My daughter’s life in Australia is dire

DEAR BEL,

MY DAUGHTER has been married for 20 years, with two boys, 17 and 14.

She lives in Australia, having emigrated in 1992. Her husband has been violent towards her over the years and is a control freak.

Now he’s been living apart from her in a flat in Sydney for the past two years, coming to the marital home some weekends. She has been paying the mortgage for that time.

He has agreed to pay the boys’ school fees (which she has to remind him to do), but she covers all the utilities, food, insurances and boys’ clothes, as well as paying the mortgage, which is rather large.

She runs her own hairdressing business, working from her home salon six days a week to make ends meet.

Every time she tells her husband she wants to end the marriage, he says: ‘We don’t want to go down the divorce road.’ The whole situation is really getting my daughter down and I fear for her mental health.

The boys are typical lazy teenagers and no help to her at all. They don’t even walk the dog. The eldest has been diagnosed with anxiety and depression and has threatened to take his own life.

My daughter phones me every day. I am her only lifeline, as she has no other family there.

I listen to all her worries about money, the boys and her husband, and we go round in circles. Obviously getting a divorce is costly and she really does not want to lose the house — her security.

As we helped with the deposit (they were renting before that), we’d hate her to lose the home. I would be so pleased to have your input and maybe give me some advice so I can help her. STEPHANIE

HOW sad and frustrating to be so far away, bearing the burden of your daughter’s unhappiness. Nevertheless, there are lots of missing details. Do she and her husband co- own the property? Did he pay some of the mortgage when they were together? What are their respective incomes?

Do the boys like him, need him? What was the cause of the break-up? Was it an affair? Or his tendency to violence? Were the police ever called?

You say your daughter has ‘no family’ in Sydney, but after 29 years she must have friends. You should encourage her to talk to them. And it took two clicks for me to find some online couple counselling in Australia, so you could suggest this to your daughter.

Tell her you are not a professional and it would help her to get experienced advice.

Although we mothers do our best, her unhappiness is draining and that’s not good for you.

Given the age of those boys, my instinct says it would help them if she ceased to discuss divorce at the moment. It will be doing them no good to have that trauma hanging over them.

If those weekend visits cause no problem, why should they not continue until the boys have finished schooling?

They need habit and stability. Your daughter’s position is tough, I agree, but that 17-year- old needs help, not the continuing anger of parents. I think your daughter should agree to a truce and discuss with her husband what they can do together to help the boys.

For a start, their father needs to tell them to draw up a rota of domestic tasks with their mum — and stick to it. Why has she let them get away with laziness? It has to stop — and making that firm decision will actually help her take some control of her life.

If her distress has been passed on to them (which I assume it has), it will add to their feeling that life has no purpose. Teenagers will loaf about — unless the adults in their life tell them otherwise.

They need to be treated as young adults who can — and must — help their hardworking mother. No ifs, no buts. Perhaps you could chat to them on Zoom, Stephanie, and give the boys a pep talk.

Of course, in time she will want to press ahead with a divorce, and has every right to start a new phase in her life — without being shackled to the man who has caused her such stress and unhappiness.

If it turns out the house has to be sold, then she will have found a good solicitor and may fancy starting afresh in a new, downsized home.

All I am suggesting is that she sees this as a postponement, rather as so many of us feel life is postponed because of the virus right now.

The only way to get through tough times is to make quiet plans while you look ahead.