Do I have a future with lover who won’t divorce?

As I so often explain to readers, your email was four times as long as this, therefore I know more facts than we have here. so I must be frank from the outset, Rosalie, and say I don’t quite believe you.

You say you came to terms with the knowledge your boyfriend didn’t want to remarry. Is that really true?

Also, you tell me he’s wrong to assume that if he divorced you would ‘press for marriage’ —because you don’t want it. Is that really true?

You see, I sympathise with you but fear that this relationship was in serious trouble from the moment it began. I doubt you ever came to terms with his ongoing involvement with his ex-wife, or his wish never to re-marry. I also suspect if he were single it would be a matter of months before you started planning a wedding in your mind, and told him so.

Believe me, I’m not being harsh. For your own sake you have to be honest with yourself in order to decide whether ‘there’s a future’.

Your boyfriend remains passionately involved with his daughters (of course) and sees no need for a stepmother for those beloved girls.

You will always be a poor third, or maybe fourth. He never invited you to move in with him — you asked.

His habitual grumpiness was probably as much because he just didn’t

want you to be there, as through any perceived incompatibility.

Madly in love as you were, you made yourself blind — until he stabbed you with the truth.

In your uncut letter you said you gave him £100 a month towards bills and ate meals in work, as well as offering more money. But he didn’t want that, did he? He wanted you not to be there.

Some couples manage perfectly well living apart but sharing a bed a few times a week, before withdrawing to their own spaces.

It wouldn’t suit me one bit — nor you, either. But your boyfriend would like it. Think of it from his perspective. He’s keeping the family home just the way he likes it, for his girls to come and go.

Meanwhile, he gets to have good sex every so often with somebody he strings along with the promise of living together at some undefined time in the future. You tell me you feel like his ‘bit on the side’ and at the moment — because you have put up with his lack of caring and courtesy, but still sleep with him every couple of weeks — that’s exactly what you are.

You long to regain your happiness and self-respect, but I fear you will never achieve that as long as you allow this situation to continue. In your place, I would enjoy living in my very own house, go out for jolly drinks with my daughter, and make a point of meeting new people.

I sympathise with your upset at losing what you thought was a ‘wonderful, long-term relationship’ — but fear that if you go on sleeping with this man you will just make yourself more and more unhappy.