I know that my main area of stress is my parents.  I'm 30 years old, but I still get that feeling of needing to please them.  I hate that I can't be as happy as I would otherwise be if we didn't live with my mom.  Its not like I can tell her how I feel, or tell my dad that he's the major source of stress in my live.  Trying to make him happy and trying to keep my husband from becoming depressed are difficult.  My husband, I know, doesn't meet my father's expectations, and I want him to.  I want my parents to be as happy with my husband as I am, but they never will be.  I can't control how my husband acts, but it feels like I should be able to change him.  The anxiety of his not doing and acting like they want then causes stress on our relationship.  How do if fix that?  I don't know.  I can't change anyone else, but it still presses on me.

 Sometimes I feel embarrassed about having to admit I have Fybro and that it keeps me from doing things I should/want to do.  At work I never want to admit that I have the disease.  Almostno one knows about it.  I feel like people will take it as just an excuse to get out of doing the hard stuff.  I know that reaction is silly, since everyone that knows has been sympathetic.  I even feel embarrassed at home.  My room is such a mess and I hate having people see it.  I feel like I should be more active in cleaning it and I get angry at myself because I never feel like getting up and doing anything.

I swing between elation and depression when I think about my husband. 

My husband has so many wonderful traits.  He loves me, absolutely and completely, although my hair is almost gone and I can't do all the physical stuff he likes.  He was just about to return to New York City, which he loves as much as he hates this place, but decided to stay after we met.  He knew all my physical problems and still this man that everyone thought a life-long bachelor married me.  He tells me he loves me a dozen times a day, and I can see his pain when I'm hurting.  He brightens my life with laughter and his ferret-like ways.  I've kept emotions and people at a distance, but he shows me what I've always missed with his willingness to feel and express. 

But my depression cuts in when I think about all his negatives.  When I say he has ferret-like ways, I'm not joking.  Any "shinny thing" be it games, tv, or whatever, distracts him.  When he's distracted he forgets everything else and focuses just on that, which makes him almost completely unreliable. He is easily discouraged and quit his job because he supervisor was pressuring him.  He's manic-depressive, although he's better now that I've gotten him away from his mother (lets just say she wouldn't win any mothering awards).  Although he doesn't work, I still do at least half of what little housework is done.  He has absolutely no time sense and I mean this literally.  When he's engaged in what he's doing, 2 hours feels like 15 minutes.  If he doesn't like doing what he's doing (i.e. housework), he believes 15 minutes has actually been 2 hours. 

But he loves me, absolutely and completely.  He makes me laugh on my worse days. 

I don't think his negatives would weight so heavily on me, if we didn't live with my mom.  I'm so use to meeting her expectations, getting dishes done by the time she prefers, cleaning up what she asks when she asks it.  This puts added stress when he doesn't meet those expectations because of his procrastination and forgetfulness.

But I love him so much that the thought of not having him with me makes me cry.  Before him there was no one, and after him I'm afraid there would be no one else.  The greatest highs and lows in my life, the greatest stresses and joys are because of him. 

I promised myself I would never try to change him.  If he did change to become reliable and responsible, would that take away all the things that I love in him?  If I wanted to change him, how could I?  The slightest hint that I might be unhappy makes him anxious.  I can't show disapproval at his faults or he'll become depressed and verbalily self-abusive (echoing all those derogitory things his mother has said).  So any rational talk is out of the question.  Isn't it suppose to be us women that can't discuss things rationally?

So what am I to do?  For now, I just swing back and forth, and hope one day our situation will change for the better.