My heart hurts...literally!
How can I say that I will be ok, regardless of the outcome, when my heart quite literally hurts because I cannot let her go? I can't let her go, it hurts worse just to think about it. The meds make me feel like a zombie and I feel numb, inside and out. We talk about a future with an us, but so much time has passed, with so much left unsaid. I feel alone, still laying in bed next to her. We talk, but the damage is done. I was desperate to be heard and confided in another friend. As I opened up for the first time in years, I fell in love! Not with my wife, but with the friend. I never intended for it to happen, but she listened, cared and empathize with my situation. She admitted she'd fallen in love with me too! I regret being vulnerable with her, but at the time I didn't have anyone else to listen. My wife has been unapproachable for years and after a couple of attempts to let her know something was wrong, that my depression has become worse, I am accused of being selfish. Anger welled up. Did she really believe I WANTED to be depressed? I now realize the depression and addiction are but symptoms to a greater problem. Now I've reverted to being closed off, making my confessions to faceless users on the internet.
Replies
Sometimes sharing our deepest thoughts is better to someone who is faceless. I go to Skype and telephone SAA meetings and that is much like that.
Anonymity is useful for sex addicts. In a meeting, we can be honest about our addiction with others who know what it is like.
I know what is is like to be deeply depressed. I take 'heavy' drugs for Bipolar. Without these, I would self distruct. People around us do not have a clue what it is like. If you are having a particularly bad episode, be gentle with yourself. I know what that numbness is like. Which meds are you on and for how long?
You need to try and get out of your head. If you don't you will just keep torturing yourself. Now I have gone into recovery, I find that, though I have depressive epsodes, I am more at peace with myself as I work my 12 Step programme.
At the start of our meeting this is read out. It makes a lot of sense to me for why I became an addict.
As children and adolescents, many of us felt inadequate, unworthy, alone, and afraid. Our insides never matched what we saw on the outsides of others.
Early on, we came to feel disconnected—from parents, from peers, from ourselves. We tuned out with fantasy and masturbation. We plugged in by drinking in the pictures, the images, and pursuing the objects of our fantasies. We lusted and wanted to be lusted after.
We became true addicts: sex with self, promiscuity, adultery, dependency relationships, and more fantasy. We got it through the eyes; we bought it, we sold it, we traded it, we gave it away. We were addicted to the intrigue, the tease, the forbidden. The only way we knew to be free of it was to do it. “Please connect with me and make me whole!” we cried with outstretched arms. Lusting after the Big Fix, we gave away our power to others.
This produced guilt, self-hatred, remorse, emptiness, and pain, and we were driven ever inward, away from reality, away from love, lost inside ourselves.
Our habit made true intimacy impossible. We could never know real union with another because we were addicted to the unreal. We went for the “chemistry,” the connection that had the magic, because it by-passed intimacy and true union. Fantasy corrupted the real; lust killed love.
We became true addicts. We took from others to fill up what was lacking in ourselves. Conning ourselves time and again that the next one would save us, we were really losing our lives.
I don't know the details of your relationship life but if you don't want to keep hurting yourself and others, then sort out your problem first. No relationship will do that for you.
Sorry to be blunt.