How can I let my cheating husband go when I still love him?

There is no doubt that love and suffering are all too often two sides of the same coin. An old Irish ballad contains the lines, ‘he is my love, O he is my love / The man who is most for destroying me.’

A million songs, poems, novels and plays have told the same story — your story: a tale of long-standing love crying out to be heard even though the beloved doesn’t want to listen.

It’s one of the saddest sagas in human existence, one I have encountered so many times in life and through this column. And a pain I have experienced myself, too.

So what can I say to you, Sophia, except that, in sisterhood, I understand? Some of us believed we were proud, strong women yet, when it came to the point, realised that we would bow before harsh words and grovel on the ground, rather than be left alone by the husband.

Such love is at the same time aweinspiring and awful. It can turn you into the weak, almost contemptible victim in those broken-hearted torch songs that plead, ‘Don’t leave me .. . let me be the shadow of your dog . . .’

Unless, that is, you stand up and refuse to accept victimhood any more. At the moment you feel life is not worth living without your husband, but suppose I tell you that countless women have felt the same way but stood up to that feeling — shouting No!

At the moment you suspect he is with her again, but you don’t know.

You remember what it felt like to have your neck on the executioner’s block — and yet you are ready to bend it again. Passively you wait for the axe, in defeated terror. You used the word ‘pathetic’ yourself.

Are you ready to let it define who you are? The alternative is to level with your husband. I wish you the courage to do this. Be calm, but firm and reasonable. Tell him that the last time was once too often and you will not wait for it to happen again. Say you value your own life too much to waste time waiting to know if he is seeing this woman again.

Tell him there are many sorts of love, and while you understand the romantic passion he felt for her, there is also the love you’ve shared through 30 years — and it’s just as meaningful.

Point out that it’s clearly stronger than what they had/have — otherwise their ‘escape’ would have worked. Yet you two — husband and wife — are still together.

Tell him you love him, but refuse to live your life not knowing what’s going to happen. Therefore, what does he want to do?

The only way for you ‘to go on’ is to be tough. Very difficult, I know. But essential — because it’s time.