whats wrong with me

[samfh]

I may just be posting this because I need to vent, I dont know. I just need to get these thoughts out and I have no one to talk to. I have been diagnosed as having depression and social anxiety disorder. I have been taking meds for these for several years. My mother has a history of mental illness so it is in me. Sometimes the meds seem to work, sometimes they dont. I always daydream about going back and reliving my past. As ridiculous as it sounds I am always doing this. I am 38 years old. I was always wise beyond my years. I was a well above average intelligence as a child but I was 'shy' and a 'loner'. As a young man I was smart, funny and well above average in looks but I still always felt like I was on the outside looking in. I didnt have many friends and I didnt have a social life except going to concerts by myself. I knew women were attracted to me but I could not talk to them, In my early 20's I discovered drinking. This gave me the social life and ability to meet people that I had lacked. I started having a lot of empty one night flings. Along the way though, I met some wonderful, kind-hearted, beautiful girls. I had a good time at the time and enjoyed life then. As I got into my 30's I got into a career and in a couple of years had a six figure income. I liked my job and was still enjoying life. At some point I started to lose motivation, my income dropped and I realized I might have depression. I was diagnosed and started taking meds. They helped for a while but the good effects seemed to fade away. The meds kept me motivated enough to have a successful career. I have a good heart and I love children. In my mid 30's I began to think that time was running out for me to have a family. I met a woman and we dated for a year and moved in together. We got pregnant and then got married. We have a wonderful 2 year old daughter who is the light of my life. My wife is a wonderful mother. I worked and she stayed at home to raise our child. My wife and I probably would not be together had we not gotten pregnant and had our child. Our relationship had already started to weaken before the pregnancy. My wife and I are on different intellectual levels. Honestly, she is just not bright. I have never felt the love for her that I had felt for girls in past relationships. I am old fashioned in the fact that I think a family should stay together and that we should put our daughters well being and happiness before our own. We don't fight often and in fact we get along very well, so it is not a case of our daughter being brought up with parents who are miserable. I could go on as we are and raise our daughter with a family. The part of me that wants to love someone is still there though. I keep thinking back to girls I knew more than 10 years ago and wishing that I had made those relationships permanent. In my 20s I was always on the move, drifting around the country so I couldnt really have anything permanent. Whats strange is that its not one girl in particular but several girls who would have been anyone elses dream girl. I just feel like one of those girls could have been my soul mate and I let her slip away because I was always on the move. Now I have a wife who doesnt love me and I am getting old, but maybe not too old to find love again. My daughter comes first though and if my wife will stay with me, I think we should raise her. On top of all this, my career is gone. With the recent troubles on Wall Street, the career that I spent 10 years getting better at is now like a typewriter salesman. Anyway, sorry for the long rant.

[Guest ASchwartz]

Hi samfh,

First, let me welcome you to our community. I think you will find lots of support and comfort here.

Medication alone will not help much with a combination of depression and social anxiety and social discomfort. You really need to be in psychotherapy and go through a process of gradual exposure to social situations so that you will become less anxious. Only behavioral therapy will help you overcome that social anxiety, or, at least reduce it enough to that you can function with greater comfort. Behavioral and cognitive behavioral psychologists are best at this. Medication can help with this but will not take you very far without the behavioral part of treatment.

Congratulations on your marriage and your children. I do not understand why you are convinced your wife is less intelligent than you and I am not sure what difference that makes, anyway. Are you sure this isn't your way of placing your unhappiness with your self onto her. After all, if you are depressed you likely do not feel good about your self and, therefore, not good about anyone who likes you. Like Groucho Marx joked decades ago, "Any club who would have him as a member ain't worth joining."

What do others think??

Allan

[samfh]

Hi samfh,

First, let me welcome you to our community. I think you will find lots of support and comfort here.

Medication alone will not help much with a combination of depression and social anxiety and social discomfort. You really need to be in psychotherapy and go through a process of gradual exposure to social situations so that you will become less anxious. Only behavioral therapy will help you overcome that social anxiety, or, at least reduce it enough to that you can function with greater comfort. Behavioral and cognitive behavioral psychologists are best at this. Medication can help with this but will not take you very far without the behavioral part of treatment.

Congratulations on your marriage and your children. I do not understand why you are convinced your wife is less intelligent than you and I am not sure what difference that makes, anyway. Are you sure this isn't your way of placing your unhappiness with your self onto her. After all, if you are depressed you likely do not feel good about your self and, therefore, not good about anyone who likes you. Like Groucho Marx joked decades ago, "Any club who would have him as a member ain't worth joining."

What do others think??

Allan

Hi Allan thanks for your advice and opinion. I know it sounds terrible when I say that about my wife, but I guess I'm just trying to be realistic about it. When I met my wife the qualities that I saw in her were that she was a very sweet woman, not a mean bone in her body and that she had qualities that I thought would make a good mother. I did realize though that we were on different mental levels. I think it is just a fact of life that there ARE different levels of intelligence and I realize that I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer when compared to a lot of folks. A lady who was a brain surgeon would probably not look at me as a compatible mate. Not to say that these types of relationships dont work, its just that birds of a feather do tend to flock together. I was right in the fact that I could not have asked for a better mother for our child. She is the perfect mother. However we did sort of rush into living together and the pregnancy was what made us decide to get married. Like I said, if the relationship had run its course without our daughter coming along we would not be together. As we began to 'fall out of love' with each other, she began to show what I look at as a 'bitchy' side of her that I had never seen early on. As I stated, I am old fashioned when it comes to 'staying together for the kids' and its not like we are constantly fighting and putting our daughter in a miserable environment. We arent the 'lovey dovey' couple, but for the most part we get along and we both enjoy doing things as a family. I guess I really dont even know what my question or point was, its just sometimes I guess people need to vent or get feelings and thoughts out. Like I said, I appreciate your opinion and thoughts on the matter and I appreciate any one else who has anything to add.

[Natalie]

Hi Samfh-

You seem to "taking stock" of all of the important aspects of your life. Your career, your marriage, your status as a parent, etc. This is not an uncommon process for people in their late 30s/early 40s. As part of this train of thought, it's easy to fall into the "what if" trap... what if I had married someone else, what if I had chosen a different profession, etc. The problem is that you can "what if" yourself to death, and it doesn't really get you anywhere.

So, I think a more productive way to take stock of your life is to direct your vision forward (rather than backward). If things are not the way you want them to be, then you need to figure out some ways to change them. Making some short and long term goals will allow you to move forward. Or, if you don't want to change things, then you need to figure out some strategies to use to change the way you think about your life (some thought changing and acceptance techniques; see our self-help toolbox article about cognitive techniques for examples).

I also wonder if some of your current thoughts are being colored by depressive and/or anxious thoughts. These thoughts may not be an accurate reflection of reality (i.e., negative and unrealistic thoughts can make you feel really crummy). You may also benefit from some psychotherapy in order to deal with those aspects of your life.

[mrsdz]

Hello Samfh,

I am sorry to hear about your job and the way you are feeling. I can understand it completely. My husband has been out of work due to the not so secretive fall in economy in his line of work. It is not the first time either, after 9/11 it struck his profession pretty hard. Stresses were high, we fought quite a bit, exchanged not so pleasant of words. I had some of the same feelings and what ifs you are having, he did too. We have been together 13 almost 14 years now and have 3 kid together. Marriage is not always easy and fun, you need to work at it to make it successful at times. We are doing very well as a couple, when it comes down to it, I am there for him and he is for me. We have learned in our own time that our marriage works much better when we work together in these stressful times and not against either other.

It sounds to me so long as there is no illegal activity or abuse towards one another going on, you very well may be going through one of the many tests a marriage creates. You may both be stressed and second guessing, this may not have happened if I did this or that, as if your life wouldn't be as stressful if you married one of the other woman, who knows it could be worse. I would suggest to you, get a babysitter and communicate with your wife over dinner or whatever it is you both like to do. Get to the source of the problem, can it be the stress of the life changes making you think like this or is it the way you both truely feel?

I wish you and your family the best. Hope it works out for you.

[John Rutledge]

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Edited October 28, 2009 by John Rutledge

[Mark]

Sam,

if you live long enough, you will make some serious mistakes in life, most of which are correctable, but which permanently alter your course away from "what could have been". If it isn't mistakes you make, then it is some other crisis that occurs and also permanently alters your course away from what could have been.

Presently, you are focused on what you've lost, both in terms of your career, which I'm sure is unsettling and frightening, and in terms of the women you did not make commitments to, who you suspect might have been superior to the woman you ended up with.

Consider that you are a person who is defining himself in terms of the things he has been able to acquire (including the people he has been able to acquire), and that is not a deep or satisfying way to life a life.

When I was a younger man (in my 20s) I was terribly shy around women, and talking about the issue with my therapist, I would lament, "why don't they like me? I have so many good qualities" which I would then proceed to list. The therapist stopped me from yammering, and pointed out that I was making myself into an object with a list of attributes; that I saw myself as something to be evaluated from without and that was part of the problem. And he was right. And I will pay that bit of wisdom forward to you if you want to take it on and if you think it fits (not sure): Do not look at the people in your life as objects. Do not evaluate them in terms of their attributes such as being "smart". It's not that these things are unimportant, but rather that if you only see things through that lens, you miss their humanity and the opportunity to make a real and deep connection to them. Your wife and child are here now and you have the opportunity to really connect with them. they are not perfect by any means but look in the mirror fella, and tell me that you are perfect (you're not). Let go of the judgment for a while and just be present with them.

Some men are serial monogamists, fliting from one relationship to another always searching for that feeling of new love. It sounds like you miss that sensation that the best is yet to come, and are lamenting your choice to have stopped the pursuit of the new. The thing is, show me a married person who is 100% satisfied with their partner. that doesn't exist. there are some very happily married couples, and some that aren't so much, but no one thinks that their partners are without flaw. Compatibility does matter, but you have that with your present partner. And it is not necessary for her qualities to mirror your own unless you want to insist on being narcissistic about the relationship. If she is solid and has heart, that is perhaps a counterbalance to your own tendency to fly up into the air intellectually. Maybe you need that weight?

In a nutshell, you've done just fine, and all people who reach a certain age look back at events that might have come out differently. Stop beating yourself up. Stop looking backwards and stop looking forwards and just be present for a while. Spend time with your family; make that a priority to have fun with them. Do some yoga or exercise or something physical to bring you into the moment. Meditate if you can. Be present.

Mark

[Guest existindeath]

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Edited November 7, 2009 by existindeath