I know this woman only slightly, but I feel she gets a kick out of controlling him. I suspect - and tried telling him - that he believes he doesn’t deserve any better. He was traumatised by the divorce of his parents and this seems to have affected his behaviour in relationships. I suggested that he keeps falling for women who disapprove of him in the hope that he will be able to win their approval. He valued my advice, but then dropped out of sight.Although he is middle-aged and hugely successful professionally, he is addicted to this woman and unable to think rationally. She has brainwashed him into believing that I am the one who is acting out of line and that her behaviour is perfectly normal.I love him and am desperately worried for his safety and her sanity, but I don’t want to spend the rest of my life waiting for him to come to his senses. How do I handle this?You are the one being abusedIt’s interesting that you highlight the terrible impact of his parents’ divorce on how he functions with his partner. Does he have children? You haven’t mentioned them, but if they are a factor, then he may be staying because he knows how it feels to be in the wreckage of a failed relationship. Guilt is a powerful glue when two people fall out. If there are no children involved, and just two women fighting over this man, why struggle to make him leave her when he won’t? If you believe that his partner is abusive and controlling, forcing him to choose could be seen as just as manipulative.Perhaps you need to ask yourself why you cannot get on with your life without him. Does he pull you in with calls for emotional support and then shut you out? If so, then that is a form of abuse on his part.If the abuse he is experiencing is escalating, then he should seek professional help, but you should stop trying to “rescue him” for your own sake as you risk wasting years of your life sitting on the sidelines of someone else’s battlefield.
Name and address withheldHe’s using youYou do not specify the manner in which this man’s relationship is abusive, besides a vague reference to “emotional abuse”. You state that he is the man you love, but with no explanation of how long or indeed how far your relationship has progressed together so far.Looking at it from his partner’s point of view, of course you are behaving inappropriately; you had an affair with her partner and are pressuring him to leave her. It appears that you supported him through a difficult time in his relationship and expected that there would be some form of reciprocation, which has not been forthcoming. It seems unlikely you will receive what you want from your involvement with this man, so it may be time to withdraw your support.Distance yourself from this man and his situation, and make it clear that you are not prepared to be his support network; suggest he seeks professional counselling for his relationship issues. If he is in physical danger from his partner, there are a number of agencies you can point him towards, but you can’t save him from himself.
VW, OxfordshireGet a life without himThis man is using you and is merely updating the “my wife doesn’t understand me” defence. This is not to deny that abuse can come in many guises and that men suffer as well as women; but according to you, this man does not appear to have any economic reasons or children which would deter him from leaving.I have met men like this and sadly, he is just using you as a prop to shore up his ego when things are not going well in his relationship. Concentrate on your own life and try living it to its full potential. Ask yourself if he would come to your aid if you were in need of help?
Name and address withheldYou are heading for heartbreakIt sounds as if this intelligent man is doing a great job of controlling and manipulating you. I suspect his partner is an extremely nice, normal woman struggling with a difficult, demanding and cheating partner. Yes, she probably says horrible things to him during heated arguments - but are you surprised? That’s not a reason to question her sanity. You are in self-denial - this is a typical affair. You will never get anything out of this relationship except heartbreak and damage to your self- esteem. Wake up!
DF, ZurichWhat the expert thinks Linda BlairTry to take a more objective look at what’s going on. Imagine, for example, that one of your friends tells you she’s just discovered that her partner, whom she loves, is having an affair. What would you advise? Should she try to persuade him to stay, or should she just let him go off with his lover? Alternatively, imagine that a friend tells you she is having an affair with someone who is already in a long-standing relationship. She claims that the relationship’s been through rocky times, but that the man has never left his partner. What would you reckon her chances are of convincing her lover to leave his partner after all this time?Another way to help yourself is to avoid using emotive words such as “brainwashed” and “emotionally abusive” - the meaning of these terms is so dependent on who is using them and they obscure the reality that the various participants in this situation see it very differently. Let’s take, for example, the term “emotionally abusive” and see how else it might be applied in your situation. Your lover is already committed to someone else and regardless of what you think about the nature of that relationship, he is not free to commit himself to you. If you were to describe this situation to an outsider, they may therefore conclude that this man is indeed in an abusive relationship - but that the person being abused is you. Your lover suggests periodically that he wants to leave his partner, but he never does; it could be surmised that he is taking advantage of your desire for him.Let’s also look at the term “brainwashed”, which means forcing someone to accept your beliefs through psychological coercion or the repetition of a certain viewpoint until it is accepted as the truth. You say your lover’s partner is brainwashing him - yet she could equally claim that you are the one doing the brainwashing.Instead of making accusations, try observing what has actually been happening. You say your lover started a liaison with you at a time when his current relationship was in a precarious state. If he had been convinced that things were thoroughly bad, he would not have needed an excuse to justify leaving, would he? Perhaps he was looking for someone to reassure him that he was still desirable, because his partner wasn’t doing so at the time. Or maybe he was looking for someone who would make his partner jealous, thereby reawakening her desire for him.You account for your lover’s behaviour by saying he was traumatised by his parents’ divorce. But that simply means he is choosing to let his past dominate his current behaviour - no one needs to let this happen.No one can force others to change their minds. You can’t make your lover decide to leave his partner, nor can you make his partner stop trying to convince him to stay with her. The best strategy is to let go of your anger and frustration, and consider why things don’t seem to be going your way. This will in turn help you anticipate and to deal more realistically with the consequences of continuing to pursue this man.Next week My partner won’t have more childrenI am a 30-year-old man and am engaged to a 38-year-old woman. We have a three-year-old daughter and my fiancee’s 14-year-old son from a previous relationship also lives with us.We have been together for 10 years and have transformed ourselves from a student and a single-parent on benefits to a couple who own two flats. She is now a senior manager in retail and I am self-employed.I am an only child from a single-parent family and have always wanted more children. My partner now says this is definitely out of the question and if that if I don’t like it, we should split up.She cites her career and age as reasons and has told me she is jealous of my relationship with the children. I compromised my ambitions and lifestyle in my early 20s for our family - I looked after her son when he was younger and I gave up work when our daughter was born.My fiancee doesn’t have many friends but socialises frequently with her younger staff after work. They lead a carefree “single” lifestyle which my partner likes to indulge in, knowing I am at home with the children.I am a devoted father with strong parental instincts and think my partner is using this against me in that she knows that I would want to avoid breaking up our daughter’s home. In my own mind I have started to question getting married at all, given how things are. What should I do?%26#183; Private Lives appears every Thursday. You are invited to respond to this week’s main problem. If you would like fellow readers and Linda Blair to answer a dilemma of yours, send us an outline of the situation of around 250 words.
For advice from Pamela Stephenson Connolly on sexual matters, send us a brief description of your concerns. All correspondence should reach us by Tuesday morning: email private.lives@guardian.co.uk (please don’t send attachments) or write to Private Lives, The Guardian, 119 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3ER.
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