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Originally Posted by troubledinlove
This is a tough one!
My partner and I both have bouts of depression. I mean debilitating depression and recently my partner was making me feeling like he checked out of "us" and i found myself asking questions much like your husband.
I suggest seeing a couples therapist so that this person can help HIM understand what your limitations are when you are cycling. Perhaps on the flip, a therapist can help you understand what feelings your moods stir up in your partner. At the very least you two can walk out of a session and understand each other a tad bit better.
My partner was depressed and refused to talk to me. He wouldn't respond to my emails, texts, or requests to talk. He would self medicate and did this for two months. He would often snap at me and did not want to spend an excess of 10 minutes talking to me so I felt he was on his way out of our relationship and just didn't know how to tell me.
I regret needing reassurance from him while he was depressed and clearly hurting but his behavior was hurtful to me and our relationship and when that is the case a little open communication would have worked wonders for us, even bringing us closer.
What ended up happening is he got annoyed with me and I became resentful. Had we just sat down and talked about the fact that he was feeling very down and ached with depression and sometimes wasn't able to get out of bed and that it had nothing to do with me I could have been there for him to be a support not an additional threat to his well being.
You two are a team - fight together and before you can fight you have to at least talk...
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I offered to go to couple's counseling and his counselor told him it was not a good idea right now because things are not "normal." I had knee surgery in February and he feels he has taken on a lot of extras in the house. We basically swapped places and he does the grocery shopping and cooking while I do the laundry and other things that do not require being on my feet for more than five minutes.
I try telling him that I am going through a cycle every time, but he never seems prepared. I literally told him two weeks ago that I felt like writing a lot and I felt mania coming on. He said he understood and left me to my writing, but he would seem very upset any time I was writing after he went to bed. He wants to read everything I write and I don't write for other people- I write for myself. I told him I just don't feel comfortable and maybe someday he will read my stories but I'm not ready. He takes it very personally.
Despite this warning, and after telling him this past Monday that I was coming down, he still wanted to press my buttons every.single.day after that. He skipped taking his son to tae kwon do so that he could hover over me and make sure I wasn't doing anything suspicious. I told him I knew what he was doing and he said that he can't help it, it always reverts to thinking I'm talking to guys behind his back (this is a real problem that he's working on, and he goes to counseling but his counselor went on a three week vacation so he hasn't seen her). To make him feel better, I have cut off contact with my male friends- there weren't many. I also do not go anywhere but to work and home, and if I'm later than usual getting home, he grills me about where I've been. :-/
I understand that he has issues but making me out to be someone who is untrustworthy is just making me worse (I've never cheated on him, or anyone I've dated in the past). Picking fights about my wiper motor going out, or how I always complain about my job (I don't- I like my job and my co-workers but I go home once in a while after a rough day and will tell him about it), that I am always negative (which is strange coming from him, because I am the one to usually say "Hey, things happen, we'll get through it!" and he's the one to throw the, "life sucks, everything goes wrong for me" thing around) is wearing.
I do become resentful because I feel like he wants me to talk, but only if it is about things he wants to hear. It's frustrating.
I'm looking into a different counselor for us. But I made it clear that I do not want to go on medication again. I had such horrible reactions both times I was medicated (I gained 80 pounds the first time, went off due to fog head, lost all the weight, then switched meds and gained it all back AND was BLAH), I do not want to do it. We definitely need to sit down to talk to someone together because he needs to be told that my feelings are not a personal attack on him- and he needs to be supportive, not a butthole, and stop making everything about him.