Marriage is supposed to be “until death do you part.” Well, what about if your partner is chronically depressed and not attempting to better the situation without your relentless urging for a which he resents the shit out of you?
The only thing that’s really “until death do you part” is your actual life, and that shit is too short to spend with someone who makes you miserable.
We’re long distance. He’s depressed. He alternates between saying if I want an out, to take it now and that I am what keeps him alive. Do I stay to make sure he’s okay while he tries to get better or end it for my own sanity?
You knew this would happen, so quick dicking around. If you want out, get out. Sounds like he needs to build a new support system wherever he is now anyway.
I keep thinking there has to be more to life than this, but I don’t know what it is or how to find it.
Nah, there isn’t more to life than this. Stop looking for something that doesn’t exist and go do something you enjoy with the time that you have.
What if we end up with another Bush as president?
If it would keep Jon Stewart hosting the Daily Show for four more years, it would almost be worth it. Almost.
I’m in love with a married man. Please remind me how big of a piece of shit I am so I can move on from this toxic situation…
You can’t help who you fall in love with, and you’re not a piece of shit unless you have an actual affair with the guy. Quit punishing yourself. Forgive yourself instead.
I love that in your 2010 posts you talk about guys at the club wearing Affliction, meanwhile in my dismal little corner of Ohio in the year of our lord 2015 this is still how every man I see on a daily basis dresses.
Move.
The Hall of anti-fame is now the best of Dear Coquette. I’m puzzled. Did you get tired of people asking you why you named it that ?
I just felt like changing it.
Are you an introvert or an extrovert?
I’m an introvert. (I’m great at parties, but my default setting is pleasurable solitude, and the stuff going on in my head is almost always more interesting than the stuff going on in front of me.)
I just snorted vodka all over my laptop over one simple answer. “Move”
Priceless
Ah thanks for the Coquette dose,I can safely say this day has been worth it. Peace!
If you consider the failure rate for keeping wedding vows (divorce, infidelity, abuse, etc.), not many people actually marry one completely faithful partner for life. It’s clear that the whole “death do us part” thing is fairy tale nonsense. Sure, it happens, but those relationships would have existed just fine without the vow.
People go through various phases in their lives, and in each one they are going to have different emotional needs that might be best met in a relationship with a different partner or by being single. You have a future, unknown self who will have different needs and doesn’t deserve to be locked into something that your younger self needed/wanted at the time.
Well-said.
(Shame there’s no ‘like’ button nowadays.)
I say that obligation towards a depressed person is a limited affair if the depressed person doesn’t want to seek help for themselves and seems to resent whoever is trying to help them. It is a crippling mental disease, but outside of getting a court to legally recognize the person as being mentally incompetent to manage their illness and hand over legal custodial rights over them onto you so you can force them to be committed and treated, there’s nothing you can do if the person afflicted doesn’t make an effort to help themselves and actively seems to resist help.
At some point it has to be asked if your continued presence in their life is enabling them in some way. In some twisted ways staying with and continuously trying to help someone reinforces their behavior, because no matter how low they get and how their state makes others miserable, if you never leave there’s no consequence for not even trying to get better.
Where does the line exist that determines how far it can go before it’s no longer worth it to sacrifice your own mental wellbeing trying to combat the tide of brain chemicals sloshing around in someone else’s head? At what point is it ok to self-care and seek happiness for yourself in the face of another’s continuing misery?
If you want the relationship to work I say you prepare an ultimatum of sorts that and prepare yourself for both possible outcomes… Either he puts forth some effort to see a doctor and get himself on a continuing path towards getting better, or you seek a divorce. If he seeks a doctor, you’ll stay to support and help him along his path to recovery and be there through the long and arduous process of medications, therapy, etc… and so long as he keeps it up, you can stay around. If he decides not to, or decides to lie and say he is and then not follow through, you leave.
Healing and learning to cope with and keep depression under control is extremely difficult for both the sufferer as well as those around them, so if you decide to stay either because you can’t bear to leave or because he’s agreed to seek treatment, do not expect it to be easy. Best case scenario you’re looking at months to a year for things to begin to turn around, and it is more likely that only consistent treatment going for two years or more will be what works.
If you decide to leave, then make peace with that in whatever way you have to, and recognize that whatever he does afterwards was none of your doing. If someone is drowning, and you try and save them, but they start to drag you down with them, you can’t be blamed for saving yourself.