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.
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.
The thing that prompted me to write this post was that my husband admitted that he felt like I was mad at him and didn’t want him around.
We play Project Zomboid together with my brother, and while the three of us were building out a sick base in Riverside, my husband drove out to West Point by himself to find new adventures. Little odd, but no problem - in the morning, my brother and I made the journey to meet him at a new base he was creating. When we got there, we started scavenging around for wood/supplies/etc for the new base, and were working together to set it up. Next thing I know, he’s driving to Louisville by himself. If you’ve never played the game, that’s the big mama jama city with all the zombies, but also all the goodies. When we logged off for the night, I asked him what was up with that? Honestly, I was upset that he didn’t even ask if we wanted to join. After several minutes of back-and-forth, he let me know that it’s because he knew my brother and I didn’t really want to do anything with him. That we didn’t actually want to drive to West Point, and that I was mad at how little progress he made before we got there. He knew that I felt he should’ve had the generator running, several rain barrels that were all plumbed, and some sort of a cooking station. This was all news to me because I absolutely didn’t feel that way, and was just trying to catch up with him cause I wanted to play with him.
Sorry for the ramble, but I’m trying to illustrate how the depressed mind can work. I went from feeling frustrated to heartbroken when I understood that he just thought I was mad at him and didn’t want to be around him. It was so far from the truth, and I know that it was so far from how I acted. But that doesn’t matter- all that matters is how he perceived it.
I’m not sure what the story is with your girlfriend, but please keep in mind that it’s very possible that your mind is misconstruing things.
Best of luck to you. If you wanna talk, please PM me, or please feel free to hijack my post. :-)
My husband isn’t much of a writer, but he does like reading, so I’ll suggest that he give intro to internal family systems a try. Either way, I’ll do that myself. Your response was very insightful, and I need to be better at understanding and processing my own shit.
At the end of the day, you definitely helped at least one of us. :-)
Cheers, friend.