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Relationships

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

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Original poster

Relationships and depression

45 replies

grace2010 · 29/09/2014 19:59

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 :(

OP posts:

Original poster

grace2010 · 29/09/2014 23:53

Do you believe in your heart of hearts that he will get better and the love he felt will come back?

OP posts:

Flybe757 · 29/09/2014 23:55

I guess youve hit the nail on the head. We were confident it could be beaten, we were the ones working so hard to help them as they suffered, but we nor anyone else can help them: they have to want to do that for themselves and then carry through the wanting into actual results.

He believes that by leaving me he has removed his major problem, because in his words "the relationship was feeding the depression" and so he feels better for having left. The longer he is gone it seems the worse he is feeling, but since he is about to leave the country i know he feels that when he is truly free of me he will be truly better then. He has no idea that there is no escaping the depression: it will be wherever he is.

Flybe757 · 29/09/2014 23:58

I have the same hope, that when he is better he will come back and all of the madness will have gone from his thinking. I long for that time, i wish it was now with all my heart.

But I am also terrified of that time because I am struggling to survive this and face the future now. I know I cant ever do this twice.

Original poster

grace2010 · 30/09/2014 00:01

This is exactly it. How do they translate that a relationship that is good and happy feeds depression? I know I'm not insane, and our relationship made us both bloody happy. How did he get to believe it didn't?

It's like if we had 90% great stuff between us and 10% that needed work all he sees is the 10%, and that 10% is completely irreconcilable without even trying. There's no reasoning with the beast.

I don't understand how I can ever really live with the idea that he felt leaving me would make him stop being depressed :(

OP posts:

Flybe757 · 30/09/2014 00:01

I suspect i am (in my prime;P) older than you. And we have no kids.

Flybe757 · 30/09/2014 00:03

Yep its like all the good has vanished and only their distorted perception of how bad the bad was remains.

Flybe757 · 30/09/2014 00:06

And he can see no bad of any consequence in the devastation he has wrought in my life.

Flybe757 · 30/09/2014 00:09

It really is just all about him and how he feels and it has been for a very log time. I think i am nearly over that.

What I am struggling with now is me. How i feel, the duality, the unfairness, the disbelief, the horror at what is,the physical and emotional impact on me and the scariness of the future.

Flybe757 · 30/09/2014 00:11

Well us old broads need our beauty sleep now. So goodnight and my very best wishes x

Original poster

grace2010 · 30/09/2014 00:14

Yes, every word you say is like it came from my won mouth. All about them and what they feel and it's like you're not even a human being, and I don't know about you but often forget I am myself.

Goodnight Flybe! As depressing as it was, hearing the shared experience made me feel validated and less alone in this hellish life x

OP posts:

Flybe757 · 30/09/2014 00:21

Yeah it (their depression) totally sucks but it does really help to know without a shadow of a doubt that your thoughts and reactions are totally and wonderfully NORMAL. I hope we get to chat again.

StartinOverTheRainbow · 30/09/2014 07:41

I understand too. My ex was a depressive for our entire marriage and he too 'didn't love me anymore'.
It was so incredibly hard! He was a constant pessimist, didn't engage with me or the kids, was in his own little thundercloud world and didn't help himself have a better quality of life other than pop a pill and hope for the world to make it better for him. He looked to me to make life ok for him too, and when I couldn't and counselors kept telling him he needed to help himself and not expects others to do the hard work for him (i.e. me) he still did nothing and just escaped the situation instead.
I do understand how seriously detrimental to the relationship having a partner who has chronic depression can be. I hope this doesn't sound harsh, but I could never be with a depressive again. That is just a deal breaker for me now that I lived through it.

Flybe757 · 30/09/2014 10:14

StartinOver you don't sound harsh, just realistic. How did you make it thru?

StartinOverTheRainbow · 30/09/2014 11:51

I didn't. I was getting stressed, depressed myself. I was tired all time, got sick easily. Generally worn down every day. Now that he isn't in the same house anymore, life feels so much more lighter and easier by 1000X. I didn't realize just how much it affected me until it was gone iyswim.
I truely believe that until and unless the depressive can 'help themselves; then there is no hope. Ex was taking his meds (I was in effect his carer, sorting his pills, making sure he took them, reminding him of refills, dr's appt, etc) but he wasn't engaging in therapy, support groups, cbt, exercise, hobbies, correct diet, etc nothing. Sat on the sofa for hours wasting his life away. It was a huge impact on the families' quality life as there was always an excuse why he didn't want to do family stuff or if he did, it was half-hearted. I said to him that he was big black hole that sucked the life and happiness out of a room. It was true. That palpable tension just from him being in the same room. Awful times. So glad that he is gone.

Original poster

grace2010 · 30/09/2014 12:46

It seems to come in all diferrent shapes and forms, and each one seems to make relationships hard.

To be fair, in sickness and in health and all that but if DP had been depressed for years and not done anything to help himself that would have crossed a boundary for me and I would have (for my own sake) put together some ground rules for minimum expectations for both our sakes so I don't think it's harsh to feel that way.

DP was always really good with that stuff - did all the right diets, exercised, made a real effort with treatment so I could not fault him for that. None of it helped though really.

OP posts:

Flybe757 · 15/10/2014 10:48

So I read runaway husbands, it was very interesting indeed, there are lots of commonalities. But the thing the book didn't touch on at all was the fact that the runaway spouse is clinically depressed. It has left me wondering ... the authors focus is on accepting ts over and rebuilding your life when they leave - but i must still not be accepting somewhere in my head that it is over; is there something about the way he feels that i need to learn from or am i looking for logic in a nonsensical / mentally ill situation; is it wrong of me to give up on him when he is mentally ill even though it now feels like an abusive relationship.......

Glenshee · 15/10/2014 10:55

I found this book very insightful and helpful: www.amazon.co.uk/How-Survive-When-Theyre-Depressed/dp/0609804154

Asstastic · 15/10/2014 17:22

Grace, Flybe, I could have written your posts. Have posted about DP depression under different usernames before. Has only been two years but I feel sick and anxious to the pit of my stomach right now.

Flybe757 · 22/10/2014 19:32

Glenshee thanks so much, but mine is now a done deal, too much pain and distress to cope with and i will never have him back, much as i love him I despise the depression and he is more and more unrecogniseable to me. Hes leaving the country soon and that will be that. Asstastic, hope you're feeling better.

Blossom12345 · 18/04/2022 16:46

Can I ask how you both are now? I am going through this now.

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