u/Supervinyl

Last year my wife of 14 years had a series of affairs with different men. I don't want to get into that. All you need to know is that I subscribed to this sub shortly afterward. I thought my story would be an outlier. Maybe it's the algorithm, I don't know, but the number of men I see posting here about their gf/wife cheating seems to outnumber women who get cheated on. It paints a picture that contrasts considerably with what I anticipated. At the very least, I conclude that infidelity is a human problem, regardless of sex.

But searching for help online just paints the opposite picture. Page after page of support groups for women who've been the victims of betrayal, with the occasional mixed group (that still seems to cater to women) and almost as an afterthought, 1 or 2 nationwide online focused support groups for men.

Maybe reddit is more utilized by men.

Maybe reddit is the only resource for a lot of men seeking help.

Maybe men are less likely to seek out help from a support group than women.

Whatever the reason, it seems really unbalanced and a bit unfair.

That's all.

Disclaimer: I don't think women deserve or need less help. But I think men could definitely use more for this particular issue.

Background: I have type 1 diabetes. Almost 20 years ago I was diagnosed with type 2 bipolar disorder. Unfortunately, I've had adverse reactions to several bipolar meds, including Lamictal, Risperdal, Seroquel, and Vraylar, in that sequence. After the episodes with Lamictal and Risperdal, I chose to go unmedicated for a little over a decade, but after experiencing male post-partum depression in the 2020 lockdown, my wife insisted that I get medicated again. I spent the next 3 years on seroquel, which basically made me a zombie. After both my wife and I got fed up with that effect, she insisted that I try a different medication, and a new psychiatrist suggested vraylar.

After a few weeks on it, I ended up in a state of Akithisia, eventually ending up in the psych ward, where the resident psychiatrist referred me to a new psychiatrist. my new psych ordered a genesight test for me, which confirmed my suspicions about my bipolar med sensitivities. He took me off Vraylar, and at my insistence, he put me back on seroquel to help me sleep after weeks of insomnia, anxiety and paranoia from the akithisia, and supplemented it with pristiq, which my genesight test showed I wasn't sensitive to. I was a zombie again, but this time with an undercurrent of akathisia-related ptsd. 2 years later (last year), my wife was fed up yet again, and threatened divorce. I worked with my psychiatrist to go off seroquel, and my energy returned.

Things got better in my marriage, but the sexual side effects of the pristiq (specifically anorgasmia) prompted me to talk to my psych again to find a solution 3 weeks ago. I had read that wellbutrin can counteract the sexual side effects of pristiq, but unfortunately, my genesight test showed that it was just another med I was sensitive to, so he suggested Trintellix instead. I went home and looked up whether it was safe to take trintellix with pristiq, and to my alarm, what I read is that the combination often results in serotonin syndrome. Because I was on a relatively low dose of both (50 mg pristiq, 5mg trintellix) I figured that I would watch for symptoms and trust my psych.

I saw him again yesterday to discuss how things were going, and voiced my concern about serotonin syndrome, while also expressing my disappointment that the trintellix didn't seem to be helping with my sexual issue. He told me we could try upping the dose of trintellix from 5 to 10 to see if it helped, and said I had no reason to worry about serotonin syndrome because Pristiq, an SNRI, "doesn't increase serotonin levels, and works with norepinephrine instead."

I was skeptical, because what I had read about Trintellix is that the higher the dose, the LESS likely it is to help with sexual issues. But in my research, I had used google gemini, and I know AI can get things wrong, so I thought maybe it was mistaken about trintellix's sexual side effects and serotonin syndrome. So I chose to trust my psych's advice and started the higher dose today. However, I haven't been able to shake a gut feeling that something is off, so again, I did some online research, this time diving deeper into gemini's sources.

As I'm sure many on this sub are aware (and please confirm) SNRI stands for Serotonin-Norepinephrine Reuptake Inhibitor. It works with both Serotonin AND Norepinephrine, and because Trintellix is an SSRI, this is why it poses a risk for serotonin syndrome. I'm concerned with the suggestion my psych gave me and I'm wondering if I should pursue someone else.

I'm also questioning whether I ever had bipolar at all, because I've never been consistently on a mood stabilizer, and I've been off Seroquel for over a year now and haven't experienced a single hypomania. Plus there was the full decade where I went unmedicated and managed to hold down multiple jobs, get both an associates and a bachelors degree, and hold down a marriage in that time.

In addition, around the same time I started seeing my current psych, my wife was seeing him as well. At the time, she was going through a faith transition, and the psych, who is a member of the same faith, spoke to her at length about the importance of staying in the faith. She stopped seeing him at the time for this reason, feeling that he had crossed the line, and ngl I've felt the same. I've only stuck with him this long because he was the one who helped me out of my akithisia and found medication solutions that helped, more or less. But this advice about serotonin syndrome doesn't sit right with me. Any advice or assistance navigating this would be hugely helpful, so thank you in advance.

EDIT: I'm recently 38, Male, 5'10, about 220 lbs, Caucasian. I'm also taking Insulin (Lyumjev), Vitamin D 50k IU/week, and 20 mg Lipitor. I don't take any recreational drugs, including alcohol and tobacco.

My wife and I used to frequent North Shore Hawaiian Shave Ice down in pleasant grove when we lived there. Coconut Dole Whip was our go-to. None of the Dole Whip places we've seen up in the Ogden area carry the flavor. Thanks in advance.

The meaning of the song just clicked for me this morning, and I'm sharing it now because it's so obvious (at least to me) and for some reason I've yet to see it laid out the way I'm about to.

The singer is part of the problem. He's no longer attracted to the woman in question, but he still loves her, or perhaps more importantly, loves who she used to be, and needs that fantasy to "get it up". Every line is about "play making" and pretending she hasn't gotten older and (in his view) less attractive. He wants to "eat the salt off her lost faded lips," comparing her aging to being close to death.

But "she can read" between the lines. This is where I think everyone gets it wrong: she's not bad BECAUSE she can read. She's interpreting the singer's nostalgic pining as "I used to be good, but I'm no good anymore, I'm bad now, because I'm poor and aging and I'll never see this face (the old me that he actually liked) again." And the saddest part is that she's 100% correct.

The singer, hating to acknowledge the truth, then victim-blames her, accusing her of self-sabotage by thinking this way instead of just allowing his nostalgic advances to play out the way he wants, likening her "interpretation" to "stabbing herself in the neck."

But later he's forced to acknowledge that she's correct, and he's just not fond of "her stories" aka her interpretations of his fantasies because they remove the exciting youthful element, force him to see his current situation, and become boring, doing nothing for his libido.

The painful truth for HIM is, this longing for youthful abandon is how he avoids acknowledging that he lost something he treasured. Every time she's "calling" his bluff (the dead giveaway), she's forcing him to acknowledge that the thing he treasured was so incredibly superficial, makes him feel terribly shallow, which makes his heart heavy: "She puts the weights into my little heart."

And perhaps his "little" heart is the issue: there's only enough room in there for him to love who she used to be. Not enough room to love who she is now.