I’ve wasted 20 years of my life as married lover’s plaything – but I need help leaving him

DEAR DEIDRE: THE realisation that I have thrown away the best years of my life on a married man has hit me hard. Now I need your help to leave him. We met 20 years ago when I had just turned 25.

Advertisement Walking into a job interview, I saw a gorgeous man with sparkling blue eyes and a muscular body. Within a week, I had landed the job and the man. We went out for candlelit dinners and spent whole days in hotel rooms having sex.



He told me he was married, but I didn’t care because I thought we would only ever have a fling. Little did I know I’d still be here two decades on. Advertisement In the time I’ve known him, my friends have married and had kids.

I’ve stayed in the same job and wasted years with my “soulmate”, exchanging a secure future for a few hours of sex. I’ve tried to end things before. What usually happens is that I’ll cause a fight and we’ll stop contacting each other.

But within a week, one of us will send a message, and we’ll fall back into bed. I’ve never had feelings like this for anyone else. The sex is unbelievable — we can make love for hours.

It’s not just physical. Advertisement Dear Deidre: Understanding the impact of ghosting He has helped me around the house, and we’ve had a few weekends away. But while my friends are booking holidays or planning Christmas, I’m sitting at home, waiting for a text.

Recently, I bumped into a friend I had known in my 20s. After she told me everything she’d done in the past 20 years, I tried to catch her up on my news , then realised I didn’t really have any. Everything has stayed the same, as I waited for my lover to leave his wife.

Now I know he never will. Help me find the strength to end it. The thought of losing him breaks my heart, but losing more of myself would be worse.

DEIDRE SAYS: You deserve a relationship that is out in the open . Advertisement I understand why you have had enough. But you haven’t thrown away the best years of your life.

They are still ahead of you – and you will enjoy them – when you are out of this one-sided arrangement. The best way to end this situation is to stop having sex. Sex is keeping you emotionally attached to him, and it’s also showing him that – on some level, at least – you are happy with this arrangement.

Tell him that you can’t continue like this and that unless he leaves his wife, you owe it to yourself to end things. Don’t second-guess your decision. The firmer you are, the easier it will be to move on.

My support pack Your Lover Not Free will help you to do what is right for you. Advertisement Get in touch with Deidre Every problem gets a personal reply, usually within 24 hours weekdays. Send an email to deardeidre@the-sun.

co.uk You can also send a private message on the DearDeidreOfficial Facebook page. HIS RAGES ARE RUINING FAMILY LIFE DEAR DEIDRE : I AM so sick of my husband’s anger.

He’s always ranting and raving at our kids. I’m 34, he’s 40 and we have three children under ten years old. It feels like my days are always spent protecting the kids from their dad’s rage.

If they fall over or break something, I have to warn them not to tell their father in case he kicks off. He’s especially stressed when he’s doing DIY. Yesterday, for example, my husband was hanging a picture in our youngest child’s bedroom.

She’s only two, and she toddled into her room to look. My husband immediately started yelling at her to get out because his drill was on the floor. He explained to me that he just didn’t want her to hurt herself, but there was no need for the shouting.

Advertisement His fury can erupt over the smallest thing, and he swears a lot. I’m always having to take the kids out of the house, so they don’t learn bad language. My friends think he’s a good man, but I’m walking on eggshells because the smallest thing can set him off He has never been violent towards any of us, even in his wildest rages.

I’m sure his heart is in the right place, but the atmosphere at home is awful. DEIDRE SAYS: Shouting might seem harmless, but it’s a form of abuse. It’s not healthy for your children to be growing up around a volatile parent, especially when the anger is unpredictable.

Long-term, it might affect their self-esteem. It’s also a bad example to set them. Advertisement I would guess that your husband grew up with angry parents, and that shouting has become a habit for him.

He might not realise the effect it has on the rest of you, or how stressful it feels for a small child to be shouted at. My support pack Managing Anger will give you more of an insight. It would also be good if your husband read it, because it could help him understand how negative this behaviour really is.

It’s important that you tell him how much his rage is affecting you and the children. Hopefully, he will listen to what you have to say and try to moderate his behaviour. If he struggles to calm down, he’ll need to get help in the form of counselling or therapy.

Advertisement FAMILY FORUM DEAR DEIDRE : ALTHOUGH I am miserable in my loveless marriage, I daren’t let my wife bring up our daughter alone. We’ve been married for 20 years. It hasn’t been easy for either of us – my wife had multiple miscarriages, and I’ve had bouts of ill health – but I barely recognise the unhappy people we have become.

My wife is not the woman I fell in love with. The only thing keeping me here is our daughter. She’s 17.

Over the years my wife has become more like a single mum than a wife. We never have sex. She makes all the decisions, uses me for money, and is nice to me only when she needs me to fix something around the house.

The rest of the time she lives alone in what was once our shared bedroom but is now messy and cluttered. It’s so full of junk and unopened boxes, the door doesn’t even shut. My daughter has noticed how cold our marriage is.

A few years ago, she tried to encourage my wife to hold my hand, or sit next to me on the couch. Now, she has given up. I keep telling her that most marriages aren’t like mine, and that she shouldn’t grow up thinking this is normal.

Sadly, my wife and I both grew up in dysfunctional families with narcissistic, violent fathers. Every day I fantasise about leaving, but I don’t want to give my wife free rein to raise our daughter into an overindulged, self-absorbed woman like her. DEIDRE SAYS: You know how difficult it is growing up in a household where your parents don’t get along.

Now your daughter is living with this too. It is very damaging for her, and there’s always the risk she will grow up and recreate this dynamic in her own marriage. My support pack When Parents Fall Out explains what can happen.

Staying in a miserable marriage isn’t your only solution. There are other options – including one where you get divorced and become the primary caregiver for your daughter. For advice and support on pursuing that, see bothparentsmatter.

org.uk (0300 0300 363). THE WRONG MAN DEAR DEIDRE : AT 36, life isn’t going the way I had hoped.

I can’t escape the feeling that I picked the wrong man. My partner is 45. I always wanted lots of children and a bustling, busy home.

Instead, we have just one son (he’s five) and our house is deathly quiet and dull. My partner says he’s willing to have more children but I don’t believe him because he has started avoiding sex. I’m depressed.

It seems too late to start over with someone else, so my dream life won’t become a reality. Advertisement DEIDRE SAYS: Have you talked to him about wanting more children? He may not realise it’s a deal-breaker for you. Find a calm moment to explain you are feeling hurt and rejected with your lack of intimacy and how much you would like a bigger family.

Listen carefully to what he has to say – there may be some other reason he doesn’t want sex. If there is, you need to know. My support pack Stand­ing Up For Yourself will help you find the right words to have this discussion.

PRANK ENDED IN DISASTER DEAR DEIDRE AFTER my brother played a silly prank, my dream woman dumped me. I’m a 26-year-old man and my girlfriend is 25. We met online and things were perfect for six months until I took her on a night out with my brother, who is 23.

While I was at the bar, my brother asked my girlfriend if she was up for sneaky fun “on the side”. My girlfriend laughed and turned him down. My brother told me what he had done, saying she had “passed the loyalty test”.

But my girlfriend dumped me the next day, saying my brother was “too controlling” and would keep ruining our relationship. I’m blindsided. DEIDRE SAYS: You may feel your girlfriend dumped you out of the blue, but the truth is you will never know.

In reality, she might have been dissatisfied for some time and took this daft joke as an excuse. It was wrong of your brother to test your partner’s loyalty and I wonder what he would have done if she had said yes. Read my support pack Mend Your Broken Heart.

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