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The unfair thing is that, even though she’s unfaithful, she gets violently jealous if I even consider dating someone else
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Early this year I returned from a business trip and found my house empty. My two children were with my mother and my wife wasn’t home. When she returned a day later she confessed that she had fallen in love with a young, successful, handsome man and they had been having a long affair. She was sick of lying and wanted to live an ‘honest’ life; this entailed staying married to me and continuing her affair out in the open. I reluctantly agreed. She now stays with her lover four days a week and spends three days with me and our children.
I feel wretched and humiliated, but it’s working fine vis-à-vis childcare and (gallingly) my wife has never been happier. I am pleased for her, I think, but I have begun to consider my own needs. The problem is that she is violently jealous. If she so much as thinks I am attracted to another woman, she flips out. I haven’t had the energy to consider another relationship – though a few of my wife’s ‘friends’ have made overtures.
I suspect this affair will wither. But what then? The children have adjusted their expectations of her. I still love her and would like us to be a family again, but this half life is eating away at me.
— Mike, via telegraph.co.uk
I can tell you one thing straight off the bat. This ‘honest’ relationship won’t last. There are too many contradictions and flaws to the arrangement.
Your tolerance of it, for starters. Not to mention your wife’s lover’s tolerance of it. (What if she falls pregnant by him?) Your children’s acceptance of it, as they get older and more judgmental. And, of course, Mike, the certainty that you’ll meet someone else, too.
It’s a rickety, fragile, temporary fix, and trust me, it’s certain to implode, sooner rather than later.
I referred above to your ‘tolerance’ of the current set-up. But just look at the language you use to describe your feelings! ‘Wretched.’ ‘Humiliated.’ ‘Eating away at me.’ And that’s in a considered letter. Lord knows what phrases run through your mind in the small hours.
It won’t do – and neither will your wife’s possessiveness. Such double standards! She can take a lover – but you must accept her prescription of a monk-like existence? Preposterous.
All right, here is the news, my friend. Your marriage is over. The sooner you accept that, the better.
My strong advice to you is to engage a mediation service to advise you and your wife on how to settle your affairs. This, prior to a swift no-fault divorce (rather than going down the adversarial road of citing her adultery).
You have a life to live, Mike. Step away from the gloom and wreckage of your old one. Move into the light.
You can find more of Richard Madeley’s advice here or submit your own dilemma below.
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