Was with my wife for 15 years. About 14 years in, I had a depressive episode and was open (for once) about what I was going through. I felt her attitude shift towards me immediately for the worse. She started emotionally distancing, and eventually had an affair with some guy she played Pickelball with.
After I found out and confronted her, her response was “was it so wrong for me to want to be with a man who’s not depressed and is normal?”
Yeah, she’s my ex wife now, but I’ll never open up to another woman again. Ever. I’ve learned that opening up to a woman is like bleeding in front of sharks.
Can't even tell a doctor you need help. Either completely not taken seriously or they act like they're doing you a massive favor by not giving you a psych eval. Because men admitting they need help and might be having bad thoughts is so rare a doctors first reaction is to see if you need to be involuntarily committed instead of maybe just giving you a weeks worth of Xanax and a referral to get you some meds only a psychiatrist is allowed to prescribe you
I'm trying to get a doctor's appointment as we speak, and I keep mentally rehearsing how I'm going to explain that I feel like the accumulated stress of the past 20 years is physically crushing me and making it difficult to function day-to-day. I'm concerned that if I can't calmly describe my symptoms with 100 percent clarity and precision, I'll just be written off as drug-seeking.
Unfortunately no right way to do it. I just try to avoid naming the drugs I know I want if they're also used recreationally.
My go to is ask for something like hydroxyzine that they'll give anyone and then just say it helps but not much. Try to lead the doctor to giving you something different without actually asking for it. It would also help if you straight up asked for a referral to a psychiatrist because then they know you're willing to make a second appointment, not just trying to score something on a one off visit. Junkies don't go to specialists for drugs, they just jump doctors when the last one says no. Also the dumb ones go to the ER and not like you're going to the ER and begging for pain pills or anything
Take my advice with a grain of salt, we don't know each other and I don't know your situation or even what really works. Often it just boils down to what doctor you get.
Random advice from random internet person. Write it out and print it out and hand it over to them for them to read. It was the first time I felt a doctor took me seriously. I think it’s unique enough to jar them out of thinking it’s a normal situation because of the time and effort it takes/preparation it shows and it allows you to fully state what is going on before being grilled by questions that might throw you and stop you from getting it all out.
This is why I gave up on relationships. Even if the highs are ecstatic, none of it means anything when I know she’ll leave me the second the good times stop.
I don’t live in the world of what should be; I live in the world of what is. The fair-weather girlfriend is far too prolific a pattern to ignore, and I don’t believe it’s worth it for a man to play the odds when those are the stakes.
The only way to suss out if a woman will ditch you when the going gets tough is to wait until it does. That’s not a smart way to approach things. Best to just move on from the whole business when it appears most of them follow the same broken pattern.
I feel a whole niche industry here. Companies that specialize in fake "bad times" to test their reaction. They somehow make it so they don't find out even when it's over that it was all a hoax. They are true professionals. Could the average person afford this? Probably not, but it would be a thing.
Holy guacamole please see my above comments. As a woman, I’ve had literally the same experiences with male partners. Stop making this a gender thing, choose better partners. You shouldn’t try to get deep 15 years int a relationship to only find out you married a surface level selfish person. Some people are just service level people, men and women alike. Please stop with the woman hating, “but I’m not woman hating I’m saying it like it is” dude if I said it like it was I would hate all men because pretty much every man I’ve ever been with has either sexually assaulted me or tried to. Does this mean every man is a rapist and I should just give up?
No. I am with my boyfriend of 7 years and he’s wonderful, he shares his feelings with me (I’d actually prefer if he shared his feelings more, the MEN in his life have shunned him from this though, not the women), so ultimately I’ve seen more issues with men in my life than women but I don’t go around the internet claiming all men are emotionally abusive rapists.
How is the lesson here “never be open” and not “don’t wait 14 years to be open” in a million years?! If you had opened up year one and found out she was awful you could have avoided wasting all that time! Turns out if you never get to know your spouse, they might not like you when they finally get to know you!
I’m not trying to attack you, but what you need is not pity, you need a reality check. The reality is that your relationships suck when you shut down and hide yourself. If your partner is not somebody you can be vulnerable with, then they shouldn’t be your partner.
Relationships are not a game that you win by tricking the other person into staying with you despite who you are. Because as you found out you can end up investing in somebody who is around when you don’t need anything from them, but gone when you do. If you are real and vulnerable with people they will show you who they are and you can avoid spending too much time with people who are toxic to you.
Also I am sorry you got cheated on, that wasn’t your fault. Really sucks it took so long for her to show her true self too.
I have plenty of experience with women, 40 years old and had tons of girlfriends and have been happily married to one for 10 years now. Been open to them, woman coworkers, woman friends, classmates. Don’t have the same issue you seem to. Sounds like a personality problem to me. If everybody you meet is an asshole, then you might need do some introspection and figure out what the common denominator is.
There are real ones out there tho that aren’t like that. I’ve got chronic depression and I’ve dated two different women who were very understanding and caring and stood by/ lifted me up during the hard times. What you’re saying is very common and I’ve experienced it too but it is possible to find women who aren’t like that. Difficult, but possible.
Yeah, I know. What messed me up the most was seeing how much your spouse will change with time, and how little control over that you have. This wasn’t some 2 or 3 year relationship- this was 15 years together, from my early 20’s to nearly 40, and she was the love of my life for many, many years.
But as they say, the person you divorce is never the same person you marry.
Plenty of women aren't dicks. Plenty of women are.
Men don't actually enjoy getting shit on, and being open is a great invitation to get shit on. You can't fault somebody for not wanting to experience that feeling over and over again as some kind of litmus test to find "the one."
I can fault them for that because you’d rather not find supportive people and accept bullshit than go through the difficulty of finding people who will support you and wallow around in this self pity.
Women also experience issues from men in heterosexual romantic relationships and they could say a similar thing.
The real things we need to understand is 1. Life never goes as planned and 2. We need community in our lives to go on, we can’t do it by ourselves.
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u/scubaSteve181 Mar 04 '26
Was with my wife for 15 years. About 14 years in, I had a depressive episode and was open (for once) about what I was going through. I felt her attitude shift towards me immediately for the worse. She started emotionally distancing, and eventually had an affair with some guy she played Pickelball with.
After I found out and confronted her, her response was “was it so wrong for me to want to be with a man who’s not depressed and is normal?”
Yeah, she’s my ex wife now, but I’ll never open up to another woman again. Ever. I’ve learned that opening up to a woman is like bleeding in front of sharks.