"I'm not 20-something anymore, but I'm still a catch."

I don't have any advice to offer I'm afraid but this sentence of yours made me laugh so hard that I had to spend 5 minutes wiping tea from my screen and keyboard :-D
You have GOT to be winding us up saying stuff like this right?

I have a zero tolerance policy to this sort of thing.
It's my life. My choices. People can either accept it or move on but I'm not interested in asking permission from anyone or justifying my choices to anyone other than my wife (and to be fair not to her either although she never hassles me over what I am doing).
It is incredible how many people feel they have the right to validate/critique the lifestyles of others and that includes parents.
My parents have built up a habit of sounding disappointed throughout my career and so now they don't get any information form me at all.
Just wondering what my daughter would say if I tried to pester her about getting a "real" job rather than pursuing what makes her happy :-D
If you love someone enough, you'll take pleasure in seeing them happy in their own world.

I would assume it was either ongoing applications or future plans for such applications. They can't be asking for details of rejected applications I wouldn't have thought.

I'm not sure your last sentence is true.
It is rare but entirely possible to have a thesis so bad that a straight fail is the outcome. You would have to have failed to show that the work was of sufficient quantity to merit a PhD and to be entirely your work to such an extent that a viva couldn't have rescued you. You'd maybe alternatively be looking at plagiarism or something along those lines (I know of one instance of this). It would need to be something fatal though.

Under those circumstances though I would have expected the external examiner to have indicated to your supervisor that your thesis was not suitable for viva rather than put you through the formality of the viva.

It sounds like you have not been shortlisted.
Sadly, like employment, most people simply don't contact unsuccessful applicants.
You should probably look elsewhere.

LilyRachel,

I understand where you are coming from but you obviously understand that there are almost certainly no trained counsellors on this site. People are trying to give the OP some well intentioned help and it should be seen as that.
If someone is suicidal, talking about their PhD can do more harm than good. We are not talking about someone who is a bit low or struggling a little with depression. We are talking about someone actually considering suicide and so there is no sensible alternative than to advise the person to seek help immediately.

I am not a mental health expert but if the OP is in the UK, they could try phoning the Samaritans or other online or phone-based groups specifically setup with people who are trained to help them. That is the only sensible advice which can be given when someone talks about being suicidal. Any other advice can be potentially catastrophic.

Given that you have told us that you have suicidal feelings I would suggest you forget all about the PhD, downgrades, confirmations, the opinions of your supervisor and anyone else and seek immediate medical help.
There is literally no point in any further discussion until you have done this.
Please get help now and feel free to come back when you have done this.

nanbob, it will help your thesis to have papers published before your viva so there will be no problem in that respect. You just need to avoid directly cutting and pasting text from the paper. There is nothing to worry about here as far as I can see.

Thesisisfun, I would recommend you read the original post again. Twice if necessary.
You appear to have completely missed the point and jumped in overly aggressively to a perfectly reasonable request for help.

FutureProfessor, what stands out from your post is that in listing all of your goals, not one of them describes what you want to do on a day to day basis as a career.
That is a big list of things which is going to eat at you in the bowels of your PhD when the nights are long, success is a distant memory and all your friends are amassing the things you dream about. I would be very concerned about whether you are in the right place just now to start that journey.

A job industry will gradually give you skills and autonomy plus everything else on your list. Honestly, that sounds like the best option for you,

You should definitely read as much as you can before you start. It will make your life considerably easier. Whether your supervisor "expects" this or not is irrelevant. You should want to do this for yourself. This is your PhD journey, not theirs.

monkia,
You said in your post "no therapy would help" but this makes no sense.
Without therapy, you are repeatedly talking about suicide.
With therapy there is a chance it won't work but worst case you remain in your current state of mind. If therapy works, you have a chance of recovery. There's absolutely no risk to taking therapy and a whole heap of trouble if you don't.
Seems like a no brainer to me.
None of us can force you to go and get help but equally none of us can help you with your problems unless you do so.
If you had a broken leg you would seek help.

Having a good breadth of education should be seen as a positive rather than a negative. I am a very strong believer that it is through breadth of knowledge that exceptional ideas appear. In particular I strongly believe that the popular idea that you should focus just on one area are misguided at best and simply wrong in virtually all aspects. We seem to have lost the ability to be polymaths despite centuries of history telling us that some of the greatest achievments in humanity have come from people with that exact background.

You really want to avoid working with a supervisor who thinks your background is a problem.