Even after her affairs, I can’t bear to lose my glum wife

DEAR BEL,

ALTHOUGH I love my wife, she does not love me. Probably because I’ve aged less gracefully than she has, but I don’t think I’m that bad looking in my mid-50s.

We have been married for nearly 30 years and up to 2004 I think we were a happy family with our three children and both of us in good jobs.

But then I moved for work and finding a job for her was difficult. I felt she was depressed, but could do nothing about it. We joined a sports club and I thought she was happier, but I suspected she might be seeing someone else.

Then she said it wasn’t working and wanted a divorce. I begged her to give our marriage a second chance. Two years went by and nothing changed, but we saw Relate relationship counsellors.

When they asked why she wanted a divorce, she said she wanted something more exciting. We had a few counselling sessions, but at £50 an hour both decided to stop. We lived in separate rooms. Our kids were young and I didn’t think it fair on them to live apart. I saw emails between her and a ‘friend’, which suggested something happening.

I contacted the (married) guy and said if he wanted to be with my wife, I’d divorce her and he could move in, if he divorced his wife.

He told me my wife meant nothing to him now, meant nothing to him in the past and would mean nothing to him in the future. He was using her. Once she realised this, she cut contact. Again we agreed to try to be together, but separately.

Financially, I’d be a great deal better off if I did leave her, but I don’t want to. We are really good friends, I can’t change my looks, but we all grow old and I keep hoping that one day she will see me as more than just a friend.

This is where I need advice. Every time I try to make something happen between us, I feel she’s likely to leave. Without a job she relies on me, so if she left now, she’d have a very difficult life.

And I could never have her back because I would never trust her again. Ideally I want you to say: ‘Keep your relationship going — sex is not everything.’

But I don’t want to live the rest of my life not feeling the warm embrace of a woman. PETER

Lately, it seems that every week I read an article which announces that the fifty or sixty-something writer is having better sex than ever before.

While feeling very happy for those blissful middle-agers, I dare to whisper that all the apparently rampant rumpy-pumpy is rather contradicted by (a) my postbag and (b) the actual experiences of people I’ve talked to over the past few years.

Many happy couples will agree with the actress Mrs Patrick Campbell, who famously defined marriage as ‘the deep, deep peace of the double bed after the hurly-burly of the chaise-longue’.

the key point is in your last sentence. Quite understandably, you crave physical affection, but you must know that it’s not always expressed by making love.

after all, loveless sex abounds (as it always has), while the joy of marriage can, after many years, be expressed in warm hugs (many, each day) which say, ‘I adore you’ — as well as the countless little smiles, jokes and confidences which bond a loving

couple, until death parts them. You wanted me to tell you ‘sex is not everything’ — so I just did.

But there is much more within your letter. You moved house and your wife couldn’t find work, which brought her down.

You felt helpless (why?) then suspected an affair — and then later confirmed another infidelity. You tried counselling but stopped because of the cost, which some of us might count a false economy.

Or maybe the truth was that neither of you really wanted solutions enough to put in real work — since the loneliness of the separate rooms had settled on your souls?

Your wife must have been hideously hurt by the lover’s cruel rejection and I wonder if you showed just a bit of triumph?

Do you really think she stopped loving you because of your looks? Have you talked through all these issues properly? Have you tried to help each other?

Now you say that if you ‘try to make something happen’ (presumably you mean sex) she will up and leave. You still don’t trust her (which many people will understand) yet claim you are ‘good friends.’

This is no way to continue. Your wife must be as miserable as you are — and surely the atmosphere must affect your children (whatever age they are now)?

It doesn’t sound as if you really want your marriage to be over, therefore surely you need to talk to your wife and work out a way forward?

I state the obvious, I know, but what else is there to say? This stagnation has to be stopped — and I’m afraid you have to think of ‘action’ which doesn’t begin and end with sex.

Many women long for attention and affection and respond to cuddles when they are absolutely confident the man isn’t simply trying to lead on to something else.

It’s a long time since you went to Relate, so surely it would be a good idea to try again, given all that’s happened since?

You two are the only ones who can know if you want to grow old together, but truly this is a waste of both your lives if you don’t.