Living with a depressed spouse

I'm new to this forum, and would love someone out there in the great big world of cyberspace to give me something to help with my husband.

I've been with my husband for 11 years, married for 4. We have no kids as of yet, but want to in the next few years. My problem lies in my husband's undiagnosed depression. He has always struggled with his emotions: starting back in high school he began to cut himself on the arms to deal with frustration and other negative feelings. This continued when I met him, and only in the last few years has begun to taper off. He has also always had a kind of mild obsession with suicide, always knowing how he'd want to do it but claiming he'd never have the guts.

Five years ago, I got a job teaching on the other side of the state, and we made plans to move. One thing led to another, and somehow we ended up in a situation where we were living where I worked, and he would drive 3 1/2 hours across the state to his job, then return 4 days later. This went on for three years. he was afraid to loose the income, afraid to make the change that would result from his leaving that job.

Two years ago, that company closed, and we were finally living together again. He struggled with anxiety and depression, until he found a position where he worked from home, for a similar wage as before. You'd think this would be great, wouldn't you? Unfortunately, those three years had meant we didn't make friends in this town as a couple, we had basically hoarded our time together. Now he was at home everyday, with no contact with anyone. His depression would come and go, depending on how work had been.

That job eventually became something he could no longer do, because of new management. With my blessing and support, he quit this summer. The goal we had was for me to find a new teaching job and for us to move. The economy has kept that from happening, and now we find ourselves in a place where we don't have a lot of friends, and where neither one of us wants to be. We can't afford to just up and move, and thus are kind of stuck.

My husband has taken this hard. He swings from days where he can talk about his options: school, another job, etc... and days where he gets up, exercises, and goes back to bed. He doesn't want to do the things we'd enjoyed together, he worries about money constantly, he's increasingly hard on me.

We've tried to talk about his bouts of depression in the past, but they always end up the same way: he won't go to a doctor, and he doesn't want to deal with it. I was hopeful as we approached this summer, as he made a point of choosing a short-term health insurance with mental health benefits, but now I'm struggling to keep that optimism. The more he removes from me, basically his only 'friend' here, the more I worry I'll come home from school one day and find him lying in the bathtub.

This long and frustrated post basically leads me to one question: How hard to I push for a counselor? I know he's not as depressed as many people out there, but something's not right with him, and I don't know how hard I can or should push to get him to help. Am I doing right? Or do I need to back off and let him work through things?

Karen,

thanks for the support. He is in limbo, job-wise, because we were hopeful of moving. Now that seems to be impossible for yet another school year, and I know he's floundering with what to do. He feels such a burden to bring in income, yet hates working. We have money set aside for him to go to school, but he doesn't know what he would study. It all adds up to too many choices, and I can just see him spiraling down.

I will continue to try and prod him gently towards seeing someone. It helps to know that a big confrontation isn't the way to go... that's been part of my difficulty. How hard to push someone to do something they don't want to do... ugg.

I want my best friend back by my side. I want the man who sobbed like a baby when we put our cat to sleep, and who laughed until he made me cry over a fart joke. I want the guy who looks at me like I'm the latest supermodel, and who gets all excited over seeing a new car. Sometimes I've yeared for alone time, with him working from home and now being home all summer, but I don't want this kind of alone time.

Part of my difficulty lies in the fact that both his parents are physicians, and thus he has never really 'had' to go to a doctor. So as an adult, he has gone once in the entire time we've been together. It's not an insurance thing, it's an.... I don't know what, thing. So getting him to a doctor is something that I've been fighting and loosing.

I've tried to get his parents involved, but the fact is they don't live with him. So they have a conversation when I call them, and then let it go, assuming things are just better. None of his family really wants to deal with this, and its easy for them to just make a token effort and then leave it in my lap.

I guess my continued plan is just going to be more of the same: trying to keep him interested and involved with whatever I can come up with, gently prod him toward counselling... I worry what's going to happen when I start school in a couple of weeks. He'll be home alone while I'm working... that's the kind of thing where I worry he'll start making extreme decisions. I think I'm worried more about him leaving me than anything else at that point.