I kinda did both i think.
My withdrawing probably started about the time my son was born about 93. I became very depressed as i tried to continue living up to standards i was not meeting. It created in me such anxiety and stress. I beleived i was totally worthless. At the time i was serving 'where the need was great' as a ministerial servant and up to the birth ,been a regular pioneer. I continued to push on doing all the right moves.
By the time child number two came along i was even more mixed up. The fight inside me between the 'spiritual man and the fleshly man' was intensifying. I threw myself into more personal bible study, more prayer than ever. Can you believe, i even re-baptized myself in an effort to shed the flesh and have a new start! I'd get up at 5am and study study. That was always the answer. If you are struggling then it's because you are not doing enough. I did confess some stuff to an elder, but to be very honest, not much changed. I dont blame them, they probably didn't have the life skills to help anyway... other than say pray more, study more.
Not long later, over about a couple of months i guess, i started to drop reaponsbilities. I just couldnt face giving public talks anymore, next went ministry school assignments. I started to miss meetings. And finally stopped going altogether and stopped field service too.
My wife said i needed medication. "We were the couple most likely to", we arrived in great fanfare, regular pioneers that had been to pioneer school! A M/S wow! and i was making her look bad.
one day i read two books, one was pro meds and anti therapy and the other pro therapy and anti meds. I threw them at the wall in disgust, nobody had the answer. The worst point was where i fessed up a 'sin' to my wife and well, while not adultery or fornication it might have well have been. I was off to the spare room and the elders came over. I dont recall much at that point, i do not recall comfort though. They didn't seem to know how to deal with real stuff like feelings and confusion. And pain. I lasted two weeks in the spare room and found a init to move into.
I needed space to sort myself out. I nearly literally disapeared. I mean drive far far away and never be heard of again. I felt so worthless. I was convinced i had become a wicked servant of satan and my children would be better off, indeed, saved by my disapearance. Over the next two years, two elders popped in once. Not one single friend in the congregation came to see me, ever. The only person who did was a very humble brother i hardly knew. He popped in for a coffee every week and never tried to bring me back, just talked. Out of the whole congregation he to this day is the only one, a man they would not give any priveldges too, that i respect.
Two years went by and i knew i was never going back to my wife or the witnesses. I stayed faithfull to my wife for two years. When i let 'adultery' happen, it's main purpose was to free my wife to move on, to re-marry. She will never know the pain that caused me and the health problems the stress took. I will always remember her pain, and now her hate, 10 years on. She used this one humble friend i had to serve divorce papers on me.
The meeting with the elders. They tried to figure out how to bring me back, how to not have to disfellowship me. Was i sorry i had hurt Jehovah, sinned againt him? I said plainly NO. How could i feel that i had caused pain to somebody i didn't even have a relationship with? They actually asked me what they should do! i just said i'd didfellowship me! so they did.
in the last 10 years i have had no visits from elders, no annual checking on the didfellowshipped etc. Only publishers who dont even who i am. Oh the local congregation does but like i said, no shows. And thats just the way i like it. Stay away fella's coz i will rip yer bloody heads off! Mainly because of my ex wife JW they are sure not my most favorite people.
Today i am very very content. Recovered fully from those dark times by altering my circumstances in life.
I have never shared this story before, only to my dear new wife.
As for wife number 1, well, she is a stillmajor pain in the glutimus maximus!