I’ve thrown out my straying husband

Your email subject line was ‘pensioners in crisis’, leaving no doubt about the seriousness of this moment of acute pain in your life. Which way will you go? I doubt any reader (at least the female ones) will blame you for suspicions which seem to be well-founded. Your husband can deny he was having an affair with the woman all he likes — yet such attention paid, so many meetings, such shared interests ( and presumably confidences) and worst of all so many lies. What can one think?

A person can be unfaithful even if sex has never happened. The ‘romance’ lies in the stories told and the trysts.

So what can you do? As a regular reader of this column, you will know that I often counsel forgiveness and new starts. Why? Because a marriage is a huge thing to throw away because one of the partners has been a deceitful fool.

Sometimes a marriage just has to end because it has run its course. Yet — especially when you are older and contemplate the whole pack of cards falling about your ears and then a future in unaccustomed solitude — it is wise to consider whether the end is inevitable. You love your husband and clearly want him back. If he wishes to come back home, then the terms are yours to set.

First, though, you have to ask yourself why you stopped going to the fairs with him. There was a process there, of which you were a part. I find it hard to believe he just suddenly refused; you need to ask yourself whether in fact you lost interest in his dealing and preferred to stay put. It won’t alter the present, but people who suspect their partners have sometimes played their own part in the sequence of events.

If I were you, I would insist the pair of you seek counselling ( relate.org.uk) as an urgent condition of his return. Even if he continues to insist there was no ‘romance’, the relate counsellor will surely ask him to consider the effect of his behaviour on you, his wife.

I’ve changed your name but I think you should show him this letter on the page to indicate the seriousness of his behaviour.

Then ask him how he sees the future. I just hope that soon you will be travelling off to auctions together and rebuilding your marriage. And that the woman who has been the cause of your pain will disappear in search of something unusual and appealing to add to her collection — which isn’t somebody else’s husband.