discuss her life with me or anyone in the family. We haven’t fallen out.

To give any opinion would make it worse because of her strong personality. We meet up, but she prefers we don’t talk about it. She left her job, but now has a better one and has lost a lot of weight.

Sometimes I think, it’s her life and who am I to tell her who can make her happy? Then I feel devastated, for how can she hurt so many people: her husband, that man’s poor wife and children age four and six … I think my daughter is unhappy and on a course of self-destruction. But what do I know?

Over the past year I’ve had therapy, although I stopped, as it was costing money. I know the theory, I just can’t put it into practice.

How can I clear my mind about my daughter and this break-up? I can’t talk to my other daughter, as it upsets her, too. My friends know a little, but have their own problems. I feel lost and don’t know what to do. MARLENE

This letter made me very sad, because it reminded me of how a whole family can be devastated when a marriage ends.

it was certainly the case with my own, and i have friends who have been made miserable by having to stand on the sidelines while a son embarks on a destructive affair or a daughter does the same; or if perhaps either parent takes on such a burden of work that the children suffer.

What can you say? Nothing. Yet you want to try, because that’s natural. Bossy parents find it

impossible to keep their mouths shut and loving parents will always want to express a view, and that’s where many a family row begins. It’s hard, because you’ve brought them up and been there to lean on. so stepping back and relinquishing ‘control’ is never easy.

As is so often the case, your original email was over four times as long as I have space for here, with a level of complexity that would have lost many readers.

It was very hard indeed to cut, but I believe I have stripped it down to the main issue. however, few problems are one- dimensional, and you bring to this issue of your daughter’s behaviour all the baggage from your past.

There are your two marriages; your first husband’s affair and abandonment when your youngest was only nine months; your late mother’s health problems and death; your second husband’s lack of support, culminating in your walking out of that marriage. A complex catalogue of woes.

It sounds as if you have been unhappy for decades and I just wish that along the way somebody could have helped you.

your daughters’ father (your first husband) treated you badly and gave you no financial support — so it would be only natural for you to yearn for your daughters to be happy and stable in their marriages. All mothers want that, but surely your personal experience would have played a part.

I also note that your daughter’s marriage problems were happening at the same time as your second marriage was in dire straights, so I’m suspecting you feel guilty that you were preoccupied.

None of this is your fault. you can do nothing to change the situation. you are wise not to have quarrelled with your daughter, even though you can’t help judging her behaviour. But you are not responsible for the hurt she has caused her husband; nor can you help the fact that the lover’s wife has been abandoned — just as you were all those years ago. hasn’t this reopened some of the old wounds?

Perhaps your daughter will return to her husband. Perhaps her relationship with the lover will flourish and be happy. Perhaps your beloved son-in-law will fall in love with someone new and gradually detach himself from you.

All you can do is stay strong — in order to be a loving mother and grandmother and be ready to listen to all their troubles.

Tokeepyourmarriagebrimming Withloveinthelovingcup, Wheneveryou’rewrong,admitit; Wheneveryou’reright,shutup. Ogden Nash (U.S. poet and humorist, 1902-71)