Hi folks,

I try to be generally kindly, and see other people's points of view, but it hasn't always been like this for me.

I dreamed about my first wife last night.

I was deeply in love with her, maybe too much, but I never felt safe with her somehow. A few weeks after we were married she left me, and went back to her parents. She gave me no explanation, and I guessed that it was all over and went back to my parents house to live, giving up our flat.

Amazingly, two weeks later she turned up again, and said that she had finally decided that she did love me. My mother didn't want her to come into the house but I was too weak, and let her in.

While we were talking I saw an anaesthetic mark on her hand and I realised the truth, dreadful for me, that she had aborted our first child. She wouldn't talk about it, but admitted that her father had paid for the abortion.

I took her back, against my mother's advice, and we moved to another town, right at the other end of the country. I found work easily, and we bought a pretty cottage in a country village. However, happiness eluded us. I encouraged her to keep in touch with her family, and she visited them, albeit without me. We had another child, a little girl, but still we weren't happy together. We just couldn't relate.

One day, to my horror, I came home from work and found that she had gone, and taken our daughter with her. I didn't see our daughter again for 25 years.

Last year, our daughter (R) contacted me and we had two meetings, and then she said it was too emotionally difficult and didn't want a relationship with me. I was frankly relieved, because I was finding it difficult too. I said that I fully understood her feelings, but would always be available for her if she changed her mind.

R. told me the story of my first wife and her family, which was not a happy one. As I had feared, our daughter had not been happy with her mother and had relied heavily on counsellors as she grew up. She was now living in a different city from her mother.

R. told me that her mother had made a second marriage which had broken down, and other relationships had failed. She was now alone and embittered. R. said that she was unable to get close to her mother, and was closer to the second husband (I had expected that).

I asked about my first wife's father, and R. told me that he was living in Spain with a new wife. He had left his own wife (my first wife's mother) while she was dying of breast cancer! I find this frankly unspeakable, but I knew the man of old, and could believe it.

Anyway, the present question is about trust. My concern is that I know that I was 'in love' with my first wife, but I never trusted her, and I just wasn't able to pretend, or make the trust happen. It was dreadful.

As I've mentioned here before, I made a good second marriage, meeting C. just a year after my first wife had abandoned me, and we have had such a good life together. Having another daughter, and such a happy daughter, was for me like a gift from God. I really believed that it was some kind of divine justice.

But, what worries me is the way I feel about those unhappy years. I know that my first wife has not been happy. R. told me that she is embittered with men in general, and is not close to her own children. The good part of me is very sorry that her life turned out so badly, but another part of me - I am ashamed to admit this - is glad that her actions brought her little happiness. I know this is disgraceful, but I can't help it. I'm only human.

I am thinking now that both my first wife and myself had something similar about us - we both had dominant and aggressive fathers. That's where I think the trouble started, but it's a sorry tale and that's a fact. I wonder if victims are drawn together? Do they have some horrible attraction?

Is the fatal flaw to be found in an inability to trust?

Myzen.