BEL MOONEY: Can I fall back in lust with my boring husband? (2024)

Dear Bel,

I’d be grateful for any thoughts, as I’m hearing conflicting messages from friends and just don’t know what to do.

My husband and I are in our early 30s — together over ten years. I’ve always been the more sociable and energetic one, but over time he’s withdrawn further away from being an interesting and communicative partner. In short, I’m bored — and have been deeply unhappy for over a year now.

I don’t fancy him and don’t know whether I love him as anything more than a companion. I can’t envisage us raising children together, though I do want a family.

His past gives clues as to why he lacks confidence, which he’ll admit, but though I’ve tried I can’t seem to help him. I’ve changed my expectations, but we seem to be two fundamentally different people who can’t meet in the middle. We’ve had open (one-way really; he says little) discussions where I’ve been very frank about how I feel. We’ve tried counselling, which unfortunately didn’t seem to resolve anything.

I’ve considered a trial separation but it seems such a big step. Whatever he tries to do, I still can’t bring myself to love him as I ought.

As an added complication, I’ve fallen heavily in love with a mutual friend, who is also married. I hope I would never have an affair but I’m increasingly tempted. Another factor is that I am a Christian, who believes in the sanctity of marriage, so feel appalled at myself for falling out of love with the person I’m supposed to be with for ever!

Do you believe it’s possible to fall back in love — and lust? Should I stay or go?

CORINNA

Bel Mooney replies: As I read through your letter, I kept thinking of ways to consider each ­problem within your marriage, as you raised it.

Here we have two people, with different personalities and who have changed — as people will. There’s nothing strange about that; surely it’s the case within most marriages?

What couples stay ‘in love — and lust’ in exactly the same way as the years pass? Human emotions aren’t set in aspic and nor should we expect them to be. What we must expect of ourselves is honesty — and kindness.

Reading on I came to what’s probably the crux of the matter. You write: ‘As an added complication, I’ve fallen heavily in love with a mutual friend, who is also married.’

Aha, the truth, I thought. Would you have written if you didn’t have these ­feelings for somebody else?

When people fall in love outside ­marriage one of the first things they do is start to rewrite their history.

Switching off affection, sexual desire and fairness, they also turn qualities in the spouse that were perfectly acceptable into newly ­discovered irritants. They exaggerate and deny in a ­dishonest but instinctive process — in order to make excuses for coldness and to justify infidelity.

I’d be very curious to know whether you went for the counselling before or after you developed these ­feelings for the ‘mutual friend’.

You don’t specify the duration, but if you were already in love and, as a result, had turned away from your husband, then the counselling was bound to fail, wasn’t it?

People stop trying once they have glimpsed the flash of green in the next field. And they can tell lies within the therapeutic situation because they don’t want it to work.

I respect the religious scruples that ­represent the moral code you wish to live by, yet we no longer live in a society where people have to sacrifice their ­happiness on the altar of religion. You have been taught that marriage is a ­sacrament which binds man and woman together for as long as they both shall live.

Fine, but most people would add to that the essential word, ‘unless’. Circ*mstances change. The forgiving Jesus I believe in wouldn’t condemn people to live in a prison of misery.

When you write, ‘I still can’t bring myself to love him as I ought’ and call him ‘the person I’m supposed to be with for ever’, I reject such moral ­absolutes. What’s the point of forcing ­yourself to stay — and making this blameless man ­bitterly unhappy?

What would be the point of (God forbid) bringing any child into the world to live in an unhappy home?

Since counseling failed, I think a trial separation would be a good idea. But don’t see the other man either. Spend time alone to try to sort out your feelings.

I can't go on without the love of my life

Dear Bel,

My husband has been in hospital for several weeks with cancer and Covid.

He was actually feeling better and making plans for home. Just simple things like enjoying his favourite foods and day trips to the countryside. Then three days ago the doctor rang and said we (my son and I) needed to go in urgently.

I couldn’t believe my eyes as I approached his bed. My wonderful husband, only in his 60s, was curled unblinking beneath a blanket, couldn’t speak, couldn’t swallow and could barely breathe.

Yet the day before I’d taken him outside for some fresh air and we’d had a normal conversation. He ate with enjoyment the chicken sandwich I brought in.

A day later, he didn’t know who we were. In fact, I hardly recognised him despite having seen him less than 24 hours earlier.

Bel, I’m ashamed to say I feel suicidal.

As we drove from the hospital a lorry swerved past us and my son took immediate action to avoid a collision. I almost wished he hadn’t. I simply cannot bear this pain.

My husband is/was my best (and only) friend. I never needed anyone else; as I’m profoundly deaf I didn’t do well in social situations so I never sought friendships.

I have hobbies and ran a company for 30 years so I’m resourceful and intelligent. But it all seems meaningless without him.

Our son is fantastic and that’s what stops me from taking suicidal thoughts further.

But I don’t know how to bear this agony.

ROSE

Bel Mooney replies: Rose, because your email arrived a couple of weeks ago, I cannot know what the ­situation is now. I pray it’s better but it may be, sadly, worse.

I regret that very much, but believe your letter is worth printing to remind ­everybody of the realities we must deal with when a loved one is very ill.

You described a sudden change in your husband’s ­condition. There are many who’ve ­visited someone in hospital and been ­frightened by a deterioration — or buoyed by a improvement that is fleeting.

What I want to talk about is the ­overwhelming sadness and helplessness which you say you cannot ‘bear’ — and which has led to this talk of suicide.

At the time you wrote to me, your ­husband was still in hospital and you were in a ­paroxysm of ­unhappiness after one worrying visit. I repeat, everything may have changed. But whatever has happened, your leaning towards suicide is extremely disturbing and it’s those feelings of despair I wish to address.

During World War II there was a famous poster which proclaimed: ‘Careless Talk Costs Lives.’ It referred to the ever-present danger of German spies or ­sympathisers. But it occurs to me it’s strangely appropriate for this era when ‘careless talk’ often concerns acute ­emotional problems paraded like badges of honour and (worst case) segueing into an acceptance of suicide as a cure for unhappiness. The ­internet is full of it — and I’m afraid despair can be contagious.

When something terrible happens within a family — and it could be marital break-up, redundancy or a ­frightening diagnosis, as well as ­bereavement — it’s common (and understandable) to feel that you’d like to close your eyes for ever to escape from the pain. That yearning for oblivion is as ­understandable as dreaming of a warm room when lost in a snowstorm.

Yet the miracle is just how much we can bear, even if it feels impossible. It’s as if shoulders can grow broader and stronger to accommodate an even heavier load.

Some years ago a man utterly broken-hearted by both the end of his marriage and the death of his new love (within a short space of time) told me how he’d thought he wished to end his own life, until he fell into a river by accident and found himself swimming and scrabbling to safety. The urge to live was far more powerful than the ‘need’ to escape pain by dying.

That is what I wish for you. The will to go on. When you wished that lorry had hit the car, you were devastated at the thought of losing your beloved husband. What’s more, you were being driven by the son who loves you and (I have no doubt) wishes to take care of you. Do not hurt him by giving up.

Your husband is/was your ‘best friend’ and you thought you needed no one else. That I understand — yet ask you to ­consider that the great love you both shared resulted in a treasure-house of ­memories, as well as the fine, caring human being you created together. Surely that is a ­powerful definition of ‘meaning’?

You have my profound sympathy. And I would want all those who feel overcome by despair to remember they can call the Samaritans day or night on 116 123. ­Somebody is always there for souls in pain.

And finally: It’s nicer to try a little tenderness

These days, I don’t think about sex very often, although every week letters to this ­column remind me of all the trouble it can cause.

Ah yes, I remember it well. Once upon a time, when we young journalists all used manual typewriters, yelled into phones, partied hard and smoked and drank ourselves silly, sex was on my mind much too often. But oh, they were fun days, for all the ­reasons in that last sentence!

­Wordsworth believed that artistic creation, especially poetic, was ‘­emotion ­recollected in tranquillity.’

Now in my prime (well, a bit further on!), recalling the ­turmoil of emotions, I’m relieved to be tranquil at last. I’m glad to be rid of the ­she-devil of flirtatiousness and passion which clung to me when Edward Heath, Harold Wilson and James ­Callaghan played musical chairs in Downing Street.

But here’s my linguistic question. Times change, but emotions don’t, so can ­anybody explain why ‘having sex’ is the only phrase now used for what was once called ‘the act of love’?

Back then girls were ­worried (or not) about ‘giving in’ and ‘going all the way,’ and ­couples would ‘have ­relations’ or ‘go to bed’ with each other. Young men would use a ­variety of phrases, usually containing aggression in words from the tool box. Romantic lovers would ‘make love’ — while dedicated sinners would ‘­fornicate’ or ‘copulate’.

I’m sorry that ‘having sex’ is nowadays used for a random one-night stand and for lovemaking within a long relationship. The bald phrase contains ­nothing of the tenderness the novelist D.H. Lawrence believed to be essential to the act of love. In my time I’ve ‘had sex’ and ‘made love’ — and there’s no comparison.