We love the dog more than each other
DEAR BEL MY PARTNER and I have been together for nearly 28 years. I was very laid-back and never checked up on or questioned him — until 2008 when I found he was on a dating website.
He said a work colleague did it as a joke, but suspicions entered my mind. In 2010, I found emails that made me feel punched in the stomach: he and my own sister — deriding me. Always ending in kisses, and ‘love you xxx’.
Also emails between him and a girl he used to work with, again complaining about me, commenting that ‘we hadn’t had sex for three weeks’, asking her what he should do.
Her replies said he should leave me and find someone better.
My relationship with my sister is now ruined. He denied he’d ever had an affair — then he later said he would never admit it anyway. He promised he would not have contact with the girl from work again, but thought me ‘mad’ to have made an issue of it. A year or so later I found an invoice from one of his trips abroad. It stated: Room: double; occupancy: two adults. Furious with me, he blamed admin error. I have also discovered dishonesty re money — when I ask questions, he calls me controlling.
Am I being reasonable, expecting him to be open about money and not wanting him to have secret liaisons online, offline or at work? Should I stay with this secretive, petulant, childish person who displays poor judgment?
If our finances were not so inextricably entwined and it was easy to leave, I probably would have done. I do like his companionship but we don’t have a close, loving relationship.
After one recent argument, he said he intends to ask me to marry him on my 60th birthday later this year. I suspect if I don’t bring up the subject again, neither will he. We have a dog and both love her more than we do each other.
MARIA
THIS was another very long letter, which I cut from 1,977 to 331 words. It’s really hard to do; I want readers to realise how involved these stories are. You give chapter and verse of financial complications, secret expenditure on lottery tickets etc.
It’s hard to know which is more depressing — his dabbling with infidelity (whether idea or reality) or the refusal to be as open about money as you are.
What I find most intolerable is flirting with your own sister behind your back and the pair of them ‘deriding’ you. Then he tells a woman about your lack of sex. Surely these are unforgivable offences?
Had he bonked any number of willing women it would matter less to me than such monstrous betrayals.
How can you even ask me whether it is ‘reasonable’ to expect him to behave like a decent human being and have respect for the women he has shared 28 years with?
You know what the answer is and it’s almost as if you want my permission to end this relationship.
Your final point about your dog is tragic. That innocent animal and your shared property are keeping two mature people in a relationship that’s surely making both of them unhappy — although he expresses it as anger.
Isn’t there more to life — in our leap from the cradle to the grave? Do you really want to enter your 60s embroiled in such an unsatisfactory relationship?
Here’s what you must decide: if he were actually to propose to you on your 60th birthday, would you want to hitch yourself to a person whom you no longer trust?
The answer should be a ‘ yes’ or a ‘no’.
You see, I think you will avoid mentioning it because you don’t actually want to decide, and this cowardice is no way forward.
You imply that you are lucky to be in a relationship when you know people who aren’t, through widowhood or divorce.
But I contest the assumption that anything is better than being alone. You’ve been unhappy, suspicious and frustrated for eight years.
Were you to summon up the courage to decide to change your life (even though sharing property makes things very hard) you might find yourself relaxed and contented at last.
Who knows? You might meet the love of your life.