My husband is clearly depressed. He is also a proud man, and some degree of old-fashioned. I am 4 years younger than him, and am far more open to the idea of therapy and medication.
For context, he has dealt with his dad (whom he was close with) committing suicide when he was a teenager, a long-term girlfriend (whom he really wanted to marry) cheating on him with multiple men (including a good friend at the time) for years, and his best friend of 10 years (my brother) dying in a rafting accident that we were both part of. I’ve been struggling personally myself, but I have a few different things I’m trying, including therapy. He is unwilling to try therapy or medication, but isn’t getting better, cause holy shit, that’s a lot of unprocessed shit to deal with.
It’s manifesting in really nasty ways, and hurting both of us. I don’t think he means the things he says; I think he’s hurting a lot and doesn’t know what to do.
For what it’s worth, I really have not been great to him or myself. I’ve been dealing with my own emotional baggage, but I’m not going to get into that. I’m working on it, and feel like after many years of work, have come through a breakthrough where I understand that I do in fact want this person in my life.
How can I help guide him to anything that will help him? Doesn’t need to be therapy, medication, or a psychiatrist. Those do seem like the obvious answers, but I’m open to virtually any suggestions.
This man is amazing and a wonderful person, but he’s really struggling and doesn’t seem to want help, but at the same time, seems like he needs/wants help. Any thoughts?
Edit: I’m really touched by all of the thoughtful responses I’ve received. I don’t like to talk about my marital issues with people in my life, and I know my husband wouldn’t want others to know what he’s struggling with. This is a great community.
I’m slowly working my way through each response. Seriously - thank you all.
I have a lot of strong thoughts regarding the use of therapy. Specifically that I think everyone needs a therapist… everyone. It doesn’t matter how well things are going, and you don’t necessarily have to see them weekly or even biweekly… but someone to check in with from time to time to see how things are going. That way when a struggle does occur, you’ve got a fresh disinterested perspective from someone with the training to help process certain things that go through your mind. Everyone needs someone to talk to sometimes… someone with absolutely no skin in the game who can give the painfully honest answer others might not be prepared to give.
Another suggestion is to see if he’s willing to write out his thoughts. Don’t call it journaling or keeping a diary… just writing down thoughts. It’s amazing what writing things down can do to help you process things. When my grandma passed, it was pretty devastating to me (to be clear, it was absolutely nothing like what your husband experienced). We’d been close my whole life and now more than 10 years later I still find myself blindsided by feelings of missing her. I decided to write a eulogy for her memorial service. It was immeasurably helpful for processing our relationship and what she meant to me and so many others in her life. She was pretty amazing… Maybe that’s the thing… maybe he could write a eulogy for his dad… or something like that. Idk.
It just sucks to go through life depressed and anxious. Life is too god damned short to allow your time to be hijacked by it. If he’d call a buddy to help him work on his car so it didn’t take an entire Saturday to fix, why wouldn’t he do the same to help himself not feel this way?
Good luck to the both of you.
Loss is never a competition. I can tell by your words that you know that pain; it’s immeasurable and incomparable.
It’s always worth repeating, “Life is too god damned short”.
Thank you for that reminder, and your thoughtful response.
I’m more fortunate than most, I’d wager, but I’ve watched several people close to me suffer in what, to me, were previously unimaginable ways.
Good luck with everything. I’m thinking of the both of you. Lots of good advice in this thread.
Hope things are improving for you and your family.
They actually are. I tried talking to my husband about a lot of the suggestions I was given in this thread, but he wasn’t very receptive to really any of it. I’m trying to keep in mind that he comes from a background where being depressed and struggling emotionally is considered mental weakness. Not to mention, I feel like it’s really hard to accept you need help (or even feel like you can be helped) when you’re extremely depressed. But I said my piece, and he at least listened to everything I had to say before turning it all down. In the past, he would have cut me off to turn me down.
Maybe doesn’t sound too optimistic lol, but when I saw him shut down those advances, I tried one of the other suggested approaches where I made plans for things that I know he loves. We go bouldering together and we love it, but had kinda dropped off due to depression on both our ends, but I started getting that routine going again. He had also mentioned that one thing he was struggling with was understanding what he was working towards, because he couldn’t see any clear goal in mind. He just feels like he’s going through the motions without actually moving or progressing anywhere. We used to always do projects, but again, that had kinda dropped off due to depression and just life being busy. So I took the initiative to start a “Life List” outlining the projects we need to do, want to do, and just other fun things we’ve been wanting to do. Goal was to get the ball rolling so that we could both build this list together, prioritize, then essentially plan it out on a calendar to create realistic objectives.
I’ve never been good at planning - I’m more of an “on the fly” type person, but I see that he needs help getting going with this, because this is important to him.
Anyways, all of these gestures seem to have helped pull him out of the deep darkness, and he’s starting to feel more like himself again.
I know that the goal isn’t to get back to exactly where we were, but I feel like things are a little bit better in the sense that he’s been opening up to me a little more. Sharing more about his feelings, and more importantly, being honest about them. It’s a huge step in the right direction, because he in general seems more comfortable with addressing his feelings. Hopeful that in the future, he’ll be finally willing to open up to a professional that can help him work through his deep-seated trauma. Especially hope that he has the confidence and knowledge that I’ll be by his side the whole way (not literally, of course).
Sorry for the ramble. Means a lot that even though you don’t know me, you had the thought to check in. You and everyone else in this thread have been truly amazing. We’re not making leaps and bounds here, but any progress is good progress. :-)
Yeah, I’ll sometimes scroll through my comments for fun and came across our little conversation again, and thought I’d check in. I couldn’t be happier to read that there’s genuine progress!
When we watch those we’ve chosen to share our lives with struggle, it’s an intense burden to bear. Especially when you often feel powerless to help. I’m a helper and a fixer. My wife struggles with a lot, and it’s been something for me to walk that journey with her. But I’ve also seen her grow and improve her mental (and physical) health and I can take pride in knowing that I was able to help in some small way. She might tell you I had more to do with it than I did, but she’s the one who put the work in. She’s also led me down my own path of mental health awareness and personal discovery. I say all that to say this… we can’t fix our partners, but we can be supportive and enabling towards them helping themselves. I loved your “ramble” because you speak your husband’s language and know how to enable that for him.
It really fills me with joy to see steps in the right direction.
Thank you for sharing a little about your own journey with your wife. I’m really happy to hear that y’all are in a better place now. I feel like too often, I hear about the couples that didn’t make it through something like this. Things like this certainly put a huge strain on a marriage, and many times it’s going to be what makes or breaks a couple.
I hope my husband and I are able to come out of this stronger as individuals and as a couple - like you and your wife. I think we’re definitely headed in the right direction.
Cheers!
Well, from what you’ve told me, you’ve got about as good a chance or better as any other couple I’ve seen. Your own strength to stay by his side through this says a lot about the person you are, AND the person he is. It says you’re the kind of person who willing to fight for the important things, and he’s the kind of person worth fighting for.
I think a lot of folks don’t take the whole “in sickness and in health” part seriously. I genuinely try not to judge folks because you really never know everything that goes on inside a marriage that isn’t yours, but I have a hard time not judging when I hear of couples splitting amid physical or mental health issues. Like… that’s what the vows are for. That’s why making the commitment is important in the first place. Because shit will get hard and it will be harder for some than others. If there’s no commitment, there’s no marriage.
But one thing is for sure… while we are definitely in a really good spot now, we’re not past it and we never will be. That’s why commitment is so important. One of the things I do is stick around and that’s probably the biggest piece of what I contribute to her progress. I fuck up for sure… and some of that makes her mental health trip up. One time, I forgot to fill one of her meds that has really bad withdrawal symptoms around Christmas (and she already really doesn’t like Christmas for a lot of reasons). It was when the face tingles started that I realized she had the med in nearly a week! But I ain’t going anywhere. Doesn’t sound like you are either.