hopeless and giving up

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This topic has 10 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 5 years, 1 month ago by Anonymous.

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September 29, 2019 at 6:58 am #314951

Loneman
Participant

TLTR; read last paragraph.

I’m a depressed person. I’ve dealt with depression my whole life and so it became so normal to me. It was apart of me, apart of who I am. So when I met someone who I had mutual feelings for, it was amazing. It felt like a love story. It was a story of a boy, abused and neglected, finally found someone that cared. The mother figure that he never had. And a happy ending. But not for me.

Depression is still apart of who I am. I am not saved. I am not inevitably happy for I found the woman I love. Sure, I do feel happy at times, unlike before. But before I was stagnant with my emotions. I was indifferent to people and events. Sometimes I’d feel anger or sadness, but never at an extreme level. Being in love, is caring. It is feeling multiple emotions at once, but the emotions are amplified at a maximum level where it feels as though you are experiencing music at the highest volume. At this point I can’t think so my mind loses it’s sanity at which I stop making educated or logical decisions. So I made the life changing decision to ask my love to move in with me, leaving her family over 1000 km’s.

Now she is all I have besides being alone. Living with her has been two extremes. I either want her out or I want to marry her and spend the rest of my life with her. What it seems most the time, it is the latter. But today, today is different. Cause when I say that there were times I wanted her out, I never meant it. But today, she, being new to the area, wanted to meet new people and make friends. So she decided to go to a party she was invited to by a female friend at work.

I feel as though I am connected to her. That she is all I have and if or when I lose her, then I have nothing. So, this is where I need advice. This is where I am stuck in life, like trying to solve parabolas in 12th grade and asking the teacher the next step in the formula. She went to this party and got very drunk. She probably won’t remember tonight. But I had to drive her to our home. It was a half hour drive to which she spent most of it passed out and the beginning of it talking about what happened. Briefly. Emphasized, briefly. She said her friend that she went with was ‘grinding’ on a guy that isn’t her boyfriend. She spent most the night talking to a guy who offered to be her “fitness coach”. Overall, she enjoyed the night. Now here is the ordeal, I love her and I believe that she was loyal to me during her ‘enjoyment’ of partying. But the fact that she enjoyed partying so much seemed too immature to me. I am only a year and a quarter older than her and she seemed so immature. I am definitely at the maturity level as a middle age man. So, what I need to understand, is whether I can make her match my maturity or end things with her, find a girl who doesn’t enjoy parties. Or should I trust her and let her do her thing?

September 29, 2019 at 7:35 am #314993

Anonymous
Guest

Dear Loneman:

Clearly it is a bad idea, for as long as you and her live together and are in a monogamous relationship, that she or you attend parties at nights, especially parties where alcohol is served. If any one of you want to attend such a party, ask the other to go with you, and if the other does not want to go, then no party.

Did any of you consider going to that party together?

Other comments:

1. You wrote about your relationship: “It was a story of a boy, abused and neglected, finally found someone that cared. The mother figure that he never had. And a happy ending. But not for me.. I am not saved”-

-it doesn’t work this way, that an abused and neglected child, once an adult, finds his salvation in a romantic relationship. The reason it doesn’t work that way is because childhood years are our formative years, meaning the brain is formed during our first decade or so- thousands of neuropathways are formed, recording our emotional experience. Once you are an adult, those early life experience remain.

2. You shared that you’ve been depressed your whole life, and that “Being in love, is caring. It is feeing multiple emotions at once, but the emotions are amplified at a maximum level where it feels as though you are experiencing music at the highest volume”-

– when a child feels too much distress, that is too much of a neural excitation, the brain/ body shuts down so to minimize that very unpleasant excitation. The shutting down is depression- minimizing excitation. The depressed person feels minimal excitation, be it positive or negative- all excitation feels uncomfortable sooner or later. When you fell in love you experienced intense emotions, that is, positive neural excitation, something you are not used to and which feels very uncomfortable.

This discomfort is the reason you sometimes want to end the relationship. Do you agree?

anita

September 29, 2019 at 8:47 am #315009

Loneman
Participant

@anita

Yes, this is true. I get lost in how I feel that I don’t know how to react. I usually react in a fight or flight response. I’ll either get angry or I will run away. Right now, I feel like running away.

September 29, 2019 at 9:01 am #315011

Anonymous
Guest

Dear Loneman:

You wrote: “I’ve dealt with depression my whole life”- if you want, answer the following:

1. Did you in the past, or do you take any psychiatric medication for depression, or anxiety, such as any one of the SSRI group of medications?

2. Did you ever attend psychotherapy, or counseling- if so, when, for how long, what happened there and did it make any difference for you?

3. Are you still in contact with the people who neglected and abused you in childhood, if so, what is the nature of those contacts?

(I will be away from the computer for less than two hours).

anita

September 29, 2019 at 10:13 am #315027
Loneman
Participant
@anita

I have never taken medication for any mental illnesses in the past. I attended counseling for a couple of months and what I took from that was that I should start meditating. Lastly, I have not been in contact with those people.

I am not sure what to do in my current relationship. I guess, I was just disappointed in seeing how drunk she got noting that she isn’t very responsible. And that quality, or lack of quality has dissuaded me from wanting to continue this relationship. Because I did a lot of partying when I was younger and those were some of my darkest times. I partied to cope with being alone and to forget my past. To forget my childhood. So seeing that my girlfriend enjoys this ‘activity’ in life worries me. It brings me back to those bad times and I just can’t do it. I am going to try to talk to her tonight. But I believe that if she wants that to be apart of her life, than I can’t change her cause that is who she is. So my only options are to stay and accept or leave. But I love her, so it isn’t that easy.
- This reply was modified 5 years, 1 month ago by Loneman. Reason: typo
September 29, 2019 at 10:33 am #315031

Anonymous
Guest

Dear Loneman:

If she is interested in doing that again, that is going for party without you, a party where alcohol is served, then you should absolutely end the relationship- it is not something you can handle. And there is no reason for you to handle it because there is such a possibility- to have a girlfriend who does not go to parties without her boyfriend.

Talk to her tonight and tell her you can’t and won’t deal with that behavior, not even one more time. Then listen to what she tells you.

I hope to read from you after that conversation, as well as before the conversation if you want to prepare for that conversation or discuss with me anything else.

anita

September 30, 2019 at 3:30 am #315107

Peggy
Participant

Hi Loneman,

Your girlfriend went to a party and got drunk. This does not mean that she was unfaithful to you, it just meant that she wanted to have a good time. If this person matters to you, then issuing any form of ultimatum will end in you losing her. If you can’t trust her then she’s better off without you. There is nothing wrong with your girlfirend enjoying herself at any age and it does not denote immaturity. Like it or not, you are responsible for your own state of mind and it is up to you to decide whether your girlfrriend is worth you putting the effort in to deal with your extremes of emotions. Join a yoga class and commit to half an hour a day, learn relaxation techniques, create new neural pathways in your brain which focus on positive thought and actions.

It’s interesting that you call yourself Loneman when your girlfriend has moved 1000 km to be with you giving up her own family and friends and now wants to meet new people and make friends. This is called normal. She’s made a commitment to you. No doubt, if she spends any real time with her new friends, you’ll begin to feel neglected all over again.

You can’t change your girlfriend but you can change you. This is where it’s at.

Peggy

September 30, 2019 at 9:25 pm #315285

Kevin
Participant

Very beautifully said Peggy.

October 1, 2019 at 6:43 am #315321

Anonymous
Guest

Dear Loneman:

In your original post you wrote: “She went to this party and got very drunk… passed out.. her friend that she went with was ‘grinding’ on a guy that isn’t her boyfriend. She (your girlfriend) spent most the night talking to a guy who offered to be her ‘fitness coach’. Overall, she enjoyed the night”.

The problem is not that she enjoyed herself, but that she enjoyed herself irresponsibly. She was irresponsible regarding her personal safety and the safety of the relationship with you.

She drank too much and passed out at one point. When “very drunk” a person’s sensible thinking is incapacitated. Her girlfriend at the party was grinding against a man who was not her boyfriend. And another man was flirting with your girlfriend.

The risks for one’s safety in this scenario is falling and hurting oneself, bumping into things, hurting oneself. Driving when drunk is of course risky for everyone on the road. And having sex with men one meets in a bar is not likely to be protected, therefore there are STD and pregnancy risks.

When a girlfriend comes home to her live-in boyfriend with an STD, that cannot possibly be good for a relationship. When a man in a monogamous relationship knows his girlfriend is at a party getting drunk, knowing she can hurt herself or have sex with a man she meets at a party- that cannot possibly be good for a relationship.

If your girlfriend needs to have fun and you do not want to join her to parties where alcohol is served, explore other ways for her to have fun by herself. For example, she might like to attend an acting class- that can be a lot of fun. Or a gym with yoga classes. She can even go to the movies by herself, day time. In addition to that, the two of you can find ways to have fun together, going out for fun activities. Maybe hiking, a picnic at the beach or in a park. And so on.

I hope to read more from you.

anita

October 6, 2019 at 3:58 pm #316377

Loneman
Participant

@anita

Hi, sorry for such the late reply. I got busy. But we worked it out and she started to understand me.

Thanks for the help.

October 7, 2019 at 9:55 am #316507

Anonymous
Guest

You are welcome, Loneman. Post again anytime you need or want to post and I will be glad to reply to you.

anita
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