The dilemma When I met my husband almost 40 years ago, it was a godsend. I had very little self-confidence and spent my school years “looking for love in all the wrong places”. He genuinely loved me and did his best to mend my broken ego. Unfortunately, he had issues of his own and couldn’t completely give his heart to me. We lost our second child when he was 13 months old. My husband never blamed me, but he was so angry at the world, taking it out on me. A few years ago, he became depressed, which I cured him of with talk therapy (I had therapy for six years, so I was pretty good at it), love and sex. As a result, he is a different person. He is loving and supportive and treats me like a goddess. The problem is I can’t forget those early years or trust my heart to him. How do I get over this without discussing it with him? It would break his heart to know what I’m feeling.

Mariella replies Are you so sure it’s all down to you? That may seem a brutal chastisement, but I’m worried that you are so confident of the empathy and emotional understanding you’ve displayed that it’s blinkered you to alternative scenarios. I congratulate you on showing patience, kindness and a sympathetic ear to your depressed husband, but I really don’t think you can take the credit for “curing” him.



Going through therapy yourself does not make you a therapist and while I certainly agree that challenging circumstances give you experience and sometimes wisdom to share, they don’t turn you into a miracle worker. You both had a lot to contend with early in your union and should be grateful and proud that you’ve managed to negotiate your way through such difficulties and remain together. The loss of a child is a terrible trauma, unimaginable to those who haven’t endured it, and it’s rare for the relationship of two bereaved parents to emerge completely unscathed.

Finding yourselves the victim of a misfortune that feels so personal changes the way you relate to the world and can easily trigger a sense of isolation and anger towards even those sharing in the grief. I’m not condoning your husband’s cruelty toward you, especially if it was physical or intimidating, but you don’t share details so I can’t judge beyond saying it’s good news that those days are now behind you.

I suspect your husband struggled harder in the aftermath of losing your child because he lacked the vocabulary to express the complex emotions and misery he was feeling, something your six years of therapy won’t have protected you from, but may have helped you to negotiate more successfully.

The greatest issue you face is your belief that the man your husband has become is entirely down to you

Adversity can forge stronger bonds or force you apart, and at present you’re occupying what sounds like a bearable middle ground. My sense is that the greatest issue you face is your belief that the man your husband has become is entirely down to your tender, supportive nursing and nothing to do with his own personal choice and struggle.

You appear to underestimate how difficult depression coupled with the anger of such bereavement would be to recover from, which is odd, as you yourself will have gone through many of the same complex emotions.

Imagining it’s all down to you is unhelpful for both of you. It means you undervalue his own role in his rehabilitation and create in yourself this sense of insecurity that he’s simply slipped on a new skin he could easily shed. Give him credit where it’s due for transforming himself into a man you can love and rely on, rather than one who inspires fear and insecurity.

Your early therapy will have given you an emotional grounding that perhaps made you less vulnerable to later trauma. Losing a child is an awful thing to happen at any point, but it’s certainly guaranteed to rock the foundations of a newly formed romantic liaison.

Now, 40 years down the line you have invested a lot in staying together and improving the quality of your communication, but you have to accept your husband has done some heavy lifting, too.

Instead of fretting that he may simply revert to type, and become ‘angry at the world again’ or dwelling on how he once was, how about giving him credit for his achievement in overcoming grief and depression and emerging a better man and a loving husband?

Sometimes the only way to solve a problem is to change the view. Seen from a different perspective, your husband has gone through a major metamorphosis that he must have fought hard to bring to fruition. The man he once was is not the man he has become. You have to gauge how you feel about him right now, not based on past history, and the first step would be to give him credit for his large role in the welcome transformation. Four decades together is a big investment to squander without compelling cause.

If you have a dilemma, send a brief email to mariella.frostrup@observer.co.uk. Follow her on Twitter @mariellaf1