Got to be honest with somebody about how I'm feeling

Ok, this feels almost more like journaling than reaching out, but here goes. I have a history with major depression, including 2 weeks hospitalized back in 1995. This is not that, but it does feel like a close cousin. I don't feel at all suicidal and only marginally hopeless.

I want to talk to someone about it because the techniques I've used over the last 16 years to fight off depression when I feel it creeping up on me don't seem to be working. My primary symptom is becoming dysfunctional when something needs to be done. I hate to sound like a whiner but how else can I say what's getting to me. I don't want to be too wordy and put any potential reader to sleep but I don't know how to narrow down all that I'd like to get off my chest.

I chose the name blue4noreason, which is kind of misleading, there are some pretty hefty stressers in my life but there are also some really good things going on and I should be able to find balance and work through the problems. The biggest stresser is my marriage, which would take pages to describe. The summary statement would be that we're more like roomates that don't get along all that well. The second biggest stresser is a change in my job position that feels like I'm in over my head and I'm making it worse by not being able to focus. I know there are things I should be doing, but most of the time I sit at my keyboard and play solitaire. I don't want to step out of my office and I resent it when people come in to talk work even though their coming provides me an opportunity to actually do my job. At home it's very similar, all I want to do is vegitate in front of the TV even though I know there are things that need to be done and not doing them just makes matters worse.

I've probably already written more than any reader can stand to read in 1 sitting, so I'll stop here. Perhaps my next post will be all the great things in my life that I should be feeling joyful about. We'll see how this goes.

Mike

Dear Mike welcome and you are nowhere near the longest post-lol. We get on a roll sometimes and really carry on.

This is a wonderful forum where I can really be honest and noone judges you. So go ahead and post anytime. Sorry you are having a rough time. Your marriage sounds very familiar to me: we are still together under one roof for financial reasons and our daughter AND I take my vows seriously. I'm sure you do.

First, you should go talk to a counselor and be honest. It sounds like you were in over your head at work and that would be a real bummer if you lost that. So, you've already taken the first step here. Take the second and talk to someone

Take carre

Maggie

Hi Mike....first you have made a positive move by coming to this forum, it really helps. 16years is a long time to feel you are fighting a battle. I have also for 28 years for many reasons on and off its like a rollercoaster but being locked. But does not have to always feel this way....we all have challenges, sadness and despair but can also have happiness love support and belief that it can be better.I left my marriage where I was mentally abused for all those years and although ten months have past the challenges seem to get harder....but I wont give into it even when its at its worst and there are days I wont get out of bed....till I tell myself ENOUGH as hard as it is the only thing that makes it better is to make yourself do what you dont want to. This has taken a long time to learn, I hate doing it every minute of it but know its the only thing to kickstart my way back. The issues in each of our lives are sometimes so overwhelming that we need to take a step back and look at each point of each problem. Else your mind just turns like a wheel and its easier to do nothing than to do something. Take each issue write what you want, what you feel and what you want to change. Work on one at a time, its a process and it works. As you work through each one you will feel you have achieved giving self esteem and sense of self worth not just a body a person who does only what has to. See and you thought you could over write......but its good you write we write back....and we feel support.
Im on medication to, I dont know if you have seen a doctor maybe go have a chat. Just remember you dont have to feel like this.
freedom4life

You are quite accomplished in your work and studies, and yes, you have a lot to be happy about. But depression can be a chemical imbalance, and no matter how good things are, we can still be sad a lot of the time. I am glad you are posting the good things though. The more you acknowledge it, the better you will feel.

I agree on the exercise. I walk as much as I can. It really helps me. I just came in from a walk with my dog and I feel pretty good. We don't walk fast either, we just enjoy it. And it still helps. Maybe it is the fresh air, I don't know. But I am still moving around and I think that counts for a lot. I am glad that you do the cardio. I am sorry about your injuries. Try walking too.

You have had great success losing weight. I have been losing too, but much more gradually. I contribute this to my walking and cutting out soda. I drink water for the most of the day. Losing weight really helps our self esteem. So good for you on the weight loss.

You and your wife sound like very good people. You are right about the religion rule. But we still say "God Bless" and things like that. But it can't come up in conversation. I am glad that you understand that rule. Thank you.

I hope that your days get better. We do understand that sure there are others worse off than ourselves, but our feelings count too. So feel free to talk about your depression here. And know we all do understeand how you feel.

Take care, have a good day

Hugs, Karen

Karen,

Thank you for taking the time to respond to each thought expressed in my last post. What it says to me is that you didn't just skim read like "blah blah blah" I get it he has a lot to be happy about. What you did took time and time shows interest and genuine compassion. Yes, it was uplifting for me to focus on and write out the good stuff. A lot of this battle is about what occupies our thoughts, where we choose to focus our attention. Thank you, also, for the virtual hug.

I wish you the best for your weight loss journey. It sounds like you have a very sound approach, no fads, nothing crazy that can't be sustained as a lifestyle change. Slow and steady wins the race and water instead of soda is HUGE in the success formula.

Thanks again for your time and for validating my feelings.

Mike

Maggie,

I also want to thank you for reading and writing back. I remember a counseling session from my crash of 1995. A friend of mine was going through a horrific ordeal, off the charts difficulty in the series of tragedies he experienced, including the loss of his leg. I was telling my therapist how trivial my issues were in comparison and he emphasized the same thing you talked about. The fact that others are experiencing unimaginable pain does not act in the least to lessen our own pain. My circumstances paled in comparison but my pain was real nonetheless. While I'm reminiscing, I'll also tell you about another session in the psych hospital. It was a mid afternoon group session. Yes, I know everybody was tired, but when I told my story literally everybody in the group fell asleep. Even the therapist running the group dozed off. I still remember how much that hurt. The message may have been unintended but what I heard was that I didn't matter. That experience still tells me that I had better be brief and only hit the high points because I have a very small window of opportunity to be heard.

Writing in this forum is not, as you said, therapy; but it is therapeutic. I think that the degree to which it is therapeutic will depend somewhat on how willing I am to be open and honest. I know this isn't the place for graphic details, but some how the mask needs to come down enough that I know you are seeing and responding to me and not the persona I've created to make me look good. I'm by nature a people pleaser so it's something I do without even thinking about it.

Thanks again for writing, and I'm glad to hear that you have found friendship here that you needed.

Mike

Is your wife in denial of being in depression? It kind of sounds like it. And when we are depressed we tend to interpret things in a defensive manner. Thinking maybe that the other person is yelling at them when in actuality they aren't. Could you get your wife to talk to somebody maybe? Do you think she would go to counseling? You might be able to persuade her to go if you try.

I hope that things work out for you and your wife. Keep posting, know that somebody is listening. I have trick or treaters so I better scoot.

Hugs, Karen

I really feel for your wife and her childhood. It is not easy growing up in the face of untreated or not managed mental illness. Also, I know ECT was frankensteinian back then, but I had 18 treatments last year and it is painless and proved very helpful for awhile.

That having been said, I think a rational woman would be extra sensitive to signs of mental illness and not put her family thru that. So, we are dealing with a woman deep in her disease who thinks the rest of the world is messed up, not her perception of it.And ZI hear alot of abandonment fears there...I can't imagine being estranged from my daughter. Don't know how to fix that...maybe over time. My mother and I had a very antagonistic realtionship for years. Once I got a few years on me, say late 20's I realized how much she had loved me and we made peace. Thank God, b/c she died 4 years later. Did she get worse after their estrangement or was she symptomatic and then they grew apart?

Maybe your kids could be a little more solicitous towards her, do they have a relationship?

I don't know...I am rambling. It's a very complicated situation, and it sounds like individual counseling for both would be good, no? But how to get someone unwilling to accept that she needs some help to go???

I don't have any good answers for ya Mike...but glad that writing it down, as you said, always help me too, put things in perspective. Keep writing and we will answer. Sometimes when we have bad days, we are a little slow but we get there-lol

Take care
Maggie

Karen and Maggie,

Thanks for responding, bummer about the dropped posts but I appreciate you letting me know that you tried. I'll try to respond to both of you in this 1 post.

Re: wife's meds. I'm terrible with time lines but pretty sure she has been on them for quite a while now, surely enough time for them to reach full effect. Like all of us, she has good and bad days, usually determined by stress levels. She's a registrar at a public school and that stresses her out sometimes. Unfortunately home is where she also stresses out, which brings me to..

Re: wife and her relationship with my kids. It's complicated. There's a lot of back and forth; she thinks she is doing her best in the relationship until they just upset her to the point she gets openly hostile. At the same time they think they are doing their best to accommodate her and her idiosyncracies until she says something ugly to them and they stop even trying. Both sides run to me to tattle on the other when they feel wronged. Oldest daughter will marry in March and youngest daughter will go off to college next fall and wife is counting down the days until they are out of the house. They, too, are counting down the days until they can get away from her. It's ugly and very painful to me.

Re: wife's relationship with her own kids. She's not really "estranged" from either of them. Her son is wrapped up in his own life and just doesn't make time for her. It's not intentional (I don't think), he just has his hands full. Her daughter is a different story, very volatile personality. One minute she can be sweet as pie and the next she can go postal and rip you to shreds. Occasionally they will flare up enough that they don't speak for several weeks, and then they'll just sweep it under the rug and act like nothing happened, although both of them keep score of past offenses and old stuff can make it's way into a new confrontation.

Re: wife's relationship with me. We've been growing apart for years. There is NO intimacy between us, which is why I describe us as roommates who don't get along very well. She used to say she didn't feel attracted because I was overweight. I lost weight and she said I went too far and now I'm too skinny. Bah humbug. She's a perfectionist and no amount of effort is ever good enough for her. I used to jump through hoops trying to do all the stuff she needed done, thinking those things were the obstacles to her happiness. No amount of effort was enough and I eventually gave up trying. I still do as much as I am able, but am no longer under any delusion that the effort will ever be appreciated or even satisfactory. (This also bears on my kid's reaction to her because they see how disrespectfully she treats me and it makes them mad at her.) Relationally and emotionally she has taken everything away from me that there was to take. She can't withhold intimacy because there is no amount less than zero. What I do for her now I do because it's what I feel I should do, not because I expect anything at all in return. When my best is not good enough, it's just too bad.

Having said all that I realize that I've just painted a bleak picture, and that picture can be misleading. We still do things together. Last weekend we took 3 of the grandsons to tour the battleship Texas and we all had a very pleasant day. We work together on the team that ministers to incarcerated youth. We share household chores like cooking, cleaning and laundry. We're not always openly hostile. We can cooperate with each other and get along for a time and be genuinely caring about each other's well being. And then something will happen; 1 of the girls will leave her laundry basket in the laundry room too long, shoes will be left someplace they're not supposed to be, something, anything, and we'll have a crisis on our hands.

I'm sure you understand that any attempt to describe a family dynamic is going to be misleading because it's only a snap shot of a very complicated system. Again, I don't expect you to have answers to something that has developed over years. I just appreciate having a listening ear.

Ok, I debated whether I would put this into the conversation, but I'm interested in hearing a female perspective. I am going to insert an email message I sent my wife in jan. 2009. For background, we met on an internet dating site in the late 90's. We communicated by email only for a couple of months before we decided to meet face to face. The message is self explanatory, but after I sent it to her I got no response and in the last 3 years things only went downhill and now we have nothing at all. Here is the text I sent...

I'm writing because I hope we can communicate better in writing than we do in conversation. Let me begin (and end) by telling you I love you and I am committed to you and to our marriage. We both know we have a problem, I'm sure we disagree on how we got here, and it appears neither of us knows the solution. Writing this letter is a gesture of trust, it means that I trust enough in your love to believe you want to know what I'm thinking and feeling. This letter is not intended to manipulate you or motivate you in any particular direction. It is an attempt at communication, no more and no less.

Writing the preface was easy, knowing how to proceed is not. I don't know where to begin so please excuse me if my thoughts seem disconnected. I guess I'll start with this; yes, I blame you for the condition we're in. But I'm also willing to accept blame for what I've said and done along the way that pushed us this far. Here is what I think we have going for us; 1)there was a time early in our marriage when we had a satisfying sexual relationship and 2) I believe (or choose to believe) that you want things to improve. It would be a very depressing idea to think that in the years to come we're just going to grow more and more distant from each other.

I said that I am willing to accept blame for what I've done to push us down this path. I have a question that I'd like for you to answer. Be honest with yourself and with me and please tell me what I said and did that ruined sex for you. I know you say its something about your body that you just dont have desire anymore. I don't buy that. I remember you saying early in our marriage that you were able to be more open and free with me than you had ever been before. Somehow I ruined that. It appears to me that now you find sex (with me) disgusting and repulsive. What did I say and do that made sex repulsive to you?

I've given this a lot of thought and this is what I think the sexual union inside marriage is supposed to be. It is supposed to be a complete giving over of oneself to the marriage partner. The sexual union is spiritual, mental, emotional and phsysical (including all 5 physical senses). It is spiritual because the bible says the 2 will be one flesh. It's mental in many respects, in the anticipation, the excitement especially in the vulnerability. It's emotional in the trust and in the committment and in the feelings it produces. Sexual satisfaction causes a man to feel masculine; it promotes feelings of being the protector provider. You could describe better than me what emotions it produces in a woman. It is of course physical in the sex act itself. It is supposed to be passionate and uninhibited.

This is where we are right now, IN MY OPINION. We don't have sexual intimacy at all. The closest thing we have is not the affirming uniting experience God intended, but something divisive and destructive. We have degenerated to the point that our only sex is when you feel so burdened with guilt that you find that burden even worse than having to endure sex. Out of guilt and obilgation you begrudgingly endure a few minutes of sex that has to be over as soon as possible. When its over you have discharged your obligation and, having done so, feel entitled to all the "protector provider" feelings and behavior from me as if we had really had marital sex. My reaction is the very opposite. When you signal to me that you're reaching that point where you have to endure sex I have to find a way to get my libido out of cold storage where it has been tucked away to help me survive the interim. As soon as its over I know that I have to shut down again because it will be weeks at best and probably months before the cycle repeats. It doesnt leave me feeling loved respected or affirmed, and I know you dont come away with any of those feelings either.

I've given up on initiating sex. You have said over and over that you dont feel pretty and so you might think that's why. Nothing could be further from the truth. You are as beautiful and desirable to me now as you ever were. The truth is that in order to initiate sex I have to do several things. I have to get my libido out of cold storage as I said before. That means stirring up desire by allowing myself to think of you in a sexual way. That's risky because if I get get turned down (more likely than not) then I have those feelings all stirred up and no place to go. It's also increasingly more difficult because I have to convince myself that there is some chance of success. I also have to take a huge risk because when you turn me down it's not usually in a nice way, it's usually insulting and painful. On the plus side I have to work through my hurt and resentment, something that's good to do anyway. On the down side, if I am again brutally rejected the hurt and resentment is back full force with a new wound added on. At least this is what the process feels like to me and for all my risk and effort the best I can hope for is a few minutes of begrudging guilt ridden hurry up sex. It's just not worth it. For a short while I thought we had found a baby step forward, the full body massage. The full body massage allowed me a period of visual and tactile stimulation in a romantic environment. And then you bit my head off for sexualizing something that I understood to be a prelude to sex by mutual agreement. Now any time I think about trying to get romantic I get overwhelmed with a whole range of feelings and the idea is quickly brushed aside.

Ok. I've poured out my heart. Your typical reaction to far less honesty than this is to cop out and say "I guess Im just not right for you" or "you need someone else". That's nonsense and I hope you resist that reaction with all your heart. There are no more wives in my future. I love you and Im committed to you and to our marriage.

I hope you don't zoom in on some single phrase and ignore the whole message, so here are the major points:

I love you and Im committed to you and to our marriage
We're both to blame for where we are and neither of has a clue how to make it better
The prospect of doing nothing at all is a very depressing thought
Please tell me what I said and did that ruined sex for you
I want our sex life to leave us both feeling loved, bonded together, and affirmed
There is hope; we had something in the past that we've just lost.
I love you and Im committed to you and to our marriage.

Love,
Mike

Please tell me from a woman's point of view what you would hear me saying to her

Yeah, me too. I appreciate the feedback. As for as it working out so I can be happy; I am resigned to the fact that I have to find a way to be happy even if this area of our relationship doesn't work out. I can't let it hold me hostage. I am still committed to the marriage and still know that there are no more wives in my future. This is a 2nd marriage for both of us. I was in my former marriage 21 years and she was in hers I think 24 years. Neither of us filed to end the first, both were divorced by the former spouses.

Also, yes I tend to over think things. That however is so deeply ingrained as part of who I am that I doubt I can change it. You may as well say that it works against me that I am a male. Like popeye I yam what I yam.

Hi, From a womans point of view and experience I can say this. All the words in the world can sometimes be just words you know when it gets to that point your listening but your not. I was with my ex for 28yrs and we ended up the same. For very diferent reasons we seperated so I am not going to talk about that. But in the begining we had great sex life then same as yours. From the perpective of woman I can say That built up emotions from stress in our lives can affect how we as a woman feel.....especially in regard to how we think about ourself and our ability to continue to feel worthwhile, beautiful, and wanted for more than than just sex....even though you have said it. You need to show, maybe you have I dont know, but less words and more action. You can try so much be spontaneous....flowers dinner special day out. You need to make her feel good about herself in order for her to feel wanted in a special way, not just there, even though you love her. It can take time patience and persistance.....but can make the world of difference rekindle what has been lost. Make the strss in your life seperate to the way you feel about her because sometimes it becomes so entwined its hard to seperate. Love for each other time and spending quality time just for that......stress, problems in life cant be linked they are two seperate issues....keep seperate, talk about each not at same time.
Hope I have been some help
freedom4life