Ughhhhhhhh, mental picture.

I know, it stresses you out, you run out of energy. When you give and give until you got nothing left. You have to make sure to take care of you. Not sure if I mentioned this in my last post, but read up on depression, and seek counseling for yourself to help you deal and cope. Depression isn't a disease that just hurts the person with it, it hurts everyone who cares for them.

As long as he is trying to "get better" then I would not give up on him either. If there was a time when things were good, when you were happy, and this is what has caused the problems, then hope is not gone.

Does he go to counseling? Is he open to it? (If not, and it is really that bad try to enlist friends and family to talk to him) Why is he depressed? Is it something that is still a part of his life? Like bad job, or feeling like what he is doing is pointless?

I know that depression zaps you of energy and motivation, but even if he had a hobby, trying to encourage him to get involved in it again. Something he loved.

Ultimately, he needs to love himself, and make sure there isn't some other chemical/hormonal thing going on.

Just don't keep doing the same old things, if they aren't working......let him know you care, and you are there, but also that you need "you" time to take care of you.

One year? If he is working on it, being on meds shows signs of trying to do something.........a year to get straightened out really isn't so long......... Even with meds it can take up to three months to get to a dosage that MIGHT work, but won't because of the particular drug..........so if you try another, it could take another three or more months. This is why I'm saying that if someone is battling major depression, to expect things to be "all better" or even "better" in as little as a year is a bit much to ask.

You said, "it all started" when he was put on meds. He needs to try different meds, and seek counseling as well.

No you can't do everything, u need counseling and support, but he isn't able to give it in his condition.

Meds, will erase sex drive, depression will erase everything else.

If you love him, and care, it is worth working on imo.

Get help from others, family members, friends. If he is still depressed the meds aren't working, and are causing MORE problems.

I've been depressed, more than a year, and been with someone who was for more than a year. It all depends on who is willing to work at what.

If he is unwilling to do his part, try intervention, if it doesn't work............then it is up to you to decide.

P.S.
In most places there are agencies to help mothers with daycare so they can work.........and other services. You may not like to have to use them, but that is what they are there for.

Communicate with him, ask him about his feelings (lol, not funny but I know how hard it can be to get a guy to open up). He isn't happy either, and YES he can love you, and with depression not have the energy or desire to do anything.......anything at all if it gets real bad.

I think the "E" is the key. The realization that we are all one. What you do to others, is only a reflection of what you do to yourself. Control is an illusion, most everything you think is "real" is an illusion.

PEACE exists, we just do not all live in it.

BTW, "violence" must exist in order to live on this planet in this form.........depending only on your definition of violence. In order to live, I must kill whether it be plant or animal. For life to be given, life must be taken..........

I don't really know. I wish I did. I know if it was a family member of mine, I'd do anything and everything I could to get them committed to get help, even if against their will...........but that is me.

Then I wouldn't deal with it. If they aren't dealing, I'm certainly not going to take it on. It's their responsibility not mine.

I'd love them from a distance, and say goodbye.

"Wanna quickie?"

Depends on how mad, and why for...........

Just a little upset, nothing, angry, tell them, if not heard, throw something at them or smack 'em in the head so that maybe when I repeat myself I've jiggled their brain into listening mode.

If I'm pissed...........as in on the verge of running you over with my car...........I will probably seclude myself and cry until I've calmed down and thought the situation through.......then talk about it......that is if there is anything left to talk about.

Yes, it happens, and I'm sorry it happened to you. Been there done that, a little more to my story, but similar enough.

Don't give up, and it isn't everyone, the man I'm with now that I'm about to share a second anniversary with on the first, I met online, the same site as the "other guy" to be exact.

Something I am beginning to believe is impossible.......someone on my wavelength, we share the same energy, he knows what I want not because I say it, but because he knows me, and I know what he wants, not because I know him but knowing him is knowing myself. Someone who brings out the depths of me that lay hidden to even myself, and I'd like to be able to do it for him in return. True unity, mind, soul, spirit, flesh.

Well, ummmmm, then I could argue that you insult me by claiming that your "God" is my "God". That you insult my "God" by claiming that yours is the only true God.......and that all others are false.

BTW, there are "holy scriptures" or "spiritual" writings that have been around more than 2000 years, or at least a similar amount of time that outdate the Bible. Many of them are written as cryptographs in Egypt, BEFORE the Bible, as it was before the Exodus. They have "gods" and all kinds of things.

So, the claim that the Bible must be the word of "God" because he wouldn't have let it be around so long if it wasn't..........well, doesn't hold any water.

You may not tell me I'm going to hell, but the book you claim is infallible, DOES, simply because I don't believe Jesus is Christ and God. So, claiming that you believe it means that you believe (whether you say it or not) that those who do not are going to hell, and that is exactly why you must share the "gospel" with them..........to convert them so they won't go to hell.

Either way, your point about "free will", well........it doesn't exist. To say, "I want someone to love me for me and love me for "real" and not because I make them or I'm going to give them something.........to love me of their own free will" and then have a book that tells about all the blessings if you follow, promised eternal life, punishment if you don't, and eternal hell...........well, explain to me how anyone could truly have free well if they are created by another being that has an ultimate plan for their existance????

Besides, you are wrong. I am not trying to prove the Bible wrong, or Christianity..... I don't feel the need. I am trying to prove that it isn't the ONLY way to truth, or to happiness, or to fulfillment..........or that any REAL God would be as the one in the Bible, especially the Old Testament. It reeks of the fallacies of humanity. Not some higher, eternal, all wise being.

You believe it, good for you...........it fulfills your life, isn't it great to have a purpose??

I'm done. Believe the Bible with all your heart. Live it.....be real...........be real.

Feral, I can respect your beliefs.........and I can understand what you are saying, but you see people debate the Bible with you and call it a "myth" because you try to use it as a law. When you use it as proof or fact, when you have those long posts of quoted scriptures........that opens you and them (the scriptures and the Bible) up to be debated and called a farce.

However, when you testify (as the early Christians did) of your life, and how Christ made a difference for you, and how your life has changed. Your personal experiences and even answered prayers...............No one can argue with those. They may not attribute them to any "God", but they are yours.

I know, for me, I hate it when people use the Bible or present it to me as if it is the infallible word of "God". I find that offensive because I personally do not believe the true word of any true God can be contained in a book. But that is my opinion, and when someone tries to use the Bible, or any holy book for that matter, as the infallible word of "God" that is what I will tell them, and then I will give them evidence of the trees, etc.

Use what is real, use the stars in the sky as testiment to divine design. Use the intricate lives of bees and their beehives of something greater than ourselves...........and SHARE

that you believe it is your Christ.

However, when you use a Bible, that speaks of Heaven, and Hell, and that all non-believers will have their place in the Lake of Fire, and such........people are going to do their best to disprove it.

Or that individuality was an illusion in the first place??

Then there is no debt owed. No, my life and service for his. No, "your life is not your own for he bought it on calvary"?

No, your sole purpose for being on this planet is to serve..........??


On another note, God and certainly religion is not what makes "good" man makes "good" we decide what is "good" and what is not, history teaches this. Something like beating a child used to be accepted as a "good" form of punishment and child rearing by...........get this Christians. "Good" is defined by your culture. Human sacrifice was "good" to many because they believed it pleased the "Gods" on the same precept that the "God" of the Bible needed a spotless lamb (of a human).

Humans are all about doing what they need to survive, it is difficult to be kind to your brother when you are starving and he has plenty. When he "owns" the earth and you simply owe him for living on it. Where you work 1/3 of your life to make money, to "buy" something, that you have to pay someone else to possess, and to keep. Where the land you paid for many times over (interest rate) is actually owned by the government and you have to continue to pay them fees to live on it. Where you make your company more money than you make yourself. And that is just the American capatalist society.

Let's look at societies that have been so ravaged by war, they have no economy. They grow what meager food in soils that have little nutrients, do not have running water, and their children are lucky to live to age five..........

They are merely concerned with survival, not about ethics or morality.

Yes, some of us in this country are in such a place that we are not in need of basic things and/or are not so WORRIED about survival that we can ponder and consider.

Either way, many wars have been waged (as have been mentioned) for "God". "God" ordered the Israelites to murder women and children and steal their land.........because it was promised to them. Plain theft covered up by using the name "God".

There are many churches who do good with the donations they receive........but there are also many churches who make sure that FIRST the pastor/preist/bishop lives about 100% better than his average "sheep", that the church has to have a nice building, while some of its members are struggling to put food on the table.........the list goes on. Churches are more of a business. Example: if you don't pay tithes at many of them, you aren't truly considered a member.

Anyhoo, if you want to even believe in the God of the Bible, or any God who is all powerful, who has a plan, and his the earth is in the center of his hand where he is in control of all that goes on, is all knowing, and created everything under and including the sun.......................HE NOT ONLY MADE GOOD BUT MADE EVIL. He made us, and everything we are capable of.

We are here to learn GOOD and EVIL, and that it truly doesn't exist. It is all a matter of perception.

My children think it is evil for a lion to kill a poor cheetah and eat it, but we must do the same to survive.

In this "realm" on this planet we must destroy and desecrate to survive. In order to live we must take life from something else.........whether it be a plant or an animal. I do not give thanks to "God", but rather the animal that had to die that I might live.

Where do people get this "good" versus "evil" and that "evil" must be vanquished??

There is only what aids and what destroys, and it takes both to live in this world. You must destroy a tree to burn a fire to keep from freezing.

Too many people complicate things. Let's take it down to the basics and look at it that way.

"God" came down, or sent his son depending on ur view of Christianity, to live a life as a human (which I though being human in and of itself was a sin, but oh yeah, his "father" was perfect, but his mother was not........so wouldn't that make him HALF a sinner??) To experience human life, and to live a "perfect" "sinnless" life so that he could be killed in order to shed blood to cleans us of our humannness when "God" was the one who made us this way in the first place. And don't play the whole "eating the forbidden fruit" game........that we chose to sin. We were innocent of sin, supposedly......but not so. We just didn't know it was sin, so "God" didn't punish us for it. IT was the KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL existing that the tree gave. It didn't create it, it was already created..........by "GOD", and if he is all knowing, he knew we would eat of that fruit, and he knew that our minds would be opened.....and as a matter of fact Genesis mentions that we were "cast" out so we wouldn't take of the tree of everlasting life, because then we would be as the "us" (more than one).

Anyhoo, most probably haven't read this far, but your "Christian" God created GOOD and EVIL as he created everything. And free will doesn't truly exist in this story. You have a choice between this or that..........free will would imply that you could make any choice you wanted, and could even make up your own choices, and even make up your own rules............as it was "Gods" "will" that created in the first place.

To tell someone you either kill this animal and eat of its flessh or you will die, is not really a free choice. It is a conditional one.......so we have "conditional" will.

And as was mentioned, Christmas existed before Jesus was even born. Winter celebrations, and December 25th was actually the birth of an Egyptian God named Horus whom some (depending on the Calendar and believe held) was born December 25th. There are actually many, many similarities between the "sun" god Horus and Jesus, if interested, study them out.

Here is one link:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_jcpa5.htm
http://www.geocities.com/nephilimnot/horus.html


Anyhoo, if you want to be Christian, and you truly act as Christ teaches in the Bible, I say, more power to you. You'd be a loving, charitable, open hearted, helping, friend..........

But, when you go saying that without "your God" there is no good in anyone, and anyone who doesn't believe in "your God" is evil, or should give "your God" credit for their goodness though they don't even believe in him.......that is extreme for me. Especially when it contradicts natrual evidence and logic.

BTW, I hate it when some of the Christians on this site claim that using other sources or evidence, or differing logic, in an attempt to show that there is a possibility of a different explanation or different idea as "bashing" or "hating" or "trying to tear them down". It isn't so. That is like claiming that someone who believes that if they step on a crack it will actually break their mother's back being told by another to try it, that it indeed won't break his mother's back, it would make your life easier to believe so, but go ahead if you wish to go around looking for and stepping over cracks that is your right, and I wish you luck.

I respect your post, but I wouldn't want to be with anyone who had to "look past" the fact that I had kids. I want him to love them and want them as his own......and if that doesn't happen, then goodbye to him...........NO LOSS TO ME!

I figure if a guy runs because I have kids that is his choice, and I'm not losing something, but rather checking off another person that I am not meant to be with, or at least not compatible with.

It, IMO, doesn't make them a bad person. Sometimes I wish I didn't have kids and if I could do it over I would not, or would have waited..........so IF I were a single person with no kids, I have the right to decide for myself, "Do I want to possibly become a parent of children who have been around a few years?"

I'm dating a man (living with for two years) who is struggling with being a "parent" but not the biological father, it is a hard job, and comes with a lot. I would not expect that, nor judge someone because they decided it was not for them.

Maybe they don't want to be a dad EVER...........it's their life, their choice.

It may be rude that they just "up and go" but maybe they feel the "pressure" to be a "good" person and don't want to feel "guilty" because they tell you they don't want to date you because you have kids and all...........sine that would make them an A$%

It's the internet, rather than going through that, they can just never talk to you again.

I'd rather them do it "now" than start dating, be together for a while, move in, and your kids get attached to them, you realize that YES they love you.........but they can't handle your kids and are incapable of making that "bond" with them.........and your "family" breaks up because he never really wanted to be their dad in the first place.

Personally, I think it is a good idea to date a guy a long while (learned from experience as I didn't do this and wish I had) without him meeting the kids, six months at least, though he would know up front that I have kids.

Then slowly introduce them into their lives, go on "family dates" where he is introduced as a friend.......and you go have fun together......this should last for several months. He isn't the parent, doesn't take on any parental roles, you are simply seeing how they relate to eachother.

Then if/when you feel comfortable have him babysit a few times, until a few becomes several. See how it goes, ask the kids how it went. Find out how he is with them when you aren't around, and if he can handle it. This should go on for a couple months.

Unlike many people (again found out late) I think it is imperative if you want a peaceful, loving home for the kids to have a relationship built with this person before you "move them in".

When you have kids, it is a family, and every family member should count. Yes, kids battle, when they aren't "daddy" but you can tell the difference between that and there being a real problem.

If he doesn't truly love them, and they them...........no amount of loving you can make up for that. It will be an unbalanced, screwed up family.

The process, that should happen, imo, would take a year to three years before you even talk about marriage/moving in or him becoming their "step" dad.............but most people are too impatient, and yes I know a lot of men wouldn't stick around and wait so long, as it is they want to know if you "like" them in the first email, but there again that roots out the ones not good for me and my children. I do understand that life circumstances and situations make it difficult if not impossible to do things this way sometimes. Especially if a woman is not financially stable on her own, etc.

Anyhoo..........I don't blame someone for not wanting to take on someone elses kids........I mean for the possiblity of the rest of their life..............I might "run" too.

With all due respect my friend (though I know you are not literally my friend as we do not know eachother), but going to the "ground" and turning to dust..........well that is not and can not be the "end" as the "ground" and the earth in it is not THE END but is simply another stage of life. The earth (dirt, ground, dust) has nutrients and "energy" that it gives off to the plants, which in turn give off to the animals............it is a cycle. One that if you actually observe NEVER "ends".

Not saying you have to believe that, or in Heaven and Hell, as I don't believe in "Heaven" and "Hell", but I do believe what I can easily perceive with my eyes, and that is "death" is not the end it is simply a change.........

Yep, true!

I did give you the rationale, you just aren't "getting it". The rational is that if God is all powerful, all knowing, and all present, then he is all in all, and all in all is IN "Him".

My rational is that I use observation and experience rather than a book, though yes, I agree much can be learned from the texts of the Bible, and you keep saying it isn't religion, but that is what the Bible says, it is the "Word" of God that can not be argued, well, I do not believe any one book can contain the "word" of any true "God". I believe those people were inspired, yes, but I also believe that their path was theirs and mine is mine...........it is a personal thing, one's "God" whomever they decide to call him/her or not.

I do not rip Christians, I "rip" people who use a book as an authority, when there are several "holy books" and many of them have some wise principles in them.

You were right in the studying of the Bible, you could study all your life and still get things, that is only when you have a personal talk/walk, I just don't think you need a book to have that talk or walk, or that "God" is the same or is represented the same to everyone as everyone is different.

Culture, my friend, culture. I did study the Bible for ten years, not a long time, but I did it desiring to know the truth. I seen it's words, it's "people" and contradictions. I remember praying and singing a song simply asking to know "God" in his truth, without all the hogwash and "doctrine"...........I believe I am learning.

I also do not believe that anyone can fully grasp anything that would be a "God" if he/she/it is higher than we are..........so therefore any "words" we would use would be infallible and would not cover the what of "God".

We learn bits and pieces, there may be a puzzle, there may not be, but I think it takes all of us with our piece to get the whole picture, and unfortunately we are not in unity enough, we are not "one" so that picture is "as looking through a glass darkly".

Anyhoo, I do not see anywhere that I bashed, the only time I get upset is when one claims that their's is the only way and anyone who doesn't agree is either stupid, ignorant, doesn't know "God", doesn't know the truth, or is decieving themselves..................it is haughty, and everything Jesus' taught against. (not saying anyone in particular has done this, especially when it has been a while since I posted in this thread, and haven't reread through it).

My rational, IS the stars, the water, the earth, LIFE, itself. It is what makes up "God" and "God" makes up it, without "God" it would not exist, but without "it" God would not exist either, or at least would not be known to exist...........would not be perceived, etc.

P.S.
Yes, there may be times I contradict myself, not saying I have, just making a note. It doesn't bother me........cuz I don't have it all figured out, and that is the beauty of it, and I hope, at least not until the day of Perfection comes (if it exists) to think that I do...........seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you, ask and ye shall recieve.....................good words, and I continue. I continue to seek, knock, and ask for truth to be separated from the illusion.

I do not wish to change anyone's mind, if it does, that is because their soul was searching and they found something that resounded within them in my words.........I am simply expressing my own thoughts and my own ideas.

The thing is, I can say, I could be wrong, I may be wrong, and IF I am wrong............that is OK, because I have FAITH that if I am wrong, that things will still be as they should be, that I am/was created to be exactly as I am.....and that everything is simply an illusion.

I see your point, and I think I did answer your main concerns.

1. Yes you were right, if it is something that is so important to you, then you should not back down.

2. I think it is a lot to expect now a days to, but not necessarily too much. People still do it. Besides, it is true that people change, but even living together people change. Marriage is about sticking it through thick and thin. You will change over your life time, you may not be the same person in five years as you are today, the question is this person willing to grow and change with you??? Most people want more guarantees than life can give. I personally am not sure I will every get married again, for that reason. I am not willing to be with someone in a romantic sense through all the horrors of life, if they lie to me, become a drunk, etc........so why go through the whole marriage thing, but that is me.

3. I have two children, and I can see where you are coming from, definitely. I have a live in boyfriend, and I worry all the time, what if we break up, how will it effect the kids, etc. I can't exactly rewind and do it differently, but if I could I would have preferred for us to live separately........

Depends on the person (man and woman), depends on the topic, depends on if I am giving them a reason to lie............

I don't get too hung up on it anymore. Don't get me wrong, I won't be in a LT relationship with someone who lies to me, but other than that, they lie to me because they don't trust me enough to let me in...........that is their issue, not mine, and one I can't fix. I also can't force someone to trust me enough to show me their real selves.

I start out by being myself. Getting to know someone with no intentions of anything other than getting to know them...........usually we just turn out to be friends. If they lie then it means they aren't to be anymore than a friend.......but that is because of the level of intimacy I desire with my partner, not because of some morality issue.

It is true that people hide themselves from others everyday...........sometimes you have to earn the right to get to know the inner being of a person.