I have been married to my husband for 2.5 years. He has had depression episodes since he was a teenager, but has been depressed the last 2 years ( so almost all of our marriage). This has been very hard on me and I recently started seeing my own counselor (he sees one as well) because emotionally it is all becoming very taxing. Not only is he depressed, but he kind of became an alcholic trying to numb the pain of his depression. We were/still are having marriage problems as he has communication issues and so we don’t communicate the best. He also suffers from anxiety and so if I make a comment that I would like him to hep me with something or pick up after himself, he usually becomes upset and defensive. We can never solve anything it seems like.
So the last year he started to drink more and more, even though I asked him to stop. It wasn’t until his family found out about his drinking/depression issues that he has stopped drinking (he would sometimes cut when he was drunk and wasn’t helping the effectiveness of the pills he takes for depression). So he hasn’t been drinking for the past 6 weeks.. I should be happy that he stopped right? I am because it was chaotic how he would drinking a 6 pack or more quickly, but now I am missing doing that socially with him. I want to be able to do that with him sometimes (he didn’t have a problem with drinking when we got married), but he seems uncapable of handling alcohol while he is depressed. I support this…but I am having a hard time with NEVER being able to drink with him again. I want him to get better. I am also upset that it seems like everyone else I know in our lives don’t have these problems in their relationship and get to be happy. I know happy is subjective… but I feel cheated that all this has happened and we have barely been married.
If that wasn’t enough for our relationship… he in the last 6 months blind-sided me and said that he may not want children anymore. We had many talks on children.. how many, names, the house had to have at least 2 bedrooms for kids, etc. I have been trying to be there for him through his depression and other issues, hoping that he would get better and we could start a family. We always talked about trying for a family after we went back to our honeymoon spot for our 3rd Anniversary (in July). Now all of the dreams we talked about have been thrown out the window…. and I feel like I am going to be really burned in this relationship. I feel like he has changed the “rules” that we talked about where we got married. I helped him through his depression, he still doesn’t want kids and I have to eventually leave. I won’t give up my dream to be a mom…. but I wonder how much longer I should stay hoping he will want children with me. I think a lot of it is his depression and he said he doesn’t think he would be a good dad. But he also said our nephew that is 2.5 is too busy for him and he doesn’t want to do that.
I don’t want to get divorced… but what are everyone’s thoughts? I sometimes think there are too many issues in this relationship that will it ever have a happy future? His depression causes him to withdraw and so I don’t always feel like we are that close when he does that. Am I stupid to still be with him? Sorry this is so long!
