My husband of 12 years has been suffering with depression for a few years now but it has recently got a lot worse. We have 2 young children.
I have had anxiety and depression myself in the past so I do understand how hard it is.
I feel horrendous saying this but I don’t know how much more I can take. When he was taking antidepressants he was much more like his usual self, but he said they made him numb so he stopped taking them. He is on the waiting list for NHS Talking Therapy.
I want to support him. I have always given him all the time he needs to talk if he wants to and have been understanding and supportive, because I know how it feels. I encourage him to do things that he used to enjoy whilst I have the children.
I know he’s unwell and this feels worse for him than it does for me but it is breaking me. It is like living with someone who hates me. It feels like he is constantly criticising me (although he says he is not) but constant comments of ‘we live in a shit hole’ (we don’t, we have a nice, clean house that gets messy because we have 2 small children and both work full time out of the house), or he’ll say he wants to go and live by himself because we are all mad, too loud, too messy, he can’t cope in this house’ etc etc, when it is just a typical house with young children. These comments are all the time.
Today, he went to the shop to get something. He phoned me on the way home and I put him on speakerphone because I was preparing the children’s lunch so it was just easier. He started saying how the shop was horrible, he couldn’t think what to get (I completely understand and sympathise with this) but then how he hates people and he hates life and what’s the point. I said DH hang on one second because you’re on speakerphone, let me take it off’ because I didn’t want the kids overhearing. He started saying ‘oh right ok you dont want to listen, you don’t care whatever’ and hung up.
All day he’s barely said a word to me, just looks at me like he can’t stand me. I feel like I’m constantly on egg shells. And to make it worse, if ever I am a bit stressed about something and want to talk, I’m ’ruining his good mood’.
It’s just horrible. I don’t want to live in a house where I feel like someone hates me. I don’t want the children seeing it, I feel like I’m having to shield them from it.
And if I try and speak to him about it, I get ‘I know, I’m a horrible person, you can’t make me feel worse than I already do’.
I have thought about leaving. I don’t want to. I could put it with it if it was just me but it’s getting to the point that the children must be noticing. But he is unwell, I know that. I just want him to be better and back to the person he used to be.