BEL MOONEY: My lover of 21 years has left me and I cry every day

Dear Bel, 

In 1997, after my marriage finally ended, I went to work for a small firm. My employer and I began a relationship which lasted until August 2017.

He was living apart from his wife when we met. He returned ‘for financial reasons’, but our relationship continued, mainly as friends and colleagues with the occasional evening out, daytime love-making and friendly coffees and chats.

His wife caught him out twice and he disappeared to try to make things work at home. The second time this happened (2004), I made plans to retire (I’d stopped working for him by then) and move to Greece.

He called me from time to time during my three years abroad. I told him when I was returning; the day after I arrived home, he was outside my house. He said living with his wife was now like living with a sister. Our affair began again. He visited almost every day and we were able to go abroad and enjoyed wonderful times.

But our last holiday was terrible. He was distant and ill-tempered. Four months later, in August 2017, he ended it with little explanation.

I’ve since discovered he’d actually left home before the holiday. He’s now living just around the corner from me, in one of his many rental properties, and using dating websites. I cannot describe the hurt and pain; I’m now under the care of a mental health team for anxiety, which shows no sign of abating.

We share a piece of road leading to our respective homes. We’ve spoken (at my instigation) to try to clear the air and had an occasional coffee. Any conversation about ‘us’ is quickly deflected, but he did admit that his marriage broke up because of me.

If he’d told me, I’d have tried to support him. He has trouble discussing emotions and I doubt he’ll contact me again. It seems I’m expected to accept his choice of home and not mind if I see him with another woman.

I’ll be 70 next year (he’s 64), but ten months on, I’m desolate and devastated, crying each day. I was happy with how things were between us, would never have made demands and just enjoyed our time together. My friends have been wonderful, but the nearest one is 30 minutes’ drive away. I have never felt so alone in my life.

I’m volunteering at a hospice, have joined a new choir, and enrolled in a doggy holiday homes service to try to broaden my life. But I still have too much time alone, thinking.

I feel sick when I imagine him with other women. We shared so much over 21 years and my life feels empty without him.

AUDREY 

Do you, I wonder, feel that you have wasted 21 years of your life on this man? It’s an important question. If you do feel that way, then it surely negates all the love, the laughter, and all those lovely holidays, doesn’t it?

But if you don’t feel it was a waste of time, then for all the hideous complications, the secrecy, the disappointment, the heartbreak, surely you demonstrate the truth of Tennyson’s words: ‘Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all? Honestly, I would first like you to think about what I say and find it in your heart to be glad of the good times. When we make that resolve – even in the midst of hurt – we put ourselves back in control of life.

For ten months you have been mourning your lost love and I understand your feelings of loss and loneliness. Yet somehow I suspect that writing to me has marked the beginning of a new stage. I give you full marks for your activities and rejoice that you sound determined (for all your tears) not to go under. 

It’s as if you have looked in the mirror and vowed to face the next stage of your life with courage and determination. I noticed you did not end your letter with a question, just a statement. No doubt you knew there is nothing for me to say. What’s done is done.

Yet I would ask you to reflect on the fact that this man you loved is not your friend. Your uncut email told me that’s what you valued about the relationship. Yet he let you down – and now doesn’t want to talk. Perhaps it’s time to tell yourself that a man who is useless at talking about emotion is pretty boring – and you could do better.

You are approaching a big birthday – which still sounds young to me! Surely it’s time to built on what you are already doing? At 69 you have so much energy, so much love still to give the world. 

So tell me – why don’t you move house? You’re the lady who upped sticks to Greece for three years, so why are you hanging around waiting to see him with a new lady on the road outside your house? I wouldn’t. No way. I’d leave that man behind with his dating websites, put my home on the market, find a great new place near my best friend, meet new people, and travel.

I’m a granny used as free childcare 

Dear Bel,

I care for my five-year-old grandson while my daughter and son-in-law work. I’ve done this for nearly three years, taking him back and forth to school, sometimes attending daytime events and also looking after him when he is ill. I love my time with him; especially since my mother and grandmother died before they could enjoy grandchildren.

At weekends my daughter and her husband want their son to themselves, which I understand. But they very regularly invite along my son-in-law’s mother and partner to day trips and weekends away, saying (ital)they (ital)need some quality time with their grandson as well. Those grandparents also work full-time and enjoy a luxuriant life-style. I have no issue with this, but now and again think it would be nice if I was invited along. I’m told I am selfish to even suggest it as I have enough time with my grandson.

I’ve asked if I can take him to a zoo or a theme park one day and been told no – the weekends are theirs. My daughter has the school holidays off so I never get a free day to take him anywhere. I feel mine is the hard slog and none of the pleasure other grandparents get. I’m just building memories at the school gate and in my living room with my grandson – who’s asked why I can’t go out for the day with them all. 

I’ve wondered if my daughter is jealous she can’t be home full-time, but I also think she is using me somewhat. My son-in-law (not from the UK) agrees with her that I’m being selfish. My husband says I should get myself a job and let them sort out their own child-care and pay. But if I did that I’d hardly see my grandson at all and would be punishing him and me for his parents’ unfair attitude. I’m only asking for an odd day to take him somewhere or even occasionally go along with them.

JULIA

Six years ago I wouldn’t have understood this letter. Empathy and imagination are wonderful, but some experiences need to be truly felt – and that’s the case with a grandparent’s woes. Let me just say that you are obviously a wonderful granny and that little boy is very lucky – as are his parents.

Every grandmotherly fibre in my body sympathises with you – but issues a warning as well.

Over the years I’ve had many letters from mothers miserable at the way their daughters and sons treat them. Such problems are heartbreaking – and should perhaps use put yours in perspective. I know five year olds are hard work; on the other hand, grandparents deprived of seeing grandchildren would cry out in envy of your position. When you talk of ‘building memories at the school gate and in my living room’ you are actually describing something infinitely precious – something that shouldn’t be diminished by that little word ‘just.’ You are the adult this little boy chats to about what happened in his day. You are the one he will tell if somebody was mean to him. Not so much ‘hard slog’ surely? Don’t you play games, do drawings, have fun and biscuits? Your time with him is wonderful – and to be treasured. You have him to yourself, one-to-one, whereas the others only have him as a group. The other grandparents may be rich (and you may feel a tad envious) but they can’t give him what you do.

Here’s the thing: your daughter is quite right to say that the other grandparents need time with the boy. At the same time I certainly don’t think you are selfish to wish to be invited on an outing now and then. I can’t think why they don’t realise that this is a wonderful thing for a child – ‘To be with all these people who love you’, as my daughter told her two last Saturday, at lunch with both sets of grandparents. But you know, the situation will change and develop as he grows older. At some point he will demand that you come with them all to the zoo, or wherever. An eight year old is listened to!

In the meantime, I disagree with your husband – and believe you should continue as you are, without rocking the boat. Moaning is counter-productive, and people never respond to silent martyrdom.. Yes, daughters can be a bit selfish (believe me, mine tests me sometimes, as I’m sure I do her!) but I’m afraid that goes with the territory in most families. In your place I’d make the time that sweet grandchild spends with me the best ever…and be patient. 

And Finally… Here’s how to banish your rage

Last week’s AF was a bit of a rant, lurching from manners to technology in a few splutters! Most of us need to let off steam from time to time. It’s bad luck to get into a taxi when the driver has several axes to grind and you can’t escape…and when (these days) you open the window in a hairdryer-wind, making your testy mood even worse.

My problem is that I can generally see two sides of most arguments – remembering the great days of grammar school debates when you had to be ready to argue (ital) any (ital) proposition, believed or not. Equally it’s a great discipline to argue against something you do believe. How good it would be for all young people to learn that art, instead of indulging in narrow-minded shrieking all the time.

It’s impossible not to associate the current crisis in mental health (old and young falling prey to depression) with the polarisation of society. Such rage and division on most issues! Here again is the quotation I chose for last week’s column: ’Sometimes the best way of caring for your soul is to make flexible again some of the views that harden and crystallise in your mind.’ (John O’Donohue).

Think about that. It’s a brilliant exercise to take an issue you feel very strongly about and deliberately formulate the opposite point of view – a useful work-out for mind and spirit. Just as physical exercise is essential for general well-being, so this mental exercise is can help keep angry, frustrated gloom at bay.

I know it can be hard – but it’s vital to try. Me, I walk around in circles in the middle of most arguments. I voted Leave but understand why my children voted Remain. I’m driven mad by identity politics yet try to make myself understand their various points of view. I can foam at the folly of fashion – then shrug it off as silly fun. Most of all, I remind myself I cannot change things. So what’s the point of rage?