What does one put here? I'm a 40 year old straight married woman. My issues are many, although life is pretty good overall. I'm here to see if I can get some help to deal with the parts that suck until I can reach the light at the end of the tunnel. I know things are going to get better, I just have to hang tight through the stress, anxiety, depression, and panic attacks until life settles back down. Feel free to message me if you have tips, or if you're going through the same thing and just want to commiserate. We are all threads in the same rope, making each other stronger together.

Warning to the reader, I'm about to over-share, because it does me good just to put this stuff in writing. Feel free to stop now, or continue down the rabbit hole at your discretion.

Some issues I'm struggling with right now:

1. Work Stress. My team has been cut in half, some because people had to leave recently due to severe illness, some because management chose to reduce headcount last year. They are working on hiring some help, but the process takes a long time in our company. In the meantime, I'm trying to forgive myself for not being able to handle the work load, and be ok with letting things go undone until I can get to them (yes, perfectionist here), since I'm the only one who thinks I'm not meeting what is expected of me. I'm also working on letting go of resentment towards upper management for their decisions that put me in the overloaded position I'm in, and try to remind myself they made the best choices they could, and I need to just be grateful I'm not the one who got let go. It really is a great company filled with great people I enjoy working with. This one is hitting me with depression and anxiety though.

2. Relationship Stress.
A. Sex: My husband is an extremely caring and wonderful man, and definitely my soulmate. That being said, he was abused and abandoned by so many people in his past, it effects every relationship he has now. We have not had intercourse in 4 years because he is very uncomfortable with it. We tried when we first got married, but after only a handful of attempts, we stopped. He has been intimate with me in every other way but that one, and he's slowly getting better, it's just going to take time. But as someone whose primary love language is touch, it is hard not to want to be completely joined with the only person I've ever wanted to be with in that way. Early on it was also a big hit to my self esteem, and I have at least conquered that part, which has improved the situation for us both. This is probably the smallest of my issues.

B. Family. Due to the above situation, we have not been able to start a family yet, although we would both like to have at least 1 child together (neither of us have any). Since I just turned 40, the chances of me getting pregnant and carrying a healthy baby to term are slim and getting slimmer by the year; so waiting on my husband to get comfortable with intercourse is slowly eroding our chances for natural conception. We have talked about medically assisted conception of various kinds, but the price/stress/difficulty of those options are unappealing. I may be facing the possibility of having to make peace with never carrying a child of my own. Lots of mixed emotions here.

C. Orientation. As if the above situations were not complicated enough, my husband and I do not fit into normal gender roles. He is a submissive and I am a dominant. We knew this about each other from the get go as we met on a Female Led Relationship website. This is one of the things that drew us together. We were both comfortable with these roles and having fun exploring them in our relationship early on. However, after some trauma in his life outside of our relationship, he has not been able to go back those activities we both used to enjoy together. I am compassionate about what he went through, and at the same time I mourn losing a part of myself I can't express and share with him anymore. This is not about sex or kink, it's about the energy between us. The way an extrovert is energized by socializing, a dominant is energized by power exchange with their partner, and my battery only just barely stays above being completely empty these days. What's worse is he has as much said that I charge him up, and that gives him the energy to push through at his job, so his job is getting the energy I could be receiving. I want to be supportive of his work, but it almost feels like I'm supporting him going to see another lover. Don't misunderstand, sexually he's 100% faithful, he's not seeing another woman. I sometimes wish he would make me one of his work projects though. And this was when he was working in the same city we live in, and not out of state where he is now.

3. Panic Attacks and Separation Anxiety. I have begun to deal with a level of general anxiety that I've never had before in my life, and panic attacks that come out of no where when nothing is wrong. I've had panic attacks while making coffee in the morning, or while I'm cuddling on the couch watching TV and having ice cream with my husband. I never know when they will hit or why. It makes me feel like I'm losing my mind.
And if those things weren't fun enough, a few years ago, I started to also have separation anxiety whenever my husband took a trip, even if it was only going to be 1 night away. No specific reason, I'm not afraid he'll cheat or that his plane will crash or anything, I just get panicked when he is going on a trip. This is ironic because we started our relationship long distance. For the first year we dated, I only saw him in person every few months, and while the frequency of us being together increased gradually, he wasn't fully moved out of his apartment and in with me until 6 months after our wedding. We know how to make being apart work. But still, the panic attacks come anyway. This has been exacerbated lately because for the past 6 months, he's had to be out of state for a project, and I've been going 4-6 weeks at a time without seeing him. With both of us being over worked and no one to cover us if we take a vacation, it's been very hard to get time together at all. He has it even worse off because he has no friends or support there at all. My anxiety is through the roof, not to mention profound loneliness, and the guilt that I can't be there with him while he faces some very difficult challenges.

To summarize: Depression, Anxiety, Panic Attacks, Resentment, Guilt, all wrapped up with having the biggest part of my support system out of state for the last 6 months. I'm exhausted, but the good news is that if I'm patient, some of these issues are going to solve themselves. Yes, I have talked to my doctor. Yes I do have some meds to help. Yes, I'm here to get more support, yay me.