I love my husband. I love him more than anything in this world…but his mental state is hard to deal with. 

We’ve been together since high school and I can’t imagine my life without him. He has always struggled with anxiety, OCD, and depression but it has never been as bad as it is in this moment. He has been on and off medicine for years and just when it starts to help him, he convinces himself that he’s fine without it and goes off of it. He does not go to therapy because he thinks that he’s “been there, done that” before and he’s heard everything that they are going to tell him anyway. I hate myself for even thinking it, but I have days where I wonder if it’s worth it. When he’s bad, he’s REALLY low, and he takes it out on me. 

It’s not all him, I know at times I make it worse. There are moments where I’m fed up with listening to him complain and drone on and on about something I’ve heard 500 times before and I want no part of hearing it for the 501st time. I try to listen, I try to care, but after a while, especially when it’s something I find extremely minuscule and unchangeable (like where we had our fence placed and if we used the correct grass seed), I get annoyed and he can tell and I know that just makes it worse for him because I’m not listening to him in that moment. 

Am I wrong for sometimes needing a break from my husband? There are days where I want him to leave, I want him to go away and stay somewhere for just a day or two…a day or two where I can just be and not worry about his mental state or what he’s internally freaking out about. I’ll admit it: I’ve told him to go. I’ve told him to leave and go stay at his parents for a bit but he never does. He always slinks into bed after he thinks I’m sleeping and I wake up with him next to me again…and to be honest, it makes me ￼upset all over again. 

I feel like a horrible wife, a horrible human being because there are some times I resent his mental illness; I want a husband who doesn’t have the trifecta of things he does, but I know it’s not realistic and I know he didn’t ask for any of this. When I vowed to love him forever, I vowed to love all of him forever, including whatever is currently going on in his brain. I know that many of the things he says and does are a result of his illness, but that doesn’t make them hurt any less…sorry can only go so far after I’ve heard it hundreds of times before. 

I suppose I wonder how spouses of those with mental illness do it? How do you keep your sanity when you feel as though you’re drowning in your partner’s needs and can’t swim enough to handle your own? I’ve heard the age old saying to take care of yourself, to manage my own anxieties, but I’m worried if I completely put his needs on the back burner to focus on my own that it would just ruin us even more….and I know that disregarding your spouses needs is not a recipe for a good marriage. 

I DO want a good marriage, I DON’T want to resent him for something I know he can’t help, but it’s hard…both of those things are hard. How do I help someone who is hardly helping himself? 

I love my husband, I love him more than anything. I just want him…and us…to be okay, I’m just not sure how.