BEL MOONEY: I've lost my job and flat - is my life over before I turn 40? 

DEAR BEL

I left college at 18, went straight into a job, worked hard for nearly a decade, built a successful career, had friends, boyfriends and a ‘normal’ life.

Then, through overwork, I had a breakdown. I assumed my employer would be supportive, but my manager used it as an excuse to push me out of the company.

I instigated legal proceedings and a very long battle followed. Despite huge amounts of money and time, I lost. My health suffered further as I was forced to represent myself, which was extremely stressful. I was unable to work at all for a couple of years.

Although the tribunal is now behind me it has left a mark on my life that I’m unable to shift. I have a constant feeling of injustice. I still suffer the effects of my illness and have had trouble holding down work every since.

I have lost my career and my friends and, approaching 40, feel my life is already over.

My work was fairly niche, so my skills are not required in most positions. I now work in a fast-food restaurant with a manager ten years younger than me.

'I have lost my career and my friends and, approaching 40, feel my life is already over.'

I have asked at the job centre about retraining, but hit a brick wall. I lost my nice flat, live in a small bed-sit and struggle financially — especially as during my worst periods I took solace in gambling and drink (problems I feel are largely under control now).

I look at others and cannot help but feel jealous. My older siblings are both married with children and although I love my nephews, I feel deeply resentful that the same joy of a happy, secure family will now be denied me.

I see an NHS counsellor regularly and although she has helped a lot I still feel I have been subjected to an injustice and that those who should have helped me (my former employer, colleagues and the Employment Tribunals Service) have destroyed my life through malice and negligence.

These people are able to move on and live their lives while I am forced to suffer. My future now seems so bleak. I used to be a smart, fairly attractive, successful and well-balanced person. I am now overweight and look like I have aged by decades.

My life has been stolen through the actions of others. What employer would want to take this person on? Who would want to settle down and start a family with this person? How do I move on and find a reason to live again?

STEPHEN

Nobody can deny that what happened to you was terrible. After working hard to build your life, you saw your carefully constructed house of cards collapse.

I have real sympathy for your feelings of loss and abandonment, and understand your wish to fight what you saw as colossal injustice, at whatever cost.

But how long ago did all this happen? I am guessing ten years — at the very least. Ten years of being consumed with resentment. Of stuffing yourself with self-pity with every bite of fattening junk food. Ten years of getting into debt because of drink and gambling. Ten years of jealousy and negativity and hopelessness.

I have to tell you that when I read that a person not yet 40 feels their ‘life is already over’, I want to suggest one of those ice-bucket challenges, once such a craze.

Believe me, I am not trying to belittle your sadness. You do sound depressed, which is why I am so glad you are being helped by an NHS counsellor. (We need much more provision like this.)

But since that fact pre-empts a staple in the advice columnist’s armoury, what is there left to say? To start with, I would like you to go through this letter and take out each blanket, negative assertion.

For example: ‘The tribunal . . . has left a mark on my life that I’m unable to shift.’ And ‘the same joy of a happy, secure family will now be denied me’. And ‘my life has been stolen from me by the actions of others’.

Now comes the exercise. Write each of those statements on a separate piece of paper.

Then pick them up, one by one, and examine them carefully, each time asking yourself: ‘Do I know this to be true?’

The only possible answer is that you may ‘think’ and ‘feel’, but you cannot possibly ‘know’.

So, each time, take the piece of paper and scrunch it up into a ball in your first and hold it tight. Then ask yourself: ‘Is it possible for me to let this go?’ — while unclenching your fist.

It will be clear that no power is preventing you from dropping the piece of paper; therefore you say, ‘Yes, it is possible’ — and let the thing fall to the ground.

You state: ‘I am forced to suffer.’ Stephen, that is not true. While your suffering may not have been your fault back then, right now you are the one nurturing pain. This is a tough truth your counsellor will not tell you, because it is not within his or her professional remit.

But this is the only way I can make you stop and think.

You have to believe that you can change your life — wait, you can save your own life. Who else is going to do it for you?

So what if your manager is younger? Just work hard to the best of your ability and maybe you’ll get their job next year.

Stop those bad habits — because looking and acting like a weak-willed slob won’t help you. Make your bed-sit as attractive as it can possibly be. Place daffodils in a jam jar. Act!

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the concept of the ‘hidden benefit’. In your case, the hidden benefit (of the bad things that happened so long ago) is that you can still hug your bitterness like a dead weight, then blame it for taking you down.

You describe your future as ‘bleak’ — but who knows what good things are waiting for you? A new job, a new love, a new self?

Time to write a fresh script, my friend.

I'm pregnant but my man's run off 

DEAR BEL

I have been with my boyfriend for a over a year-and-a-half and we have been living together for over a year.

We are both divorced with two kids each from prior marriages.

I am 26 and he is 38. I am now three months pregnant and my boyfriend is extremely upset. Until I found out I was pregnant our relationship was going extremely well and we were both so happy.

Now he is saying I got pregnant on purpose and ‘was trying to trap him’. He says: ‘We were supposed to grow with our kids now, not make new ones.’

We discussed having children before this pregnancy and agreed to have more one day.

Just because this was not planned he is so angry. He is now moving out of my home and leaving me alone to provide for my two kids and expected baby.

I’m extremely hurt and pretty confused by all of this. He says he needs to provide a home for the kids he has and their mother.

Keep in mind that we planned to get a big enough house for all of us — that was until my pregnancy test!

I didn’t think someone his age would start acting so childishly.

He says he still loves me and wants to be with me — but just wants to live separately. I’m so confused and don’t understand why he’s going to leave me to handle three kids (one of them his) alone when I’m not even financially stable. Will he come around?

Am I crazy for feeling furious about this? Or does he have reasonable points?

TRACY

Poor Marie Stopes and Margaret Sanger. Even before World War I those pioneers took on the Establishment to proclaim the importance of birth control.

My own generation felt liberated by the Pill. Now Marie and Margaret must be spinning in their graves.

Can you understand why I feel despair that a 26-year-old mother of two and a 38-year-old father of two can appear to be so ignorant about how babies are made — or how (whisper it) they might be prevented?

I know accidents happen, but if they do, sensible people should sit down and talk things through.

You ask whether you are ‘crazy’ for feeling ‘furious’ that your boyfriend has legged it with as much maturity as a spotty, feckless 18-year-old because he doesn’t want to become a daddy again.

Well, you are quite right to feel upset; the ‘crazy’ bit comes with getting yourself into this situation in the first place.

You may think these words harsh and unhelpful. Let me make it clear that my intention is to make you think.

Because it doesn’t sound as if much of that essential activity has been going on, does it? The word ‘reasonable’ (implying rational thought processes) has much to do with this sorry story. Yet a baby is on the way. A small, vulnerable human being (not a baby goat) who will require responsible love and care, and has the right to two parents who will give it. Nothing matters more than this.

Therefore you have to take some deep breaths (I always say that, because stopping to close your eyes and breathe properly helps cut through confusion) and make a plan.

If you want your boyfriend to return, you need to be calm. You need help; both of you owe it to your ‘unplanned’ child to have at least one session with a relationships counsellor to discuss the way forward.

If he is adamant that he does not wish to live in your home any longer, then he must provide proper financial support for the baby.

He may just be panicking because he has two other children to support; if that’s the case, you need to assure him that you’ll do all you can to help with the finances.

Do you have a part-time job, for example? Or family or friends to help with childcare? He should know that you’ll do all you can to provide for yourself, while expecting him to do his bit.

If you were happy together before the result of the pregnancy test, then surely it is not too much to hope that you can be happy again. For the sake of this baby, I beg you both to try.

And finally: The Easter I witnessed real love 

A few days before Easter, 26 years ago, I was in Timisoara in Romania. It was March 1990 — only three months earlier the city saw the first protests that would lead to the end of the Communist regime.

In Timisoara and Bucharest I saw bullet holes in buildings and little shrines on the pavements, where yellow candles still flickered for those injured or killed in the uprising against tyranny.

My translator/new friend and I were heading for the city’s magnificent Orthodox Cathedral. We bowed our heads against flurries of snow on an icy wind. Then I saw the long queue snaking across the main square.

You became used to them: people had so little and always carried a bag in case they found provisions. We followed this queue to the top. And there, in a modest shop window, was a pile of nasty looking brown objects, like dusty rocks. What was it?

My friend asked, then explained. People were queuing to buy broken chunks of chocolate for their children, as an Easter treat. They hunched their shoulders and waited to pay precious money for sweet stuff no British person would accept.

Deeply moved, I visualised the two expensive boxed eggs I had hidden in a cupboard at home, ready for my return on Easter Saturday. So lucky, my children…

Yet then I reflected that the children of Timisoara were lucky, too, as their parents cared enough to stand in the cold, hoping the chocolate wouldn’t run out.

We went into the cathedral, where I lit candles for the dead and said a prayer for a beautiful country which had suffered such hardship.

That research trip, and another one later that year, resulted in two novels, a short story and a screenplay — and I will always be grateful to Romania (multumesc!) for testing experiences and for inspiration.

But most of all, each Easter, when I tuck into chocolate eggs, I remember with humility those loving Romanian parents — and the snowflakes that studded their hats and scarves, like stars.