Me 42-Him 40 T20yrs Married 16yrs 2/06 H- "not sure if i want to be married anymore" 6/07 H-"I'm not happy" 9/07 Admits affair & OW 12/08 I moved out 12/09 still waiting for divorce
I see that things are really tough for you right now. phbear gave you a lot of good feedback and ideas. She's right about a lot of things, including the fact that you have to learn to be gentle with yourself, not beat yourself up for feeling lonely and depressed, for having a hard time opening up to your therapist, etc. You took a huge step when you even started counseling; you took another huge step looking into meds.
It's so much easier to be totally open and honest when the forum is anonymous and you're opening up to your keyboard. Doing that in person---with your therapist or anyone else---is *hard.* You're getting there, and you'll make one step at a time.
I like the idea of writing your feelings down when they ambush you, then sharing that with your therapist. A variation on that might be to print out a post or two from here and give them to your T. That would allow you to share those feelings with your T *and* avoid wallowing in them when they strike. I suggest this because of the suicidal thoughts you're struggling with; perhaps exploring those feelings in person with your T and getting tools to deal with them would be more useful that putting them down in words when you're alone.
You've realized that you relied on W to buffer you from your own unhappiness. Of course you'll need to create your own happiness, like we all do. I'm not surprised by the late-night all-alone thoughts that overwhelm you. That's the time we face our demons, and when we're struggling just figuring out how to deal with them, they feel overwhelmingly scary. You're staring into the maw of your deepest fears. The good news is you see them, and you have a therapist who can help you deal with them. The meds will help, too.
Keep posting, MMan. This work that we're all doing is the most important there is, and we all struggle sometimes. Do your best to keep your thoughts positive (good suggestions, phbear): it's a skill that takes work and practice, and it'll get easier, like everything else.
One other thing I do is when I am feeling good, I write notes to myself for when I'm down---funny how when you're down you can remember being up but not quite how you got there or why you were.
Me 42-Him 40 T20yrs Married 16yrs 2/06 H- "not sure if i want to be married anymore" 6/07 H-"I'm not happy" 9/07 Admits affair & OW 12/08 I moved out 12/09 still waiting for divorce
Just caught up on the latest thread hear, well not really deep yet so not much to catch up on. I totally know where your coming from with the Meds. I was totally anti, and finally a friend of mine that is someone I totally look up to with coping in life, told me he has been on AD for 2 years. Explained why and what it has done for him.
I got on them a few months ago, and it really helps with the ducks back. I'm not sure how to really describe it, it's not like your happy or giddy or something. I guess for some it may be. But I don't overreact to things. I seem to cope better and take things as they come. I thought they would dull my mind, or something, and I would say a lot of the opposite is true.
Also, I would like to email you, but I can't post my email up on the site. Do you have an email address I can get?
Just a brief post here to let everyone know I'm OK - I disappeared for a couple days due to the business around New Year's, and all that.
I just got Celexa today. We'll see how that goes.
So tired now (stayed up till 7am on Jan 1 - good job, throwing off my sleep pattern, hmm?). Got stuff to share from New Year's. . . noting uber-big, but some interesting comments I got.
Atlas: you can email me at "okkealy" at "hotmail" dot "com". The quotes are in case there's any spambots sufing the netterwebs.
I'll post again tomorrow (well, later today, technically) - for now, sleeeeep.
MM, read your post and it brought me back a bit. When I first found out about the current affair my wife was having, and then her moving out shortly after I felt the way you do. You should know that its completely natural and normal for your thoughts to race like they are, and right now even anti-depressents are not going to *stop* those thoughts, only perhaps distance you from them a bit. Its 7 months later for me, and trust me I learned the hard way and got into this DB game maybe too late but I am happy and strong enough to accept this challenge and do what I need to to achieve this goal even with the understanding that the odds are against me. As bad as things tend to seem with this sh*t you are not going to die, and this situation is by no means terminal. Thats where the "act ASIF" stuff comes in, I KNOW its tough but just start to SEE it that way and tell your self "f*ck it, it is what it is right now and I cannot CHANGE it, but I can CHANGE myself". Seems simple and silly, but you know how hard it is to DO that, but you got to. I will also tell you that one of the other things that really helped me was I have been taking Yoga, and into advanced classes now. Definitely helps in ways that no pill can, guaranteed. Before you write it off as being gay or something, know that I am an ex-marine and I felt goofy as hell the first time doing it, but there are an even mix of people in there and many of them are in there to work on their MINDS as well as their bodies. before each workout you are supposed to devote the workout to a goal, or a person or thought so you also feel as if you are "working" towards what you want and thats to be happily married to your wife. Start doing something today, for you, not for her and you will be surprised at how your life will start changing in positive ways.
Me: 37, engineer, former Marine Her: 33, HS dropout, retail sales Kids: 3 Daughters 11,9,3 2 Dogs Seperated since Jun07
Okay. So. This is a really lengthy post. I didn't even realize how long until I copied-and-pasted to make sure that I didn't lose it when hitting "submit"
New Year's was pretty good, overall.
Went to Party-1 where W and B and others were, but wanted to pop my head in and say "hi". it was a LAN party...really boring, actually, cause on New Year's I wanted to be social and stuff. Plus they were in the middle of a run (warcraft 3?) and wouldn't be done for awhile.
Luckily, my roommate, her bf, and her friend showed up - we played the Wii for awhile, before deciding everyone LANing was lame (because the only socialization they did was eat pizza then go back to their computers) and left.
I then went to Party-2.
Waaaaay more fun. The couple hosting it are friends from back in college (Dated the wife in the couple for 1 month, Oct. 2001. That figures in later). Saw friends there, talked, discovered that 1) Vanilla Stoli + Root beer = yum! 2) Never, never ask my friend to mix a drink randomly - yes, it was tasty, but holy damn was it sweet.
One friend (I hate to be all jumbled, but don't want to use names) who's also going to be a Marriage and Family Therapist, is one year beind W in the grad program - same school. She's incensed (sp? p*ssed is what I mean) that W is going to be a LMFT. Said that in one class, there had been a large section on infidelity, and she thought "Hmmm. 'W' was sitting in this class, same time last year."
And, I actually got a bit of a laugh out of this: In one of my friends' classes, someone said of a case study "No, this is just too weird - stuff like this can't actually happen. It has to be exaggerated"
Friend raises her hand, and says "Welll, actually -" and tells my story. Keep in mind, I haven't told her "my side", so there's no bias in that way. She just laid out everything that happened. She had her professor looking at her with a "Wow, that's f**ked up" expression.
Whoo! My life can stun a LMFT professor and a class of graduate students!
heh. Not a good thing, of course, but still - find teh funny where I can.
As for the wife in the couple...well, I did something I've been meaning to do for a really long time. I apologized to her for our bad breakup.
Long story short: When W decided that she did, in fact, have feelings for me after I started dating...er.. "L", she basically did all she could to "woo" me away from L - because W knew I still had feelings for her.
I was a stupid 19-year-old ass and was dating my W for a week before I broke up with L. L had been uncomfortable with how close W and I were (as in, physically close), and knew that I'd broken up with her to date my eventual W.
It took a couple years for L and I to consider each other friends again - and only in the past two have we actually become good friends. I hurt her a lot with what I did, even if we had only been together for a month, the way I acted was tacky and mean.
I apologized to her, for how I acted and for hurting her the way I did. The six years between then and now provided her with enough closure, I guess, but I needed some myself. I'd always felt guilty as hell for that.
Especially since boyfriend/husband stealing via emotional affairs and physical closeness seems to be a talent of my W. heh. (insert moderately cynical laugh here).
I ended up staying up till 6:30am talking with L's husband, a good part of our discussing being about my current situation. He and L have a much lower view of my W and of B, and B's W now days. Not because of things I've fed them - they see the situation for themselves, and make their own judgments. He actually said he and L were impressed with how well I was handling things, and how adult I was compared to how the rest of this group is handling things.
It felt...validating?...to hear "Yeah, [my name], you did your share of f**king up, but you're handling this pretty well."
He gave me some things to think about, too - which I won't expound on here, since it would require more explaination and editing of names and stuff. hehe
What's important is: I had fun on New Year's. And I didn't talk about W too much. There were three important conversations that happened, but they weren't overly long...and I listed them chronologically. I was there for almost 8 hours, and most of the time I was just BS'ing with people, and having a good time.
L and her H are two friends I definately need to see more of, too. They're good, down-to-earth, intelligent people who are outside of the social group I was involved with when "B" was a friend. It's a completely different circle - one which my W seems to have left largely behind, in favor of, for lack of a better term, the "gaming group."
Ok. So. In the interests of just trying to meet people...I was browsing match.com. Not interested in dating. Even tho it's a dating site, just...people.
Ran across W's profile.
Bleh.
That's a downer. I can't change that it's there, but it does kinda suck that every picture shes got of herself on there is one I took.
At least she had the dignity to list herself as "Currently Separated".
I'll work through this, but these moments like this smack me with the reality-fish.
Sorry about your sitch. I am glad you found this site because there are lots of supporting pepople here. Do you want to try and save your marriage? I was not sure from your post. I know this sounds really stupid, but one thing I do when it comes to H is if he does something to piss me off I don't respond to it right away. I will try to sleep on it and if it still bugs me in the morning then I will address it with him. Also, when you find yourself thinking about W immediately do something else. I went through this before with H and when I wanted to call him I would paint my nails so I could not dial his number. Silly tricks, but sometimes they do work. My H and I were really good friends too. We had a lot of goofy things in common that no one but us understood. To the rest of the world we were kind of weired, but to eachother we made perfect sense. I am also loosing a really good friend. Keep your chin up and post on how the ADs are working. I was against taking them myself. I may look into it though. I am in school and I need to work. I can't afford to keep having these really good days and bad days. My good days are good, but my bad days are really bad.
