Anne Robinson on whether to leave a stale marriage

A reader asks

My daughter is getting divorced – no drama or affairs, but she says she and her husband are just existing side by side, living parallel but not connected lives, and she wants more out of life while she is still young. After she told me I lay awake all night. She could have been talking about her parents!

My husband and I rub along together, sometimes companionably sometimes sniping, but there’s no closeness and part of me longs to feel properly alive again.

Am I being a foolish old woman?

Anne Robinson's reply

You are not a foolish old woman. How can you be? You’re a Saga reader!

I understand how your daughter’s situation has set you thinking. There’s nothing like someone else telling you they are bravely facing up to huge change and demanding a better life to make you question what you are tolerating. You say her break up includes no drama, but any divorce is bound to involve a degree of sadness and regret.

What interests me most about your letter is your desire to feel ‘properly alive again’. I wonder what would have to happen for you to have this thrilling feeling.

I suggest you make a list of your desires, from small to big.

I presume your husband has not tied you to a chair he’s nailed to the floor. In any case it would be unreasonable to expect him to be the sole provider of your happiness.

There are countless activities that might start to take you out of your rut. Anything from art classes and travel to studying a language, Pilates and so on.

I believe that many women who find themselves in a humdrum, unsatisfying partnership often have self-imposed limits. Then, if they break up with a partner, discover that half the things they longed to do would have been perfectly possible while they were married.

You describe your marriage as veering between sort of OK to what I would call manageable dislike. You don’t say if you’ve talked things over with your husband. Perhaps he feels the same. Also, it would be helpful to chat to a professional and to work out what you really, really want.

This is guesswork – but you wouldn’t be the first woman to dream of living alone in a bijou apartment with a thrilling, available, handsome man who has integrity, decent finances, and who adores your company, whisks you off your feet and – yes – makes you feel ‘properly alive again’.

This sadly unrealistic dream always reminds me of a description of the beautiful Hollywood actor Ali McGraw when she was in her prime and a friend said of her:

"She was forever riding off into the sunset with a guy who didn’t have a horse."

The reality is that living alone after years of being a twosome is much more likely to involve loneliness for quite a while. Even for those who have no desire to return to their partner.

As for the amazing lover. You only have to read a few back issues of Saga to learn how often women complain of the total absence of desirable similar-aged males and how disappointed they are by finding themselves across a table from one whose specialist subject is himself.

The estimated divorce rate is an astonishing 42% of all marriages. Increasingly, this is marriages of people in their fifties and sixties.

However, I hope I have convinced you to take some baby steps before considering the equivalent of the New York marathon.

Lastly, a fascinating, newly published book called Affairs: True Stories of Love, Lies, Hope and Desire in which the author, a psychotherapist called Juliet Rosenfeld, argues that our choice of partners and lovers is very often laid down in a kind of blueprint and has a lot to do with our own parents and how happy or not you felt they were.

It might be worth reading while you cogitate.