BEL MOONEY: I've nursed my husband through cancer but now I want to leave

/li> DEAR BELI’m 32 and my seven-year marriage is in crisis. The last three years  were difficult. Sam has a bad temper and would shout and be very intimidating.

Once, he punched my arm. He was very sorry and never hit me again, but it made me lose my trust.

We went to Relate three times for relationship and sex counselling. This helped for a while, but didn’t address the fundamental issues between us.

I felt rejected by him as he never instigated sex and I tried for such a long time, but eventually stopped.

'I felt incredibly guilty for leaving my husband at such a vulnerable point, but didn't see how it was fair if I stayed, unprepared to make things work'

About 18 months ago, I worked with a counsellor who was enormously helpful and got me to see what joy could be gained by being truly intimate with another person.

I thought by working on my issues it would help the marriage and get Sam to address some of his, too.

I didn’t explicitly communicate any of this with him and so it’s unsurprising that nothing changed. At Christmas 2010, I asked him to leave, but he didn’t. We muddled along, though I was still unhappy.

Then, last June, Sam was diagnosed with cancer and had lengthy surgery and radiotherapy. I was devastated and thought he was going to die. He’s fine now, but is having regular check-ups.

I did my best to support him, but his treatment isolated us even further — and his cancer made me assess what’s important in life.

I married at 25. I put my need for stability above important things such as a spiritual connection with another person. I am quite a deep and introspective person. Sam isn’t. Now I see that this is much more important than I thought.

Before Sam’s diagnosis, I had grown close to a work colleague, Daniel — a good friend I leaned on. By October last year, our feelings were clear. I stayed with Sam until after Christmas, then left.

I felt incredibly guilty for leaving him at such a vulnerable point, but didn’t see how it was fair if I stayed, unprepared to make things work.

Daniel isn’t the reason I left Sam. He was a catalyst — together with Sam’s cancer. My departure has completely devastated Sam and I feel terrible for the pain I am causing. I’m staying with a friend to give me space.

I’ve told Daniel I’m unable to commit as I want to be clear about my reasons for leaving Sam before I can move on.

Sam is begging me to come home and we meet weekly. I accept that my behaviour has been selfish. But do you think it my duty to go back?

TANYA

Your anguished letter was four times as long as I have room for here, and displayed an unusual degree of honesty and self-knowledge — for which I congratulate you.

I picked it simply because it was by far the most difficult one in the latest batch. Readers tell me they often play a ‘game’ where they read the letter, work out what they would reply, then read my response — to see if there’s an overlap.

My feeling now is that anybody with a clear-cut answer in mind is almost certainly less wise than they think. In other words, faced with a conflict like this between ‘guilt and duty’ (the subject-line of your email), most people would feel, as I do, that there is no simple answer.

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Should you stay married to a man you no longer love, simply because you feel sorry for him?

Does having survived cancer negate the unhappiness a person has caused in the past?

Bearing in mind that there are no children involved, would it be honest to return to a failed marriage, turning your back on a likely soul-mate perhaps — just because you feel you ought?

You explain how you fled a chaotic upbringing by marrying a man from a stable family. Your counsellor has told you that you and Sam evolved a ‘parent-child dynamic’ where he provided stability.

Explaining that Sam has struggled with his weight, you offer that as perhaps a reason for his increasing lack of interest in sex and intimacy.

As a couple, you tried counselling, but that didn’t stop the tension and loud arguments, as — increasingly — you felt on a different sphere. You must have both felt intensely lonely in your separate rooms. By the end of 2010 you felt (probably correctly) the marriage was over, but it struggled on.

Then, after the bombshell of Sam’s diagnosis, you tried to be supportive — but in truth you wanted out.

The man you depended on for stability had proved to be weak, mentally and physically. The possibility of his death made you realise how much you value your own life and how much more you want from it.

Others may judge you for starting an affair when your husband was having treatment for cancer, but your guilt is ‘punishment’ enough.

You admit to me that you didn’t communicate with Sam enough —yet surely you would have done, if you still loved him. It seems to me that you’ve been very mature to seek refuge with a friend and not with Daniel. If he is the person you are destined to find joy with, then he will wait.

But in all honesty, I do not think you should return to Sam out of pity. What kind of life will that be, for both of you? Won’t it all end again in a year or so, with you feeling bitter?

The purest, kindest thing you can do is to remind Sam of all the good things you valued in him and thank him for what you shared.

Help him to see that this is his new chance at life — and happiness. But not with you.

  Am I losing her to a man in a sports car?

DEAR BELYour main letter a few weeks ago appears, on the face of it, to be exactly like a situation my former lady friend and I were in recently and she has emailed me to say it vindicates her.

To explain, I had been seeing my friend for nearly 12 months and though we didn’t live together we considered ourselves a couple.

She belongs to a widow and widowers group and a number of these men and women have become quite close.

Recently, one of the men invited a few of the group to a dinner party.

It included my lady friend and her two closest girlfriends from the group, together with their boyfriends.

Though I had been seeing my friend for longer than the others, I wasn’t invited. At midnight I received a text to say she was stopping the night — though no one else did.

I got upset and had a slanging match with her on the phone.

What she didn’t tell me until afterwards was that the next morning she went for a drive with this man in his sports car and they had lunch.

In a couple of weeks, the same man is having a birthday lunch. My lady friend has been invited along with her two best friends and their boyfriends, but again, I haven’t.

Was I wrong to get annoyed and question her actions?

She assures me it was totally innocent, but what would your reaction be?ADRIAN

Here is where I hold up my hand in protest to your friend, saying: ‘Hey, lady, please don’t use my column to justify your actions!’

The letter she referred to bore the headline: ‘I’m furious at my boyfriend for having his ex to stay in his flat.’ Reading it again, the only common factor in the two stories I can see is anger and jealousy. 

I suspect your friend focused on my criticism of the jealous lady, to whom I wrote: ‘Instead of being mature and civilised you threw your toys out of the pram like a needy child . . .’

I also advised her that, in my opinion, she had ‘no ownership’ of her neighbour/boyfriend.

Your ‘slanging match’ sounds like another version of her ill-temper and you certainly assumed ‘ownership’, didn’t you? But there it ends.

Every human problem is different, although readers often tell me they find enlightenment about their own issues in my replies to others.

But let me answer the direct questions you pose at the end. My reaction would have been to feel very hurt and left out, just as you did. Even if your lady slept innocently in the spare room, there is an intimacy about staying over and going out with him the next day.

In your place, most people would have felt annoyed and asked what she was playing at.

Your friend will be disappointed that I appear to be taking your side, but — on the face of it — it doesn’t sound as if she treated you with much courtesy, after enjoying your loving companionship for nearly a year.

You don’t tell me your respective ages, but I sense neither of you is young — despite this ‘boyfriend’ terminology!

Your friend has been widowed; you tell me nothing about your own history, marital or otherwise. How did you meet? Are you a part of any group, too? If not, I suggest you look carefully at ways to boost your social life, to help you through this disappointment.

Because it seems obvious that the widower in question has his eye on your lady, and that she finds that rather fun. Who can blame her for wanting to go for a spin in a nice car with an attentive man?

In any case, you now describe her as your ‘former lady friend’ — leading me to assume that after the ‘slanging match’ one or other of you decided to cool it. Surely what’s important now is for you to come to terms with this situation and shrug it off.

If you were to stop reproaching her by text or email (I bet you still do!) and start to get out and about, she might reflect on the enjoyable times you shared. And miss them.

I wonder if you can put yourself in her place — and write me an imaginary letter about your relationship and these recent events?

It could help you to stand back and reflect on her feelings during these months. Then take that self-knowledge with you as you go out to enjoy yourself. Maybe she will come back to you, and if so, greet her with open arms.

If not, wave her goodbye with generosity — and go out and meet one of the many mature ladies who long for somebody like you.

  And finally... Nastiness is bringing me down

Regular readers know I always try to be honest. Sometimes, you tell me you think you know me, think of me as a friend.

Therefore, I’m confessing that your columnist is feeling very low indeed. Dispirited. It began when Mrs Thatcher died . . . then became worse and worse. Sometimes I just want to stop reading newspapers and switch off the computer forever.

When George Osborne shed a tear at the funeral, he had no idea that he was caught on camera. Poor man.

He might have been thinking of a loved one, been touched by the Bishop of London’s story of the small boy, been stirred by the great music and the extraordinary ceremony . . . there are many reasons to cry at any funeral.

TROUBLED? WRITE TO BEL

Bel answers readers’ questions on emotional and relationship problems each week.

Write to: Bel Mooney, Daily Mail, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT, or e-mail bel.mooney@dailymail.co.uk.

A pseudonym will be used if you wish.

Bel reads all letters, but regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence.

Immediately the Chancellor was jeered at, excoriated, scorned and pilloried, his sincerity doubted, his private tear linked to his public office and all that he has done to ‘oppress’ the people of Britain. 

People even suggested he took an onion with him to  St Paul’s so that he could fake tears.

The events of the last ten days have reminded me of the terrifying degree to which cynicism and hate have taken over our society.

It is the kind of ideological viciousness which would roll you and me along in a bloody tumbril towards the killing fields.

I know we should laugh off the loonies spraying champagne at the death of Mrs Thatcher, like rich F1 drivers.

But I’m finding it hard to shrug or laugh. I’m repelled by those with whom I’d have once found some common cause and depressed by the ignorant cruelty unleashed daily.

How fascinating that the godless invoked medieval ideas of hell for Lady Thatcher — who is now at peace.

The philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre wrote ‘hell is other people’. Yes, it is we who are left to struggle in this hell of widespread hatred, swirling on the web and social networks.

We who are poisoned by the miasma of negativity and a widespread lack of empathy that pollutes the very air we breathe.

And which spits on a man shedding a tear at a funeral.