Buon giorno, tutti! Today is our fourth wedding anniversary, and we are now crossing the threshold of having spent half of our married life together. I found a great card with an arm wrestling couple that says "Still holding hands," but I don't think H would appreciate the humor as much as I do. I opted for one about me burning the sauce. I usually burn it a little but last month I really charred it. H actually thinks it's okay, though not as good as usual. Bless him.
One of the best things I think we've done this year is making mutual friends. Up until last year, our "mutual friends" were my friends, and to be honest most of them are more like acquaintances even to me. We've been spending time with them, because we don't know anyone else. We've met some really cool people through the Italian group and other places. I'm still keeping up with "my" friends who are really friends, but it's been really nice having friends whom we both trust and enjoy being around.
Gotta go! Have a great week everyone and take care of yourselves. -- z
I have been off of anti-depressants for two months and keep catching myself being a real jerk and coming close to tears over the wierdest stuff every single day. I hate to take drugs, yet I'm beginning to think longingly of those lovely Zoloft days. H says that I can't stay on drugs forever... that was my theory before I started tearing up over ads in women's magazines. [sigh] I need to give up and go back to the doctor I suppose. I've just missed so much work this year because of my sinuses and the surgery. That is going very well. I can sleep, I can think and I'm not in pain. Yeah!
Around here we have had some very good news. First, H called me last week to tell me our Italian group had received its 501(c)3 tax exempt designation from the IRS. This took six months of research and preparation just to fill out what became an 85 page application. I almost cried when I got the news that we'd been accepted. Second, our Italian group got a feature article in one of the local entertainment weeklies this week. Together this means that "we have arrived," and the pressure is on for us to do some really great things. I suppose we could continue to go with the status quo, but it won't last any longer than the board of directors has energy. I'd like to see this go beyond where we are. I was feeling a little overhwelmed by it all the other day, just because we're at a point where people's personal expectations are starting to surface. I've put so much into it that I have a lot at stake where others do not. Sometimes I feel like I might be the only one interested in what is best for the organization itself. Deep down I don't believe that's true, but I do think that the people who are interested in the well-being of the organization are greatly outnumbered. Somehow I manage to keep more patience with these people than I do my own husband... maybe he just gets the brunt of my frustration. Oh well, onward and upward! Have a great day! -- z
Z - A few thoughts: First - if you stopped your antidepressants abruptly, instead of weaning off of them slowly, you might need to go back on them at a low dose and transition off more slowly. Second, many people need them for up to three years for an episodic depression, and some people do indeed need them for life (I'm guessing my H might be one of the latter, as problems he has had all h9s life since his teens were lifted when he finally took them.)
Third, if you really don't want to go back on them, consider trying all the natural methods you can to improve your mood: - get a lightbox or a dawn-simulating alarm clock - these can be helpful even for non-seasonal depression - take some fish oil, B-complex vitamins, a multivitamin, vitamin E, on a regular basis - exercise 3 days a week - shown in some studies to be as good as antidepressants (I don't quite believe it's THAT good, but it DOES help)
Second, I'm finally coming back to update, with much long overdue news. H and I are separated... ... but by circumstance rather than choice. In a rapid series of events I applied for and got a promotion that has taken me to Denver... where incidentally I was looking for a job when my marriage crisis called me home. H loves the mountains, so he's all for it, but someone had to stay back and finish the renovations on the house. I only gave three weeks notice at my old job, and have been out in Denver for two months now. Alas, the week I left, the city sewers backed up into our basement, and it has taken my H two months just to get the house back to the point it was before.
Since my H is ex-military, I keep treating this kind of like he's been deployed, and he seems to like that support from the homefront type of attitude. In the meantime I am living with my parents in Denver, which is okay. My parents are really neat people, and I have a lot in common with them. My dad and I like WWII movies and swing music. My mom is up for just about anything. I admit that they do hound me a bit about things, usually the computer or mom's scrapbook project. I finally explained to my mom that I'd like to get half way down the stairs before she starts shouting "Come see how my new page looks?" I will shortly be explaining to both of them that I am not personally responsible for making sure they know how to use their computers. Some days I think I'll scream if I hear one more question like, "but why does it put my picture in the file when I want it in the folder on the window?" WTF???
Nonetheless, for Mother's Day, I did indulge my mom by spending two hours resizing, enhancing and printing photographs for her to put in her scrapbook. I think that made her happy, and I can always hang out in my room when I need a little space.
At my new job, I am happy as a clam. I know there is a certain amount of honeymoon period, but for the most part I think I am working with people who like and respect me and have reasonable expectations. This is a huge change from my old job. I even have a peer where I am working now, so that I can commiserate, and it turns out we have a lot in common. The best part is that I am happy to be there everyday, and no one seems to think that me being happy is going to ruin their day or threaten productivity.
My Italian group is going through a bit of a transition with having me as a long-distance leader. I adopted a Denver Italian group a couple of years ago, so I've been working on making connections to expand this group here.
That's all my big news. My H is getting a little moody the past week, but still misses me and still wants to be married to me. I did DB today, as H was being unhelpful and accusatory when I called him to ask for some information. He hates not to be helpful, so naturally he jumped on my case about how I should know this stuff and he doesn't have the information anymore, because he threw it away, et cetera. I didn't get off topic or get worked up, I just got the discussion to the point where I could ascertain that he didn't have the information and then got off of the phone thinking I'd talk to him tomorrow. A few hours later, he called back... no apology for being surly, but being an "acts of service" person, he went to our storage unit and dug through it to find the information (which he apparently didn't discard). I skipped mentioning his inconsistent statements, thanked him for going to look for the information, and ended up having a very nice chat instead of an argument.
Hope y'all are having a nice day, and taking care of yourselves. --z
Wow, big move! But it sounds great. I'm glad to hear that things are still progressing with your H. You have put so much into it, and you deserve it.
I came across some pictures the other day, of a certain someone with a glazed look. I wonder what could have caused such a thing? What a fun time that was
I have a friend from Texas that thought we had too much fun when certain people got him busted with his son when they made a surprise phone call. He's still paying for that one! Hee Hee.
The pictures were a nice walk down memory lane.
Me 47 Ex H 46 Bomb 9/02 D final 3/04 Ex H now married to OW
------------ This is surviving. There is no such thing as a normal life, there's just life. So get on with it and enjoy it!
Ciao! Thought I’d check in and get a few things off of my mind. H is still back in KC working on the house after seven months. I was at the end of my patience with it, because I think he often makes decisions that prolong the work on the house rather than move it toward completion, but after spending a week out there in October helping him, I also see that he’s doing a very big job entirely by himself. To a certain extent that too is a problem of his own making, since I am the more social of the two of us and he is disinclined to rely upon anyone who doesn’t belong to that very small class of people who might be called friends for life. I’ve been encouraging him to try to get his brother and a few people he trusts involved in the project, but I am sure he will still end up finishing the house on his own.
The real down side to this is that he feels guilty that it’s taking so long. There are a few people beginning to wonder what is taking him so long, but his guilt has turned it into the idea that everyone is bad mouthing him for being such a burden to me. That’s my H’s MO… make choices that amount to procrastination, so that he feels guilty, then decide everyone hates him because he’s obviously unworthy, resulting in a depression that leads to evading the issue that results in more procrastination . (I read the part of the book about not nagging, so I pretty much keep my mouth shut. What does one do when he does the nagging for me?)
The procrastination part isn’t so hard to accept, if one just decides that he’s a procrastinator who has to go about things in his own way, then one can just plan on the procrastination. At any rate, I do get entirely sick of hearing about how everyone despises him and everyone is out to get him. Occasionally, he can actually joke about everyone being out to get him, but the sad truth is that it really isn’t a joke to him.
There are days when I wonder if I didn’t screw up by trying to save my marriage. It really can be a bummer being married to someone who is depressed, self-critical, paranoid, and won’t be reasoned with. Some nights we sit on the phone for hours while he spins conspiracy theories about the people we know. I spend as much time trying to get him to put it into perspective. It doesn’t matter what points I make, someone is taking something vitally important from him, someone is threatening him, someone is offending him, someone is making his life harder and they’re doing these things as some kind of personal vendetta against him and/or me.
I’m about the only person he believes isn’t out to get him, though I’m problematic in a different way, because I’m not constantly vigilant the way that he is. I am a weak point in our defenses, because I’ll actually talk openly about myself with my family, my friends and even acquaintances. I guess I take the Tsar Alexander the First approach to self-defense … if I give it all away, the enemy will probably figure out there’s nothing there that they want anyway.
Besides that, my husband has accepted lots of other things that I do to threaten our well-being, some are inconsequential in my opinion and some things admittedly are really problematic. I think he came out of our divorce phase with a sense of resignation about the flaws in my character, and I suppose that is a good sign.
Life has been in a holding pattern since I moved to Denver for my job. At first I thought it would be a great opportunity for me to do things that are difficult to do when H is around, like read all night or take a yoga class or go to church on Sundays. But, I also know that going in that direction would not set me in the right mind frame for when he finally does join me here. Besides the fact that I get really philosophical in a way that totally annoys my H when I start spending a lot of time at church, I also wonder how fair is it that I start on my own grand life and make H figure out how to fit in when he gets here – kind of how things started in our relationship when we first met. I really want for this to be our first real opportunity to build something together. To pick a house together, to pick friends together, etc. So, I tread water and am bored a lot.
I think I get way too much time on my hands to think, and way too little positive interaction with my husband to make the marriage seem worthwhile. I anticipate that things will be better when he finally joins me, but his resolve to get the job done seems to be flagging as he gets more guilty, depressed and alienated. It seems that this wears on me more and more, while at the same time I see more and more how important I am to him.
Short version… our relationship doesn’t work to well when we’re apart.
We did celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary at the beginning of the month. Imagine that we’ve been separated by 650 miles for most of seven months. When we’ve been here, we’ve been in the constant company of my parents who don’t really like having our dog around. When we’ve been in KC, we can’t stay at our house (no furnishings, appliances or plumbing) so we are constantly in the company of relatives or working on something – and none of our relatives will let the dog stay with us. So our big anniversary present was to rent a hotel room with a kitchenette that allowed dogs. We cooked dinner, watched television and spent quality time with the dog all in complete privacy. It was so much fun, we were giddy.
Anyway, there’s all of the news. Hope everyone is doing well and taking care of themselves. On that score I have managed to lose a respectable twenty pounds since I moved out here and even managed to get myself back onto the elliptical this week. I love my job. I love the people I work with… I just wish I didn’t have to put myself in a box every night at five. Well, I can always Skype H and find out who’s out to get us today.
MAL: It might make that guy from TX feel a little better to know that I'm still paying for that weekend in VA Beach myself. On the rare occassion I mention it, my H looks at the wall and act as if he didn't even hear me... and I was relatively well-behaved.
Hi Z! Just wanted to stop in and wish you a very Merry Christmas and New Year! Denver sounds great and I am glad to hear you like it there. Take care! Debi
Just had an ugly week. Not that anything is necessarily wrong, but that I'm mostly lonely. I've been in Denver seven months, first staying with my parents and for the past two months it's just been me and the dog. I want to start my life, but I'm not inclined to start it without my H. Heck, by the time he gets here (and now he's putting off the move date again) I could have an entire life of friends and activities that have nothing to do with him.
Anyway, I've gained three pounds this week... most of it cookie dough. I'm unbelievably bored and spending a lot of time in my own head imagining if things were like this or like that, but not actually living my life. At what point do I throw in the towel and say "If we can't have a life together, then I want a life of my own?"
Sitting around here waiting just bites. Listening to my H go on about his eternal guilt over it, isn't exactly attractive either. I hear a lot of that, but not much about how he's getting off his butt to do something about it.
Today, instead of installing the duct work in our bathroom he spent the morning on "a personal goal." Nothing wrong with personal goals, but this one was stupid... he's determined that he will teach his brother's cat to use the cat flap to get into their garage??? Message loud and clear "Training my brother's cat is more satisfying and more important than finishing renovations on my house so that I can live with my wife." Or perhaps the message is "I'm afraid that I'm a failure so I'm going to set myself up for failure by not even attempting to try." So naturally, I sit on the phone listening to the blow by blow of the many hours spent following a cat around the house, luring the cat into the garage, prodding the cat toward the door, etc... and I nod and say "oh wow... oh cool... oh of course..." Because a) I want to be supportive, b) I don't want to nag about the house and c) I don't want to hear him whine about how sorry he is that he hasn't finished the renovations yet. So clearly I'm not taking care of myself... I'm putting my life on hold, which is not good... especially since it's starting to make me alternately depressed and angry. As for my H, he's not looking entirely attractive to me right now... no action, no activity, just a lot of guilt and complaining. Did I really start piecing just to put up with this crap?
... but by circumstance rather than choice. 
In a rapid series of events I applied for and got a promotion that has taken me to Denver... where incidentally I was looking for a job when my marriage crisis called me home. H loves the mountains, so he's all for it, but someone had to stay back and finish the renovations on the house. I only gave three weeks notice at my old job, and have been out in Denver for two months now. Alas, the week I left, the city sewers backed up into our basement, and it has taken my H two months just to get the house back to the point it was before. 
I wonder what could have caused such a thing? 