Journal

So I'm gettind divorced from my wife of four years. My story isn't really the tragic, broken down tales of some other divorces. No one cheated in our relationship (though I have my wonders about whether there was some emotional cheating on my stbx's side.) No one was physically abusive. No alcoholism or drug abuse. The problems came from mental abuse. I can only speak from my own persepective, but essentially my troubles stemmed from an ongoing problem with major depression that I have only now A) realized I have and B) realized has been a problem in my life for as long as I can remember. I've always been the kind of person to give people all the slack in the world and bend over backwards to accomodate anyone who asks me for anything. My counsilor tells me that I hold myself to a standard of perfection and don't hold anyone else to a standard at all, and that in a lot of ways is the root of my problem. Consequently, I married a woman who was best described as "high maintenance," both in terms of emotional and actual quantitative needs. I spent most of the four years trying to accomodate mood swings, almost nightly needs to run out and complete some random errand for her while she went straight home from work and plopped down on the couch (at the time I was commuting from Omaha to Lincoln for work, she worked a few blocks from home), and being made to feel like the financial burden from my graduate school work was the most terribly inconsiderate problem I could have inflicted upon her. I've often wondered if the problem wasn't really a reflection of her own resentment towards herself for not going on with her own school work, choosing instead to get a job that she doesn't necessarily love, leaving her resenting me for making her pay to live through her own dreams. In any case, my other major depressive tendency is to internalize my aggressions or frustrations during the day, only letting them out in little passive aggressive bursts and choosing instead to isolate myself from her in the relationship by physically avoiding her and distancing myself emotionally.

We lived like this for years of ups and downs before finally seperating, at which point the panic kicked in on my end. I've since realized that I was really just trying not to lose being married and having our home and the life I had built for myself, but at the time I convinced myself that I needed her and we needed to patch things up. It should have been a clue that things weren't going to work out when I realized that I was the only one who was really trying to patch things up between us while she was trying to start moving on with her life. She told me she "didn't feel anything for me anymore," or "didn't want to take the chance that, like had happened previously, she would take me back with promises that I would change only to be disapointed later." She said she felt like a battered wife who kept letting her abusive husband back time after time only to have her heart broken again and again. Finally, at the wedding between two of our mutual friends which we were both attending, she informed me that "she loved me, but she couldn't live with me" and that was that.

I was devastated. I had always been under the impression that there was no problem that couldn't be worked out in a marriage outside of some major things like cheating or physical abuse. I was lucky enough to have a lot of my good friends around when it all went down, since I essentially just fell back into their arms and let them support me. I had the wind completely knocked out of my sails. I've never felt pain like this before or since. It felt like my life was over, like I had failed, and like I had been completely abandoned. I didn't necessarily want to die, which was somewhat of a relief since I had previously had trouble with suicidal thoughts (shortly before this I began my treatment with Lexapro and counselling) but I did want the pain to end through whatever means necessary. 

Slowly, day by day, I'm crawling back from the abyss. With the help of good friends and time, I'm beginning to see that I can move on from this shock and put a new life together that will be better and more fulfilling. As my councilor informed me (to my surprise) the problems that she had with me and the way I am were not my fault, but hers. As she was always so fond of telling me, I am the way I am. Her inability to accept that was one of the most fundamental underlying problems in our relationship. I am still fighting off the need to accept blame for all of the things that happened, as that is my first inclination, but I'm beginning to start taking care of myself again. I utilize mapmyrun.com both as a means of mapping my own running through the neighborhoods of Lincoln and as a means of motivating myself to keep going and lose some weight. I'm struggling with when to start dating again (also, how to start dating again, but we'll worry about that bridge when we come to it,) and I'm basically just trying to get to a point where I can get free from my depression and live the happy life I deserve. 

The first step, however, is to convince myself that I deserve the happiness in the first place. That's where I am now, and you are pretty much up to speed.