Depressed Husband has left me

I posted this elsewhere and got some really helpful replies, but am posting here too because I feel I need more input and, hopefully, support.

My husband of 15 years moved out a few weeks ago. We now see each other every few days or so and keep in daily contact. The situation was precipitated by a stressfull year of arguing and not getting through to each other about what we both wanted; he to realize himself fully, finally, and me - hmm, what did I want, for him to spend more time appreciating what we had together and relax into a more 'grown up' lifestyle, maybe. To have a child, buy a house, I don't even know anymore.

In any case, I pushed and pushed and finally pushed him so far that he collapsed into himself and left. I didn't really understand this strange break-up, as there was no plan about working our way back to each other or setting any sort of time scales - all things I read would be a good way to manage a temporary separation.

He has been dealing with some pretty big issues in the past year, apart from the fraying of our relationship, and I suppose I felt he was being selfish. He was, in some ways. But maybe it was time to focus on himself and had I understood him better and been more resourceful in myself I would have handled it better.

In any case, he is now 'depressed' and is at last going to seek counseling, afer years of talking about it. Which I think is wonderful. Some part of me wishes he'd been open to the idea of couples counseling when I suggested it, but he wasn't. Too depleted and probably too pressured by me.

I am now taking the advice of a wise woman on this site who suggests I be a friend first, try to love unconditionally, and not be hard on myself or my husband. I am trying to do this, but I'm finding it hard. I feel angry at my husband, sometimes, not all the time, at his self-involvement and his inability to give me any reassurance about our having a future together, or his even wanting that. He sais he loves me, but all else is a mystery to him.

I am trying to stay focused on the positives of this situation; both of us becoming less co-dependent and more resourceful. Some days this is easier than others. Some days I feel he has betrayed me and us with childish willfullness. Other days I see clearly the rightness of this and feel we're both in a better place already.

My thinking is muddled, at times. I feel hurt when he treats me as just another person in his life. We were out together socially recently and I felt strongly the absence of any physical affection from him in public. I've always been very demonstrative, he slightly less so in public.

I'm afraid we'll lose each other. Forget to come back. Or maybe I'm just afraid that if he finally 'sorts himself out' he'll realize how much he has to explore and cast away everything we've had in the past. He wrote me about the fear of losing touch and love for me, yet when I asked him if he feared my losing love for him he seemed surprised at the thought- as if it hadn't occurred to him that I could.
A reflection of his self-involvement or his certainty of my feelings? I don't know.

The more I think the more I go in circles. Though less so now than a few weeks ago. Maybe I should keep it simple and just think of him as a depressed person with issues he needs to deal with and my role as being a supportive friend who asks for nothing in return for my love and understanding.

That's probably it. But I have always been the supportive and understanding one, for years, and I wonder if I haven't hidden from my own issues with the useful excuse of tending to those of my husband.

The funny part is that there's no real traumas there, nothing major at all compared to what so many people on this forum are dealing with bravely and practically on a daily basis. Neither of us is seriously messed up. Not at all. And yet we're like two children who have an amazing capacity for joy and creativity and love who've become so entangled in each other that the only way to deal with it is to not be together at all.

Do things work out this way? By two very close people being apart and focusing on themselves and then eventually getting back together and learning new ways to focus on each other as well?
This sounds like WORK which I'm not sure if he's up to. Maybe being in therapy will help. I've tried it and can't say it's done me that much good.

I don't know what I expect anyone to say, or if even I can expect anyone to wade through this waffling, long post. I do hope someone does though. I do.

Thanks.

(((((((((((((StingInTheTail)))))))))))))))
I think you are on the right track trying to be his friend for now. It sounds like you also should try figuring out for sure what you want out of the relationship. Good luck with everything.

Hi, StingInTheTail, welcome to PsychCentral. I read your post and am quite impressed with your self understanding and willingness to work on making things better for yourself and your relationship too.

I see two things you might want to think about; you are still very concerned about your husband, more so than you are about yourself. I would look at what you want and are doing for you, rather than looking so much over the fence speculating on what your husband may be doing. Whatever he does, stays or goes from the relationship, you're still only going to have your own thoughts, feeling, life to manage so you might want to put some energy into what you want to do with your life. Do you have a career or hobbies/interests you pursue, friends of your own, etc.? You might want to look toward yourself instead of stay tangled in what is happening in the relationship all the time; yes you should still care and look to the relationship but the individuals in the relationship (you :-) are what make it work and it can't be a very good relationship if one's self is not "whole" to begin with. The relationship can't make you whole, you have to bring your whole self to the relationship in order to make it. It sound a little like that might be what your husband is trying to do, make himself whole within himself so then he can reassess the relationship and see if he thinks the two of you will be able to make another go of it or not.

Another thing is that mending takes time. You said you had been arguing for a year before he left, it could take that long or even longer to sort that out again. I was in therapy 9 years, twice! There aren't any maps or books on how to mend, how to make a life for one's self. I don't know if it would help but having a longer view instead of anticipating something "happening", relaxing a bit and learning to take the situation in stride, working with it as it unfolds slowly, might be a bit more comfortable for you? Expecting things to happen often feels rushed to me and I don't like that anxious, nervvy feeling? I prefer to feel like I have time to do things and for things to change. I can experiment and see what I like and reject some things and still have time to try others, etc.

But the biggest thing is that things are in the future and one can't predict the future. I wish I could tell you how it is all going to come out but no one can, not even you and your husband. So I like to try and sit back and watch how things are going, relax and use my interests and curiosity to guide me and let things unfold as they will do anyway. Doing a lot of analyzing and thinking about things can drive me crazy :-) so I try to work on my tendency to do that and relax as much as possible since all the thinking and analyzing in the world doesn't do anything at all to move things forward or help with whatever problem I am having.

Thank you Perna. It was both surprising and heartening that someone DID read my long long post. And thoughtfully too. You hit some big nails on their big stupid heads, I must say.

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Perna said:

"I would look at what you want and are doing for you, rather than looking so much over the fence speculating on what your husband may be doing. You might want to look toward yourself instead of stay tangled in what is happening in the relationship all the time."

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You are right! Completely. I am gazing over that fence all the time, and wondering, wondering. The only way I can stop is to turn away from it completely, pretend it and and the field on the other side of it don't even exist. To continue the metaphor. I can't keep it and myself, my own pasture, so to speak, in view at the same time. Somehow the whole of my life containing my husband our 'our' life together, and my own life now, without him in it, have become two separate things. I know why this is and am proof that one can be intellectually smart and emotionally a total dumb-***. I know that my biggest fear is that if I look to myself, at myself, I will find nothing there. Nothing to keep me occupied for long. I know this is ridiculous but don't feel it. I've had this feeling for the whole of the past year; that if I take my eye off the relationship it will somehow vanish. That I have to protect it against what I don't know. That I could only flourish and follow my own path if the love was there for me to look back at and wave to. Like kids do when they are playing and want their mums nearby to watch them and admire them. If I pretend it doesn't even exist (the relationship) it's easier to get on with things. Hardly anyone in my life would guess I'm upset at all, to look at me.

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Perna said:
"It sound a little like that might be what your husband is trying to do, make himself whole within himself so then he can reassess the relationship and see if he thinks the two of you will be able to make another go of it or not."

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Yes, that's exactly what he's doing. Exactly. I can understand it, I really can, but still resent it when I see him and he tells me what he's been doing. I suppose I want him to be pining for me, not making plans which don't include me. He misses me in some ways of course, but he is staying determinedly on the road he's taken.

And there I go again, figuring him out instead of myself. I guess this is the pattern, and it's hard to break the habit of years. You're also right, Perna, that a relationship can't make one whole and that's exactly what I've allowed myself to believe for years - sort of. In a romantic way.

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
Perna said:
"Another thing is that mending takes time. You said you had been arguing for a year before he left, it could take that long or even longer to sort that out again.°

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Good point. God, I feel tired just thinking about it.

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Perna said:
"There aren't any maps or books on how to mend, how to make a life for one's self."

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How strange, the whole time I've been thinking how we are in uncharted territory, in a new land with no maps. How to feel, think, behave in this situation.

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
Perna said:
"I don't know if it would help but having a longer view instead of anticipating something "happening", relaxing a bit and learning to take the situation in stride, working with it as it unfolds slowly, might be a bit more comfortable for you?"

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I've never been the slightest bit good at taking the longer view. This is a hard situation to begin learning it in. I even tried yoga and meditation recently! I tried it with an earnestness that made me laugh at myself even as I was doing it. Impatient, high energy, overgrown child insisting she bloody relax - or else!

I need a mantra, or something. Something that helps me when he tells me about something that interests him and he is following up on, something that helps me not to feel that as a sort of rejection but to be able to rejoice for him and reciprocate with my own cool thing. I know this.

Thank you, really, for reading my post and answering so insightfully.
Do please write more, if you want.


Best, StingInTheTail

Hey gimmeice,

Meant to thank you too for replying! It's weird, I just re-read my post and tried to do so as if I hadn't been the one who wrote it to see how clear it could be that I'm avoiding the issue of what to do with myself.

How the heck did I get to this place where all I think about is me but make no progress at getting out of me?

Talk about navel gazing, more like navel micro-analysis!

Bye for now, thanks again.

You must train yourself to let go of all the things you are afraid to lose.

Easier said than done, I know.

I believe a relationship will be the best when both people live lives that are independent (regardless of overlap), successful, and happy.

Another person shouldn't make you happy. You should make you happy.

Hm, yes Conquistador, thank you. But you might as well be speaking Chinese; I know you're speaking a language I could understand if I had the training. I think it will take some time for those words to make sense in a real way to me - it's just an intellectual understanding I have of this at the moment, sort of.
To 'only you can make you happy' one could easily reply with 'no man is island'. See?

Anyway, a general question to whoever is listening (reading): what about this - I have been thinking that since seeing my husband every few days is kind of painful and frustrating and confusing,to me at any rate, perhaps I should give myself a break and declare a period of not seeing each other. A friend asked me recently if I really thought that he had 'left' just because he's moved out. I answered 'of course', and she said that we hadn't even begun the process of leaving each other to possibly work things out and possibly come back together.

It was an interesting perspective on things.

Keeping in touch is weird in this situation, because he doesn't seem to have moved on much with regard to the relationship issue in the weeks since he's left. I thought I had, but perhaps not. Perhaps we are just continuing the 'tangle' at a bit of a distance and not giving each other and ourselves enough room to really recover. From all the fighting and misunderstandings.

And Perna was so right in saying that maybe I should concentrate more on myself instead of speculating about what my husband is up to all the time. This is definately keeping me in some strange mesmerized zone.

So my question is this, or my questionS ARE this:
1) Should I announce this as my decision and explain, briefly, that I need some time for myself now.
2) Should I decide on a period of time? Should I announce that? (Just a note, when he moved out he could only say that he 'needed to be by himself for a while' - that was as much information as I could get from him) I guess I'm wondering if I should be as vague, both because I don't know how much time I need and how much I can actually take without missing him so much that I'll go mad.

I'm scared we'll lose each other. Lose touch, even about the incidental things we share with each other now. I'm also angry that he doesn't seem to want to know any details about my mental state, not really, so I'm already not 'burdening' him with this. Isn't it natural to feel there's something one-sided in this relationship in which he wants to be light with each other and talk about 'normal stuff' instead of anything heavy, yet I am told of his moods and so on.Of course, it would be an even worse sign if he didn't want to tell me anything about his moods and all the rest of it.

Either way, I seem to be too caught up in what's happening for him and am so used to putting myself second, or in a superior position of being the one to provide the comfort, (depending on how you want to look at it), that I think the only way to focus on myself is to not see him.

It's a risk, of course, but he's taken the much bigger one in moving house, so why should I worry so much about doing something similar.

Any advice?

Hi Splitimage - I am so sorry about your situation. My ex-husband left me and it was very traumatic for me - not right away, but eventually. I know that it hurts tremendously.

You write really well, by the way. You definitely have your head on straight - it's just hard to meld the mind and emotions, isn't it?

In your shoes (and this is NOT how I handled it myself, but would have, in retrospect) I wouldn't announce your decision, nor would I give a timeframe. I know that you're scared that you'll lose him, but HE needs to make the effort to make sure that doesn't happen, if that's what he wants. If you make yourself too available, then you'll never know if he wanted it on his own.

About him not being interested in your mental state... well, that's probably part depression and part guilt. If he's truly depressed, then dealing with someone else's emotions probably feels overwhelming for him. My ex-husband wasn't depressed, but he said time and time again that I needed to be careful what I told him because he doesn't like to be reminded of his guilt over what he did to me. Eventually, those statements made me very angry, because I realized how selfish he was being, and that was the end of ME wanting to maintain the friendship. So that's something to consider.

I do wish you the best and I hope that your heart heals quickly. My thoughts are with you...

Hi LMo, I can't believe I didn't reply to your post. Thank you for your words. I've been away, and thinking, and just living, and am now trying to remember why exactly I didn't respond immediately. I realise that I've moved on, just a little, since then and think I may have just needed some time to process things.

Interesting how long things take to go from becoming words to something more, something in the blood. Like the biblical 'word made flesh'.

Being away physically made a huge difference. Unbelievable. To remove the body is also to remove the mind from whatever is stressing it. Seems perfectly obvious now. Which is not to say that the mind and body are equally removed. Not at all. Sometimes removing the body brings the mind closer, but in a different way. Sometimes it creates a space for 'sentimental love', as Erich Fromm calls it in "The Art of Loving". Though he means it negatively, it can also be a resuscitation of something deeper that gets ripped to shreds in the analytical focus on problems and shortcomings.

I guess my point is that finding the right words for things is all well and good, but no substitute for feeling the same things. And feeling things takes a lot longer than finding the right words, because, as you said, 'melding the mind and the emotions' is the hard bit.

Not that I'm done, not at all, but I'm in a different place. And increasingly able to find my way back to that place, with increasingly less effort, when things go a bit pear-shaped. I'm relying more on different friends, and find myself listening and sharing in their lives more. I'm re-realising my own strengths and being a bit kinder to myself as regards my weaknesses.

My husband is, I think, reaching some kind of crisis point. And I'm trying to accept that there's little I can do to help. I feel increasingly distanced, the odd 'burp' when I get angry that he's so utterly self-involved, but then I remember that it's at least a partial function of his depression and let it go.

For the moment, this is as good as it gets. And the weather, even in this rainy, soggy country has been good, and the swimming in the sea wonderful and the ceilis by the lake amusing.
So I enjoy what's on offer; my little car, the sun, my friends, my cat, my garden, my family - far flung though they are. I'm glad I'm alive, and not dead as I wanted to be, and that's cool.

Excuse me in advance for any future 'burps' which may bring me back here in a different state of mind. I'll be back, either way.

Hi StingInTheTail,

Reading your posts was like reading pages out of my own diary. While my depressed husband and I still live together and I can tell he is trying to reconnect with me in small ways, I have nearly identical thoughts and feelings to the ones you described. I see that your original posts were from 2008. I'm wondering how things ended up with your relationship, with you individually, and if you can impart any lessons-learned to a gal in the thick of it?

Thanks in advance for any wisdom,
SJames44