the story of a secondary

[PaperGrace]

Originally Posted by BlackUnicorn

Are you sure there is a real Davis under the issues, or maybe the issues are part of who he is?

Hi Annabel, I am impressed by your writing and your journey. I see a good bit of myself in your thinking and overthinking. I am a champion over-thinker, too!

I was in a long term relationship with a man who lived with dysphoria followed by minor and then major depression. That depression was a part of who he was for all of the years we were together. He acknowledged it. Waiting for the best parts of him to emerge for a month here and a week or two there required a lot of patience on my part. I loved him, so I was patient. I struggled on and off to get him into therapy. It was an exhausting and delicate dance, and eventually he went, but he was so proud and afraid (he had a PhD in psychology), just that process caused him to mistrust me and pushed us further apart. I concur with one of nycindie's earlier responses, it may be that a depressed person has to come to terms with and take responsibility for his or her own mental health, and however long it takes is how long it takes. Are you prepared to have that story, good or bad, be an interactive part of your life, perhaps for many years?

I can't say that I regret staying in that relationship for as long as I did. I don't know that his life would have been much different without me. I sometimes wonder how my life would have turned out without his depression affecting our joint decisions.

In my experience, it's hard to have a healthy and functional relationship with someone who doesn't have a functional relationship with themselves. I'm not hearing that Davis' problems are severe. Your situation is not what mine was, and I can't know how Davis feels. I can empathize that when a partner's life experiences are skewed by depression, it's really tough to have "open and strong communcation" and find common ground. I wish you both the best and will be looking forward to updates on everyone.

[AnnabelMore]

Originally Posted by BlackUnicorn

Are you sure there is a real Davis under the issues, or maybe the issues are part of who he is?

I think there is, yeah. I believe in his ability to be self-assured, centered, and effective, I just feel like I've seen a lot of him NOT embodying those traits over the years. He *does* seem prone to... not drama exactly, but difficult situations, such as the roommate troubles I described above... so maybe the fact that he usually seems to have some issue going on IS just an innate thing about him.

It seems like he's just now, at 30, really finding himself as an independent adult (he's said as much to me). He was a bit lost when he left the military 9 years ago, and we started dating right after that so he was able to follow my lead... since we split up he's had a rough time but he's also done serious work on fighting his demons and is in a better place overall now than he's been in the past. Maybe neither of us really know who he is, or who he's going to become.

Originally Posted by PaperGrace

Hi Annabel, I am impressed by your writing and your journey. I see a good bit of myself in your thinking and overthinking. I am a champion over-thinker, too!

Thank you! Over-thinking seems to be a common trait around here...

Originally Posted by PaperGrace

Waiting for the best parts of him to emerge for a month here and a week or two there required a lot of patience on my part ... I struggled on and off to get him into therapy. It was an exhausting and delicate dance ... Are you prepared to have that story, good or bad, be an interactive part of your life, perhaps for many years?

Your story scares me with how familiar it sounds. :/ I don't know if I have the emotional energy and will to do this. Not now at least, not when things are still so new and uncertain. I need at least a little time for things to be stable, so that I can look forward to that and believe in it when things are bad.

It just sucks that his most recent down spell happened shortly after we started this new relationship, because it's made it very hard to hold onto a vision of our future that makes me feel assured. On the other hand, maybe it's good in a way because it forces me to think about his mental health realistically and to take it seriously as a potential threat to our ability to work together and have a happy shared life. And so, it's become super important to me to know that he's taking it seriously too and is doing all he can.

It's good to know that you didn't regret it in the end. You're right that Davis's struggles right now are not severe, more a tempermentality of mood than something clearly recognizable as even a minor depression. But there are fault lines within him, and I could see him going to a very dark, scary place if things went badly wrong in his life. Those fault lines (I can't think of a better way to describe it) are what I think he is not yet ready to address, and what he believes he will one day return to therapy for.

It saddens me, because I want to believe that my life partner would be strong enough, resilient enough, to face whatever life throws at us and not crumble, and I don't know that he is, or if/when he will be. I just have to trust him when he says he is working on it, and decide whether this is worth it for me.

[AnnabelMore]

And so, to follow up on the above.

Yesterday, Davis calls me just to chat. Asks what I've been up to. I tell him I've been doing a lot of reading. About what? About depression, mainly. Ah. Yeah, I've found some interesting articles but I was thinking I'd hold off on sending then to you, I don't want to overload you, I know you're still thinking about and looking over the relationship agreements thing. Yeah, I might well be interested but you're right that I need a little space from all that for a while, I'm trying to just clear my head and not focus on serious stuff.

Aaaand that was when I started crying. In my defense, I'd just started my period. The rational side of me was thinking "ok, he needs space, that's totally fair" and the irrational part was thinking "I'm freaking out over this and he's not available to work with me on it, I can't handle this alone, I am not ok right now." He came right over and we laid on my bed together and talked. I felt bad for utterly failing at giving him even a centimeter of the space he was saying he needed, but I felt like my need was the greater in that moment.

We talked, again, about communication, our relationship, patterns in our lives and, of course, depression. It felt like a more positive talk overall than the last one, which we'd had exactly a week before. He joked-but-seriously that I had to keep these mega-talks to a maximum of once per week.

I told him about one particular literature review that I'd read, which said that certain "therapeutic lifestyle changes", such as exercise, meditation, and volunteering, can be as effective as traditional treatment in reducing depression. I said that I thought I could accept him working on things alone rather than in therapy IF he would commit to doing one of those therapeutic lifestyle thingies with me, his choice as to which. He registered his annoyance at feeling pushed on such a personal topic, but agreed to join a gym with me.



I was glad he picked that one, I've been meaning to start working out but haven't been motivated enough on my own. Mainly, I was just glad he picked *anything*, because of course he could have just said no.

The funny thing is, I'm nearly positive that if I'd brought up the idea of joining a gym together outside of this context he would have said yes anyway. I could have avoided the big talk and the feeling on his part of being pushed and gotten the same result. But I think that setting it up in the way I did was something I needed. By explicitly framing the commitment to go the gym as a commitment to work on his mental health at my request, I was able to feel that he was addressing this issue, honoring my concerns, and working with me instead of like I'd "tricked" him into working on it.

I know that his mental health is a personal issue and that it's up to him to work on it at his own pace, but it will affect me greatly if we remain very intertwined and so it's my issue too. And to feel like I have no control or even influence over it is just too scary for me at this point. Is that presumptuous or unrealistic of me?

Anyways, I'm so looking forward to checking out the gym that we identified as our first choice!

[AnnabelMore]

A short post for once.

I watched Bee tonight while Gia and Eric went out. We tried some pureed baby food and sat outside in the unseasonably balmy air and practiced standing up and played with his toys and gave the cat pets. It was the best. <3 <3

Before they left, I said to Gia "If you and Eric want to be alone together for a little while after you get back just let me know and I can, like, go somewhere." She did a little scrunchy thing with her face and said "I don't think I'd want to do that, that'd be kinda weird." "Yeah," I said quickly, "it probably would be weird." Relieved.

[AnnabelMore]

Originally Posted by fuchka

when you feel abundant love for someone, you may emotionally "net in" the other romances/bromances etc of theirs: you are attracted to those who are attracted to those who attract you

I was just thinking about this little snippet of comment from Fuchka, and how true it seems to be in my life. If you are vitality important to someone who is vitally important to me, then how can I not want to fold you into my tribe? By loving and protecting you, my loved one's loved one (whether metamour, family member, or friend), I protect my own heart from the dangerous destabilization that would occur were you to exit the equation.

[fuchka]

He joked-but-seriously

I sometimes call this 'quarter-joking'

Mm, failing at being the stronger person can form the lattice-work of a relationship if the overall structure holds up. Glad you got the mega-conversations you needed, and hope you both have fun at the gym!

[AnnabelMore]

I've started a tumblr site to store all the awesomest, sexiest images I come across. So far, about half of it is D/s stuff and the rest is random fun things. I actually feel comfortable linking to it here because it has no identifying information and I wanted to share it in case anyone might enjoy it! However, I want to spell it out in such a way that it's not google-able... in other words, if one of my friend is looking for it, I don't want them to accidentally find this site. Therefore!

http://p
l
u
m
b
a
t
(dot)
tumblr.com

[BrigidsDaughter]

can you PM me with the link because it does not work when I type it out.

[AnnabelMore]

Hmm. It should, I just double checked it. Are you sure you got all the letters above, including the p? It's a fruit and then an animal, followed by a period, followed by tumblr.com.

[NovemberRain]

Worked for me. (no 'e' in tumblr)

Hooooo! That harp is amazing. And the picture above the harp? Fantastic! What a concept! yowza!

Thanks for sharing....