Woman furious after her husband resumes contact with his 'lost love'

A woman fumed when her husband resumed contact with his ex-girlfriend and now the husband doesn't know what to do.

Writing in the Guardian, the man explained that he had "an all-consuming relationship" forty years ago when he was starting university with a woman but "she ended it in a long, drawn-out way" leading him to have a "breakdown which went pretty much unacknowledged by everyone."

It affected his academic career and has been "in and out of therapy with depression for decades". And although he is now "very happily" married with "two wonderful children", his "lost love" contacted him a year ago "which prompted an immense crisis for me."

"I have maintained contact, but we’ve not met up," he explained. "However, this has allowed me, with help from my therapist, to deal with the 40-year-old issues, and I’m now in a much happier place."

But this has had a bad impact on his marriage.

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"My wife, on the other hand, is convinced she is second-best," he said. "I have promised to let her know whenever there is contact by text or email, which I have done, although every instance is difficult. She is upset by any contact and I feel she is spying on me. I rarely initiate the contact myself. My old lover has shown no inclination to take things any further, she’s single and adamant that she doesn’t want to be seen as a seductress.

"I want to maintain friendship; she is the only person I still know from that period of my life. Dealing with the past trauma and forming a new relationship with her has been extremely good for me. But my wife’s reactions are unbearable. If I broke things off I will once again lose someone I am still fond of."

Responding to his dilemma, psychotherapist Philippa Perry said: "If I was your wife I would not be reassured by you referring to or thinking of your friend from the past as your 'lost love'. Nor would I be happy about the only reassurance being that your 'lost love' doesn’t want to be a seductress, because that would not reassure me that you did not want to be seduced, or did not want to seduce her.

She said it "sounds as though you are blaming your wife for your present dilemma as though you have done nothing to cause her unhappiness" and told him to "take responsibility" for his actions.

She wrote: "At the moment, it is as though you are a ball being thrown from the 'lost love' to your wife and back again, and you don’t appear sure who is going to catch you. This malarkey of telling your wife everything that happens between your 'lost love; and you is a great way of trying to get her to not catch the ball – and then it won’t be your fault if she drops you. So, again, life would appear to just happen to you without you having to take responsibility for your actions or the consequences of them. I don’t see you as so innocent as you seem to be trying to appear."

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