How long?
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I personally wouldn’t leave if my husband was going through depression or struggling mentally. In fact my husband has and I was in the same boat as you for awhile, even made appts for counseling for him which he decided he wasn’t going to do. It wasn’t until I sat down with him and explained the ways I saw him struggling, how it was effecting me and kinda rerouted his brain into knowing that counseling and medication were okay that he decided to get help. I will say there is a large stigma around getting help for men, it has been engraved into their brain that counseling/meds or even asking for help in general is considered weak. One’s ethnicity also has a lot to do with the stigma around being open to receiving mental health help. I would say just talk to him, be open and honest about how you see him struggling and how it’s causing you to struggle as well bec no one wants to see their spouse hurting. See why he isn’t open to receiving help and try to deconstruct those ideas!
@Bonny @Tiffany thank you both for taking the time to comment. i have recommended and tried to book therapy appointments as well, but he says he will deal with it on his own. he has a tendency to be very angry when he’s depressed and recently punched a hole in our rental apartment wall and gets very angry around (not towards) our small children. when i do try to speak to him about it, he told me he doesn’t need a lecture but i do really try to speak from the heart and tell him i just want him to do better because the kids and i love him so much and i hate seeing him angry, he always jumps into defensive mode. he also lost his job recently for missing too many days, and i am starting a job now but he has a really hard time watching our kids but we dont have another choice. i am trying 1000% my best to be sympathetic and encouraging but I am also struggling so hard to pick up all the pieces and I am so stressed. I was extremely sympathetic about him losing his job, not angry.
Would he consider going to a dad's group? You might encounter less resistance than with therapy, but it can be very helpful and effective if he's open to it. If there are ones near you that great, but there are also good online options, but be sure to vet them first. You can pay for it yourself so he doesn't have to feel bad about the money part while he's not working.
@Bonny thank you bonny ❤️ i really appreciate it. my mental health is also suffering so badly right now and i needed the great advice. I think this is a much better option that he’d go for. thank you ❤️
https://youtu.be/hzkcB9GEhmQ?si=8jFPpY2k6W19lUwA This is a video from the Dr John Deloney show on YouTube. He has actually several calls about depressed husband's! He is a mental health guy, formerly did mental health crisis's with police departments and worked at colleges. He is a great resource for learning about mental health and boundaries. Also I was there too, and I decided to put on a boundary for myself. If he started talking about his hopelessness, or his "better off dead"? I was going to insist on a conversation with a counselor. Or I was going to put up and boundaries around myself and the kids. Because it was becoming an abusive cycle of his depression pushing and pulling me around. Worried about him actually going further than I was expecting. I decided that I had been lulled into inaction long enough! And I was going to take it seriously every single time. And it ended the cycle and he's been much better! (We both are depression prone, but we have learned how to call each other out. And insist
On the struggling spouse talk to someone. When we get low anyways! Thankfully it hasn't happened in a year or so.
thank you bethany, it feels really nice to know i’m not alone! i definitely need to work on boundaries because I feel the same, I’m scared to say anything because of mentions of suic*de. i will watch , thank you again ❤️
How much effort is he putting into improving it? If the answer is 0, you're just enabling him to continue as things are or get worse. Does he see his mental health as a problem? What has he tried? What is he trying right now? How likely do any of those things seem to be able to help? Is he all talk, no talk therapy? No action? Relationships are a system. If you make a change, he will make a change (although maybe not the change you want...). What kinds of changes do you think you could make for yourself that would shake him out of the status quo?