Spouse abusive and depressed
Q: I am in a second marriage. I was battered in the first. It took me years of counseling to get rid of my old garbage and pain. I was on my own for some time before remarrying.
My present husband never got help during or after his extremely unhappy first marriage. I believe a lot of our current tensions come from his first marriage. But he refuses to see a counselor or even read anything to gain insight into himself and our marriage. As a result, he’s killing my love and respect for him.
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We don’t talk. He just walks out, saying “I ain’t arguing with nobody.” When we disagree, he won’t listen to my explanations. And I hear that how he later told it to others was false and twisted. He bullies me cruelly. I’ve told him I won’t take it any longer.
I wonder if he has a physical illness, like thyroid, which runs in his family? He gets so moody. He’ll lay around for days or weeks and not even take a bath. Even getting him to wash his hair is a chore. It seems like depression to me. But if I threaten to phone his adult son to take him to a doctor, he hops up and starts to tend for himself.
How much of this is a game? He also forces himself to throw up if he thinks he’s getting too fat.
He keeps saying you are better off dead if you can’t get a job. But he often gets hyper when doing chores or working on a car. He constantly checks the phone message recorder, as well as our mail and the mileage on the vehicle if I ever use it by myself.
I love people and I need people. But if I speak casually to a man, I’m accused of all sorts of things. Our intimate times, now quite rare, are difficult for me to cope with because of how he treats me. I’ve told him I wish I could run him through a car wash and rinse out his heart and mind so he could begin to live again. But he blames me. He says his doctors can’t understand how he lives with me, and that it’s no wonder his blood pressure is up.
A: Most men think they are only abusive if they punch or hit their wife. They are wrong. Abuse is any action that disrespects or harms another person.
Your husband is abusing you by being accusing, controlling, manipulating, suspicious and refusing to share his feelings and be honest with you. He sees things in a distorted way. If he’s not willing to get help, you need to take care of yourself.
Talk to your husband’s doctor. I don’t think the doctor knows all that is happening. He needs to, in order to treat your husband. I don’t know whether your husband suffers from depression, which also runs in families, from a negative outlook on life or from both. But the behavior you describe is unhealthy. Since he is obviously not telling the doctor the truth about himself, you need to.
Check out support groups for abused women in your area. Don’t ask him for permission to attend them. Just insist on access to the vehicle so you can go. Check with the nearest mental health counselor on group programs for abusive men.
But if your husband doesn’t get help or take care of himself, you may have no choice but to leave.
