Brief background on me: academic in the arts, advanced degrees, professor at a great school, musician and writer.

Married to a wonderful man, kids who are blessings. Husband is someone I truly like and whom I respect enormously. He has been unequivocally good to me. The one problem, and it has Always been there: the sex life. For me, it is bad, almost nonexistent. I have no desire for him, and at times it is a kind of revulsion. I do have desire, but not for him.

This is heartbreaking, and I have fought it for decades. It has wreaked all sorts of problems for me, from eating disorders to over-exercise injuries, to medications for depression, etc.

Complicating the issue is that I developed feelings for a work colleague/friend.

I have, of course, done the unthinkable. I fell in love with a work colleague, a married man (albeit one who had shared the unhappiness of his marriage with me), and someone who was probably my closest friend and confidant. It is necessary for me to keep this all a secret (though I have been seeing a therapist for over a year, to whom I can talk, but it has only been moderately helpful, as she is quite nice and supportive but not overly insightful; and also an acupuncturist who has been very helpful more broadly as well).

I cannot avoid this friend/colleague. I think I’m doing better, and then we have contact, and my feelings are all reopened, whether of love and desire or of absolute anger at how he has treated me. He has truly been a wonderful friend in all areas but this. I cannot begin to tell you how many hours this has sucked out of my life, and how much energy.

Last week I punched both of my forearms furiously, leaving horrible bruises, because I had nowhere to direct the pain (and I am working desperately to avoid bulimia, which was one of my main coping techniques in the past). If I were brave enough, I would have cut myself. It is horrible enough that I damaged my arms — me, as a musician. I must wear long sleeves this week to conceal the horrendous bruises from my children and my students — this, in a week in which summer has sprung on us prematurely.

I have reduced my calorie intake as much as I can while still managing life, and have no doubt mucked seriously with my metabolism.

It’s as if when I’m not eating, I feel the pain less, but I know I cannot sustain this indefinitely, and I’m terrified of having to rejoin life. I think if I started eating more, and feeling the pain, I could not go on, yet I know I must, for my kids.

I don’t know what to do. My background and life story suggest a kind of intelligence and hard work ethic, but it has not been helping me here. I think the analogy of an addiction is not a bad one, but it is like a food addiction in that I cannot leave this job, and cannot avoid him at it. And I hate negativity; it eats at me like an acid. I do not want to avoid him through anger and pain; I want, and need, to move on, but I keep being heartbroken — longing for him, enjoying our friendship so much, and then being consumed with anger, frustration and grief — all in no particular order. It does sometimes seem to be getting better, and then it will be worse again, like a virus that never quite goes away.

Meanwhile, my husband is still around — this wonderful man — for whom I have zero feelings physically or even negative ones. Indeed, perhaps I should not have married him, but I was so terribly inexperienced, and he was so good in other ways, that I thought — well, maybe I’ll get over it, or I’ll learn, or the feelings will develop, or it won’t really matter — life’s not a fairy tale, and you’re lucky to have found him. And indeed, I was, and have been, and yet… I have not learned, the feelings have not developed, and now — it does matter.

Please help me. I seek your insights, strategies, anything. I have been struggling for decades with the marital issue, and probably more than six years (I almost don’t want to count) with these other feelings of longing, which have consumed much more energy than even the marital stuff. I must find a way to break free — for my own sanity and even to offer the hope for myself of moving on — whether to find someone else, to make peace with what I have, or to make peace with myself on my own.

Desperate

Dear Desperate,

Yes, I agree, you need to break free.

But how?

Right now, you are trapped in a punishing cycle that you cannot reason your way out of or adjust your way out of.

I think you need to physically remove yourself. The best practical hope is to get into a residential treatment center. Residential treatment would give you an opportunity to step back for a few weeks. I really think that could help.

Insurance may very well pay for it.

It won’t be as hard as it sounds. While you are in pain, and enmeshed in these unsatisfying relationships, you continue to function at a high level. You continue to have a strong will. You can put that strong will to good use now. Your psyche needs that strength.

To find and arrange to enter a treatment center, you can marshal your practical skills to come to the aid of your wounded psyche. What is beautiful about human beings in crisis, beset with the worst of troubles, is that when we seek solutions, we discover our complementary skills; it’s as though in being forced to come to our own aid, we are forced to become whole.

I know what it is like to try to solve such wrenching problems on your own, in secret. It can hardly be done. But imagine finding hope in a community of people to whom your predicament is a known illness with known cures. What you are going through is no mystery. It has a cause and it has a cure.

Imagine the relief of having a real program of change. Imagine feeling it work. Imagine getting better!

Suggestion: Read this article from PsychCentral. It is an excellent overview: thorough but not technical. It says that cognitive behavioral therapy is considered the treatment of choice for people with bulimia. Using CBT, you can learn to recognize and combat the harmful thoughts that are causing your upset.

Here is a list of residential centers you might contact or visit.

And here is a list of online support for people with eating disorders.

What else do you need? You need deep compassion for your wounded self. To find compassion for your wounded self you need to tell someone all of this: the starving yourself, the eating, the hitting yourself, the thoughts of cutting. In order to tell all of this, you need to find somebody you can trust.

You can find that person. You can do this. You are going to get better. Just start taking the steps, one at a time.

For most of these 15 years, I’ve been in therapy. And I want to give it up forever, period.

I’ve had six therapists for stretches of time from a few months to three years. None of these stretches has ended well. One was good but I moved away; one put me on major drugs that wrecked me; two were pleasant enough, and talking to them helped sometimes, but they never brought any special insight to the table.

Two others have been ruinous. One insisted, through my worst depressive episode, on reminding me of all the reasons I had to be depressed (his favorites were the death of my father several months prior, and my mother’s long-term incapacitating illness), and pointing out what a long hard road back lay ahead for me, and how much work it would take. Every session was worse than the previous, and I would find myself sobbing uncontrollably as soon as I got home afterward.  (My partner took to referring to this one as “Dr. Mengele.”)

My most recent therapist spent half of our last (and final) session exploring the fact that I often forget to write down the times of our appointments, and have to email him for confirmation. “Why did you forget to bring your calendar today? Well, why do you think you forget to write things down? Will you put this on your calendar for next week?” I’d had a terrible week, and was sitting on the couch in tears at the end of this.

Neither of these guys tried to comfort me, or make me feel better in the moment, or the week that lay ahead. The first guy made sure I knew that I could always check myself into a psych hospital, but never listened when I asked him to please stop saying things that made me feel worse, week after week. The second sat there in a room with me — another human being — looked at me with tears running down my face and said nothing to express any sort of compassion or concern. Nothing. Never went back to him, of course (that was a few weeks ago).

I’m sick and fucking tired of this. I go see these people, and pay them as professionals to provide a service: helping me feel better. Yes, I know that you have to go into painful areas in therapy. I’m willing to do that, and have. And I know their job isn’t to make me “happy.” But if it isn’t to help me feel better, and cope better with those painful feelings now rather than sometime in the distant future, then what the hell are they doing there?

I don’t get it and I don’t want to be involved in it anymore. Frankly, I think there’s something inhuman in this — who spends their day watching humans suffer terribly, while proffering little more than handkerchiefs and banal questions? I don’t want to work these things out alone, I want help. Instead, I find myself consistently talking to people who, to my mind, border on the sociopathic in their ability to disregard suffering. (I’m looking at you, Dr. Mengele.)

The day I “fired” my most recent therapist, I felt better than I had in months. I knew I didn’t have to go back there and ruminate yet again.

Unfortunately, in America, if you’re not happy and well-adjusted, everyone from you to Dear Prudence to Dear Abby to my sister proffers therapy as a necessary component of maintaining mental health. Well, I’ve done it, I hate it, it’s damaged me, and I never want to go back. I especially don’t want to go back into that hellish process of trying out new therapists and spending multiple hours laying out my troubles.

But, there’s still the nagging feeling that I might be wrong — obviously, or I wouldn’t be writing to you. What would you do if you were me?

Thanks for letting me ramble.

Jeff

PS: Don’t suggest cognitive-behavioral/mindfulness therapy; that last guy specialized in that and didn’t do jack shit.

Dear Jeff,

I feel for you. I wish you could find some relief for your pain. I don’t know what I would do if I were you. I guess if I were you I’d keep looking for some kind of solution. I’d keep looking for someplace I could go and just leave all my problems for a while. If not through therapy then some kind of group.

All I can say is I totally hear you when you say you want to quit therapy, and some of these therapists sound like real jerks. Maybe there are some sociopaths who are therapists. I hadn’t really thought about it before, because I’ve been very lucky with the therapists I’ve had.

I just went through the worst depression of my life, in the spring, summer and fall of 2011. That was awesomely bad. So what was I depressed about? Loss, I guess. I was grieving. But I was fighting it. I was fighting my own grief, and I was angry and heartbroken over things that happened in my family and in my own life. But I got a good therapist and I’m working through it and most days I’m pretty good. Of course, I haven’t been drinking for a long time, so that helps. I think when I was drinking I was depressed but didn’t even know it.

Where the hell are you living? It sounds like you’ve had some real cold therapists! Out here in San Francisco there are lots of really caring people. I mean super caring people. There are people out here full of love, and when you’re down really low you can feel it and they’ll pull you out of it. I’ve been pulled out of it by people with extraordinary gifts, extraordinary wellsprings of love. Where does that come from? Hell if I know. I came out here, though, because I sensed there was a lot of love out here, and love was what I needed. You know, like the song says, “If you are going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.”

Seriously. I was a lonely, cold, frustrated kid down in Florida, and I needed people who could be warm, and luckily the therapists I found were that way. They didn’t just sit there and stare at me. They helped me.

You know, one thing I’d do, is contact that one therapist who was good, and see if you could do sessions by phone. Or at least just talk and see if he or she had any ideas about what to do.

It would probably feel good just to get in touch.

This thing about therapists not being kind is interesting. The idea, I think, is that by observing you in a neutral way the therapist lets you have your emotional experience and then hopefully guides you through some kind of process where the sadness ends up meaning something. It’s compassion for yourself that you need, but the therapist can model that for you by showing compassion for you. Now maybe this being within you who is deserving of your compassion has surfaced but the therapist hasn’t helped you successfully identify this being and connect with it. Or maybe, just maybe, you haven’t been able to process and integrate what you’re encountering in therapy because afterward you self-medicate with alcohol. If that were true, it would make perfect sense that therapy’s not working — because you’re not able to really solidify what you’re learning.

But if drinking’s the only thing that gives you any respite, well, that’s a tough one. Not to bring you down any more, but the alcohol and the antidepressants together sound like a dangerous combo. So at the very least, please get some solid medical advice about drug interactions. And find out how much alcohol it’s safe to drink with these medications. That’s really not something to fool around with.

Look, I’m just another drunk, and a depressed person to boot, but I’ve been able to quit drinking, and I’ve been helped by therapy. And I don’t know if therapy would have worked if I was drinking. I never would have gone to therapy when I was drinking, because I was afraid of therapists and also angry with anyone who tried to help me. I did think they were a bunch of jerks — but that was before I tried it.

So if therapy isn’t working here’s my suggestion: Try Alcoholics Anonymous. Just start going to meetings. At the very least, you’ll find some people who are compassionate. You’ll hear some stories of other people who are having a hard time.

That’s what I would do if I were in your shoes. See if you can quit drinking. That really might help.

Mary dropped out of college, and subsequently led an alternative, tree-hugging kind of lifestyles. She smokes prodigious amounts of pot and is an alcoholic. She is married to a man, “Mike,” who I think of as a real brother, but he drinks a lot, too (although he does not smoke weed). They seem to have a master/slave type dynamic. Mary would cut her arm off for him — and for me, for that matter. He often is irritable with her. And it’s hard for me to not be, as she is, well, almost childlike and, frankly, boring to talk to after she’s swilled several beers and gotten good and stoned, which is every night. Literally, she talks about yard work, what she ate for lunch, what mundane things she’s going to do or did do, and so on. She isn’t into reading, seems to have almost no curiosity about the world. I often don’t know what to talk about with her so I find myself sitting in stupefied silence while she babbles on. To compound matters, I am renting a small studio apartment from the two of them, as I can’t afford anything better, and if I can’t make rent, they let it slide.

Even worse, my sister runs a landscape maintenance business and I have been working as her assistant about once a week as I struggle to launch a translation business (takes a lot to reinvent myself in this new profession and this also is very discouraging — to be mowing lawns after struggling so hard to attain that damned doctorate). In my first year here, when I was drinking heavily myself, I often felt suicidal, but what stopped me was the pain that would inflict on my mother, and also on Mary. I have, thankfully, pulled out of that dark place and am now “merely” depressed. I miss the identity my former profession gave me, and I hate Mary’s neediness. I had to really work to create some personal space for myself — Mary and her husband would love me to hang with them virtually every night as they are largely bored with each other. Mary makes noises about cutting back on drinking. The pot is something I don’t see her ever giving up. I doubt if she’ll go very far with the cutting back on drinking because it’s what she and Mike do. He even distills whiskey. And he’s big and can drink without getting as drunk as Mary, who is slender and pot-addled, as well.

I think I could deal with all this, though, if I had a job that provided me community. I miss teaching. I miss being independent. I am not a gifted technical translator thus far and have tried to get work at the local community college and in various staff positions at the local university. I’ve tried for several office jobs and nonprofit jobs. I think my three postgraduate degrees and my age make me unemployable in this economically distressed area. I feel like I have no identity of my own, and that I am living in some kind of nightmarish limbo. Most of all, this situation with my sister oppresses me. I never realized how much socialization I used to get from my work. I am, in fact, a social person, outgoing and personable. But without going to bars and drinking, I don’t know how to get that fix and so now I spend a lot of time alone, and while I like my own company I feel like part of me is withering. Yes, I am tutoring on a volunteer basis for the community college that won’t hire me, and I’m working out at the local recreation center. These help, but I don’t have friends of my own. I never thought I would be in this situation. I never thought I would find it so hard to branch out.

I guess what I’m asking for is how to deal with this? I halfheartedly fantasize about moving to China and Korea and teaching English as a second language, not because I want to teach English as a second language (which I did for a couple of years way back in my globe-wandering days). I would miss my two cats, and I’d feel bad for deserting my mother and Mary, who are both so thrilled that I moved back here, but that’s about it (not that that’s a small thing). But I miss teaching, I miss having colleagues and a professional identity and a life of my own that has nothing to do with my family. I could also try to find something of a writing/editing nature in a bigger town — Portland or Seattle. I also think, well, if I could be successful at this translation gig, then that might be enough — especially if I could attend professional conferences now and then.  In short, I don’t know what to do about my current lot in life.

Floundering

Dear Floundering,

It sounds like you are experiencing depression and a kind of “social death” as a result of your unemployment and return to the family. So your life task now is to regain your social life, to locate, in this temporary wasteland, people among whom you can again exist vividly. You need people who can actually see who you are. Since you are largely about ideas and knowledge, you must be around people who can see those ideas and that knowledge. The way you accomplished that in the past was to have a job, but you may have to find other ways to accomplish it now. That is OK. Many people are having to do this. Our culture is being rearranged in certain fundamental ways. There will be much support for this, as millions like you rearrange themselves culturally and geographically. We will see in the years to come a new definition of “job” as we find new ways to acquire necessities and also new ways, outside of “jobs,” to define ourselves socially and “be seen for who we are.”

Here is the bottom line: The people around you now do not see you. You have become invisible. That is the source of your anguish. It is also your existential condition, but we will get to that. For now, it is vital to note that your family cannot see you. Your twin cannot see you. You do not exist in their eyes. What they see when they look at you is something of their own creation.

Deprived of your social identity by unemployment, exiled from a place where you had standing, you have returned to the condition of childhood and its murky, undifferentiated selfhood.

You have disappeared.

It’s weird, isn’t it? We return to the family, thinking we will be seen, but we are not seen. Rather, we disappear.

I must say, I think part of the reason we resort to alcohol and drugs in such situations is that the threat of nonexistence causes us to panic. Ideally, we ought to understand that this panic is merely the recognition of our essential condition. We need not panic. We are merely being brought back to reality — the reality of our groundless, shifting, temporary existence; the reality of our mortality and smallness. Our panic is occasioned not by some calamity but in fact by the arrival of truth and the loss of an illusion.  So, while you fight to regain your social identity and find some comfort in it, do something else as well: Welcome this groundlessness and discomfort; make friends with it; meditate upon it; it is your existential condition.

The world of languages is the land of the traveler. So in a more practical sense, here is what I suggest: Seek out other language people. Seek out people who will get your Russian puns. Go to movies in Russian. Place ads in the paper for work as a Russian tutor.

Also: Define your mission. Give it a clear purpose and an end date. You have come here to help your mother in her final years. That is why you are enduring this. With your mother’s death, your chief reason for being here will also disappear. So plan for that. Begin looking in Portland and Seattle for jobs. Don’t worry, you don’t have to take a job yet. But begin looking.

What makes it so hard to be seen today? Does it not seem to you that our world is one of constant distraction? Does it not seem that the attention of people is not on us but on their devices? As they peer into their devices, do we not lose something of their attention? Are we not jealous of all that attention being sucked up by devices? Do we not mourn the death of their seeing us, the death of being vivid and central in others’ sight on the street?

We wish to be seen and now we are competing with many devices for the attention of the passerby.

So we post videos of ourselves on the Net. If the Net is where the attention has gone then that is where we must go to be seen.

Those are some things to think about.

Now, as an addendum, here are some things I read as I was thinking about your situation. I found them interesting, so I’m just putting them here at the end. Perhaps you will find them interesting too.

On the effects of unemployment and depression

Here is something interesting on  the Loss of Work Contacts and Depression:

“According to an Institute for Work and Health Issue Briefing, researchers conclude that the loss of social contacts with colleagues has a more harmful effect on the unemployed than the loss of income (Helliwell, J.F., Putnam, R.D.,September 29, 2004, “The Social Context of Well-Being,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.) Workers who have abruptly lost their jobs have also lost their social support system and are forcibly isolated with their stress.”

Also this on Unemployment as social death: “Long-term unemployment affects many facets of a person’s life besides their income. According to Ernest Becker, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Denial of Death, losing our role in our culture is a kind of social death (1973.) In a culture that values hard work and believes that anyone can get ahead who is not lazy, long-term unemployment is a shameful prospect. The person has lost the social contacts once enjoyed in the workplace and has lost the sense of playing a role in society at large. Besides the self-doubts raised by rejection after rejection from employers, the long-term unemployed person faces rejection from society as a whole. Accusations that the unemployed spend their days loafing on their couch and collecting unemployment checks are not uncommon and are a defense of the American core belief that people who are poor only have themselves to blame.”

An interesting text on Lady Gaga and social death, among other things. And, So, What’s Work? (See the section on “connectedness.”) It comes from Dr. Elijah Levy  of the Thinking on Things Institute.

Though this may seem a little tangential, I was touched by this and it made me interested in seeing the movie “Losing Tom.”

And finally, though this may seem even more tangential, here is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. writing on  “psychological death.”