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Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

Original poster

Supporting a partner who is depressed

37 replies

fuzzytree · 10/04/2014 11:59

In short, my partner probably has a lot to be depressed about - he is a widower, left with full time care of 2 primary school-aged children, found out his marriage wasn't what he thought it was after he was bereaved, had to give up his career which he loved and worked so hard for.

When I met him, he seemed to have overcome a lot of his problems and was in a positive mindset about the future, about what he wanted to achieve and what made him happy. We had a loving, happy, fun relationship for a year and a half, and the kids and I had forged a caring relationship too. We had a lot of hopes and plans for a future together as a family. But since the start of this year he has hit rock bottom.

I just don't know how to be supportive when I am struggling myself. He is so completely different to the man that I met and fell in love with. He keeps saying he needs 'time on his own' (we are long distance so he just stops texting / calling / says he doesn't want me to go to his house at weekends). So there will be a period of a week or two where we don't speak at all, then he will get in touch with some kind of revelation. So far the varieties have been:

a) he wants to break up
b) he wants to get married, took me shopping to look at engagement rings
c) he wants to move him and the kids up to where I am by the end of the year, and I should tell my landlord that I don't want another year-long contract
d) he wants me to give up my career here and come down to him for a year to see how things go

I understand he is confused, depressed, doesn't know what he wants anymore or what will make him happy. But emotionally I'm a mess - I never know what he is going to say to me next, never know whether the man I talk to will be my old loving caring partner or his new depressed self who at times is so cold. It's got to the point where, if I have an important day ahead, I will just turn off my phone in the evening because I'm too scared of him rocking the boat and of being hurt.

How do I support him? Do I even support him, or does it sound like he would be better on his own? It's so hard to let go of someone I adore so much, and that's not even counting the lovely children, but it seems that the man I loved isn't here anymore. Sad

OP posts:
LavenderGreen14 · 10/04/2014 12:03

Sorry - but I think you should leave him and find someone who doesn't play such games with you. Is depression a valid excuse to treat you like this?

Stop worrying about him and start caring about yourself - sounds like he is making you ill. When a person shows you who they are believe them - this is him and this is how he will treat you (& your children).

Val007 · 10/04/2014 12:06

Support yourself.

Original poster
fuzzytree · 10/04/2014 12:15

He says he doesn't want to hurt me and that he needs to sort his head out. If he had been like this when I had met him or near the start of our relationship it would be a no-brainer - I don't want a relationship with this man. But I still see him as the man I've been with for a year and a half and who has been dealt a really crap hand in life. I suppose it's a question of how long to wait before just accepting that he isn't coming back.

OP posts:
LavenderGreen14 · 10/04/2014 12:19

yes he has been dealt a bad life, and maybe he is depressed - but that is no excuse to treat you like this. Are you going to sit around waiting for him to change back to what he was in the first flush of your relationship - because I don't think he will at all. He is now showing you the real him, not the illusion of him before you got to know him properly.

Original poster
fuzzytree · 10/04/2014 12:20

Another thing - went on his laptop a few weeks ago and found a tab left up which was 'dating for widows' or something. He had a paid account on there and had been using it for a few months.

He told me it was just to talk to people in a similar situation who could understand. I said it seemed odd that he would join a dating site for that purpose, as it would only allow him to talk to women.

He showed me some of the messages and it was just platonic day-to-day stuff but he portrayed himself as having just started a long-distance relationship, that it wasn't anything serious and that I was a first step into dating for him. He said it was because he didn't think anyone would want to be friends with him if he said he had already met someone else.

Think I'm answering my own question aren't I.

OP posts:
deepest · 10/04/2014 12:24

What do you want to do....

a) break up?
b) get married?
c) move him and the kids up to where you are by the end of the year, and tell your landlord that you don't want another year-long contract?
d) give up your career there and come down to him for a year to see how things go?

Have you been open and honest about what you want?

How long has he been bereaved? -- I think it is a long bumpy road that only settles after 4-5 years.

Maybe he is trying to fix his grief by grasping at planning a future to in an attempt to move on. I think bereavement is like "Going on a Bear Hunt" - you have to go through it do you think he has or is this what is only happening nnow?

LavenderGreen14 · 10/04/2014 12:24

yes you are - run like the wind.

He wants his cake and to eat it. He would minimise it wouldn't he. So he is probably actively seeing other people. You may need STI testing.

Original poster
fuzzytree · 10/04/2014 12:34

I was happy how we were for the time being - mostly me travelling down to him at weekends, with the occasional weekend on our own without the kids. I was shocked in a good way when he suggested wanting to move up here. A while ago I was considering a career break for a year which is where the 'moving down to him' thing came from - it seemed like a way of knowing whether things would work or not without having to move the kids. He knows how I feel and my hopes for us - we were agreed on everything until the start of this year.

He's been bereaved for 3 years. When I met him I genuinely thought he had gone through it, as you say. He assured me that he had and that he was ready to start afresh, to make the most of life's opportunities, build a new life with someone. But I guess that wasn't the case.

OP posts:
CogitoErgoSometimes · 10/04/2014 12:40

I'm sorry you're being subjected to this hot and cold treatment. It may be depression-related or it may not. Either way, I agree with LavenderGreen14 that there is no excuse to treat someone this way. It is not your job to make him happy and if you keep excusing his behaviour with 'he's been dealt a crap hand' you will be trapped forever. It doesn't sound like you live together if he's talking about moving nearer so I'd suggest you take a break from each other. Give yourself time to think properly about what you want out of life and get off the rollercoaster he's created. Give him chance to work out whatever it is that making him behave this way.

CogitoErgoSometimes · 10/04/2014 12:42

" found out his marriage wasn't what he thought it was after he was bereaved"

Does this mean that he found out his late wife was having an affair?

Original poster
fuzzytree · 10/04/2014 12:45

I know I should leave him to it for the time being, and I have been trying to. But I still love him and miss him. When I text him these days he is invariably cold and I end up feeling worse than if I hadn't text him at all. Just not very strong I guess.

Yes. He has a lot of anger and confusion over the whole thing.

OP posts:
Bargara · 10/04/2014 12:49

He is obviously not that into you anymore, sorry. He is playing away by the sounds of it and he is trying to end it.

Bargara · 10/04/2014 12:50

Don't let him hurt you this way. Stop seeing him and contacting him and see what happens.

Bargara · 10/04/2014 12:51

Its easy to see this as an outsider but not something that you want to see when you are still in love. Sorry.

CogitoErgoSometimes · 10/04/2014 12:53

If you take the fact that he is a widower out of the equation he is displaying a lot of the characteristics of an emotionally abusive git. Blowing hot and cold, manipulation, lying about being on dating sites, threatening you with the relationship ending knowing it'll make you try a bit harder.... Add the widower with kids element and the hint of depression and it opens up a mine of emotionally manipulative opportunities. The gold standard of guilt-tripping. What kind of bitch would dump a man that's been through so much... right?

Do you still have friends and interests of your own or has travelling to see him every weekend monopolised your time? (I note you don't mention him putting himself out to see you)

Original poster
fuzzytree · 10/04/2014 12:59

Funny you should mention that last point as I was telling him about this only a few days ago - how I feel I am losing friends, who try to arrange to see me but understandably get so exasperated because I'm always busy.

We get a weekend every 6-8 weeks or so without the kids when he will come here or we will get a hotel somewhere - I can't physically house his kids in my flat so it's either me go there or him get childcare, and he has very set ideas on how frequently he should leave them with grandparents etc. so that he doesn't ignore their emotional needs.

I suppose that's why I was so stupidly hopeful and excited about him coming here - I can get a bit of my old life back and build a new one with him and the kids too. It's exhausting living out of a suitcase.

OP posts:
Original poster
fuzzytree · 10/04/2014 13:04

By the way, thanks for the replies everyone. Felt very lonely - as I say, no real friends to talk to now, family don't approve of the relationship full stop.

OP posts:
CogitoErgoSometimes · 10/04/2014 13:08

Families sometimes get it wrong but, in this instance, I would endure a few 'we told you so's' and restore your links with them. Get your life back.

SolidGoldBrass · 10/04/2014 13:09

FFS bin him and move on. It's not your job to be his endlessly patient nursemaid and emotional punchbag.

Has he recieved any treatment for his 'depression'? I am fully aware that depression is an illness, of course, but there are some people -and he sounds like one of them - who claim to have depression, seek no medical help, and basically use the idea of being depressed as justification for being horrible and always having to get their own way.
Let this selfish man find someone else to leech off.

LavenderGreen14 · 10/04/2014 13:10

Do you think your family know what he is like and don't approve of the way he is treating you.

All the time you waste on him is time which could be spent on yourself or even with someone who treats you nicely and actually likes you. I agree he does seem very manipulative, and I don't think he is faithful to you either. Sorry.

Bargara · 10/04/2014 13:10

Fuzzy can you not see that something changed at the beginning of the year. He might be depressed and an arse but more likely he has another woman from what you have said.

Original poster
fuzzytree · 10/04/2014 13:12

They don't approve because of the age difference (12 years) and because he has kids where I have none - they think it will ruin my life. I paint him in an entirely positive light so they know nothing about anything of this.

He is having counselling. I'd love to be a fly on the wall...

Time to claw back the past year and a bit then I guess.

OP posts:
SelectAUserName · 10/04/2014 13:16

Depression doesn't change basic character to that extent. It can have an impact on behaviour (the withdrawing from contact is a classic) but it doesn't change a fundamentally nice guy into a manipulative cheat.

Original poster
fuzzytree · 10/04/2014 13:19

I can accept him wanting someone else or not loving me anymore - in that case, end it and be done with it. It's the dragging it out and changing his mind that makes no sense. It is really going to hurt his kids and that's only to get worse the longer this goes on. Maybe that's the reason he's delaying it. I don't know.

OP posts:
Original poster
fuzzytree · 10/04/2014 13:20

Anyway - you have all confirmed what I was secretly thinking. I just needed someone external to tell me that I'm not just being selfish and an uncaring partner. I think of the man I fell in love with and I would have supported him through anything but clearly this is not that man.

OP posts: