YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

It has been an eventful few weeks, yet at the same time not so much has changed in my life.

1. I am still stuck in limbo regarding my current employment. The last development was a meeting (now 2.5 weeks ago) with the Provost and Vice Provost of my University discussing my request for reconsideration of his decision to not recommend me for tenure and promotion. He did not reject my request at that meeting, which is good, but I still don't know what the outcome will be. I am sick of waiting. And things in my department and at my university suck anyway.

2. My wife is crazy. I don't know how else to describe it, even though that is a mean thing to say and not really precise. She is overwhelmed and struggling, and her struggles add to my burden, and yet she keeps sabotaging herself and is full of anger and fear and entitlement and it is just hard to deal with. We had a huge fight Thursday morning. I don't even remember how it started but it ended up with her screaming in my face and me breaking down in a heap in tears on the floor. Somehow everything always ends up being my fault. Her anger is valid but mine isn't. My behavior is not OK but she can't help hers. But it gets all twisted around. Because she is getting angry at me for getting angry about her behavior that she can't help... and she says that I am blaming her for everything. Somehow my feelings or my reactions to her behavior or feelings are the problem, but her reactions to my behavior or feelings are perfectly fine? I worry constantly about our physical as well as mental health with the amount of stress we are under at home and with my work and her schoolwork. I apologized profusely over and over again. She didn't apologize for how angry she got. For screaming and yelling at me. For saying mean and hurtful things. For playing the victim.

But even now, as I'm writing this, I'm hearing her words. "You always blame everything on me. You act like I'm the crazy one. You make me out like I'm some kind of monster to everyone else." I don't even want to get into the details of how it started - it all seems so pointless and crazy. It is hard to go back and forth between the stress at home and the stress at work. At least at work I can try to hide in my office on certain days and just insulate myself from people. But I can't do that every day. I wish I could take a day off from work sometime but being home would be just as bad, if not worse.

3.I have been noticing attractive women more and more around me. I feel like if I were single, there are women that would be interested in me. For some reason, I seem to have a weird hot single mom radar. I want my marriage to get better. But mainly I want a confident, responsible partner in a relationship that helps me to feel good about myself and my life rather than making it harder to feel those things. I really hope my wife can become that partner again. I think she is trying, as I am trying to do it for her. For a long time I thought that if I couldn't get those things from her, there was no hope for me because nobody else would ever want me. Sometimes now I'm not so sure of that. It is really, really hard to love someone that needs/expects more than you can give and can't/won't give the things that you need.

4. I was called in for jury duty this week and served on a jury in a criminal case over the last two days. After hours of deliberation, we found the defendant guilty and I (as the foreman) had to hand the verdict over to the bailiff and then watch the judge sentence the man to six months in prison. It was a very interesting and yet surreal and emotionally draining experience. I am a scientist and a baseball umpire, so I have experience in trying to separate out emotions and just pay attention to the facts and the evidence and be analytical and decisive, but it is hard to do in that context. It scares me a little that just regular ordinary people with no particular expertise or intelligence or good judgement go into a jury box and make decisions that impact people's lives in such a significant way. And the well-trained, high-paid attorneys for both the prosecution and defense seem to spend so much of their time obfuscating, trying to discredit the testimony or evidence of the other side, and just generally trying to manipulate/persuade/confuse the jury. It makes you think a lot about things - both from a practical and a philosophical standpoint.

I forgot to mention... So I started off this week by reporting for jury duty at 8 am on Monday morning.

I started off last week with a dentist appointment at 8:30 am Monday that turned into part one of a root canal. And amazingly, that wasn't the low point of my week. At least there was nitrous oxide and novocaine for the root canal.

And this coming Monday, I will start my week by returning to the dentist to finish the root canal. Good times.

That's about where my life is now. A root canal is not something that I am dreading, but just one of the regular routine pains of life, and might even be a relaxing few hours in the chair under mild sedation, who knows...

weary wrote:Her anger is valid but mine isn't. My behavior is not OK but she can't help hers.

I apologized profusely over and over again. She didn't apologize for how angry she got. For screaming and yelling at me. For saying mean and hurtful things. For playing the victim.

I hear you, weary. You deserve to have your feelings validated as feelings, so I do so. Please take care. You don't deserve this suffering.

Thanks, manuel_moe_g.

My wife had a major meltdown last night, and it just left me feeling drained and hopeless. She is struggling and keeps giving up on herself, and yet she is terrified that I am going to give up on her and abandon her. So it's OK for her to give up on herself, to stop trying, to not let anyone else hold her accountable for her behavior, to decide that (in her words) she is "worthless", "a failure", "never going to be good enough no matter what", but I am supposed to (1) not give up on her and rebut all of those things she says about herself and (2) try to make her feel better and reassure her that everything is going to be OK. Never mind that her behavior as a wife really is not good enough for me. Her attitude and moods are hard to deal with and she is not a good partner in terms of the burden of responsibility. And there is no chance that we are ever going to have kids at this point, and it breaks my fucking heart. And I can't depend on her for anything. But because of her depression and anxiety and the fact that her mental and other disorders make everything too hard for her and it takes her too long to do things, she continues to get a pass on life and I can't say or do anything about it without feeling guilty and ashamed and being labeled an asshole.

She is struggling to finish papers for a course that she got an incomplete in last semester, and as a result asked her professor for the course she is taking this semester for an incomplete. She is a 40 year old woman in school for a second bachelor's degree struggling to complete one class per semester at this point and not taking care of herself, sharing in a meaningful way in household chores, or picking up after herself. She acts like a child, and sometimes a spoiled one at that, but she has a huge chip on her shoulder if I or anyone else ever dare call her on it. Meantime I am still in over my head in terms of what has to be done and so far away from having what I need to feel safe and calm and happy. No matter what I try to do to calm and soothe myself and take care of myself and try to manage my own stress and my own issues, it doesn't matter, because five minutes in the house in her chaos or listening to her meltdowns just wrecks me.

Today, I had my second dentist appointment for a root canal. The dentist still couldn't get all of the nerve tissue out, so now I will need a third appointment (this time with an endodontist) to just finish the root canal. Then I will have to wait 2 weeks and go back to the dentist to get a crown. I should be thankful, because I'm not in any pain (the only reason they had to go in on this tooth in the first place was a broken filling that was developing a cavity underneath). But come on... three appointments over the span of a month and a half for the root canal? I don't mind the dentist, and I like my dentist, but just get it the fuck over with already.

And also, today, I got a letter from the Provost at my University saying that he has considered my request for reconsideration of his negative tenure decision and is sticking by that decision. For those of you keeping score, my department said no, but faculty committees at the college level and university level as well as the dean of my college said yes to tenure and promotion. But the Provost fails to see my worth and reversed that positive decision, so I will be out of a job 12 months from now unless the President reverses the Provost's decision (which is unlikely). In the long run, I don't want to be here anyway, because my department is dysfunctional and the entire University is a toxic environment right now, but I just need something in my life to be stable and OK for once. But it won' t be. So I will have to see if I can find another job at another university, in another city, another state, and drag my dysfunctional marriage and my wife and all her baggage there and try to start all over again once more.

My therapist is a nice guy but is ultimately useless. I have been seeing him individually and as part of a therapy group for two years and my life still sucks. And I don't know what the deal is with my wife's therapist, because she obviously is not really understanding how fucked up things are. And besides, if we move then it will be back to square one with therapy again. It is too fucking exhausting to even think of trying to start over and explain my fucked up world to another therapist anyway. What's the point? They can't help anything.

I'm tired of all the bullshit. Fuck it. I don’t know why I try anymore. Teaching, research, trying to be a good mentor/advisor, trying to be a good husband, trying to be a good umpire, whatever it is that I do. I guess I must have some self-esteem after all because I’m certainly not getting any external validation that anything I do is worthwhile. But that self-esteem makes me want to just tell everyone else to fuck off and leave me alone. It is embarrassing and humiliating to have the members of this department reject me as being beneath them, and to have this university maintain that I am not acceptable to remain on their faculty. Given the reputation of my University and my Department, that makes me look pathetic to any other observers. I mean, if I can’t swim with the petty, vengeful underachievers that are my colleagues, what does that say about me? My marriage and other personal problems and my career failures have combined in a spectacular way to leave me with no solid ground under my feet and a whole lot of shit behind me and ahead of me no matter what I do.

I want to be respected. I want to be loved. I want that love to be a two way street of mutual responsiblity. I want to have sex. A lot. And I want to make babies with someone that I love. And I want a home where I feel safe and secure and that is a place of calm and rest and relaxation. I want a space, even a small space that I can retreat into that is my domain that cannot be encroached upon by others. I want to feel like I can pursue things that are important to me without guilt and even ask for help with them sometimes and even expect to receive it upon occasion. I want to stop putting everyone else's needs and expectations above mine. I want to stop feeling like I am always putting so much more into everything (marriage, career, family, etc) than I am getting out. I want to fucking belong somewhere. I want to just be able to be me and have that be good enough. Of course, that last one is the same thing my wife was saying last night as she was melting down. And if I can't give that to her, what right to I have to want or expect it from the world?

Read your latest diary. I validate your feelings - you are not crazy and you are plainly a person substance and worth and you are plainly a person who has been deprived of compassion from yourself and others.

Good therapists are out there. My EMDR therapist is intelligent and empathetic and wildly competent, even beyond any specific technique used.

Bad therapists are like a train wreck.

Yup, you are being bullied at home.

I was just in a foul mood last night when I got home and spent most of the evening sullen and sulky. My wife was considerate enough to let me be for most of the night, but I did break down in anger a few times talking about how shitty I feel about everything. I think she felt bad for her meltdown the night before. I feel guilty and ashamed, because on one hand, I feel like I was acting like she was the night before - incredibly angry and depressed and feeling like the world was closing in on me and I was a worthless piece of shit and there was nothing I could do about it. But instead of just fucking exploding and making it miserable and intolerable for her, I kept a lid on it. Except when I do that it makes it hard for her.

I'm just tired of everything being so hard for both of us. Except the stuff that she struggles with is little, everyday stuff, and she flips the fuck out about it, and the stuff that I struggle with is big, enormous stuff, and I have to keep it together and keep functioning. She gets let off the hook for her behavior all the fucking time with minimal consequences and all of the responsibility is on me. She is stuck at the level of a teenager, and I have to carry all of the burden for both of us, and it sucks. I am so fucking angry at her and resentful, and yet somehow it is my fault that I can't move past that to have a more loving relationship. It's not about letting go of things in the past - I think I could do that if she wasn't still doing the things all the time that make me fucking crazy.

I can't win no matter what I do. Everything I think that I wanted to have, wanted to be in life is never going to happen. I don't know what I will be able to salvage out of my career. My marriage will never be what I want it to be. I just have to accept it. My wife is not going to change. She is never going to be organized, never going to be responsible, never going to be an equal partner. She can't do it. She is incapable of doing it. And she feels like it's not her fault, ergo if I get mad about it I am not loving her and not accepting her for who she is.

I will never be successful in my career. I will never have kids. I will never have a calm and peaceful home that I can retreat to and feel safe and comfortable in. No matter how much I do to try to take care of myself and manage my stress - meditate, yoga, therapy - it makes no fucking difference because my wife can't manage her stress AND SHE MAKES HER STRESS MY STRESS EVERY FUCKING DAY. I am tired of being taken for granted and disrespected by everyone.

I should have gone to medical school. I should have gone to law school. I should have been an engineer. I should have done anything except go into science and try to have a career in academia. It's a fool's errand. I am 41 and have a long list of so-called "accomplishments" that amount to exactly NOTHING. And nobody knows that the reasons that I have struggled at work is because I have a mentally fucking ill spouse who has spent most of the past decade being completely nonfunctional. And because I have dealt with all manner of other personal stress in that time dealing with shit THAT ISN"T EVEN MY PROBLEM BUT IS THE PROBLEM OF OTHER PEOPLE THAT I CARE ABOUT AND I GOT SUCKED INTO IT. My personal life has fucked my career. My career has fucked my personal life. And it's all fucking over. I'm broken. I'm fucking angry. I'm fucking scared.

And I have a wife who says she loves me so fucking much, and she is dying to connect with me, and yet I don't think connecting even means the same thing to both of us. I don't even know if we have the same definition of love anymore. I don't know what anything means anymore. She says all the time that she wants us to be on the same team again. But I don't think we ever were on the same team. I think I was the team and she was the occasional cheerleader rather than actually contributing to the team, but even then she needs more cheering and encouragement than I do so I am the team and her cheerleader.

Whatever. I just need to do what I always do. Just keep going through my day. One day after another. Keep trying to do the things that I am supposed to do. Keep trying to keep things from getting even worse. Try to stop hoping things will get better because that just leads to disappointment. And someday I will get old and die and that will be that. There will be no lasting imprint that I will leave in this world. No kids. No real friends anymore. No significant accomplishments. It's good we have no kids. People as fucked up as us shouldn't be allowed to reproduce. It's natural selection in action. That's what I keep convincing myself when I think about a divorce - no other woman would ever want to have my kids either, because I don't deserve to have them.

Thanks for sharing. It helps me reading your diary to see that other people feel hopeless in their situations. I guess one way of looking at your situation is your are lucky to not have kids, in one sense, because they would be complicating everything soo much more. There are assuredly people whol feel the same way as you in their marriage and careers, ie stuck, but also have the responsibility of holding it together for the kids. You don't have that burden. Also, it sounds like you are educated which is good. Do you ever have time to work out, run, go for a hike etc? That has been my lifesaver. I know it can be hard to find time. Running for me puts me in a much calmer mindset and also focused.

Good luck

Thanks moe and camp.

Camp4, I do exercise and it is probably the only thing that has helped keep me sane. I generally go to yoga 1-2x a week, lift weights with 2 friends twice a week, and run 1-2x a week (hopefully more soon now that the weather is getting warmer). I also am a high school baseball umpire so for the past month I have been getting outside to do 4-5 games a week. The physical exercise makes a difference, and like I said, I think I would have completely lost it by now if not for that.

Moe, my therapist is not a bad therapist. I think he is a good therapist. I think my wife's therapist is a good therapist, too. There are just a lot of problems and not enough time to fix all of them, if that makes any sense. So much time gets taken up dealing with the latest acute problem or urgent situation, and it is overwhelming to figure out how to fix the underlying problems. Example - how do I fix my marriage while my wife is constantly on the edge of a breakdown and my career is crumbling and I will have to find a new job and probably move to a different state in a year?

manuel_moe_g wrote: I validate your feelings - you are not crazy and you are plainly a person substance and worth and you are plainly a person who has been deprived of compassion from yourself and others.

Thanks moe. Honestly, I wish I was better at giving myself the compassion and respect that I want from other people. I don't know why it's so hard. I know that I deserve it. It is really, really hard to do. And I feel like all of the negative things in my life reinforce that I am a failure and NOT worthy of compassion and respect. And the positive things, when I allow myself to even notice they are there, seem insignificant and insincere and can be explained away by people feeling sorry for me. It really sucks.

Camp4 wrote:I guess one way of looking at your situation is your are lucky to not have kids, in one sense, because they would be complicating everything soo much more.

I do think about that often - the things that I don't have that I really want (kids, a house) would just be two more things that would be overwhelming responsibilities and burdens if I had them in my current situation. But at the same time, that makes me really sad, because it makes me feel like somehow I don't deserve those things, or that I will never be able to have those things.

The rest of this week has been OK so far. I am starting to numb out about the whole work thing. Even though I feel like I have accepted and come to grips with the disappointment of failing to get tenure and the consequent loss of my job, every time a new reminder comes it triggers a jolt of acute sadness and shame that is hard to get over... until I start to numb out about it again. It leads to a lot of avoidance because it is too painful to think about. My marriage is the same way... when things aren't terrible I just try to breathe and take in the calm until they get messy again, but there is no space in there to actually feel like I can improve things. Every move stirs up a lot of pain. I got a good run and a massage in yesterday and have a baseball game tonight. There have been some positive developments at work as far as some accomplishments of some of my students that I am feeling proud of (the first graduate student to join my lab is getting ready to defend his PhD dissertation and graduate, and he was just offered a postdoctoral fellowship at a prestigious university, which makes me feel really good on one level, but makes me angry on another level that despite that sort of success, my colleagues and upper administration still have judged me as an unsuccessful researcher on the basis of grant money and are using that to justify my tenure denial...).

I'm really sad. I'm really angry. I'm really scared. But I am trying to hold it all in and keep functioning because it is all I know how to do. I know I can't keep avoiding these feelings and there are difficult things that I have to figure out in my life and I have to stop avoiding them. But right now, I have to stop avoiding the huge stack of lab reports that are ungraded. Because work comes first. Because other people's needs come first. Always. I did ask my wife to put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher last night after I made dinner and she did. Which is nice. I wish I didn't have to specifically ask her to do that. I wish I didn't have to specifically ask her to put her clean folded clothes away after I do the laundry, etc. But I guess I should just be thankful for when I ask her to do something and she actually does it, and even better if she does it without complaining about doing it.

weary wrote: I did ask my wife to put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher last night after I made dinner and she did. Which is nice. I wish I didn't have to specifically ask her to do that. I wish I didn't have to specifically ask her to put her clean folded clothes away after I do the laundry, etc. But I guess I should just be thankful for when I ask her to do something and she actually does it, and even better if she does it without complaining about doing it.

Glad you have a tiny respite. Please take care, weary, and give yourself compassion.