He’s a cheating bully and it’s my fault

THere are few things more sad than the loss of dreams. This is a common source of grief — but rarely acknowledged. Within the ordinary hearts of men and women there lurk untold wistful yearnings and disappointments — for the first love who got away, the unfulfilled ambitions, the married bliss which eludes, the children who let you down, the dreams which seem foolish in the cold light of middle age but once sparkled like rockets in the sky.

This is the human condition — and most people learn to live with the shortfall in happiness.

Surely you have never been ‘disloyal to your husband’ — but sound as if you have been disloyal to yourself.

Perhaps you had low self- esteem when you married this man more than 30 years ago; whatever the truth, you let your friends drift away because he didn’t like them and subsumed your personality to his. Might it have been different had you stood up to him?

You’ll never know — but the truth is, some people with a tendency towards bullying (and see today’s main letter, too, for the female of the species) manage to find their victims.

I feel such sympathy for your situation. You have longed to be loved for yourself — and clearly fancied the flirtatious man who might have been ‘the one’. Your husband wasn’t nice to you so you basked in the attention of a man who was very nice indeed — for a while. If he was distant when he ran into you recently he was probably embarrassed — and perhaps guilty, too. Who knows?

What I do know is that you have nothing at all to reproach yourself with — because plenty of people flirt at their place of work, and some even fancy themselves deeply in love and secretly cherish wistful fantasies for years.

That’s very common — and I beg you not to use it as a stick with which to beat yourself. You say your husband is improving somewhat, and it’s obvious you have no intention of leaving him. Is it possible for a marriage to revive after more than 30 years?

Well, nobody ever said it was easy — and yet you are noting a shift in your husband now. I’d advise counselling but that would be a waste of time, because he wouldn’t go.

Nevertheless it might help you to talk to somebody on your own — so I suggest you try to tell your husband you feel very low (without going into all the detail of why) and would like to talk to somebody.

If you are menopausal this will be having a huge effect on your mood — and I imagine even he will be able to comprehend that.

You say he never listens, but if you don’t want to leave him, you have no option but to ask for his help. He may surprise you.