BEL MOONEY: How can I stop my life being so empty and sad? 

Dear Bel,

At the age of 72 I feel my life is over. I divorced after 22 years, realising my husband was a narcissist. Without going into details, I can tell you that his behaviour over the years cost me dearly in terms of losing friends and me not fulfilling my potential in my job.

Now I’m feeling that anyone I become close to moves out of my life. I have a friend whose husband died suddenly around the time of my divorce. We supported each other on many outings and holidays. But now she spends most of her time with family, daughters and grandchildren who live nearby. I seem to have become the friend she calls when there is nobody else around.

Another friend has just gone into care many miles away and I miss her. I have two lovely children and precious grandchildren, who live fairly close, and I’ve looked after my son’s children on many occasions, taking them out and having them to stay during school holidays. Now they are older, they don’t need looking after, so I don’t see them very much, as they are doing their own thing.

I have also looked after my daughter and her partner’s son ever since he was a baby. He is now reaching the age where I was looking forward to taking him out and about. However, it is likely that the family will be moving many miles away, so this will not be possible.

I have extended the hand of friendship to people with offers of trips out/cups of tea, but nothing seems to come of it. In all honesty I feel like giving up, as I really feel very despondent.

I do accept that people have their own lives to live, but it’s just that mine feels so empty. What can I do? Any small piece of advice you can give will be much appreciated.

JANET 

You gave as the subject of your email the words: ‘No purpose in life.’

So now it’s my task to say you do indeed have purpose in your life, because to deny that glorious truth about our brief time here on this Earth — that is to suggest it has no purpose — is to allow the bad things to win. And we’re not going to do that.

It‘s well-known that a relationship with a narcissist results in very low self-esteem, meaning the ‘victim’ in the marriage finds it hard subsequently to believe that he or she is worthy of love and affection.

It is one of the signs of narcissistic personality disorder that they deliberately isolate their partner from other people, the more to exercise their powerful, self-serving will to annihilate confidence.

Cumulatively such treatment usually leads to the ‘victim’ feeling extremely lonely.

You had 22 years of this and, although you don’t say how long you have been divorced, there’s no doubt that the effects of such a marriage will be long term.

So your friends were driven away and you lost confidence in work, but (and this is very important) you at last found the courage to end the marriage.

That was a definite purpose then — and it remains a vital goal for you because you are still in the process of becoming the person he couldn’t completely squash. It’s not over.

Your ex-husband flattened out your sense of self, but now it’s yours to find again. The task is hard and that’s why you experience such ongoing disappointment when you believe people are consistently letting you down.

You need friends badly and need to be needed by them and by your family. Perhaps you ask too much — always seeking reassurance that you’re worth more than that man made you feel.

Friendships evolve: sometimes we can neglect old friends and sometimes they don’t seem to have time for us. You have constantly to work at such relationships and realise you really can be the one who calls, not the one who waits to be called.

Friendship itself is a great purpose in life, so I suggest you make a real effort to contact people who may have disappeared from your life because of your husband’s behaviour. Make this a little project.

And how do you know your widowed friend didn’t ever think you were busy with your children and grandchildren? Be pro-active.

Now, grandchildren do grow and need us less. I, too, know that. There’s nothing to be done about it except be stoical and cheerful and always there when they need you.

But isn’t watching them grow and hearing what they wish to tell you a Big Purpose?

It’s sad for you that one family may move away; on the other hand you don’t know it’s going to happen. If it does, you will make journeys to the loving welcome that will await you.

Talking of journeys, I hope you can visit your friend in care, too. Thinking of her pleasure will give you another purpose.

Is your life ‘empty’? Last week, I felt unhappy, exhausted and unwell at some sad news, yet seeing footage of the parents of the murdered Nottingham students embrace each other, and hearing their broken, noble words of compassion, made me bow my head in awe before the love and courage that gives life meaning and purpose.

Flip your mind, Janet, to that — and recognise it.

I still long to be with my expat ex

Dear Bel,

I really hope you can give me some advice, as I’ve been having a sick feeling in my stomach.

I’m in a relationship and we have two babies together. We broke up a few times in the past as I went back to an ex, but each time it was short-lived and I would return to my partner, who took me back and never asked details.

We have now been together without a break for a few years. But I cannot stop thinking about my ex who now lives abroad. I feel sick with anxiety about the permanence of that situation. He asked me to go with him but I declined because I lacked confidence in my career prospects where he is.

My partner is a good man and a good father, but I really clicked with my ex and shared a similar sense of humour.

He rejected me at our last encounter, and I think this was probably payback due to my treatment of him. I really wish I could move on from this situation. I’m so tempted to make contact with him to get a form of closure, but I know this would be a bad idea.

What are your thoughts?

JENNA

Jenna, I need to be absolutely honest, which you would expect. Yet honesty can be harsh . . . but you have asked.

My first — and last — thoughts are with those ‘two babies’ who came innocently into this world and now face all it may throw at them.

What does that mean? That they need the two adults whose lovemaking created them (I hope in good faith) to put them first in everything they do. Inevitably, parenting means sacrifice, and let nobody ever say it does not.

When you have a baby, the love you feel is so different from the old affection for parents, or adoration of a beloved partner, or the dark thrill of lust. It is a protective devotion that would confront a horde of wolves threatening your child.

You yearn to protect your son or daughter from all the danger and grief of the world. This love makes you accept financial burdens, and tells you that from the first sight of the tiny squirming creature, your own desires must take second place to the needs of this child.

So you shrink from responsibility and sacrifice? Then don’t have a child. Love the child and you are immediately nailed to your own small cross. Hankering after an old love is perfectly understandable, but not if it turns you into a distracted woman obsessed by a dream and unable to cope with the reality she has freely chosen.

Because you call your children ‘babies’ and say you have now been with your ‘good man and good father’ ‘for a few years’ I am assuming you had the children after that last rejection by your ex. So you ‘clicked’ with your tolerant partner enough to make babies.

What do you want me to say, Jenna? That big passions are valid and can’t be withstood? That you should contact your ex to say goodbye and gain ‘closure’? That it’s understandable that you hanker after that ‘similar sense of humour and wit’? That maybe he was the love of your life?

No, I will not. I’m not indulging all that stuff. You need to stop this nonsense and become a loving, attentive partner and good mother, focus on your family and your own job prospects, and determine to make the best life you possibly can.

Practise deep breathing to calm your stomach and visualise the good future for those babies that you and their father will create together.

Lord knows, I realise from experience that it’s not easy to knuckle down. I understand that hankering for something else to escape to. I’ve been there — and that’s precisely why I know the day comes when we must grow up and take responsibility.

If we don’t, if we continue to think the grass is greener, then destruction follows and that means the real danger of ruining the lives of those who depend on you. I ask you to live in the present and see the good in what you have.

You know I am right.

And finally… Stay strong and carry on living . . .

This came from Lynne: ‘Hi Bel, Your column is one of the highlights of my week. I live in Australia so don’t have the option to pop out and buy the newspaper. I noticed your last column hasn’t been published online. I hope you’re OK.’

I’m sorry about my sudden absence last week. I wasn’t away (holidays for us are an increasingly vanishing dream) but I was sick — body, mind and spirit.

The symptoms: heart palpitations, dizzy turns, permanently dry mouth, nausea, exhaustion. Plus disbelief, rage and grief, of course. ‘Shock,’ said my lovely husband. ‘Heartbreak,’ decided my wise, unemotional old friend, a doctor’s daughter: ‘It is a real thing, you know.’

Things build, don’t they? Slowly, slowly, the waters of your tears recede, and everything feels calm, and you can hear the birds, the sounds of children playing — and then pow, a tsunami hits you.

Receiving some very bad and terribly sad news concerning some people I know well and care about, I was swept away.

The day comes when you realise you’re not the superwoman you thought you were, and wonder how to put one foot in front of another. As Simon and Garfunkel sang, ‘Hello darkness, my old friend . . . ’

A week passes, Father’s Day comes and goes, then what would have been Mum’s 99th birthday, and I lay fresh roses on their memorial stone in our village churchyard, and feel deeply in touch with this beautiful world, full of pain and delight.

What choice do we have but to go on — take those steps forward, live each day for our beloved dead and summon up vital strength for the living who need us to be strong, not feeble?

This is how it is for all of us. In the words of Sylvia Plath: ‘I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am. I am. I am.’

Yes, the heart on the sleeve, so battered, full of knowledge, sometimes sad and bewildered and yet still beating.