Just me 1980 Posted October 18, 2011 Posted October 18, 2011 Hi, I am a 31 year old woman and I was happily married until 18 months ago. My husband who is 29 woke up upset one day and stayed upset (lost weight and interest in everything as well) for the following six months. Of course I tried to figure out what was wrong, to help him out but he kept telling me he is "dealing with it". After six months he decided it was the marriage that was the problem and he left, moved back in with his mother. I was (and still am) devastated and shocked. This was the man that used to be my everything - lover, best friend, family - and it went from that to nothing in an extremely short space of time. He shut himself from me completely and whenever I used to call him upset, distressed, he was cold towards me, told me he didn't love me anymore, that he didn't miss me, that he was better now, refused to help me with anything I asked just inventing excuses (for examples, I had a MRI scan that I was nervous about and knowing that he was on holiday I asked him if he could take me and just be there for me as moral support. He came up with all sorts of lies - including the fact that his friend's cancer had returned and he had to take him to the hospital on the very same day! - before he just told me he didn't want to, he preferred to sleep in rather than come with me!). I just don't recognize him anymore! Now I know I should have left him alone and not contact him and haven't done that in 6 weeks or so. It's just killing me that I have no idea what caused this and how he could change so much?!!? I miss him!
SeedsOfHope Posted October 18, 2011 Posted October 18, 2011 Does his family have any history of chronic depression? The weight loss and loss of interests sound like explicit symptoms. Are there are any little things that make you suspect there may be another woman in the picture? Does he gamble?
Author Just me 1980 Posted October 19, 2011 Author Posted October 19, 2011 You know, all your questions are right on the money here - and I think that there is some truth in all of the above... I am not sure whether his family have suffered from depression. Of course at the time I was convinced he is depressed but he refused to seek any adequate help - i.e. the idea of talking to a counsellor seemed ludicrous to him! Regarding his family though - they are very different to my family... His father left them 13 years ago and moved away - I think in 13 years he's only seen his dad once for a couple of hours at Heathrow airport while his dad was in transit. He has always been very close to his mum and sister - perhaps too close?! His mum has been married about 5 times and in numerous other relationships in between. She had two children from her first marriage that she abandoned and didn't see for years and years. She always seemed to me to be able to change her mind very quickly about everything and anything, one moment she would say something then the next day she would say the opposite and she'd act like she had completely forgotten about her initial plans. His sister closely followed in her mum's steps - she has had more boyfriends than even she could remember, she fought and fought and managed to get onto this competitive three-year training course to become a paramedic and then she simply abandoned it after two years My husband himself seemed to be very keen on starting things but then just gave up on them - he started uni and gave it up after the first semester, he started a computer course that he paid a few thousands of pounds on and after the first exam, he abandoned that and wasted all that money. However - and here is where I blame myself because really I should have known shouldn't I what with his family and his own history of starting things and then just not finishing them - I always thought he would be so different when it came to us... We were together for 6 years and he was always supportive and loving and he kept telling me how he didn't want to repeat his mother's mistakes and how he wants to be with one person (i.e. me) for the rest of his life, how he wants to grow old together and how he is looking forward to that... And now onto the gambling thing... My feeling is that the beginning of all our problems lies in something that happened connected to money: I discovered he had lied to me about a loan he had. He owed some thousands of pounds that I only found out about by accident and even when I found out about it, he still denied it for a while. In the end he admitted it and he fought very hard for me to stay (I threatened at the time I would leave because if there is one thing I cannot live with that is lies!). I did stay and not even that but I gave him my last savings for him to repay this loan. And then six months later he became all depressed and sad for no apparent reason and a further six months down the line he just took the decision to leave. But I have a feeling that somehow that loan story was at the centre of his transformation... I still don't know what that money was for. He told me it was for a computer he had bought years ago - but what kind of computer would cost so much money???? I chose to believe him though because I so wanted to put it behind us and to trust him again like I used to. But obviously it didn't quite work out like that. When he left, that money issue started to bother me again and for a long time I did think of gambling as a possible issue - saying that I never, never knew of him gambling even 1 pound on anything in all our time together and even if now I am sure over the years he has kept a hell of a lot hidden from me, I do wonder if he could have gotten away with something quite so big.
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