Storied Mind

Hi John,

Thank you for this series – your perspective, as a man, father, family member etc. is both surprising and healing. It helps, the hearing it once removed.

I never lost the love for my Father, through even the worst times. But as for restoring the trust. Well, that probably wouldn’t even be a good plan now.

Not that I don’t believe folks change. I know they do but not everybody wants the same things. Each to his own path and story ‘eh?

I think, perhaps, to get the closeness back you don’t just have to want it, you all have to need it. The trouble is that after a point with families/relationships that have been through these experiences the need part gets lost. Submerged because you know you can realistically expect more disappointment/pain, and little else.

While I think you can walk that back, it’s a job which requires the type of cohesiveness and communication that can take an awfully long time to learn.

On a more hopeful note, I’ve found it is a little easier to learn other ways to be close. Maybe they’re not the ‘norm’ but I don’t know that matters so much.

Hello

I come and read your posts often and just thought I want to leave a comment to thank you for sharing so much.
Take care.
Love,
Herrad

I have recently suffered from a very rare and extremely life threatening condition. I lost our second child whom I was pregnant with at the time. Last year my husband was diagnosed with suffering from depression and anxiety but was not given any medication and he seemed to improve. He was great through my illness until I came home. His moods became erratic and he couldn’t sleep. He wanted me to promise never to leave him but when i couldn’t do this he withdrew from me. His father became very ill due to depression and anxiety at this time and we were left to deal with this as well as my recovery. My husbands behaviour became very erratic and he became aggressive and destructive to our relationship. He left a month ago and is unable to give a reason as to why but wanted initially to break all contact with me and our daughter. He refuses to seek help and opted out of counselling offered. He walked out of his job but refuses to accept any responsibility for his actions. He switches between anger and “normal” frequently. What can i do to get through to him before our relationship is completely destroyed?

Hi John, So nice of you to visit my site some days ago. And I so appreciate your writing this series. My Ex is a highly functional depressive (and narssisist) and a past master of externalizing his depression–picking on my and our daughter, unpredictable explosiveness, blaming everybody, being socially charming and privately abusive…Having been delivered from this corrosive atmosphere for close to 6 years now, I am so thankful everyday that he did leave. My cheif desire is to help our daughter understand that this behavior is NOT love, so that she does not repeat our terrible pattern. When the EX broke up with his GF, he went on antidepressants and was for the first time in the more than 30 years I have known him a nice guy. It is a pity that he stopped.

Come back and visit Vaboomer often.

John,
Your four phases are exactly what I see my bipolar husband go through year after year. They are extremely variable in length, but “normal” sometimes lasts for many months. The anger phase is the most destructive to our marriage and the hardest for me to recover from. I have an excellent therapist who helps me to see that his anger is part of his illness, but being the object of constant blame for his unhappiness is overwhelming me. We’ve been married over 10 years, and the last angry phase has lasted over 3 months now. He locks himself in the basement of our home so that I can’t speak with him. Despite medications, good psychiatrists and psychologists, he does not seem to be able to gain insight into the devastating effect of his behavior on me. How did you gain that insight?

Why I will never, ever get married or have kids.

I’ve recently gone through something like this and have been suffering a lot trying to find a place of recovery for myself. I was not married to this man, but deeply in love with him–in love for the first time in my life really. At one point, he did truly feel the same, only because of his depression, he really did end throwing a lot of things out. I tried to leave a couple of times because he could never really commit though his actions always led me to believe he wanted to, or would if he could have broken through the depression, finally managing to make myself do it after a year. After two months where we went back and forth a lot–he wanted me in his life, I wanted an actual relationship–I laid my foot down about the depression. Shortly after that, he started a 23 year old (he’s 35, I’m 30). As one of his friends put it to me, he loves everything about me but is scared of commitmenting and dealing with his emotions. So he goes and finds someone who is a lot like me but unlikely to want a commitment.

And stuck dealing with the fallout as he goes on pretending that life is normal and refusing to admit to anyone (except my sister oddly) that any of his behavior was confusing or led me to believe something that he now completely denies.

Becasue of mental health issues with my parents, I let myself get way too involved in his issues. I made myself sick over him, trying to help him because he always did just enough to convince me he would follow through.

We were not married nor had made any commitment to that extent. I don’t know that there could ever be any way that I could forgive him–for what he cost me, making me question something that I was once counted as special and amazing in my life.

My husband was just told he has depression by his doctor, and is on meds, but he doesn’t believe he is depressed. He is withdrawn, he says he wants to be alone and wants to leave. He blames me and doesn’t want to talk about it. this man is a wonderful husband and father but i can’t seem to help him and he refuses to believe that the depression is causing so much anger. I am trying support him but it get hard when he doesn’t want help. pls help

a very, very good article. having had a number of depressed men in my life, it resonates with me a lot.

for some reason i had never realized you had a whole category on men and depression. are you familiar with william harryman’s site? i think you have a lot in common. http://masculineheart.blogspot.com/search/label/depression

Thank you for this insightful blog. It has given me some peace by gaining knowledge about how a depressed individual thinks. My finace (ex) a very happy go lucky, positive man had surgery 5 months ago. He was on pain medication for three months (2 months before one month after)and actually went through withdraw symptoms upon coming off the drug (Oxycodone).
He became very withdrawn, negative, unable to sleep, felt tired all the time, had little apetite, wanted to be home all the time and had no sex drive. When I would ask about what was happening he would get very upset and say he needed to take baby steps. I encouraged him to talk to his doctors but he didn’t. I continued to try to talk about the issues and he withdrew further. He appears very confused and can’t make decisions, he vacilates back and forth sometimes over the course of one conversation. He now blames me for the fact that he is not back to himself because of all the stress I put on him. All I did was try to help but he actually looks at me differently and accuses me of manipulating him etc. things he knows I’m not capapble of. I’ve watched the man I love disappear before my eyes. He told me last week that he needs to be alone, so I’m no longer in contact with him. I’ve still got the ring and I’m wondering what to do next, just give up on him or wait it out and hope he snaps out of it.

Dear John,

My ex broke up with me a bit over a month back. He was a very simple & nice guy. He chased me, professed his love for me and even moved cities to build a life with me. We were together for a year and a half and living together for 6/7 months.

We had a lot in common and we had a wonderful time. Yes we had fights but nothing too dramatic. He was always the pacifier. He has a binge drinking problem but that didn’t make him depressed. He got fired in November 2009. I went overseas shortly afterwards and then he decided to move back to his city. We were communicating and he finally decided to stay on there. Not an issue since it’s my hometown and I was planning on moving back for a while. Then he told me early January that he didn’t miss me anymore and cared for me as a friend. Came as a shock to me.

I returned from overseas and we tried to talk things out. But he went on like a broken record. He refused couples therapy but was very interested to hear what my counsellor would tell me about us. He had told me he was having trouble sleeping but had cut down on alcohol. I never snapped at him – was very nice to him. I reminded him of the good times and he kept saying he didn’t want to hurt me – even cried. He told me he was going to get into university and couldn’t take the pressures of a relationship.

I went to his city since he wasn’t being able to make up his mind without seeing me. I gave him a list of his good features and he liked that. This was meant to lift his self esteem. We were very happy when we met but then he got cold and he got savagely angry. He verbally abused me (he was drunk) and blamed my culture for being self-centred and said I had too few friends. He tried to push me out of the house at 4 in the morning. I had never seen him this angry. He called me a psychopath when I was trying to pacify him.

Prior to this his mother had told me he required psychological help. He doesn’t like her much so he won’t listen to her. I had spoken to his dad and urged him to intervene but he doesn’t like confrontation and won’t bother.

We broke up and I haven’t contacted him since. I have emailed him about his mail, money that he owed me and about all his things still at my place. He was cordial. I had learnt in the meantime that he was snapping at people and was still drinking a lot.

Since I wanted to get this off my chest I emailed him to let him know that I didn’t betray him by speaking to his dad but because I was concerned. He got very angry. He doesn’t want me to have any mutual friends with him and thinks I will throw his things away so he won’t pay me my money.

He has blamed me for his financial woes and his career situation. He has been putting up morbid song lyrics on his facebook, abusing people who comment and even writing misogynistic comments. I know his self-esteem suffered due to his job loss and I have always feared he will spiral into depression but this anger is ridiculous since he knows I have cooked, cleaned, ironed his shirts, done his laundry and even done his job applications for him. I mothered him and now he tells me that I remind him too much of his mother and that’s not good.

What should I do? I know he needs to stop denying and help himself – he needs therapy and meds and till that happens he won’t come back to me or see things differently. As much as he protests and says he doesn’t love me anymore I know he does. He has pushed me away really hard but I have still been very nice to him and even told him I still care.

I dearly love him and am wondering whether you can answer this question – do men ever return to the woman they love after the depression lifts?

Thanks in advance!