I think the couples who manage to stay together through one party having depression, even with suicide attempts, and other illnesses and hard times are so lucky. So great. I know some of the couples don't feel that way. A distance has come into the relationship.

I had been depressed for a few years when I was diagnosed with lupus, which is definitely a factor in the disease. I lost a good job, and it is possible that I will never recapture that earning potential.

And the man I was with walked out 5 weeks after the lupus diagnosis, saying I was impossible to live with. When I hear stories about how men have stuck with their wives through so many things, I know I didn't do anything to deserve the way I was treated. Yeah, sure sometimes I nagged a bit. I could be cranky. As my T says -- who doesn't? And living with a depressed person is no box of chocolates. But I also called him my angel and the best person I ever knew, thanked him for the kind things he did, bought him shirts while he was on the road (as he frequently was) because I missed him so much and it was the way I could show I cared.

One of the last things he said to me was that he was leaving me because I was "so filled with hate and bitterness and anger" that he didn't like to go out with me in public anymore. I cried and cried that that was final opinion of me. After 15 years together.

He used to make fun of Newt Gingrich for bringing divorce papers to his wife to sign while she was in the hospital recovering from cancer. Now I believe that he had to make me into this cartoon of a woman to justify leaving me in a lurch, otherwise he would have to look in the mirror and despise himself.

The way this relationship ended -- with me not suspecting a thing -- just a phone call one day from California (I was in Florida -- he ran so far away from me, he would have fallen into the sea if he'd gone any further) -- has been traumatic. I had to give away my dogs, I lost my dream house.

My life has been rootless and chaotic since. He left in May 2003; I had to give my dogs up soon after; I lost the house in March 2004. My Ts say that I am still grieving, give it time.

At this point, I don't want to ever have another relationship with a man. Sometimes I think about having sexual relationships, but the man who left me was not a good lover. So it was boring and routinized and infrequent for the past 15 years. My body is ok for a woman my age, but I am not a babe anymore, and the thought of exposing myself to judgment is terrifying. After all -- I'm so filled with hate and anger and bitterness, who would want me? One T told me that one of her rules is, "Just because someone says it doesn't make it true." But it so awful to think that this man whom everyone loved has this thought about me. He was so loved by my family that my brother supports him in the breakup and my mother cried when I told her he was gone.

Yesterday, a nice man who wants a romance but is cooling things with me said to get in touch if I ever want to get "frisky." I guess that is why all this is on my mind. I don't know if I can ever have a relationship with a man again.

And this, of coure, feeds into my depressive thoughts. It's not that I believe life isn't worth living without a man. It's much deeper than that -- the feeling of having been told that I am so completely and utterly worthless and filled with hate and bitterness and anger. Of feeling that I shouldn't show who I am to the world because I am so lacking in redeeming value.

Sorry, just rambling I will value what feedback you give. Thanks for reading all this.