Loosing and regaining my grip

[weary]

I feel like I have been losing my grip and then just barely hanging on for years at this point. Things have gotten really bad over the past year, and after a bit of a lull, they have gotten bad again over the last month or two. I've written about a lot of it already, and I don't want to just get in the habit of repeating myself or just venting all of the stuff that has happened in the last day or week.

I'm confused, exhausted, sad, and angry. I know that I have problems, and I have been working on them for a long time. I am trying to take better care of myself, build up my self-esteem, keep promises to myself and stop procrastinating, set good healthy boundaries, and get in touch with my wants and needs so that I can be authentic and connect with other people in a more meaningful way. I just feel like I need a lot more love and support and assistance (or at least different forms of it) than I feel are available or forthcoming in my marriage.

And there are a lot of stresses created by my wife's issues that are really working against the work that I am trying to do on myself.
I am so tired of dealing with her anxiety and depression and the chaos that she brings to my life. On one hand, we have been having some better discussions lately about things. But it is still painful and stressful to try to discuss our real core problems, and I still feel like so much has to change and I am not hopeful about it happening. I feel stuck and trapped.

Some moments I am ok. My wife and I are getting along and even having some relaxed fun some of the time. But I know deep down that it's because we're avoiding talking about difficult issues. And we do need that break for a while, but sometimes I think she can just live in that denial indefinitely, and I keep getting pulled back to how uncomfortable and unfair our relationship has been.

I've gotten to the point that whenever I am doing something that feels good, I feel guilty - because I must be doing something wrong if I am feeling good. If not completely morally wrong, at least something that will upset/hurt my wife. Because the things that feel better are opening up and emotionally connecting with other people (some of them women), and she is angry that it is hard for me to communicate all of my feelings to her. The thing is, it doesn't feel good to talk to her most of the time, especially about difficult things, or to express thoughts and feelings that upset or hurt her. Her reactions hurt and scare me sometimes, and I feel very emotionally manipulated. It is really fucking painful and stressful. I can't sort a lot of this shit out alone, and I feel like pressure and intrusion from my wife has made it harder to journal, to confide in my therapist, to feel like it is OK to make new friends and connect with them.

Right now, I feel completely overwhelmed with work and career stuff, family and legal bullshit, and dealing with the chaos with my marriage at home. I haven't had an appointment with my therapist in almost a month. I am having a hard time getting enough sleep or exercise or eating as well as I should. I am in a bit of a dry spell in connecting with other people for the last few weeks. I have all of this confusion, frustration, worry and sadness locked in my head that I have no outlet for, and it is driving me crazy.

[JasmineP]

writing it is better than just sitting and stewing over something. i've written about the same few things i think about when i get depressed every time. I also write the response that it's all lies and what i'm thinking is wrong (I can be too much of a dick at time for people to pretend to like me so they actually like things about me, I just don't always see what).

It's okay if you repeat yourself here, different people will see it at different times and may offer different words of compassion and support.

Do you do anything creative? Writing or drawing? Try even just covering a sheet of printer paper or notebook paper with sketches and scribbles. they don't have to be good but you'll go through different types of thinking as you're doing this and the types of things you draw will reflect your emotional state. There are days when i sit down to do artwork for projects i need for classes and when i'm warming up everything i'm drawing is a slew of depressed images. i don't always realize i'm that depressed that i can't even imagine something more positive to draw. if it's difficult to put the emotions into words images could be a different way to express it. Don't worry about quality or skill, that's not the point of this exercise.

I hope things get better for you so you and your wife can be more comfortable together.

[weary]

I've posted about this on another thread. I used to keep a journal and do all sorts of written CBT exercises. Then, last year, after I was unfaithful, my wife went in and not only read my journal, but took photos on her phone of every page and for months and months would get very upset and bring things up that I had written. And sometimes I feel like just writing for myself is still keeping things stuck in my head because I'm not interacting with anyone else and I'm not able to get reality checks. I can start to get close to and open up to other people and then something happens and I withdraw and shut down again. I feel like I am making some progress with my wife in terms of us being more open with each other, but her anxiety and negative behaviors (about my feelings/thoughts, about things wrong with our marriage, or about things that have nothing to do with me) are overwhelming and make it really hard for me to express myself about certain things and advocate for myself. I feel like my thoughts and feelings and wants and needs are worthless. And even though she says she cares about them, her reactions and her behaviors make it really hard to feel like she does sometimes. But I don't even know what I want from an interaction with her or even from opening up to someone else. I guess ideally I want someone to agree with me, but that's too much to ask. I at least want them to accept and validate my feelings and thoughts. But if what I express to someone else makes them angry or sad, I feel like I've done something wrong. And just having a feeling or thought that I know that if I express it to her, it will make her angry or sad makes me feel like I'm doing something wrong just for having that thought/feeling.

I do some creative stuff for work - I do a lot of writing, but not much of it these days is really that creative. I can put my emotions into words sometimes, but it's overwhelming and those words are hard to share with anyone, let alone the people that I really need to share them with. And so in those situations sometimes I misattribute the emotions. Much of the time when I am trying to connect emotionally with my wife about things that I am upset about, most of it comes out as very negative self-talk - anger and frustration directed at myself. I am really upset with her for a lot of reasons, but I feel like that's not OK and she will not react to it OK, and therefore I'm not OK for being upset with her in the first place, and so those negative emotions get redirected inwards - about what a stupid piece of shit I am for feeling those things. It is a really awful cycle.