ive never been too open about posting on this board, but the people on here seem kind and caring as well as understanding because so many of us have been through the same experiences.

i am suffering from a battered self esteem and self confidence. i met and fell in love with someone who i thought was the love of my life. he turned out to be abusive. it remains to be seen why. but i sometimes think that things didn't start out well between us because in the begginning i told him i had depression, believing i was being a responsible person, and not wanting to hide this side of myself any longer. it just felt like the right and honest thing to do for the sake of myself and the relationship.

has anybody else been in a situation with a spouse or any relationship where things turned bad after they admitted to having depression or a rift was formed or just the person started to seem uncomfortable or start saying weird things to you after you admitted to having depression? I would like to have another relationship, in the future, but i don't know how to explain my D to the next guy and what is the best way to explain it and break the news so to speak. also what are some things that i should know about as far as typical obstacles that pop up in a relationship that is new and trying to be formed when one spouse is depressed and the other is not.

i got a lot of flak from my ex-husband and im pretty sure its because i was a depressed person. how can you combat this bum wrap in a relationship?

any advice or ideas. :confused:

Gosh, I am sorry for the lack of understanding you are getting. You make it sound like things changed after you told your partner that you suffer from depression...are you sure that is the only reason, or could it have been a combination of other things...or even, perhaps you just began to see your partner for who he really is (it is just a matter of time to when that happens anyway!). Maybe it has nothing to do with your depression.

Regardless, I have suffered on and off from depression for the past 16 years. I also had a father that suffered from it and remember what it was like to live in the same house with someone that miserable (long before I had it too). It is very frustrating to be around...it gives you a horribly helpless feeling...and you sometimes want to get away from that person and go somewhere else to get a "break" from the darkness in the air. It was these memories that completely convinced me that I would end up alone when I was diagnosed as well. I had a lot of fair-weathered family and friends that would abandon at my low times and that only made it worse. But, I will tell you that not all people are like that. There are people of good character out there and I finally found one of them when I met my husband. He had no idea what depression was before he met me. He found out that it is in fact a disease and stuck through some hard times. I later found out that I suffer from fibromyalgia and the pain/fatigue was making my depression way worse. It was hearing info from my dr's and books that helped my hubby to understand better.

Some people I have known with depression don't want to get better. I truly believe that is half the battle. I despise my depression and what it robs me of. I love it when I feel good and can't imagine not doing everythng it takes to get back to happy feelings. When I feel a depression coming on - I always think it is the memory of those times that helps to pull me out eventually. And living that way, they don't seem to last as long anymore.

My wish for you is that you truly believe that you deserve to be treated with compassion (not sympathy) and love. You deserve it! If you treat yourself with care, the you will attract people with the same qualities. Never settle for less!

I too was in a bad marraige before. My ex was violent towards me and even his own mother said to me "Just cos hes hit you a couple of times doesnt mean to say his a wife beater!" Yeah right!! When he hit me he hit my self esteem, my confidence and my inner self. When we split up I became more confident but since having my second child 3 years earlier, I was suffering from depression. He never wanted to know about it and kept telling me I was imagining everything. Even when I told him that there were so many times I wanted to end it all he told me it was a shame I didnt as I would have saved everyone so much pain. These things all still hurt today almost 5 years on.

After we split I met someone else within a year who I fell totally head over heels in love with. This man was everything I ever looked for in a man and to me it didnt matter that we lived miles apart, I just knew it would work. I was still up and down with the depression but never told him anything until I had to. We decided to get engaged within a year and due to his circumstances we knew we had to spend a year apart on different continents. The pain was too much for me and in the end it was him who told me to go and see a doctor as he was so worried about me. He has been so understanding and actually hates my ex for what he did to me and put me through.

There is a hope after this one honestly. Not everyone has the same thoughts on things like this. Once you find someone who you really want to be with then you will be able to open up and tell all and they will understand. This man I met I ended up marrying and moving across the world to be with him so there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

I wish I could say that I've been in an identical situation but I HAVE been the spouse with the depressed wife. We ended getting divorced and the issue at the time was her behavior as I didnt understand depression at all. She was diagnosed with OCD, but it was after quite a long period of just staying home and not even getting out of bed, a behavior I couldnt understand at the time.
Personally, I plan to fight this depressive episode I'm going thru tooth and nail. But what disturbed me about her was that she had absolutely no life and didn't seem to have even the slightest desire to have one. She had no friends and didn't even want any. Her life completely revolved around me and I wanted her to have something going, even if it was charity work. We didn't have any kids and so her life was spent reading magazines and going to the doctor.

In hindsight, I wish I had been more understanding, as now I can totally relate to the feelings she had. But I didnt understand the behavior as it was such a departure from the person I thought I married, just as now my friends are aware of how my stressors have affected me.

I remember her doctor telling me that OCD was as hard or even harder on the spouse. I would extrapolate that to depression as well.

Going through the life crisis I've had which blew me right into a major depressive episode, I decided it would be a terrible time to date or even contemplate it because it wouldn't really be fair and I'm not me.

So, I hope some of this helps you understand what might be going on. I can only share my experience with you and, in doing so, it will resonate with you at least a little. Won't make your pain any less, I realize, but might help you understand more for whatever value that brings.

Its ur ex, my ex husband was mentally and emotionally abusive to me, I felt like I was being beaten up all the time..!! I was mentally, I just went to a Dr. couple months ago and found out I had major depression, after years of knowing something was wrong with me. I am now getting the help I need.. My ex bf 'friend now" was like that, saying to me that I just wanted something wrong with me.. When I knew there was something wrong with myself.. Hes slowly accepting it. It hurt me that he couldn't understand.. I'd just left it at that with him.. I'm picking myself up after being down for so long, that I'm finally feeling good about myself......Emily

when my ex realised i was depressed she left me. she denies this but i know this is the reason for her departure. u did the RIGHT thing telling him u were depressed and its his own fault that he couldnt cope with it.

one girl i fell in love with and still do love, told me straight away that she had depression , was raped and was in a mental hospital for a short while, i didnt care, it was her i loved, so what im trying to say is the right guy will come along who will love u for u and not be 'put' off by ur depression. so yes i would tell them about ur depression if u think its important to ur relationship, otherwise itll be playing on ur mind when ur going out with them.

take care

Brett :angel:

I haven't been in an identical situation, but I have been the spouse of someone who was depressed so I can at least relate that experience to you. My ex-wife exhibited signs of depression about two years after we got married. She lost a job and rather than regroup and get back out there, decided to stay home and be a housewife. I didn't object regarding financial reasons, but instead wanted her to HAVE a life and identity outside of me. We didn't have kids, so her existence was solely reading magazines doing an occasional errand and going to doctors continuously. She did function quite well, I thought before we were married. What got to me wasn't that she was depressed per se, but her behavior. I realize now, as a result of my own depression some sense of what she went through.

The point of all this is that a depressed person impacts the spouse or mate and that was what made it impossible to remain married to her. As I've become depressed, I stopped dating because I realize that until I lick this thing, and I will, the real me is buried below the depressed me.

I've wondered how so many of the posters on this board have relationships despite being depressed as I view them as almost mutually exclusive. I know I couldn't right now and its up to me and my support network of friends to conquer this illness.

I hope that something in here resonates...best of luck to you...I know how much this condition sucks and it has given me much greater empathy for those who suffer from it

It's amazing how many partners will judge you for your "mental problem" and how often they themselves have similar and even worse problems.

Having clinical depression is just another flaw people have, and everybody has flaws. You need to find someone who will understand depression (which might mean someone who's been through it himself) and can handle it in a healthy way. If you can't find him, well, you may be better off alone until you find someone who's GOOD FOR YOU, because that's the whole point of relationships, anyway.

Avoid men who scapegoat you because "you're the one with the problem, not me" (seldom the truth), or freak out when you say "I'm a little depressed today." When I get depressed, I take it easy, laze around. I don't go out and try to drive over a cliff. It doesn't have to be such a big issue!!

so her existence was solely reading magazines doing an occasional errand and going to doctors continuously. She did function quite well, I thought before we were married. What got to me wasn't that she was depressed per se, but her behavior. I realize now, as a result of my own depression some sense of what she went through.

Astroboy! Wow!!! I could have been your ex-wife! I went from being a highly active person to someone that could not function. I didn't care at all about anything anymore. I just wanted to isolate.

That is the worst depression I ever went through. I have had other episodes since - sometimes I feel the urge to isolate and sometimes I just come out swinging and fight the depression as hard as I can. I prefer the latter because I have been lucky so far that it helps me to "come out of it" faster. The thought of getting like I did before terrifies me and I don't ever want to get to that point again. I hope your ex-wife came out of that level and is doing better now.

We all react to it in our own ways. I have lived both sides of the coin...isolating and pushing hard live normally while pretending nothing's wrong...I think somewhere in the middle is the key for me. I am very sorry for your pain and and agree with your wanting to get healthier before getting into a relationship. I am married and my husband has witnessed some rough times and has learned a lot more about the balancing game of depression.

Good luck to you!

hm. i guess our relationship did have a lot more issues than just my depression, but in the beginning he was kind and compassionate towards me about it. he gradually changed. i don't know why though.

i have had to split up our relationship into sections in my mind. i have been reflecting on what we had and I think the abusiveness he showed towards me had nothing to do with my depression, but at other times i think it played some part in the way things went between us.

In the beginning of our relationship he would bounce back and forth between having a negative outlook towards me and the 'type' of person i was(which he really didn't know because it was a very long distance relationship and we had never met before) to having a more optimistic attitude about me. He said he had attended a group for depressed people, so he could learn about it, but he came back from the experience even less comfortable with the idea of getting involved with me with me having depression. It was very confusing for me because he seemed to change his outlook towards me every other day. he was also having personal problems of his own and i thought that was a big part of his attitude with me.

i started a new job when i was talking with him and had plans to go back to school, which i did to help support us even though due to circumstances i could never finish. by that time he had moved here to be with me and i thought things were going fine even though i never knew that he didn't even consider our relationship to be a good relationship. he never would tell me about things. just kept them to himself and never communicated what he thought or felt to me. he also had a lot of anger problems and i asked him to go talk to somebody about it because it was really bothering me. i was afraid of what we could get into (in the relationship) with him being angry and me having depression.

i'm a good person and i think i'm strong. i pulled myself out of a clinical depression and went back to work, i also started making plans to get a career going and find myself. i did this all to be with him. thats how much i wanted to have a happy healthy relationship just with him. i guess he couldn't appreciate that. and now we are at this point in our life, all because he didn't want to do anything to help hang onto the relationship. i just wish he would have told me sooner. i gave him a lot of the things that meant the most to me, and have nothing to show for it now. and trust me this is how my life has been for about 17 years. it's hard to keep losing so much and never be taken seriously because your just a depressed person that nobody listens to. normal people are allowed to hurt get mad drop out of life, but if someone with a mental illness does that or gets angry they are 'crazy' or going off the deep end. that double standard just gets to me.

i'm sick of having to start my life over and would just like to experience consistency and life as it was in the good ol days. i used to have a very nice life.

i just want to be better prepared for another relationship so the same thing doesn't happen to me twice. if it's impossible to have a relationship like this then i'll cut my losses and go on with my life and find other ways to have people in my life in healthy ways instead of hoping for a relationship. i know it's going to take a special person to be with someone like me. :angel:

I hope I can convey this: what Ive noticed is that if I am depressed, or even physically ill, hubby draws away. Honestly, I think he doesnt like my "weakness' during these times. He is much more interested and in tune with me and concerned when I am just fine. It bothers me because I NEED him during the rough times, and that is when he retreats. I am not speaking of depression with me, Ive mostly just had some illness lately and its really annoying. He is nicer to me when I am not sick. I did hear something about how if you spend an extended period of time vulnerable and "weak" then your husband may not be able to identify with you, as you are not behaving like the person he first married. It causes alot of divorces, but it hardly seems fair. So what is the solution, try to be the wife he thought he landed in the first place??? :eek:

How on earth do you do that when situations change, and you cannot control everything?? I just try to stay true to myself and try to be strong, so that he can still see "me" in there, even though right now I have strep, pneumonia, and ear infections from nursing his sick kid back from a bad cold. I sure as heck dont feel like me, but he truly seems annoyed when Im under the weather. Gah! Marriage is so not what we think it will be. FYI, hes mister wonderful the rest of the time.

some people do retreat when there is illness or death around them. my husbands father passed away when he was very young and he wasn't around for it although he was around for his illness. i often wondered how much that affected the way he would respond with me when i was ill.

he told me one time and it broke my heart "Even when your married you don't get comfort." I know for a fact he said that because I was so absent in the relationship, i wasn't able to give him the attention he craved. And it caused me a lot of guilt. i knew he was feeling rejection from me on some level, but i lacked any ability to do anything about it, so i just went on with my life, so to speak. i tried to soothe him with words but it didn't help, and there were many nights i would wake him up crying because of the pain the depression was casuing me. he would always wake up and hold me but i know it was hard on him because he would have to get up the next day and go to work. i think the relationship would have worked out much better if we were rich and neither of us had to be anywhere but with each other at least while we were getting to feel more comfortable. unfourtunately we were poor people. i respect if he chose not to be with me but i wont lie and say it wasn't VERY traumatic the whole ordeal. and again, i'm left wondering how much of it was my fault, and what to do next time that won't destroy my relationship. i think i would have to have someone who was very undertsanding and with few problems of their own. i also think i won't mention it to soon. but i will tell them.

Personally, I think someone with "issues" is likely to be a better mate especially if they are honest about them and have worked on them. Anyone who says they don't is either not honest with themselves or one in a million.
A few dents in the fender are a good thing. A train wreck is not. Not that I've been so good at keeping relationships and picking people. The complete opposite is true.

The point is that your odds of success are better if that person can empathize when life inevitably deals you a bad hand, which it does at the most inopportune times. Even that said, most people evolve and change and nothing is ever guaranteed.

i respect if he chose not to be with me but i wont lie and say it wasn't VERY traumatic the whole ordeal. and again, i'm left wondering how much of it was my fault, and what to do next time that won't destroy my relationship. i think i would have to have someone who was very undertsanding and with few problems of their own. i also think i won't mention it to soon. but i will tell them.

I hope this doesn't come off as harsh to you because it is definitely not how I mean it....

but I feel like you are "victimizing" yourself. Boy, I certainly understand how depression can make us feel like we are victims to it (I have been there). But, it is also important to not lose your sense of self-worth from it.

You make it sound as if you are "handicapped" with depression (and always will be) and need to choose someone that is healthier than most because of it. That is not going to work either...it is a skewed realtionship. The fact of the matter is life comes with stresses...financial, health, family crisises, etc... Life can be turned upside down for any one of us at anytime and there is nothing that can insure otherwise. I saw a therapist about this a few years ago - I had so much guilt about the pressure my depression was putting on my husband. She stated a healthy relationship was two people standing on their own sometimes leaning on each other during stress. She went on to say that if it is always one leaning on the other that it will not work. I hope you can realize that you, too, have something to offer and can find a relationship with a healthy balance.

well healthseeker, what do you call depression? it IS a handicap of your emotions and your mind and will, and thank you soooo much. but i think you have a skewed attitude to your own depression thats why you have to knock me around about my own post. don't read into what someone else says and make snap judgements about how another person expresses themself like that. thats really unhealthy in itself, and thanks but i've lived my whole childhood in AGONY because of this and it has been awful and debilitating so i don't have much to say to you except your post really provided little to no support whatso ever and did nothing but leave me down right upset. so whatever.

happy day

depression IS A HANDICAP!!!! it doesnt enhance ur life any does it?? i think healthseeker maybe didnt mean it to sound as harsh as it did? hope not anyway.

healthseeker,

you need to realize that i was only 26 years old when i even got the chance to start my very first relationship, and i had many embarrassing moments in front of my husband because he was very critical of me, and he turned abusive towards me, and left me several times during the whole ordeal. our marriage was something i had waited for for a very long time, in my state i didn't think i could carry on a relationship, and i lost my own father and havent seen him in 17 years. how can you be so harsh? please. im not victimizing myself. if i was playing a victim i would have layed down and given up by now. how can you say such hurtful nonsense like that.

i probably will nEVER get another relationship ever again and don't know if i can even trust another relationship. I am posting because i am trying to figure out if my husband abused me for being depressed or if it was his own problems getting in the way. i have had little to nothing to show for my life so far because i was always afraid to talk about being depressed and afraid to trust anybody with it. do you realize that when i went for treatment(when i could finally afford it) i could not even say whole sentences! give me a break. this just makes so upset that someone would even say things like that.

normally i wouldnt even have had the courage to say something back to someone when they make a hurtful comment to me for fear of furthur embarrassment. but i'm done with the little mouse routine in my life. i'm over it. so no i'm NOT victimizing myself. if i was i would have just stayed silent on this thread and let somebody else words do some more damage and not even stick up for myself.

I just would like to add that I completely concur that clinical depression is a handicap and a major one. I think that had I not experienced it firsthand like now, I might have answered the way healthseeker did. This time in my life, which I would do anything to shorten, is by far the worst I've known, despite the fact that objectively speaking, I've actually been quite blessed. The anxiety that comes with it is almost crippling and I'd prefer a physical injury to this mental injury. And, depressed people make poor mates. Period. I would be a very poor mate now to someone because it can those around you.
This is a time you lean on your friend, or if you are married, I believe you owe it to your spouse to do everything in your power to conquer it. Just my opinion from someone who knows both sides of the coin.

I am truly sorry for making you feel so upset. That was not my intention and I cannot stress that enough. I have been diagnosed with major depression and definitely understand how it can make you feel like a victim from it. I have felt robbed by it. The point I was trying to get across was that this does not have to be the case for the rest of your life (note where I put "and always will be"). When you mentioned choosing a partner that has very few problems...I thought you meant it was because you had more than your share. I just don't want you to believe that you will ALWAYS feel like this and you have to choose a certain type of life partner based on it. I think that a healthy relationship is balanced in the give and take of support. It doesn't sound like you are getting any support now and you deserve it. That only makes you feel worse...

My heart hurts that I have caused you any pain. I just don't want you to feel like the way you feel now has to be permanent. You obviously have a lot of passion and, I'm sure, a lot more to offer someone than you think.

Notthisprincess:

Depression distorts our perceptions so greatly that we believe things like "we will never succeed" or "never have a relationship again" and the like. I know it feels like that to me, too. People have beat depression, so we know it CAN be done. I really feel for the folks here who have suffered with it for a long time but as hopeless as it feels, and it does hopeless to me, too, its important that we do whatever we can to change our mindset. I know I need to work on mine. I've spoken to people who have beaten it so I know its possible. Let yourself believe it is as I do. But like beating cancer, it's not easy. My guess from reading this thread is that healthseeker was attempting to encourage you to actively work on your mindset. I now know how much the illness seems to reinforce itself and how when we have it, our bodies and minds tell us to do exactly the opposite of what we should do. We've all read that exercise helps and I literally have to drag myself to the gym. I used to love exercise and now its a chore.

We know that we should go out and utilize our support network and socialize and I can tell you that I've days at home not even answering the phone from my very best friends because all I do is complain and the who the heck wants to hear a whining and complaining person? I don't want anyone I know to even see me like this, but I know intellectually that your support network is vital when all i want to do is withdraw. I'm operating solely under the assumption that because I know others have beat it, that I have a fighting chance and owe it to myself to do everything I can.

If you can at least incorporate what I've said slowly into your thinking, it might help build some momentum for the future. To me it looks every bit as bleak as you described but just knowing its been done gives me enough to go on and I hope you could incorporate that into your thought process.

If I didnt know that it has been done successfully by others, I don't know how I could go on, because this really sucks! I hope this helps, and I've written it as much for me to reinforce these thoughts as I have for you and the others. I would encourage you to do likewise and maybe we can all pull each other out of this miserable muck.

no healthseeker, i am sorry. even when i was answering your post i had a feeling that i should take a different viewpoint and not take it so personally. i always do this, then regret it later.

i don't know why i get deffensive, it is just a message board, what is there to loose? must be everything thats going on right now.

i know that we are all battling the same illness and i have been a wanderer here for the past 4 years and only just started posting, since i lost my relationship with my husband(if thats what i can call him). so i'm not very good at talking about it yet(the depression), but i think i must be gaining some ground with it if i'm here trying.

i guess i have lost hope somewhat that one day i won't feel the sting of depression, what i wouldn't give for a whole year without a depressive episode, but i have lost hope i guess and quietly resigned myself to the fact that i won't exist any different. but there is always a lingering hope.

i would like to have another relationship somewhere down the line, but i want to know everything i can know about my depression so i can explain and communicate about it so he isn't left in the dark so to speak, getting deffensive. it is easy to see why a spouse would feel that way. I only meant that my last husband had some problems of his own, and with me being depressed i think it was a bad combination, maybe contributing to the fallout of the relationship, or the fact that he decided to cheat and lie :nono:

anyways, i was really looking for any experiences that anybody had in a relationship,that ended in success or a better understanding of yourself with or without the illness being involved. i really just feel that i could grow right out of my depression, given the right circumstances. but that could be just wishful thinking.

i really just feel that i could grow right out of my depression, given the right circumstances. but that could be just wishful thinking.

Nothisprincess, no apology needed. I have been there...

Your last couple of sentences that I quoted above literally put a smile on my face. My wish for you is that you not only find relief from your depression (and being out of an abusive relationship is a good start), but that your life may become better than it ever has been...reach for the stars!!!