Message ID: 2q0mrcFpqcvqU1@uni-berlin.de
I need advice on the crossroads of my life. Our four children are in high school and college and are well adjusted, intelligent and ready to pursue the adventures of life and adulthood.
My transition to a new role is somewhat complicated and depressing. I seem to be behind in politics, literature, music and other interests of my husband and children. I feel so alone at the dinner table when I can't seem to relate or participate in their conversation.
For the last 20 years I have been devoted to my family, and I have loved every minute of it, but now I feel very out of it.
To complicate matters I still feel betrayed and angry and do not trust my husband because of an affair he had more than two years ago. I believe my husband is here only because of the children and because he can't confront his real feelings.
This has been so devastating to me. When he is late coming home from work, I still have anxiety attacks--even if he does call.
My husband and I have received counseling, but he believes I need more. The kids are avoiding me, and my husband is tired of my anxious moments. Any advice?
--Worried
Dear Worried:
Get thee to a therapist. Quickly. You are surrounded by reasons to feel depressed and anxious and are so articulate in describing them, but you seem to have missed the final part of the equation, which is that you are anxious and depressed.
Every mom who loves her mom-job (as you do) feels that terrible tug as the kids grow and leave. Kids' growing and leaving does more than put you at a crossroads--it's a cloverleaf in the highway of your life. The answer isn't for you to glue yourself to MTV or CNN so you can keep up with your family at the dinner table--though all of those things might help.
The answer is for you to get professional help and perhaps agree to a course of medication that will help with your anxiety.
I certainly appreciate your husband's fatigue with your anxious moments, but really, because he delivered many of these anxious moments to you on a silver platter, the least he can do is continue to hang in there with you.
Talk this out, not just to review his low-down greatest hits, but to figure out where you go from here.
Her life feels like a dead end
September 5, 2004
Nothing in this life lasts forever. You are much in the same situation as a worker whose job has been outsourced overseas, and the plant has closed after 20 years. If you feel behind, its because you are behind. You have lived in complacency, secure in your cocoon of Mommydom, and now, for all intents and purposes, that part of your life is over. C'est fini.
No damn wonder you feel anxious, your children have outgrown you, and possibly your husband too.
What to do, what to do, what to do? Well, like any worker who is out of a job, you have to start looking, maybe upgrading. Start by getting some outside interests - take a class, get a job, volunteer for an organization you feel strongly about. GET OUT OF THE HOUSE AND DO SOMETHING!
Once you start regaining your sense of self, and a definition of yourself outside that of "Mommy", you will likely find that a large part of your anxiety will be manageable. You will be able to face your husband as an equal, not some sad little clinging vine.
Childfree Abby
The ChildFree Abby Archives - http://www.dismal-light.net/childfreeabby/