'I'm Depressed and I Want to Go out My Perfectly Good Husband'

Photo: Gavyn Stalley/Getty Images/EyeEm

Dear Polly,

I dear my husband, and I call back he'south the best person past far I've ever been involved with. I certainly never liked anyone enough to want to marry them before. He's smart and kind and funny and handsome and he laughs at soooooo many of my jokes and we have great chemical science. He puts up with my obnoxious dogs and gets along with my friends. He has a expert and admirable job. He tells me I'one thousand smart and beautiful, and it seems similar he means it.

But the unabridged fourth dimension I've been with him, I've stayed a mess. I met him at a time when my life was fraying, and he was doing very badly as well (he was living with his mom), and I've simply kept going down. I had a not-so-proficient merely beauteous job at the time I met him, which I later lost. Since then, I've drifted. I barely do anything these days. I have jobs and practise them halfheartedly and so quit. In the time we've been together, I've tried antidepressants and therapy, just nil has changed. In the time we've been together, he's gone from existence unemployed, living at his mom'due south house, and doing way likewise many drugs to graduating from police school, staying off hard drugs, and landing his impressive job. He'southward not a dick — he tries to suggest that I go back on antidepressants, look for work, whatever, but lately I've been feeling like maybe the thing that's keeping my life fucked upward is beingness in a relationship with him.

I honey him so much and I believe he loves me and that feels practiced, just I was better off in nearly every way when I was in unsatisfying relationships or single, even though my life was by no ways perfect or even happy a lot of the fourth dimension. I know if we divorced information technology would throw my life into serious chaos. We don't have whatever savings. I'm not working, similar I mentioned. My credit sucks. I have those bad dogs, which would make finding a place of my own even harder. I'm not getting any younger, and I'm definitely not getting whatever more than dateable (I'm 38).

Simply I have to wonder if anarchy is what I demand, considering nothing else — going to therapy, taking prescribed medication, writing in a goddamn journal, MICRODOSING lol — seems to be knocking me out of this sad, ghostlike existence. Writing it out sounds so bitchy, like I'm blaming him for my unhappiness, which I'yard not. I just experience like, how can this relationship possibly be good for me when I feel so bad and part so footling all the fourth dimension? People always compare mental illness to cancer and other physical ailments, and when I retrieve of it like that, I know he's not necessarily causing my issues, but he's also okay being married to someone who's slowly dying and doesn't seem capable of getting the medical attention necessary to care for it.

I don't know why I'm like this. I don't know why information technology feels safer to do less and less than to proceed trying to get improve, but I know I've created this state of affairs where I tin be with someone who will put upwards with that and make sure we have food and shelter. I have a lot of expert friends who care nearly me and I know they know I'm struggling and I know I make information technology extremely difficult for anyone to help me because I only close them out if they try to bring up things that brand me uncomfortable. Perchance the reason I've behaved this way for so long is that the only friend who could always tell me annihilation moved away presently before my hubby and I started dating.

Stuck

Dear Stuck,

Y'all don't want to look closely at yourself. You don't want to talk about uncomfortable things or experience uncomfortable feelings or have a difficult chat with your husband about how unhappy you are. You don't want to tell him, "You're pretending that I'm okay, simply I'm not okay so I need you lot to finish pretending." You lot don't want him to cease pretending. Yous don't want to talk near difficult things, similar the fact that you're falling apart, nothing is getting better, your business firm is caving in.

Y'all steadfastly refuse to talk nearly your aging business firm. So instead, you're fixated on what'south incorrect with the yard. Y'all're maxim information technology must be the weather, the traffic, the government. It's the lack of oxygen in the air, it'due south gravity. You demand different weather, different atmospheric weather. Simply here is your hubby, making y'all look bad. He didn't need ameliorate atmospheric condition, less traffic, more oxygen, less gravity. He's thriving and he still thinks you lot're great. He'south patient with you because he'south been there.

His empathy makes you lot hate yourself even more. There must be something incorrect with him, that he still loves you. At that place must be something ill about him, that he pretends when y'all tell him to pretend, that he's loyal to you, that he laughs at your jokes, that he tolerates your bad dogs.

You must not need love. You must require chaos. You lot need to lose your food and shelter. You lot demand to hitting rock bottom.

You call up you're going to feel ameliorate, in one case you walk away from everything that's currently propping you up. The oxygen is different beyond town. The weather is different across the state. But mostly what y'all'll lose is this witness, who sees how sick you are, who knows how broken you are, who makes things uncomfortable mean solar day after solar day after 24-hour interval. You want to shut out this concluding witness, who embodies your failure. You desire to crumble all by yourself. He'due south doing too well. He triggers your shame.

You think that if there aren't any witnesses, there won't exist whatever shame, either. You're wrong about that. The shame is coming from inside the house. The shame is coming from inside of y'all.

You need a real connectedness based on honesty. Right now, y'all've convinced your hubby to live inside your lies, to pretend with you, to allow you avoid uncomfortable conversations, to let you fall autonomously without recrimination. You demand to tell him the whole truth instead. The whole truth goes beyond "I notwithstanding feel terrible" and it goes beyond "Microdosing isn't working" and "I don't care about annihilation" and "Perhaps I need new medication" (maybe you do, merely that's only one part of the film). The whole truth digs down into places like "I hate myself" and "I hate you for loving me" and "I feel embarrassed most how good y'all still are to me" and "I feel envious of you lot" and "I am ashamed of everything I do and say" and "I experience worthless" and "I feel nothing for yous sometimes" and "I desire to be alone" and "I hate everything."

I'm going to gauge that y'all oasis't said these things out loud, in a vulnerable way, to your husband. You haven't best-selling what you comport effectually within every twenty-four hours, even to yourself. You oasis't talked to a therapist, repeatedly, well-nigh how deep your cocky-hatred goes, and how much you fear, and how angry yous are. You lot haven't written your most shameful thoughts down when you journaled. You haven't allowed yourself to be vulnerable to the truth.

Beingness vulnerable and albeit how confused and sick and angry and ashamed you lot are is similar stripping out the mold and the rotted boards from your house. And when you dare to permit someone else into that kind of deep sadness, when you dare to tell someone else, out loud, in words, "I am against you, I am against myself, I hate myself every infinitesimal of every day," y'all're daring to endeavour on a different kind of dearest that no one sings about. You lot're daring to align yourself with someone in a existent way, maybe for the first time. You're showing them everything. You're taking the biggest jump, for yourself and for them, because you know, in your center, that they love you plenty to try it.

You're taking a real take chances for the outset time. You lot're refusing to pretend for another day. You're resolving to live in reality. And yous're refusing to do what you always do, which is run away, shut down, withhold, hibernate, and stop connecting. Right now, you're hiding. If you lot want to find a fashion out of this depression, you have to end hiding and dare to connect in an honest manner, with your husband, with yourself, with the WHOLE truth.

Lots of people don't have a true, existent, honest connection with their spouses. But it sounds to me like you've found someone who'southward stiff enough to handle it. So instead of kick out the best, about loyal person you lot've ever known merely because you hate yourself that much and believe, in your heart, that he's too expert for you, and his goodness is part of what's making you look bad and feel bad, information technology's time for you to work with what you have. You take something precious. I believe that you were meant to start from this love, to build from here.

Will it be hard? Will you lot be uncomfortable? Will you feel more afraid than yous've ever been earlier? Volition you hate telling the truth? Will y'all hate feeling vulnerable?

Yeah, yes, yes.

You're sure that you lot're codependent, and maybe you're not wrong most that. Just codependence is all about living inside a lie with someone else. Once you tell your married man the whole, uncomfortable truth, it'll be easier to brand some infinite for yourself, to live on your own terms. Considering you won't be pretending anymore. Y'all'll be saying, "I am non malleable. I am a sharp and pointy object and I'thou going to demand some things, outside of what nosotros have together." The more you lot make your uncomfortable realities known, the easier it will exist to serve your ain needs within the relationship.

You lot don't need to hit rock bottom, all alone. Patently yous can choose that, if you desire to. You can believe that erstwhile myth, that cutting yourself off and falling to pieces is more heroic, somehow, than being vulnerable and staying continued to the people who love you. You can live the way you feel you deserve to live: destitute, abandoned, penniless, loveless. You tin can shut out the last adept person in your life. Y'all can refuse connexion, refuse to look at yourself, turn down to dig for the whole truth and instead blame the copse, blame the sky, blame the sun.

But that's office of what landed you hither. It wasn't the wrong drugs, not entirely. Information technology wasn't the wrong therapist. It wasn't the ineffectiveness of journaling or microdosing. What got y'all hither was your refusal to make a real connection, to tell the truth, to accept and embrace the truth virtually who yous are and how angry and scared and ashamed you experience.

You wrote the truest thing in your whole letter at the very terminate: "Perhaps the reason I've behaved this manner for then long is that the only friend who could always tell me annihilation moved away."

But even that isn't the whole truth. What you lot didn't write was: She moved away and I didn't stay in impact. I let her become. I forgot about her. I shut her out.

What y'all meant with that final line was this: Maybe I should stop shutting people out.

It is exceptionally difficult to brand progress with your depression when you don't tell anyone (including yourself) the whole truth, when you shut people out and refuse to connect, when yous tell people to drop it the 2nd they want to talk about something real. You demand to look at the truth at present: You lot hate information technology when people run across you clearly. You'd rather disappear.

It'due south time to exercise the hardest thing: to brand real, deep connections based on honesty. It'south no coincidence that THIS is how people recover from hitting rock bottom, too — later on they try suicide, afterwards they destroy all of their relationships and wind up in AA: They see that they have zip, so they might as well tell the truth. What else is there? Might likewise admit how much they hate themselves. Might as well acknowledge how invisible they feel.

Maybe some part of you is romanticizing the idea of losing everything. Then you'll either die or you'll accept an excuse to be truly vulnerable. Your involvement in the discussion "chaos" seems telling. You think vulnerability is shameful. Only desperation and madness and chaos can excuse information technology.

I know you're hurting a lot, and I'm and then deplorable that you've been in such a nighttime identify for so long. Don't confuse anything I've written here with blame. I don't blame yous for feeling terrible. I spent decades of my life beingness controlled by shame. Even though I was never totally immobilized, the levels of self-hatred and rage and embarrassment and sadness I've waded through are off the charts. It has taken me a long time to be unashamed enough to look at the truth most how disordered I've been for decades. It's very hard to practice, fifty-fifty for me, a person who's always treated psychoanalysis as a super-fun leisure activity. I imagine that these things are nearly unbearable for you.

But I want to cease you lot from making an enormous mistake. I don't call back you should give away everything yous have only so you tin can finally tell the truth. I think you should experiment with telling the truth correct now, where you lot are. If you lot're getting defensive, if yous're thinking "I've done that already!," recognize that it's merely you, doing what yous do: Protecting yourself. Withdrawing instead of looking more closely at the chaos INSIDE OF YOU.

Y'all are incredibly afraid of feeling your emotions. Simply once you encompass your feelings instead of hiding from them (and low-level, clouded-skies low can exist a manifestation of hiding from stronger, less acceptable emotions like shame and acrimony), y'all'll finally meet that beingness cleaved and scared is cute. Hiding and shutting people out is what'due south ugly. Letting your friend move abroad and never thanking her for telling you the truth is ugly. Confusing existent dearest with quicksand is ugly.

Feeling unfixable and saying so, out loud, is cute. Maxim "I feel small" is beautiful. Saying "I demand you" is beautiful. Proverb "I have been antisocial you," and crying, and knowing how much y'all care, feeling that, for the commencement fourth dimension in years? There's not much in this world is more than beautiful than that.

In that moment, you feel exhausted and erased and scared and crumpled and hideous, simply you tin can also meet, through your tears, that y'all are loved. You lot are a razed house, a pile of bricks and splintered lumber, and the sky is vivid blue and the air is clear and bracing and you are loved, loved, loved. You can experience that instead of just recognizing information technology intellectually. Fifty-fifty when you can't come across yourself at all, even when yous are blind, he can still come across you. And he's not going anywhere.

You will feel grateful for him, one time you dare to look at yourself, once you dare to let yourself truly fall apart, in one case you dare to say, out loud, "I accept been hiding."

Polly

Order Heather Havrilesky'due south new book,What If This Were Enough?, here. Her communication column will appear hither every Wednesday.

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'I'chiliad Depressed and Want to Leave My Perfectly Skillful Husband'