'It may sound mean-spirited, but while none of us fancies cohabiting with the Grinch, at least misery gives you something to work with.' Photograph: AlamyThe dilemma I have been living with my partner for 22 years. He is a lovely man but a negative person, and I?don't understand it. Everything is about mortality and ageing, traffic, too many friends coming over, will we make our flight etc. I love him and he is one of the loveliest men I know, but he can't seem to live in the moment. I am younger than he is by a few years, but I don't understand the negativity and the propensity to think that life really is a crock. We have a great life, great friends and family – what's not to love? I am a positive person, I enjoy life, but sometimes I feel like I'm in a bubble and he doesn't get me or what I am. Trust me, I try to be the understanding spouse, but sometimes it gets me so down I want to run away.We both know so many positive, lovely people, and it is a real treat to have them in our lives, but I don't understand why he feels this way.
Mariella replies Are you for real? I had to have a little lie-down after reading your letter, I?was so exhausted by the tsunami of goodwill. Such displays of heavenly virtue are guaranteed to send a sane person hurtling into the arms of any passing misanthrope. I admit goodness tends to bring out the worst in me. Agony aunts, too, can experience irrational prejudices. We are only human, after all.
So what about you? You really do love the universe and all who reside there; you even ended your email to me with kisses! Are you a?bit profligate with your affections? What do you hold back for those you really love or, like increasing swathes of mankind, does the milk of your human kindness surge out among your "network", making no?distinction between cyber and flesh-and-blood friends?
It may sound mean-spirited, but while none of us fancies cohabiting with the Grinch, at least misery gives you something to work with. Joy acts like a trampoline, everything that touches it bouncing right back off it. Inhabiting the same space as someone so unrelentingly jocular, who unilaterally loves life, must be pretty exhausting. Perhaps, ironically, it's your capacity for extreme happiness that's driven your partner to the opposite extreme.
You only seem to see the downside when it's your beloved. "What's not to love?" you ask about friends and family – and I'd happily be specific, but there just isn't enough space on the page. On a more positive note, you may be hitched to Mr Grumpy but you've lucked out on the in-laws; not a single one worthy of ducking behind a pot plant to avoid a chance encounter with. As someone so focused on the bright side, I'm sure that's already occurred to you.
It could just be me: I'm suspicious of extremes, and your ebullience is causing me concern. You describe your partner as "one of the loveliest men" and I keep getting stuck on the "one of". Just in case my instinct is right, and you are thinking of other lovely men, can I caution you against the bombastic bon viveur, a tempting character, I know, when you are long-term hitched and displays of unmitigated enthusiasm are thin on the ground. It can be dazzling in the focused light of their joie de vivre, but just as swiftly they'll point their beam elsewhere, roving the terrain for new converts and leaving you deeper in darkness.
Moving on is certainly not a crime, but if it's tempting you, make sure you're doing so for the right reasons. Most of us find it a challenge to stay put for the duration now that we're living three times as long as our ancestors used to. Seeing the world differently is one of the toughest incompatibilities to reconcile in a?relationship. If your worldview has become so diametrically opposed to your lover's, it may indeed be time to call time. A pessimist simply doesn't recognise the world through optimistic eyes and vice versa, but in relationships many of us get typecast as one or the other before we're even aware the auditioning phase is over.
You're playing Mr Jolly to your partner's Mr Morose. How about switching roles? Could you countenance as an experiment lowering the tone of your giddy delight? Without you to rely on to pull him up, your partner might have to do a bit of the legwork himself. Likewise spare a thought for how far you might drift without his ballast. When you've been together for decades, surprising each other is essential fuel for reinvention. Changing the mindset of a lover invariably involves a willingness to contemplate similar seismic shifts in your own behaviour. For a?positive thinker like you, that should come as no great challenge.
If you have a dilemma, send a brief email to mariella.frostrup@observer.co.uk. To have your say on this week's column, go to guardian.co.uk/dearmariella. Follow Mariella on Twitter @mariellaf1
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