My wife and her feckless son callously exploited my generosity

THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK 

Every morning I exercise my body.

It complains: ‘Why are you doing this to me?’

Alice Walker (U.S. writer, born 1944)

DEAR BEL 

I first met Julie in 1981 when I was 30 and she 26. She was unhappily married and having an affair. 

She started seeing me, divorced her husband, and then she and her son Ben (by then 11) came to live with me.

He was introverted and displayed bursts of uncontrollable anger.

I suspected he blamed me for the breakdown of his parent’s marriage, but no amount of kindness on my part had any effect. Things got so bad they went to live elsewhere — but Julie and I continued for the next ten years.

'I feel I was used over very many years and Julie was more interested in the lifestyle rather than me myself. How could I have been such a fool?'

'I feel I was used over very many years and Julie was more interested in the lifestyle rather than me myself. How could I have been such a fool?'

Ben’s bouts of depression and rage became worse. Although working, he ran up large debts, which I cleared. At 20 he moved into rented accommodation with friends, but their house was raided for drugs.

Then I offered several thousand pounds as the deposit on a mortgage. Later he sold that flat and bought a house, and Julie and I both felt he was making progress. In 1992 we married and I thought we were very happy.

One day Ben told us he’d lost his temper and ‘slapped’ his girlfriend. In court I was disgusted to see photographs taken shortly after the assault: her face was bruised and swollen.

Another girlfriend told us she’d ended their relationship because of his drug abuse and vicious temper. He obviously needed specialist support but flatly refused any help.

Eventually he moved to South Africa to work, but returned in 2009 and stayed for some time at his father’s home.

After Julie had visited him, he sent her a vicious email. Back in Africa he only spoke to me when he needed money — for example, £4,000 for a Land Rover. I sent him the money only to discover he’d bought a quad bike for £1,000. I have no idea what he spent the other £3,000 on.

In March 2012 he came back for a two week ‘holiday’ — but brought all his stuff back. I still welcomed him and lent him a car — but he was very difficult and full of anger.

Without consulting me, Julie announced that Ben (by then 38 and penniless) could stay as long as he wanted. She blamed me for her son’s failures in life and (despite my best efforts to reason with her) said she wanted a divorce.

The strain was unbearable and in April 2012 I collapsed with a cerebral aneurysm. I was in hospital for many weeks and very fragile when I eventually returned home — where I felt like a stranger, sleeping in a spare bedroom and seeing Ben doing exactly what he wanted.

As early as June I received divorce proceedings through the post. The most shocking thing Julie said was that it would have been better for all concerned if I had died.

In our brutal divorce she insisted on half of everything — from the value of my company to my (recently-deceased) father’s estate. In October 2012 it was over and our home sold.

By December 2012, I had further surgery as the aneurysm had returned. Julie is now in a new home and financially secure.

Ben has returned to Africa (no doubt with a healthy share of the money) and I am seeing a therapist to help me keep my sanity.

I feel I was used over very many years and Julie was more interested in the lifestyle rather than me myself. How could I have been such a fool?

CHRISTOPHER

The subject-line of this sad email (three times as long as I have space for) reads, ‘I was barely surviving in a dark wilderness of pain and despair.’

By writing that in the past tense you have already set yourself on the road to recovery.

The collapse of your very long relationship and marriage was nothing short of catastrophic and it horrifies me that a woman who once loved you so much that she waited for you (until her son became older) could have changed so much as to wish you dead. Nobody deserves that. Not that you deserve any of the pain you have suffered.

Were you ‘a fool’? It’s easy to read your letter and despair of your foolishness in being so generous with handouts to Ben. You let yourself be ‘used’ and it can’t have done him any good.

You sent me the nasty email he wrote to his mother and it reveals an unpleasant, self-pitying person, resentful and ready to blame everybody else for his own inability to make something of his life. Obviously he was very disturbed by his parents’ divorce (and all that went with it), and I will always go on saying that people generally underestimate the effect of divorce on children of all ages.

He missed his father, felt angry with his mother and resented you, while you couldn’t cope with him, and his mother (almost inevitably) compensated for her guilt by spoiling him — and the stage was set for the ruination of a character. No child or teenager can be blamed for that.

On the other hand, can you go on blaming your parents and step-parents for ever? Don’t you have to take charge of your own life?

What’s done is done; what matters now is how you cope with the life that’s left. At 63 and in poor health, you can be forgiven for feeling bitter.

I’m glad you’re talking to a therapist, and admire you for writing to me. But do stop denying that Julie ever loved you. Surely all you endured together was no lie? Please take care of your emotional well-being by reminding yourself that you did love each other — very much — but that ultimately her obsessive mother-love took over and changed her beyond recognition.

 

Is my partner having an online affair?

DEAR BEL

In a relationship with my partner for six years, I thought we were a fairly loving couple. Over the past year, I’ve had a few health problems, which made me moody and possibly distant.

I also had the grief of my darling dog being terminally ill and then dying. My partner has been supportive, as he loves dogs as much as I do.

My current problem is that he loves going on Facebook daily and communicating with people all over the world. He has a small group of friends in daily contact — especially females. It felt OK since when we met, he was always in light-hearted contact with people by text.

But when we both got internet access on our mobile phones, he started using Facebook and emailing instead of texting. 

A few weeks ago, I found out from looking at his emails that he and a woman in the States were having very ‘lovey’ conversations. She even referred to him in one email as ‘my husband’ and said she ‘knew that he used to love S (me) but he knew he did not have those feelings for S any more’. That obviously hurt me. In another email, she wrote, ‘thank you for the money’.

Confronted, he denied there was ‘anything going on’ — telling me all his friends use phrases like ‘love you’. He also denied sending money. I asked him not to contact her again and he agreed — but repeated he was not having an affair and, anyway, she was far away.

Yesterday, I looked at the emails and found that he was still in contact with her. I accused him of having an affair, but he said you cannot class it as an affair if it’s not physical.

I sent the woman an email telling her that she should not contact him again, or she would be responsible for breaking up our relationship. She wrote back, saying that if I am that insecure, then maybe there is something wrong in my relationship and maybe he did not actually love me. Am I jumping to conclusions? What shall I do?

SUSANNA

No doubt your partner feels hard done by, to have had his emails read on his mobile phone, but nowadays that seems to be par for the course — and much infidelity is rumbled this way.

I have here a very long email from another lady whose husband has been texting a woman he met at a social group, arranging meetings, yet telling his wife that nothing is going on. She’s naturally very unhappy.

When will people realise that having an affair is not dependent on having sex? You can indeed be the best of friends — but, if you feel a need for secrecy, if the clandestine contact makes you happy and excited, and if you really look forward to the phone calls, texts, or emails — then, ladies and gentlemen, you are having an affair in all but name.

Once, I didn’t understand that, but writing this column has taught me there are more ways to be unfaithful than are written about in the Kama Sutra.

You seem almost ready to accept a degree of ‘blame’. By saying that you have been unwell, preoccupied and full of sadness over your poor dog, you imply you might have given your partner cause to flirt elsewhere. 

That may or may not be the case — but surely it’s irrelevant to the fact that he has continued emailing this woman after promising not to? You could forgive flirty emails, perhaps, although saying disloyal things behind your back is hardly forgivable. But once he was found out and you told him how hurt you were and asked him to stop . . . at that point, he started making serious choices, rather than careless mistakes. He chose to cheat.

He probably did send her money. And she has behaved with crass, hard-bitten cruelty in emailing you as she did. Most people reading this will agree with me that you are hardly ‘jumping to conclusions’, but responding rationally to the facts as you see them.

I would ask him point blank if he is planning to get on a flight to the USA in the foreseeable future. If not, then he must stop all contact with the woman — because he is wasting her time, as well as upsetting you.

Yes, I know you asked this before — but, this time, you have to be stronger. You sound unsure, but it’s time to be calm and firm. 

You could ask him if he thinks her reply to you is acceptable —and whether he really wants to remain friends with somebody who can be so offensive and hurtful to the woman he is sharing his life with. If he refuses to cut off contact, then perhaps you should suggest he takes his mobile phone to another address.

 

And finally... Face the facts in a family feud

You can’t please everybody, but it was hard to be called ‘crass’ by Linda. She objects to last week’s reply to ‘Sally’ — bewildered because her son is so neglectful.

Not trying to blame anyone, I hinted there might be something buried in the family history to cause his behaviour.

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.

But Linda writes: ‘It is almost as though you do not understand the depths of cruelty and unfairness that exist in SOME humans and indeed in life and that no amount of reasoning and striving to make a situation right will result in the desired outcome . . . You really should temper your responses with more thoughtfulness, kindness and compassion.’

Well, I do try! But I don’t mind printing criticism, as it enables me to make the point that we tend to see life through the prism of our own experience. Linda is a daughter whose mother turned against her ‘for no reason’.

Meanwhile, sad mother Lizzie tells me: ‘I understand your children adore you so perhaps you don’t know what it is like to lose the love of your child for reasons you don’t know or understand.

‘Whatever I did to my son I would take back in a heartbeat just to see him and hug him again, but I know it isn’t going to happen. And for the rest of my life I will torture myself with the thought that I must have got it wrong.’

The same postbag brought a letter from Daniel, explaining that he too had cut himself off from his parents. Just before his 21st birthday five years ago, a row and ‘tirade of abuse’ made him withdraw. Daniel writes, ‘We are all flawed by our parents’ characters’ — and feels a better person for liberating himself.

Lastly, I had a response from the grandfather ‘Ed’ whose complaint about his uncommunicative grandson I included with Sally’s problem. Ed found my thoughts ‘very useful’ — making him consider that the grandson ‘resented the money spent on his sister’s wedding’.

I still say it’s better to seek reasons — even if they are unpalatable — than to flounder in bewilderment. 

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