My husband is clearly depressed. He is also a proud man, and some degree of old-fashioned. I am 4 years younger than him, and am far more open to the idea of therapy and medication.
For context, he has dealt with his dad (whom he was close with) committing suicide when he was a teenager, a long-term girlfriend (whom he really wanted to marry) cheating on him with multiple men (including a good friend at the time) for years, and his best friend of 10 years (my brother) dying in a rafting accident that we were both part of. I’ve been struggling personally myself, but I have a few different things I’m trying, including therapy. He is unwilling to try therapy or medication, but isn’t getting better, cause holy shit, that’s a lot of unprocessed shit to deal with.
It’s manifesting in really nasty ways, and hurting both of us. I don’t think he means the things he says; I think he’s hurting a lot and doesn’t know what to do.
For what it’s worth, I really have not been great to him or myself. I’ve been dealing with my own emotional baggage, but I’m not going to get into that. I’m working on it, and feel like after many years of work, have come through a breakthrough where I understand that I do in fact want this person in my life.
How can I help guide him to anything that will help him? Doesn’t need to be therapy, medication, or a psychiatrist. Those do seem like the obvious answers, but I’m open to virtually any suggestions.
This man is amazing and a wonderful person, but he’s really struggling and doesn’t seem to want help, but at the same time, seems like he needs/wants help. Any thoughts?
Edit: I’m really touched by all of the thoughtful responses I’ve received. I don’t like to talk about my marital issues with people in my life, and I know my husband wouldn’t want others to know what he’s struggling with. This is a great community.
I’m slowly working my way through each response. Seriously - thank you all.
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I went through a period of severe depression following some life-changing events. These changes caused me to suddenly become isolated from my family so my wife was really all I had. I lost my job and struggled to find another one in the industry which only made things worse and made it so that we didn’t really have money for therapy. It was a rough few years, but we made it through.
The best thing you can do for him right now is to be there for him and remain his ally. Try to make him smile when you can and give him hope for a brighter future. If you want to do something more pro-active then you could try to keep his space clean or cook healthy meals for him as these things will help with his mental hygiene, but it’s mostly up to him to make the necessary effort to get better.
Make sure you take care of yourself, too. Practice good mental hygiene so that you can stay positive and motivated to make it through this. You got this.
Take this with a grain of salt, but I’ve been going to therapy lately and I feel like most big parts of my healing process can be attributed to reading introduction to internal family systems.
I write a lot to process, but I’ve stopped recently to just sit with my emotions and face them without any distractions. Trying to sit with silence is hard, but the closer you get with genuine peace, the deeper you go. The book helped me understand that I’m all of me, and sometimes that contradicts, and that I don’t need always need words to define experience.
I don’t know how else to help, but therapy’s helped me feel more… real. Not so idealistic as a consequence, and things are scarier that way, but… life goes on.
I’m reading the red book by Carl Jung now. It is very helpful for me in understanding my own “human experience.”
I don’t comment/post online much. I’m depressed and I think my girlfriend hates me, but these upvotes give me hope. Thank you.
If you find something that helps, please let me know. I’m so tired.
I’m very prone to becoming depressed and recently found out that it’s tightly linked to a feeling of not having control over my life. I discovered this after my wife and I decided to make some changes on our dailly schedules to accommodate dailly gym sessions for me, after all other responsibilities are taken care off. Now I have something to look forward to eveyday of the week that I alone control.
It changed my life. There’s something primal about lifting heavy stuff on top of having some alone time away from home (children demand a lot from us). Also looking better in the mirror as helped.
This worked for me because exercise is something I’m passionate about. Perhaps it could work for your husband, having some regular activity he enjoys.
Good luck
I have a lot of strong thoughts regarding the use of therapy. Specifically that I think everyone needs a therapist… everyone. It doesn’t matter how well things are going, and you don’t necessarily have to see them weekly or even biweekly… but someone to check in with from time to time to see how things are going. That way when a struggle does occur, you’ve got a fresh disinterested perspective from someone with the training to help process certain things that go through your mind. Everyone needs someone to talk to sometimes… someone with absolutely no skin in the game who can give the painfully honest answer others might not be prepared to give.
Another suggestion is to see if he’s willing to write out his thoughts. Don’t call it journaling or keeping a diary… just writing down thoughts. It’s amazing what writing things down can do to help you process things. When my grandma passed, it was pretty devastating to me (to be clear, it was absolutely nothing like what your husband experienced). We’d been close my whole life and now more than 10 years later I still find myself blindsided by feelings of missing her. I decided to write a eulogy for her memorial service. It was immeasurably helpful for processing our relationship and what she meant to me and so many others in her life. She was pretty amazing… Maybe that’s the thing… maybe he could write a eulogy for his dad… or something like that. Idk.
It just sucks to go through life depressed and anxious. Life is too god damned short to allow your time to be hijacked by it. If he’d call a buddy to help him work on his car so it didn’t take an entire Saturday to fix, why wouldn’t he do the same to help himself not feel this way?
Good luck to the both of you.
If you haven’t yet tried it, you should try telling him how his new state of mind is affecting you, and not just operationally but also emotionally. How is his behavior making you feel?
If he’s old fashioned, that means he sees his role as protecting others and fulfilling his duty. Old fashioned men are more apt to sacrifice their self than to sacrifice another who is in their care.
Your legitimate claim is to his role as your husband. His own life is his own life, but his role as husband is yours to lay grievance against.