Hi all

Joined earlier this week. As my name says I'm a single dad in Brisbane. I've had to deal with depression for nearly 30 years, in various shapes and forms. It's returned following the breakdown of my marriage earlier this year. The typical horse sees water but refuses to drink scenario forced me to abandon the relationship as she simply refused to acknowledge and take proper ownership of her mental health.

Want to try and socially reconnect slowly, even if only online to begin with. Start taking small steps and do the things I used to enjoy, start rebuilding my life.

Hope to contribute and share experiences here, with what I'm able to relate to.

41singleBNE, welcome to the forum and thank you for posting. Im sorry to hear about your marriage breakdown. I am a adult child of a recent divorce, its a very painful experience to go through. Sounds like your wife was taking a toll on your own mental health because she has no perception or insight into her mental health. We cannot help others when they refuse to be helped. How are you coping and your kids at the moment?

Hello 41singlBNE, I'm sorry about the breakdown of your marriage, as I can totally relate to what you're saying, in my marriage, it was me who caused us to be divorced and I regret what happened, but certainly understand your experience.

Being in your position may have contributed to some form of illness, with the knowledge that your wife needed to accept her condition and not be so dominant in refusing that she should have sought help, but a continual refusal would only make your situation worse.

I hope you want to keep this going and please ask any question you want, I have been free of mental illness for a long time.

Geoff.

Hi 41singleBNE,

Welcome!

I'm so sorry for what you have experienced recently. But from your words I can feel the the little flame of hope in your heart is growing, which is absolutely amazing.

You have very good self-awareness, you're doing absolutely right step to restart. The next important thing might be resilience. You may know that the recovery pattern will not be Linear, there will be some old or new challenges in front of you and sometimes there might be temporary frustration, but if you keep going, you will get better and better.

Please feel free to share as much as you'd like to. This is the place for people to support and learn from each other.

Mark

Thank you for the replies.

Some people have told me I'm grieving losing the relationship. I think that's true. We were together for 13 years, married 10 of those. I didn't want to separate and eventually divorce. I desperately held onto hoping she'd somehow pull herself out of it and be a strong person again.....she just never did. Now I feel like a part of me has been lost and I'd do anything to get it back. I live by myself with primary care of my 2 kids. Once they're in bed, the isolation hits me like a torrent. I cry myself to sleep.

My GP says this will eventually pass. I've experienced grief several times throughout my life, I'm no stranger to it. I lost my father at a very young age. I'm now strong enough not to let that trigger any current crisis or stressors I might otherwise be going through. But it (the grief) is definitely strong, in a crushing way.

I'm glad I found this forum :-/

Hello 41singleBNE, thanks for getting back to us.

Yes, I know this feeling even though I was the one that caused our divorce and it took me a few weeks to finally understand what had actually happened, the person who I was married to for 25 years was no longer with me, the person I had always wanted and expected to be with me forever was no longer there.

I know this sounds to be ironical but my depression slowly improved and I don't blame her one bit but finally, I made contact with her and now we speak regularly, maybe twice a week and talk as if nothing happened and this could also happen in your situation, however, if for some reason something comes up that may trigger a concern, one of us says 'to move on'.

Unless both of you are able to cope with going back in history and want to do it, take it slowly.

I hope the two of you are able to recover from this.

Geoff.

Hi Geoff

My situation is very similar to yours we was married for 25 years together for 28 years and my mental health was what ended our marriage we have a 20 year old son who lives with me . It breaks my heart that i have destroyed 3 peoples lives the worst part of the breakup is spending so much time alone which is not good for my mental health . Friends say just go out and meet new people but i struggle each day just to get out of bed and go to work let alone meeting new people so i stay home alone each weekend so yet again home alone with my thoughts i thought with time things would get easier but it seems it is getting harder as i still love my wife dearly