Relationships with those on Anti-Depressants

[orionboxing]

I already have thread going in this forum...but I want a few takes on something specifically regarding anti-depressants.

 

I have my own take on this. I was married to someone for nearly three years that was on 3 or 4 different mood-stabilizers/anti-depressants at a time.

 

Looking back at the marriage recently (which ended last year) I see my wife's emotional problems as a major reason our marriage ended.

 

It was terrible cycle of massive weight gain, unpredictable mood swings, months without sex, passive behavior, and manic episodes where I would be belittled for things such as not taking the dishes out of the dishwasher the correct way.

 

For a good amount of time, I really blamed myself for all of the problems. I tried my best to anticipate (or duck) these mood swings to keep everything intact. Constant praise and support weren't sufficient. No matter my help, or concern, the efforts were just not good enough. I lost a ton of confidence in myself...and just recently have recovered from it...with a lot of help from friends and some attractive girls that have expressed some interest in me (I'm not rushing into anything, however).

 

After asking for a divorce last year, I went through a bout of sadness recently where I mourned the death of my marriage. For reasons unexplained, I desired the see my wife again. I had to meet with her regarding some financial things regardless. When she contacted me via a phone call, she sounded bright and full of life. A good sign, I thought.

 

But a mere hour later our meetup was very cold and unpleasant, clearly influenced by whatever meds she had taken. It seemed like I was talking to another person...almost a multiple-personality situation.

 

At first I was hurt, but soon realized that my ex-wife is still very, very ill and there is nothing I, or sadly her for that matter, can do about it. Her counselors (both of them) can not seem to get her out of the dark. It's a sad situation in retrospect...and I cannot place the blame on myself any longer.

 

What have been your experiences been with partners on anti-depressants?

 

Please share.

[germain]

I am in your ex's situation. Almost exactly as you describe. Mood swings, anger issues, frequent fighting, lack of sex. Really you described my last relationship perfectly.

 

Not only do we suffer with these problems but also consider the issues that arise from taking the medication itself. Switching between different doctors or meds is a draining process, on both people. I've been on medication that regulates my mood and seems to genuinely help, but it never lasts forever.

 

Also "testing" each med generally takes about 4 to 6 weeks. Life continues during this period, regardless of whether or not the medication is working. My ex and I were doing pretty poorly, so I made the move to start seeing my doctor again. It helped some, but ultimately it was a waiting game to see when the right combination worked for me. Unfortunately, we didn't make it to that point.

 

My ex blamed herself for so much of my anger. I would bitch and start a fight about the dishes for instance, and the next night the dishes were taken care of. And I felt horrible about it. This wasn't what I wanted. I just wanted to feel normal and happy and to treat her like the amazing person she is for once. But I really don't know how to get to this point.

 

I'd like to think people like us aren't forever broken. That we can have healthy relationships with others. It just takes time, work, and a lot of patience I suspect. We can't run away from ourselves, and I wish my ex could have stuck it out with me. But it's very hard being on the receiving end and not something I expect most people to be able to handle or understand.

Edited March 11, 2013 by germain

[LifeIsGreat]

I was married to someone like that, and it only lasted 2 1/2 yrs. Have to say, I wasn't nearly as supportive as you appear to be and lost my patience easily.

 

In my experience, people with emotional issues tend to blame their partner for their unhappiness. Also, long before your support helps to bring your s/o "up", they will bring you "down". It's a long hard road my friend, and I couldn't do it.

 

When I was going through my seperation and divorce (which was extremely painful for me), I did a lot of research on being in a relationship with someone who suffers from depression. The overwhelming consenus was this: count your blessings that they leave you because you will be much happier in the long-run. Yes, that is VERY hard to hear---I know. The second time my wife left, I completely let her go---even helping her financially and loading the truck for her.

 

Since then I have dated and had relationships with other women who also suffer with depression. I could not/would not stay in such a relationship and had to let them go.

 

In the end, your s/o's issue is their issue and there is nothing you can do UNTIL they recognize it and are willing to do WHATEVER it takes to get better. For me that was a hard pill to swallow since I'm such a "fixer". But once I realized and truly believed it, life went on just fine.

[orionboxing]

In my experience, people with emotional issues tend to blame their partner for their unhappiness. Also, long before your support helps to bring your s/o "up", they will bring you "down".

 

Wow...you are really nailing this. This is exactly what was happening with me. The most perfect example of this was once when we went out to dinner. She had particularly tough day at work and was angry and yelling about her terrible co-workers over the most insignificant things. I tried to offer my support...but apparently the support was not good enough....she then began brutally tearing me down for being insensitive. When I excused myself to use the restroom, I had this urge to just grab the keys and leave her at the restaurant. If I wasn't married to her, I probably would have.

 

There were times where when she'd be laying on our bathroom floor crying and I physically had to pick her up off the ground to get her to stop. Later, she'd accuse me of being a "robot" with my emotions. I could not win.

 

I would try to kiss my wife on the cheek sometimes, and she would literally shudder as I moved close to do so. The next day, being angry and sad with me because we weren't close to having children.

 

It is so hard when you are attracted to this person, love them unconditionally and they don't even realize it.

[RedHead33]

Illness does not define the person. If you just started dating someone that is sick and it is emotionally draining and difficult for you then getting out of that relationship is ok. But if you are married to someone who gets depressed and sick, you should stick around and help that person. Depression is illness and it takes time to get diagnosed, find appropriate medication and dosage and depressed people need support by loved ones.

Turning your back on someone in such a difficult time... Try to put yourself in their shoes...

[orionboxing]

Turning your back on someone in such a difficult time... Try to put yourself in their shoes...

 

Everyone has a breaking point. At what point do you cut ties to save yourself?

 

The issue with my wife was that she was capable of showing emotion (kissing the dog on the head, talking nicely with her mother) and after two hours or so, exploding on me. It was like being blindsided by a truck.

 

My wife also not an bed-ridden invalid. She held a respectable position at a large company. This is what made our life so unpredictable. Putting her game face on for what she felt mattered, shutting things down that didn't suit her current mood but were important regardless.

 

I just made a decision to not hurt anymore.

[emmalynro]

I think people are conflating different categories here. In my mind, someone who takes an antidepressant because he struggles with bad feelings sometimes is not at all the same as someone who needs mood stabilizers for bipolar I. And many people take medication and go to therapy; are they automatically off the table because of that? What about the person who doesn't take antidepressants when he's legitimately crazy?

 

I'd only worry if someone is taking antipsychotics or mood stabilizers. Those are used for far more serious conditions than simple depression. And if he gets ECT, like an ex of mine did, well...turn and run. Just trust me. Turn and run.

[Treasa]

I'm on two antidepressants, Prozac and Wellbutrin, and I often get comments that I'm the most rational, pleasant, reasonable, patient person most people know. I don't have work problems, relationship problems, family problems, money problems, etc. I'm doing pretty well, and I came from a bad place. It took a lot of work. I don't plan on going off the antidepressants, because they *help* me.

[orionboxing]

And if he gets ECT, like an ex of mine did, well...turn and run. Just trust me. Turn and run.

 

Wow...if you feel comfortable talking about this. Please do so.

 

My wife jumped between Strattera, Lymicatal, and Cymbalta. I don't remember the fourth and fifth drugs she was taking earlier on. She also was taking some of prescription med for her stomach. I don't remember what that was either. Like previously mentioned, it was always a struggle to get the balance right.

 

By far the worst was Cymbalta. She suffered what she called "brain zaps" once going off of them.

 

This type of depression and erratic behavior not only cost her a marriage but many friendships as well. She'd go weeks without talking to anyone except me and her mother. She would get into fits of rage and jealously when her peers, old classmates, or friends went on elaborate vacations or announced that they were expecting. It was little things like this that would destroy our weekends.

 

My wife is now supposedly seeing someone else. She is someone who always needs approval from others to be happy. I could only shake my head in disbelief (not in jealously, but just sadness that she still isn't fixed).

 

That poor guy...a long road ahead for him if he doesn't pick up on it right away.

Edited March 12, 2013 by orionboxing

[emmalynro]

Background: I was born with a rare, completely biological form of depression. It has no relation to my life and it has no cure. Because it's biological it cannot be treated with therapy (although oddly enough I see a therapist simply to help deal with other issues in my life). Medication is a part of my life like a diabetic with insulin.

 

Antidepressants do not make someone unsuitable for dating. I think the problem is that they're over-prescribed and people expect the pills will fix their lives. Some folks become dependent upon them---not just physically but mentally; they turn to the pills for every small grief and setback. And these drugs can have profound side effects, some of which are dangerous and crippling to perfectly healthy people. The important question is why are they taking these drugs? Is it a short-term problem? Is it part of a treatment for something like OCD?

 

My condition is relatively serious, but I get by on a very very small dosage of an extremely mild antidepressant. I know my brain chemistry is difficult but I've worked incredibly hard to develop healthy coping habits for the pains I *can* control. And none of my partners have ever thought less of me for it.

 

As for the ECT ex, well...he said he had "treatment-resistant depression", a very real thing but didn't quite seem like him. Couple years later and oh, hey, he's stalking me and asking if he's the father of my children (I don't have children). He asks if I'm watching him and then contacting people to spread rumors about him. What's that your new doctor said? Paranoid schizophrenia? That makes much more sense.

 

PS: I got to test a lot of drugs when I was younger. I had brain zaps once. They were horrific. Imagine the weird shock you get when you lick a nine-volt battery over your entire body. Now imagine that happening anywhere from a few times per day to five times a minute. I spent about two weeks incapacitated on my mother's couch.

[flitzanu]

i'm not sure you're pointing the fingers in the right direction.

 

the biggest thing i've learned from this forum is, (often) no one wants to simply accept that two people don't always work together. everyone wants a reason or scapegoat to ease guilt, rejection, pain, whatever it may be.

 

as pointed out above, someone who may be Manic, Bipolar, Paranoid Schizophrenic, or other EXTREMELY strong personality disorders are in a more finite category than someone just "being depressed".

 

there's also a very fine point in what you'd stated, that after the divorce when you spoke, that she seemed happy and bright...and then you met and she was cold.

 

have you considered that her life was happy without the drama of the relationship?

 

sorry, i'm sure you'll think it's just dickish to say, but again...sometimes people just DON'T work together.

 

and yes, i do take anti deps, have for years. i was in a relationship without them, and after she left and i started taking them, i realized how cold and dark i'd been, and "found myself" again. i wanted to believe that i was to blame, and that my moods were the reason she left.

 

maybe they were? maybe they weren't though, because i've still had the same personality traits while on them and off of the meds.

 

also as a side note...while depression is serious and a real concern...using it as an excuse by someone for why they "act that way" is selfish and not accepting blame. just because i may have depression or situational depression doesn't give me a right to take it out on someone else...so in that aspect i am taking your side that you shouldn't have to be the butt of their negativity. but on the other side, to blame their behavior only by their meds is a little shortsighted.

[blue_jay_bird]

Theirs a lot of stigma around mental illness.

 

My mother is bipolar and i fully understand why people with personal experience tell others to run for the hills.

 

BUT their are people that successfully treat their disorder. And it's important to look at the person as a whole.

 

My ex may have left me because i was a little down. But you will be hard pressed to find a person that does not suffer from depression once or twice in their life time.

 

It's a common saying that having "depression is todays common cold." As in america, 1 in 10 people are taking antidepressants.

[orionboxing]

 

there's also a very fine point in what you'd stated, that after the divorce when you spoke, that she seemed happy and bright...and then you met and she was cold.

 

No offense taken by anything that you said.

 

Sorry need to clarify this. She called me at 4:50pm and was happy, chipper, etc. By 5:50pm, she was a cold bitch. What on earth materialized in that one hour?

 

This was a woman that could never be happy with what she was given, or what she earned. She wasn't just upset with our relationship, but relationships with just about everyone else. This woman had very serious mental/emotional issues.

[flitzanu]

No offense taken by anything that you said.

 

Sorry need to clarify this. She called me at 4:50pm and was happy, chipper, etc. By 5:50pm, she was a cold bitch. What on earth materialized in that one hour?

 

This was a woman that could never be happy with what she was given, or what she earned. She wasn't just upset with our relationship, but relationships with just about everyone else. This woman had very serious mental/emotional issues.

 

and THAT was what i was getting at in so many words. some people just AREN'T happy, regardless of meds, no meds, or disorders. for someone that doesn't want to try to be happy, or try to be better, there's just nothing you could really do. and for that...you have to find your own sanity and do what makes YOU happy, even if it means walking away from them. there's no need for you to live in the same rut as they want to live.

[J_L_C]

No offense taken by anything that you said.

 

Sorry need to clarify this. She called me at 4:50pm and was happy, chipper, etc. By 5:50pm, she was a cold bitch. What on earth materialized in that one hour?

 

This was a woman that could never be happy with what she was given, or what she earned. She wasn't just upset with our relationship, but relationships with just about everyone else. This woman had very serious mental/emotional issues.

 

Hi there.

I surely don't want to speculate but had the idea of "borderline personality disorder" come up at all? Check on my post in 'self-improvement' in regards to dating those with BPD.

 

To those of you who mentioned "brain zaps", what do you mean exactly? I am on Cymbalta and am curious.

 

Emmanlyro...if you don't mind, what is the rare form of biological depression? I was recently diagnose with depression and have felt this way my whole life.

[emmalynro]

Hi JLC,

 

Biological depression is usually called "melancholic depression" or just "melancholia". There are a few traits that distinguish it from other kinds of depression:

 

- feelings are worse in the morning (most depressions get worse as the day goes on)

- insomnia rather than sleeping too much

- too little appetite rather than eating too much

- when untreated, catatonia is possible (being unable to stand, walk, and in extreme cases, move)

 

As a 3-year-old I would run to the laundry basket in my closet, shut the door and bury myself in all the dirty clothes, and cry for hours. When my parents threw me birthday parties I'd cry even harder. In elementary school I would eat foil and stab myself with scissors as a punishment "for being bad". And at my worst I would just be in bed for ages and wouldn't move. My teachers were afraid I was being abused. Luckily, the diagnosis of melancholia was a life-saver, and I started trials of all sorts of drugs. (Little-known perk: the biological form is of such interest to doctors that you can make serious bank as a test subject). Some of these were very helpful and some of these were very harmful.

 

After many years of treatments and post-treatments and post-post treatments, I'm mostly doing OK. I'm 26 now.

 

As for brain zaps, well, you don't have to worry until you stop taking your meds. Then may God have mercy on your soul.

[emmalynro]

"Was that AFTER you had been put on a strict nutritional diet and all the chemicals in your environment suspected of the course?"

 

Yes. Yes it was. It was THREE YEARS of every kind of diet, exercise, environment (school, home etc) and therapy imaginable before I was finally put on psychiatric drugs. But thanks for assuming! And yes they do work. I'm proof.

 

There are a lot of bad things about antidepressants. I think antipsychotics are incredibly dangerous. But some people need them to function. I would rather be dating someone who was trying to improve himself rather than someone who was terribly sick and not getting any help for it.

[emmalynro]

I didn't start any kind of medication until I was 9. The extreme behavior/life/environment intervention began a bit before age 6. None of it worked. Period.

 

I am proof the drugs work. I would (probably*) be alive without the medication, but I would not be able to have a high-paying job in a challenging field and enjoy going out with my friends. The last time I was taken off drugs completely and given ample time to flush them entirely from my system, I went back to symptoms I hadn't had since preschool: hours of sobbing plus the inability to move.

 

Are psychiatric drugs sold by unscrupulous money-grubbing Big Pharma companies that don't care about people's welfare? Yes. Does that mean all drugs are bad? No. Look, get on your soapbox all you want, but medication is the difference between my happily hopping to work every morning and having a nurse help me out of bed and sponge-bathe me because my arms won't lift up. Sorry, I'm not going to be ashamed of taking something I need to live. I'm done with this thread.

 

 

* = The suicide rate among those with melancholia is the highest by far in the class of depressive disorders.

[germain]

STOP!

Was that AFTER you had been put on a strict nutritional diet and all the chemicals in your environment suspected of the cause? What vaccinations were you given between birth and 3 years old?

Nup. They just whack you up on drugs which have no basis in science for being effective.

PSYCHIATRY - THE INDUSTRY OF DEATH

 

lol vaccinations? "Industry of death"? How can you have an industry based on killing off your customers and yet expect to somehow sustain your income? Is this some sort of population control? Or wait, maybe it's the food coloring we use, right?

 

Ever consider that perhaps it is our increased understanding of physiological functioning that has brought about psychiatric medication? Suicide isn't a recent phenomenon. Some of the greatest thinkers, writers, lovers suffered from depression but at the time had no idea such a thing existed. I think the term "depression" is tossed around a lot. Being depressed because you lost your job isn't the same as being depressed when everything in your life is going pretty well, yet you still are unable to function or control your mood because of a genetic deficiency in your brain's wiring or whatever it may be.

 

I don't believe the solution to mood disorders is to be on medication for the rest of one's life. Eventually you have to learn how to cope with your disease, because it isn't going away. How to basically live with it and control it so that you can function and be the person you want to be.

Not giving someone you care about the opportunity and support they need to get it right is only doing yourself a disservice if they honestly acknowledge their problems and are willing and wanting to put in the work to fix it. That last bit is the important part.

[Feelin Frisky]

Anti-depressants--at least the modern ones--don't cause maladies. They treat them. If a person is an emotional mess and anti-depressants don't help, they eare either not speaking up and changing their meds until they find the ones that deal with their particular chemical imbalance or they have something so wrong with them that anti-depressants can't work. For one thing, they way anti-depressants work is very subtly. You can not continue to self medicate with alcohol or illicit drugs and be clear-headeded enough to understand the subtle benefits anti-depressants provide which people then learn to build on. Another issue is that people are misinformed about what constitutes and anti-depressant and often mistake them with anti-psychotic medications which are meant as a last resport for people having psychotic episodes in which they may hurt themselves or others or are extremely agitated and irrational. Anti-psychotics are given to people with genuine mental illness like schizophrenia in varying does and the side effects can be likened to the "zombi-like" condition often misdirected at anti-depressants.

 

I take anti-depressants and am very pleased with the result. My emotions and intellect work cooperatively and not against each other. I don't think I would have discovered how to figure out how to discipline my emotions into proper proportions without the help of this mild medication. And instead I would have continued to reach for alcohol when angry or upset over things. I have nothing but respect for people who take responsibility to improve the "vibes" they feel and give off even if that requires a medication. It's the ones in denial that you have to watch out for.