Posted by JohnD
Wed, 02 Jan 2008 00:34:00 GMT
Photo Credit: rustyphil – Stockxpert
It was more than a decade ago when I stopped believing my own fantasies of finding happiness by leaving my marriage. I could see that those dreams were only substitutes for taking a hard look at who I was. Depression, though, made that difficult task even harder by convincing me there was no one worth knowing in this mind and soul of mine. I had a dream at that time full of images of shame that took the form of people speaking in my own depressed voice all the messages I kept sending to myself. I sat shrinking in the corner of a big room, and each of them came in turn, looking twice their normal size, to tell me what a mess I was. The gloom of that dream woke me up. I could see so clearly how my psyche was devilishly busy turning my own thoughts into hammer blows to drive me deeper underground. Something snapped, and I was suddenly alert with purpose to fight back against that force trying to kill me. It was the same powerful feeling that woke me up from depression during an earlier bout with cancer. I wasn’t going to let that darkness prevent me from rediscovering who I really was and rebuilding a close relationship with my wife.
But exactly what do you do to regain this closeness with your partner?
Read more...
Posted in Partners to Depression, Connecting | Tags close, depression, intimacy, longing, love, marriage, partner, personality, therapy, Undefended Love | 2 comments
Posted by JohnD
Sat, 29 Dec 2007 23:38:00 GMT
Photo – Rights Reserved
In reading over the many responses to The Longing to Leave series, I realize those stories only get at part of the picture. Like many in the midst of depression, I wanted to blame my marriage for what I was going through and fantasized about leaving. But at the core of that fantasy was an almost miraculous closeness and intimacy. What is deeper than that longing to be close, to be perfectly understood, accepted, loved? The fantasy of leaving to attain it is like a drug that gets you high, but the charged dream always leaves out, as dreams usually do, the daily reality of building a relationship through hard honesty. When possessed by that dream, all I could think about was what I did not have in my life, yet I couldn’t do what needed to be done to turn that around, to restore the closeness I so deeply wanted.
I think of Sylvia Plath’s powerful image of her own depression in The Bell Jar. She felt enclosed in a clear glass structure that cut her off completely from everyone and everything but still left all of life fully visible. She could not connect with anyone or feel anything through that barrier. The image fit what I was going through in many ways. The separation was always there, and often I couldn’t feel anything at all. But there were other times when I was raging with fury inside that glass bell, full of blame and frustration and yelling to be heard. The words, though, and the rage were exactly what was driving my wife away rather than drawing her closer. I think the truth was that real closeness was the most terrifying thing I could encounter, and the fear of it was a powerful force driving me into fantasy fulfillment where intimacy was seemingly so available and had no cost.
Read more...
Posted in Partners to Depression, Connecting | Tags depression, dream, fantasy, intimacy, isolation, marriage, partner, presence, relationship, shame, Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar | 2 comments | no trackbacks
Posted by JohnD
Sat, 06 Oct 2007 21:21:00 GMT
The longing to leave one’s intimate partner brings out something that isn’t much discussed in descriptions of depression. It is the
active face of the illness. We often focus on the passive symptoms, the inactivity, the isolation, sense of worthlessness, disruption of focused thought, lack of will to do anything. But paradoxically the inner loss and need can drive depressed people to frenzied action to fill the great emptiness in the center of their lives. They may long to replace that inadequate self with an imagined new one that makes up for every loss.
My experience with this phase of illness occurred when I had only limited awareness of the hold depression had on me. That may be a key to understanding the dynamic and how to respond to someone in the grip of this drive to turn life upside down. Unhappy without knowing why, I had to find an explanation, and the easiest way to do that was to look outward. I could only see my present life, my wife, my work as holding me back, frustrating my deepest desires. In effect, I was blaming everyone but me for my misery. In that state, I could only focus on the promise of leaving, finding a new mate, new work, new everything.
Every suggestion my wife might make that there was something wrong with me only brought the angriest denial. Every time she said how much she loved me only felt like a demand that I stay stuck in this unfulfilling life and do what she wanted me to do. I knew so clearly that I was not the problem, certainly not sick but for the first time on the verge of escaping into the exciting life I should have been living all along.
Read more...
Posted in What Depression Can Do, Partners to Depression, Men and Depression | Tags anger, fantasy, intimacy, leaving, love, marriage, partner | 13 comments
Posted by JohnD
Thu, 04 Oct 2007 16:15:00 GMT
As I read through the web for conversations, questions, ideas about depression, I am struck by how many people who write to forums and blogs are desperately asking for help not for their own depression but for that of their spouses, partners, loved ones. So often, they report bewilderment. They feel stunned to find anger and rejection in place of love. How can it be that the person I have known so well is suddenly different, alien, hostile and wants to break out of the relationship that is so precious?
What is this longing to leave that so many depressed people feel? I have no simple answer to that, but I can describe my own tortured experience with an almost irresistible drive to break out and start a new life.
I spent many years feeling deeply unsettled and unhappy in ways I could not understand. Flaring up in anger at my wife and three great young boys became a common occurrence. I’d carry around resentments about being held back and unsatisfied with my life, fantasizing about other places, other women, other lives I could and should be leading. My usual mode was to bottle up my deepest feelings, making it all the more likely that when they surfaced it would be in weird and destructive ways. I’d seethe with barely suppressed anger, lash out in rage and, of course, deny angrily that anything was wrong when confronted by my wife.
Read more...
Posted in Partners to Depression, Men and Depression | Tags fantasy, intimacy, leaving, love, marriage, partner, rage | 9 comments
