# Dealing with a depressed spouse who doesn't care to change it.



## venussky (Aug 4, 2008)

I have posted the dynamics of my marriage before on this site but will give a quick history.  Attended H.S. and was friends with husband, started dating husband right out of highschool.... got pregnant at 21, got married that same year. Lived with my parents during the first couple years of our marriage due to financial reasons (live in an expensive resort area)... Husband worked for my family and resents them for our financial problems (he blames them for our lack of money and house at the time), Resents me for his working for them even though I begged him for years to find a better job. We rented a home and started a program that helps you build your own home. While building he was miserable....made it out that I was forcing him to build a home, that is was my idea (it was he and a friend's machinations) and was stressed the entire time (thought this normal). Kept telling myself that after the house was built, he'd calm down. He hasn't.

OKAY...now to the issues at hand;

We have lived in the house since this past December and he is still mean, angry, touchy....I'm very sensitive so it's hard for me to deal with. When I mention how he hurts me, he tells me he's always been an A**hole and it's nothing new. It is new..he has always had a dry sense of humor and could be a jerk but not constantly and always directed towards me. 

After having our daughter, I lost my good paying job due to an illness and have since then worked off and on when the time was right or I could get a job working around my daughter's school schedule. Now that the economy has gone to poo, I need to get a job and have applied for over 15 jobs and have yet to get one. My husband makes snide remarks and has made me feel like a failure. He keeps getting laid off and we can't make our mortgage so I know this added stress is a lot of where he is coming from. What I don't understand is how someone can love someone and yet constantly belittle them, say mean things. I'm even scared to have friends over and when someone asks to "swing by", I'm scared of how H's attitude will be. It's like walking on eggshells all the time. 

I recently started doing daycare for H's sister's children in order to make a little money. These kids are horrible and even though it is affecting my daughter and myself to have them here, I suck it up so that my husband will feel that I am contributing even if it is in a small way. The daycare is still not helping. He still acts as though I am a freeloader and that I am worthless. It's so frustrating. 

He will fall asleep on the sofa and when I wake him up to go to bed he will curse, stomp off and blame me for his not showering earlier because I was making him dinner or some such nonsense. In the mornings, he will set his alarm and let it go off on snooze for up to an hour before I need to be awake for daycare and this morning, I asked him if he was going to get up and he called me an A**hole and slammed around the room and told me I was a "B***C for being like that. I told him it was inconsiderate to wake someone up so blatantly an hour before they needed to get up and we got in a huge fight. I told him that if he hated me so much, I could leave..that I could move out and take our daughter with me. He responded with "Don't start this right now". A few minutes later he acts normal again..tries to make jokes with our daughter, etc. I can't live this way and I know he is depressed but he refuses to get any type of help. He won't even take herbal supplements. What should I do?


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## Unit4 (Mar 15, 2009)

There's probably no greater stress than mortgage and what may soon be bankruptcy. You guys need help. If he refuses marriage counciling, see if you can get him to consider financial counciling, or something else that at least gets you two on the same page during a troubling time. At least mutually acknowledging that things should get better might be a good start. 

Does he act as though you wouldn't understand why he's an a-hole? That treatment sounds rough. Maybe heading out of the house with your daughter more frequently, without calling it "seperation", would get him to realize his negative waves are crap you don't need.


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