"He texts another woman all the time"

Should she stay or should she go?

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The Question

Dear Philippa,

My husband is developing a second life which upsets me. He declared to me that he had “fallen in love” with a work colleague 30 years his junior. This woman sought his help and attention when she was seriously & traumatically ill and I poured my compassion on his desire to help her. Also I then warned him not to fall in love with her.

Two months later he told me he was not only was he “in love” and infatuated with her, but it seems she is dependent on him.

And now he professes that our relationship is lacking something. We have been married only 8 years - the fluffy lovey dovey cuddling has died back a bit leaving hopefully both of us in a solid interdependent relationship. We are trying to pinpoint and deal with what it is that he sees is lacking. I don’t see our marriage lacks anything. I was independent for 30 years before our marriage; he has never lived independently, but gone from one long relationship, 25 years, to a new one with me, with some short relationships in between.

But what is driving me mad is his texting with his would-be lover. It’s constant! I don’t know what’s going on between them. It’s been going for nearly 6 months now; it’s not a sexual affair. But he texts all day long, sometimes hiding with his phone like a teenager.

I don’t know what to do. I feel like slapping him as his secretive behaviour makes me cross, but I don’t. I feel like dropping his phone down the loo, but I don’t. I don’t want to be his parent and tell him off, although he is putting me in that role. Should I just leave him and say I want to sell up? I really don’t want to do that.

Thanks

The Answer

What you describe is not unfamiliar. A man, often later in life, finds themselves lit up by the attention of someone much younger, particularly someone in distress. It offers a sense of purpose, emotional urgency, and sometimes a borrowed vitality. It can feel meaningful, but that does not make it benign.

Your husband says he is in love. But what you describe does not sound like love as it is usually lived in the long term. It sounds more like a psychological entanglement. She was in need, he stepped in, and in doing so may have found an identity that gives him a sense of importance and renewal. He appears to have taken on the role of saviour. He may be enjoying the experience of being a kind of knight in shining armour to someone younger and fragile. That position flatters the ego. It offers him a clear and elevated place in someone else's story. It may even allow him to feel both useful and virtuous while avoiding the ordinary vulnerabilities of a more mutual relationship. That dynamic can be powerful. But it also bypasses the harder and quieter work of facing one's own ageing, purpose, and the emotional demands of real intimacy.

I wonder if what he might be missing in your relationship, but hasn't yet articulated, is the opportunity to exercise his saviour complex? He may like to be the wise one, the fixer, the one who is needed. And he may struggle to feel comfortable in a relationship where that position is not available. Your strength, your capability, your experience of life may be felt by him not as something to value, but as something that unsettles his idea of what it means to be a man. These are my guesses. But they are worth checking out with him. See where that conversation might lead, if he is willing to have it.

He says your relationship is lacking. You do not experience it that way. What he is feeling in his connection with the other woman may be intense, but he is not comparing like with like. That relationship is new. It exists under the sign of drama, secrecy, rescue and escape. It carries with it the thrill of being between fantasy and reality, rather than only in reality like your relationship is with him. It is my guess that in his previous long-term relationships, he may not have been partnered with women who were as capable as you. You don’t need a knight in shining armour, you’d rather have a mate, an equal.

What you are facing now is not just hurt but humiliation. He is texting her all day. He hides with his phone. The secrecy makes it worse. It places you outside, and draws a protective curtain around something he claims is innocent but also won't relinquish. It also demotes you from being his first significant other to a lessor position in his affections. It seems he wants to hold both relationships but face the consequences of neither.

You have already seen that this behaviour regresses him. He behaves like a boy. You feel like a parent. It puts you in the position of being the adult who wants to flush the phone down the loo, issue a telling off, restore order. But of course you are not his parent. And you are right not to act that out. Still, the impulse is a clue to what kind of dynamic has crept in.

You ask whether you should leave, sell up, start again. You also say you do not want to. Wanting to stay is a reason to stay. But that does not mean waiting passively. You are not obliged to collude with behaviour that distorts the shape of your marriage. Nor do you have to absorb all the confusion and pain without naming what is happening. He may tell himself he is trying to help someone. You can tell him he is wounding you in the process. If he is uncaring about your pain, then I wonder whether that will signal to you that it is ultimatum time.

And, just another thought, is he giving her money?

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