Divorcebusting.com Forums Open Forums THE SEX-STARVED MARRIAGE Upgrading the Crazy Eddie Drive

You're thinking too much about playing fair and not enough about having fun. You can't have fun if you don't play fair because you can't learn anything or ever really win and you'll feel guilty all the time if you don't play fair. So really all you have to ask yourself is "Am I having fun?" and be very, very honest when you answer.

Your logic is impeccable. Thanks for the advice. Yes, I have the most fun when I'm playing fair. Also good advice for S6 (if he'll listen to it), who I have a hard time playing with because he keeps making up and changing rules as he goes along, incorporates the plot of cartoons I have no interest in watching, and doesn't speak very clearly. Oh, and like the other two, he would much rather play with me than his siblings. (Arrgh! We had three kids for a reason!)

Anyway, I can see that you ended up having a lot more fun and happiness when you discovered this for yourself.

She was upset again, and scowled at me when I talked to her. I teased her a bit by scowling back, then just did my own thing. By the end of the night, she was back to her old affectionate self and told me of something she was frustrated with all day(completely unrelated to yours truly. Imagine that... things other than me get her angry, and it's not my job to calm her down!) and I talked to her a bit about it and helped her feel better (now that she was willing to feel better). Life is good.

And I found an investigator with good recommendations for about $400... much better than the $1200-$3500 I was quoted from other investigators. She still thinks it's a bad idea, but I've told her that I'm doing it anyway within the next few weeks, and she isn't flipping out or showing contempt for me. She just keeps repeating the possible downsides while I keep repeating the reasons why that risk is acceptable and the enterprise is worth it to me even if the worst case comes true.

She doesn't have to completely understand, sympathize with, or agree with this in order to be a good wife or to love me properly. She can and does love and respect me completely while still not understanding or agreeing with this decision. (Now if she demands that I cease or minimize contact with the people I find for any reason that I don't consider a good reason, we will have a conflict. If she is merely unenthusiastic about my relationship with them, I can openly proceed in the face of that without the need for conflict. And no sense worrying about it until it happens. Planning is good, worrying is not.)

Have you ever heard anyone in college say that, if you drink while you're studying, you should show up to the test at a similar level of intoxication so you'll be in the same state of mind and remember what you've studied?

That's the way it seems to work with antidepressants. I ran out on Saturday morning, with the doctor's office closed, and no refills left on the prescription. I could have gotten an "emergency supply", but I didn't know that until Monday morning. Anyway, by Saturday afternoon, I was back to my old self. All the stuff I'd been learning here just sort of went out the window for a while. I'd rememeber it intellectually, but putting it into practice for more than a few minutes at a time was completely beyond me.

It looks like I'll be on this stuff, or future generations of it, for the rest of my life. I like being the way I am right now. My wife told me things like "Now I see why our marriage wasn't good for the first five or six years", to which I snapped "You were doing the same thing" (she's on her own antidepressants now) and she responded "I never said I wasn't.". She was right... without the meds, suddenly everything anyone did or said was an attack on me or an inquisition to find grounds to attack me. Anxiety once again became my constant companion, and reminded me just how unhappy I was living with it for day after day, year after year, with no complete respite from it. Once again, people and tasks were just overwhelmingly too much to deal with and I wanted nothing more than to lock myself alone in my room and hide from the world and particularly from those annoying people I live with that would just not stop bothering me or b*tching at me.

The sexual side effects were gone, so I decided to get one good thing out of my weekend while I could. She was up for it both days because, she told me later, she thought it would help keep me "sane". But the sex was about as good as it was before I started taking the medicine... subdued, full of anxiety, less connected, and over with way too quickly for either of us (the meds seem to help me last longer, and I'd forgotten just how much of a difference they make in that department). She was smiling afterward, but it didn't take long to wear off. It was her taking care of me, not the two of us making love like I wanted to but couldn't in the state of mind I was in. And I think now it was like that for years, and helped explain why neither of us seemed to want it all that much.

Yep. I can completely identify with that. Only it takes me around 2-3 weeks after stopping the medication before all that kicks in again. I ran out about 3 weeks ago, haven't renewed my prescription yet, and only in the last couple of days am I starting to feel it all over again...

I's decided to forget about renewing my prescription, but now I'm not so sure.

Hmmph.

Talk to your doctor! Don't just stop taking the meds without getting medical advice.

Why would you even consider stopping if you lived the life I described before you started on them?

Because I'd like to see if I can dig myself out without the help of the meds.

Sure, they helped clear the fog a little, but I'd be much more comfortable being able to do it myself. I think what is helping just as much as the meds is PMA stuff, GAL stuff, exercise, and all that.

I guess at the end of the day, I really don't like having to rely on something other than ME to dictate how I'm going to feel when I wake up each morning.

Does that make sense?

Yes, it makes a lot of sense. I resisted taking meds for a long time because I didn't want to be the sort of person that depends on them.

But I changed my mind after a long time of struggling to function without them, because it occured to me that I had people depending on me, and it was my duty to them to do whatever it took to get my functioning and my mental performance up where it should be. Even if that meant swallowing my pride, facing my fear of weird and/or dangerous side effects, and taking some medicine.

After changing it around a few times, I found a combination that allows me to get into a better mindset than I've ever had in my life, and I'm sticking with it. This past weekend confirmed that in my mind... I won't try to get off of it until something new and improved comes out of beta.

Mind you, I'd love to be free of the side effects, particularly the need to take Cialis before every encounter. I'd also like to be able to say that I don't need meds to be totally awesome.

And I'd like an anti-aging treatment, a flying car, and a personal spacecraft while I'm at it.

I don't think it's a pride thing, or a fear, or anything like that for me.

This might seem odd but I actually view it as similar to having to put contact lenses in every morning (which I do, btw) - it's just another daily routine that I *MUST* do before I can function as a human being.

The less of those the better as far as I'm concerned. They make me feel a little less, umm.... 'free'.

I guess I read too much Kerouac in college, eh?

I've talked to people that got sick of putting in contacts or wearing glasses... and they got laser treatments for their eyes.

They didn't try to just force themselves to see better.

So far, there's no equivalent one-shot treatment for the brain. Stay tuned... I think we're going to see long-term drug-dispensing implants of some sort in the not-too-distant future. Between antibiotic-resistant bugs coming from people not finishing their treatments, to psychiatric patients going off their meds and becoming dangerous, there's plenty of benefit to such a thing for a large number of people.