Sandy scheduled us to meet with a couples therapist that my therapist recommended.  Ironically, our first session is on our anniversary.  I wonder how I should begin to explain the situation.  Why exactly are we seeking therapy?

I am going to just start listing things and maybe by organizing them it will help make sense of it to me.  No idea if I can make sense of it to him.

  • I have been wrestling with a significant depression for several months now.
    • Clues were increasing self-loathing
    • Increased anxiety about the boys and the future
    • Strong need to escape into reading romance
    • Generally available sorrow
  • I began on the assumption that my medication was no longer working as needed perhaps because of hormonal and/or metabolic changes in the last year and a half.
  • After no immediate relief, my psychiatrist recommended I see a therapist.  I started seeing the therapist that I saw during my infertility, Madeline.
  • A few sessions in I began to write.
  • I started exercising more desperately as an anti-depressant booster pack.
  • I began relying fairly heavily upon a couple of non-married friends who also struggle with depression.
  • I stopped reading romance novels and started reading more self-help.
  • I started realizing that my self-loathing was coming from feeling like Sandy didn’t like my various characteristics – that I was a “lemon.”
  • I’d been sitting on all kinds of guilt because Sandy is an awesome father and husband in so many ways – so there must be something wrong with me to not want it.
  • I acknowledged that I had grown tired of fighting Sandy when he would just hold my opinion in disregard or be disdainful about something that I believed in.  I have been sitting on a lot of anger.
  • I also recognized that our sex life has been in trouble for a while.  My libido is still solid, but my desire to have sex with Sandy is compromised. This is largely due to a number of factors
    • My physical problems and pain with sex
    • My sublimated anger with Sandy
    • My frustration with the way he touches
    • Sex with Sandy often feels obligatory
  • I am frustrated with my career surfing – I wanted to be somewhere else by now.
  • I am not mentally stimulated by my job.  I’m not proud of my career.
  • I am frustrated by my being the secondary breadwinner and feel as if I should be the default caretaker as a result, though I resent that position and often fail to perform that role well.
  • I question whether there is much of value – or at least that Sandy recognizes as valuable – that I bring to the family.

Honestly, I don’t really know what the problem is.  I don’t know what it is that I want.  I feel trapped but with no idea what it is like outside of the cage and where there is to run, if anywhere.