Nadeem, 57, an academic, meets Anona, 59, an environmentalist

What were you hoping for?
That he could make me laugh, had hair and wouldn’t bore the pants off me.

Your first husband robbed you of a lot, and you have some mourning to do. But there seems to be a part of you that thinks you don’t deserve happiness

• Every week Annalisa Barbieri addresses a family-related problem sent in by a reader

I met my ex in our last year of high school. After a year of university we married when we were only 18. The first 10 years were rocky, with many family crises that put stress on our relationship, and at one point I left my husband. We reunited within a few months and changed our attitudes and goals. From then on I vowed to accept and find the good. We were married for 25 years, through his many infidelities and my anxieties. We didn’t have any children because he didn’t want to be a father. Finally, there was a mistress he wouldn’t set aside, and after three years I gave him an ultimatum, as gently as I could. He chose her, and divorced me. Some of the most painful words I have ever heard were: “You are a wonderful wife, beautiful and brilliant, but I don’t want you. And you deserve better than this.”

I remarried 13 years later and for 23 years have been wife to a fine man. But he is emotionally distant, while I am emotionally overflowing. I relive my first husband’s betrayal in my dreams nearly every night. In my nightmares, I am frightened when he appears and feel under his control. I wake up full of fear.

Philippa, 32, and Jack, 30, met at a post-election party in 2019. They plan to marry in September and move to Spain
• Tell us your story of how you met someone special

When Philippa moved to Sheffield from London in 2018, one of the first things she did was join her local Labour party. “I was studying for a PhD in housing and planning and was already involved in a tenants’ union,” she says. “I was very active socially, but I lived alone, so it was a bit lonely for me.”

A year after moving up north, she began supporting the 2019 general election campaign. “We’d send groups from different areas to go leafleting and door knocking,” she says. “Olivia Blake, who we’d been supporting, won her seat, so she put on a little victory party just before Christmas.”