Dear Thelma: Husband lives off her, and demands she supports his mistress too

My ex-husband and I were together for 19 years, and married for seven years. We have a daughter aged five. He was the only man I have ever been with.We met at university. In our initial 13 years together, I was fully supporting him. I paid for everything, from rental to utilities to gym membership.

It wasn’t until a few years back that he paid for daily expenses like dinner and his petrol usage, as I also had to take care of our daughter’s daycare expenses.His housewife mother – from the start of our relationship, when I was 20 and he was 21 – had always emphasised that I should be the one paying the bills because my family is better off than his. The truth is our household incomes were just marginally different. After graduation, I earned more than him since he had put off working.