In last week’s Family Secrets, a mother told her daughter, 9, not to tell her father that they had met by chance an ex boyfriend. Here are your responses . . .

Why did you allow your old boyfriend to take you and your daughter for ice-cream in the park? If you are as concerned as you say about your “past”, a quick hello and goodbye would have sufficed. I suspect that you resent the control exerted over you by this otherwise apparently perfect husband. He is in denial about your life before him – and you cannot eradicate this. You need to sit down carefully and think through the implications. Even with a new baby on the way – maybe even because there is a new baby on the way – you need to address your situation. You cannot continue to live on the edge.

Sally Evans, Kent

My late husband suffered from retrospective jealousy too. It was at times disruptive, and could be triggered even by old photographs of any period before our marriage. Counselling and psychotherapy made no impression. Julian Barnes’s novel Before She Met Me about this subject is well worth reading.

I still miss my husband terribly. The jealousy was a negative sign of the positive love between us, even though I used to feel exactly the dread described by the reader. Advice? Truth still seems to me the best thing; he has to deal with that, so try not to suborn yourself (or your daughter).

Sandy Graves, London

It's all about your past sex life for men, but don’t live a lie. It was sad to read how you seem to have to pretend that you haven’t had a past sex life, or any kind of relationship for that matter, with a member of the opposite sex.

Your husband’s behaviour is all too familiar to relationship counsellors everywhere. Unfortunately for him, or fortunately as I would see it, you do have a past. It has shaped you into the person that you have become – by the sounds of it, a loving, caring, partner and mother who is doing her best for all concerned, but living a lie.

Men generally are happy to have had sex with others before they “settle down”, but would also like to marry virgins. The chances of this when people meet after the age of 21 are slim indeed.

Your husband needs to address this issue, possibly through counselling, and you need to make him confront your past, otherwise you are storing up problems for the future.

I can understand why you asked your daughter to lie, but it is wrong and sets a terrible example and it could come back to haunt you. You know that your situation is not healthy, so you must do something. There also seems to be a potentially violent undertone in your husband’s behaviour that should be dealt with.

Don't shut down your past for anybody. You are worth more than that, believe me. Good luck.

Patrick Morrison, Derbyshire

I felt so sorry for you. This problem is a serious one and has to be faced if your marriage is to remain a loving and equal union.

Men (and women) can be very possessive, but it is your husband’s problem and should be faced by him. If your daughter ever mentions that she met your former boyfriend, with the ensuing trouble it will cause, you should stand your ground and try to make him see that these are the lengths he has forced you to go to, even coercing your daughter into silence, to keep the peace.

Just remember that you’ve done nothing wrong, and make him face his problem before you become resentful and bitter.

Lin Taylor, Leicester

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