I despair over my new love

DEAR BEL

MY QUESTION is very complex and I can only say it is driving me to despair.

During lockdown, I became friendly with a woman and we would walk and talk every day, and we would even message each other in between times.

The only stumbling block is I’m a married man — with my wife for 30 years — a loveless marriage, which has been the case for years.

We don’t sleep together and so are more friends than husband and wife. I want to leave her and move in with this woman. What should I do? PETER THIS is one of the shortest

emails I’ve ever received, and there are so many questions I would like answered.

I take this chance to suggest to readers that although the lengthy letters give me a hard task of editing, I do need some detail when you write.

You, Peter, don’t even tell me whether you have a family. Or when you met the other woman and if she is married. Or whether your wife has any inkling that all

this walking and talking has been going on. Do you see?

each letter that comes to this column is a unique story, but yours is as full of holes as one of my moth-munched sweaters.

But it’s easy to imagine you are in love. I believe we ‘fall in love’ many times in a lifetime; by ‘love’ I mean a sensation of intensity. It could be that this lady is your new life partner.

Or she could be a wonderful person whose allure has been intensified by the heightened atmosphere of lockdown.

either way, I’m old-fashioned enough to believe that a marriage of 30 years’ standing should not just be junked because of a new passion.

You call the marriage ‘loveless’, but by that you mean sexless, because you still call your wife your friend. and old friends need consideration, too.

If the marriage has run its course, then that conversation

must be had with your wife. It can’t be shirked.

But ‘despair’ can be made much worse by lasting guilt. treat your wife with the love you felt when you met her and then you will be given the moral strength to cope.