Am I wicked for staying with a cheat just to get his inheritance?
DEAR BEL, I’M 65 and have been married three times. I wasn’t a good wife, as I cheated on my last husband constantly. He left and started a new relationship and they are very happy.
Five years after divorcing, I met my current partner and decided to give it a go. But, four weeks in, a note in his letterbox said this woman missed him. He protested that she was just a ‘married fling’.
After six months, he asked if he could move in with me, as he was hopeless with money and his landlord had asked him to leave. I was reluctant, but lonely. I thought: ‘At last, I have someone to come home to.’
He had a professional job working from home. I worked full-time. Suspicious, I bought a mini tape-recorder to pick up his conversations. I discovered he was still in contact with the married woman and he told her he didn’t love me.
Heartbroken, I confronted him. In the end, I wrote to her husband at his workplace and informed him exactly what had been going on.
Later, my partner was made redundant. I then discovered that he was still contacting women on sex websites (I put spyware on the laptop) and arranging to meet others.
Our arguments were extreme and I began to lose feeling for him. I was offered redundancy — and the main reason for taking it was to keep an eye on him.
But I regret it. My payment was £25,000, which I’ve blown in four years. I feel desperately sad about this and I know I need a kick up the backside.
We bought an old motorhome to renovate. Up to now, it’s cost us about £6,000 and I’ve maxed out two credit cards ‘just to make him happy’.
I’ve now taken charge of the finances and have just £6 in the bank.
He’s treating me like a leper and we haven’t had sex for two years because of the hurt he’s caused me. He ignores me when I speak, is verbally abusive at times and I can’t please him with anything I do.
I don’t like him and I wish he would leave, but I don’t want to be alone. My friends have all but disappeared (they only met him once in seven years) and I’m a recluse in my own home. I have no ties with my family.
My partner suffers from two serious conditions, which are predicted to end his life within the next ten years. His mother, 83, is very rich woman.
I don’t want to split with him yet, as I am going to squander his inheritance like he squandered my money. I feel wicked, but this is my karma. Am I truly evil? LEAH
While i have no idea whether you are evil, my goodness, are you ever stupid! is that the sort of ‘kick up the backside’ you reckon is needed?
Tell me, are you his ‘karma’ or is he yours? To be brutal, it sounds as though you deserve each other.
in your longer letter, you say you’ve had a ‘traumatic life’, but give no details about your childhood. So who knows what led you to the destructive path you’ve followed.
You had three husbands who, you admit, you treated badly, and then bounced into the relationship with this man because you were lonely.
having already gone through three men ‘to come home to’, you must have forgotten the way you treated them.
You also ignored the fact that your man had been sleeping with a married woman, but then later punished her innocent husband by blowing the whistle.
That must have been traumatic for the poor guy. it might have made you feel better, in a noble pursuit of truth, but it wasn’t kind.
And the story gets worse. Your man’s a liar and a cheat, so you spy on him — yet allow him to spend
your money. You give up your job to become a (rather pathetic) detective — then blow your redundancy payout, with nothing to show for it but a clapped-out camper van.
You let your friends go, perhaps because you were so focused on spying on your man that you had no time for them.
Now you fight constantly (when you’re not being ignored) and dislike the man you live with, yet stay with him so that you can get your mitts on his mother’s money. Nice.
You first condemned yourself to misery because you didn’t want to be ‘alone’, which, in my book, is like submitting yourself to torture because you can’t stand your own company. What’s the point?
And now you’re hanging in there for the sake of more vengeance — spending an inheritance that isn’t yours. Nor, for that matter, necessarily his.
His mother might leave it to an animal shelter, which sounds like a brilliant idea to me, given all the squandering that’s gone on.
Isn’t it time to wonder why you dislike yourself so much that you take out your rage on men? Was it inadequacy that made you unable to love or sustain relationships? Did you feel so guilty at the way you treated husband No3 that, subconsciously, you hooked up with someone who would give you hell?
This all sounds harsh, I know, but you said you needed it.
So think about who you are, what you want and what you’re doing — and, please, consider having some counselling to sort yourself out while there’s time.