| Re: Husband has depression for years
Dear Lady,
Oh for sure, do not try to take over anything except your own health. First of all unless our spouse has been legally ruled incompetent that is not our place.
My own experience is 38 years married to the same person, and of course, we are different people, and it is not always easy, not by any stretch of the imagination. From my vast experience, you might benefit from getting some counseling for your own anger and frustration. Whatever we do we need to own our own emotions. No one 'makes' us feel what we feel. It is not our place to rule someone else as incompetent or to try to interfere with the doctor relationship because he doesn't act like what we want or do what we think will help.
We can only change our own selves. We can only get help for our own selves.
When you communicate with hubbie, stick with I statements, describing your own emotions. I think it wise to get counseling to help us learn to take responsibility for our own emotions and to learn how to talk that way rather than to make 'you' statements. All you statements do is create defensiveness. Rightly so; we don't want to hear others say 'you' need to do this, or 'you' have a problem, either. Really, it is insulting to speak to others as if they have a problem and we don't.
If we don't like who we are with, it's we that need to deal with our own attitude. None of this is to say it's easy to live with someone that is depressed. Or angry, etc. Sometimes it can be hard to live with someone that is happy, you know? The point is that we need to deal with our own issues and let other adults deal with theirs. or else if we really just cannot tolerate who they are, maybe we need to just move on. That is always something to consider.
That said, in my personal opinion drugs only drug us. They don't solve our emotions or any other problem. Likely we need to change what we eat, when we eat, how much we exercise, what we dwell on, who we are around, what kind of work that we do...mostly we need to change our own selves and just let others be who they are.
From my many years of life on this earth, I believe mostly relationship problems come from not taking responsibility for our own emotions and not using I statements
If you cannot handle how you feel about your husband, hon, that IS your own issue to take care of. Perhaps he is completely unreasonable, I don't know and I don't presume to know. But I do know that we can only fix our own selves. It's not our place to fix other adults, or even our children!
We can only take care of our own needs. That is what you need to do. Get some counseling for your self. You will feel better and then you can meet hubbie as two adults, not one spouse parenting the other.
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~ YaYa ~
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