Dear Christine,
FOR THE PAST year I have been seeing a married woman. It started casually but has grown to the point where we are terribly in love with each other. I would love to share the rest of my life with her.
The problem is that she can’t seem to leave her husband. We have tried breaking off our relationship, but we both are miserable, so we keep on. Our children get along fine, and I treat hers as if they are my own.
She says that her marriage was a mistake from the beginning, is not happy and she would marry me if she could. More than anything in the world, I want her to be happy, and would do anything for that to be true. What do we do?
– CAUGHT IN LOVE TRIANGLE
Dear Caught in love triangle:
You two should stop seeing each other, and she should go for marital counselling. That counselling should either help her to repair her marriage – and it would help if her husband went too – or else she’ll come to the conclusion that her marriage needs to end in divorce.
If the latter occurs, then you two could get back together. I don’t know why she can’t leave him, but this situation is not fair to you, as right now you cannot move on with her or without her.
I’m not saying following this advice is going to be easy, but it’s really the only way you can reach a satisfactory solution in a reasonable amount of time. And if she won’t bite this bullet, then you have to realise that you’ve come to a dead end and just move on for your own sake.
– CHRISTINE