This coming Sunday will be our 1 year anniversary!
It was about 8 months into our marriage that my husband had the courage to share his feelings of hopelessness, suicidal thoughts and general lack of happiness. It was after he read an article on a football player and his struggle with depression that my husband began to realise that his constant negative train of thoughts were not 'normal', for lack of a better word. I am so incredibly thankful that he shared with me!
The first thing I did was research depression and learned how to get my husband onto a mental health plan. He was very keen to begin treatment but wasn't very proactive in his approach, so I organised doctor's appointments to refer him to a psychologist and started the process by going with him and supporting him this way. We have so many psychologists in the area so I researched their level of experience and areas of expertise to find a few people who I thought would really suit and I gave him the details so he could make the choice. My husband has now been going to fortnightly sessions for the past 4 months and although there is no end in sight he's taken the first step!
Our relationship has grown stronger since the process has started. Don't get me wrong, some days/weeks are hard, incredibly hard actually, but there are reasons for so many things now that I couldn't understand before! We can have great nights out together now where if he's feeling anxious or down he just gives me a look and we go, whereas previously he would have taken his feelings out on me in a public way (putting me down in front of friends, ignoring me, acting immaturely) and it would impact heavily on our feelings towards each other. Before he wouldn't help out around the house and we'd constantly have the same arguments over pulling his weight, now if he's not helping out I approach the discussion in a completely different way so as to not accuse and invoke those negative thoughts.
I believe that knowledge is power - the threads I've read on here and the advice given helped me a lot to approach this time in our lives with positivity and support. So thank you everyone for sharing your stories and words of advice.
