Finally responding to the above:
Regarding the medication - I know you all don't mean any harm when you say the medication may possibly be hurting the situation, but I'm going to have to disagree with you on that one. When I first started taking the medication I was extremely depressed - let me preface that by stating that some families may be labelled as "prozac families" - that's my family - the only difference is that I was the first to truly admit it to everyone that my depression was not a situational depression - it was something I had been struggling with for many years of my life - at least 10. Finally I found something that made me actually feel NORMAL - I had what regular people call their ups and downs, their highs and lows. I wasn't happy all the time, I wasn't sad all the time - I was able to deal with things rationally, the way an adult should deal with things that impact their lives. My husband told me he could tell the difference between when I was taking my medicine and when I wasn't taking my medicine - I was that different of a person. I have since stopped taking the medicine and don't feel like I need to take it anymore. I am happy when I should be happy, sad when I should be sad, I'm not irrational... but most of all, I feel right mentally and I honestly believe that medication has helped me get to where I am today.
Re. David and I doing things together: We used to do EVERYTHING together to the point where we had no external friendships. In my opinion, it is a healthy thing to have external relationships, it is healthy to have other people you can turn to, because Lord knows my husband doesn't want to hear every little detail of what is bothering me and I certainly wouldn't want to burden him with that. Just as I don't need to hear everything that flows through his head. I also think it's healthy to develop different interests - that way you can introduce the other person to those interests.
Re. some of the questions asked by PDM:
"Why did you feel, even a a child, that you had to be the one who made people happy?" - I was always the one that made people smile, I never wanted to see people unhappy. It's just been in my nature. My other siblings would tell my mother they hated her - I hated to see her cry after they told her that. I could never tell her that even if I felt it in the heat of the moment - I knew it wasn't true and I couldn't hurt her so badly. I never wanted to disappoint anyone, to the point where I was unhappy because it made my mother happy to see that I wore the clothes she picked out for me, did my hair the way she wanted it done, got the grades my parents wanted me to have. It made them happy and I guess in some aspect it made me happy to see them happy. That and as I grew older and I spoke up about things bothering me, it only caused fights, tension, anger - all things that would cause me to shut down and give in to what they wanted to make them happy - at the expense of my own happiness.
"What caused your world to crash? How did you come to lose your friends at such a young age?" My world crashed when who I thought had been my best friend (and other friends) for 6+ years told me she didn't want to hear my problems anymore. So I turned to the only other girl that I thought was my friend - she knew about my eating problems and ended up lying to her parents (who subsequently told my parents) about what we would do together: she said I was the only one going out drinking (which was not true, we were hanging out with college boys who drank in addition to her drinking) and that I was still making myself sick (which was not true). When I realized what happening, I got in the car and started driving west - wanting to run away. Ultimately, I turned the car around and went home. After being screamed at by my parents and realizing I had no friends left to turn to, I sunk into an even deeper depression. Then David came along.
"Did you enjoy college ~ without friends & without your boyfriend?" I think I enjoyed college. If I could go back through it, I might make more of an effort to make and keep more friends. I also probably would not date anyone. I think I was too young to get into such a serious relationship. Needless to say, based on the above, I think I would have enjoyed college more had I followed the comments above.
"How old were you when the drinking, cutting, etc, began?" I didn't start drinking until late in my senior year in high school - this was after my best friend told me she didn't want to hear about my problems anymore. I started my eating disorder before the end of my junior year. I also started cutting myself then - at first it was my belly, upper legs and arms. After that, since I was a lifeguard during the summer, I cut just my belly. This continued throughout my senior year - finally my freshman year in college, after a fight that David and I had, I took a knife and sliced very deeply - didn't get stiches, just patched it up with butterflies and wore long-sleeve shirts for a while. My parents have noticed the scar as it is on the arm that I got burned with boiling water when I was a child - they knew what that scar looked like - and this was fresh, red and out of place. I have not cut myself since then, although a couple of times I have taken pills in the hopes of not waking up. It has been several years since that though as well.
"How did your family react?" My family doesn't know about all the details of my friendship woes. The only portion they know about is my eating disorder as they are the ones that took me to a psychiatrist to get help.
"Did you tell your husband about it?" My husband knows about all of the above.
"How did your husband react?" My husband was sorry that the above happened to me. He now knows how I feel about college as well. He said he was afraid I would feel this way at some point but doesn't believe he's at all to blame for it - which I never blamed him anyway. This was something I should have realized at that point in my life, but didn't.
"Has all this affected the way that you behave, and have behaved, towards your husband, do you think?" I do believe that the above has affected the way I used to and currently behave with my husband. I should have had a different standpoint from the beginning - I should have know it's always a nice gesture to make people happy, but you also need to make yourself happy. Making others happy to the expense of your own happiness is not healthy, nor is it the way to live a life. I think, because I am now realizing this and feeling the pressure to continue to make him happy with where he wants to go in his life is impacting the way I feel about him - I think it has caused a rift - I think when I told him that I wanted to travel and I saw how negatively he reacted, it angered me and made me only want to do it more - like an immature child. I do want to travel though - and he does have the opportunity to meet up with me at the ends of my trips, but he says it's too expensive and he doesn't want to do it. He has also said that I can get to understand the business without having to travel - which is NOT true. I will not go into the details of my new job, except that I am an internal auditor of a manufacturing company. I was not hired into this position with the anticipation (by myself or the people that hired me) that I would always be in internal audit, I was hired in this position in hopes that I would move up within the company and possibly be a Controller at one of the many locations within the world. My husband knew this when I accepted the job - after I came back from my first trip and started talking about the possibilities, he got upset.
He says he wants children now - I do not (I do at some point, but not at the moment, especially now given the new opportunties with my job). I want to get out there, understand the new business that I'm in, do things I have always wanted to do, but never had the chance and once children are in the picture, those opportunities may disappear, especially with me being a woman.
"Why did the photos cause you problems?" It made me think of times when I was happy, but it reminds me of how much I've changed and how much I've realized since those days. Some of them also show me what lengths I was willing to go through in order to make him happy, sometimes even at the sacrifice of my own happiness.
"I get the impression that your husband has been your 'rock', but at a price. You seem to feel that you have to please him, just for being there for you. But marriage is a two-way thing. He must have got something out of it too. You want him to be happy, but does he want you to be happy?" He wants me to be happy and he's trying now that all of this has come up, but I have this feeling in the back of my mind that it's too late - it might be too late to build up his deposits in my "love bank" for him. (
http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi3200_love.html)
"You were both very young to marry, yet he is satisfied with his lot ~ even if it means hating his job and just sitting on the sofa, watching TV. You have always appeared to be content with this too. But it was an appearance, only. You were not content, but you wanted to do and say whatever made him happy ~ including agreeing to have children." This is quite on point with how I'm feeling looking back at things. And now that I think about it - I was crying the entire time during our wedding - was this something I should have paid attention to?
"You may be able to fall in love again and start afresh, or it might be time to make the break. Be sure ~ or as sure as you can be. Talk it over. Give it every chance. Talk to your counsellor. See how it goes." I have a meeting with my counselor tomorrow to discuss these things. I think this blog has helped and I hope it continues to help me sort through things. Maybe one day I will feel for him the way I once did, but only time will tell. I know it hurts him to know I don't want to kiss him or hug him - but when I do, I feel nothing, almost as though I'm kissing a brother or just a friend. This has and will continue to be hard.
Thank you all for your input - it is greatly appreciated.
