Counselling! I laid out the chart of my marriage on the table to ready for Richard, boiled the kettle, and waited for him to arrive.

When he came, I didn’t put the dog in the kitchen again – she is slowly getting better around people and the only way to get her better is to keep letting her be around people.

I gave him what could inaccurately be called “the unusual recap”. It doesn’t seem as though one week bears any resemblance to any other week and they are full of sexploits – failed or successful, they all contain lessons.

From the fortnight’s adventures, I said that I had been thinking about people who are good with boundaries and with whom I know that the boundaries are difficult. I am realising that people with unstable boundaries upset me and cause me stress, and I am trying to understand where each person fits into my life.

As with many of my counselling sessions, I tend to jump around. From the update of the last couple of weeks, I moved to talking about a new understanding that I have of my dad – how he showed love by sharing his special interests. I’d also like to show affection for people by sharing my special interests with them, but I have learnt to that what interests me rarely interests other people, so I tend to check out whether they have a compatible interest and watch for signs of glazing over. It is a shame that my dad’s interests weren’t appropriate for a child; he got frustrated with my clumsiness and inability to grasp the delicacy of the things he was sharing (which tended to be modelling or DIY).

I talked about the lack of affirmations of love in my marriage. I did so the “I love you” stuff.

I am thinking now that I was almost more upset that I got no affirmations that he was attracted to me. But I had to tell him he was good looking. I had to protect his self-esteem at all costs: failure to do so would result in dangerously destructive and potentially violent meltdowns – or worse: self-harm and overdoses. I do not know how many ambulances I have called.

I told Richard about the little the episode of the Christmas card: I had bought a “Human Santipede” card, which I’d picked out especially for my husband, but it had upset him. We didn’t reach any conclusions about it – except that whenever I shared my feelings and thoughts with my husband I had to deal with his reactions and feelings first. I don’t feel that there was any space for my own emotions.

I talked about unreasonable expectations that my husband had of me, for example remembering dates: if I forgot, he took that to mean that I didn’t love him. When mobile phones got calendars, I’d put reminders for everything in there, but that wasn’t right because he said that if he was important to me then I wouldn’t even need to even try to remember: I just would.

Richard then re-focussed me on the relationship chart – specifically the long period that my husband and my mum didn’t talk. I don’t really understand why they fell out, it seems so trivial and stupid now that we are separated and my mum has been dead five years.

I feel that my husband had wanted me to take a side, which could have meant cutting her out. But I couldn’t do that because I didn’t believe that his reasons for such an extreme action were really justified. Instead, I stayed neutral. I wouldn’t talk to anybody about what was going on – least of all my mum. She continued to ask after my husband and send him birthday cards and gifts: he was never out of her thoughts.

I know that he needed to feel that I was on his side, but I don’t really know what that would have looked like. I would never run him down to friends or family, nor would I permit them to criticise him.

If somebody did say something to offend my husband, I would discreetly tell them off. I never told him that I’d done it because I didn’t want to point score, and he’d have picked apart whatever I’d said.

Before that break in their relationship, my Mum would often call my husband and me “her boys”. He noticed that it stopped, but I am not not certain when – I suspect that it stopped during the silent period, which would hardly be surprising. I didn’t notice until he’d pointed it out to me.

I didn’t tell friends what was happening in our marriage. I learnt early on that they choose sides which meant having them and husband in the same space impossible.

I was alone and keeping up a front that everything was wonderful. It was stressful and exhausting, but I desperately did not want anybody to know that there was anything wrong with us.

I even felt disloyal because I was talking about him even to Richard, my counsellor! I am certainly not going to stop talking to Richard, but I can notice this feeling and choose to put it under the microscope next time.

Richard seemed to notice that I was beginning to struggle with words, he directed the conversation to happier memories.

So I talked about the first time that my husband and I went to see the Priscilla Queen of the Desert musical in London and how it had blown our minds. I said that I wondered what these shared experiences of our past meant now that we weren’t a couple any more – did they mean anything? I feel a lot of grief about the end of our history.

However, it was getting late and Richard knew that he needed to get away from anything too heavy if he was to leave me in a safe place. So he directed things back to Priscilla; he knew that there was a sequel to the film coming out and that Terrance Stamp had filmed all his parts before he had died! What wonderful news! God bless you Terrance!

And there we left things! Three week’s time I see him again.