I’ve written a lot about the form of depression in which men look outside themselves to find the cause for an inner pain that simply can’t be faced. They may feel anger, rage, a longing to act out fantasies, or a compulsion to blame and abuse those closest to them. That side of depression is […]
Depressed Partners
Why Depressed Men Leave – 2
Some of the comments on the last post in this series hit hard on two issues. First is the question of personal choice: is a man supposed to escape responsibility for destructive behavior by attributing everything to depression? The answer is no! Depression is never an excuse for inflicting pain and loss, breaking up families, […]
Why Depressed Men Leave – 1
About a year ago, I wrote a series of posts about my experience with the fantasies of a better life that often prompt depressed men to leave their families. You can find the first of those stories here, here and here. Those brief pieces tell only a small part of a long and troubling story. […]
You Are So Beautiful
There is a powerful moment in the film, Tender Mercies, when the lead character, hearing of the death of someone close to him, says he hates happiness. “You can’t trust it.” I think I took in lessons like that when young and for a long time was fearful of a happiness that seemed to depend […]
The Longing to be Close – 2
It was more than a decade ago when I stopped believing my own fantasies of finding happiness by leaving my marriage. I could see that those dreams were only substitutes for taking a hard look at who I was. Depression, though, made that difficult task even harder by convincing me there was no one worth […]
The Longing to be Close – 1
In reading over the many responses to The Longing to Leave series, I realize those stories only get at part of the picture. Like many in the midst of depression, I wanted to blame my marriage for what I was going through and fantasized about leaving. But at the core of that fantasy was an […]
