BEL MOONEY: My wife has left me after 37 years, for 'a cult'

• e-mail

Dear Bel,

Married for 37 years, my wife and I had normal ups and downs. We have three boys, all doing well, and a comfortable lifestyle.

Three or four years ago she told me she didn’t like our life and resented everything associated with being a wife: the daily chores of cooking meals and being at home (she hasn’t worked since our eldest was born).

At the same time she got involved with a group called The Crimson Circle — which (as best I can fathom) is about finding your true self. But I reckon it’s like a potentially divisive (and expensive) cult.

She believes this is the way forward: the focus of her life and raison d’être There’s no talking to her about it. She said she must find her true self and it makes us incompatible, so we must separate.

We did — 12 months ago. Living apart, I’m all for telling myself to get someone else and restart my life, but I do love her and miss the companionship we had. There are no other parties involved — except this group. I cannot fight their indoctrination via webinars etc. And they have seminars which cost about £1,500 to £2,000 a time, that she feels obliged to attend.

She thinks she’s found the solution to her problems and her ‘true friends’ — spending hours listening to their videos. I’m convinced she’s become brainwashed. Her head is elsewhere and I don’t know how to turn it around.

We’ve now talked about divorce as I can’t just limp on. My heart is still with her, as I love her to bits, but my head tells me I’m fighting a losing battle and should just call it a day and walk away.

Tonight she called me about a future family birthday celebration and I realised that we are no longer building projects together, nor planning a retirement together. I feel sad to have come this far with her, only to be defeated by what I see as a big scam. Any advice?

JONATHAN

You feel you have lost a shared future, but perhaps you can teach yourself to value all the past has given you, to respect who you are now, and realise that this has to be the beginning of a new stage. I wish you courage

Never having heard of the organisation you mention, I studied its website for a long time. And, used as I am to the study of philosophy and religion, I found it puzzling, to say the least.

Even though I’m quite fascinated by New Age philosophies, I found myself quickly exhausted by the language. The Crimson Circle is the name for a group of humans involved on a particular spiritual journey, who are also here as teachers to others on the journey — but that’s about as simple as it gets.

There’s a glossary of strange terms which made me wonder if such mumbo-jumbo (sorry for the shorthand cliché) is designed to confuse people into believing they are dealing with all-powerful mysteries. To me the whole thing reads and sounds like a mash-up of random beliefs, old and new, about life, death and the self — and feels very egocentric.

But, always open to talk of ‘the spirit’ and ‘the soul’, I’m generous about people’s beliefs — as long as they don’t hurt others. The term ‘scam’ is yours; I’m not sufficiently informed to make that judgment.

Naturally you will tell me that your wife’s sudden ‘conversion’ to this cultish way of thinking/feeling/ imagining has indeed hurt you very deeply, but I can’t help wondering whether she was in fact looking for a way out of your marriage. And any exit would have sufficed.

I doubt even you know whether your wife’s dissatisfaction with her role made her search for The Crimson Circle, or whether finding this group turned her against the life she had. She says she is on a journey to find her true self, and whatever she is gaining from all these endless web talks and meetings (the site seems to go on and on) she has decided that marriage — her old life — does not reflect the ‘self’ she is becoming.

And to be honest, after a separation of one year I suspect you have no power to change her mind.

This is about a serious failure of communication and sympathy between you and your wife, and if she is set on a new path away from domesticity nobody can change her mind. What matters now is how you move forward.

It would have been interesting to know what your adult sons think of all this, whether there are any grandchildren, and so on.

I hear the sadness within your letter and sympathise deeply, but I do believe you have to think of your own self.

You feel you have lost a shared future, but perhaps you can teach yourself to value all the past has given you, to respect who you are now, and realise that this has to be the beginning of a new stage. I wish you courage.

I feel so abandoned by everyone 

Dear Bel

A few weeks ago I had to have an operation on my left breast. It turned out to be a blocked duct and nothing more serious.

I told my six long-standing good friends (we’ve known each other for some 40 years) that I’d be out of action for a few weeks.

They live between 100 and 150 miles away. What’s upset me is that not one has been in touch to see how I am. When one had an accident, falling downstairs, I phoned and sent flowers.

The same with another friend who had a double mastectomy. But I haven’t received a card, flowers, or even a phone call, and feel very let down.

I don’t want to ruin our friendships as I find it hard to make friends. We all used to live fairly near, got married and had families and would see each other as a group three to four times a year. Then my husband and I had to move from the South Coast to Suffolk. I hate it here.

The neighbours are very unfriendly — don’t want to know us ‘southerners’ … taking all their houses and jobs etc. We can’t afford to move back. If it weren’t for my three-day supermarket job, I’d never see anyone.

Even when I came out of hospital, my husband hardly helped.

I know he has his own health issues (arthritis in his knees and a heart attack 12 years ago) but only once did he make dinner and get me a cup of tea. Instead of resting, I’ve had to do the washing and ironing and I’m unhappy.

What am I supposed to do? Our children have their own families to deal with, so I haven’t been able to rely on them. I feel my life is not worth anything, and my thoughts for my friends are unwanted. So do I just pretend all is ok and carry on sending cards even if they are bad friends — or lose them?

SALLY

This isn’t the first time I’ve had a letter about disappointing friends. Most of us have experienced that feeling of being let down — and the hurtful suspicion that perhaps a certain chum means more to us than we do to him or her.

Recently an old friend who’d been for supper emailed her thanks with the comment that she’d ‘missed’ us — when it’s me who always does the inviting!

My response is a smile and a shrug because that’s what she’s like — and I’m very fond of her indeed. With all faults — as the antique dealers say. And maybe we should think of old friendships as like rare old china — valued even with chips and cracks.

It must have been so frightening to have that health scare, and I completely understand how sad you felt that those distant friends didn’t respond to you as you did to them. All I can suggest is that you try to be philosophical about it because to complain to them would be too needy — and potentially destructive. Don’t think of them as ‘bad friends’, just people caught up in their own lives.

So yes, I think you should continue to send cards because doing so honours the shared past.

Yet there’s more going on within this letter. First, it bothers me that you have so readily accepted that you don’t make friends easily. Have you ever asked yourself why? Do you find it hard to ask people questions about themselves? You will never make friends if you are closed off and perhaps a little incurious. But is the real problem this relocation that you so hate? I’m afraid your sweeping generalisation about resentful Suffolk dwellers simply does not ring true.

People often act as a mirror to who we are ourselves — so that friendly folk will probably find others friendly, and so on. You may not like the fact that I’m saying this, but I believe you have to help yourself. You hate where you live and dislike the people, so what kind of face do you turn to the world? Think about it.

On the subject of resentment, you are unhappy at home, too. Is this the real issue here? You tell me that your scare was ‘nothing more serious’ than a blocked duct, but then complain that your husband didn’t treat you like a real invalid.

There’s something illogical there, and it suggests you have always wished that he would help more. Like many married couples, you settled into roles. But if you are to grow older together in harmony then give and take is absolutely essential.

If I were you I’d cut the ironing down to the bare minimum (the younger generation never irons) and ask him to help with other chores — bearing in mind that he’s not in the best of health. Tell him gently that you have to take care of each other.

I worry that you are locking yourself into discontentment because you dislike Suffolk and are perhaps suddenly aware that none of us lives for ever. Casting off your old friends won’t help.

Now you must make a conscious effort to examine the life you have and vow to make it better. Tell yourself you can and will make new friends, while keeping in touch with the old.

And finally: New puppy Lily brings joy to my heart

A recent Swedish study of over 3.4 million individuals investigated the potential health benefits of dog ownership.

Those who took part were aged 40 to 80 and were followed for up to 12 years. Just over 13 per cent had pet dogs.

The researchers found that dog ownership had a dramatic effect — cutting the risk of death from cardiovascular disease by 36 per cent.

Bel's new dog Lily

That was with people who live alone, but in larger households, dogs still lowered deaths from heart disease by 15 per cent.

It’s a short step from reading that to wondering whether dogs (or maybe I should say, pets) help keep us young. Something to love, take care of, exercise, play with, say silly things to, stop you thinking of yourself, cuddle … what’s not to like? I use face cream to keep wrinkles at bay (I wish!) but a better bet might be a dog to keep stress on the back burner.

A dog, I say … or two … Or three. Yes, I just made life more complicated — and maybe three times as healthy, too! This is the new baby.

Two years after my beloved Bonnie’s death, my yearning for a sweet little Maltese would not cease. Bonnie was from the RSPCA and I’d made a vow I would only ever rescue a pet, as the centres are full of needy cats and dogs longing to be taken care of.

But my search for a Maltese failed — so this 13-week-old scrap came from a lovely family in Devon (not a commercial breeder) who were going to keep her but decided to let her go to the right home. And that means me!

I love our rescue dogs, Sophie (Chihuahua cross) and Hattie (Pomeranian cross) very much, but now they have a wee ‘sister’. And why not? She is my little pure white Lily, and an early Christmas gift to myself. Just to help my heart along, you see.