ASK ANNA

'I don't need to work because my husband supports me-but I feel unfulfilled and guilty

- Anna Richardson

Q I’m 48 and married with two children. Thanks to my generous husband, I don’t need to work to make money. The trouble is, I feel that I haven’t accomplished anything in life. Friends tell me how lucky I am and say that I ought to be happy, but I can’t stop feeling horribly sad. I feel guilty about this, as I know how privileged I am.

A On the surface, this looks like a lovely problem to have. A stable marriage, two healthy children most of us are bearing right now with the cost of living crisis. Plus, not having the stress of an unsympathetic struggle for equality that many women face in the gender pay-gap scandal. So your life may appear, to some, frankly idyllic.

But what seems like one woman’s heaven is another girl’s hell, and I would never underestimate the pain of somebody else’s reality, however far from the norm it may be.