My Old Husband Is Resurfacing And I Don't Want Him Back

Today I am living my old life, my pre-recovery life, and I'm ticked off. My new and improved husband of the past twenty months is reverting back to old behaviors such as leaving church early, coming home and going to bed.  Such as telling me he is going to go work out and then sitting around.  Such as acting like a victim of his depression and acting helpless.  Such as disregarding a boundary I've set because, in his words, "You don't care anyway."

I rode out his declining mood and motivation a few days last week and the week before, because he has had some down days in the past months of recovery.  He's had days when it's been difficult to be present and when stress has overwhelmed him; however, due to his drastically changed habits and his changing heart, he was able to rebound fairly quickly.  It has been fantastic to observe him consistently on stronger emotional ground.

The difference now is the old, sulky husband is loitering here, and he is not yet showing signs of bounce-back.  I've been Ok, but today, I got scared and really sad.  I don't want my old life back, and I certainly don't want my old husband back.

But wait a second....even if, because of my husband's behavior, I feel like I am living my old life, I am NOT the same person I was when I lived that life.  I have changed.  I can have a decent day despite his mood, and I did, on Friday and Saturday and half of Sunday  But, today, I cracked. I even cried in Costco.  As the clerk handed me my receipt, she said, "I hope you have a better day."

Even though it wasn't a great day, I did have a better day than I would have pre-recovery.

I got up early and cheerfully got my kids to school.
I went to my exercise class.
I kept the appointments and did the work that I had planned.
I read my scriptures and prayed for guidance.
I called more than one support person and told them what was happening.
I called my sponsor and surrendered the things I cannot change.
I set two new boundaries: I won't go anywhere with him when he's like this. I will sleep downstairs when he's like this.

Yes, I do worry about relapse. Yes, it may have already happened.  It's out of my control, and I have  boundaries for all of that.

My buddy Melody Beattie summed up my plan, "Today, I will trust God and the process, but I will also take action to help myself feel better."

Right now I am taking the action of going to sleep.  Good night.

Are You Sick, Addicted or Depressed?

Right now I want to make a ballot with three possible boxes for my husband to check:

Are you physically sick? _______

Are you depressed? ______

Are you in your addiction?______

Because sometimes it is hard for me to tell.  All three look basically the same around here.

I could ask him, of course, as in have a conversation, but when he's in a state like this, his answers stir up more questions than they answer.  Such as "Do I believe him?" or "I wonder what the real truth is?"


Rebuilding a marriage out of the wreckage of sexual addiction is hands-down the most difficult task I have ever attempted, and today that task is beating me to a pulp.

A close recovery friend often reminds me that, "We are learning a new dance in our marriages, and we are bound to step on each other in the process."   I say AMEN.  We are figuratively stepping all over each other.

Is The Purpose of Life To Go Through It Without Medicine?

Yesterday I ran into a  friend and she confided that her 15 yr old daughter, who is a friend of my son's, was not doing well.  Her grades had dropped, she was uncharacteristically irritable, and she spent long hours in her room alone.  She turned down invitations to socialize with family and friends.  A man standing nearby said, "Sounds like depression to me.  Depression....or drugs."

I opened up about my son's depression.  She was incredulous when I told her that my son had struggled with depression and anxiety since before the age of 8.  She never would have known, she said.  Of course not: we cannot guess what is really going on in the heart of another person, even the ones in our own homes.

We talked about antidepressants, and I told her about my initial fears and my attempts to treat the depression with counseling and fish oil and gymnastics and wrestling and St. John's Wort. ANYTHING but a pill.  There were strategies, right?  There were tools and good counselors, and we would figure this thing out!

But through all these methods, I could see that my son was still isolating himself at home and at school.   His anxiety was keeping him awake long after he had gone to bed and waking him up long before dawn.  He had stomach aches daily, and often I had to force him out the door to school.  Nothing in our life had changed.  He had a good teacher, friends, and he wasn't being bullied.

But he could not do the things he wanted to do.  For example, he wanted to play little league basketball, but on game days, he would cry and fret and not be able to get out the door.  He was irritable and overwhelmed by very small tasks.  He was not the person I knew him to be.  I mourned the loss of the son I once had


We finally (after a 5-month wait), got into a child psychiatrist, who changed our perspective.  He said something to this effect:

"There are people with mental illness that go through life without taking medicine, right?  So I want you to ask yourselves: Is the purpose of your life to go through it without medicine?  Or is the purpose of your life to do as well as you can do?"

That doctor gave us the courage to give our son a very small dose of Zoloft and to watch and see what happened.  During that appointment that doctor also persuaded my husband to try medicine for his never-before-treated depression, something that I had been begging him to do for nine years.

That was in the spring of 2006, and I remember Thanksgiving of that year vividly.  As my family went around the table saying what we were most grateful for that year, there was one thing on my mind:  ZOLOFT!  Of course I was still hiding and projecting perfection, so I made up something else to say, but antidepressants had changed our family dynamics drastically, and I was grateful to God for allowing medicines to be developed for mental illness.

Mental illness is an illness.  Not a lack of will power.  Not a consequence of sin.  Not something that can be snapped out of.  Not something to be ashamed of.  But boy, our society shovels shame onto mental illness like we shovel Ben and Jerry's ice cream into our mouths.

Depression That No Amount Of Exercising, Reading, Thinking, Talking or Praying Could Alleviate

About five years ago, after a surgery that required several months of rehab, I found myself in a depression that no amount of exercising, reading, thinking, talking or praying could alleviate.

I didn't know that during this time and the months leading up to it, my husband was not in a months-long depression, as I had believed, but he was an active sex addict, whose addiction was escalating in frightening ways.

One day as I expressed sadness into his cold, disconnected eyes, I became so exasperated, that I threw a phone into the wall!  I had never done anything like that before, and it forced me to look at myself.  I was miserable.  Obviously, my old coping mechanisms weren't cutting it anymore.  I had resorted to throwing objects to get his attention!

I was sick, and I knew it.

Although I had confided my sadness to my close friends, I found my outer happy facade cracking to mere acquaintances.  Like a friend's husband, who called our house for something, and I ended up in tears when he asked me how I was doing.  I think I cried to a few people in the grocery store.  My sadness dam broke and spilled over, and I was powerless to fight it.   God seemed like a distant relative, with whom I had lost contact.

I was filled with fear: if I allowed myself to crumble, then our entire family would crumble.  My husband cycled perpetually in and out of family involvement, and I realized that even in my needy, post-surgery state, he could NOT stay present and emotionally support me, let alone pick up the slack with the kids and around the house.  The day I realized this was a horrible day: the man I married was not available for me when I really needed him.  I felt weak and alone and desperate.

Not too long after that, with my two year old on my hip, I walked into my pediatrician's office (I didn't even have my own doctor), and I asked for an anti-depressant.   I was brimming with shame that I couldn't handle my life.  Next I came home and made a counseling appointment with a therapist out of the phone book.

These were my first baby steps towards healing, and although it would be another three years before my husband finally disclosed his addiction, I began to learn about self-care and co-dependency and the grief process.  As painful as it was then, I believe now that God was giving me a head start on the things I would need to know to survive the future.

Confessions Of A Depressed Comic

For a while now I've wanted to do a series of posts on depression.  Happy thoughts, huh?  Up until my mid-20's I had no idea mental illness would be in my future, since it hadn't been in my past.  I bought into all the stigmatizing things people say: about depression being a choice and how taking medicine for mental illness was unnecessary and wrong-headed.

Since then I have lived every day with at least one mentally ill person.  Now I live with several, including the person I see in the mirror every day.  Ms. Experience is the best teacher (albeit the toughest teacher) I have ever had, and she is still teaching me better ways to live with my own depression/anxiety and with that of my family members'.  Having depression has increased my compassion.

The following is a video of an outstanding teen who struggles with depression.  I want to be part of this conversation.








Confessions of a Depressed Comic

Gentle readers, please let me know if this video doesn't work.  It's my first video post.