My lover’s cold and cruel, but I just can’t let him go

evidence. Nothing in your uncut email tells me you have a chance of this love affair developing into anything else but a source of misery for everybody.

You say you ‘love him so much’. Well OK, I’ve been there and done that and can assure you it passes in time. Always.

You’ve had just six months with Lover; the only way forward is to end the relationship, before it drags you all into a pit darker and more frightening than anything experienced so far. You have a perfectly good life (yes, you do) with the hardworking father of your children, but it lacks passion.

Well, you don’t have any passion with the lover either, by the sound of it, just not enough sex and the ups and downs of your acute neediness.

From where I’m standing, you’re doomed to continue being used until the day his scary wife finds out or he just gets fed up with your moods and demands as well as all of the exhausting subterfuge. I know you think it’s easy for me to write ‘end the relationship’ — but what’s the alternative?

You say Lover is ‘controlling’ (actually he sounds pretty awful) so perhaps it’s time for you to surprise yourself by taking control.

Put very simply (sometimes we do need to boil down complex feelings thus), you say you love your children ‘so much’ and Lover ‘so much’. Well those two feelings are not compatible. The tension between the two loves is tearing you apart, and therefore you have to choose.

What would happen were you to confess to your partner, ask his forgiveness and beg him to go to couple counselling?

You could re-make your whole life. It’s a risk, but one surely worth taking, for the sake of the children.

Yes, you’re right. Time to show some self-respect and strength and end this affair.

You are what your deep, driving desire is. As your desire, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny. From the Upanishads (Indian religious texts c 800 – 500 BC)