Leave Your Partner Out of the Conversation

I originally wrote this in 2019 and thought it might be good to share it here.

This article really hit home for me.

For me, It came to a point last year where my wife finally said to me that she’d noticed a slow and gradual change in me, I wasn’t the happy person she’d married, I’d lost interest in doing social things, that she couldn’t be the one to keep the relationship healthy and I couldn’t be relied on anymore. It’s difficult with a busy home and work life to find the time/money for therapy and I found myself relying on my wife for emotional support and running the household which made things way harder for her and it wasn’t fair.

It wasn’t that I thought therapy is sign of weakness or anything like that but I thought that I was doing just fine. The slow nature of the depression crept up on me and I didn’t even notice. I’d lost interest in things, I found it hard to answer questions like what do I even like these days? What direction do I want to head with in my career? It’s not clear and without a sounding board I’m finding the answers challenging to say the least. After having my father pass and my mum being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s within quick succession I really needed an outlet that wasn’t my wife. I’m mostly to blame for that with pushing my emotions back and trying to keep myself busy with life and failing to reach out to friends for a chat. When anyone asked how I was doing, I was always great, happy, loving life but underneath it wasn’t so rosy.

I started seeing a therapist about things but the cost became prohibitive and I stopped going. I found that to be useful but only having gone to about three or four sessions, I’m pretty sure that I haven’t sorted out all (any?) of my issues and I still need to talk to people about it. Group therapy didn’t really occur to me as an option and I have a feeling that my problems aren’t that bad, there are people who are far worse off than me, talking about my issues would just be boring to someone else. It sounds weird but it’s almost like imposter syndrome; “I’m not depressed enough!” but I need to get over that and just reach out and look for like minded individuals in a safe space to open up and live my best life!