Sue Plumtree

Sue Plumtree was born in 1945 in Buenos Aires of Viennese parents.

She came to England in 1965 when she was 20 where she met Jim just 3 months later. She decided to see if she could make him fall in love with her and, unfortunately, she succeeded.

It was, she says, the worst mistake of her life.

In her marriage, she felt unloved, unimportant, taken for granted and lonely.

While the only way she knew how to cope was to go into denial, her body knew the truth.

She developed serious health conditions - severe pains that left her walking on crutches, various episodes of clinical depression and the potentially fatal eating disorder bulimia.

It took the unstinting support of her life coach to finally find the courage to leave her marriage. She was 60 at the time and had been married 37 years.

During the 10 years she lived on her own she wrote her autobiography, 'Dancing with the Mask: Learning to love and be loved', established a successful coaching practice as a Personal Relationship Coach and began to attract wonderful friendships.

Then, in 2015 she unexpectedly met Paul, the man who, as she describes him, turned out to be the love of her life, her friend, her lover and now her husband. She adds, "this relationship is everything I dreamed of'.

She now knows, with the benefit of her own experience and extensive research, what makes marriages suffer and what makes them blossom and last.

Her latest book is, 'Open Your Heart: The 7 secrets of strong and loving relationships' where she shares everything she has learned along her journey.

She has also been featured on the BBC1 series 'Holding Back The Years', The Telegraph, Daily Mail and Radio Tees, amongst others.