Hi everyone. I am 37F married to my husband 43M for 13 years, together for 17. I am in need of advice about my situation and am hoping people can offer their experience and thoughts. Apologize in advance for the very long post.

We have three children that are all under 10. My husband and I met when we were both fairly young. We both work full time and are on a good track career wise. He suffers from depression which was diagnosed when he was a young teenager, but it typically is well controlled. I would say the entire time we have been together there have maybe been 5-6 bouts of severe depression which were not too lengthy, although very personally hard for him and for me.

We had our kids fairly close together such that when we had our youngest son our oldest was not even four yet. During the time I was pregnant with our youngest and after I had him we were not having sex very often. As my husband was very unhappy about this, according to him, it precipitated a very severe depressive episode. Because of this and because we were both generally unhappy, after our son was born we went to marriage counseling for a few years and things seemed to improve, especially during the pandemic. Our kids are older now and there is more time for intimacy and to spend time with each other. However, for the past couple of months or so my husband has been completely checked out of parenting and our marriage and really our lives altogether. The kids and I function as a four person team and my husband is somewhat of a loner. We have maintained an active sex life because through counseling I was able to learn how important this is to him. Nonetheless, my husband has once again entered a major depressive episode for which he is currently in outpatient therapy and on medicine.

He tells me that our marriage, and only our marriage, is causing his depression. That no matter what he cannot be happy with me because we lack the "sexual connection" that he desires. That the only thing that can pull him out of his depression is this "sexual connection" with someone else, but he is 100% sure he can't find it with me. He is resentful of the times when our kids were young and I did not make time for him and cannot get over that. He says that we are very compatible in a lot of ways but he just can't be happy in our marriage. He doesn't even necessarily want to get divorced right now, he just wants to go have sex with other people and find this "connection" he is so desperately seeking as it is the only thing (in his mind) that can pull him out of his depression.

From my end (and I have expressed all of this to him), I don't want to end the relationship. I love him and care about him and think he is having a midlife crisis and depressive episode and desperately seeking "something". It is hard for me to take him seriously because depending on a marriage or sex with other women to cure depression doesn't work. He refuses to increase his meds or do any more serious therapy because again, he is 100% sure our marriage is the cause and only cause. I should also mention that he views divorce and our potential relationship if we get divorced in a way that is unrealistic, such as saying that he will always be there for me no matter what and hopes that we can be together as a family (even though divorced) a lot and that divorce will make the relationship between he and I better and stronger.

I'm at a loss of what to do. I am not ready to give up on our marriage, although I acknowledge it might very well be a hopeless situation. We have talked about it a lot, and he is considering whether he can actually be present in our marriage and give it a real try to see if it will work so we don't have to give up the life that we have built together. While we are working through that, I wanted to see if anyone has been in a similar situation and has any advice. Much appreciated!