Mr Husband and I have spoken more with each other in the last few days than we ever did. It is, mostly, thanks to his unbreakable sense of equilibrium. He is so well balanced that you could set a spirit level on him. A rare quality indeed, and one which has helped him in so many dark times in his life. This, my friends, is certainly one of them.

Yes, raw grief and cutting disappointment whisked up his anger, when I finally decided to stop hiding behind the Morris wallpaper and showed my very little soul. When one lives with a man who is not prone to emotional roller-coasters, any unusual display of jagged sentiment on his part explodes with much heightened intensity. Like a whisper in a silent, empty and echoing room.

Mr Husband's pain surges and ebbs as he tries to deal with it in the only way a man like him can: by making sense of it all. From me, he needs the pieces missing from the puzzle of our marriage, the fragments that I have kept from him: the unspoken words and sighs punctuating our nights, the silence of the evenings spent together but not with each other, the emptiness of those long periods in my life when I longed for a conversation that never came.

His puzzle is held together by the indestructible belief that solid, affectionate love and eternal commitment to one's family will be enough to see us through the roughest edges of temptation and time's demolishing force.

And he is right. The world Mr Husband has managed to build around us has a lovable, enduring nature, as open as the fields surrounding our home and just as everlasting. But it is his world, not mine. I feel but an awkward guest admiring the tapestry of a life which would be perfect for someone else.

Someone not as needy as me.

It is not that Mr Husband feels that I am perfect; far from it. He knows my many faults but finds them adorable all the same. I know his (fewer) faults, and can no longer pretend that they don't matter. I do not wish to destroy the tapestry, but cannot be woven into it.

You see, I have my own, ragged and incomplete tapestry to weave. In places, it shows the same scenes: two lovely blond children, sweet memories, laughter and companionship; in others, it has holes and rips, where my own life has dealt the secret blows Mr Husband has never seen, busy as he was with making sure we were well cared for, and showing his love in the only way he knows.

I was ashamed of those holes until very recently. I covered them up with shiny bits of his tapestry, hoping that nobody would notice. Until I could no longer see the holes or me.

I passionately believe in love, my friend. Yes, you, whose back shivers at inspecting the damage inflicted by me onto my family and life. It is neither a myth nor a travesty. There are different forms of love, of course. Trust, respect and deep affection hold entire tapestries up for centuries.

Mine... will only be held by a fairytale. And even when I am broken and shattered and with no hope left in my soul, I shall still be happy to have sought absolute, intimate and all-consuming love. The only kind that can patch up those holes.