Should I take back my lover after he ran off to Australia?

DEAR BEL I WAS in a very happy nine-year relationship with a wonderful man I adored (I’m 55, he’s 44). We had a fabulous, loving relationship from 2005, though we moved house and countries a lot. (I now realise how much he’s a roamer.) We returned home in 2011, but he was unable to get much work.

In 2013 his father, who lived in Australia, died and it seemed his world fell apart. He flew back to Australia for the funeral, but two months later, just days before he was due to return, he took a fulltime job in Melbourne.

I was devastated. He explained he’d felt worthless not supporting me and that this job would be for only six months.

I saw him in March last year (abroad) — a tense and sad meeting where he seemed unable to commit to anything, though he wanted to have sex. In June last year he ended the relationship by telephone. He then had a fling with a woman in Australia.

I decided it was best to have no communication, but then contacted him for an address t o send his belongings. In January, we met at home. He was lonely and regretful, but I didn’t spend the night with him, as he asked. We’ve been in contact since. He’d said he hated his job and asked: ‘How would you feel if I came back to be with you?’

I pointed out the lack of, ‘I miss you, I love you’ and said he needed to work out what he really felt, then tell me. It might be relevant to say that he had a troubled youth. His parenting was highly dysfunctional, though he usually maintained a sunny, optimistic disposition.

In my heart I’d love to give our relationship another chance. We talk easily, with the same view of the world. But a lot has happened over the past year-and-a-half and I was thoroughly trashed by his actions. Is there any way forward? I will always love him, but I am frankly scared at letting him back into my life — despite the years of absolute joy he gave me. I feel he always runs away.

AMANDA

OFTEN I like to imagine what readers are thinking; here I’m guessing that most women will be telling you not to re-start this relationship. It’s the common-sense reply. But me . . . I’m not so sure. One phrase i n your unedited l etter keeps jumping out. It’s ‘absolute joy’.

When you have experienced that within a relationship and still treasure it (in spite of having been ‘trashed’) you are aware that such love is rare.

Nine years is a long time, especially ( perhaps) when you are older. So maybe there is another chance for you.

I wish I knew whether he had ever been unfaithful or split up with you before.

Since you don’t say so, I assume he didn’t.

You and your chap were happy roaming the world and getting freelance work when you could (I’m omitting what you do, for privacy’s sake) and with no children to consider, such a life would appeal to many.

The death of your partner’s father was the catalyst for change — and this is not unusual.

He had already been feeling low because of the lack of work and then bereavement shattered him.

You write: ‘It seemed his world fell apart.’

Who knows, the ‘ dysfunctional parenting’ might have intensified his sense of dislocation and loss?

What would have happened if you had hopped on a plane there and then to support him?

Would you not have wanted to attend the funeral, as his partner?

I realise i t might have been impossible because of your own work, but I’m wondering if this made him feel that you didn’t love him enough.

He was in a very vulnerable state, after all.

Whatever mistakes have been made (and I don’t count that fling as one, since you and he were apart) you are right that he needs to work out what he feels about you and tell you.

You’ve let him know just how much he hurt you, but you also need to listen hard to his side of it.

Normally, I would suggest that you book a couple of sessions with a relationship counsellor, but that wouldn’t work since he is in Australia — unless he agreed to it, came back to share the experience with you, and thus proved that not saying ‘I love you’ doesn’t mean there is no love.

As a f riend of mine said at the weekend: ‘My partner says that love is the most misused word in the language.’

Might it be brave to meet up somewhere neutral, but rather wonderful, taking a weekend to consider where you both stand and if there is any possibility of a new beginning?

Go sight- seeing, share meals (even a bed — what’s the harm?) and talk, talk, talk.

I understand that you feel afraid of letting him back into your life when he hurt you so badly.

But if you still love him, I don’t think you should rule it out.