Digging Through Old Email

[AntoniaB]

Oh I can answer your question above using myself! (but hopefully Cyrena will answer too). How can a person be depressed and yet have no idea she is unhappy and hurting? I just found a bunch of stuff I wrote today back like 5 years ago. I had just started seeing a mind-body doctor and I was talking about how I had these physical problems that were probably exacerbated by stress and anxiety and stuff. The person I come off as in the stuff I wrote was CLEARLY suffering from depression. I can see it so easily NOW. But I did so much rationalization of things in my fog--I blamed a TON of other things--work, my parents, a boss here and there, all of that for the reason that I was unhealthy. I never took at look at myself. I externalized all of my angst and said it was someone else's fault. Therefore I wasn't depressed. I was a victim.

I never blamed my XH but EVERYONE else for my own idenity problems or lack of self-esteem/confidence.

So I was where my XH eventually ended up, only I was so tied to him and the marriage FOR my happiness, that I never blamed those things.

He did the same as me--externalized his own inadequacies. For years he blamed all of it--work, other people, etc. Then it hit a breaking point, and he turned it onto me at the same moment a willing young woman who resembled a younger version of me walked into his life. Boom. It was suddenly all my fault; all the marriage's fault.

The only thing that forced me to confront myself and stop externalizing my unhappiness and get out of depression was for him to betray me. That's why I think my XH is stuck forever unless she betrays him. I want her to betray him so he is forced to confront the way I did. I don't want this to happen so he comes back to me. I just don't know if we'd find each other compatible anymore. But until he's given the shaft, he's never going to face himself.

I think this is why for so many in MLC the only real wakeup call for them is if they go on this so-called journey and it backfires royally on them and they run out of places to hide. I hid for a long time till he left me. That's why in the end, as sad as I am about losing him, what he did to me made me a better person. Sad, but true. I had to be betrayed to grow.