Relationships and depression

[grace2010]

There's a thread running in MH for spouses or DPs affected by depression in their relationship, but as relationships is full of so much wonderful advice, stories and insights I'm posting here on a hard day in the hope of hearing from those who have been affected by this illness.

My story is a common one. Happy relationship until DP got depression. After that everything changed. He got angry, I could do no right, he was demotivated, snappy, emotionless, unreasonable and just withdrew completely from me. Everything was my fault, including his depression. He could only see the negative in me and picked on little things and forgot everything good :( He decided he didn't love me and left. Apparently coping with having a DP was too hard for him, he wanted to be alone and deal with it alone.

I'm not looking for advice, as I know I have to "take care of me", and I know I can't control this or stop it, but I would love to hear from others who have either been depressed or who have had their spouse become depressed just maybe to help me feel less alone in this situation.

Although I know in my head how much he loved me before he was ill, it's hard to live with the fact that he feels almost nothing about me now. Years of love and caring evaporated overnight.

Would love to hear from anyone who has been through this or had experienced it from the other side. "I don't think I love you" is the worst sentence I've ever had to hear and it just keeps reverberating around my head endlessly :(

Not had direct experience, but my Father went through manic depression for about 4 years (I was only young at the time but can remember it).

This was all brought on by work (someone "losing" £10 million and the responsibility being put on his shoulders).

In my experience, and what I saw my mother go through was that depression like this can cause the depressed to become very detached from everything but themselves, they become so entrenched in them and what it is that is making them depressed that everything they love/loved becomes an after thought - almost an annoyance as they try and get over their issues. I remember him saying on a few occasions that he wasn't sure if he loved my mother anymore.

Depression is an illness and can totally consume someone - I always remember once when my father said family doesn't come first, that work is his priority, this, of course was all because of what he was going through at the time. I didn't see him smile or laugh or be happy for four years.

I also remember many a packed bag at the door as either he or my mother had had enough, thankfully that never came to fruition. The point that this all stopped was when my dad finally said enough is enough and basically told those that were blaming him to "F" off - worked out pretty well and he became very successful (retired now). I'm very close to my father and he is a great dad/grandad. (he and my mother still together).

Exactly how I felt, thanks Snoopy.

DP used to be so great. Really calm and thoughtful and selfless and all that turned on it's head. He used to tell me all the time how great I was, how nice I looked, how lucky he was and how he'd never let me go. Then I became someone to ignore, an annoyance and suddenly my quirks he found cute were something he'd snap and shout at me for :(

He's now left, and got worse since then - much worse. He can't do anything but be depressed. It's as if I don't exist and never did. He could not care less how I feel. My birthday passed without even a card and I just got an facebook message and it set me off feeling really low, wondering how someone who used to love me just stopped caring completely.

Add onto that the fact that I was to scream and shout at him for treating me so badly but can't because he's so ill :(

It would be easy for someone on the outside to call him a bastard etc.

But, like you have said, depression is an illness a completely crippling illness. It can make someone who was once kind and loving come across as horrid and hateful - this isn't the true them though.

Remember, no matter how much you want to you cannot help him - for my father it was facing his demons head on that conquered depression - for other is counseling/doctors etc - either way it is up to him to deal with it.

p.s. For your ex to have such a quick and drastic switch in behavior does point to bipolar. (I'm not an expert)

Oh yes, everyone thinks he is a bastard, which makes it no easier. Fact is he has been a complete bastard since he got depressed.

I do feel it's not the "real" him and he knows that too but he can't stop doing it either. So what's real is real even if it is down to illness and I have to live it anyway.

He has demons, no doubt about it, also an iffy childhood to deal with but he seemed so strong and capable before all this hit him. Shame I wasn't watching and didn't know what to look out for because with hindsight there was a slow and steady change in him from outgoing to withdrawn and tired all the time.

It wasn't quick and drastic, it was slow and steady, but for a year we were calling it "stress", I had no idea it was depression for quite a long time because he wasn't honest about what he was feeling.

When it became unmanageable it came out and he directed blame for how he was feeling at me.

Grace I am living through your same situation. The loving, gentle, kind, rock of a man in whose arms I felt so loved and so safe has become cold, uncaring and full of blame and resentment all aimed at me once there was no-one left to blame. He was diagnosed with depression ages ago but has a treatment resistant version.

Have you come across the many websites aimed specifically at depression?They helped me to see the illness objectively and to know that the spouse hating and the leaving is a path well trodden by the depressed.

What it hasn't helped me with is coping with having my heart ripped out by someone with whom it was so safe. I know the pain in those awful words" I don't love you anymore" said with such conviction and received with such disbelief.

How can we have come to this?, how can he be so cruel to me?, how can it be possible that we are living apart now?. It is still so unreal and so painful. I have never known distress like it and I really hope that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger isn't just something people say, because it has me reeling and it hasn't stopped yet.

I simply cant get to grips with what his desertion, my head and my heart are in two different places. I have some serious thinking to do and feel completely unable to work it out yet. Should he ever want to come back, what would I do? I want him back if he is my lovely husband, but this depressed hater will take me down with him if he returns as is and I can't allow that. I have to decide my future. How could i ever feel safe again in the face of his cruelty, how could I ever trust him again or know that this wouldn't happen again? And yet I know I am here waiting and wondering for any possible return.

I am fighting hard not to be taken down by this, but it is the hardest battle of my life. I wish you strength.

Flybe that first paragraph was like reading my life. Honestly, I'd kill for one of those hugs that used to make me feel so safe and warm. when I hug him now he's all skinny and cold and the connection between us that was so strong before is just gone.

Yes, I've been on a long journey through this and read a lot of books on it, including "depression fallout", which describes my life to a tee but you're right. "Understanding" his condition doesn't change the agonising pain, and as you say the part I can;t cope with is that it's him of all people inflicting this one me and seems not to even care.

Every word of your post is like reading my own life, my own thoughts, my own questions. It is the hardest fight of my life too, but I don't even understand what I am fighting for most days.

The belief that he will come back to who he was? What happens then?

(my ex is also treatment resistant)

I think what it is Flybe, even though I read in those websites how often this happens (Storied mind, my partner is depressed) and I read the books which says this can happen...I just feel like "NOT TO US"...no way should this happen to us.

Grace ive just ordered runaway husbands I will let you know if it helps. I have also come across a book called detach and survive, i like the sound of that because intuitively i know that is what i need to do, i just dont want to yet.

I'll look those both up, thanks. I also just can't detach.

I am with you in your disbelief. It is all so unreal and yet so bone shatteringly painful.

How long has he been gone? Was he horrible to you for a while before he left?

That moment of "I don't love you" really was the most scary moment of my life. I remember time just standing still. He said that a while before he left. Then he loved me again, then not, then again, then not. Then finally he was absolutely sure that if he was so sad and low it clearly must be all my fault.

I just kept waiting for him to be normal again, he started the pills, he had the counselling. Nothing seems to work.

I sometimes wonder, maybe it was me? Maybe I was so awful to be around that he got depressed!

I am struggling to accept that this has happened to us too his love was so bankable; but, he has left me and swears his decision is irreversible. He is the one full of decision and conviction and i am the one in the mental fog whose heart is wondering from here tothere and bak again.

Yes exactly how I feel, but felt like that before he left too. Just like all the things that used to make him laugh or smile that big broad grin didn't work anymore and I felt like I could never win. Some of the things he said were just so bloody awful.

I think the moment that we start to believe them we are lost. You have to take strength from the knowledge that they are mentally ill: they think they are thinking correctly and feeling correctly whilst all the time they are mentally ill and can take no account of that fact in their thoughts or actions.

I understand the depression and its anhedonia clearly and yet he is utterly unable to hear me and twists everything i say and everything that has happened and there is no reasoning with him and believe me i have tried.

For years.

I wish you lived round the corner! Sometimes hearing another human being acknowledging having been through the same is a big relief.

I understand it is enormously helpful when someone understands, we have the most enormous need for support: i have an excellent family who help me thru daily I hope you do too because if the professionals can't help them then what chance do we have of them helping us!

But even family have their limitations because unless you have been thru it i guess you don't know the depth of it and above all the utter duality of it.

My family and friends are great, but as you say, no one can understand the duality.

In addition to him being a great loss for me, i know that i am a huge loss for him and i know too that what we are going through now awaits them when their mental health has returned. It is a complete lose lose situation.

I have not lost my compassion for him, i wouldn't wish this pain on anyone. Nor have i lost my belief in myself, and my worth and value even though he would have me believe i have none, at least to his mentally ill self. I have struggled so hard to hold us together and he has ripped us apart as if I were nothing.

I told him that i deserve to be loved, that i will not live my life unloved and i mean it. The merest hope of a life without depression in it seems magical to me. But it is all around us. And i want that life.

I wish this thread bleeped to tell me youve replied!

Yes! this is what really scares me a lot is that I will get busy getting over him and moving on, and once his depression goes he will realise what he's lost and regret it and by then it will be too late? I suppose there's nothing I can do about that, but it seems like you say that nobody wins.

I also have compassion, endless compassion but I've fought too. So hard, so long and tried to do / say / be what was bets to help him through this and it's been so long since I felt loved.

I know your exhaustion and your frustration, and all of that effort being poured into an abyss.

And while fighting so hard to say, be, do what is loving getting all bent out of shape by a complete lack of love.

It is hardly surprising that there are some things that we feel we could have done better!!

I have always thought i could influence matters, that i was never powerless.

But the depression has me beaten, hands down. I am out of options and he is devoid of anything useful.

So this is an in-between time with no set timeframe.

I have clarity on the problem. Now I need clarity on the way forward.

And a way to limit the damage to my poor battered heart.

I know how that feels. At first when he was diagnosed I was so confident that we'd beat it and if I could do all the right things he would get better and it took a lot but I do feel beaten now. I could cope with him not wanting to get up out of bed and not laughing and all of that but when you give so much love and get zip in response it's horrible and just soul destroying.