Depression

[Substandard]

Eamonca,
I hope everything works out for you, and there's good advice already for you from people much better placed than me.  I blew the one real relationship in my life from falling between two stools, one trying to create the perfect relationship,  and the other trying to still be one of the lads.  I didn't handle the ending well for a number of years, and included an uncomfortably long flirtation with alcohol immediately afterwards.  I've adapted since and accepted that I'm likely to grow old and die alone, but I still keep my pipe dream of meeting the future Mrs (Blank) and being married with kids that will play county and go to college and all that (I keep it filed beside playing for United, winning the Euromillions, and others).
Counselling and professional guidance is a really positive step.  My tuppence worth, for what it might be worth, is to balance focus on the positives as well as the negatives.  Yes,  there are issues to resolve.  But you obviously both love each other- the text shows that from her part, and you have said and shown as much.  Get a babysitter in, and go on a date like you used to at the start of your relationship, and make it a fixture, where any issue is parked or out of bounds for the night..  Writing down issues is important,  but so is listing what made you fall in love in the first place.  You have invested a lot in each other.  Ye have children together.  While it may seem like ye might bring out the worst in each other from time to time, ye also bring out the best in each other.
It's not a solution to all ills, but I think it would be a very rewarding use of a small amount of time that might otherwise be lost brooding or fretting.
I sincerely hope it all works out.

[J70]

Eamon, hope you guys work it out.

Clearly you need counseling as a couple, with someone to mediate and make sure you both get a chance to be heard and discuss these issue.

[seafoid]

Sorry for the long post. I don't expect anyone to read this, but it's been therapeutic writing it all down.

Disclaimer: I love my wife and we have a happy family life. But when it gets bad, it gets bad.

I had a massive fight with the wife on Monday (which was a holiday here and daycare was closed). They seem to get bigger each time because of the unresolved issues that come out of them.

I've asked her before not to let our 4 year-old daughter sit in her lap in the car while she's driving, even if she's "just" moving the car into the street. On Saturday she went to move the car into the street and took our little girl with her. I said "She's not to sit in your lap while you're driving." She said "I understand," which I thought was a strange response.

I watched out the window, saw her pulling out of the garage, then stopping, and opening the driver's door to let our daughter out of her lap. She then put her in her little plastic car, and drove off around the corner, leaving our daughter unattended, which we never do. This is a driveway in an apartment complex with cars and delivery trucks coming and going. I thought "What the Sam Hill is she doing?!"

I grabbed the baby and ran downstairs and outside. By the time I caught up with our daughter, mom had already parked the car in the street and the two of them met at the gate. Our daughter was heading towards the street, although she would have had a hard time opening the gate to get her plastic car through.

I looked at my wife in horror and she immediately knew I was upset. I said "I don't think she should be allowed to sit in the driver's seat in any circumstances until she's old enough. I don't want her thinking it's okay to get in the driver's seat. I've seen her play with the controls of the car. Our garage floor has a slope. She might get into the car, play with the gearstick and move it into neutral. If you've forgotten to pull the handbrake (which she frequently does) then the car might roll forward and run over the baby and she won't know how to stop the car."

She said okay, and was sorry. She hadn't thought of that angle. I said words to the effect of "I'd appreciate it if you'd listen to me next time and don't openly defy me. I specifically told you not to do it and you did it anyway." I think I also brought up the business of leaving our daughter unattended in the driveway. This is where she started getting defensive and interrupting me. I raised my voice to make myself heard. Then she starts berating me for yelling. Some neighbours walked past and saw the whole thing. I told her not to do the usual thing of turning this around and making it all about me and my temper. From that moment forward, it was all about the shouting. The original problem of her not listening to me went out the window. More shouting and arguing ensued in the house. I put the kids in the bike and took them to the park.

She sent me a text a few minutes later saying she was going "somewhere else." I tracked the car on my phone and saw that she was on her way to her mother's house, one hour away, which is unoccupied at the minute because they're on holiday. She spent the night and the next day there, coming back on Tuesday evening in time to help me pick up the kids from daycare.

After putting the kids to bed I tried to talk it out with her. I let her speak first. I let her deliver a monologue lasting about ten minutes, uninterrupted. It was all about my temper and my shouting, and she played down the original problem. She attributed that to a misunderstanding, that she thought it was still okay to have the child on her lap if driving a few yards within the complex, she thought I only meant out on the public road where a cop could pull her over.

Then it was my turn to speak. I got about six words out and then she started interrupting. I was trying to tell her that I have a massive problem with how she interrupts me when I'm speaking and I end up not feeling listened to. I tried to explain that I felt like she openly defied me just to prove that she could. When I said that our daughter was not to sit in her lap, she said "I understand" rather than "okay" as you'd normally expect. It felt like she was acknowledging the request but had no intention of doing what I asked, and sure enough she did what she liked anyway, which she often does. It took me over half an hour to get these points across because of her constant interruptions. I would get about five words out only to be shouted down. At one point I took out three plastic cups and set them on a kitchen worktop, invoking the old three-strikes-and-you're-out system we used to use when our daughter was a toddler and misbehaving.

I tried to speak again and was interrupted almost immediately. I turned one of the cups upside down and said "strike one." She then flicked the cups off the counter and they went flying across the floor with a crash.

We tried writing down our grievances on a big sheet of paper, but she took the marker and started writing my grievances for me in her own words, which completely twisted the meaning.

After about another twenty minutes of me trying to speak and say my piece, she demanded that I apologize for shouting, which I did. She refused to talk about anything that happened before the shouting, claiming that "this is what abusers do, blaming their victim for making them violent." She only wanted to talk about the shouting which was "the core issue" as far as she was concerned.

I asked her what she would do if I had thrown cups across the kitchen the way she just did. She denied throwing them. Said she just "knocked them down" and played it down. I said that I may have a temper, but she can give me a good run for my money too. She denied it. I said that she was yelling at me in the driveway too. She argued that I was worse because I was yelling louder.

When I persisted with my attempts to tell her about her listening problem, she demanded that I leave the house and go somewhere else to spend the night. I refused.

She kept repeating that I was trying to argue that it's okay to yell at your wife. I said, approximately six times and through her constant interruptions, that it's not okay, but she kept coming back at me with this claim that I was trying to argue that it's okay to yell at your wife.

She gave me an ultimatum. She said that if I yell at her one more time, she's going to leave me. She had already moved a substantial amount of money out of our joint account and into her personal account, preparing to switch to a life as a single mother. She ordered me to come up with a plan for anger management and look for counselling. She denied that she has a problem with her own temper.

I got the usual barrage of criticism for not being proactive enough in planning activities for the kids and "letting her do it all." (It's not true. I work my ass off in the house, there's a lot more I could write about that.)

Since I effectively had a gun put to my head, I accepted all her demands, gave her a hug later and let her cry it out.

We had a normal day yesterday, and she clearly feels a lot better. Last night I asked her to move the money back over, and she already had.

She's back to normal happiness again, but I'm not. I feel completely defeated and still not listened to.

She has this annoying habit of interrupting when I speak. Most of the time it's about trivial stuff and it doesn't really matter, but during the big important discussions it becomes a big problem, especially when it comes to the safety of our children. She tends to dismiss my point of view out of hand. She has trouble listening to me. She has her own ideas about what I'm getting at and just runs with them, cutting me off before I get to my actual point.

I don't feel respected by my wife. I still feel like an employee with a bullying boss. I still feel the need to jump out of my chair and look busy when she walks into the room. I still can't take so much as a one-minute break to look at a newspaper or look at my phone if she's doing something productive, but she has the freedom to sit on the couch and watch TV or look at her phone for half an hour while I scrub and clean the kitchen. I brought that up during our "discussion" but she used some sort of convoluted logic to prove that I'm really not proactive enough.

I don't know how to bring this up with her. She spent all day yesterday thinking this was resolved, but it was just a truce that I called to stop her from breaking this family up.

Last night I slept on the couch (we've been doing a lot of that lately because she's such a light sleeper, and I use CPAP which sometimes wakes her up). I had trouble sleeping, and I dreamed that I'd fallen asleep during the kid's upcoming birthday party and she was angry with me for letting her down.

This morning she didn't see much of me because I skipped breakfast (which I never do) and had an early remote meeting that I had to lead. After the meeting she got snippy with me over a misunderstanding about masks, she'd left the context out of a statement and I misunderstood what she meant. We took the car to daycare and she kept making technical suggestions about getting the cleaning lady back to take some of the chores, what to do with calendar invites, and things to make the mornings run more smoothly. I was mostly silent and just nodded in agreement to everything she said. By the time we got to daycare she knew something was wrong, I think she could see I was on the verge of tears. I wanted to help her bring the kids in, but she dismissed me in the hallway saying that "there's something wrong with you, you look like you hate me." I just said "no" and almost started crying, and I walked out. She looked through the glass door and unlocked the car remotely so I could take my kick scooter out of the boot to take to work. That's where I completely broke down bawling, and I think she saw it.

I scooted on into work, stopping for a sit down and cry on the way. I held it together when I got to work, then took my computer to a private room, shut the door, and sat on the floor crying for an hour.

She has texted since saying she's sorry I'm upset and she wanted to give me a hug. I told her I'll be okay.

She's already set up a counseling appointment, I was in the process of doing that this morning for myself but didn't have time because of the meeting and getting the kids up.

I'm still in the room now but feeling a bit better after having written all this down. If you've managed to trudge through all that, thank you.

Imo women do not like shouting . It is  threatening and has a much higher value than the original fault. It's not really intuitive for men.
I hope that you work things out.

[Milltown Row2]

It's a tough one Eammon and I'd be clean useless at giving you any meaningful advice..

But.... Do not drag yourself down to the point were it is affecting your mental welbeing and seek help if it is...

Things may always seem very dark when these things happen in life and nothing looks to be getting better but it does.

Oh any if I try and tell my wife something it generally backfires so I stay away from that, funny enough she's worked that out too after being with her for nearly 30 years, in fairness it's take 30 years to work that out

[tbrick18]

Sorry for the long post. I don't expect anyone to read this, but it's been therapeutic writing it all down.

Disclaimer: I love my wife and we have a happy family life. But when it gets bad, it gets bad.

I had a massive fight with the wife on Monday (which was a holiday here and daycare was closed). They seem to get bigger each time because of the unresolved issues that come out of them.

I've asked her before not to let our 4 year-old daughter sit in her lap in the car while she's driving, even if she's "just" moving the car into the street. On Saturday she went to move the car into the street and took our little girl with her. I said "She's not to sit in your lap while you're driving." She said "I understand," which I thought was a strange response.

I watched out the window, saw her pulling out of the garage, then stopping, and opening the driver's door to let our daughter out of her lap. She then put her in her little plastic car, and drove off around the corner, leaving our daughter unattended, which we never do. This is a driveway in an apartment complex with cars and delivery trucks coming and going. I thought "What the Sam Hill is she doing?!"

I grabbed the baby and ran downstairs and outside. By the time I caught up with our daughter, mom had already parked the car in the street and the two of them met at the gate. Our daughter was heading towards the street, although she would have had a hard time opening the gate to get her plastic car through.

I looked at my wife in horror and she immediately knew I was upset. I said "I don't think she should be allowed to sit in the driver's seat in any circumstances until she's old enough. I don't want her thinking it's okay to get in the driver's seat. I've seen her play with the controls of the car. Our garage floor has a slope. She might get into the car, play with the gearstick and move it into neutral. If you've forgotten to pull the handbrake (which she frequently does) then the car might roll forward and run over the baby and she won't know how to stop the car."

She said okay, and was sorry. She hadn't thought of that angle. I said words to the effect of "I'd appreciate it if you'd listen to me next time and don't openly defy me. I specifically told you not to do it and you did it anyway." I think I also brought up the business of leaving our daughter unattended in the driveway. This is where she started getting defensive and interrupting me. I raised my voice to make myself heard. Then she starts berating me for yelling. Some neighbours walked past and saw the whole thing. I told her not to do the usual thing of turning this around and making it all about me and my temper. From that moment forward, it was all about the shouting. The original problem of her not listening to me went out the window. More shouting and arguing ensued in the house. I put the kids in the bike and took them to the park.

She sent me a text a few minutes later saying she was going "somewhere else." I tracked the car on my phone and saw that she was on her way to her mother's house, one hour away, which is unoccupied at the minute because they're on holiday. She spent the night and the next day there, coming back on Tuesday evening in time to help me pick up the kids from daycare.

After putting the kids to bed I tried to talk it out with her. I let her speak first. I let her deliver a monologue lasting about ten minutes, uninterrupted. It was all about my temper and my shouting, and she played down the original problem. She attributed that to a misunderstanding, that she thought it was still okay to have the child on her lap if driving a few yards within the complex, she thought I only meant out on the public road where a cop could pull her over.

Then it was my turn to speak. I got about six words out and then she started interrupting. I was trying to tell her that I have a massive problem with how she interrupts me when I'm speaking and I end up not feeling listened to. I tried to explain that I felt like she openly defied me just to prove that she could. When I said that our daughter was not to sit in her lap, she said "I understand" rather than "okay" as you'd normally expect. It felt like she was acknowledging the request but had no intention of doing what I asked, and sure enough she did what she liked anyway, which she often does. It took me over half an hour to get these points across because of her constant interruptions. I would get about five words out only to be shouted down. At one point I took out three plastic cups and set them on a kitchen worktop, invoking the old three-strikes-and-you're-out system we used to use when our daughter was a toddler and misbehaving.

I tried to speak again and was interrupted almost immediately. I turned one of the cups upside down and said "strike one." She then flicked the cups off the counter and they went flying across the floor with a crash.

We tried writing down our grievances on a big sheet of paper, but she took the marker and started writing my grievances for me in her own words, which completely twisted the meaning.

After about another twenty minutes of me trying to speak and say my piece, she demanded that I apologize for shouting, which I did. She refused to talk about anything that happened before the shouting, claiming that "this is what abusers do, blaming their victim for making them violent." She only wanted to talk about the shouting which was "the core issue" as far as she was concerned.

I asked her what she would do if I had thrown cups across the kitchen the way she just did. She denied throwing them. Said she just "knocked them down" and played it down. I said that I may have a temper, but she can give me a good run for my money too. She denied it. I said that she was yelling at me in the driveway too. She argued that I was worse because I was yelling louder.

When I persisted with my attempts to tell her about her listening problem, she demanded that I leave the house and go somewhere else to spend the night. I refused.

She kept repeating that I was trying to argue that it's okay to yell at your wife. I said, approximately six times and through her constant interruptions, that it's not okay, but she kept coming back at me with this claim that I was trying to argue that it's okay to yell at your wife.

She gave me an ultimatum. She said that if I yell at her one more time, she's going to leave me. She had already moved a substantial amount of money out of our joint account and into her personal account, preparing to switch to a life as a single mother. She ordered me to come up with a plan for anger management and look for counselling. She denied that she has a problem with her own temper.

I got the usual barrage of criticism for not being proactive enough in planning activities for the kids and "letting her do it all." (It's not true. I work my ass off in the house, there's a lot more I could write about that.)

Since I effectively had a gun put to my head, I accepted all her demands, gave her a hug later and let her cry it out.

We had a normal day yesterday, and she clearly feels a lot better. Last night I asked her to move the money back over, and she already had.

She's back to normal happiness again, but I'm not. I feel completely defeated and still not listened to.

She has this annoying habit of interrupting when I speak. Most of the time it's about trivial stuff and it doesn't really matter, but during the big important discussions it becomes a big problem, especially when it comes to the safety of our children. She tends to dismiss my point of view out of hand. She has trouble listening to me. She has her own ideas about what I'm getting at and just runs with them, cutting me off before I get to my actual point.

I don't feel respected by my wife. I still feel like an employee with a bullying boss. I still feel the need to jump out of my chair and look busy when she walks into the room. I still can't take so much as a one-minute break to look at a newspaper or look at my phone if she's doing something productive, but she has the freedom to sit on the couch and watch TV or look at her phone for half an hour while I scrub and clean the kitchen. I brought that up during our "discussion" but she used some sort of convoluted logic to prove that I'm really not proactive enough.

I don't know how to bring this up with her. She spent all day yesterday thinking this was resolved, but it was just a truce that I called to stop her from breaking this family up.

Last night I slept on the couch (we've been doing a lot of that lately because she's such a light sleeper, and I use CPAP which sometimes wakes her up). I had trouble sleeping, and I dreamed that I'd fallen asleep during the kid's upcoming birthday party and she was angry with me for letting her down.

This morning she didn't see much of me because I skipped breakfast (which I never do) and had an early remote meeting that I had to lead. After the meeting she got snippy with me over a misunderstanding about masks, she'd left the context out of a statement and I misunderstood what she meant. We took the car to daycare and she kept making technical suggestions about getting the cleaning lady back to take some of the chores, what to do with calendar invites, and things to make the mornings run more smoothly. I was mostly silent and just nodded in agreement to everything she said. By the time we got to daycare she knew something was wrong, I think she could see I was on the verge of tears. I wanted to help her bring the kids in, but she dismissed me in the hallway saying that "there's something wrong with you, you look like you hate me." I just said "no" and almost started crying, and I walked out. She looked through the glass door and unlocked the car remotely so I could take my kick scooter out of the boot to take to work. That's where I completely broke down bawling, and I think she saw it.

I scooted on into work, stopping for a sit down and cry on the way. I held it together when I got to work, then took my computer to a private room, shut the door, and sat on the floor crying for an hour.

She has texted since saying she's sorry I'm upset and she wanted to give me a hug. I told her I'll be okay.

She's already set up a counseling appointment, I was in the process of doing that this morning for myself but didn't have time because of the meeting and getting the kids up.

I'm still in the room now but feeling a bit better after having written all this down. If you've managed to trudge through all that, thank you.

Firstly, fair play for having the courage to share all of that on here. It must have been tough.
Marriage can be tough, believe me I know!
In general terms, not focusing on you here, if a situation or environment is having a detrimental effect on your mental health you need to either remove yourself from whatever is negatively affecting you OR try to take action to change the situation to not be so negative.
It seems like you and your wife have both recognised that something isnt right and you both have take action to try to resolve some of these issues and that, for me, is a very positive step.
I'm no councillor, but I've had my own experiences when it comes to mental health. My wife previously had severe postnatal and my teenage son currently going through his issues (which I thought we had got on top of but have come to the surface again recently). I can say without any shadow of a doubt, their issues 100% effect my own state of health, sometimes to the point where I dont know if I have an issue or they do or both. It affects my sleep, ability to concentrate, eating patterns....basically all facets of daily life.
So I feel your pain.

The only advice I can give you, is to talk to as many people as possible. Don't bottle it up as that won't help you, your wife or your kids.
I really hope things work out for you and the counselling helps.
I've said it on here before and it still stands, feel free to PM me any time. Happy to pick up the phone or just listen if its helpful.
That offer stands for anyone.

Look after yourself chap.

[imtommygunn]

I don't know if any of you listen to the GAA social podcast but there is a very powerful episode this week where Armagh ladies player Aoife Lennon is on it.

She is a very impressive speaker about a lot of things she has suffered between her own issues and what happened with her father. It is a bit harrowing to listen to as well tbh but it is a very very good listen. You can't help but feel sorry for her and respect her a lot at the same time.

I guess it is more her father's depression she talks a bit about but she has her own things too which aren't quite depression but for me very much fall into the mental health sphere. Definitely quite a bit on grief which I imagine sometimes is a contributing factor to depression and then various other things.

[Jell 0 Biafra]

My very brief and amateur 2c, Eamon:

First, best of luck, you both have a lot of work to do, both as a couple and individually.

Second, in terms of what you might consider revising about your own reactions (obviously no-one here can speak to what she should consider), I noticed you described a couple of times your mrs. as having "defied" you. 

Now, I agree with you that  the "don't put the kid in the front seat" is obviously right.  However your description of her subsequent actions as 'defying' you (as opposed to ignoring you, or deciding otherwise) may not be helpful.  These terms suggest that she is choosing to disobey a legitimate authority. 

Might you consider another way of describing her actions that don't paint you as the authority that is to be followed or else defied?

Also, might this way of describing this situation tap into something that she feels about your view on authority  in your relationship?

[RedHand88]

Few alarming things from both sides.
The taking the money from the joint account is just sh**ty. Unfortunately that's the risk you take when getting a joint account with a partner. Total trust is needed.
Why/How are you tracking her car? Don't think anyone mentioned this but its a huge red flag.
+1 on what someone else said about you saying she "defied you". It's the exactly the sort of language/word than women don't want to hear from a man.
I believe you when you mentioned the throwing the cup bit.

Ultimately, I think you both need to work on what you're doing. I wish you all the best with it.

[Milltown Row2]

Guys who hasn't said something they shouldn't have said during a heated argument?

Minor tiff can lead to some nasty verbals

The money thing, mine would have difficulty with taking it as the mortgage, both kids student rent, kitchen loan, car payments, electric, standing orders, no savings ..

She wouldn't have enough for a taxi to her mums, who lives in the same street

[Jell 0 Biafra]

Why/How are you tracking her car? Don't think anyone mentioned this but its a huge red flag.

Yes.  I remember reading this and wondering if this is the norm nowadays or whether it was unusual.  Wouldn't be at all happy if I found my other half was doing it on me.

[AustinPowers]

Why/How are you tracking her car? Don't think anyone mentioned this but its a huge red flag.

Yes.  I remember reading this and wondering if this is the norm nowadays or whether it was unusual.  Wouldn't be at all happy if I found my other half was doing it on me.

Isnt there  an app  where you can track  someone else's phone?

And these air tags thing , aren't  they  just like planting a bug on someone?

[Milltown Row2]

Wife tracks our adult kids every day on an app...

[Jell 0 Biafra]

Do they know?

[Milltown Row2]

Do they know?

Yeah they have to allow her. Students living away from home, she thinks it's a good idea...

I keep telling her they are grown ass women

[Jell 0 Biafra]

Seems strange to me, but if everyone involved is OK with it ...