I got home with the Christmas shopping just as my husband walked out the door

DEAR DEIDRE: THE Christmas lights are up and the festive decorations out, but this time of year makes me feel so blue after my husband dropped a bombshell three days before Christmas last year.

I’d just arrived home with all the food shopping to find him waiting in the kitchen with his bags packed. 

To my shock he said he was miserable and needed to sort his head out.

Over the next days, weeks and months, he flip flopped between wanting to come home, actually moving back and then going back to his mum’s place.

To say he ruined the festivities is an understatement. 

It’s taken 12 months but I’m only just beginning to discover the truth – he’s been having sex with his female boss all this time. 

I’m 52, my husband is 57, and we’ve been together for 26 years. We share two grown-up daughters together. 

We’d had a good marriage but things were definitely rocky in the run-up to Christmas last year.

My husband had become uncharacteristically distant, and we were arguing a lot more than normal.

Still I can’t believe he left me to explain everything to our family at Christmas.  

He sent divorce papers in the new year, but then proceeded to show up late at night saying he missed me. 

It was a mess. 

Now I found out through the grapevine he has been sneaking around with his married boss from work.

And finally everything makes sense – he’s merely using me as a backup, and my heart is breaking all over again – just in time for Christmas – again.

DEIDRE SAYS: You know your husband has been lying to you about what is really going on, and yet you are still clinging on to the hope that he’ll come back, begging forgiveness. 

You still love him and he is taking advantage of your feelings. 

While it’s hard, you need to acknowledge that you’re letting him walk all over you. 

Toxic love really can feel like a drug – start looking at the cold reality of how he is treating you, rather than an ideal of how you’d like him to be. My support pack, Addictive Love, explains more.

You deserve someone who will love you wholeheartedly and offer you the commitment you deserve.

My support pack, Mend Your Broken Heart, will help you pick up the pieces and move on from him.