**update**

Thank you to those of you who have read this whole post and given me your feedback. You’ve given me the pieces of the puzzle to understand exactly what’s happening. Everything he’s been saying and doing lately makes total sense now. We’ll be alright. He knows what he’s doing. He wants me to be able to live without him (he had a brush with death recently and saw how it’s been affecting me — I guess it just took him a little while to figure out how to help me move forward with healing). Again, thank you. Your words are just what I needed to put it together.

COVID and quarantine has my anxiety and depression through the roof! My husband’s also having some major issues and is pushing me away and cutting me out of his life without any real reason (bc he’s depressed). I have a doctor’s appointment today, but I’m not sure what can be done for me at this point.

I’ve never felt safe in this world until my husband. He makes me feel safe, just being here for me, and being my husband, and being attentive to my needs.

I’ve never found peace until my husband. After being sexually abused as a child, after being unwanted sexually by my first husband and losing myself to him, and after being raped again as an adult, I had given up on finding peace. But my husband saved me from the dark pit and has brought me into the light. He’s made me comfortable to be the person I truly am — I feel like it’s really okay to be myself, because he’s beside me to protect me and defend me if I should ever again need that.

I’ve never found home in a person before my husband. My first husband was always annoyed that I only ever called where I grew up home, but I’ve understood what it means to feel at home with a partner with my husband since we’ve been together.

When it comes to medications for anxiety and depression, the last time I tried, I psychologically rejected it — it literally made me throwing-up sick. Because I cheated on my first husband when on Prozac and I hurt myself when on one, and yet another potentially gave me seizures. I couldn’t live with the guilt of the terrible things I did (that were largely out of character) and lately, after moving back to the area where everything negative has ever happened to me, I’ve been having nightmares every night since my husband has abandoned our bed.

I barely get any sleep, waking up from nightmares ever hour of the night, or waking up before 2am and not being able to sleep anymore because I’m too anxious. I’ve not been able to eat very well due to stomach upset and a nervous stomach, then loss of appetite a lot of times. I feel a flutter in my chest often when at home, and the tightness reaches up to my chin when it happens. I’m often dissociating to deal with the stress, and sometimes that’s the only way I can fall asleep.

I don’t want to live without him. I’m not obsessed or anything. I’m just afraid to be thrown back to the wolves. I love him very dearly and I’d die to secure his happiness, if that was an option. He’s done so much for me. I really feel like he’s my other half — he makes me feel whole. I’ve always tried to do just as much for him as he’s done for me, but now he’s pulling away from me, and I’m falling. I feel like his plan is just to dump me where he found me, that I’ve just become a burdensome obligation to him as his wife. He’s not the kind of man to intentionally hurt me and I understand needing space and time to oneself, and I’m trying to give him time and space to himself— I’m even going a few states away to visit an aunt tomorrow for a couple days. But when I tell him this, he says he doesn’t care what I do. He tells me in so many ways lately that I don’t matter at all to him anymore. This is all of a sudden, after getting a dog together who’s not fully grown yet (I wasn’t ready for another dog and he chose her, and now he says me and the dog will take care of each other), after getting into a comfortable groove (but in a city where neither of us wants to live due to traumas).

I’m in a tailspin. When I ask how we can make our relationship better, he says he doesn’t care about a relationship at all. He never has any complaints about our relationship at all, but something I say every now and again that he tells me upsets him. When he says he’s leaving and wants a divorce, he says it has nothing to do with me and he just needs some time to himself. He’s not interested in other women — if anything, he might just be pushing me away so I’m not there when he dies/kills himself.

I don’t want long-term medication for my anxiety and depression. A break would do my husband and me good, I’m sure, but I don’t want to be here, at the epicenter of my traumas, and he doesn’t want to be here either. The longer I’m here, the worse I get. But I signed a contract until next June for my career, because he said he’d be here to support me when I took this job, to kick off my career for a year or two. I wish I’d never taken this job. I wish we’d never moved back here. At this point, I’m even wishing we didn’t get the dog, even though she’s the closest thing to a child I’ll ever have.

I need the inner peace back that he’s afforded me for years. I feel homeless without him sleeping beside me. I miss him and the safety he’s provided for me physically and mentally. I need to feel whole again. But everything I do is only temporary relief — walks/hikes with the dog, reading, drives and motorcycle rides all over the state and across state borders, etc. When I turn around to come back here, my body starts protesting again. Things just keep getting worse mentally and psychically for me and my husband. 😔