Sharks need love too (not all bite)

[Lyrael]

Betsey-
I hope you ladies have a wonderful time this weekend. Is this the first time you and Meredith will meet in person? I'd love to see that.

I think I can offer a couple of observations on your "depression/terminal illness", only because I have been through it - not with my spouse, but with myself. I am going to go out on a limb here and share something about myself - I have been diagnosed in the past with Borderline Personality Disorder. It's pretty much chronic crazymaking, along with a deeply ingrained set of immature beliefs about life, reality, and people in general. When I was in the height of it, I was hospitalized for awhile, and was on various meds. Nothing helped with my out-of-control behavior or my deep depression (lacking the skills to relate to the people you love most is VERY frustrating). Nothing helped because I kept expecting something outside myself to change me.
Then I started surfing the net after being told that BPD was virtually untreatable, and I could look forward to a life of hospitalizations, broken relationships, and failed opportunities. At the time, I was a junior in college, and couldn't believe that I wouldn't be able to have the full, successful life I wanted. So I started looking on the Internet and found a therapy called DBT. You want solution-based? That's it.
Well, my point is not to share a sob story, or to share the miracle power of dialectic behavioral therapy (although it and DB'ing have a lot of parallels), but to point out that I had to lose almost everything - school, my husband (him moving out was when I started DBT), my job (not the one I have now), before I was motivated to look for change inside myself. The road to getting help that worked took me two years, but it's only taken me six months since I realized I was the only one who could make me change. I firmly believe that with the work that you're doing, and with as much as you pray for him, he will come to realize that the only way he can be happy is to make HIMSELF happy, just as you've been modelling to him while he has been living outside your home.
He is in the ideal situation to have realizations about himself. You have worked on your end to change all the behaviros that you can, and you are supportive to him without being enabling of his depression (i.e. letting it bring yuo down as well, letting him draw you into fights so he can blame his "down-ness" on you). You are the best thing that could have happened to him, and your patience and strength make ihm a very lucky man. I am hoping he realizes that really soon.
((((((((Betsey)))))))
Myrrh