DEAR BEL
It’s now nearly a year since I had to leave my wife after her affair.
We’d been married more than 30 years and I always thought we would grow old together and care for each other in our old age.
When I realised she’d been seeing someone from work, my world fell apart. I had never known pain like it — I have no words to describe the devastation.
When she moved out I couldn’t function, took sick leave and was prescribed antidepressants and sleeping tablets. After a couple of weeks she called and said she’d made a big mistake and asked if we could try to patch things up. Over the moon, I brought her back home.
For a couple of months we seemed happy. She left her job and changed her phone number. I made a massive effort: as long as she was happy, I was happy. Then I sensed something and checked our joint mobile bill.
I couldn’t believe my eyes; she had been calling and texting him dozens of times a day. I found out that as soon as I left for work she took a bus to meet him.
My life was just back on track: off all medication, back at work, looking forward to the future. Then another massive blow. I am ashamed to say I took an overdose.
Unfortunately, my daughter was in the house and threatened to call an ambulance if I didn’t let her drive me to hospital. I had a breakdown and was admitted to a mental hospital and on release moved in with my daughter, where I was visited most days by a doctor.
It has now been nearly a year and I’m still on antidepressants. There is the occasional good day, but mostly not. My wife wants a divorce, but I miss our old life so much — she is still the last thing on my mind at night and the first in the morning.
Sometimes I wake to think it was all a bad dream, then reality kicks in. When alone, I occasionally break down and long to end it all.
I’m still hurting so much after all this time and wonder if I will ever feel normal again. I loved her more than words can say and my life will never be the same again. I never cheated on her in all our marriage and wonder what I did to deserve this. Please help.
ALAN
The anguish in your letter tears my heart. Please don’t ask what you did to deserve such treatment. There is no justice in the universe, no reason for good people to suffer, no explanation or consolation for pain.
All of us who have been hurt know how the mind rolls round the ‘what-ifs’ (‘What if she had never met him?’, ‘What if he’d been run over by a car on the way to work?’ and so on) until they make you sick.
To sit amid the ruins of your castle of cards is the saddest, loneliest, most bewildering experience. Those injuries are mental, physical and emotional, like those of an accident victim. I know because I’ve been there.
After finding out about her love affair, you took your wife back, which is exactly what I would have advised, because marriages can survive affairs. They are always cracked, yet not inevitably broken. But then to discover the extent of her deception was so much more cruel because this was your new start.
There can’t be a single soul reading this who doesn’t enfold you with compassion.
Tellingly, you say that your daughter ‘unfortunately’ intervened in your suicide attempt. Let me suggest that you may still wish yourself dead, but that will not be the case in a year’s time.
You have so much to live for. What, you ask?
Well, your daughter, for a start, and other family and friends, and the world — the world which, in the guise of crisp green leaves and spring flowers and nesting birds, is currently holding out its arms to you. Go outside and see. Look up.
Oh, I know you will read that with bleak disbelief and dismissal. Nevertheless, I must stand up for its profound truth. Listen to me, Alan, life is better than death; lost love better than never-loved, powerful feelings of loss better than blank indifference.
You won’t believe any of it, but I beg you to realise two things.
First, these are still early days and you still need maximum help. Second, that with the passage of time comes an eventual healing of scars. They are always there, but fade and become tolerable. By which I mean, they can be borne. They do not stop life.
That is not to say we ‘get over’ the blows life deals us. I hate that phrase! It implies a kind of hurdle you manage to jump, then everything’s OK. You wonder if you’ll ever ‘feel normal again’ and state: ‘My life will never be the same again.’
My response to the first point is that in time you will do normal things and maybe even make a new relationship — who knows? None of us can possibly know anything that will happen.
As for the second point — you are absolutely right; life will indeed remain changed utterly, and I can tell you that years afterwards you will feel a sudden pang of longing for somebody who left you long ago. For the shared life and the future snatched away.
By then . . . well . . . in a strange way, the longing has become absorbed by you and is a powerful testimony to the love you had. I think of it as a fine, marble memorial, there for ever, and in that sense (yes, I know this sounds strange) not entirely lost.
You sound a good, loving man who deserves that new start. I wish you strength to get through the divorce and warn you that when those legal papers come in the post, the scab rips off. Be aware of this and seek the support of all those who care for you. Listen to the good things they say.
I hope you have counselling (ask your GP) to help you deal with the loss and pain. The Samaritans are also always available to call on 116 123.
I wish I could give you a massive hug. Most of all, I beg you to take back that word ‘unfortunately’ and rip it into tiny pieces, as white as the cherry blossom outside my window.
Your daughter was there for you; now you must see your one life as a precious second chance. Be strong now and make it new.