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The Sun
29-06-2025
- General
- The Sun
I'm growing tired of three-year-affair with my lover… our sex is awesome but he's still with his wife
DEAR DEIDRE: MY lover visits me every Thursday or Friday, late afternoon. We have sex and then he carries on his merry way back to his wife. He tells me he loves me and sounds genuine but after three years, I am starting to tire of this arrangement. I am 39 and he is 45. He has been married for 18 years but says that, despite the fact he and his wife are no more than friends, he would feel too guilty to leave her. He is an HGV driver and regularly stops in the lorry park where I have a mobile burger van. We used to swap banter while he stopped to eat and one time he suggested we go for a drink. There was a pub just up the road, so we went there. The next time we met up he came back to my flat. We discovered that we are compatible when it comes to sex and instantly gelled. No matter what his working week is like, he always makes sure he calls at my flat before he returns to his wife for the weekend. The sex is awesome; he is a thoughtful lover. I convince myself things will work out with him in the end. However, I have been waiting for him to sort his life out for almost three years now. He promises me we will be together soon and that we can have a fantastic life, but it is just words because nothing changes. He hates it when I tell him my plans for the weekend. He doesn't like me going out with my friends even though he admits that he has got no right to expect me to live like a hermit. Is it time to end things even though I know how much it will hurt me to do so? DEIDRE SAYS: Your lover's marriage might be one of friendship, but he shows no signs of leaving his wife for you, despite his promises. Tell him to focus on his marriage and work out what he wants. Perhaps give him a deadline and don't spend your entire life waiting around for him now. You can find someone to love you who is free to be with you – it's really what you deserve. But first you must end this affair. It will be tough, but you have no future together. Improve your social life, get out there and meet men who are free. My support pack Your Lover Not Free explains more. MY ROTTEN TEETH ARE A TURNOFF DEAR DEIDRE: MY horrible teet h are scaring women away. I rarely get a second date even though I have no trouble meeting women through dating apps. I am a 36-year-old man. I go to the gym to keep myself toned. I'm not that bad looking until I open my mouth. It is so awful. I have a couple of chipped and broken teeth and some of them are discoloured and misaligned too. I will chat to women and get on well with them while we message but when we meet up, I can tell immediately that the spark isn't there for them. I am terrified of the dentist but can't carry on like this because I am totally miserable. I am ashamed and embarrassed to let anyone look in my mouth. It has gone on so long and my teeth are getting worse. I'm so ashamed and embarrassed. It really is soul-destroying. There is no need for you to suffer a minute longer. Dentists are trained to be sympathetic, not to judge you. It is important you seek professional help because this issue will only get worse. Take a look at Dental Phobia ( who have a guide Overcoming Dental Fear you can download. Think ahead and imagine how relieved you will feel when you have got the treatment you desperately need and can start to date with confidence. DEAR DEIDRE: I AM desperate to have a baby after waiting years for my husband to say he is ready for us to start a family. I am 34 and my husband is 35. We've been married for five years. A year into our marriage he agreed to try, but then when I discussed coming off The Pill with him he said to leave it a month or two. He admitted he wasn't 'quite ready'. I agreed to not mention it again for a while, but I don't understand what he is waiting for. Now a couple of years have gone by, and I am still waiting. We own a house together, our jobs are secure, and our relationship is good. I thought it would be the perfect time. My husband loves children and is brilliant with his nieces and nephews. I don't want to have a baby unless my husband wants it, too. I am trying to be understanding but my resentment is starting to drive a wedge between us. Why doesn't he want to start a family with me? DEIDRE SAYS: You are going to have to bring it up again in a calm moment because your husband is unlikely to. His attitude towards starting a family could be tied up with difficult experiences. Perhaps he had problems with his own dad and is scared that history will repeat itself? If you both want a family, it is time to start talking honestly but if he is adamant about never having children then I'm afraid you may have a difficult decision to make. HIS MUM WON'T GIVE US SPACE DEAR DEIDRE: IT appears my boyfriend's mum will always be the main woman in his life. She is like the third wheel in my relationship. I am 27 and my boyfriend is 29. We have been together for almost two years. My boyfriend was brought up by his mum after his dad died when he was only ten. As a result, he and his mum are very close, which I completely understand. However, if we go out anywhere, to the cinema, bowling alley, dinner or just for a drink, my boyfriend always calls his mum to say where we are going. It is infuriating. It has got to the stage that if we go out for the day, a trip to the seaside or an adventure park, his mum comes along too. We have just bought our first flat, which needs a lot of work so there is plenty for us to do. His mum calls every weekend to say she has some DIY she needs help with, or something has gone wrong with her car, knowing that my boyfriend will drop everything to help her. Sometimes he can be gone for the rest of the day. Recently I picked her up late from the hairdressers. She told my boyfriend that I drove too fast and almost caused an accident, which was untrue. My boyfriend went ballistic saying I had stressed her out. I am starting to feel that we are at a breaking point in our relationship. He formed a deep emotional connection with his mum, which has resulted in his loyalty towards her. You really must talk to him. Tell him that he must start putting your relationship first and then, put some boundaries in place with his mum, so he can be his own man. I would also encourage him to talk to a Cruse bereavement counsellor, which will help him deal with his dad's death too ( 0808 808 1677).
The Sun
30-05-2025
- Health
- The Sun
I watched maniac hack his own neck with kitchen knife & took on infamous ‘suicide bomber'…my life as hostage negotiator
AS filing cabinets, chairs and shattered glass rained from the sky, John Sutherland felt like he was in a scene from the apocalypse. Hours earlier a man wearing a suicide vest and wielding a homemade flamethrower had stormed offices on London's Tottenham Court Road and taken terrified hostages, including a pregnant woman. 10 10 10 More than 1,000 workers, shoppers and tourists were evacuated as it was feared the 'terrorist' had enough explosives to 'bring the whole building down with everyone in it'. Dubbed 'the Siege of London', it was an exceptionally-high alert situation due to it being three months before the 2012 Summer Olympics. 'It was one of the most extraordinary days of my whole career,' former Met Police Chief Superintendent John, now 55, tells us. 'I was on the scene working out what on earth to do when I heard the sound of glass shattering. I looked up and a window was being broken. 'A series of office equipment - computers, furniture, cabinets, everything - rained down onto the street below. It was genuinely apocalyptic.' Fortunately, despite threatening to "blow everyone up", the suspect's bomb jacket was fake and the attacker wasn't a terrorist but a disgruntled HGV driver. Ex-BNP candidate Michael Green, then 48, carried out the siege to retrieve £1,000 he paid for a driving course after failing his exams twice and feeling he had 'nothing left to live for'. Green forced his hostages to lob office supplies through a window to 'liquidise some assets'. 'He raided their offices as way to settle his grievances after some form of meltdown,' John says. 'It could have ended terribly but we managed to get him and everyone out unscathed.' It's one of many colourful tales from the retired Met officer, who has mined his experiences over 26 years as a hostage and crisis negotiator to pen his Sunday Times bestselling crime thriller, The Castle. I'm a cop turned vigilante who hunted down a one-man crime wave after police turned a blind eye In an exclusive interview, John explains that unlike in Hollywood movies, 90 per cent of his work was 'holding out a hand' to those in crisis on 'the worst day of their lives'. He tackled dozens of threats in London and recalled the simple question he was routinely asked before being dispatched on a job: 'Are you ready to save a life?' 'Whether it was 3am or in the middle of the afternoon, when you heard those words it focused the mind, because it was the only thing that mattered,' John says. 'I've always said the greatest duty and privilege for any police officer is to save the life of another human being, and that is the exact job of a negotiator.' Stand-off tragedy Despite that, it was a deeply challenging and emotionally turbulent role which is voluntary within the police force. When on shift, negotiators are on-call 24 hours a day for that week. Most stand-offs go on for a few hours, but John said it was not unusual for them to last two to three days. One of the longest he was involved with was the tragic Markham Square siege in London's Chelsea on May 6, 2008. John was the negotiator for the five-hour stand-off which ended with wealthy divorce barrister Mark Saunders being shot dead by police. The 32-year-old, who had represented presenter Chris Tarrant, had fired shotgun rounds from his £2.2million home during a mental health episode linked to alcohol and drugs. 10 10 Out of respect for Mark's widow, John only says a few words about the tragedy, admitting: 'It was one of the days that will stay with me for the rest of my life.' Previously in his memoir, Blue, John mournfully explained how "a man died on my watch", and he was "the last living soul to hold a conversation with him". Another harrowing encounter saw John talk down an Eastern European man who was threatening to throw himself from the 17th floor of a block of flats in Islington overlooking Arsenal's Emirates stadium. 'He was standing on the wrong side of the window on a ledge that was six inches wide, if that,' John recalls. 'Inexplicably, the windows opened into space with no balconies. 'I don't know how long I was with him, all I know was that it was a hell of a long way down and any of the next moments could have been his last. 'It was difficult talking to him because I didn't speak his language, but as a negotiator you try to find common humanity and understand the story of the person you're dealing with. 'For him it was a perfect storm of being unable to get a job because he had no address, but not being able to have an address because he didn't have a job.' John admits he had no idea whether he would be able to coax the man back inside after he'd reached such a heartbreaking 'point of desperation', but thankfully he succeeded. Heartbroken OAP John tells us the key to a successful hostage negotiation is the art of listening, as was proven in an extraordinary case at an old people's home. Upon arriving, John was taken into a communal area where a man in his 80s sat in an armchair holding a large kitchen knife to his throat. 'There was almost a surreal nature to the scene, he clearly represented no threat to anyone else but a significant threat to himself,' John recalls. He approached him slowly and sat in an armchair nearby, knowing he could move much faster should he need to flee, and "asked the old boy tell his story'. It was difficult talking to him because I didn't speak his language, but as a negotiator you try to find common humanity and understand the story of the person you're dealing with John Sutherland 'It transgressed, later on in life, he'd fallen in love with a fellow resident of the home but his feelings were not reciprocated," John says. 'In fact she had been fairly unkind to him and he was an old boy with a broken heart. I listened to him and he agreed to put the knife down.' The need to be heard and 'feeling that they matter' were common themes, with John recounting many stories of people on the edge after mental health struggles. They include a man threatening to jump into an icy cold pond on Hampstead Heath at 3am and a drug addict holding a hypodermic syringe in his neck 'as a weapon'. Life in the balance 10 By the time John arrived at one difficult incident there was already a line of territorial support group (TSG) officers on the scene, clad with long shields. He recalls: 'The man in his 20s was in the kitchen-diner of a flat on one side, with a knife to his throat, and I was safely behind the shields trying to engage with him. 'This poor young guy was seriously mentally ill. It was one of few times in my career where I've spoken to someone directly and knew mine wasn't the only voice they were hearing.' John remembers him 'pacing continually backwards and forward, like a tiger I'd seen in London Zoo', twisting the knife more and more. If there's a life hanging in the balance, you can't wait for anyone else. You have to get on and deal with what is in front of you John Sutherland 'One minute he was with us, partly lucid, the next he was somewhere else,' he recalls. The man eventually surrendered after speaking to his mum on the phone. In another incident a man with a kitchen knife was furiously 'sawing backwards and forwards on his head and neck' while holding his ex-girlfriend and child hostage. John recalls the "curtain of blood running down his face and soaking his clothes", adding it reminded him of a scene from the Stephen King film Carrie. Race against time Whenever he received a dispatch call, John says there was an element of adrenaline, which was followed by exhaustion "so deep you're almost unable to speak or walk" afterwards. But he remained motivated by the 'profound sense that today we did something good'. He retired in February 2018, and John has now turned his hand to writing books including memoirs Blue and Crossing The Line, and fiction titles The Siege, The Fallen and his latest novel, The Castle. 'Psychologically and emotionally I draw on my lived experience," he says. "Alex, one of the lead characters [in The Castle], is a version of me, but is a million times more interesting. 'But my deeper purpose to all of it, which I feel very passionately about having worked as a hostage and crisis negotiator, is for people to re-learn the art of listening. 'In the world at the moment it seems that most of us are shouting at each other and not listening. Listening is in danger of becoming a lost art. 'While I hope my thrillers are thrilling, subtly they have something to say about the ways that we listen and how it can do some good in the world. It can save people's lives.'
