I have a friend who is getting married soon, to a woman who suffers from depression. On all accounts, she is awesome and I love her - I don’t begrudge her having depression. She goes to a therapist any my friend (her fiancee) goes with her.
He’s a very caring guy but he’s never really had any experience with depression, and is actually coping quite well, considering he’s just doing what comes naturally to him. Plus, they’re both close with her family who is very supportive so he doesn’t have to do it all.
But lately it seems to be taking a toll on him. I don’t think he’s sleeping or eating well. He’s used to going out a lot but I don’t think he goes out so much anymore. He talks to me about it but being a man I don’t think he delves too deep into it.
Can anyone recommend some books, maybe, about living with someone with depression? How about some anecdotes? Anything I can suggest to him to help?
Could this be merely due to the fact that he’s getting married soon? It sounds like the couple are already dealing with her depression in a mature, responsible manner. Has either of them actually asked for your involvement?
Go ahead and educate yourself if you feel the need. But keep your involvement in perspective.
Is that really kosher to “turn” the discussion towards you when you’re merely accompanying someone to their session? If it is, I’ll tell him to mention his issues too.
As for why they’re stressed - yep, the wedding is coming up soon and that does add to it. However she is also having issues with her meds (they stopped working right, then she had to change) and has been hospitalized three times now.
He hasn’t asked me specifically for help but I’m one of the few people he’ll talk to about it. I asked him today if he had thought about getting a book on the topic (living with someone who has depression) and he said yes, so he does think he needs help just dealing with it.
I mean, there’s nothing WRONG…it’s not killing him and they’re not fighting, and they’re both doing everything they can. But it would be nice if he had some advice from someone who understands, or better yet, a book with a plethora of advice.
It seems to me that his role in accompanying her to her therapy should primarily be to understand what she’s going through and provide additional perspective to both her and her therapist to aid in her treatment. This is not to say that he can’t talk about how her situation affects him, as she needs that information, but the goal of her therapy session should not be to help him cope.
Personally, I’d strongly recommend that your friend get some therapy of his own, by himself. He’s going through something very emotionally challenging, and even though it sounds like he’s handling things quite well given the situation, being able to work through his feelings with his own therapist (not the same one his fiancée sees) would probably help him cope and better equip him to support her in a healthy way.
Starting out a marriage dealing with a problem like this must be very challenging in terms of setting up a healthy, equal relationship, so the more support both of them can get in processing their feelings and having an outside sanity check, the better.
As someone who has lived with moderate depression (my own) for most of my life, here’s what I would tell your friend:
The number one thing he can do to help his wife (and by extension himself) is to simply be upbeat. Hopefully, he is already a naturally happy and upbeat person so this won’t be any kind of chore for him. And, I am assuming that the wife-to-be doesn’t suffer from debilitating depresson, but rather has mild to moderate, so she can function in day-to-day life reasonably well. So if she’s anything like me, what she needs most when she’s feeling the depression is to be around someone who’s happy. Talk to her about silly things, positive things, meaningless things, anything other than her depresson.
Asking, “Hey, you seem depressed, is there anything I can do to help?” doesn’t help, it just re-focuses the attention on the depression. If her depression has been long-term, it’s likely that when she feels down there isn’t any one thing that’s caused it, so asking about it or asking why she’s depressed just makes it worse (it adds frustration at feeling depressed and not knowing why and thinking that you SHOULD know why and that if there isn’t a reason then you shouldn’t feel depressed, which makes you more depressed . . .)
But if you’re just upbeat and happy, you’ll tend to pull her mood up just by being that way. Talking about something neutral like, “Let me tell you about the stupid thing my co-worker did today” or “Did you see how nicely the neighbor’s roses are looking?” gives her something to occupy her mind with, other than how she feels.
Therapy is the place to ask the “What can I do?” question. Doing that is in no way turning the discussion to him, it’s still about her, but it’s about how he can help her, what can he do to make it better, what does she want from him. I did some therapy, but never took a SO along. But if I had, I would have really appreciated it if the SO had taken the initiative to ask “What can I do?” at one of the sessions.
No, but he could mention it either before or after the session and set up an appointment for himself, or the doctor may decide to combine the two sessions. I think he’d probably initially want to do a one-on-one evaluation, though.
I think it’s good that your friend is getting the help he will need, it’s a rough place to put yourself but the one peice I can give is one he will probably hear often enough in session - You can’t ‘fix’ it. As a guy he wants to protect his wife and make everything all better but depression isn’t a broken toe or or a bounced check. No hand wave or screw driver can fix what is wrong. Accept it, work with it and don’t focus on it.
Thanks everyone for your advice! This is something neither of us have ever dealt with (people we know and love are usually more on the “batshit crazy” end of the mental health scale, which is different than depression) and you bring up some great points.
We talked about it a bit more last night and I made the point to him that you guys suggest that you don’t dwell on the depression, don’t try to talk about the depression itself, and just try to live a happy, stress-free life.
And knowing that no one can “fix” it (at least, not us) is a very good thing to remember. He seems to have come to that conclusion as well and as they live their lives together hopefully they will both be ok.