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DEAR BEL

THREE years ago, my now former husband came home and told me he loved me like a brother, but was leaving, after five years of civil partnership and 11 years together.

This came just two weeks after his 40th birthday. I had organised a party, helped him to start a new business, booked a holiday . . .

I fell to pieces. Naturally, there had been someone else (younger) for six months.

Eventually he admitted there had been various other physical encounters over the 11 years we were together.

He left us in a financial mess, but through determination I paid off the debts and legally ended the civil partnership within six months.

We stayed in contact for two years, but when he told me he was engaged to the guy he left me for, I stopped.

It has been a year now. Since those dark days, I’ve been promoted at work and have lots of friends, but I’m stuck.

I simply don’t have the courage to go out and meet someone. I’m scared this is ‘it’. Divorce is bad enough, but to be out of a gay civil partnership, you can’t even tick the box . . . I feel lumbered with the words divorced, single.

It’s lovely to have the extra money each month and peace and quiet at home, but I’m working myself into a corner.

I feel bad I don’t talk to my ex any more and sometimes think perhaps it was all my fault our relationship collapsed — as he said. Other gay couples broke up after us and they have moved on, but this damn piece of paperwork and the damage done by it and my ex stops me.

I have not had any physical contact with a man since August 2014 (a one-night stand) as it took a lot to rebuild my confidence.

I go to the gym, but I am just a face in the crowd and for anyone I might meet, there will be a younger, fitter lad just around the corner. So what’s the point?

Oh, and how do I face the ex and my ‘replacement’?

We avoid each other by drinking in different gay pubs in town. But that won’t last for ever and then I will have to face his relationship and my failures head on.

I am 42 and stuck. This isn’t what I want or how I thought life was going to be.

My friends say I am a better person without my ex and that I should have moved on by now.

A gay divorce support group would be helpful, but where I live there’s very little support.

Any advice?

SIMON

After three years you certainly should be picking yourself up, yet as I write the word ‘should’ I check myself, because people do not move according to preordained rules, like automata.

What matters is your own sense that it’s time. three years ago, you had a terrible shock, knowledge of the love affair made worse by the discovery of all those cheap infidelities as well as his incompetence at even paying a bill.

Lost love is one thing, utter disillusion doubles the pain.

I confess I don’t quite understand your ‘paperwork’ issue. In your uncut letter you talked about ‘dissolving’, too, leaving me a bit confused.

All I will say is that getting hung up about a piece of paper and a label is just an excuse not to face what happened and process it.

No one cares whether you are separated, divorced, marriage dissolved, unconsummated . . . whatever. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you are still hurt and lonely and need help.

We live in a world obsessed with division. My generation will never understand LGBTQ ‘politics’ and I have no wish to because the whole

THOUGH I often suggest counselling (see today’s main letter), I know it isn’t always plain sailing.

At two difficult times in my life I went to see psychotherapists, recommended by a friend who knows about such things.

They were OK, but in each case I went three times, then stopped. I guess I felt the two women weren’t right for me, though I reckoned someone with a much stronger personality would have been. You only discover by trying.

In truth, I don’t know a single person who wouldn’t benefit from confiding in an experienced outsider, to try to make sense of worries.

When I was ‘down’ last August, I got in touch with my friend, clinical psychologist Linda Blair (author of The Key To Calm), and she did me much good. The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy has a separate site to help you find an experienced therapist in your area. You can watch a video of one of the professionals talking.

A website I have never mentioned here is Welldoing. org. It was set up by former journalist Louise Chunn in 2013 and has received recognition by being added to NHS Choices as a recommended resource on its counselling and psychotherapy pages — nhs. uk/Conditions/Counselling/Pages/Introduction.aspx

Louise Chunn explains the purpose of her website: ‘We have gathered a range of information, tips and advice about all aspects of health and wellbeing, alongside our innovative therapist directory of professional mind and body practitioners from across the UK. We hope, like our name, welldoing, we can empower you to build the happiest, healthiest version of yourself.’

Like a good magazine, the website offers much to read. There’s a section called ‘What’s worrying you’ and ‘Stress’ to find useful suggestions.

The ‘Find a therapist’ section looks useful. I like the way the site tackles subjects as various as spirituality and specifics, such as body dysmorphia.

I hope you find this noncommercial enterprise useful. As I said, you can only find out if you try.