To be totally selfish for a moment and complain about how exhausting and sad it is to live with someone suffering with depression.

[Bumpandkind]

I know it's wrong to say this as I'm in good mental health, but the sheer weight of it drags me down. The excess need for sleep, the lack of enthusiasm the dragging monotony that is living with a depressed partner. How do people in similar situations cope?

This thread has been so reassuring, just to know that other people are in the same situation. My husband is very depressed, spends nearly all the time in bed, refuses to go to the doctor or get any other help. I work in a school and everyone else is excited about it being nearly the summer holidays, whereas I just dread the 6 weeks without any chance to escape into work. My husband just seems to be such a sad relic of the man he used to be. I don't know what to do anymore, I can't go on like this much longer but I can't just walk out on him.

I divorced my husband because I could no longer love him or live with him as he was determined that, if he was miserable, the whole family had to be miserable too. Our DC had spent years in poverty and deprivation and had never known love or happiness from their father.
He immediately found a new partner who must have been a better person than I was. The DC and I never looked back.

Where You've confirmed to me there's no point talking to anyone when I feel awful. When I lack motivation to shower

I read sleepys post differently - I read it as when your depressed but don't get help it can be lazy. Not the actual lack of motivation to do things, like shower (which I sympathise with completely by the way - I get like that when I'm bad). Maybe I've misunderstood it.

I think actually the most important thing a depressed person can do is get help. And, yes, that in itself can be extremely hard when you are actually in depression.

Feel for you and could not agree more with OP.

Lurked re read my post.
Sleepy does say that depressed people are lazy and selfish

At what point have I mentioned anywhere a monopoly on sympathy. Where do I talk about the supporter being selfish?
Read carefully before you comment because you ain't quite getting it
Ps I think u need some sort of counselling because you obviously have issues with your own situation

And sleepy do you think we all sit around not helping ourselves?? Thank god for martyrs like yourself who can show us lazy selfish no hopers the way cos I didn't realise you could get help???

I haven't read the full thread. My husband suffers firm depression. And my best friend- she has had to be sectioned twice this year. Then this year my sister's brother in law took his life. Neither one of us has ever had even the offer of any real outside help. It's very very hard and you have every right to say so.

No where depression does cause selfish and lazy behavior. It's part of the illness ffs. And another aspect is that people with depression do often expect a monopoly on sympathy, again part of the illness, as your posts clearly demonstrate.
Also I don't need counselling, only time I really needed it was coping with someone else's depression. Like I said I've been on both ends so I'll say what I want about the effects of depression on those around them, because I've experienced both. As for sleepys post I could have wrote it myself.

You are absolutely allowed to say it and feel it. I am bi polar and I know it must be horrid sometimes for my family. I don't know how they do it sometimes. For me it was worse to not know they were suffering. For me I cannot be shielded from the full impact it has on others. It helps me to find my way back. Your feelings are real and valid. Just because your DH is suffering doesn't mean you aren't too.

You are not alone op and yanbu for feeling this way. It is such a difficult life to try and live, as the sufferer and the carer.

When my dh was going through a particular bad patch, I was referred by his psychiatrist to a charity called Rethink. I had a supporter and 1-2-1 counselling. Their website is worth a read.

I am still learning how to live this life but the good times make the bad times easier to cope with. He understands the deal breaker would be if he didn't seek help when needed and take his medication. I have to protect myself and our dc.

My dh suffers with sad and anxiety and depression due to childhood trauma that he won't get counselling for. He buried it for years and finally 'told' last September
he's now on anti depressants and I ended up having counselling and anxiety meds ... just from dealing with his trauma

I don't think k could do it. I just don't. Hats off to people who support partners with depression or other mental health issues.

Maybe if DP was depressed, but was amenable to medication and therapy and engaging with treatment. But not if he was not engaging with treatment and dragging me and my (hypothetical) children down

The effects of living with someone who doesn't have good mental health should not be underestimated. You are essentially saying that you will always put your partners needs above your own and your children's, and you will always have a caring role.

Sleepy, your post could have been mine but with a slight switch to stepfather! That awful feeling that you didn't know how it would be when you got home that night. I would do a lot to protect my own child from that.

Even now, decades later, you never know how even a phone call will go. And I do think that depression/anxiety can make you self-centered even if you don't realise it.

OP, you are NBU - not at all. It is a very tough thing to cope with and even more frustrating if they will not seek help.

If they won't seek help you entitled to leave or have them leave .
Make an ultimatum.

One thing to support someone who is getting help and has insight
Quite another to bear the brunt if they refusing to treat their illness.

Further by not insisting they seek treatment you just enabling them.

Get some help for yourself see a counsellor talk it through. Blankety and others. ... Tell him.. He goes to gp or he leaves .... and mean it.

I don't think it's helpful to compare who it's worse for as each of you is going through a separate experience and we don't need to rate one above the other. Believing that the ill person has it worse won't change what you are experiencing or how you feel.

You have those feelings. It's not selfish to voice them.

I found it a very difficult line to find between selfish and unhealthily selfless/codependent.

My ex was a lovely, wonderful person when the illness was not in full force. The reality was that I got to see that person once for a few hours every few months. The day in day out relationship was with someone swearing and shouting abuse at me or angrily shooting down anything even slightly positive I did or said, a constant battle about appointments and engaging with treatment and and daily Russian roulette with self harming that half hoped to be a successful suicide attempt.and upsetting or thwarting them would lead to an extreme self harm to 'punish' me. I was trying to work around endless phone calls to try to hold them together to get through the day and then going home from a demanding job to spend all evening and a lot of the night meeting their needs.

There came a point where to continue to commit to a relationship like that was insanity. I was desperately unhappy, living in an abusive relationship albeit the illness reduced my ex's control over this, and finally had to say no, I wont live like this any more. I felt very guilty. My ex regards me as the devil incarnate for leaving. But whatever the reason and however desperately sorry I was for my ex's suffering with an illness not their faul and that was a nightmare for them, I was not willing to be abused any more.

I think you have to be 'selfish' - there are many times in life, dealing with a dying family member, coping with elderly relatives with dementia or a severely depressed family member.
In the end you have to be mentally 'happy' enough to keep going yourself. So you must have a part of your life separate from the responsibility where you can be yourself and relax.

I can see the point sleepy is making about depression not magically turning people into saints - if you were an arsehole before suffering depression, it's unlikely to make you less of an arsehole to live with once you've got it - but I think I would have phrased it slightly differently. While there is no doubt depression is a selfish (in the true sense of the word) illness in that it is about the self and causes huge amounts of self-analysis and self-criticism in the sufferer, who often struggles to look or see beyond that through no fault of their own, I can't agree that depression makes people lazy. I think some people who are inherently inclined to be lazy may use depression as an excuse not to try. That's not the same as the effect of the sucking black void that saps all energy, all motivation, all will and all hope.

My husband isn't "lazy" when he spends all day in bed, any more than a person in a wheelchair isn't lazy for sitting down all day. He's in the grip of a horrible illness that leaves him mentally and physically incapable of carrying out the simplest task. What's the point of getting up and getting showered when there's no hope today will be any different from yesterday? When all you'll do is see the burden you've become on your loved ones (that's his thinking, not mine)? When it's taking all your energy, what little you have, to stay in the world? When the only emotion you can feel is despair?

Myself and DH both suffer on and off. This is both good and bad. If one is down the other knows how to deal BUT if we are BOTH bad at once its horiffic. It is equally hard being on both sides.

He does need to get help. Depression rarely just vanishes. Look on some websites for advice on how to tackle this. Mind is good or time to change.

rumbleinthrjungle wow. Seriously I could've written your post word for word. Every. Single. Word. It's like you wrote down my life in one post.

Yes, I had to leave in the end. I felt battered and bruised and I could take no more. I was near to breakdown myself, and it was effecting our little child. The atmosphere in the house was intolerable. He hates me now and thinks I'm evil for splitting up the family. He blames me for everything, and that is something I have to live with. He made me miserable within the relationship and now he continues to try to keep me miserable.

Leaving was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. I felt bereaved for a long time, grieving for the relationship and life I had dreamed of but would never be. Any love I had for him slowly died over the years until I couldn't bear to be around him anymore.

I absolutely viewed his behaviour as abusive, I felt horribly abused. He refused treatment. I tried so hard to make him feel better. I booked doctor's appointments, I bought (him and me) relevant books online, I came on here for advice, I met up with groups of ladies who were in similar situations to see if they could help, I bought him a SAD lamp to help during the winter, I suggested going to joint counselling and he refused. I went to counselling myself in the end as I was so dragged down by him and felt I was having a nervous breakdown. Still he did nothing. He refused to even talk to me about it / stuff.

He says it's depression, but I say it was abuse. I certainly felt abused. Being depressed doesn't give you the right to treat someone like the shit on your shoe, does it? I've had depression myself. I felt horribly guilty for being a burden to my loved ones and sought help and got myself better. He, on the other hand, did nothing to help himself. It's almost as if he used his depression to treat me like dirt, and get away with it, because he's ill.

sorry if that sounds heartless, it's truly how I feel. It's horrible. And just to be clear, I'm not lumping everyone in this description, only my ex.

...and if some people want to view my actions as selfish (and I would hope those people are in the minority), then so be it. I am putting the life of myself and my child first. I refuse to be broken by this man, I refuse to allow my child to live with miserable parents, I refuse to let my child see its mother be mistreated while it's father claims depression as his excuse for being abusive.

My husband had always suffered sad but when he suffered 2 strokes 6 years ago and since then depression has taken over with suicidal thoughts and days in bed I know it's hard and I glad we have 3dc to keep me busy even though medication can't help after stroke, but your husband can be helped please urge him to go for your sake, and i was chatting to a friend the other day and we are convinced half of the people who say their life is perfect are actually miserable it's us with upside down lives that are the norm. ????

Marriage and family is about supporting people when they need it, but, as the depression sufferer, I believe that I need to do my part too - which means taking the treatment and therapy that is available, and doing what I am capable of, to promote my own recovery.

This sums it up for me.

As the partner you are expected to support your partner. But if the partner is not seeking help or actively making life worse they are not showing any support either. And it's exhausting.

its not always worse for the sufferer imo. They have a diagnosis. The carer is always expected to be strong and be there. I don't think people understand how hard it is to be that person everyday

my OH had panic attacks about going out for years before he got help, he always insisted he was "ill".

I managed by just getting on with my life, going out without him etc.

You're not being selfish at all OP. It's hard enough when DH is in a bad mood. I can only imagine what it must be like when partner has depression (I am the partner with depression BTW)