My Wife Has Clinical Depression, But She’s the Reason I’m Happier
The Story of My Failure in the Face of my Wife’s Illness and How She Saved Us Both

We like to pretend that the ones we love are just “in a rough patch,” which leads us to ignoring the signs of mental illness and soaks the ones we love in shame, only worsening the problem.
Operation Aquaman is not just about me getting into shape and working hard on my physical fitness, it is also about my spiritual and emotional growth and connection with those around me. This post is the first in what I hope will be a long-standing tradition to write more about those experiences as they come.
This Sunday will be my wife and I’s first wedding anniversary. We have gone through our young life in a way not-so-different from others of our generation: we had kids early in life, still trying to get our education, find what we want to do with our lives and careers, and trying to figure out parenting and the intricacies of a modern marriage all at the same time.
As can be imagined, this has been hard. We’ve had our ups, our downs, and our in betweens – but on this, our first anniversary, I want to make right my own shortcoming that she has been saddled with for the entirety of our relationship: my inability to express how proud I am of her.
Depression Took Away the Love of My Life
My wife was diagnosed with clinical depression a little over a year ago. At the time, I had no idea or intention of finding out what that meant or how it would affect our day to day lives. Per my upbringing, depression was just something that went away with time. If life was falling apart, it was because you were being weak and feckless and if you just “took care of business” or “manned up,” it would eventually subside. No pills, no therapy, no talking it out with anyone; just good, old-fashioned American toughness and self-reliance was the cure.
My wife had just give birth to our youngest son, so initially we chalked all this up to postpartum depressions waited for it to go away. We both referred to the first few weeks and months as a “rough patch” and waited for it to subside.
As time went by with no real relief or resolution and in conversations with friends and family, I’ll freely admit that I dismissed her condition. I said things in passing that reflected my ignorance of the weight that she carried from sunrise to sunset every day of her life. I suggested on more than one occasion that if she simply “got over it” and “tried harder to move on,” or “stayed busy,” then that would solve her problem – as if some lack of strength and courage or purpose was the root cause of her condition.
We spent a great deal of time arguing with each other and dancing around the issue – me too cowardly to directly call her condition as I saw it: a fraudulent excuse to get out of working and fulfilling her responsibility; and her falling apart as I berated her for what I perceived were her shortcomings. There were many times that I found myself struggling with thoughts of separation, divorce, and just plain disdain for my own wife.
As she got sicker, so did I. My inability to empathize with her feelings, as illogical as they seemed to me, was my own undoing. I refused to allow myself to believe that what I saw as weakness was infecting the soul of the woman I loved.
Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the U.S., affecting 40 million adults in the United States age 18 and older, or 18.1% of the population every year. – Anxiety and Depression Association of America
How I Failed My Wife
As with a lot of things in my life, I walked through a lot of warning signs just whistling along without stopping to assess things in our marriage that needed changing, and more importantly, without considering her emotional needs. We spent the middle four or five months of our first year of marriage emotionally seperate but silent about the distance between us – it was an unspoken chasm that had opened under our feet, with both of us refusing to budge.
The root of the problem was this: I had spent every second of every day, knowingly or not, bathing my wife in shame for her condition. She would gather up the considerable courage necessary to try and address her feelings with me openly and I would scoff at the very idea of this seemingly illogical and nonsensical line of thinking and feeling. I perpetuated a lifestyle of fear and self-loathing that she was already steeped in so deeply she could hardly function, clawing her way out from some sort of pit that she could see was an unreasonable and sometimes even crazy trap, but unable to get out of it all the same.
I had failed her in the most important vow I took: to be there in sickness. My wife was sick, but because she didn’t LOOK sick and she wasn’t physically ill, I was never there for her like she needed me to be.
No wonder, then, that her depression infected our relationship like a cancer, feeding off of every moment of happiness, twisting and corrupting it absolutely, tying it in unstraightening knots, and sinking to a dark hole to rot. Without anyone to support her, my wife collapsed in on herself.
The Turning Point
Still struggling with the idea of this condition and its effects, I spent a long time continuing to instigate arguments and insist on being an arbiter of “the right way” to do things at the expense of her feelings. We spiraled so hard and so fast that I didn’t think we could go on and, selfishly painting our problems as entirely her fault and her responsibility to fix, I gave her an ultimatum: either start going to therapy (I had gotten it in my mind that this would magically fix her problem based on readings like this one written by Susan Cheng) or our marriage would not survive.
At first, she viewed this ultimatum as what it was: unfair and accusatory. In time, though, after days of silence and resentment between us, she started a weekly regimen of speaking with a professional. Again, in retrospect, I had failed her. Instead of empathizing and supporting her through the process of asking for help, I bullied her and made the decision a punishment, not a reward for her own courage.
Since then, she has come such a long way – recognizing what her own feelings are and what her depression forces on her more often than ever – but it has helped me even more.
Why I’m a Better Husband, Father, and Man Thanks to My Wife
Before all this, I thought all people were all basically the same, the only things separating the mentally healthy from those with depression or other mental health disorders was strength, courage, and the work ethic necessary to overcome such conditions.
My wife changed all that for me.
She has taught me to understand others, reach out to those who are hurting, and empathize with the way others think and feel. Now, instead of reaching for indignation or looking down on people who cannot “pick themselves up by their bootstraps,” I reach for empathy and love.
Our society puts a lot of influence on men being an unwavering force of nature, manipulating their emotions through sheer force of will and”being tough” in the face of
mental illness. My wife has taught me that this is folly, that it is a better use of a man’s time to feel rather than to brute force your way around emotions.
My wife is not cured and I hope that day comes. But, for now, I love her for who she is, not her suffering. I love her for the strength it takes for her to overcome impossible odds just to get up in the morning or maintain a basic level of sanity under the pressure of her anxiety.
Additionally, she has been an amazing influence on my own introspection. I’ve spent countless hours investigating my own trauma and sources of anxiety. From my upbringing to my lifestyle, she has helped me re-examine myself and my reactions to the world around me in source of my own rosebud – the root causes and experiences that have shaped the man I am today.
I am currently struggling with the idea of attending my own therapy sessions and perhaps uncovering some of my own shortcomings, a remnant of my old attitude, unwilling to confront emotions and feeling that I am inclined to think I can just muscle my way around through some imagined masculinity and force of will. But I know that seeking my own help and support is an inevitability and I will get there when I’m ready, just as my wife did.
I’m fully aware that I deserve absolutely no credit or praise for the progress my wife has been brave enough to make. It is also not lost on me that the way I treated her during her struggle was unhealthy and perhaps even abusive. But I’m not writing this to pat myself on the back or call attention to my actions throughout the long and arduous journey – I’m writing it as a warning.
Perhaps a warning I would not have taken had I read it, but a warning that some husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, or family member will read and take to heart. Maybe I can prevent just one relationship from suffering the cancer that I inflicted upon my own. If you are a significant other and you feel you are failing, floundering even, in the endeavor of supporting someone with a mental illness, anxiety, or depression – I hope that this helps you.
I hope that you find this as a life raft in your own storm – and more importantly, I hope you use it to become a life raft for your loved one.
This post is dedicated to my wife. Happy Anniversary. If we’re strong enough to have made it through year 1, may the following eternity be as filled with happiness and love as we can imagine. I love you.
