I am drowning in my husband's PPD!! Help...

Please help.

I need to know how I can approach my husband with this delicate topic...I think he has PPD. All the symptoms fit. I am at the end of my straw. He's always suspicious that I'm doing something and that I'm up to no good. He have problems with co-workers, too, because I believe he thinks that they are all incompetent and that they talk about him behind his back.

I love my husband and we have 3 kids but he is slowly killing our marriage. We have 3 kids, btw, and they are more attached to me (because he is sometimes verbally abusive to them). I feel like he hates that the kids prefer me more than him.

Whenever we fight, he tries to manipulate it so that I would get the blame. In his mind, he is right and I am wrong.

He is a good guy and he takes good care of us, but this PPD has changed him over the past few years. He even had the gall to tell me once that I "made" him this way. He is obsessed that I will eventually betray or cheat on him.

I am a strong woman with very strong opinions...but lately I am so sick and just plain tired of everything that I feel I am being swallowed alive and I am just a fragment of the person that I used to be...

Day by day my hate for him grows. I cannot sit him down and talk to him-- even in a nice and calm manner. He feels that I am "attacking" him and that I am making him into the bad person that I imagine him to be.

HELP PLEASE!! I am drowning!!!!

-Nori

Hi Nori,

It seems that your husband has major trust issues and I'm going to suggest that they are due to his upbringing. Do you know what his life growing up was like? There are different reasons why a person grows ito an adult that lacks trust and feels paranoid. One, for example, is abandonment. If he was frequently abandoned as a child, then he might grow into an adult who feels that others cannot be trusted and that they would also abandon him eventually. On the other hand, if he grew up as a loner, then he would grow into an adult with 'skewed' ideas about what friendships and romantic relationships are about...

In my opinion, something must change in your situation before you or he ends up doing something bad/terrible in the heat of the moment. Sit down with him at a designated time to talk about what has been going on, and by no means raise your voice (even if he does). You both have to decide and agree upon a course of action for the future. If you ultimately feel that you will be happier without him, then think about getting a separation with the view to a subsequent divorce... A good life - and the happiness that we can get from it - is paramount.

Take care
Kevin

Kevin

It's funny you mentioned "upbringing". My husband was abandoned by both his parents when he was a little boy. He grew up with his Aunt and Grandmother. His mom would sleep around (supposedly) and had a child from some man we don't know. His dad was also not faithful, had a kid with another woman.

I, on another hand, was brought up from a good, solid family and I seriously don't know how to handle this. I have not told anyone about my husband's PPD tendencies because my loyalty is still with him.

I want to work things out before this gets out of hand and I am very thankful for your kind words and encouragement. I appreciate it.

Okay. I hope that things improve. Please just don't fall into the trap of constantly hoping that something will somehow, magically change without taking any action. Invariably, taking no action results in a worsening of the situation. or all intents and purposes, he feels that there is nothing wrong with his behaviour right now. He therefore must learn that what he is doing is tearing the relationship apart and is affecting your morale/happiness....

That's why I do encoyarge a meeting of some sort, on a regular basis, so that you can discuss all that has happened and also where you both are going in the future.

Kevin