For the last ten days I've been in such a dark place. For seven weeks prior to that, my relationship with ym husband had been improving beyond all measure, and as he told me, for the first time in over a year he felt he could see a bright, shining light at the end of a dark tunnel. He was beginning to trust me again and we were finding new strengths in our relationship.

The thing that broke it all was my inability to be completely honest about a brief relationship that I had had, some 27 years ago, with someone who had been, and was still, a good friend. I don't know why I found it so difficult - I couldn't remember some details of exactly what had happened and when, and I still can't. But I didn't tell him that there had been two incidents, not the one I had referred to, and I didn't tell him exactly what had happened. When pushed, I changed my story.

Why did I do this? I've been trying to find out myself. The man lives in the same town as us, and we occasionally see him in the supermarket. He's always friendly - because he's a nice, friendly person. Is the reason I didn't tell my husband because I felt uncomfortable about what he might think next time we bump into this guy? Or is it because I thought my husband would feel uncomfortable? I didn't do it to hurt him, although I'm sure he thinks that my inability to tell him everything about it is a deliberate act - a mistake made once is a mistake, but when you make the same mistake again and again it's a deliberate act.

I'm still trying to go back in time and work out the things I did and the reasons I did them. It's really difficult. My huband finally told me a couple of days ago that deep down he doesn't think that I've had an affair or been unfaithful to him, but I have admitted to him that couple of times I felt so frustrated and unhappy that I thought about running off to an ex-boyfriend who I had friended on Facebook. Last night he said something that made me feel quite belittled, in front of one of my daughters. A short while later I told him quietly that I thought it was uncalled for, and he was defensive about what he had said. I thought about it a lot through the night and realised that a lot of the times in the past when I had thoughts of running away, it was after he'd said something that had made me feel small. I didn't feel strong enough to tell him that whatever he had just said, no matter how insignificant it was or no matter whether it was instantly forgotten by him, had made me feel small. Not telling him this was not exactly lying, but it wasn't being open and honest either. If I'd told him, he might have felt defensive and angry, but he might have thought more if he'd felt like saying something the next time, and I might have been able to be more honest about how it made me feel. I didn't tell him and everything inside me just seethed.

We are still married, and at the moment he doesn't seem to have a plan to leave, so I am holding onto that and hoping that it will be enough for both of us, if only for now. He's asked me in the past to sign divorce papers, but I can't bring myself to say yes. If I did, I would feel that I would be lying and saying that I didn't want to be his wife anymore. I'd be saying I didn't love him, and that would be a lie. But if I really do love him, and the only way that he could be happy was for me to let him go and find happiness with someone else, would that be more of an act of love? He says I'm selfish because I only think about how I feel - but I promised to spend my life with him and be faithful to him, and although he says he's released me from that, I can't release myself.