Every six weeks or so my fiancé starts a row about something silly, storms off and then doesn't speak to me for several days or even weeks. I always try to sort it out the next day, but it takes him ages to come round. When he does he always promises it'll never happen again - and then it does. We're both in our fifties, so we're not young and silly - why is this happening?

Susan advises
Even in one's fifties, one can have problems with intimacy. In fact, I could argue that by the time one gets to one's fifties, and has had a number of relationships that have ended in tears, one is actually more likely to have problems with intimacy than when one was in one's twenties!

What I'm saying is that your fiancé may love you to bits, but somewhere inside him - maybe starting in childhood and developing over the years - there's a huge pile of anger, fear or wariness of relationships. Every now and then, it comes to the surface. He tries to control it, because on one level he cares for you deeply, but it's such a heap of emotion that he can't push it down.

He needs to find out what the painful emotions are that are triggering him into fury and flight. So next time he swears that he won't go off on one ever again, support him to go to a counsellor. Therapy will help him resolve this and will help the two of you build something that's stable rather than wobbly.

Final note. I wouldn't actually walk down the aisle together until your man's made serious progress on this one - the extra pressure of marriage could make the situation implode altogether.