Apart from the opportunities, I could have written this. What I would like to be able to do is be OK with being single, because having another relationship like my past ones which would leave me freshly dumped at 37 and trying to pick up the pieces of a shattered life again sounds like a nightmare not too short of being buried alive.
Margo, I can definately empathize. I hope everything works out for you, and know that you can always talk to us here on the dope.
Well damn, now my little “troubles” seem petty by comparison. I have my health, a stable job, and love in my life. Thanks all, for the dose of perspective.
I am still married and can’t seem to get completely free from this unhealthy relationship.
I’m unhappy my brother is still unemployed after nearly a year. His field of expertise is shrinking and he is unlikely to find another job comparable to what he was doing.
I’m unhappy my wife’s company is preparing for a strike, stressing her out to the point where she is sick and will probably have strike duty in Ohio away from us all.
I am in general depressed about the economy and the small hits my own pay has taken including losing our 401k match this year.
Overall I am still thankful though we both have good jobs, my kids are healthy and doing well. I am relieved my mother’s problem was diagnosed and she is doing much better. I thought we would lose her. I am optimistic that a candidate I looked forward to voting for will be in charge to lead us through this troubled time.
Finally I am thankful that overall my problems are those that can be handled. It might even turn out that instead of just letting my brother move in until he gets back on his feet will instead be him doing a favor for us and helping out by moving in while my wife is away.
I’m sorry that you’re having medical problems on top of everything else. I just retired and feel almost guilty complaining about my issues with it because they’re trivial next to yours.
I’m 49 and I retired early because we didn’t need both checks in full anymore and my partner didn’t want to stop working yet. I had worked from the time that I was 13 until now and the idea of not having to work was/is wonderful. Except…
All of my friends still work so I spend all of my time alone except when my partner is home. Other than talking to people online I can go an entire week without having any other human interactions. This doesn’t sound so bad except for the fact that I love it. I’ve always been an extrovert and had lots of friends but now I’m perfectly content to isolate myself. It’s weird for me and I don’t know why I’ve become so antisocial. I don’t really want to meet other retired people because I have this ridiculous feeling that they’re “old”. Intellectually I know that I’m getting old too but I see myself as coming from a different generation than people that are only 10 years older than I am. I’m not ready for senior bus tours or being a red hat lady like my mother is. My best friend died a few years ago and although it’s usually easy for me to make new friends I don’t have any desire to. I don’t feel depressed, lonely or bored but I don’t know where this big change came from or if it’s permanent. I guess I feel worried about not feeling unhappy in a situation that would normally be frustrating for someone that was as social as I was.
My other unhappiness is that my little cocker spaniel is getting close to the end of his life. He came from the pound so I don’t know how old he is but he’s deaf, blind, almost incontinent and can barely keep his back legs under him at this point. Every time I think about it I start crying. I know that I’ll get over it like I have with every other pet but it doesn’t feel that way now.
All in all I know how lucky I am to have a wonderful relationship, be financially stable and live in a place that I love but I hope that I don’t turn into a hermit as I get older.
Single and aging, and uniformly rejected after two dates, at most, by any woman that I feel real chemistry with.
Hang in there. I was in talk-only therapy for five years, and finally got over my reluctance to take meds. Then, over the course of nine years, I went through the entire spectrum of antidepressants, and actually spent a year on MAOIs that didn’t work because there just wasn’t anything left. I ended up consulting with the head of the psychopharmacology dept of a major university, and we went back through things making “cocktails” of multiple meds. The last combination apparently worked, as I’m apparently functional, but that pretty much means that I can get out of bed and go to work. I’ve been a little stuck for the past three years, trying to do that last step of actually going out into the world of people. (I’m considered a little eccentric at work, but I can at least function there).
Before arriving at the right mix of meds, I discussed ECT with my therapists as a possible avenue, but didn’t do it. However, some people have benefited from it (e.g., Carrie Fisher) and it’s not as much of a crap shoot as it once was. When I was seriously considering it, I felt like the biggest loser on the planet; I didn’t know if I would be able to tell anyone about it if I had done it, because people just don’t know how bad it can get when you find yourself looking at ECT as a possible part of therapy.
I can’t say it all works out to be sunshine and puppies, but at least I’ve gotten to the stage of being functional, and I’m currently counting that as a win.
I am unhappy that layoffs will be coming up so either I or my colleague(s) will be out of work. I’m unhappy that there aren’t a lot of other choices for employment around here for any of us.
I’m unhappy that I am clinging to this job rather than pursuing my real dream, because it’s a risk and scary but would really pay off. But I’d like to choose to leave my job, you know, and not be asked to leave. Argh.
Oh, and I am unhappy about how scared I am to look at my retirement account balance when it comes in the mail soon!
I’m stuck in the U.K. and bored out of my mind.
I want to be world travelling and doing something interesting.
I want to be surrounded by people who have led interesting lives and are on the same wavelength as me.
Sometimes I think that I should get hitched again but that would messup any chance of doing the roving bit.
One of the companies I work for has decided we should all be grateful we have a job in this economy. This means they feel free to treat workers like dirt. The job has turned into all stick and no carrot. Worse they’ve hired new supervisors who have decided the only way they can justify their jobs is to spend lots of time enforcing petty rules and writing up people when they even hint at thinking of breaking them. We’re supposed to be as docile as possible about no pensions, no direct deposit, no wage increases and an increased work load.
Oh and I’d like to murder several body parts including my ovaries, eyes and gums.
It is frightening how quick some companies take advantage of the down turn to act like shit. I can’t complain (much) about my job. We lost some benefits and are being asked to do more with less but they actually relaxed the dress policy and are not going out of their way to destroy moral.
My wife’s job on the other hand is seriously overloading its salary employees and looking to crush the union employees. The really want to build a team environment.
If it’s not too personal, what combination is working for you at the moment? SSRIs and SNRIs alone are both pretty useless for me (much worse problems with side effects and withdrawal in the case of the SNRIs).
Note: I am absolutely not giving any advice here, and I’m a little hesitant to say, because the categories of medications are sometimes taken out of context.
But …
Nortryptline is the primary one; it’s a very old tricyclic. It was actually the second one I tried back in 1997, and it worked very well in terms of my depression, but it gave me tachycardia and made me sweat so profusely that I sometimes changed shirts midway through the day. The side effects were too extreme, and beta blockers didn’t help much, so I proceeded to wander in the (pharmaceutical) desert for about seven years, trying things across the spectrum.
When we started considering cocktails, we started with Nortyptline, since it was the one that was most effective against the baseline depression. Then we added Guanfacine (Tenex), which lowers my metabolism somewhat, and I also take a “sub-therapeutic” dose of Abilify, which (please don’t read too much into this) is an anti-psychotic. In its normal doses, it’s used for bipolar disorder, but in the smaller doses it seems to aid antidepressants and lower my metabolism even more.
I frankly think that a lot of this is just doctors stumbling around in the dark. They know these meds have psychoactive properties, but the issues underlying depression and anxiety are so complex that the best they can do is just try a bunch of things and see what works on any give patient. I did not like giving up my 30s to this task, but I seem to be in a better place these days. However, my lifestyle is also a bit different than it was ten years ago, and I’ve also moved somewhere along the various axes of emotional stability, mostly in positive directions, so maybe that’s helping.
The really big problem is that, because I know how bad it was when I was in the pits of despair, I’m terrified of altering anything about the meds or my general lifestyle, because I might get knocked off-kilter and go into a downward spiral. I just can’t let that happen again, so I’ve been very hesitant to rock the boat in the last few years, which itself has now become a bigger problem.
You know, if I could choose between being where I am now and being stuck in a functional and stable situation, I’d probably pick the latter. Thanks for sharing your (moderately, at least) successful cocktail, and keep on keepin’ on.
I’m almost 3/4 of the way through my Master’s in Criminal Justice program and I still work a crappy $9/hr job with constantly rotating hours. This week starting Thursday at 6 PM I work 4 hours on, 8 off, 8 on, 3 off, 5 on, 8 off, 8 on, 4 off, 4 on, 8 off, 8 on… That brings me up to 2PM Sunday, not sure my schedule after that. And I have a 12-page juvenile justice paper due at the end of that. I’ll be lucky to pass.
To top it all off, I live in Michigan and I can’t convince my long-term girlfriend to move to a more economically viable area. Oh sure, it’s great for her. She’s still an undergrad so doesn’t need to worry about the big wide world out here. Well, I’ve had a B.A. for 3 years and still make less than most entry level positions straight out of high school. I’ve sent out about 500 apps by my count without much success. We’ve got to get out of here and find careers! With health insurance! And pay over $18,000 a year! I’m 25 years old and haven’t been to a dentist in 6 years because I can’t afford it. I don’t know if I can take this another year.
But I know if I choose career over family again and relocate without her (tried it once, all fell apart) I will regret it for the rest of my life.
My job. I hit the “fuck it” stage today.
I’ve got 3 or 4 “art directors”, depending on the day, and they all have contradicting opinions on how the game should look. A new guy was hired recently, apparently on the strength of his friendships with the guys who hired him, whose job it is to make things look “next gen”. He’s decided this means micromanaging me- sitting behind me, telling me what the effects should look like.
Listen, ya jerk, I was hired because I know what the effects should look like, not because I’m real good at pressing buttons.
Anyway, I hit my saturation point today. I just don’t care anymore.
Luckily, I’ve got an interview tomorrow, at a better company. 
Having ulcerative colitis, not having insurance, and feeling ill every day, despite having given up eating anything that tastes good.
To those of you who have problems with clinical depression, there are many of us here who understand and know that it is not just about being sad. I’ve been told that ETC treatments these days are not the nightmare that they were in the 1960s when I had them. But even then, they were better than trying to cope with depression. And they did work!
New medical solutions are coming to light all the time. And if talk therapy is of no help, you might ask yourself if you have the right therapist. That’s just something to consider.
The Social Security Administration recognizes that depression can be debilitating.
To the newlywed among us: One of my best friends is ninety years old and very active and savvy. She was married just over fifty years when she lost her husband. I thought that she had had an ideal marriage. One day when I was whining about something that wasn’t going my way in my own 23 year marriage, she said, “There are no good marriages – only good occasions.”
Another time I heard a minister’s wife say that she had never considered divorce. “Murder? Yes. Divorce? No.”
I have had the same fight that you are having at least fifteen times. Maybe I’m exaggerating. More like twenty-five or thirty times. Most of those times were in the first four or five years of marriage. Welcome to the great rollercoaster!
You can give each other space even under the same roof. You don’t have to fight everything out while you are angry. Sleep can help. So can A sense of humor, some rules, sitting in the floor facing each other, letting it go, taking turns, writing it all out, and saying, “I’m sorry, I’m just in a sucky mood.”
Learn where your boundaries really are. You can work them out over time. Right now, can’t you decide that you two are going to work it out whatever it takes? Then just be quiet with each other and trust each other for a few days. Trust. Really trust.
First years are often abolute hell. The reality comes as a surprise to a lot of people – especially when they have known each other for a long time or even lived together.
It will help if you can keep your tears private for a while. He will want to fix your tears and feel bad that you are crying – and probably blame himself a little too. You have a right to your tears, but when you are talking things out, try not to cry, okay?
He loves you. That’s why he tries to hold you. That’s why he married you after knowing you for so long. You don’t have to be perfect or change too much. Listen. Trust Touch. Talk. Forgive.
This right here. It’s what I want, and it is all that I’ve been asking for. I asked him to move out because he wouldn’t say or do anything that could let me feel like he even wants to work it out, much less that he is committed to it. I hope that he really does, and will realize that, but I can’t force him, and I can’t live with the way he’s treating me if that purpose isn’t there.
I’m trying to use this time to reset my emotional responses to stop crying at the drop of a hat, and to figure out how to be happy and OK again without relying on him to make it so (which hasn’t been intentional, and needs to happen whether we work it out or not.)
Thank you for your advice, it seems pretty spot on. I know I’m not the first to go through this and won’t be the last.
I’m actually feeling pretty OK- I just had a long talk with an old friend who “knew us when” we were reasonably happy and good together (a whole 6 months ago) and cares about us both. Talking to her helped me realize that while I love the friends I have here, I don’t really trust them in matters of ethics or judgement- they aren’t bad people, they just look at life very differently than I do, plus they’ve been subjected to a downward spiral of misery and contempt between us, so probably think we’re better off apart. My mom and sister love me unconditionally, but that’s kind of a problem because their priority is protecting me, and my mom especially falls back on her experience of 3 divorces- good advice for keeping me safe, not so good for saving my marriage. I love them and I need their help, but I have to remember that their goal isn’t necessarily mine- they love my husband, but I’ll always come first for them.