Hi LT, I have known for sometime about how AD's have hurt our M. In fact AD's hurt our sex life greatly and that was the start of W's decent. We always had a really good sex life. AD's made that almost impossible and it freaked her out. In fact, I'm very down on the "medical community" right now as her GP told her that AD's only effect her sex life IF her M was bad to begin with! I couldn't believe this when she told me that her Dr. (who I also know recently had his own MLC and left his Dr. W!) would say something so unprofessional! She told me that he also told her that "as soon as I get away from you, I'll be able to atop taking AD's again". At first I thought she was either making this up or "miss heard" what he said but I also know that Dr's, like other people, do have their own problems and if he is in his own MLC, may actually believe what they want.
One of the reasons she went back on AD's (she stopped about a year after going back to work, a big mistake in hind sight) was her inability to sleep because of her anxiety (depression and anxiety go hand in hand). She would lay in bed and worry, worry, worry and that killed our M. Since leaving she hasn't been able to go off and is still not sleeping. She let this info out one day when we were driving to her grandmother's birthday party together a few weeks after she left. Of course, she still finds ways to blame me for this (It's because she hasn't gotten the D finalized yet and hasn't been able to totally cut ties from me. At least that was her excuse then, who knows what it will be tomorrow!). When she was going through her first huge depressive episode I learned as much as I could about depression and AD's, etc. The thing is, my W is one of those people that are so afraid of being "weak". So not wanting to believe that her problems are caused by something in her but would rather blame an outside force, in her case she wants to blame her M and me.
I really don't think she was ever out of her depression but used her work to cover it up. She has even told me that she has felt so bad for so long and she has tried so many things to stop feeling so awful but nothing has worked. D'ing me she said is the biggest thing she can see that she can change and before she was M, she never was depressed. She thinks that if she is on her own, totally in "control" of every part of her life, she won't be able to be depressed because I won't be around to "help" her. Yes, crazy thinking but when someone is depressed and in MLC, you really can't expect clear thinking!
I really believe that MLC and depression are almost always found together. One feeds off the other. It took me a very long time to detach at all because I saw what she was doing as another chapter in her depression and she was just sick and needed my help. Well, part of what she needs from me now is for me to detach and let her see what it's like on her own without my "help" and love. Hard to do after so many years of her needing the opposite!
