I’ve found the love of my life, but is she stringing me along?

DEAR BEL AT THE age of 38, four months ago I met the love of my life.

At that time she’d been separated from her husband for around a year. She has lived nearby for four years, yet we had never met — until she turned up one day at my flat in response to my advertisement for a cleaner. Immediately, the chemistry and attraction was electric.

I’d like to think it was fate or serendipity that brought us together because our connection is so strong.

She is a 33-year-old Polish lady with a three-year-old son by her husband — whom she introduced me to within days.

Within the first week he got wind that we were having a relationship and from then on it was an emotional roller-coaster, with her see- sawing back and f orth between us.

She left and returned three times, before deciding to stay with him. We were together about seven weeks, during which time her other half would turn up at her place, fighting to get back with her. But t he seven weeks were incredible and we were intimate more than once.

Now we’ve been enjoying a sort of platonic relationship, although she is plagued by feelings of guilt and shame, heightened by her strong religious outlook — she is a Jehovah’s Witness. She’s the most lovely girl I’ve ever met and I can’t i magine being with anyone else.

I love her beyond words and want to spend all my days with her and her son, living as a family.

Unfortunately, I don’t work due to a long history of mental health issues, which I am now fully recovered from. I have a sevenyear-old daughter from my past relationship, who I don’t see, because I was denied access after a lengthy court process.

But I’m looking for work and want to learn to drive, among many other ambitions.

Naturally, these are issues for her — impacting on my chances of beginning a family life with her, coupled with her reluctance to leave her husband.

She has told me that she loves me, but must stay with him. She is very contrary by nature — giving me mixed messages: one day I am ‘perfect’ for her and it’s love, the next she’s calling it off.

I know I need to be firmer, but don’t want to lose her, as I enjoy what we have.

But obviously I find this triangle hugely frustrating. I desperately want to be with her, but can’t see her leaving him and don’t know what the future holds for us. Any astute advice?

JASON

FROM what you say in your letter, it’s important to be gentle with you because I suspect you are a very vulnerable person trying hard to get his life back on track. nevertheless I cannot soften the blow: your non-relationship with this woman is a disaster and you will be damaging yourself, as well as the welfare of a three-year-old child, if you persist in imagining yourself in love with a totally unsuitable female you simply do not know.

To go back to the beginning, so many aspects of your sad tale do not stack up.

You say this lady had been separated for a year, yet I find that hard to believe.

I think she was fibbing. she introduced you to her estranged husband after she had already slept with you (I bet) and then enjoyed herself playing off these two men. By any standards that is vain and exploitative behaviour.

You were ‘together’ (not) for seven weeks during which you had no idea what her true feelings were, as she was ‘with’ the husband from whom she was supposed to be estranged, while allowing you to talk of love and a future.

I’d like to know where her child was when she was frolicking at your place and why on earth she was stringing you along.

To be honest, I find myself worrying that perhaps you have given her money.

‘Lovely girl,’ you say? Well, maybe she’s pretty and flirty (hence that instant ‘connection’) and sexy — but I beg you not to have any illusions about her unstable character.

‘A strong religious outlook,’ you say? Well, maybe she pretends to believe when it suits her and to feel ‘guilty’ in order to keep you at arms length. But if she has any sincerity or sense of morality she would not be jerking you around on a string like this.

she should also understand that having screaming rows with her husband (estranged or not) is the worst thing f or the child they conceived in love.

This woman knows quite well that you have had mental health problems and yet has no compunction about making you as unhappy as you are. I beg you to wake up to the impossibility of this situation.

Your past history contains serious problems about which you give no detail: f or example, was your access to your daughter denied because of your mental health or because of other aspects of your behaviour?

You tell me of ambitions to learn to drive and to find a job, both of which are admirable. You already use a computer, I’m glad to see.

But you must be brave and stop this — for the shilly- shallying and foolish fantasies about a nonexistent future are getting in the way of your i mportant wish to create a stable life for yourself.