Dear Bel,

To outsiders I’m a 50-year-old who has it all: a big house and land, money, an apparently lovely partner of 30 years.

We’ve had ups and downs, but I always thought we loved each other. He’s moody, jealous and a perfectionist — which I learned to live with by not having to be told about anything twice and making sure I don’t repeat past errors.

He criticises everything — I cannot remember when he last gave praise. I gave up working full-time because my office hours interfered with his life — and now only do two mornings a week for some contact with the outside world.

Gradually, all my close friends have melted away. I keep busy with an animal society and manage our property on my own — putting out the bins, cutting the grass, cooking, cleaning and doing the laundry, as well as looking after my farm animals.

THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK Nothing matters but the quality of the affection - in the end - that has carved a trace in the mind. From The Cantos by Ezra Pound (American Poet and critic, 1885 - 1972) Advertisement

If I get caught sitting down with a cup of tea, he calls me a lazy, ungrateful b***h — so I leap to it! He never offers any help, and I have to be exceptionally grateful if he lifts a finger. Now I realise I’m nothing more than a hired help.

We saw our financial adviser, who said the best thing would be to marry. Secretly, I’ve always yearned for that white-dress day (yes, even now) and thought this might give him the impetus. Later, I said maybe it was something to consider and he said: ‘Huh, I’ll speak to the accountant tomorrow and see what he says.’

A dagger through my heart. If he loved me, he’d have asked me then.

A couple of weeks later, when we made new wills, the solicitor also suggested the easiest thing would be to be married.

It was an uncomfortable moment, but new wills were made, with each the other’s executor. Back home, he says he wants another executor as well so I ‘don’t do anything stupid with his money when he’s gone’.

Then last week he called me a money-sucking leech for needing ‘too much’ housekeeping, and I realised I’m nothing more than his slave. I feel empty, heartbroken and alone. I talked to my aunt (the closest person I trust), but she didn’t want to know.

I can’t leave because of my animals (children would have been easier!) and (having put 30 years into this) don’t see why I should give it all up. But I long for some affection.

He knows something is wrong, as I’m cool and civil (he hasn’t a clue why), and is trying to make it better by buying me things.

I’m depressed and menopausal, but I sometimes wonder if it’s my fault for not being more assertive in the beginning. What shall I do? I don’t think he’ll ever change.

SALLY

'To outsiders I’m a 50-year-old who has it all: a big house and land, money, an apparently lovely partner of 30 years'

There can’t be a single woman reading this who doesn’t reach your final conclusion (about you not being assertive enough) pretty near the beginning of your letter.

Perhaps it does no good to say it, but you are surely a contributor to your own unhappiness.

It defies belief that you have lived with this controlling man for 30 long years, putting up with exploitation, ill-treatment and unforgivable rudeness, which many would call abuse.

You probably should have called time on this prison sentence years ago. For three decades you have tolerated his demands, his lack of appreciation, his refusal to consider what you might want (marriage, for example) or to see you as an equal partner in any way.

You were 20 when this ‘relationship’ began and over half your life later, this man has no interest in what you are thinking or feeling.

Please forgive me, but you must be able to see how this all looks from the outside. Like no life at all, but a hideous compromise.

I wish you would leave him and make a new start where you might even meet somebody very different — somebody who’d make you feel loved. The fact that you are ‘depressed and menopausal’ goes a long way to explaining why this has suddenly all folded in on you, making you feel so full of despair.

But surely the seeds have been there since the beginning — at which time you should have refused to put up with it. There is a lesson here for all couples. If you don’t begin with equality, it can rarely be achieved.

Nevertheless you have animals and a home, and it’s far from easy to change a lifestyle.

You don’t say whether the property is jointly owned, so it’s impossible for me to give much advice about one path of action — which would be to get a solicitor and work out how things stand. But I do think you are urgently in need of counselling to help you find a way through this impasse.

You should look at the Relate website (relate.co.uk) for a start, to investigate ways of getting in touch with one of their trained relationship counsellors, face-to-face, online or by telephone.

Your partner need not know about this. But talking to somebody will hopefully give you the courage to tackle him about your present unhappiness and bruising feelings of rejection. How can he be so stupid as to have no idea of why you are hurting? Somebody has to tell him and it can only be you.

What about rebellion — like no meal on the table? How about that for wild courage? I wish and wish you would.

Do you still long to marry him? With all your experience of what the man is like?

Only you can know the answer to that leading question, but you should give it careful thought. Can you visualise standing at the altar with him, saying ‘I do’?

At a youthful 50, you have many years ahead and need to consider how you wish to spend them. Might life with animals be infinitely more rewarding than life with a man who never gives love or support?

You say he ‘will never change’ and so your decision will be how much longer you are prepared to sacrifice your heart and soul for the sake of security. That — or finally stand up to him and demand your human rights.

I can't stop my daughters feuding

Dear Bel,

I am at my wits’ end. My two daughters, Sue (28) and Ann (27), have not spoken for nearly four years.

It started before Sue’s wedding. Ann had been sour-faced during the build up — not giving Sue measurements for her bridesmaid dress, not sorting the hen do, then saying she couldn’t afford it . . .

During all the preparations Ann turned up at my house wearing an engagement ring, saying she was planning her own wedding! (She is no longer with him.)

Fast forward to a week before Sue’s wedding. The girls’ father (we are divorced and remarried) announced he wanted to bring his girlfriend to the rehearsal. Sue said no — it would either be him and me or both couples.

He was not happy. I think Ann got involved siding with him and there were phone calls and texts between the girls and their respective partners.

Eventually, Ann said she thought it best if she did not come to the wedding and Sue’s groom said if that was how she felt, then not to come. She said he had banned her — which wasn’t true.

Then their father took Ann and her boyfriend on holiday, posting pictures on Facebook before the wedding ones.

This has caused a major rift and I’m caught in the middle. They both refuse to communicate with each other and we cannot have them round to family events together.

Sometimes, I feel I’ve done something wrong, but I don’t know how to resolve it. There are no older relatives who could mediate and I don’t know how to sort this out.

GWENDOLINE

Once again I confront a letter which makes me despair — because it is almost impossible to see what an outsider can do. Of course, professional help is out there for those who need it; nowadays it’s not hard to seek family mediation and/or counselling from a variety of sources.

These are obvious things to suggest, but to do so would feel like a waste of time to me here, since these adult sisters have freely chosen to continue their feud for four long years.

I am sure you have cast your mind back many times to when your girls were growing up. There is only a year between them, so I wonder how they got on as children, how old they were when your marriage broke up, how they each responded, and so on.

Since the younger was clearly very jealous at the elder’s wedding plans, I wonder if these complicated feelings began years before — perhaps because Ann thought Sue the favourite (siblings are like that). Who knows?

It does seem as if unfortunate lines have been drawn — with you and Sue on one side and your ex-husband and Ann on the other. Because of that, I think he may have the key to resolving the matter, but you don’t make it clear how you get on with him these days. Whatever the truth, is it not possible for you to tell him how worried you are and beg him to mediate?

You might point out to him that when you die, or he dies, your daughters will not (going by their intransigence) find it in their hearts to attend the funeral together — and how truly appalling that would be.

It may sound melodramatic to invoke death, but I believe you must have a sense of an ending to appreciate the glory of life. If you meditate on death every single day, petty differences melt away.

Life really is too short to fight and if more people realised that, the world would be a happier place.

If your first husband says there is nothing he could do, then your only hope is to set it all down yourself, in a proper letter.

You might try the photograph trick I’ve used before, with success.

Look for a snap from when the two girls were little, playing happily, and send each one a copy, with an identical letter, begging them to remember that they are sisters and should make up their quarrel.

If they ignore you … then … what else can you do?

If I were you, I would make a real effort to persuade their father to join with you before Christmas to ask them (with some urgency) to forgive and forget.

And finally...A voyage of culture and fun

With no pause in this column (service must continue), we zipped off to chilly Ravenna, northern Italy, for a five-day break.

Time for dank November days to be lit — and the heart lifted — by the glory of ancient mosaics, enshrining the Christian faith.

What an interesting, varied group Robin and I joined. Led by the renowned icon specialist Sir Richard Temple (of London’s Temple Gallery), it included a theology PhD student, an icon restorer, a Slovenian couple who run an outdoor activity centre, a French theologist, two British widows, a merry divorcee, a multi-lingual German artist and academic and a Polish icon painter from Wales.

Not to mention this writer and her patient husband, who might have preferred to be scuba diving, but just loves old buildings.

Our ages ranged from early 30s to a tireless 79, all marvelling at magnificent Byzantine churches and mausoleums and museums — uplifted and educated by sacred mosaics and objects dating back to around the sixth century.

WRITE TO BEL Bel answers readers’ questions on emotional and relationship problems each week. Write to Bel Mooney, Daily Mail, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT, or e-mail bel.mooney@dailymail.co.uk. A pseudonym will be used if you wish. Bel reads all letters but regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence. Advertisement

And then to eat, drink and be merry every evening, of course! Culture, faith and fun — that’s my kind of trip.

Glittering in the light and making you reflect on what life really means, the World Heritage mosaics are timelessly beautiful.

They’re filled with early Christian imagery — so even the illiterate (most of the population back in the Middle Ages) would have been able to ‘read’ their significance.

They were made to glorify God, but let’s not forget that the craftsmen were also working to put bread on the table for their families.

Personally, I can never separate even the most sublime art from human reality. It may be rooted in faith, but surely that itself is based upon our need.