Joyce's story: insecurity, love and our feelings

Hi everyone, I'm finally back from Malta! Some years back, I shared Jessica's story which gave a fascinating insight into a woman's journey from working in a hotel to becoming a high end prostitute - that's the kind of story I like and today I am going to share with you Joyce's story which does have a lot of overlap with two themes I had discussed a lot this year on my blog: social class/wealth and self-esteem. I got to know Joyce (obviously not her real name) sometime back and she shared her story with me recently. Joyce is from Malaysia and a long-term resident of London where she also works in the financial services industry. I did have a long chat with her about what she went through when her last relationship ended and she agreed to share her story here with my readers, because there are some lessons she learnt that she felt the need to share with others. All names in the story below have been changed to protect the identity of those involved.

Alex: Hello Joyce, can we begin by telling me a little about Paul please? How did you meet him?

Joyce: Well, I met Paul about 18 months ago at an event hosted by a client - many firms in my industry often sponsor various high-end luxury events in the art world and on this occasion, it was a private bank hosting an evening launching the latest collection by a contemporary artist in London. So I went along as I thought it may be fun and useful for networking, so that's where I met Paul who was also connected to the art world but from a PR and marketing perspective. He advises a lot of the high end firms in the fashion world about how they should brand themselves and goodness, like that's such a dream job. Getting paid millions to go to these fashion shows, telling the designers how they should connect with their buying public so they will maximize profits. At first I thought he surely must be gay as that's a bit of a stereotype, you know, men working in fashion but it turns out he is straight and not even bisexual. We got chatting and it was pretty clear that there was chemistry, we exchanged numbers, got connected on social media and I remember telling him about my favourite film, which he had never heard of. So I jokingly said, I'll bring the DVD over if you'll order the sushi and he said yes. The next thing I knew, I was in his huge house in Knightsbridge watching the film, cuddling on his sofa, eating sushi and we just clicked - I couldn't believe my luck. He was awesome and we became an item quickly.

Alex: Sounds like D&G could have done with his help in China, but I digress. Do tell me more about his background.

Joyce: Not only is Paul extremely good looking, he is also very rich but you could tell immediately that he's extremely posh, his parents are nobility and had all kinds of fancy titles. Paul probably could have used a bunch of titles as well but he has refrained from doing so. I felt like Rachel Chu in Crazy Rich Asians except that I was even more of a fish out of water - I grew up in Ipoh for crying out aloud. Whilst Paul spent his summers sailing around the Mediterranean on one of his father's many yachts, a post-exam treat for me would be going to watch a movie followed by some Japanese food. My family were not totally poor, like we weren't starving but we were very working class and I had never set foot on a yacht until I met Paul. I am well educated and I have a good job, but I always felt really out of place with Paul because I was just afraid that all his friends and family were going to look down on me for being this poor working class girl - I thought everyone was going to think that I'm a gold digger, that I was only with him because he was so crazy rich but that's not the case at all. I'm not as rich as him of course, but I am gainfully employed in the banking world and I am doing pretty well at my firm. But Paul was always very kind in that aspect, he never ever made me feel bad about my humble, working class background and I always felt very comfortable when it was just the two of us together, it was just his friends and family that I was always somewhat wary of - that's mostly because of my own insecurities. Paul was handsome, rich and had everything going for him, I thought he was out of my league but hey, we were a couple, I was in love. I was so totally in love with Paul and thought I could see my whole life ahead with him. Oh my life was so perfect.

We did talk about getting married. In the time we were together, I lived like a celebrity. Money didn't matter, we would fly to New York on first class and get a suite at the Mandarin Oriental. I did all the things he did - we went skiing in Davos Klosters in Switzerland and had such a great time. Then during the summer, I said something like, "oh I can't wait till winter, so we can go skiing together again," then he arranged for us to go skiing in Santiago, Chile instead just because I wanted to ski in July. You know whoever said money can't buy you happiness is just stupid and jealous of rich people, you'll be amazed what kind of lifestyle you can have when you are spending like there's no tomorrow, as if you have a bottomless pot of money that you cannot finish spending in this lifetime, so you'll always go for the more expensive option. It wasn't quite like the kind of in-your-face wealth you see in the movie Crazy Rich Asians, Paul had a lot more class and was more understated in the way he lived. He was also a kind person - like we would often order sushi from the same place and he knew that the Deliveroo cyclist was barely making ends meet, so he would always give him a generous tip. For him, that's just spare change but we knew that for the Deliveroo guy, it made a big difference. I still don't know what he saw in me, like I was the first Asian woman he dated and his previous relationships had been with white women - like really beautiful white women. I was so happy back then. But well, things fell apart a few months ago.

Alex: Would you like to tell me how things unraveled and fell apart in that relationship then please?

Joyce: I felt that things were becoming serious and once, we were talking about our past relationships - like you know, whom we had dated before in the past and I told him about Michael. I had this thing with Michael for a while and I really liked Michael but he was a married man with two kids. It was a completely loveless marriage - like the wheels had fallen off that bus a long time ago but because there were two children involved, the decision was taken for them to maintain the status quo until the kids were old enough, like at least until the younger child turned 18 before they would get a divorce. Michael and his wife wanted to bring up their children together in a family unit as they always put the interest of their children first, but both him and his wife were effectively 'single' when it came to dating and sleeping around. It's actually not that unusual, many older couples end up in that kind of situation when there are children involved. I think Michael's a great guy, he just made a mistake by marrying someone who wasn't right for him but that's life for you. I'm sure his wife isn't a bad person either, they're simply not compatible as a couple for marriage. So I was sort of seeing Michael, it was mostly for sex as Michael is very good looking - there's a certain George Clooney meetings Anderson Cooper quality about him. He was refined, rich and very posh just like Paul - if I had met Michael when he was single, things would have been very different indeed but sometimes life just fucks with you like that. When I met Paul, I stopped sleeping with Michael as I wanted things to work with Paul but we still remained good friends. It wasn't acrimonious at all.

So I told Paul about Michael as I thought, well if we're in a relationship then I want you to know about my past, everything from what I did as a teenager in Ipoh to what I did with Michael. But Paul took the whole Michael thing really badly. It was not as if he was objecting to the fact that Michael was a married man - no, that wasn't the issue at all. He got jealous of Michael, when I told him about Michael he asked to see a photo of Michael and he then said something like, "why are you dating such an old man?" And I had to say Michael is 50, he's no spring chicken but I'm not attracted to men younger than me and we got into a huge argument about it - I accused him of being childish when really, I had grossly underestimated how insecure he was. Once he knew about Michael, he was always comparing himself to Michael and he had this terrible habit of putting Michael down. Yes Paul was younger than Michael, more good looking, a lot richer, had a more successful career though it is hard to compare as Michael worked in banking like me. I thought that all this comparing was completely unnecessary and I often defended Michael, but that was just pouring oil on the fire. Was I insecure about some of the other women Paul had dated before he had met me? Sure I was, but I just don't talk about it as that's all in his past before he met me so pouring over the details and comparing myself to them seemed like a futile exercise that will only upset me. Paul and I are both adults who have dated loads of people before we met each other, that is what you'll expect when you date someone in their 30s or 40s so he knew I wasn't exactly a virgin when we met. 

So once Paul asked me point blank if I would have sex with Michael if the opportunity presented itself, I tried to be diplomatic about it - I said I would not sleep with anyone else whilst I was in a relationship. So then Paul asked me if I still found Michael physically attractive and I answered honestly: yes I still do and that's the whole reason why I was sleeping with him in the first place, I do find him attractive. You don't get into a sexual relationship with someone you're not attracted to. He accused me of being a Wendi Deng - you know, the Chinese third wife of Rupert Murdoch. She married him even though he's so freaking old, had two kids with him then divorced him for a lot of money? Well in fact, her first husband was another rich American old man who was married when they first met, but she seduced him and got him to divorce his wife to marry her. She was not stupid, she graduated from Yale but twice she got ahead in life by seducing and marrying much, much older rich white men. There was even a juicy rumour about Wendi Deng and Tony Blair, but I think she's now so well-known for her tactics that any rich, old white man will be wary of her. I'm not like that at all, I am not a gold digger, I had that relationship with Michael because we were attracted to each other and I truly loved Paul. But Paul couldn't handle the fact that I still found Michael attractive and even though I did not sleep with Michael whilst I was with Paul, Paul was completely consumed by jealousy. He became really obsessive, he would text me and call me a mediocre gold-digger, going for the lowest hanging fruit. Please, like Michael had perhaps bought me dinner on a few occasions but that doesn't make me a Wendi Deng at all. More to the point, that's not how you treat someone you love.

I put my foot down with Paul - I was willing to stop all contact via social media with Michael and never see him again but had to control his jealousy. I had opened Pandora's box and couldn't close it. That was when I realized it was something I really couldn't control. You see, Paul had a very distant relationship with his parents - when he was 13, he was sent away to boarding school at Eaton and didn't have that much contact with his parents but even before that, he had nannies and tutors taking care of him. His mother would never sit down and read him a bedtime story, that's the job of the nanny and so whilst he grew up with his parents in the same house, he never really got the approval or love he craved from them. It was like the character that Benedict Cumberbatch played in the series Patrick Melrose - the rich boy who grew up to be totally messed up in his head because of a psycho mother and an abusive father. Paul didn't really like talking about his parents - it was a sore subject, he liked talking about his aunt Caroline who was there for him during his childhood. But I suppose, I didn't really want to talk about my parents in Ipoh either, like what's there to know? My father worked in a hardware store in Jalan Lahat, he wasn't particularly educated and I don't think Paul had anything in common with my father - like even though my father could speak some English, like what the hell would they ever talk about? Both Paul and I had our pain in the past we were happy to leave behind, I guess that much we had in common. I really tried hard to figure out why Paul didn't mind my working class background at all, but he just couldn't get over this whole Michael thing.

Alex: Did you ever find out why Paul had this unhealthy obsession with Michael then? I'm dying to find out.

Joyce: Partly. It turns out that Paul had an older brother Matthew whom he was always compared to. When they were boys, his parents would be like, "Matthew is doing so well in French, why can't you work harder so you can be as bright as your brother?" You get the idea, from a young age, instead of getting encouragement or help from his parents or his older brother, he had been made to feel inferior to Matthew and in their warped way of thinking, they somehow thought that would motivate him to become better at school, at sports, to make more friends but it was just bad parenting and they just crushed his self-esteem by making him feel he wasn't as good as Matthew. Furthermore, Matthew wasn't kind to Paul and had gone out of his way to make Paul feel as if he would never be good enough and it was really only his aunt Caroline who took some interest in Paul as he was growing up. But the damage had been done, it is quite unbelievable that this family can be so incredibly rich, yet somehow bring up a young man who has a huge chip on his shoulder and an inferiority complex despite the fact that he had developed into a handsome, accomplished adult who has everything to be proud of. Even rich people can fuck up when it comes to bad parenting. To be fair, money has nothing to do with it. My parents are working class and we were poor compared to them, but my parents made just as many mistakes as them and fucked up just as much. So you can't make money as the scapegoat here, we need to hold the bad parents accountable for all their mistakes whether they are rich or poor. The money is a moot point when it comes to parenting.

Alex: Yes I can see that - it is so wrong to put parents on a pedestal as if they are incapable of doing any wrong when clearly, parents are only human and even if they have good intentions, they are still capable of fucking up really badly and doing some serious damage to their children. Gosh, the amount of awful parenting I had been subjected to personally. My parents never set out to fuck me up, no they had the best of intentions I'm sure, but they still fucked up as parents not because they were malicious, but simply because they were both autistic and incredibly stupid - like you wouldn't believe just how clueless they were as parents and now they're repeating that same stupid shit with my nephew. But going back to Paul, so you think Michael is somehow taking the place of Matthew because of all this unresolved sibling rivalry crap from his childhood? Like he can't or won't confront Matthew, so he vents his anger on Michael instead.

Joyce: It would be simplistic to say this is it, but definitely, it played a major role in it. It's amazing how if you don't resolve crap from your childhood, it comes back to haunt you later in life. I don't think Paul and Matthew ever sorted out their differences, Matthew lives in London too but Paul never ever thought about introducing me to Matthew even though I had met a lot of Paul's other friends. I imagine that Matthew probably thought it was just childish crap from the past and doesn't spend a moment worrying about it. I can see how it still hurts Paul up till today and he doesn't know what to do.

Alex: Yes, but you eventually ended up bearing the brunt of it. And that's not fair to you, is it?

Joyce: I made a judgement call that was wrong. I wasn't prepared to be the kind of woman who would simply sit back and say, oh that's the issue that would upset my man so I cannot talk about it. I saw a problem that I could fix, rather than a problem that I had to stay the hell away from. I could have easily just told him what he wanted to hear, I could have easily just put down Michael and begged for forgiveness for my folly. I could have pleaded ignorance and claimed that I was confused, that I didn't know what I was doing but somehow that just wasn't the kind of thing I would do. In hindsight, I bit off more than I could chew, perhaps I was very naive in thinking that as a loving partner I could fix that part of Paul's life by forcing him to confront his feelings about his brother Matthew. So many people simply don't deal with their feelings, they don't talk about it, it festers in their heart like a toxic poison and when the pain gets too much, they turn to alcohol, drugs or other ways to let out or forget the pain. Paul drank heavily and smoked a lot. I've been through my share of challenges in my life - I didn't have an easy childhood and as an Asian woman working in the male, white dominated world of banking, I have to control my feelings all the time otherwise I'll just be totally consumed by negativity and self-doubt. Well, hindsight is 2020 of course, perhaps I pushed Paul too hard to face his demons but I was pretty sure that he saw Michael as some kind of convenient scapegoat for him to vent all his feelings about his brother Matthew, thus he projected all these accusations onto Michael because he was never going to confront his own brother.

Alex: Was there anything about Michael that reminded Paul of Matthew? Like, did Matthew have an affair?

Joyce: No. He didn't. Like, they were both older than Paul and roughly the same age, well Michael is still a few years older than Matthew but what was Paul going to do, project his insecurities and angst onto any white man roughly the age of his brother? I wasn't prepared to back down I suppose out of pride. Things got quite confrontational and Paul was screaming things like, why don't you just run back to Michael since you're obviously still so in love with him? Common sense should have told me that when the man you're supposed to be in love with you speaks to you like that, it's time to walk away but I was so wrapped up in the idea of me "fixing" him that I had detached myself from the abuse and was playing shrink with him in spite of the fact that he clearly wanted to end our relationship. I have learnt my lesson, it is unfortunate that I had to learn it the hard way but hindsight is 2020. There was one night that he sent me a whole lot of abusive texts, then I thought I'm not going to respond to that, I just couldn't deal with it right at that moment, I didn't know what to say to him. Then the next morning I woke up, re-read the texts and thought, whom am I kidding? All this time I had been putting up with all this abuse because I kept telling myself that this was not his fault, so I shouldn't blame him for acting this way - but that's bullshit of course. I should have never allowed him to treat me like that in the first place. I realized that this relationship is so over and that was when I decided it was time to draw a line, stop fooling myself and walk away from Paul. I can only look back at my actions and shake my head in utter disbelief - I can't believe what I did.

Alex: Can we talk about the issue of insecurities and how that can really wreck havoc in a relationship? You have mentioned that you had learned your lesson, can you be a bit more specific about what those lessons were, please?

Joyce: You can never look at a person and make any assumptions about their self-esteem. On the surface, Paul is super rich, very good looking and has a successful career. On the other hand, he is hugely insecure and has so many demons from his past that he has failed to deal with - society is very unforgiving to people like that I'm afraid and at the risk of sounding as if I am still defending Paul, I think he is a victim. If someone like Paul were to say that there as something from his childhood bothering him, most people would be unsympathetic - they would brand him a spoilt brat, they would tell him to get over it and berate him for still bearing a grudge against people who wronged him years ago. I don't think many people would take the trouble to actually even begin to understand why he may feel this way, but they're often very simplistic in their approach - you can't change the past, so why continue to be upset about something that happened so many years ago? That's why Paul never  felt comfortable talking about his childhood - he probably felt that people would never offer him any sympathy, especially since he was so rich and they would never get their heads around the fact that rich people have their share of problems too but of course, these problems are nothing to do with money and often money can't solve these problems. Paul hid his self-esteem issues really well but once I scratched beneath that veneer of fine manners and decorum, I opened up a whole can of worms from his past and I wasn't prepared to deal with it all.

Alex: I think many people would be unsympathetic or even downright nasty to Paul because they never got any help, they never got any love or sympathy with their own problems. So they feel, "hey if I had to go through all my own problems without getting any help from anyone, then I expect you to do the same. It won't be fair for you to receive any help from me because I got zero help, none whatsoever. If you're going to suffer, then that's only fair because I suffered too." I actually witnessed a lot of that when I was serving national service - life in the army sucked for pretty much all of us in one way or another, you had some guys who believed that we should make the best of a bad situation and support each other emotionally. Then you had some others who wanted you to go through the same mental anguish and pain they faced and if you could avoid that anguish and pain because you had a kind friend who was there for you, then that just wouldn't be fair. I even get hate mail regularly because I dare to speak up about my troubled childhood on my blog - this is because I actually get a very warm response from my regular readers who offer understanding and empathy. These haters think, "hey that's not fair at all, I don't have thousands of kind people to turn to with all my regular problems, all I can do is bottle up my feelings so I am going to attack Alex for getting all this love and support from his kind readers". In short, they suffered alone in silence, so they want me to suffer like them instead of getting help - that's so fucked up. But going back to Paul, why do you think he was so insecure despite having everything a man could want?

Joyce: I can never tell for sure. I had my share of problems growing up but somehow I managed to figure a lot of things out on my own as an adult - I think we call that growing up, but we just make the assumption that somehow, as we get older, we just manage to make sense of a lot of complex issues in life without anyone actually explaining to us how it all works. There's an element of truth to that but some people have better social skills than others and they are the ones who are much better at working things like that out for themselves. Look at me, I came from a humble working class family in Malaysia, I have little in my younger days to feel proud about but somehow I emerged as an adult with healthy self-esteem, able to function with enough self-confidence. Feeling confident doesn't depend on having achieved great things, having a lot of money or many friends - you need to give yourself the permission to feel confident and that comes from learning to love yourself, to give yourself credit for the things you have done. I hate it when I see people looking for approval from others - be it from their parents, their friends, on social media; like, why can't they just give themselves the approval if that's what they're looking for? Why can't they trust themselves and their own judgement? That really messed Paul up, he never got the approval he wanted from his parents and brother and so he became rather insecure whenever he thought that someone didn't respect or like him enough, or didn't give him enough credit for what he has achieved.

I never had that problem because I couldn't even go to my parents for that. I remember once I school, I wrote an essay that impressed the teacher so much she gave me an A+ and wrote some really kind comments. I thought, maybe I should show my parents but they're not educated enough to understand my teacher's comments, never mind make any sense of my essay. So I didn't even mention it to them and that's how I was forced from a young age to trust my own judgement rather than seek any kind of approval because even if my father were to say something kind or nice about me getting that A+ for that essay, I think that's quite meaningless as he's not even read the essay. I was very happy with what I had achieved and that's all that mattered - I could give myself a pat on the back, I don't need anyone else to do that. I thought that this was a valuable lesson that I could share with Paul, to free him from the burden of craving his family's approval. I suppose it was rather foolhardy of me to have imagined that the girl from Ipoh could have solved Paul's problems but the next lesson I learned was that you cannot help someone who doesn't want help. I thought Paul would be grateful if I helped him face his demons, to come to terms with his past and if I could somehow help him make sense of the feelings he has towards his family. But no, he never said to me, "please help me sort this out" - I took it upon myself and you can bring a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. Unfortunately, Paul had rejected my offers of help.

Alex: You were motivated by love. You saw that he was in pain and thought that you had a way to help free him from that pain - that is not a bad thing, you were not malicious. Things didn't work out because he wasn't prepared to accept your help but you can't blame yourself for having tried to help the man you loved. You only did what you thought was right.

Joyce: You know, I have friends say to me that Paul's irrational reaction shows that he can be volatile, jealous and difficult to deal with when he feels his ego being undermined or when he doesn't get his way; they say that I am better off without him. There's a part of me that agrees with that sentiment given how caustic the relationship turned in the end, but I was very much in love with him. And that's the third lesson I have learnt: you can't go into a relationship and say, "okay I like these things about you, but I don't like those other things," then try to fix those things you don't like. No, if you love someone, you have to accept them for all their imperfections and faults, warts and all. Sure people do evolve, grow and mature during a long term relationship but you allow them to do that on their own free will, rather than try to shape them into the perfect partner you want. You can be there for them, support them, give them all the love and encouragement they need if they wish to improve themselves, but they have got to want to do it - you can't make them do it for you, to please you. I suppose I did see a part of Paul I didn't like and I decided to fix it the same way I would fix a problem at work. I can't help it, that's just the kind of person I am: when there is clearly a problem, I feel I need to do something about it but resolving a problem in a business is not the same as dealing with another human being you're in a relationship with. There were many other great things about Paul that made me fall in love with him in the first place and once I had opened this can of worms, I suppose in hindsight I should have not try to fix it despite my instincts to want to.

Alex: So what next for you now? Has this whole episode given you insight about what you want in life then?

Joyce: Well, I used to think that Paul was out of my league but now I don't think that way anymore. This whole concept about society having this standardized way of judging what kind of spouse or partner you deserve based on your looks, wealth and brains that's all bullshit designed to make you feel inferior. It's easy to find someone you fancy, it's so rare for two people to like each other that way and if you happen to find someone you have that special chemistry with to create the magic of love, then all the rules get thrown out of the window instantly. Let's just say I've seen enough unusual relationships that break the mould to demonstrate that the rules that our parents had lived by no longer apply in this day and age. I got a taste of what it was like to live that kind of crazy rich lifestyle and boy, that was sweet but I'm not poor. I have simply gone back to being ordinary middle class - I'll now fly economy class when I travel, I'll miss flying around in first class. I'll go back to using AirBNB when I want to book somewhere to stay, I won't be able to afford the suites at that Mandarin Oriental anymore. That initial shock made me want to be wealthy, but not to depend on a man to buy me nice things and take me to nice places: I want to make my own money, I want to become so successful at what I do that I can be that rich. That gave me renewed focus on my career and I am now ever so determined to be successful at what I do.

You see, the first person I ran to when I broke up with Paul was Michael - he was really understanding and he felt bad, thinking that he was the cause of the break up but no, you can't blame Michael. You see, Michael is rich like Paul, they have a similar kind of background, the kind of very elite, aristocratic rich family. I told Michael everything and he was able to put the pieces together for me, he gave me a very good autopsy of how my relationship fell apart. I think that in Malaysia and Singapore, we tend to lump Angmohs into one broad category but the British are for example, very different from the Americans who tend to be a lot more open with their feelings, whilst the British will bottle up their feelings and be a lot more reserved. So someone like Paul has been culturally conditioned to bottle up his feelings for a lifetime, but you cannot go through life just doing that - those negative feelings you try so hard to repress will somehow find a way to bubble back up to the surface one way or another at some point. Especially amongst the upper classes, they put so much emphasis on being polite, on manners, on all these outward appearances so you come across very well and that's part of the charm of people like Paul and Michael - it's a stereotype but they will make a lady feel special on a date. I can't imagine a Malaysian or Singaporean man behaving like that, not unless he has lived a long time in somewhere like England and has become totally anglicized. But the key message that Michael gave me was that I always had to look beneath that veneer of Hugh Grant meets James Bond type British charms that these typically posh, upper class gents have before rushing into a relationship. Some of the richest people Michael knows have turned out to be some of the most insecure people as well, they have simply learnt to hide it well. That is actually a part of British culture I suppose.

Alex: I have to ask this question, did Paul have a big problem with the fact that you were seeing a married man? Perhaps Paul's father or mother had an affair and that just made him hate anyone who would be involved in anything like that?

Joyce: A lot of people could say that, like I am some kind of Wendi Deng type who was a home wrecker, the younger Chinese woman who goes out of her way to seduce the rich white man. But I must stress, Michael's marriage was over a long time before I had even met him and there's a huge difference between a husband having an affair behind his wife's back, without her knowledge and what Michael was doing. It was not like Michael was lying to his wife, "honey I'll be working late again tonight" when he was with me; she knows exactly when Michael is with me and she didn't care or mind as long as Michael adhered to their childcare schedule, so she could see her boyfriends on the days when she didn't have to take care of the children. You could argue that this whole charade is not necessarily the best thing for their children, but for some reason they agreed that they didn't want to subject their children to any kind of traumatic change like that so I respect that. A lot of people would say, "oh your marriage has clearly fallen apart, it's better to make a clean break and get a divorce, loads of children live through that and come out okay." But one thing that is clear to me is that even though Michael and his wife no longer love each other the same way, they are both still completely devoted to their children and are not willing to compromise on the quality of their childhood; so they have arrived at this uneasy status quo. I have even met her a few times, it was all very civilized and polite. I don't think she and I would ever become best friends who will hang out or go shopping together, but there's no acrimony whatsoever. She doesn't hate me and I don't resent her. I can understand why some people may find that whole situation unusual, well, because it is rather unusual.

But as for Paul's view on extra-marital affairs or women who sleep with married men, I am not sure - as far as I know, his parents never did anything like that or even if they did, they were of the generation whereby they would be discrete enough to hide it from their children and not discuss it openly. No, rather his problem with Michael was more the fact that I was willing to say, "Michael's a perfectly attractive guy and I would sleep with him again if I was not in a relationship with you." That's like waving a red cape to a bull during a bull fight! I think Paul was so insecure about being compared to other people that he expected me to put him on a pedestal and never speak about any other man in a complimentary manner ever again. He said things like, "I'm so good to you, I give you everything you ever ask for, anything you ever want, yet in your heart, you are still in love with Michael and craving for him." I then asked him, "okay, what if I told you that I found someone like Justin Trudeau or Emmanuel Macron attractive, would you still be jealous?" Like come on, so many women and gay men are totally in love with them as they're so handsome, I thought I could illustrate how ridiculous it was to be jealous over me finding another man attractive. In my opinion, there's nothing wrong with that as long as I'm not actually having an affair with Trudeau or Macron behind Paul's back - but no, that suggestion made Paul even more angry and he just couldn't cope with it. He claimed he couldn't be in a part-time relationship with me whilst I was thinking about all these other men like Trudeau and Macron in my head. Can you believe that? I just couldn't cope with the very irrational way he behaved, he expected me to just keep my thoughts to myself, to censor myself, rather than be honest.

Alex: So are you actively looking for love now? What will the future hold for you?

Joyce: It's complicated. I'm currently married to my career, I'm determined to succeed and things are going well at work despite everything that happened with Paul. But that means working so freaking hard that I don't really have the time to start dating someone properly and that's where Michael comes in - he's familiar, he's there, he's all I need and he feels the same way about me. It's convenient: he has his kids to take care of, he has his career and he only has a little bit of time for me - but that's enough for me as that's all I want and need right now. But look, I didn't go on a dating app to try to find love: I just kinda ran into both Michael and Paul by accident, purely by chance simply by having an active social life and that's exactly what I intend to go on doing. I hate it when people think that oh you're a woman in your 30s, you're going to have to hurry up if you want to marry and have children before you get too old. If it happens, it happens: I look at Michael and his wife and I think, hell no, do I want to end up in a situation like that by rushing into a marriage and then regretting it after there are children involved? It all gets so complicated and messy - I'm not against the idea of getting married and settling down, having a family but I'm terrified as hell of ending up in a loveless marriage like Michael. I have friends who are stuck in loveless marriages, they just end up focusing all their energies on their children and careers, but they are effectively married to someone they are no longer physically intimate with nor do they really love and that is pretty darn scary to me. I'll rather be single and dating, than to end up like that. My parents keep nagging at me to settle down soon but fuck that, they can think whatever they want - oh it's not like they had a particularly happy marriage either.

Alex: I agree, it's so fucking stupid for people to think that marriage will somehow bring you happiness but it's the person you marry that will either make you happy or destroy your life. Oh there's this other woman I know - let's call her Yvonne, she was getting into her mid-30s, decided it was now or never, so she settled for someone who was in the same position, another man who felt his time was running out and he had to get married and have children before he got too old. They weren't passionately in love, they were just united by the fact that they both wanted to settle down. I don't think he's a bad person, he's been good to her but I can't help but feel when I look at Yvonne and think, you're beautiful, you're intelligent, you're a wonderful person yet you've shortchanged yourself in your haste to get married and now you have children, it's too late to go back and undo that mistake. So now she's making the best of a bad situation by being a good mother, but her kids are mediocre - she tells me that her sons are both struggling in school and need help and her husband is really not that attractive as in he's just not good looking at all. And holy shit, her sons have inherited her husband's awkward looks. Yeah, I bet she never thought about that when she decided to marry that man - if marry an ugly man, your kids may get his DNA and not yours. Is this the kind of married life that Yvonne wanted when she was younger? Probably not. She is average at best, mediocre - it feels almost cruel for judging her like that but what can you do? I do think she has shortchanged herself. I hope she's happy but even if she isn't, I don't think she would ever admit it.

Joyce: I think one final lesson that I have learnt is that you can never get into a relationship looking for someone to complete you or to fix you.When I was with Paul, I thought my life was complete - like I was going to marry into this fabulously rich, upper class family  and that I could finally be proud of myself and hold my head up high; I thought I was like a caterpillar who had finally become a butterfly. But what was that based on - the fact that Paul found me attractive enough to want to get into a relationship with me? It was all based on pleasing one person and that's dangerous. I don't want to base my entire self-esteem and success in life down to that one person granting it to me because the man who gave it to me can take it away anytime as well. When I realized just how emotionally unstable and irrational he could be, it dawned on me that this was not the kind of man I should depend on to feel like I have achieved something. Whereas if I achieved success in my career, I can say, even if I don't work for this company, there are plenty of other companies out there who will gladly hire me because I am very good at what I do. I have the confidence to believe in my abilities and that's why I am focusing on my career right now, because even if say my employer decides to make me redundant tomorrow then I would be like, so what, I'll just take a holiday and find another job - it won't be the end of the world for me. But I realized that as I left Paul, I walked away from all his money and the kind of privileged associated with being with someone like that and no, you don't want to depend on anyone else but yourself. That's quite an important lesson.

Alex: Thanks so much for sharing your story with us.

Joyce: Thank you, it's nice to get it off my chest. I hesitate to tell people this whole story because I am worried that they would be judgmental and think that I'm some kind of horrible person. There's a part of me that thinks I will always be misunderstood. I'm not, I'm just someone who has made a few mistakes but the key thing is that I've learnt my lessons, albeit the hard way. So it is nice to be able to share some of those lessons, because no one ever sat down and taught me how to find love - think about it, to drive a car, you need to take lessons and pass a driving test. That's not a particularly difficult test, yet we make sure people know what they are doing before we allow them to drive a car down the road. But with love, it is so much more complicated and tricky, so many more things can go wrong yet we're either fed this ridiculously simplistic mantra of "get married, have kids and live happily ever after" which simply doesn't work in real life, or we're meant to watch Hollywood movies or TV programmes with happy endings and figure it all out based on what we have observed of others? That's just so wrong, hence I am glad to be able to tell your readers some of the mistakes I've made and hopefully, they will learn something and avoid making those same mistakes. And have a merry Christmas!

Alex: Thanks! Happy holidays.