Thank you nextgirl. You understand me well.

From Anne's book, "How You Can Survive When They're Depressed", page 199, she talks about divorce-speak.

For a depressed person:
"...divorce-speak comes out of bravura, and is not the product of thoughtful deliberation."

For a non-depressed person:
"In the absence of depression, an unhappy or disaffected spouse might be expected to leave a trail of bread crumbs to mark his or her gradual progress toward the decision to separate or to divorce: signs of unhappiness, discussion, arguments, and attempts to improve or at least define the dissonance in the relationship."

For a depressed person:
"...no such trail is laid; the gauntlet is simply tossed, without warning or preamble, more often than not into a mundane exchange such as what to have for dinner or you, the partner, have done wrong that day."


I believe in my posts and certainly in this very thread I am operating more from a non-depressed perspective than I ever had before. My wife and I both remember the "gauntlet" days. Not now though. I'm defining the dissonance (and now she also is defining the dissonance). We are having the discussions. We are having the arguments. We are trying to improve the relationship.

The catalyst that started all of this was when I entered treatment for my depression. MORE IMPORTANTLY though, it was the "thoughtful deliberation" that occurred in therapy.

If we do all these changes to improve our relationship will my "not in-love" doubts disappear? That I can not answer at this point in the journey.