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I’M exhausted from caring for my terminally-ill father.
Dad now has a bed in my front room because he hasn’t got long to live.
I’m trying my best to juggle his needs with everything I have to do, but things aren’t helped by my two sisters-in-law who pop in and out all day but don’t actually do anything to help me.
I end up making them cups of tea and sandwiches while they chat, watch TV and generally ignore my father.
My home has become a place of refuge for them and I’m angry. My partner tells me to have a go at them, but how can I when they’re touchy and could easily accuse me of being bossy?
MY husband blames me for the breakdown of our marriage – even though he has left me for another lover.
He claims that he was forced to cheat after I stopped adoring him.
If I’d worked harder to respect, cherish and appreciate him, then he would still be in my bed.
I can’t tell you how angry I am by his self-serving reasoning.
When we married 17 years ago, I’m the first to admit that I absolutely worshipped the ground he walked on.
I was impressed by his wealth and his confidence and found him very sexy and charming. For the first few years of our marriage I did everything to please him.
Warned
I gave up work, dropped all my friends and cooked and cleaned like a woman possessed. Then my mum died and I felt guilty as I wasn’t with her at the end.
She left me a dying letter urging me to reclaim my life and be my own person. Her words shook me to the core so I decided to go back into education.
My husband wasn’t best pleased. Then I got myself a job and a whole new circle of mates.
A few months later I was warned for the first time he was cheating on me with a colleague.
I confronted him and he accused me of neglecting him in the bedroom. He said I made him feel unloved by being unadventurous and boring. I refused to apologise or take responsibility for his infidelity and we argued. Months later he left me for yet another woman, with whom he’s now living. I don’t want a divorce.
I’ve suggested meeting up for a chat and even looking into professional mediation, but he keeps saying everything is my fault.
Is it? How is trying to fulfil my potential worse than him betraying me?
JANE SAYS: The last thing your father needs is stress during these final, precious days.
You’re not running a cosy drop-in centre.
Your sisters-in-law need to pitch in to make your lives easier. Sitting back and demanding tea and sandwiches is just not on.
You need a family conference with them, your husband and brothers. Explain that your father hasn’t got long. Insist he is treated with love and respect.
Work up a rota so that everyone can help out.
Sadly, if your relatives are not interested in doing their bit, then they will have to be told to limit their calls.
Your brothers have to get involved too. They can’t hide or shirk their responsibility.
Be firm with them or you will collapse under the strain. JANE SAYS: Your estranged husband is a person with a strong sense of self-entitlement.
He loved it when you were cooking his meals and warming his slippers. Yet the minute you dared to think about yourself he went off on one – literally.
Now you find yourself single again while he’s in the arms of another. Do yourself a favour and keep living your life to the full.
You aren’t, and never have been, his domestic drudge. If he can’t be happy for you, then you’re better off without him.
His attitude is, and always has been, childish and selfish. Let his new woman find out how demanding and backward thinking he is.
It takes two people to make a relationship work. Clearly, there’s been a breakdown in communication. You and your estranged husband have been circling each other for months and now he feels that everything that has gone wrong is all your fault.
At some point he needs to stop playing the blame game. In an ideal world he would accept that he has made mistakes too.
Sleeping with other women was his decision and it’s something that he should take ownership of.
But will he? I am not holding my breath.
Simply saying that you drove him into the arms of others is insulting and quite pathetic.