Reply to Husband hasn't worked in years. It's wrecking my health

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP it seems like you wrote this just over a year ago, why has nothing changed?

OP here. It's not that I'm a doormat; in my career, as a parent, and as a friend I have good boundaries and am assertive and confident.

I'm just grieving and freaked out, not understanding how I married a smart public interest lawyer who lived a normal life, how we *had* a normal life, and it's gone for reasons beyond my control. The fact that he really could fix it makes me want him to. The fact that he's unilaterally taken away what we had makes me lose sleep. I'm unused to problems that are totally beyond my control.

The gaslighting feels so crazy and unrealistic that I'm having a hard time even processing it. It's so far from my experience I'm expecting him to come home from therapy one day and say he figured out the truth- that his depression and having his life become so narrow warped his perspective.

I am going to figure out an exit path, but I'm not ready to start down it because there is no earthly reason this person I married shouldn't come back.

But if he doesn't seem to be on his way back by the end of the year, I'll have to pull the plug.

Extremely sad about all of this.

Tired of no sex, too. I get hit on a lot and don't act on it. Boy would I like to blow off steam, though.[/quote]

OP, this is heart-breaking to read. I'm not going to demand you get out now because I had a spouse who was very dysfunctional until the last couple of years of his life, our entire time together could have been what I had always wished it would be and was those last couple of years, and then it was gone. Given that the situation is so damaging to you, it's important--and you know this--to work on exit paths. (I did that, and actually much of our time we had a separate living arrangements relationship, even then it was not that easy). But also you need therapy to survive this--you should not be trying to "process" the gaslighting, you have to somehow get to a point where you can treat it like the weather--no you can't control it, but it's also not a big deal, you have a coat and umbrella and sunscreen to protect you. (Obviously much harder when the words and behavior are coming out of someone you still want to love, but that would be the goal for now).

I also survived extremely severe depression many years ago (living at my parents' home and very, very paralyzed although I could manage crossword puzzles), it lasted a very long time, the thing that started me climbing out was that in my thoughts my choices were having a job or ending my life and a very stupid job got shoved in my lap and I grabbed it like a lifeline. Life has taken many turns since then that I could not have imagined back then.

And if nothing else interrupts his stasis, your moving out could. [/quote]

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