My husband asked this of me in counselling. I was surprised by it and couldn’t answer the question straight away. He didn’t wait long before he added that he couldn’t stay friends with me if we separated: he would need to make a clean break. That upset me enormously and the tears broke out and nearly overwhelmed me.

The counsellor seemed concerned that it was an unfair question and was akin to setting a trap for me, given that he would not be able to remain in contact if we split.

Yet, he asked the question, therefore I must seriously consider it.

Even though I have never been adept at caring for him, especially of late, I do worry about him all the time.

When he doesn’t sleep, I worry. When he is particularly low, I worry. I worry that he doesn’t eat properly. I worry that he has no friends and no social life. I worry about him all the time – and that is my privilege.

It’s a privilege because having somebody to worry about isn’t a right neither is it a forgone conclusion.

When things aren’t so tense as they are now, I look forward to spending time with him. In my mind, spending time with my husband is what weekends are for. They are the time when I have the most time. It is rare that I spend a day on my own or see a friend, and the biggest reason for that is that I consider weekends as our together time.

However, when I do have time to myself, I’m usually very happy to fill it up with trips to the beach, the forest, or the town. I’ll read, walk, cycle, or write. And I can relax.

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I know what it is like to live in my own space and not have to consider another. I enjoyed it, but I don’t think I enjoyed it because I didn’t have to consider anyone else, because I don’t see that I was living in a way that would be incompatible with living with somebody else. It was more that the omnipresent anxiety and the sense that I need to initiate “conversations” all the time felt oppressive.

The problem comes back to one of balance – my husband has needs, and whilst I believe that I can identify them, I hear all the time that he feels that I don’t meet them or don’t them enough and I don’t understand how I balance my own needs with his.

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In the interim putting this down and picking it up again I have felt grief at the thought of never seeing him again.

At the same time, when he is up before me in the morning, or comes down before I leave the house, I miss the quiet and immediately sense that ever-present pressure.

Yet, I look forward to the weekends and hope that we get to do something interesting or fun together. I fully intend to have at least one meaningful conversation with my husband on a weekend and I try to get my head into the right space.

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Back to his question!

I suppose, I need to consider it exactly as it was asked: would it be any easier to let him go if we could still be friends? If it wasn’t forever?

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Another aspect of the question came to my mind: he tells me that if we separated that he would lose everything, including his financial security.

This is true.

I earn enough to keep us in relative comfort, if we split, that would be lost to him. We would have to either sell the house, or I would need to buy him out – both situations result in him getting a lump sum.

Whilst I would definitely be poorer, I would still be working. He would need to arrange for benefits.

I have assured him plenty of times that I would make sure that he got his half of everything: we have always owned everything jointly. Beyond that, I could not afford to run two residences.

It feels a little unfair that he says that he fears being out on the streets, however, when considering his question of whether I would find it easier to let him go, I realise that I have to also try to disentangle his fears from the equation before I can answer it.

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Something else to maybe remove from the equation is our history, good and bad. We have had some terrible times, where both of us had said and done things to the other that were cruel and violent in word or action.

We have also had spectacularly good times, such adventures that I could never have dreamed of have been made possible by having this man in my life.

I dread considering that our past together might have been for nothing.

The only question to consider is whether our future together might contain more good things than bad. This is very much at the heart of if the issue.

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My difficult answering this simple question is because I am afraid that an affirmative answer would be taken by husband to mean that I want to separate. I have to put that fear aside: I can acknowledge that the fear is there, and discount it from what is ultimately a simple, boolean question:

Would I let him go if we could still be friends?

The answer is simply:

Yes.