Will my wife ever forgive my flirting?

DEAR BEL,

IT’S now November 2022 and I am into the third week of my wife not speaking to me after an expletive-loaded list of accusations centred around a supposed sexual affair with another woman.

I can only say in my defence that this never happened, or indeed that any physical contact occurred. I could be accused of flirtatious behaviour for which, on reflection I’m sorry. I feel regretful and rather embarrassed.

Up to this point it may sound a familiar story, but this supposed event took place 50 years ago and we are both now 84 years old. At irregular intervals my wife is triggered to act this way by something I am not even aware of.

It has slowly but surely destroyed all intimacy and seems a cruel way to see out the latter part of our lives. No amount of persuasion has ever made her agree to seek help either individually or as a couple.

I don’t know if there is any connection in the fact that her father, in the last 20 years of his life refused to speak or have any contact with his daughter, myself or his grandchildren after a minor altercation. Is my position as unique as I feel it is?

ALEXANDER

WHAT a miserable situation to be enduring at home — and how pointless. Still, I am sorry to have to tell you that this story of your life at the moment is far from unique, but an everyday tale of adults who have no idea how to coexist. Letters from couples (or usually one half of a couple) who do not communicate are common, but your story centres on a perceived historical wound.

Fifty years ago your wife mistook your flirtation with another woman as evidence of infidelity and has never forgiven you.

her sense of hurt and insult has never left her, and from time to time she is minded (for some reason) to punish you once again. Oh, what a terrible waste of a life!

Yet (I repeat) such ugly, festering wounds are not uncommon within relationships.

People cling to resentment for decades, imprisoning themselves without light or hope of release.

They choose misery, deliberately throwing away any chance of contentment — then bitterly wailing that it has gone.

If you really had had an affair 50 years ago then your wife really ought to have learned by now how to forgive, if not forget.

That she uses a silly flirtation from so long ago as a stick with which to beat the both of you is just unspeakably sad.

You say you have suggested counselling and been refused. That’s a great pity because it might have helped, while there was still time. I wonder if your wife is one of those people who thrives on conflict, needing it to give meaning to a life which otherwise feels empty?

Yet you give that interesting precedent in the story about her father.

There was a man who took such offence after ‘a minor altercation’ that he cut himself off from his daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren for the last 20 years of his life.

It’s easy to guess that such a pattern might have been set when your wife was growing up. She probably saw her parents quarrel and observed how, by withholding communication, one parent drew constant attention to himself and created permanent anxiety in the rest of the family.

Such lessons easily take hold in a child’s psyche, teaching punitive unhappiness as a means of control.

So yes, it’s likely your wife learned all this at her daddy’s knee. What can you do?

On the face of it, not very much except somehow rise above domestic misery, knowing it will end. But you could be bold and show your wife this page in the newspaper, asking whether she understands why you wrote to a stranger.

Then let me ask her how many months or years of life she thinks she has left.

Does she want to waste them in miserable silence? Will she refuse to speak to you when she longs for a sip of water on her deathbed?