Hi everyone, hope the link works. I came across this article recently and found it astonishing in its insight and relevance to this board. It provides no answers as to what to do, but it may help answer why for some people.. Covers men and women in detail. Wonder.
I've actually read this article before. It's a good one. I quoted a section that I think is very interesting and describes my H.
Quote:
Emotionally Retarded Men in Love About the only people more dangerous than philandering men going through life with an open fly and romantic damsels going through life in perennial distress, are emotionally retarded men in love. When such men go through a difficult transition in life, they hunker down and ignore all emotions. Their brain chemistry gets depressed, but they don't know how to feel it as depression. Their loved ones try to keep from bothering them, try to keep things calm and serene and isolate them further.
An emotionally retarded man may go for a time without feeling pleasure, pain, or anything else, until a strange woman jerks him back into awareness of something intense enough for him to feel it—perhaps sexual fireworks, or the boyish heroics of rescuing her, or perhaps just fascination with her constantly changing moods and never-ending emotional crises.
With her, he can pull out of his depression briefly, but he sinks back even deeper into it when he is not with her. He is getting addicted to her, but he doesn't know that. He only feels the absence of joy and love and life with his serenely cautious wife and kids, and the awareness of life with this new woman. It doesn't work for him to leave home to be with her, as she too would grow stale and irritating if she were around full time.
What he needs is not a crazier woman to sacrifice his life for, but treatment for his depression. However, since the best home remedies for depression are sex, exercise, joy, and triumph, the dangerous damsel may be providing one or more of them in a big enough dose to make him feel a lot better. He may feel pretty good until he gets the bill, and sees how much of his life and the lives of his loved ones this treatment is costing. Marriages that start this way, stepping over the bodies of loved ones as the giddy couple walks down the aisle, are not likely to last long.
aid, I think many of us here can relate to that passage you quoted. I think that is exactly why most of our H's are having affairs. It's medication for depression, simply put. However, they should realize by now that the prescription is not working...
Most of us really marry only once. First love endures, even unto our dying day. And we never really divorce.
Hope, That's exactly right... their prescription is NOT working. In fact, it's making it all worse. Until they figure that out for themselves, they will continue to be lost souls. I keep thinking that my H has figured that out, but apparently not.
Oh well. Thank God we are not in their shoes. Thank God we are comfortable in our own skin!
However, they should realize by now that the prescription is not working...
You think they would realize it. My H pulled his back out again due to stress, I have not been around him to give him any. If things were so wonderful in la la land right now, I don't think he would have these aches and pains.
It's funny, I was just thinking about H's depression this morning. The fight we had on Sunday revealed some of his fears and regrets however it was also a reflection that he hasn't learned anything about "why" he is doing what he is doing...because of his depression. When I was telling him what I was angry about, I told him that it's clear he was not happy, but that wasn't my fault and he has to take responsibility for his own happiness. He hasn't learned how to do this yet.
