J's best friend's mother has died. J hasn't seen her for a couple of years but he spent a lot of time with her family when he was young. They provided a safe haven for him when his own home was dangerous and he also had much more in common with them.
I think he reached out to me. I came home to find five missed calls on the mobile but no messages. When I called him back he was upset but also hostile. Perhaps I wasn't sad enough for him.
I happened to ask if there was anything else he had called about and he took this as insensitivity to what has happened. Is it? I didn't mean it that way.
The truth is I have very few reserves of sympathy left for him. That's terrible I know. It's just that everything is a potential disaster and every event is potentially a trigger for the same response.
I asked him if something else was wrong. His tone was so angry. I didn't immediately equate the occasion with anger. He said goodbye and hung up.
I waited a few minutes and then called back to see if he was okay but was met with the same thing - anger, sarcasm and a quick good-bye.
I wish I could feel more sympathy for him, for what he must be feeling right now. I wish he could be there for his friend. And I wish that he had the support of a loving partner.
But he doesn't really. The foremost thing in my mind is to wonder how long this episode is going to last.
I feel sadness for his friend and I spent an hour talking to his friend's wife this morning.
J deserves some of that too, but how can I give it when anything I say or do invites such a negative response? How can I find the maturity and strength to see past the dismissive, critical, passive aggression to give him the support that a person should be able to rely on at such a difficult time?
And our relationship is in such a precarious place right now. All I want to do is move forward with it to address things as we said we would. But I can't do that now can I? He's hardly in the frame of mind to deal with it.
Feeling pretty hopeless today.
Flo
Sometimes a Depressed Partner will invent reasons to be angry with you. It's a means of justifying their own bad behavior towards you and alleviating their own guilt about it. When your partner is in this mode, there's NOTHING you can do or say that's right. Likewise, difficult events and life circumstances also get used to justify the depression and bad behavior. I've been in your shoes and I too have found it hard to be symathetic at times when I know that sympathy is genuinely called for, largely because I knew that for my Depressed Partner, it was just yet another reason to treat me badly. I wanted to be compassionate, but there's a point at which you simply reach Compassion Burnout.
ReplyDeleteHang in there. You drew some good and important boundaries for yourself this week. Don't let these events, sad as they are, derail you. And good luck. Don't ever forget that you're a very brave, kind, compassionate woman to have gotten this far.
I agree with the last poster. I often find my DW looking for a fight. Anything I say can trigger it. IDK, maybe it's the only way they can release the anger. But I'm tired of making excuses for her bad behavior. Set your boundaries and take care of yourself.
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad you realize its NOT you, but its HIM. Hang in there and take care of yourself....you deserve it!
Thanks to you both for the encouraging comments. They really help.
ReplyDeleteThis happens to me too and I'm in total agreement with the commenters above. Hang in there, this isn't you, it's him. Make sure there are people around you (friends? family?) constantly reinforcing that, reflecting yourself back to you as the person you really are (kind, brave, strong and compassionate, as the poster above has said), not the person your ill spouse has decided to turn you into in his illness-muddled head.
ReplyDeleteIn your last post, you were regaining your sense of self and dignity. Of *course* he's going to seize on the first excuse he can find to derail that - change is scary for a depressed person, and he will kick back at it all the way. My husband did this too when I began to act less like his full-time nurse and to assert my personhood and independence, so in the short run making that change was hard-hard-hard, but in the long run it made things distinctly better in our household.
My husband's depression is difficult in a million ways, but he doesn't take it out on me with bad behavior aimed directly at me any more - largely because I reached a point where I quietly refused to put up with it, made it clear I was leaving if it didn't stop NOW (it wasn't a threat, I was ready to go) and he was forced learned to control that behavior. I realize that he can't actually be loving and kind when he's in the grip of depression, but I insist upon polite courtesy towards me and his teenage children nonetheless, no matter how he is feeling that day.
Now he disappears into himself and into his private den in attic of the house when he's depressed rather than galumphing around taking it out on everyone else - which is still hard since it leaves me with the house to run, money to earn, bills to pay, kids to raise, etc. etc., but it's a million times better than it was when the kids or I were a focus for his anger.
I hope you can get to that point. If not, leaving has to be a viable option. It still is for me. It has to be. If it's not, he's got all the power, and the depression - which is a supremely selfish entity - will use it.