6 ms·

Depression can also manifest in different ways. One way is anger, frustration, and anxiety. My wife’s depression was like this. She would come home from work, f

Depression can also manifest in different ways. One way is anger, frustration, and anxiety. My wife’s depression was like this. She would come home from work, find one thing wrong with our apartment - there were dirty dishes in the sink, the clothes hadn’t been folded - and get angry with me for not having taken care of it. The fact that I had cooked dinner and mopped the floors didn’t count. She was angry with me probably 33-50% of the time. For about a year I tried to get out ahead of all the chores. But that’s impossible. Finally I realized that this wasn’t my fault. I wasn’t a bad partner. This was something in her head. I could actually watch in real time as her own brain gaslit her. I’d pay her a compliment — “that dress looks nice” — and see a perceptible lag as her brain figured out how to turn it into an insult — “your other dresses aren’t nice.” Eventually she recognized something was wrong and got help, but it took a couple of years. She is a completely different person now. If you are the partner of a depressed person, your primary responsibility is to yourself. You have to stay sane. THEN, if you can, you can support and help your partner. But if you lose your own mental health you’re pretty much done.

bonoboTP 5y ago
So was she diagnosed with depression or what? Main part is missing from the anecdote.
- GlenTheMachine 5y ago
  Yes. Eventually. SSRIs saved our marriage.
- albedoa 5y ago
  A major point is that a diagnosis is often missing from the anecdote because there is not one. The main part is the depression.
  - bonoboTP 5y ago
    Without a diagnosis, it wouldn't be clear that such irritability and being confrontational/angry is the result of depression and not something else.
poulsbohemian 5y ago
I commend you on getting through that with her. What you describe sounds exactly like a subset of the behavior my ex-wife demonstrated, but she refused to acknowledge that she needed help and it ended in a very bad divorce. Takes a lot of mutual strength to work through all of that together.
reidjs 5y ago
I went through the exact same thing, except with a girlfriend not a wife. 100% agree that it’s important to keep your own mental health strong before you can help them. But that is exceptionally hard when they are trying to bring you down to their state at every opportunity.
- goodpoint 5y ago
  They are not "trying to bring you down to their state" just as much as a person on a wheelchair is not trying to make you go around slowly.
  - e_i_pi 5y ago
    I think this is a "misery loves company" sort of thing. When you're depressed you don't want people to try to help you be happier, and you don't really want to be happier in a deep sense - you want them to be depressed with you so you feel less alone. I think the fair analogy here would be someone in a wheelchair trying to get other people to use wheelchairs so they have someone to share the difficulty with.
    - goodpoint 5y ago
      This narrative is provably false and harmful (and insulting) to people with any mental illness. Psychologist has been fighting such social stigmas for decades.
      - joshgrib 5y ago
        Do you have a source? This is coming from how I feel when depressed so at least for me it is definitely not false. But that's just anecdotal and I don't have any studies to back it up. Just on intuition I have a hard time believing a depressed person would rather be surrounded by happy people they won't be able to relate to, then they would to have someone to share and talk about the bad feelings they're both experiencing. I'd also add that (again maybe just for me) it's a way more helpful way to view it. It helps me recognize when I need to just go through the motions of being positive until I can get back to doing it naturally. It usually feels a lot better in the moment to focus on the negatives but somewhere in my head I know that's not going to help me.
rowingcoal 5y ago
This rings true. > But if you lose your own mental health you’re pretty much done. Happened to me. I started the relationship with zeal and willingness to help. I wished to make a difference, yet it can be incredibly taxing one one's emotions. You can very much be affected yourself.
hemloc_io 5y ago
Going to take a different, probably controversial perspective on this. (But this is my pseudo anon account so whatever;) I had a similar thing happen with my long time girlfriend, 5+ years. She had a rough childhood and covid measures eventually made her suicidal as we graduated college. Eventually she got treatment, and is doing better (yay!). This is all great other than the meds have now evened her out too much. She’s a totally different person and antidepressants have some side effects that have effected us. Even if the meds are good for you, and they probably are, it was difficult to adjust to a whole new person after so long. I could even see either the side effects or who she is now ending our relationship. We’re working on it, but i think in part the meds messed with our dynamic.
- ycombinete 5y ago
  > have some side effects that have effected us. I assume part of this is the typical effect that she now has almost no libido
  - TranquilMarmot 5y ago
    To be fair, depression has enough of an effect on libido on its own
    - ravishi 5y ago
      Including the effect of lifting it up to unhealthy levels.
- rancar2 5y ago
  To affirm you experience, the meds can most certainly have the effects you are witnessing. There’s a few gems of the stories told in Dopamine Nation including of the author that touch on this topic about antidepressants and the side effects. It’s worth having her dose and medication examined much closer by the right professional in your country (I’m in the US and know the system best here). If you need any help navigating, I’m pretty easy to get in touch with and happy to help point you and/or your partner in the right direction along with any supplemental information that may help.
donatj 5y ago
Every piece of this rings so true to my own experience. My wife suffers clinical depression. It has been no joke the biggest challenge of my entire life. When it is under control, life is great. When it's not, it's not. We've been through many meds and doctors and therapists. We're in a decently stable place right now, but there's always a fear in the back of my mind "but for how long". Her previous meds worked for years and then just... Stopped. There was also the "fun" 6 months where she decided she didn't need then anymore - spoilers, she did. We're currently quarantining because we both caught COVID over Christmas. We've both been sick for a solid week at this point and the cracks are kind of showing. All this is to say you're not alone, and there are others. Hold in there. Addendum: I’ve looked for like online support for people in this sort of relationship and come up largely short. I looked at BetterHelp but couldn’t really justify the cost. If anyone has any recommendations, I’d love to hear it.
- labster 5y ago
  I have a relative, who, every three or four years, decided that this time her bipolar disorder really was cured! And so she’d stop taking her medication and feel really, really good for a few months. And then the inevitable crash happened and she spent a few months in hospital. The last time was different though. In her seventies, her body couldn’t take the strain again. And now she’s in a long term care facility for dementia, probably for the rest of her life — fortunately close for her husband. Moral of the story: if you want to go off your meds, make sure a doctor is keeping an eye on you. No matter how good the good times feel.
  - ordu 5y ago
    > Moral of the story: if you want to go off your meds, make sure a doctor is keeping an eye on you. No matter how good the good times feel. It might just not work with bipolar. If bipolar person go manic, then reckless behavior, overconfidence, and unlimited optimism may beat any moral of this kind.
  - kayodelycaon 5y ago
    Mania affects judgement, sometimes severely. Bipolar people go off their meds because they think things will be better without them. Doctors put them on meds in the first place. I don’t think the advice of “just follow the plan” is going to work. It took me years to get to real stability and meds still suck. The only reason I haven’t gone off my meds is I’m both high-functioning and very used to managing chronic medical problems. I know how to work with my Psychiatrist to manage my own medical care and decide what is and isn’t acceptable to me.
steve_adams_86 5y ago
My wife does this too. Granted, I’m diagnosed with ADHD, but when it comes to chores I’m kind of battle-hardened and quite diligent. I found trying to get ahead of chores very demoralizing and exhausting. My wife hasn’t found a solution yet. She will sleep in until 11 on a weekend and get out of bed only to get upset with what hasn’t yet been done. She does very little with herself outside of work. Like your wife, any compliment is actually an insult. That sort of dynamic definitely complicates kindling or maintaining romance. I remind myself that it’s worse for her than it is for me. I’m also grateful for the challenges it has presented because in many ways, it has made me a better person. I do wish she was happier. For her sake and for our kid’s sakes. Life isn’t always happy though, and it all takes work. Relationships take work. With the right framing and patience these things can be worked through. Your last point about maintaining your own mental health really is key, though. I’ve crossed that line several times and essentially developed my own depression. It’s very dangerous. I’ve found it very helpful to reflect on what I contribute, how hard I’m working towards my duties as a partner, and how my actions meet my intentions and so on. When I can honestly tell myself I’m doing well, just about the best I can manage, I let things slide. If it’s all I can do and it isn’t good enough for someone else, I’ll still reward myself for my efforts and let the depressive ire slide off my back. Most importantly though I’ll recognize my own efforts and make sure I don’t allow myself to be pulled into thinking it isn’t good enough.
- kybernetyk 5y ago
  Hmm, one of my past girlfriends (we had a very long term relationship) was like this. I left her. I think I did the right thing when I read through all the comments in this thread.
- dempseye 5y ago
  The whole "I need to do better because I have ADHD" thing sounds like a narrative she uses to gaslight you into being her slave. All the focus in your post is on your duties, not on hers. I obviously don't know your relationship from the inside, but I experienced similar and it was relief to get away from it.
  - 5y ago
mianos 5y ago
I am in the same situation, for for word. > But if you lose your own mental health you’re pretty much done. I sometimes feel I am at the edge of this then somehow I do some work I am happy with, see a friend, ride a bike or go for a swim and I am back from the edge. The gas-lighting is sometimes so surreal I am speechless.
joeman1000 5y ago
God this sounds like my life right now. I’m glad your wife got help. How did you keep positive and healthy? And how did your wife come to see the problem?
- Gene_Parmesan 5y ago
  > And how did your wife come to see the problem? Making someone "see the problem" is missing the point entirely. Firstly because often, people with depression are fully aware of how they are treating people. They simply can't help it. Your role as a partner is to love and support them. You also, however, need to prioritize your own mental health and happiness. There is an extremely common relationship 'trap,' one I've lived through. You are in a relationship that is causing you personal distress and unhappiness -- but your love of the other person makes you feel trapped. You can see how much they are struggling, and can't bear to hurt them -- often because you are afraid of what may happen if you leave. When you love someone with a debilitating illness, mental or otherwise, you need to decide whether you can accept the other person as they are. If you can, then you have to do that, and choose to stay with the person precisely as they are -- while having and enforcing healthy boundaries. If you cannot -- and often times there are extremely good and valid reasons why you cannot -- then you owe it to both of you to discuss this and potentially end the relationship. Sometimes such a conversation can be the spark of change for the other person, but often times it isn't, and that's okay. Staying in a relationship that is making you miserable is doing no one any benefit. It's a supreme challenge with depression, but you cannot allow the depression your partner experiences to affect your own emotional health. The best tool for this is something called "loving detachment." I'd recommend you read about it, and about the concept of co-dependency in general(*). It was a life saver for me. The worst relationship mistake you can make (after the obvious choices like affairs or so on) is being in a relationship with a mirage. Too many people have a false ideal of their partner -- their partner after they've been "cured" or "fixed" or "realized the problem" or "got clean" or whatever. You cannot have "you must change" as a condition of the relationship. Either the person will change or they won't, but staying in a relationship where you expect the other person will change is controlling and damaging. Are you in love with the person? Or with a made-up vision of the person you have in your head? Remember that love is unconditional. The best thing I did in my relationship was spend a year (I'm not exaggerating) thinking about the realities of the situation, the options I had, the way my life could end up whether I stayed or leaved, and so on. It was an extremely difficult time and required the help of therapists, both personally and as a couple. In order to do this properly you need to admit divorce as a possible end -- and I don't mean the empty threats of divorce many of us make. For instance, the hardest session I ever had was when my personal therapist pushed me to walk through a concrete plan for leaving. Where would I go? Who would I tell? How would we split up our possessions? And so on. Making the possibility real is extremely important. In order to not feel trapped, you need to fully believe that leaving is an option. In the end, the decision I made for myself was that I could accept my wife as she was. Almost immediately my mental wellbeing improved drastically. I no longer felt trapped. My wife's depression did not magically become cured, but I learned how to detach from it and be a good partner while protecting my own health. In the years since, my improved wellbeing and happiness has slowly but surely helped turn the relationship around. Her depression is still not cured, but now I know how to be a good partner for her, which has in fact helped her to a large degree. She now trusts me as someone she can turn to for help, rather than viewing me as someone who was taking her mental health personally (which I was definitely doing). In the end, this is thing most spouses don't want to realize -- it's you that has to change, not your partner with depression, whether that means leaving the relationship because it can't and won't work, or learning to love them as they are. (*) It can be really easy for spouses to take suggestions like this personally. I know I did. Being called co-dependent by the couples therapist felt like a full scale assault. How dare he say that I'M the one with a problem!! Doesn't he know what I've BEEN through?? What I was missing is that he was telling me that to help me. Learning about co-dependency -- and how to overcome it -- was the most liberating thing I've ever felt.
hooande 5y ago
I'm surprised to see so many other commenters in this same situation. Thanks for posting this, and I hope things work out for the best
hotz 5y ago
Similar experience here. Though my ex was diagnosed with bipolar and borderline personality disorder on top of the clinical depression. Regular psychologist and psychiatrist visits and a scary amount of meds to take each day. I've got a lot of empathy for people in relationships like this. It's not easy and even though there's help and medication, it still ends up being an up hill battle. I myself have been struggling with Dysthymia since my teenage years so you can imagine how fun that experience was with her. I tried everything with her to change her outlook on certain things, find ways to distract her mind, finding coping mechanism etc. Nothing worked, though I think she might not have wanted to get better in a sense. Having 5+ hour long arguments every day about things that weren't logical finally broke me. My Dysthymia turned into full on depression. For months I'd tell her that I'm going to bed praying I wouldn't wake up - hoping that she'd find better ways for managing things... I just eventually tapped out and had to leave. So yeah, I have loads of empathy for people in similar situations. Just remember that you can leave. If you've done all you've could, no one will blame you. Some people just aren't meant to be in relationships or need a lot of help before getting into one.
ratww 5y ago
Wow, I went trough exactly the same thing. Even the examples were eerily similar: a couple dirty dishes on the sink would turn into an argument. A minor positive comment was an insult that would totally ruin her day. I'm surprised by how many people go trough the same. This seems to be more widespread that one would assume.
ra-mos 5y ago
This and all the comments with similar experiences really just put a negative light on marriage.
- ciphol 5y ago
  ...to a mentally ill person. Marriage means you share your spouse's life and well-being. Often for better, sometimes for worse.
  - ycombinete 5y ago
    My mother has often said that “a parent is only ever as happy as their least happy child”. I think the same sentiment holds true for marriages.
- hvs 5y ago
  Marriage is spending your life with someone else. Life has it's good and bad, just like marriage. You can decide for yourself what you are willing to do deal with and what you aren't, but "marriage" isn't the issue.
tduberne 5y ago
(Before anything: sorry if that nessage comes accross as insensitive, this is not the purpose. More on this at the end) Your situation sounds like the textbook description of depression as caused by "mental distortions" from proponents of CBT. Did your wife consult a CBT practitioner, and did this help? I am in no way trying to say I know the solution to your (past) problems, but CBT is sometimes described in a bit too enthusiastic terms by its proponents, and your story sounds like an opportunity to get anecdotal evidence on how much it might actually work in practice. In particular TEAM-CBT proponents claim to be able to cure depression in a session (and then continue to accompany the person through the innevitable relapses). I love their very data-oriented approach, but find it too good to be 100% true.
- chris_st 5y ago
  I have recently read through the book, "Feeling Good" by David Burns, which is regarded as one of the better books on CBT. It helped me a lot, in particular in dealing with thoughts something like what the OP's partner apparently had. It has great strategies for first recognizing, and then dealing with such thoughts. They're not "just feel better" ideas, they're specific things to do which help. Highly recommended.
  - tduberne 5y ago
    I read it as well, and also listened to his podcast (which is where I learned about "TEAM-CBT", his supposedly highly effective new approach). The concepts and arguments in the book (and podcast) make total sense to me, but the _way_ it is presented is sounds more like snake-oil marketing than science, which is why I am interested in learning about its effectiveness on severe forms of depression from independent sources.
    - chris_st 5y ago
      Yeah, I understand that feeling. I guess I sort of viewed it as a nerd just way too excited about something they think is cool...
petercooper 5y ago
If you are the partner of a depressed person, your primary responsibility is to yourself. You have to stay sane. THEN, if you can, you can support and help your partner. But if you lose your own mental health you’re pretty much done. This paragraph reminded me of the advice given regarding oxygen masks on planes. If you can't breathe, you're of no use to anyone, so sort out your own mask before helping others, etc. The fact they have to keep reminding us of this, though, is perhaps a demonstration that this doesn't come naturally to many.

bonoboTP 5y ago

So was she diagnosed with depression or what? Main part is missing from the anecdote.

GlenTheMachine 5y ago
Yes. Eventually. SSRIs saved our marriage.
albedoa 5y ago
A major point is that a diagnosis is often missing from the anecdote because there is not one. The main part is the depression.
- bonoboTP 5y ago
  Without a diagnosis, it wouldn't be clear that such irritability and being confrontational/angry is the result of depression and not something else.

poulsbohemian 5y ago

I commend you on getting through that with her. What you describe sounds exactly like a subset of the behavior my ex-wife demonstrated, but she refused to acknowledge that she needed help and it ended in a very bad divorce. Takes a lot of mutual strength to work through all of that together.

reidjs 5y ago

I went through the exact same thing, except with a girlfriend not a wife. 100% agree that it’s important to keep your own mental health strong before you can help them. But that is exceptionally hard when they are trying to bring you down to their state at every opportunity.

goodpoint 5y ago
They are not "trying to bring you down to their state" just as much as a person on a wheelchair is not trying to make you go around slowly.
- e_i_pi 5y ago
  I think this is a "misery loves company" sort of thing. When you're depressed you don't want people to try to help you be happier, and you don't really want to be happier in a deep sense - you want them to be depressed with you so you feel less alone. I think the fair analogy here would be someone in a wheelchair trying to get other people to use wheelchairs so they have someone to share the difficulty with.
  - goodpoint 5y ago
    This narrative is provably false and harmful (and insulting) to people with any mental illness. Psychologist has been fighting such social stigmas for decades.
    - joshgrib 5y ago
      Do you have a source? This is coming from how I feel when depressed so at least for me it is definitely not false. But that's just anecdotal and I don't have any studies to back it up. Just on intuition I have a hard time believing a depressed person would rather be surrounded by happy people they won't be able to relate to, then they would to have someone to share and talk about the bad feelings they're both experiencing. I'd also add that (again maybe just for me) it's a way more helpful way to view it. It helps me recognize when I need to just go through the motions of being positive until I can get back to doing it naturally. It usually feels a lot better in the moment to focus on the negatives but somewhere in my head I know that's not going to help me.

rowingcoal 5y ago

This rings true. > But if you lose your own mental health you’re pretty much done. Happened to me. I started the relationship with zeal and willingness to help. I wished to make a difference, yet it can be incredibly taxing one one's emotions. You can very much be affected yourself.

hemloc_io 5y ago

Going to take a different, probably controversial perspective on this. (But this is my pseudo anon account so whatever;) I had a similar thing happen with my long time girlfriend, 5+ years. She had a rough childhood and covid measures eventually made her suicidal as we graduated college. Eventually she got treatment, and is doing better (yay!). This is all great other than the meds have now evened her out too much. She’s a totally different person and antidepressants have some side effects that have effected us. Even if the meds are good for you, and they probably are, it was difficult to adjust to a whole new person after so long. I could even see either the side effects or who she is now ending our relationship. We’re working on it, but i think in part the meds messed with our dynamic.

ycombinete 5y ago
> have some side effects that have effected us. I assume part of this is the typical effect that she now has almost no libido
- TranquilMarmot 5y ago
  To be fair, depression has enough of an effect on libido on its own
  - ravishi 5y ago
    Including the effect of lifting it up to unhealthy levels.
rancar2 5y ago
To affirm you experience, the meds can most certainly have the effects you are witnessing. There’s a few gems of the stories told in Dopamine Nation including of the author that touch on this topic about antidepressants and the side effects. It’s worth having her dose and medication examined much closer by the right professional in your country (I’m in the US and know the system best here). If you need any help navigating, I’m pretty easy to get in touch with and happy to help point you and/or your partner in the right direction along with any supplemental information that may help.

donatj 5y ago

Every piece of this rings so true to my own experience. My wife suffers clinical depression. It has been no joke the biggest challenge of my entire life. When it is under control, life is great. When it's not, it's not. We've been through many meds and doctors and therapists. We're in a decently stable place right now, but there's always a fear in the back of my mind "but for how long". Her previous meds worked for years and then just... Stopped. There was also the "fun" 6 months where she decided she didn't need then anymore - spoilers, she did. We're currently quarantining because we both caught COVID over Christmas. We've both been sick for a solid week at this point and the cracks are kind of showing. All this is to say you're not alone, and there are others. Hold in there. Addendum: I’ve looked for like online support for people in this sort of relationship and come up largely short. I looked at BetterHelp but couldn’t really justify the cost. If anyone has any recommendations, I’d love to hear it.

labster 5y ago
I have a relative, who, every three or four years, decided that this time her bipolar disorder really was cured! And so she’d stop taking her medication and feel really, really good for a few months. And then the inevitable crash happened and she spent a few months in hospital. The last time was different though. In her seventies, her body couldn’t take the strain again. And now she’s in a long term care facility for dementia, probably for the rest of her life — fortunately close for her husband. Moral of the story: if you want to go off your meds, make sure a doctor is keeping an eye on you. No matter how good the good times feel.
- ordu 5y ago
  > Moral of the story: if you want to go off your meds, make sure a doctor is keeping an eye on you. No matter how good the good times feel. It might just not work with bipolar. If bipolar person go manic, then reckless behavior, overconfidence, and unlimited optimism may beat any moral of this kind.
- kayodelycaon 5y ago
  Mania affects judgement, sometimes severely. Bipolar people go off their meds because they think things will be better without them. Doctors put them on meds in the first place. I don’t think the advice of “just follow the plan” is going to work. It took me years to get to real stability and meds still suck. The only reason I haven’t gone off my meds is I’m both high-functioning and very used to managing chronic medical problems. I know how to work with my Psychiatrist to manage my own medical care and decide what is and isn’t acceptable to me.

steve_adams_86 5y ago

My wife does this too. Granted, I’m diagnosed with ADHD, but when it comes to chores I’m kind of battle-hardened and quite diligent. I found trying to get ahead of chores very demoralizing and exhausting. My wife hasn’t found a solution yet. She will sleep in until 11 on a weekend and get out of bed only to get upset with what hasn’t yet been done. She does very little with herself outside of work. Like your wife, any compliment is actually an insult. That sort of dynamic definitely complicates kindling or maintaining romance. I remind myself that it’s worse for her than it is for me. I’m also grateful for the challenges it has presented because in many ways, it has made me a better person. I do wish she was happier. For her sake and for our kid’s sakes. Life isn’t always happy though, and it all takes work. Relationships take work. With the right framing and patience these things can be worked through. Your last point about maintaining your own mental health really is key, though. I’ve crossed that line several times and essentially developed my own depression. It’s very dangerous. I’ve found it very helpful to reflect on what I contribute, how hard I’m working towards my duties as a partner, and how my actions meet my intentions and so on. When I can honestly tell myself I’m doing well, just about the best I can manage, I let things slide. If it’s all I can do and it isn’t good enough for someone else, I’ll still reward myself for my efforts and let the depressive ire slide off my back. Most importantly though I’ll recognize my own efforts and make sure I don’t allow myself to be pulled into thinking it isn’t good enough.

kybernetyk 5y ago
Hmm, one of my past girlfriends (we had a very long term relationship) was like this. I left her. I think I did the right thing when I read through all the comments in this thread.
dempseye 5y ago
The whole "I need to do better because I have ADHD" thing sounds like a narrative she uses to gaslight you into being her slave. All the focus in your post is on your duties, not on hers. I obviously don't know your relationship from the inside, but I experienced similar and it was relief to get away from it.
- 5y ago

mianos 5y ago

I am in the same situation, for for word. > But if you lose your own mental health you’re pretty much done. I sometimes feel I am at the edge of this then somehow I do some work I am happy with, see a friend, ride a bike or go for a swim and I am back from the edge. The gas-lighting is sometimes so surreal I am speechless.

joeman1000 5y ago

God this sounds like my life right now. I’m glad your wife got help. How did you keep positive and healthy? And how did your wife come to see the problem?

Gene_Parmesan 5y ago
> And how did your wife come to see the problem? Making someone "see the problem" is missing the point entirely. Firstly because often, people with depression are fully aware of how they are treating people. They simply can't help it. Your role as a partner is to love and support them. You also, however, need to prioritize your own mental health and happiness. There is an extremely common relationship 'trap,' one I've lived through. You are in a relationship that is causing you personal distress and unhappiness -- but your love of the other person makes you feel trapped. You can see how much they are struggling, and can't bear to hurt them -- often because you are afraid of what may happen if you leave. When you love someone with a debilitating illness, mental or otherwise, you need to decide whether you can accept the other person as they are. If you can, then you have to do that, and choose to stay with the person precisely as they are -- while having and enforcing healthy boundaries. If you cannot -- and often times there are extremely good and valid reasons why you cannot -- then you owe it to both of you to discuss this and potentially end the relationship. Sometimes such a conversation can be the spark of change for the other person, but often times it isn't, and that's okay. Staying in a relationship that is making you miserable is doing no one any benefit. It's a supreme challenge with depression, but you cannot allow the depression your partner experiences to affect your own emotional health. The best tool for this is something called "loving detachment." I'd recommend you read about it, and about the concept of co-dependency in general(*). It was a life saver for me. The worst relationship mistake you can make (after the obvious choices like affairs or so on) is being in a relationship with a mirage. Too many people have a false ideal of their partner -- their partner after they've been "cured" or "fixed" or "realized the problem" or "got clean" or whatever. You cannot have "you must change" as a condition of the relationship. Either the person will change or they won't, but staying in a relationship where you expect the other person will change is controlling and damaging. Are you in love with the person? Or with a made-up vision of the person you have in your head? Remember that love is unconditional. The best thing I did in my relationship was spend a year (I'm not exaggerating) thinking about the realities of the situation, the options I had, the way my life could end up whether I stayed or leaved, and so on. It was an extremely difficult time and required the help of therapists, both personally and as a couple. In order to do this properly you need to admit divorce as a possible end -- and I don't mean the empty threats of divorce many of us make. For instance, the hardest session I ever had was when my personal therapist pushed me to walk through a concrete plan for leaving. Where would I go? Who would I tell? How would we split up our possessions? And so on. Making the possibility real is extremely important. In order to not feel trapped, you need to fully believe that leaving is an option. In the end, the decision I made for myself was that I could accept my wife as she was. Almost immediately my mental wellbeing improved drastically. I no longer felt trapped. My wife's depression did not magically become cured, but I learned how to detach from it and be a good partner while protecting my own health. In the years since, my improved wellbeing and happiness has slowly but surely helped turn the relationship around. Her depression is still not cured, but now I know how to be a good partner for her, which has in fact helped her to a large degree. She now trusts me as someone she can turn to for help, rather than viewing me as someone who was taking her mental health personally (which I was definitely doing). In the end, this is thing most spouses don't want to realize -- it's you that has to change, not your partner with depression, whether that means leaving the relationship because it can't and won't work, or learning to love them as they are. (*) It can be really easy for spouses to take suggestions like this personally. I know I did. Being called co-dependent by the couples therapist felt like a full scale assault. How dare he say that I'M the one with a problem!! Doesn't he know what I've BEEN through?? What I was missing is that he was telling me that to help me. Learning about co-dependency -- and how to overcome it -- was the most liberating thing I've ever felt.

hooande 5y ago

I'm surprised to see so many other commenters in this same situation. Thanks for posting this, and I hope things work out for the best

hotz 5y ago

Similar experience here. Though my ex was diagnosed with bipolar and borderline personality disorder on top of the clinical depression. Regular psychologist and psychiatrist visits and a scary amount of meds to take each day. I've got a lot of empathy for people in relationships like this. It's not easy and even though there's help and medication, it still ends up being an up hill battle. I myself have been struggling with Dysthymia since my teenage years so you can imagine how fun that experience was with her. I tried everything with her to change her outlook on certain things, find ways to distract her mind, finding coping mechanism etc. Nothing worked, though I think she might not have wanted to get better in a sense. Having 5+ hour long arguments every day about things that weren't logical finally broke me. My Dysthymia turned into full on depression. For months I'd tell her that I'm going to bed praying I wouldn't wake up - hoping that she'd find better ways for managing things... I just eventually tapped out and had to leave. So yeah, I have loads of empathy for people in similar situations. Just remember that you can leave. If you've done all you've could, no one will blame you. Some people just aren't meant to be in relationships or need a lot of help before getting into one.

ratww 5y ago

Wow, I went trough exactly the same thing. Even the examples were eerily similar: a couple dirty dishes on the sink would turn into an argument. A minor positive comment was an insult that would totally ruin her day. I'm surprised by how many people go trough the same. This seems to be more widespread that one would assume.

ra-mos 5y ago

This and all the comments with similar experiences really just put a negative light on marriage.

ciphol 5y ago
...to a mentally ill person. Marriage means you share your spouse's life and well-being. Often for better, sometimes for worse.
- ycombinete 5y ago
  My mother has often said that “a parent is only ever as happy as their least happy child”. I think the same sentiment holds true for marriages.
hvs 5y ago
Marriage is spending your life with someone else. Life has it's good and bad, just like marriage. You can decide for yourself what you are willing to do deal with and what you aren't, but "marriage" isn't the issue.

tduberne 5y ago

(Before anything: sorry if that nessage comes accross as insensitive, this is not the purpose. More on this at the end) Your situation sounds like the textbook description of depression as caused by "mental distortions" from proponents of CBT. Did your wife consult a CBT practitioner, and did this help? I am in no way trying to say I know the solution to your (past) problems, but CBT is sometimes described in a bit too enthusiastic terms by its proponents, and your story sounds like an opportunity to get anecdotal evidence on how much it might actually work in practice. In particular TEAM-CBT proponents claim to be able to cure depression in a session (and then continue to accompany the person through the innevitable relapses). I love their very data-oriented approach, but find it too good to be 100% true.

chris_st 5y ago
I have recently read through the book, "Feeling Good" by David Burns, which is regarded as one of the better books on CBT. It helped me a lot, in particular in dealing with thoughts something like what the OP's partner apparently had. It has great strategies for first recognizing, and then dealing with such thoughts. They're not "just feel better" ideas, they're specific things to do which help. Highly recommended.
- tduberne 5y ago
  I read it as well, and also listened to his podcast (which is where I learned about "TEAM-CBT", his supposedly highly effective new approach). The concepts and arguments in the book (and podcast) make total sense to me, but the _way_ it is presented is sounds more like snake-oil marketing than science, which is why I am interested in learning about its effectiveness on severe forms of depression from independent sources.
  - chris_st 5y ago
    Yeah, I understand that feeling. I guess I sort of viewed it as a nerd just way too excited about something they think is cool...

petercooper 5y ago

If you are the partner of a depressed person, your primary responsibility is to yourself. You have to stay sane. THEN, if you can, you can support and help your partner. But if you lose your own mental health you’re pretty much done. This paragraph reminded me of the advice given regarding oxygen masks on planes. If you can't breathe, you're of no use to anyone, so sort out your own mask before helping others, etc. The fact they have to keep reminding us of this, though, is perhaps a demonstration that this doesn't come naturally to many.