QUESTION: Twenty years ago, I drifted into a relationship that seemed to be quite happy.
I wasn’t very keen to move in with my girlfriend, but she insisted, so I said that I would – on one condition: that she didn’t expect children. She was so in love with me that she agreed, and we’ve had a reasonably happy relationship ever since, which has recently deteriorated.
She’s now 50, and I have fallen deeply in love - properly in love for the first time - with a woman of 35. I am desperate now to move in with her and have a family. What can I do?
Yours sincerely, Philip
ANSWER: Nothing for it, I’m afraid. You will have to give up your present relationship and move on. I hate to advocate such a mean move, but I can’t see the benefit to anyone of your staying on in a loveless relationship. Had you got small children, of course I’d recommend that you tried to make a go of it. But you haven’t. And what is the future for any of you if you stayed?
However hard you tried, you would feel a permanent sense of resentment towards your partner, being bound by some kind of mad promise you made years and years ago. She would pick up on it and live out the rest of her life with the knowledge that something was wrong, always aware of your underlying fury and misery about the situation.
Your lover would be desperately unhappy, too, since you are so much in love. And you – although I have to say I can’t feel much sympathy for you – would be mooching around for the rest of your life thinking, “It might have been”.
You were, of course, incredibly selfish to make such a demand on your partner 20 years ago. But she, for her part, was quite able to refuse such a demand. Anyway, had she been desperate for children, she could have spent the first years of your relationship badgering you to change your mind – or, even, got pregnant without your knowing. It sounds as if she wasn’t that desperate to have children at that stage, either and – who knows? – she may still feel that she wasn’t cut out to be a mother.
Yes, you were, perhaps, cruel to impose such a condition on her; equally she was a complete idiot to acquiesce.
You will feel incredibly guilty about leaving your partner. But in the end, you’ll be freeing her from a loveless relationship - at least on your part - and you’ll be giving her the opportunity to find someone, or perhaps to live a much more fulfilled life on her own. It may turn out that she’ll meet a divorced man with children, and be an excellent stepmother to them.
Of course, I assume that – if you need to – you will make some provision for your ex, even though you aren’t married. Leaving her completely in the lurch financially, if she’s been dependent on you, would indeed be unacceptable.
But these days, we’re all living longer. It’s more difficult for relationships to survive the decades that some may last when death doesn’t do the job of ending a marriage early, as it so often used to. Our partners change. We change.
Yes, you’ll be vilified and yes, you’ll lose a lot of mutual friends. But that’s the price you’ll pay. I just hope it really will be worth it for you in the long run. And for all of you.
The Independent
* Virginia’s latest book is ‘Yes! I Can Manage, Thank You!’ (Quercus)