Prince Charles ‘starved of affection’ before divorce
Prince Charles and Diana’s marriage was far from that perfect fairy tale everyone expected when they tied the knot.
And while Diana’s anguish was recorded in her secret tapes, it’s now been revealed that those close to Charles were also worried about his wellbeing.
The prince had been seeing a psychologist friend for a number of years when he suddenly stopped in 1995 – three years after he and Diana first separated, and just before the pair finalised their divorce.
Charles had been seeing a psychologist throughout most of his married life. Photo: Getty
His psychologist, Dr Alan McGlashan, was concerned, and wrote a letter to Charles’ godfather Sir Laurens Van Der Post to check on the prince.
The contents of their correspondence was published by the Mail on Sunday at the weekend and reveals that Charles was ‘misunderstood’ and ‘starved of affection’.
Explaining that none of his clients had disappeared as suddenly as Charles, Dr McGlashan wrote that he “was completely mystified as to how he [Charles] could, after six or seven years of close relationship, just walk out of the situation without explanation…”
Princess Diana married Prince Charles in July 1981, before separating in August 1996. Source: Getty
Sir Laurens, who Dr McGlashan referred to as “one of the closest people” to Charles, replied reassuringly with an insight into Charles’ emotional state and family life at the time.
“You, I am certain better than any of us, know how misunderstood and starved he has been of really spontaneous, natural affection – and, indeed, the respect his own natural spirit deserves,” Sir Laurens wrote.
“I do not really think that you can think of it as you would with normal people because his life in the last few years has meant that he has terrifyingly less and less time for his “being” as he calls it… and his being is something precious in which you are very important and will always be very important.”
Diana had also been to see Dr McGlashan at the beginning of her relationship with Charles, but stopped after just eight sessions.
In secret tapes that she later sent off to her biographer Andrew Morton, Diana revealed that she had been struggling with depression and an eating disorder, and felt like the royal family didn’t know what to do with her.
In an explosive book published earlier this year, author Sally Bedell Smith claims Prince Charles was left at his wits end shortly after marrying Diana.
The royal struggled with Diana’s emotional outbursts which ranged from “suffering from insomnia… growing thinner by the day [and] berating her new husband about his former mistress [Camilla Parker Bowles],” Sally told to the Daily Mail.
Source: nz news yahoo com
Tags: Prince Charles, Princess Diana, Princess of Wales, British Royals
