Thanks

This is the email I sent to my friend today. (I really need to come up with good psydonyms)

Thank you for being so wise and wonderful. Thank you for valuing my marriage and our friendship more than I have in the past week.

Last night my husband and I had our little chat. More crying on my behalf than chatting... at least 12 months of sadness expunged (hopefully).

I explained to my husband how I had been feeling and how I felt. That although I am strong, I am similar to cast iron, with the wrong sort of pressure and stress I will shatter like glass. He understood, and in the first time in what seems like years, let me be sad without getting sad himself. He was not upset for me being angry and resentful of him. He understood my frustrations, and held me while I cried.

I then slept. For at least 12 hours...

Thank you

Hugs and love

Relief

So last night I sat down with my husband and told him how unhappy I was and how I was despairing. I didn't tell him everything, I'm not that stupid.

I dragged him off the computer when I got home and we sat in the lounge room. I thought we could just chat, reaffirm our relationship and stuff. I just broke down. Completely broke down. I told him that I had been so unhappy these past few months, that although I am strong and cope with a lot of crap, I have reached my limit. Just like cast iron. It is strong but under the wrong pressure it shatters like glass.

Initally when I started crying he sat away from me, not touching me. I didn't know what to think. I told him that I didn't know if he was going to get better anymore, and he told me that he needed my faith in him. My faith was one of the few things keeping him alive and moving to the next level. Eventually he asked me what I wanted, at that moment I wanted to be held and cherished, so I asked him for a hug and he came over and hugged me and I made him all soggy.

I was just so miserable last night. I'm still sad writing this now. I feel like I have gotten a couple of years of sadness out of my system. For the first time in what seems like an age, I have been able to get sad without my husband also getting sad. I've been allowed to have "my turn" at getting sad.

He asked me if there was anything else that was upsetting me, and I told him that the worst thing is that I have no one else to talk to about this. I didn't tell him that I also love another man, that would have been counter productive, but he understood my overall resentment of his moods.

Its a start on the road to recovery. It doesn't solve my overall angst, but I feel a lot better today than I have all week.

I suppose having over 12 hours sleep also contributed to that.

Lets see how things go.

Dreams

It makes it harder when even your dreams betray you. The subconscious speaking to the conscious mind.

Last night I dreampt that myself, my husband and the other guy (see previous posting) were sitting outside on a bench. My husband was being very rude to my friend... My friend got quite annoyed and he started telling my husband that he did not appreaciate that behaviour. I walked of into a craft shop and overheard as I walked off, "where is she?" from my husband, and the reply from my friend "your fat one went into that shop.

Am I insecure about my weight, surely not.

Anyway, I was quite hurt by the comment, and kept walking into the shop looking at the goods on display. I realised that I had to return to work because my lunch break was over and went into the lift and back to work.

Work passed with no time and I was on the bus home. (I don't ride buses to and from work, but never mind). I wasn't talking to either my friend or my husband because I was still hurt and annoyed at them. Because I was so absorbed in my own hurt, I missed my husband leaving the bus at our stop. I remained on the bus until my friend asked if I was going to get off the bus with him.

I got off the bus and stood there. I told my friend that I thought he didn't like me any more. He gave me a hug, kissed me on my forehead, cheek and neck and told me that of course he liked me. I walked back to his house and when we got there he went and had a shower. While he was in the shower a colleague called him and I answered the phone. She had made an update to the computer program we used at work and wanted him to test it.

When he had finished showering, I told him the message and we both tested the computer system.

The end. It was weird.

STUPIDITY

There are very few monumentally stupid things you can do in your life which are legal, non leathal and no one else will know about.

I happen to have done one of them. I am married, not quite happily at the moment, more on that to follow, and have fallen in love with another person.

I consider myself to be quite open and loving. I exist in a mostly closed marriage, my husband is bisexual and will stray into his own gender, but there have been no affairs. I consider myself able to love more than one person at a time, and that in part, is why I am in my current predicament.

My husband has been suffering major depression since August 2002. He would have down periods and then bouce back, and then get depressed for longer and bounce back for a shorter period, so on until he was almost beyond suicidally depressed in March 2003.

In March, I was at the end of my coping ability. I didn't know what else to do. My husband realised that I was no longer coping and in fear of losing our 7 years of marriage, went and saw his local GP for a referral to a Psychartrist. He was put on anti-depressants and an appointment was arranged for him.

The anti-depressants made him dopey and sleepy and things calmed down in my household. A couple of weeks after he started taking the medication, the effects were beginning to show. He was happy and cheerful, he was helping around the house - life was good.

Then the medication he was taking stopped working. The past three weeks have been a roller coaster. His mood deterioated severely and he again became chronically depressed and suicidal. I didn't want to experience the same hurt I had experienced on so many occasions previously so I kinda shut down. A male friend was visiting during a weekend in that period, one whom I am quite fond of and have some attchment too. I began to wonder what life would be like with this other person.

That was bad enough, but when the weekend immediately after this person's visit my husband hit rock bottom again, I wanted to be anywhere else but where I was. I was emotionally vulnerable, my male friend is also to some extent having ended a long distance relationship, and I would have done anything to escape. My husband was suicidal and was telling me that if his life hadn't improved by the end of the year he would certainly kill himself. He kept telling me that I deserve better and should find someone else that would take better care of me.

The problem is, when you keep telling someone something like that eventually they are going to seriously consider it. And given that I was again at the end of my coping ability, I considered it.

I promised that I would never leave my husband, and I don't think I will, but I have let myself fall in love with another man, and I can't do a thing about it.

Telling him would ruin the friendship. NO matter that I think he also feels the same for me. I have been skirting this issue with him for a week and he's been responding in kind. If I approached him directly it would require the friendship to change in its dynamic.

So, I can't admit these feelings I hold to anyone. A bit of a bind.