# Exhausted by wife's depression



## Daedalus (Jun 29, 2011)

*Exhausted by wife's depression -- and wanting out*

I am really struggling to keep it together with my wife's depression. Stepping back to give a quick rundown of my history, I have suffered from mild to moderate depression most of my life, though I was only diagnosed about 15 years ago when my mother went through a bout of major depression. At that point, I "solved" her problem by having her move in with me in my 1 bedroom apartment -- she slept on the living room floor until a 2 bedroom unit came available in the complex.

The "upside" of that episode was that I started seeing a therapist and within 8 months had started dating for the first time, and got engaged to the second woman I met.

I was married to my first for almost 5 years when she died suddenly after knee replacement surgery. Our marriage was OK, but she did complain quite a bit about me not putting enough into it. She was very active in a support community, which was helpful in the immediate recovery. Unfortunately, I was basically following in her shadow and gradually started losing my connection after her death.

Now to my current wife. I had met her before, but the first time I really took an interest in her was at a memorial gathering for my first wife. Carried by the whirlwind of emotions, we were married less than six months after my first wife's death! There were lots of red flags, but I thought I could fix the world with love and my first wife's life insurance payout. The money did help for a while, but we ended up burning through 3-4 times that much in the 10 years of our marriage. 

The big red flag at the outset was her relationship with her ex from her first marriage -- and her reaction thereto. Without going into details, he was emotionally abusive to her and she responded with anxiety and depression. Depression was a major factor in their divorce and every e-mail from him triggered an anxiety attack. One of her therapists related it to PTSD. Anyway, she started seeing a therapist and I figured between that and the reduced interaction when their daughter went to college, she should be able to get back to the woman I fell in love with. Well, her daughter is going into her senior year in college and the last year has been a nightmare. 

My wife dates the start of her current depression episode to December or so, but I think it went back much further. Getting to the current situation, she has been on medical leave from her job since April 25th due to severe major depression (diagnosed by 3 psychiatrists), has been through a number of drug combinations, and is now in the middle of ECT (electro-convulsive therapy) treatments. She seems to be gradually improving, but it is very slow.

In the course of this, I was able to focus on my job and let my life revolve around work until about a month ago when she got down to the point of being basically non-functional and was referred for ECT. Since ECT started, I have been on "intermittent family medical leave" in order to be a nearly full-time caretaker. I'm seeing a therapist and Psychiatrist myself, but I'm barely holding on.

At this point, with the help of my therapist, I have come to realise that I keep falling into a caretaker role and setting aside my own wants and needs. Over the last 10 years in particular, I have been sacrificing almost all of my wants to "support" my wife through the trauma and depression.

Well, I'm tired. I have been waiting for the wife I thought I was marrying to pop out of the fog for ten years, but it just seems to be getting thicker. Even if the treatments do work to lift the depression, I'm really having trouble recalling a time other than the first flash of emotion where I was really happy with our relationship. 

I know I'm not in a good emotional place to make such a decision, but I really want to end this drain. I fear what kind of devastating impact that might have on her (she has been having suicidal ideation) and the damage it would cause to my very good relationship with her daughter. 

Anyone have any suggestions or ideas? 

Thanks!


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## tamara24 (Jul 14, 2010)

I am so sorry that you need to go through all this. Dealing with someone with depression is very hard and draining. I don't have any quick fixes for you. All I can say is this is a disease. Your wife did not ask for it, nor did you. Would it be any different if she had say....cancer? I am certainly not blaming you. But my question to you is this. Did you have these feelings before she was seriously ill or once the train started moving? 

If you answered that you have felt this way a long time and thefellings are getting stronger,then I think you need to keep talking to the phyciatrists and find out a way to break it to your wife that you care for her, but you can't live this way. If you are feeling this way since she has hit an all time high, I would think you are suffering from burn out. Caregivers often go through this. Explain to the daughter that your caring for the wife has mentally and physically drained you. See if you can get someone to stay with her and go visit friends or family or take a small trip on your own. Rest, take care of yourself. Wind down. It will give you a clearer head to think with.

Also maybe your wife needs to be hospitalized for her depression and get 24 hour care. This would give you a break. You. Can also keep the daughter in the loop. Say, your mom's illness has taken a toll on both of us and I need to take a break and this is a good situation for her too. I don't think the daughter would think less of you if you were just honest and explained what was going on. She has to see it too growing up wit mom. I wish you the best!
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## Daedalus (Jun 29, 2011)

Thanks Tamara. I've felt this way a long time. One big difference is that this is really the first major episode where I couldn't point to an external stressor, mainly her ex, as the cause. For the last five years or so I've been living on the hope that once my step-daughter was a little older and the ex was not in the way that everything would magically improve. Well, the ex has been in the picture alot less over the last couple years, but my wife's illness has gotten worse. 

She's also been dealing with PTSD from childhood sexual abuse that I didn't know about before we got married. That has been a definite stressor on our sex life, which hasn't been good for years and has been basically non-existant for the last couple years...


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## Uptown (Mar 27, 2010)

Daedalus said:


> She's also been dealing with PTSD from childhood sexual abuse that I didn't know about before we got married.


Daedalus, when sexual abuse occurs in the teen years or later, it can result in painful flashbacks and nightmares -- the symptoms of PTSD. When it occurs in childhood, however, it tends to interfere with the person's ability to form an integrated, strong sense of herself. Hence, the damage is far greater and far more difficult to treat than PTSD. This is why sexual abuse in childhood is more likely to result in BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder) than PTSD. Moreover, even when therapists believe a client has full blown BPD, they generally are loath to call it that -- for many reasons I've explained in other threads. Instead, they often call it PTSD, depression, or anxiety -- i.e., related or co-occurring issues that are covered by insurance and won't frighten the client into terminating therapy.

Significantly, your description does not provide any details indicating your W has strong BPD traits. Yet, because you mention the childhood sexual abuse and depression, I believe it may be worth your time to read a little about BPD traits to see if they sound familiar to you. They are easy to identify because there is nothing subtle about symptoms like verbal abuse, blaming everything on you, inappropriate anger, always being "the victim," and trust issues. I provide an overview of such traits in Blacksmith's thread. My posts there start at http://talkaboutmarriage.com/genera...-complicated-marriage-dynamic.html#post358403. If you have any questions about BPD traits, I would be glad to try to answer them or point you to professional articles that can. Take care, Daedalus.


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## Lorraine M (Apr 26, 2011)

Uptown said:


> Daedalus, when sexual abuse occurs in the teen years or later, it can result in painful flashbacks and nightmares -- the symptoms of PTSD. When it occurs in childhood, however, it tends to interfere with the person's ability to form an integrated, strong sense of herself. Hence, the damage is far greater and far more difficult to treat than PTSD. This is why sexual abuse in childhood is more likely to result in BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder) than PTSD. Moreover, even when therapists believe a client has full blown BPD, they generally are loath to call it that -- for many reasons I've explained in other threads. Instead, they often call it PTSD, depression, or anxiety -- i.e., related or co-occurring issues that are covered by insurance and won't frighten the client into terminating therapy.
> 
> Significantly, your description does not provide any details indicating your W has strong BPD traits. Yet, because you mention the childhood sexual abuse and depression, I believe it may be worth your time to read a little about BPD traits to see if they sound familiar to you. They are easy to identify because there is nothing subtle about symptoms like verbal abuse, blaming everything on you, inappropriate anger, always being "the victim," and trust issues. I provide an overview of such traits in Blacksmith's thread. My posts there start at http://talkaboutmarriage.com/genera...-complicated-marriage-dynamic.html#post358403. If you have any questions about BPD traits, I would be glad to try to answer them or point you to professional articles that can. Take care, Daedalus.


Not to hijack the thread but my situation is semi-similar, I will read your link but what about verbal and physical abuse to a child in lieu of sexual abuse? 

I'm asking because as a caretaker, the story isn't as involved as Daedalus, no ex, no step kids, recent diagnosis of husband but I know I can pinpoint 3-4 years ago an incident when I knew something changed, I too am so burned out and am with great difficulty making my husband follow his psychiatrists recommendation of limited contact separation even though it's killing us financially but the only break I have is when he isn't here for hours, or texting me for advice or calling me to ask me what to do about something....I feel your pain...I am exhausted, and in therapy myself, it started as marriage counseling but little did we know how deep the issues are, which means I am now standing in my marriage because I do love my husband, but it's l am also trying to detach enough to work on what are fundamental personality traits that got worse because of depression and anxiety and what is a result of the illness and most importantly, how to stay detached from the behavior enough to not fall into my old habits of trying to please everyone at my mental expense, and keep things stable for our child...But...as my husband is in therapy, he's realizing how much effect his dad's abuse had on him, right down to remembering how he passed out at a school function and he thought at the time it was from probably not eating before hand, of the school was too hot, and now he's starting to think about how he's channeled his stress from childhood. He's already recongized he's "zoned" out in life, focusing on necessary things only (which isn't good for a marrige) and he realizes he has such a low bar of good things, like getting through a week without a disagreement with anyone is a good week...I'm just wondering if the verbal and hitting abuse equates to sexual abuse for depression and BPD as near his psychotic break, and months leading up to it, the verbal abuse, blame, being the victim was his mantra, not only was it his mantra, he made it his mission to be the victim and broadcast everything wrong he perceived I did in our marrige, but that's another thing I need to work through.

Again, sorry to hijack the post but are situation seems to be similar with burnout and in our state if the person isn't actually trying to kill someone, even the family doctor couldn't get my husband in in-patient care because he refused, so as much as it would give the caretaker a break, it's just not an option for most people.


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## Uptown (Mar 27, 2010)

Lorraine M said:


> Not to hijack the thread but my situation is semi-similar, I will read your link but what about verbal and physical abuse to a child in lieu of sexual abuse?


Lorraine, I am not a psychologist. Rather, I am just a man who lived with a BPDer exW, taking her to weekly sessions with six different psychologists for 15 years. My understanding is that, because BPD is believed to be partly caused by genetics, most abused children do not develop it. Childhood abuse, however, GREATLY raises the risk of doing so. Indeed, a recent study of nearly 35,000 adults (_J. of Clinical Psych_., 2008) found that 70% of those diagnosed with BPD reported having been abused or abandoned in childhood. Although such abuses included verbal, emotional, physical, and sexual abuses, the connection seems strongest to sexual abuse.

Yet, if your H is really exhibiting strong BPD traits, my understanding is that such symptoms likely would have begun showing when he started trying to form LTRs outside the family during his teens. With you, the traits would have been temporarily suppressed (by his infatuation) during the honeymoon period but then the red flags would start showing -- typically about 4 to 6 months into the relationship.

This is why, last May, I asked you the following questions in your "Should I File for Divorce?" thread:_When did the crazy problems with your H begin? I've read your other threads and you seem to be describing a situation where the marriage was fine for 17 years or so and then all hell broke loose in the past three years. That doesn't make sense to me. It sounds like your H had emotional issues when you married and you overlooked the red flags earlier. Is that right? (from my 5/21 post)._​You never responded to my questions. If you would like to do so now, please continue this discussion in that thread and I will join you there.


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