He wants a second chance with me but can I trust him?

Dear Coleen

About 18 months ago I got together with a man I met through work. I’d been single for a while and he seemed to offer everything I was looking for – handsome, funny, caring and so on.

We saw each other a couple of times a week – usually meeting at a restaurant after work or occasionally he’d come back to my place.

Then when the first lockdown hit, we obviously didn’t see each other, as we weren’t living together. We spoke on the phone occasionally, but he was often unavailable.

Eventually, he called me and admitted he was married and was sorry for lying, but explained the relationship had been in trouble for a while and he’d been trying to end it when he met me.

I dumped him there and then because I was so angry and hurt, but was upset because I really thought we had something.

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago and he’s been back in touch to say his wife has moved out and they’re officially separated, and he wants to make another go of it if I can forgive him.

I want to but, as he lied about something so big, I’m not sure I can trust him again. What do you think?

Coleen says

I agree it’s a big lie and if he can deceive you like that, it makes you wonder what else he might lie about.

If he’s separated from his wife now, then it sounds as if he was telling the truth about their marriage being in trouble, but he should have been honest from the start and given you a chance to make a decision.

If you’d known, I’m assuming you’d probably have said, “Get back to me when you’ve left your wife.”

Also, I’d be wary of taking on someone who’s had no break after ending his marriage – he would literally be jumping from one relationship straight into another. It has rebound written all over it.

At the moment, we can’t see other people outside of our bubbles, so it provides the opportunity to take things really slowly and see how you feel.

If he’s serious about you, he won’t have a problem with agreeing to that.

If you do decide to make a go of it with him, insist on transparency and make it clear you absolutely won’t tolerate being lied to again.

He never told me he was married and I was so angry

Alexa, What Is There To Know About Love? Brian Bilston Picador, £12.99

Brian Bilston has been described as the “Banksy of poetry” and “Twitter’s unofficial poet laureate” and, reading this, you see why.

These 52 poems on the theme of love, just in time for Valentine’s Day, display great imagination and glorious humour. Richard Osman tells us: “If you like a) laughing or b) words which rhyme with each other, you will love Brian Bilston.”

I would add the word “almost” before “rhyme”: anyone who tries to rhyme “compatible” with “irrational” deserves to have his poetic licence revoked, but the laughter is undeniable.

A section on historic poems starts with The Caveman’s Lament (“me say to her how much me love her/she tell me love invent not yet”) and progresses through to Alexa’s response to queries about love (which she typically mishears as “glove”).

And Five Clerihews For Doomed Loves ends with a succinct summary of Shakespeare:

“Romeo and Juliet/must have wished they’d never met/for what use – when dead – is love’s sweet alchemy/and all that yelling from a balcony?”

Some of the poems are gloriously displayed, from a tall, thin poem on The Unrequited Love Of An Olympic Pole Vaulter (ending “I haven’t/got over/you yet”), to Eye Chart For The Optically Deluded, presented as an optician’s chart ending with tiny letters that spell out “NOW PLEASE READ THE SMALL PRINT”.

This is the funniest collection of humorous verse I have seen for a long time.

It is truly splendid/what Brian Bilston’s pen did/highly recommended.