I really don't know what to say here because there are so many things. I guess I will just start with, I feel like I am going crazy.

I love my wife and children more than anything in the world. I have given my life to them, but I just feel cheated. I feel cheated in the sense of my wife was rather eventful to put it lightly before we got together. She had been with 6 other guys before me and it drives me crazy and I feel I was cheated with being her first for everything in life. I will say I was also and actually had a child while in high school that I took to raise without the girl. So in this aspect, with me having a past of my own I guess you could say I am selfish for not forgetting hers.

We have been married for going on 15 years. We married the day after high school and only knew each other for our senior year. Over time before marriage I found out about the others (small town) and would ask her about it and at first she admitted to 3 then finally after much prodding the other 3. This is where thengs have gone bad for me.

Even after so many years I just can't let it go and feel there is more due to the fact she has lied many times to me, mostly about money issues. I continually ask questions about her sexual past and I know this is very desctructive behavior. I don't know what I can do for myself to just let it go and forget it. I know it is hurting her having to talk about it and I tell her it won't bother me at all that I just want to know, but deep inside it is killing me.

On to other issues now. Geez as I write this I feel like there is no end. I have found myself the most angry person in the world. I use to be outgoing and went fishing or something all the time. Now I just sit in the house or sleep. I only work 14 days a month (12 hour shifts) and sit for 14. I leave long enough to pick the kids up at school and then back home. I can sit and think of a hundred things I want to do, but just can't get up and do it. I get upset easily and even pick fights with my wife at times. I use to be in law enforcement in a very violent area of the country and after 5 years decided to quit due to I couldn't take all the dying anymore. I have sat, even today, and I wondered what I did wrong or did I do anything wrong so the other person didn't have to die. It got so bad I started having seizures from being sleep deprived. That is when I chose I needed to leave.

I found myself to the point when one of the kids say something I find the least bit disrespectful I bark at them immediately. I don't show any love towards people I care about. I find myself doing like my father did. Instead of saying I love you I just buy them something. I have heard my father tell me 3 times I can count that he loves me and 2 of those were right as I was going in to have brain surgery 2 times. Any other time he would just go buy us something when we were growing up. I feel like I am sending my children down the same path and I don't want that.

I need help and don't know what to do. I don't know if it's depression or something else causing me to do these things to my wife and basically mentally killing myself or what.

I am such a proud person I just can't ask for help. It's not in me to be able to do it. I just know know I am so confused. My wife and I consume all our time together with the kids. There is no us time. If we go eat they go to, it's just what parents do. I have tried to take a step to some us time. My parents always get us something together for Christmas each year. This year I asked for them to give us the money to spend in a hotel in another tow for a few nights and them keep the kids, which they are going to do. What is sad is I am telling all of you this stuff and my wife doesn't even know how I feel. I just can't bring myself to tell her because I don't want her to think it is something she has done.

The first thing you are doing wrong is being dishonest with your wife. Pick up some of Dr. Harley's material and read it - Love Busters and His Needs, Her Needs.

Your wife needs to also be able to come to you honestly with money matters. I don't know why she is lying but that is killing your trust for her. And that is why you're having such problems with all that happened before you two got married.

Dishonesty between the two of you set aside, you are definetly depressed. You have all the symptoms. Maybe if you look at the situation from a different standpoint you would be able to go get some help. I know the way you're looking at it now will only get you into more trouble. A man's pride is actually a statement of just how insecure he is. He uses the "I'm too big to go get help" to cover up the insecure little boy inside that says, "I'm scared that if I ask for help somebody will think I'm not really a man".

Now the way you can retrain your thinking that will help you get help is say to yourself, "I'm proud enough of what I have that I'm man enough to stand up and do whatever it takes to save it all, even if it means I have to get somebody to 'teach me how this new machinery works'".
In other words, remember that once upon a time you had to learn how to walk, then to talk, then to ride a bike, then to drive a truck, or maybe a tractor. All you are doing is getting somebody to teach you how to work on that vehicle. Even if you were a mechanic, there was a time when you had to learn how the thing was put together.

Go to the doctor and tell him the symptoms you told on this site. Sleeping, irritable, not motivated to do things you enjoy; and he can give you some medicine. Take care of that first. Then sit down and write out what it is you feel so you have time to recheck thing and make sure it's all there, then go to your wife with it. You can't have a successful marriage without honesty.

Good Luck!

Well. Honestly if she has only been with 6 you should feel lucky. I have about 10 close girlfriends and there is only 1 of them who has been with less than 5. The rest are up in the 20's. Guess I hang out with pretty promiscuous women, but I am also in school and all of the girls in my class also discuss that they too have been with many men. I don't really see why after 15 years something like that would still be an issue.