BEL MOONEY: Should I kick out this lazy, moaning sponger?

Dear Bel

I finally got divorced five years ago after 15 years with a vile man.

Then I soon met what seemed like the perfect man and everything was great until six months later. He started to change. I no longer had contact with friends and he was always checking up on me. He had moved in and then stopped paying towards anything, though he’s a much higher earner.

It all got too much — being put down by him, too — so I made him move out. That was extremely hard, as I was still in love with him.

We got back together and he promised he had sorted himself out. But all the same things began happening.

We then split again and didn’t see each other for 16 months. I then got a surprise text telling me life was great, he’d got counselling, paid his debts off and the only thing missing was me.

We talked and got back together. I explained I can’t go through any more heartache and we should take things slow. He agreed. Of course he was just saying it to get me back.

A month later, he pushed to move in, saying he could pay me rent. He said if he couldn’t move into my house (I pay the mortgage) there was a worry we may drift apart. So again he’s moved in.

At the moment I’m earning only around £10,000 a year (due to Covid-19) and struggle to make ends meet. I work, cook and clean. My youngest child is 14 and my middle child goes to uni. My eldest child is with her partner with my two grandchildren.

He still asks who’s texting me. Still places bets on football. He pays £650 a month towards costs — no more. He’s out everyday on his boat doing nothing. He hasn’t paid his debts off like he promised. He comes home and gets fed, then tells me he’s tired and lounges watching TV while I clear up.

He finds fault with my kids. Always seems to put himself first and moans he’s not appreciated.

He says I’m not committed (when in actual fact it’s me who holds everything together) and tells me I’m not paying him enough attention.

I don’t actually see what this guy brings to my life.

Am I getting the rough end of the stick or is this normal — and it’s me being the selfish one? Why do I feel guilty?

KAREN

Why indeed do you even think of feeling ‘guilty’? I find your closing question the most bizarre thing about a disturbing letter from someone who is in danger of repeating a pattern — if that process hasn’t already begun.

It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that treatment endured during an appalling marriage has left you with such low self-esteem that you are once again accepting the role of guilty victim.

Your original letter was over three times as long, so I need to inform readers that the marriage involved marital rape, bullying, control, infidelity and economic dependency (yours). You wanted an amicable divorce because of the children, but ‘he had other ideas’.

When you met this new man you thought him ‘perfect’ and quickly fell in love — even though he showed his true colours after just six months. He became possessive, controlling over your texts, and freeloading, too.

You still loved him, but asked him to move out. Then the whole thing happened again.

And now a third time. I feel like throwing down my invisible tennis racquet in frustration and shouting: ‘You cannot be serious!’

In your original email, you listed all this man’s transgressions carefully numbered, as if you had spent some time thinking about them and felt better just setting them down. Yet you can still ask if this situation is ‘normal’.

It makes me wonder what sort of relationship your parents had, as well as the experiences of friends while you were growing up.

Can it be that at no stage in your life you were exposed to a real ‘normal’: two people living together in mutual trust and respect, doing their best for each other, knowing ups and downs and surviving them, helping each other and being kind? I feel so sad if you do not realise that is how most people try to live (even if they fail).

So what is to be done? You mention that he seems to pick quarrels with your children while hardly seeing his own and that he might be jealous of your family.

Well, this would be enough to ring loud warning bells to me. You have a 14-year-old who is about to go through a very testing time of life, even without the total disruption to education caused by coronavirus and the lockdown.

Do you think it will help your child (and the others) to watch you having your spirits ground down by a useless, moaning, lazy sponger?

You use the word ‘selfish’. Well, I’m afraid too many parents continue with new relationships that are ultimately damaging to their families — and, yes, that is where the selfishness lies. I don’t even think you love this guy any more. How can you when you list his faults with such ease?

In this so-called relationship, you have been just like the person who walked down the same street three times and each time failed to notice the workmen’s ‘danger’ sign, so tumbled into the hole in the road. So what now?

If I were you, I would pack his bags and dump them outside. Then find a new route onwards.

The world is so gloomy, I can’t sleep

Dear Bel

I don’t know whether it’s the current climate, but I have been feeling miserable and have been unable to sleep.

It almost feels like grief, although there is nothing in my personal life that should be making me feel like this. Even worse, I am drawn to gloom in newspapers and online and have been reading some of the letters you have received to your column.

When they reveal how horrible we can be to each other, especially to those we should love and care for, they always make me cry.

Sometimes I can’t get their sadness (and selfishness) out of my mind. (You are so often compassionate, but when needed you tell them exactly what they need to hear).

I wonder if you ever find out what subsequently happened? Things like this are really bothering me right now.

JENNIFER

Recently, in my last video for our Mail Plus website, I talked about this very feeling of gloom and referenced the little daisy called the Mexican fleabane (or Erigeron Karvensionus) as a symbol of resilience.

It’s tough, common and grows in even stony places, so a fitting emblem of hope in hard times. And yes, I believe that the malaise you describe is a result of coronavirus, the lockdown, the ongoing uncertainty and pessimism about the future.

Many of us feel the same and with good reason.

Being drawn irresistibly to content that makes you feel worse is like compulsively touching a sore tooth, isn’t it?

Or picking a scab because if you make it bleed, at least you’re having an effect.

I waste ages on Facebook (more fool me) making myself furious or depressed by people’s rancid hostility and intolerance.

You read depressing articles and cry reading this column. Oh dear. Yes, I do often hear back from people whose letters I have printed, and often with heart-warming appreciation.

I also get letters from readers who have not written in but have been helped by reading about others.

For example, this week I received a lovely email from Mrs JS, who wrote: ‘Please find attached a letter of thanks for the advice you provided in last week’s newspaper. It has made such a difference to my sister and I who have been dealing with a very difficult (similar) situation for some time.’

So this is how it works — all of us listening and learning as we reach out to each other.

This week’s quotation from Elizabeth Goudge (did you ever read her lovely children’s classic The Little White Horse’?) perfectly describes this process of empathy. I believe that the helpless ‘grief’ (a good word you chose) good people feel for the world and the people in it is a good thing. Sometimes tears are the only sensible, compassionate response to the sorrows we face.

There is nothing new here: the Roman poet Virgil recognised the condition years ago when he wrote of ‘lacrimae rerum’ — ‘the tears of things.’

When people cry at a play, a film, a piece of music or something moving in print, they are tuning into a universal sense that life is inherently sad — because of our sins and our mortality — but also brave and glorious.

You cry at this column because you can’t bear it that people’s lives can be such a mess.

But nothing is entirely bad or sad. I’m forever saying how grateful I am for all the lovely kind letters — and there are plenty of heart-warming stories in our paper, too. The light balances the gloom, just as sickness is balanced by health.

So please remember that tough little Erigeron that goes on flourishing in the most inhospitable places — and always lifts the heart. If we can’t ‘stay safe’, we must stay strong.

And finally… This is the hardest job I’ve ever had

The main letter last week was from ‘Stephanie’, desperately mourning the partner who died two years ago. She wrote convinced that people do not understand her inability to ‘move on’.

I had an avalanche of letters on this subject, all expressing understanding, fellow feeling and real gratitude that someone expressed how they are feeling, after life-crushing loss.

This, from JB, was typical: ‘It was nice to read your response, and your understanding that there would be many readers who absorbed her letter, because it expressed how they (and I) feel.

‘In the near future, I will hopefully reach the stage were I can read the words of David Kessler in Finding Meaning. But in the meantime, I would like to thank you and Stephanie, as I now know I am not alone with my feelings.’

Thank you all so much for writing: I have cut and pasted all your comments into a document for Stephanie to read. And she herself came back to me after her letter appeared, saying that she hoped my reply ‘helped others’. I did honestly doubt it would help her, but who knows . . . in time?

Do you remember when newspaper or magazine problem pages were often referred to as ‘Lonely Hearts’ columns? I think of that simplistic phrase with as much irritation as I do the name ‘Agony Aunt’ — both are insufferably patronising.

I look back at Stephanie’s searing, painful letter and realise why bereavement is a subject so many people, advice columnists included, shy away from. Hearts may be lonely for many reasons, and most will not be crammed into cosy little boxes people can deal with.

This is my 50th year in print journalism. I’ve been a reporter, interviewer, feature writer, arts editor, travel journalist and columnist; interviewed famous people; hung out with miners, politicians, bikers and poets; fought my corner; had a great time. But this column is the toughest role of all.