I am once again going through what I like to refer to as my husbands quarterly depression.
As that sentence suggests, this happens several times a year. We’ve been married for 12 years. In the beginning, this didn’t happen, or he was able to conceal it. It wasn’t until we were married for 3 or 4 years I started to notice it.
I now realise it is part of who he is.
The problem is, when he gets like this, he acts as though he despises me. He can hardly stand to look at me, he speaks to me spitefully, says really nasty things, and nothing I say or do can help him. He fixates on something that is wrong with life and I have little influence trying to convince him that he’s view is a little warped.
After 12 years, I know it will pass, eventually. But I can’t help feeling so so sad at being spoken to (sometimes in front of the kids) cruelly. And I have to admit to getting really fed up sometimes and lashing back. Like, I just feel deeply...sad.
our lives are very busy. We volunteer for a church group, he is a senior professional, I work 2 jobs, we have two kids, my mother lives with us, his father has terminal cancer, and we are renovating our house. But this is something that was happening long before our lives got quite so full.
He’s been working from home since March last year, he feels trapped.
I empathise fully with that but it’s not like this depression started because of covid.
I just hate the feeling that when he gets like this I’m an outsider. My opinion makes no difference. He honestly looks at me like he hates me. My encouragement doesn’t work. Most of all, I am a punching bag. Because he gets into this tunnel vision state where nobody really matters to him.
im looking for a way to both support him but also protect myself from the deep hurt that I experience at being turned away from in bed, not being even looked in the eye for weeks on end, and if I try and help, I am verbally spat at for trying.
I have my own anxiety issues that I am currently working hard to try and remediate.
When he is not depressed, he is a really great guy. He works really hard, he’s smart and funny, looks after our kids really well, and we have a good time together.
is there such a thing as seasonal depression?
