His affair was symptomatic of the problems in our marriage

SHIRLEY HALES*, 70, is a former administrator from Southampton.

She and husband Steven*, 72, a retired company director, have been married for 35 years and have survived his affair with a former friend.

This year Steven and I are looking forward to celebrating our 35th wedding anniversary – for a long time it looked as if we weren’t going to make it. Steven had a six-year affair with a woman in our close friendship group, which ended in 2006. To say I was hurt and humiliated doesn’t

work through all the blame and anger, and

of hindsight, can I see that the affair was symptomatic of the problems within our marriage. We had both become complacent and I took my eye off the ball.

The problems began in 2000, by which point we’d been together for 16 years and married for 15. Steven and I had both come out of previous marriages and, at

sands were shifting. We were struggling

on a beautiful beamed cottage that our salaries barely covered. It was a money pit needing total renovation. I also had health issues that left me exhausted. The one part of our life that was going well was our social life. We were in a group of four couples and we did everything together – from dinner parties to weekends away.

so when one of the women in the group

– especially because she was married too.

when she began engineering seating arrangements to sit next to Steven. Behind my back, an affair started that carried on for years. She was a travel agent so they even had sneaky minibreaks, which he passed off as being away with his friends.

The truth came out after a night out when she mouthed ‘I love you’ across the table at him in full view of everyone. She had wanted me to see, but I didn’t have my glasses on and only found out when I overheard a friend confront her about it. The next morning I asked Steven straight out. He confessed, broke down in tears and asked me not to leave him. He told me he didn’t love her and wanted to be

‘To say I was hurt and humiliated doesn’t cover it’

with me. Each time he’d tried to break things off with her, she had threatened to

Even though I still loved him, it took a long time for us to work through the fallout. In the end, two things were key. One, we accessed counselling both as a couple and Steven alone – he worked through other unresolved issues such as his relationship with his mother and grief from losing two babies to cot death

from counselling a different man, lighter and happier. The second thing was that I had to break the cycle of recrimination – I kept wanting to rehash all the details, but it was torturing us both and I had to let him build trust to allow us to move on.

a relationship, I would say get the perspective of people of the opposite sex. All my female friends said ‘leave him’ and couldn’t understand that I didn’t want to. In the end, I took the advice of some trusted male work colleagues who said, ‘he’s made a big mistake, but if you love him and he’s sorry, you should give him a chance.’ It was enlightening and, for me, was the right call. >>