How Depression Can Affect Your Marriage

newlyweds hold hands

Publish date

Nov 20, 2021

Post Author

Bryan Amaro

Category

Depression in any of the partners in a marriage can severely impact the couple’s personal, marital, mental, and emotional health. The behavioral changes associated with depression, along with life struggles and emotional health deterioration, can really get in the way of a healthy marital relationship. Successful marriages are all about helping and supporting each other through thick and thin. You must serve as constant pillars of support for your partner. Paying attention to the signs and symptoms that indicate a struggling or failing marriage is crucial to maintaining a long-term and positive relationship. Depression symptoms can aggravate and hinder a healthy relationship.

Depression must be handled with extreme care and attention. The article will discuss the various side effects depression can have on a couple’s marriage and their mutual understanding.

Depression in Marriage

So, what effects depression can have when someone in a marriage is struggling with it? There are many:

  • Frequent episodes of major mood swings hinder a healthy relationship at home. Couples stop conversing with each other and distance themselves during such episodes.
  • At times, the person struggling with depression can turn violent. Getting physically violent with your partner at any given time for any reason is not acceptable.
  • Your depression is bound to affect your social life and community networks. You may shy away from attending social events, avoid meeting with friends, say no to attending family functions, or cancel events at home. This can frustrate your partner over time due to its effects on their social life.
  • Communication between the couple suffers greatly. A depressive state of mind can make it extremely difficult to have healthy conversations or share positive ideas with your partner. Your partner can feel the brunt of this silence on several occasions.
  • The partner of a person struggling with depression may be in charge of handling the finances, house arrangements, and affairs, practically anything that involves decision making. This can overburden them.
  • Taking charge of your life also includes taking the lead role in the lives of your kids. Being there for them, attending to their academic and personal needs, becomes a daily task in the absence of your struggling partner.
  • The person struggling with depression may experience disturbed patterns of eating, sleeping, and work. This hampers the routine cycle of everyone at home, especially the partner taking care of you.
  • The partners of the person suffering from depression spend most time managing their health, depressive symptoms, medications, and checkup routines. This gives them very little time for their own personal grooming or health.
  • Finances often become the most difficult part to manage if the person suffering from depression is the main breadwinner of the family. Life continues, and so do its costs.
  • In some cases, a person who has depression disorder may lose interest in their marriage. This can cause a major rift in both trust levels and the relationship itself.
  • Blaming, rebuking, and taunting can become quite common with such couples. Blaming each other for life struggles, health issues, and financial difficulties becomes a daily issue.
  • A cascade of problems starts off with the deteriorating emotional health of the person struggling. A partner’s emotional absence at the time of major happenings and life events that take place over the years can be detrimental to the mutual bond between couples.

Isolation of the person struggling with depressive disorder affects the marriage in endless ways. Being absent physically, mentally, and emotionally from marriage for years or even decades can be devastating for your partner. Transformational changes, such as mood swings, violence, lethargy, restlessness, and anxiety can change the person in and out. This causes an emotional change in marital relationships.

The Long-Term Effects of Depression in Relationships

Incidents of mutual misunderstandings, distrust, and fights increase and intensify over time. There is a lack of communication, understanding, information sharing, and trust. The list of impacts of depression on one’s marriage is worth paying attention to. This is required to understand the complexities it can put your marriage through. Having a clear idea of how marriages fail under such circumstances can help you avoid these in your own life. Taking timely healthcare action is crucial for the health of your relationship.

Seeking expert supervision at a trustworthy addiction recovery center with timely action plans can help you save your marriage from deteriorating over the years. Seeking professional healthcare assistance for managing your depression can help you better handle symptoms, reduce the impacts of any possible triggers, get adequate guidance from trained professionals, and ensure a dedicated routine of medications and checkups.

Depression is reflected by many changes in your behavior, health, mental condition, and comprehension. If you are in a marriage, that may also suffer. Addressing depression at the right time under expert care is important. Maintaining a healthy marital relationship is critical for ensuring sound mental and emotional health. If you think your marriage is being affected by your depression, it is time to take action. Do not let your partner’s trust in you and your relationship erode due to your health condition. Seek professional healthcare advice at a treatment center you trust. HealthyU’s trained professionals help you cope with these through a mix of treatment plans and strategies. Our team of industry-reputed healthcare experts track your depression, detect various signs, triggers, and symptoms, note your relationship struggles, and devise customized treatment plans for you. Our outpatient programs give you access to trustworthy counselors for up to three days a week. Feel free to call our representatives at (619) 542-9542.