The Vine: March 16, 2011
I have what I would guess is a pretty common problem for spouses of creative types. I believe that my sweet husband A is suffering from depression. He believes that any depression he feels is directly related to his loathsome job, and would apparently disappear if he worked somewhere else. So it’s clinical vs. situational depression, basically, and we are at a stalemate in our discussions about this.
He has been at said loathsome job for six years, about a year longer than we’ve been together. We’d been dating for about a year when I first saw the angry, withdrawn, and self-pitying side of A — who had previously been almost uniformly happy, easygoing, and positive. I thought it would shake off after a day or two, but it didn’t really, and I started to see this New A more and more often over the years. Friends who hadn’t seen him in awhile would remark that he seemed depressed, and I began talking to him about it in a more serious way.
He is very thin-skinned by nature, and every disappointment at work really affects his self-esteem. But he also frames any success or happy moment in a negative light. Example: if a client chooses his concept over his coworker’s, he’ll say something like, “Well, one out of 20 ain’t bad,” or “We’ll see how long it lasts until [Boss] gets his hands on it,” or “It’s not like it’s going to win any awards.” I think his attitude/depression hurts his work, and hinders his chances at a better job.
At present, I rarely see A truly happy, engaged, or excited about things for a sustained period. Instead, he is bitter, envious of his peers’ successes, easily angered or discouraged, pessimistic, and full of self-pity. And, according to him, it all comes back to his creativity stifling, soul-crushing job.
Sars, my question is twofold. One: is it possible that he’s right? That his depression could be mostly linked to his job frustrations, and it would “clear up” if he changed jobs? I do think some creative types may be more psychologically affected by bad job situations because their identity and self-worth are wrapped up in their work. Even if he is right, it’s a terrible time for a creative professional to find a new job (especially with a less-than-stellar portfolio), and we are not in a financial position that would allow him to just quit and take some time off. So the job situation may not change anytime soon, and I am really struggling with this.
So Question Two, the biggie: what can I do about it in the meantime? As the commercials say, “Depression hurts everyone,” and this is hurting our relationship more than ever. In therapy-speak: I don’t feel like he’s carrying an equal share of the emotional load of our relationship, and I’m getting fatigued. In addition, the apathy, envy, and self-pity are really unattractive to me, and that has gradually eroded our sex life. We had planned to start trying to get pregnant in the upcoming year, but that seems less than likely, unless he undergoes a pretty major change.
What do I do? Get him an appointment with a counselor? Or a career counselor? Or do I just get myself to therapy?
Thanks,
Tired Wife
Dear Tired,
Answer One: Yes, I think it’s possible. Sometimes a job situation is just bad, and if you switch things up — better commute, office with a door, boss who’s not on-site, whatever — your outlook really improves.
The problem with blaming your job for your unhappiness, though, is that it’s really easy to put it all on the job and not examine the underlying issues: why criticism throws you into a tailspin, for example, or why you tend to feel like a victim all the time instead of an active participant.
As I said, sometimes jobs just suck, and changing gigs would probably give A a lift…for a while. But then the time will come when things don’t go his way, or he gets passed over for a hoped-for assignment, and you may well find yourself right back here. “Because he’s depressed” is one answer. “Because he’s the kind of person who complains instead of doing what he has to do to improve things, even if it’s hard” is another, and I think you’re afraid that it’s actually that one.
It’s probably mostly the first thing, that looks like the second thing because he doesn’t have the tools to deal with the first thing; either way, Answer Two is that you need to tell him most of what you just told me about his self-absorption and negativity affecting you. I think he is depressed, whether it’s situational or clinical (and one can kind of slide into the other after enough time goes by), and depressed people do not mean to dominate relationships with their self-loathing and ignore other people’s shit — it’s not something they’re aware of doing, or try to do. But it can present as selfish and/or annoying, and it’s frustrating to deal with on a daily basis when it seems like no attempt is made to deal with the problem.
And this is the issue, for him and for you. Whether the problem is the job itself or his emotional state generally, it’s not getting dealt with, and the only thing you can deal with here is yourself, so start there. Tell him how his depression is affecting you, using our old friend I Statements. “I feel abandoned in this marriage. I feel like your job is all we talk about. I feel like your unhappiness is both of our problem, but mine is mine alone. I plan to get counseling, and I strongly suggest you do the same, with me or without me.”
The next step is to find a therapist for yourself, and tell her everything. Get honest with her and yourself about the fact that A’s response to the situation has made you lose respect for him, that you don’t feel as attracted to him, that you question whether you want to have a kid with him. Speak frankly about what you want and how you feel, namely that if he doesn’t either make a change or shut the fuck up, you don’t think you can take it anymore.
I don’t mean to sound like I don’t empathize with depressed people, or with a tendency to let a miserable work environment take over the rest of your life. I do, on both counts. Depression makes everything seem impossible, or not worth it in any case, and you should try to keep that in mind when you talk to your husband about this — speak kindly. But speak kindly to yourself, too, because this kind of thing is very hard to live with, and very hard to talk about in a way that makes everyone feel psyched about their prospects instead of doomed to a life of fuck-uppery. You do have a right to be over it.
So. Get counseling. Urge your husband to join you for joint counseling; tell him that, since something has to change, you’re starting with your own shit. See what happens.
Tags: boys (and girls) health and beauty
I wonder if a bit of therapy (either talk or meds) wouldn’t benefit A towards fixing the job thing? By leavening the depression, he might be better equipped and able to make a job change. Sometimes it pays to work backwards towards a solution in order to go forward.
Tired: You said that creative types tend to have too much of their self-worth wrapped up in their jobs/work. IMO that is true for roughly 98% of men, at least almost every man I’ve ever known. I’m married to an engineer (read: not creative)who has been through the following in succession: a) a soul-sucking job, b) unemployment for 9 months, c) a great job out of state that required him to live alone, and d) now back to the fam with a new local job. We’ll see what happens, but whether you call his general psychological state depression, or not, it ain’t been fun. Hang in there!
Tired,
attica has hit it on the nose. Since finding a new therapist and changing up my meds, my unbearable, makes-me-cry-every-day job has become an irritating job that I can tolerate (for now), and don’t have to rant and cry about every evening. I have more energy to job hunt, as well as more energy to put into any creative side projects I have, which validates my feeling that my job does not equal my life.
My husband is currently dealing with situational depression (due to his mother’s health). I kept asking him to see a counselor for ways to cope, since some days he’d be his usual self, other days he’d be depressed and have no appetite, and not knowing how he’d be when I got home was affecting me.
About two weeks in, when I asked him again, he said his father and stepmother suggested he read a certain self-help book. I said “I need to know who I’m coming home to.” He called the next day, and he saw her for the first time last week. He really liked her, and he sees that she can help.
I totally agree with Sars that the thing to do is start dealing with the issue as it presents.
But it may still turn out that one fact is that he is the kind of person who complains instead of doing what’s needed in the situation. What flags that for me is this sentence in your letter:
He is very thin-skinned by nature, and every disappointment at work really affects his self-esteem. But he also frames any success or happy moment in a negative light.
I dated someone a bit like that for a few years, and it became more and more draining for me to listen to him complain, because he made every bad thing that happened to him about the how world was so hard and difficult and unfair. He didn’t seem to realize that everyone has times when the world doesn’t work the way they’d like it to, and that it’s possible to try to change them, find a different approach, or deal with them gracefully. In the end, I stopped seeing him because I couldn’t deal with the negativity (and associated issues) anymore.
Your guy sounds a bit different because he takes on the negative occurrences as self-criticism rather than world-criticism — so he’s more likely to become depressed than angry — but it’s a similar issue.
If he’d be open to self-help/self-improvement stuff, I’d suggest exploring the “explanatory style” area in positive psychology, which might help. He seems to have an explanatory style that negative stuff is permanent and his fault, and positive stuff is just luck and won’t last. That style leads to less optimism than the alternative that negative stuff is just temporary bad luck, and positive stuff is due to hard work that pays off.
http://positivepsychology.org.uk/pp-theory/optimism/129-explanatory-style.html
Wow, that letter could be written by the new wife of an old friend of mine. If the timeline weren’t different, I’d wonder. He’s historically *just* like Tired’s husband, and, after some therapy and possibly drugs, lifted himself up enough to woo and marry her. However, it looks like he’s sinking back into his normal “angry at everything” state. Hates his job, but rails against the conditions that force him to stay there. Went on one job interview, and, when he didn’t get the position, declared that “no one gives him a fair shake” and gave up. Just as his friend, I’ve been infuriated–and I’ve dealt with moderate to severe depression myself. (I think it’s easier to get frustrated when you’ve been there and gotten out of it.)
Also agree with Georgia about how getting treated can help get perspective on the current situation and lift you up enough to look for a new position, too. I don’t *love* my job, but now that I’m happier, I can shake off the petty BS that would have sent me into a tailspin a few years ago.
Getting help is nonnegotiable, IMHO. Unless he gets some strategies to deal with this, it could be a recurring pattern for the rest of your marriage.
I don’t know which creative field A works in, but the description sounds a lot like an advertising gig. As someone works in the field, I can testify that it can be brutal to the creative ego. Sounds like A has the classic Catch-22: Soul-sucking job makes him depressed, depression prevents him from leaving soul-sucking job. Attica and Georgia have the right idea, I think. A is going to need to address the underlying depression *before* he can attempt to make changes to his work situation or build up his portfolio. The kind of self-deprecating negativity you mention in your letter will really carry to interviews and can hurt his chances.
The creative environment and its expectations can put you on a gerbil wheel if you’re depressed: You’re WAY more likely to self-censor your ideas at work, for fear they’ll get shot down and you’ll feel even worse. So what you put forward isn’t your best, portfolio-boosting work, and the cycle continues. Other more confident (though not necessarily more talented) people get their ideas produced instead of yours. And the cycle continues. The client pees all over your ideas but you feel too downtrodden to speak up to defend them. And the cycle continues. Oy.
All the best to you both. In the meantime, perhaps he can look into doing some pro-bono work on the side for a small organization he likes (small theatre, local food pantry, a friend’s business). Might give him a chance to explore his more creative ideas and build up some nice portfolio pieces?
Situational, clinical: it becomes kinda tomato, tomahto after a certain point. Both kinds of depression are real–you can be a “normal” person until something external triggers a depression, or be a depressed person in general that has the condition exacerbated by an outside force, but really, once you’re at the point that you don’t enjoy anything and dread every waking breath, the way out is pretty much the same–therapy and meds.
That sounds glib, but I don’t mean it to be. Therapy and medication won’t miraculously change his circumstances but they can change his viewpoint on them. They can make a soul-sucking pit of a job take on the proper dimensions and help you get the energy to either deal with it or find a good exit route. They can turn vicious, envious thought patterns from a set of hara-kiri knives into what they are–patterns that can be broken, reset, changed.
And as a spouse, yes, as Sars says, you deserve to be over it. And both of you deserve better than what this depression is doing to you, your marriage, and any future kids you may have (and please, for everyone’s sake, hold off on that until you both have a better mental outlook.)
You can’t make your husband change, but you can change the patterns depression has carved into your relationship. It’s not loyalty or a display of love to trudge behind him as his disease plants a field of self-loathing and insists you help water and harvest it. That’s the disease talking, and you deserve to hear his voice. You’re his wife, his partner in his life, not his misery. You are ALLOWED to want better for both of you.
I’ve been on both sides of this, and neither one is fun. Therapy all around is a good starting place, if only to determine if Husband is just burnt-out or if there’s something else at play. Find that out and work from there.
In the meantime, there’s nothing stopping you from lobbing it back to him when he bitches about work. Start with the “oh, that’s a bummer. What do you plan to do about it?” That might make him think a little bit about the fact that he is NOT powerless, however much he might feel that way.
I have recently started a career in an industry that chews up and spits out creatives, with the added bonus of lowish pay (Fashion!). The book “Bounce: Living the Resilient Life” by Robert Wicks has some great techniques for living with chronic stress, for both the OP and her husband.
I second Melissa in that I don’t think it has much to do with being creative but a lot to do with having bought into the idea that work should be the source of most of your fulfillment in life.
My husband went through this – and changing jobs didn’t really change anything because the basic facts about his situation hadn’t changed much. He did finally get to move to a different part of the building where he no longer has to listen to daily detailed descriptions of pets’ bowel movements being screamed across his cubicle by the people he sat between, which helped a lot, but some of the frustration remained.
He is not interested in talk therapy and absolutely refuses to consider any kind of meditation. Instead he has started throwing his energy outside work into constructive hobbies, started taking a meditation course, started running on his lunch break a few times a week, and generally spending more time focusing on things like our fantastic kid than on the incompetence of his upper management. Finding this that are not-work to focus on when he’s, you know, not at work have tremendously decreased his stress and raised his contentment level.
Short form: Even if the depression is situational, he should try to find ways to cope with it.
As a creative professional, crappy job circumstances totally do a number on one’s opinion of self-worth. We put out hearts and souls into a concept, along with late nights and a lot of hard work, then something else gets chosen and my little-piece-of-soul gets sidelined for good. Nature of the beast in creative fields.
It’s normal to be bummed out when your best efforts get canned. But when *every* little everything results in scowling and petulantly kicking a tuft of grass with your shoe… you need to evaluate your own level of responsibility. If he’s not clinical, he might need to just grow the eff up. Professional counseling should be able to help him determine which it is, and make headway in either case.
Changing jobs may help if “circumstances” really are all it is, but I fear that the issues are inside of A and a new job will just be a different place to trot them out. I was on the verge of a similar decision some years ago, and a friend gave me some excellent advice: Don’t run just to be running FROM something undesireable; run TO something better.
Living with depression is like having unwanted roommates that can’t be evicted (Ball of Anger and Hopeless Despair have been squatting in my house for years now.) @Isis Uptown, I feel you on not knowing who you’re coming home to.
Best of luck to both of you, Tired… you (plural) deserve so much more.
@Jen S 1.0
“You can’t make your husband change, but you can change the patterns depression has carved into your relationship. It’s not loyalty or a display of love to trudge behind him as his disease plants a field of self-loathing and insists you help water and harvest it. That’s the disease talking, and you deserve to hear his voice. You’re his wife, his partner in his life, not his misery. You are ALLOWED to want better for both of you.”
This is so well-said, I have to call it out. I was in a relationship with someone who just became someone else with depression, and who had a tendency to try to hang his problems on me rather than deal with them or at least to be honest about what the problem was. And a good friend had it even worse: her 10-year marriage imploded when her husband became a violent stranger with depression & bipolar disorder, and refused to get help, blaming his issues on her. She was smart & got out before she landed in a hospital, though the divorce was hellish.
It’s hard to be the positive one, the cheerleader, and then to be perceived, unfairly, as the the bad guy or the cause of the problem just because you’re there and talking. While you can recognize that the illness is the problem, you also have to accept that your support can only go so far – you can’t force-feed him his meds or frog-march him to therapy if he can’t accept the need for them. Sometimes the necessary pattern change is to get out before you get more hurt than you already are.
I could have written this letter, and cannot stress enough the value of talk therapy. My husband goes through intermittent depressive states, typically associated with seasonal affective disorder (and we live in the Pacific NW, so it’s rainy about 8 months of the year. Awesome.) When he does, he tends to blame more and more on his job, which is actually getting worse. He’s also been at the same job for far too long, and hates it very much.
That said, since therapy, our fights have gotten shorter, less upsetting, and more productive. It’s been a really nice change, and even when he’s really depressed, he’s able to recognize what’s actually going on.
He took some initiative the other week and made a pro/con list and started updating his resume, which was due in no small part to my prodding. He’s definitely getting more motivated to leave, since one of the things keeping him there was his friends, who are starting to move en masse into new jobs.
So not a lot of advice, but know that you aren’t the only one, and it does get better, especially with a little third-party help.
You know, I totally relate. I’m one of those artistic people who has to work in an office to support their art habit. I was getting angry at work, frustrated, depressed and just grumpy as all hell until I got back to what I am at my core, an artist. Once I realized my job just paid for my life and wasn’t my definition, everything got back to where it needed to be and I was happy again.
Sometimes all you need to do is re-connect to the artist within to reanimate your life. Sounds like the job is a big issue, but until he can make a change, he needs find a way to re-connect to his creative self. Maybe a pro-bono job for a startup (can find on craigslist all the time) or an art class, new software, or heading out somewhere with a sketchbook or paints. Don’t know about him, but I’ve always found the answers within my art.
I hold a BA in English Literature and somehow worked in the Financial Industry for 10 years. I’m still not sure how it happened. I, too, am prone to bouts of depression, and I, too, went through a very prolonged one for much of my time working where I worked. The work situation was both a poor fit for me AND a terrible, dysfunctional environment. I did pursue talk therapy and I found it helpful, but I have to say, I found it WAY more helpful when I finally left that job. My depression and anxiety have decreased enormously in the year since I left. My husband is grateful for the change and our relationship (which was always great) has gotten even better as a result. So, for what it’s worth, I believe your husband could absolutely be right. A job that is a poor fit can really, really wear on you.
Tired, here. Just wanted to say thanks so much to Sarah and all of you for your thoughts. To answer some q’s: A does take on freelance projects on the side, pro bono and otherwise, and sometimes those help but just as often they hurt. The negativity sometimes affects his output there as well, which just compounds the cycle, because then he feels like what he did wasn’t good enough, therefore he’s not good enough, etc.
He has interviewed for several positions in the last few months, and has a very good chance at one that we expect to hear about in the next few days. So fingers crossed about that! But I did talk to him about therapy and my needs, and told him I was going to look for a counselor and hope to start sessions in April, and he promised to go to one as well. I will likely have to find the options for him, because I think this is still difficult for him to fully accept and own, but that’s a compromise I can live with.
“A” sounds like he works in advertising. I heard that attitude soooooo very much over the 10 years I was in/around that business. My longtime boss was the most negative person on earth and he actually owned his own advertising business for almost 30 years.
Finally he retired and did what he really wanted to do – write/direct a movie. His wife said she’d never seen him happier.
Lesson learned: Find out what you love and do what you can to make that happen. A bad job fit is a living hell (something I would know about too – life sucks when you spend your days with people you don’t respect, having the life crushed out of you day in and day out).
It’s a long, hard road out of that, but I really hope your hubby finds his way & ends up happy (and you too!).
I’d also throw out that negative/depressed emotions can affect brain chemistry in a way that produces… negative/depressed emotions. It’s a vicious downward spiral. So even if you give 100% total credence to the idea that A’s depression is situational, it doesn’t mean that it isn’t serious, or even that a change in the situation will change the brain chemistry part of the cycle. One of the things I learned in therapy was to recognize that cycle as soon as possible, and do everything possible to cut it off at the pass (meds, exercise, social interaction, etc.).
So, the “situational” label doesn’t suggest to me that A is any less in need of therapy.
Tired, I’m glad to hear about the therapy plans and that you told him about your needs. I wanted to put one other thought out there, particularly because of what you said about your sex life and future-kid plans: Depression (or any mental illness) does NOT give anyone the right to treat you like crap. No matter what. If your needs aren’t being met, you are allowed to say so and to seek their fulfillment. If he doesn’t get better, even if he tries, it is okay not to want to be with him anymore. Etc. Your situation can be exhausting, and it looks like you’ve been at it for about four years, and it is okay to want something different.
I have seen too much abuse excused by mental illness; it’s just an issue that raises my hackles. I recognize that a depressed person isn’t necessarily acting that way on purpose, but if they won’t seek help or can’t see how their behavior affects others, then those others have the right (and perhaps the obligation to themselves) to get or stay away.
Tired, you could be me, with a few details changed.
I am getting to the end of my rope with his negativity. I feel like he either ignores me and is irritable or he criticizes me. This isn’t how I want to live. Everyone’s comments are really hitting home with me. He’s tried a couple different meds but they didn’t make him feel any different (perhaps going to a higher dose may have helped, I don’t know). I honestly sometimes feel that I would be happier living alone.
Of course everyone is different- but you could be describing my husband a couple of years ago, and we got through it and it’s only in hindsight that I realized how much his crappy job situation was affecting his mental state.
It was only leaving the long-time shitty job to move across the country and then going into a completely unsuitable shitty one (albeit short-term as well) that pushed him to realize that he needed help- we went to the doctor together because he couldn’t handle it on his own, I picked out a therapist for him that got him through the temporary unsuitable job, and he went on a very mild anti-depressant. He’s unemployed now, but honestly- we’ve never been happier. When I wonder sometimes if we made the right decision with our big move, I just have to remember how much happier he is now than he was in that job. Even being unemployed for so long has not dimmed his bulb the way that job did. I hope you all find a way through this (and that it doesn’t take a series of intense panic attacks for him to realize he needs help). But it can get better, and I hope you both can find a way to get him what he needs. If it takes a big change, just go for it.
Coming to this belatedly: Tired, it’s possible his depression started out situational, but from the way you describe the negative mindset spreading to his hobbies and passions, it could be that the thought patterns are now entrenched.
I’ve just discovered these tools and think they’re kind of awesome: MoodGYM and eCouch. They are basically online cognitive behavioural therapy programmes which seek to help you tackle and change negative thought patterns associated with anxiety and depression. They’re not a substitute for in-person therapy, but they may be useful to one or both of you in the meantime or in addition. Good luck.