Do you see a medical doctor regularly? I think everyone who has depression needs a good primary care doctor. An internist is even better.

I had about five years of depression similar to what you're talking about in the late 90s. It turned out that I was developing an autoimmune disorder. When that finally showed enough symptoms to be diagnosed, and I got a medication to control it, my depression started responding to meds again.

There are other medical issues you can have too, like low vitamin D3 or B12 or thyroid problems.

If you have insurance and can afford it, it's definitely worth looking into.

And...I'm going to type this, even though maybe I shouldn't. It's about not wanting to have sex until you're actually doing it. I used to have a friend who made me laugh so hard once when he said, about women in general, "You have to hot her up before you bed her down."

Some men get offended if their partner isn't immediately interested, and others don't mind if it takes some effort before the woman gets into it. It sounds like you've got one of the second kind of man, so that's really terrific! If you are still able to enjoy sex once you get into it, even with your depression, that's a really good thing.

I still tend to have long depressive episodes. I'm just starting to come out of a 3 yr+ one. I've been slowly getting better for a couple of months now. I suppose it's mostly because I started seeing a really good therapist last fall. Or it just happened. Sometimes you never know.

But I do encourage you to get your medical status checked out if you haven't already. When you have chronic depression, doctors often attribute everything to the depression if it can be a symptom, and depression has lots of symptoms that overlap with other illnesses.