Hi
I recently received a detailed explanation from a dear friend who with a generosity of spirit wrote me a lengthy email describing his - as he calls is "fall from grace" I have asked his permission to post his email on this forum and he is okay with it.....so here goes.
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My Midlife DepressionMy explanation of how I experienced my midlife depression (often referred to as a midlife crisis MLC) is in two parts. The first part explains my feelings at the time and the consequent behaviours; the second is a post mortem of my MLC from the perspective of having survived it to become a more integrated human being.
Part 1 – the MLCI was 41 years old and in the space of one year I had lost a good friend to cancer and after many years trying to recover a failing business I had to finally admit defeat and declare bankruptcy. Just like that my world had changed and I was back in the job market working for a younger boss. This was the catalyst to what became a self-destructive search for meaning.
I awoke one day to realise I felt emotionally numb and that nothing in my life had any meaning - I did not recognise the man staring back at me from the mirror - I was a failure period! I was worthless period! I had lost any emotional connection to the people that once meant the most in my life – my wife and two daughters. I had no connection to any happy memories of the past. I was emotionally empty. At first, I reasoned that I must love my wife but I could not feel it, I must love my daughters but I could not feel it. Emotionally numb and terrified my thoughts were consumed with the fear of continuing with an unfulfilled life that lacked happiness, meaning and purpose, a life that was filled with hopelessness and sadness, that smacked of failure, routine and boredom – I was like a gerbil on a wheel going nowhere – this life did not reflect the life I wanted or the person I wanted to be- although I was not sure who I wanted to be. I was a maelstrom of confusion. This confusion of not knowing who I was, lent a panic and urgency to search for a ‘new’ life because the old one was not working. Time was running out, my youth was fading fast and I had to get the life I wanted now before it was too late - because the life I had been living so far had been a farce- not really but that’s was how I felt at the time. And so began a journey where I set aside my belief structure, my true-self and became a person that outwardly expressed a contradiction to what was real on the inside, a persona that bought into an illusion of success, fun, excitement and ‘happiness’. This journey lacked any real attempt to find meaning and purpose, even though I used this reasoning to justify my MLC behaviour.
My new found persona gave me a ‘clarity’ of who I was supposed to be – Not!!! But at the time I was convinced by this new found ‘clarity’, this new found ‘persona’. I started my ‘new’ life by renewing my pursuits of old, namely past time hobbies from my younger days. This was done in an attempt to reconnect with my youth – because apart from the emotional void I also felt old and that time had suddenly passed me by and I had little to show for it – I had wasted my youth. My wife bless her soul could see my despair and encouraged me to take up rock climbing and sky diving; these pursuits brought me into contact with new people and often involved weekends away.
It was in this environment and this altered state of mind, that I met a young attractive woman – at first we kept it purely platonic but the attraction was evident, she made me feel good, she admired me and gave my flailing ego the validation I so desperately needed. This is not to say my wife was not giving me the support I needed, but her support came without the excitement of a flirtatious relationship – my wife represented the old life marked with an overwhelming burden of responsibilities and feelings of failure - I had come to hate this life while this woman represented freedom and everything else I wanted for my new life – so I thought at the time. There is something to be said for the admiration of someone who does not really know you – your failures, your demons, your past – you can pretend to be someone else – it’s a fresh start – a blank slate to create a new more exciting life, a new more exciting you – it feels empowering. Suffice it to say that I began an affair which offered me the emotional highs my marriage no longer offered. To my new found ‘awareness’ this seemed to indicate that this new path was the right one. As the affair progressed my affair partner became more involved with my new life than my wife – to succour my feelings of guilt I began to withdraw from my wife, this withdrawal was accompanied by anger as in my mind I started to view my wife in negative terms, I unconsciously created a disharmonious environment to bring out the worst in myself and her, so that I could give justification to my behaviour by exaggerating her weaknesses and her failures as a spouse and as a human being. I began to blame my wife for my discontent, I projected my internal discontent onto our marriage.
Eventually, I managed to convince myself that I had never been happy with her or our marriage – not true but my new persona, my new awareness had convinced me of this ‘truth’. I realise now that I never stopped loving my wife in my crisis I had just set my feelings for her aside and pursued those feelings that made me feel less guilty, feelings that gave me an emotional high, feelings that made me feel empowered. However, these feeling were always short lived – at first I blamed this on the fact that I was unable to pursue my new life with a wife and daughters in the way, but as it turned out even with my family out of the way these feelings remained short lived.
My wife finally found out about the affair – one would think bringing the affair out into the open would bring a sense of relief and freedom – now I could pursue my new life, my new ‘love’, without the tiresome obligations of wife and family. But all that it did was turn up the heat from a frying pan to a fire. Feelings of guilt, moral failure, integrity failure, remorse, regret, anxiety, lack of self worth, loneliness, failure and sadness were intensified. So what did I do, I began to run faster, I increased the self-medication by pursuing a life of excitement to create emotional highs that in the moment made me forget and brought the illusion that my life was better, I was happier, I was fulfilled – but in those quiet moments the despair would return – so I kept on moving, I filled my days with work and many other activities so that there was little time left to think, so that by the time I got to my apartment I was too tired to think. Although on those days where I was too wired to sleep porn sites and adult dating chat rooms became my escape from the demons in my head. I had become the narcissist trying to prove that he is real!
My affair while in its secret phase offered the excitement to create the emotional highs and the illusion that I was ‘in-love’, but after exposure my affair partner in the space of a few short months failed to provide the emotional highs required to escape the darkness within. To keep the illusion alive to my new friends, colleagues and family, that I had made the right choice in terms of leaving my family for my new ‘love’ interest I maintained my relationship with her and together we indulged in all sorts of ‘fun’ activities that required spending much money (I bought a sports car, bought new cloths and got a tattoo, expensive dinners and holidays), drinking, drugging (only the occasional recreational joint), kinky sex and parties. This new life did not lend itself to continued pursuit of healthier sports like mountain climbing and sky diving so organising weekend car trips around the country with my new friends of racing car enthusiasts became the new passion. Yet, my affair partner just like my wife failed to maintain my ‘happiness’ – so behind her back I began to have one night stands. My womanising not only enabled my new obsession with the excitement of illicit sex (this was the more popular pain medication I used followed by alcohol) but these women provided me with the admiration and attention that I could no longer get from my affair partner – not that she was not attentive – she just was not enough. She was no longer the blank slate onto which I could project all my desires. And of course I would at times use the poor me had a terrible wife talk to get further empathy from these unsuspecting women.
And so began my journey into a life of deception, lies and manipulation that brought me to the very pit of despair – although the journey itself offered emotional highs that convincingly created the illusion that I was at last happy, in all honesty the happy moments were fleeting – I had to keep moving and doing things that continued to create the illusion of happiness, if I stopped the demons would return, each time they did they would be magnified – more intense -because each time I got drunk, slept with another woman, smoked another joint, lied to and manipulated people my self- loathing and guilt would be compounded. This would create even more urgency to escape.......it was a never ending cycle of momentary escapes of emotional highs followed by emotional lows. The effort to keep up an image of confidence and surety that my life was exactly as I wanted it to be began to take its toll. All my effort was yielding nothing but emptiness. The highs were getting lower while the depth were getting deeper as I knowingly pursued behaviours that compromised my integrity, my sense of honour, and yet like an alcoholic or person with an eating disorder the knowledge that what I was doing was self-destructive and compounding my self-loathing – could not stop my behaviour. I was addicted to a self-destructive life I came to abhor, but in the beginning it was a life that my ‘new’ persona thrived on, for the simple reason that it at least made me feel something, which was a lot better than feeling nothing at all or despair. In the beginning I was convinced this new life was who I was supposed to be – it kept the depression at bay and brought me moments of ‘happiness’.
The depression could no longer be silenced, I finally hit rock bottom – I woke up one morning in my apartment looking at my sleeping affair partner with a fragmented memories from an alcohol induced fog from the night before. In my hangover stupor I was suddenly struck by deep feelings of anxiety - I did not really know the person who lay beside me. She was a stranger to me – she had been a welcomed distraction nothing more – once again I was struck by deep feelings of despair – only this time the despair was overwhelming and there was nowhere left to run – I was exhausted. My life had no meaning at all – life had no meaning at all – life was a terrible task master from which there was only one escape – Death. I kept these feeling in check long enough to ask my affair partner to give me some timeout and upon starring at a photo of my daughters in happier times I crashed – I curled up on the floor in a foetal position and cried and cried and cried for the loss of my innocence, self- worthiness, integrity and for the person I used to be. I was 47 years old and I had spent the last six years in a blur of mind numbing activities that had led me to the f*ck up that was my life. As the 16th century saying goes “hell is truth seen too late!”. My pursuit of happiness had failed dismally, I had made enormous sacrifices and burnt many bridges in this hollow pursuit. I had lost the people who most loved me – I had discarded them like yesterdays newspaper and here I was a lonely and pathetic excuse for a human being let alone a man. I did not recognise and did not want to be this persona, it had failed me dismally, it had compromised everything I had once held dear. I lay there with one thought a deep unfailing urge to escape the despair. I was in so much emotional pain that death appeared as my friend to succour my despair and offer me peace. For the first time in my life I had thoughts of suicide – in my despair I reached out to the only person I could really trust.....I called my ex-wife......she recognised my cry for help and came to my rescue that day.
I spent the next two years in recovery which included counselling and spiritual teachings - trying to find my sense of self – some peace of mind, forgiveness and my sense of self-worth. I have learnt a lot, and have rediscovered the man I used to be but with some improvements.......after all, this entire hellish journey had to have had its purpose...otherwise it would all have been a waste – considering what I have lost. I still have a lot to learn – life is a journey of self discovery – and while I occasionally experience bouts of depression they are less intense as I have now developed the coping mechanisms to deal with it. My MLC was the most spirit jarring and lonely part of my life’s journey. It was an Armageddon of my own making. Today I have realised happiness comes from within and it begins with forgiveness, the most important part of which is forgiving myself for the bad choices I made, especially those made during my MLC. For the most part I have forgiven myself for these bad choices however I still live with regret – well only one – and that is that I lost my only true love and closest ally – my wife. While she has forgiven me, and we remain friends she has moved on with her life. My relationship with my daughters is slowly recovering – bless their hearts they have forgiven their daddy.
There is a saying “discipline weighs ounces but regret weights tonnes”. Where my wife and my daughters are concerned I still live with the weight of tonnes – I live in hope that the day comes were I make my peace and truly forgive myself for this mistake.
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I will post part 2 at some other stage
hope this helps some of you gain some insight
moment
PART TWO is #89: http://mlcforum.theherosspouse.com/index.php?topic=5388.msg345718#msg345718RCR edited to add link to Part 2
a view into MLC from a MLCer
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