It's been about seven months. We've been dealing with it for that long. Postpartum depression. Three months after the birth of our third child. It's been a really rough year.
It's hard to accept that our marriage will be ended by an illness, especially one that is treatable.
What can a husband do when his wife refuses treatment? Sure, she's seeing her doctor and psychiatrist, but she's not taking the medication that they recommended. She's afraid that she might eventually have to rely on them for life, and that they might put her in a "zombie" state of numbness.
My wife also stopped talking to her therapist after she tried to get her to change her way of thinking -- mainly , to stop thinking in black and white terms. But that implies that there's something wrong with my wife, and she can't accept that. She felt that her therapist had turned on her and stepped over to my side. I'm the problem, not her. I have to change, not her.
She won't allow me to talk to doctor or psychiatrist because she's afraid that they might turn on her too. And I don't think she's telling them everything. Because of the HIPAA Privacy Rule, they can't talk to me without her consent. I just want to know what is causing my wife to think the way she's thinking now and what I can do to help her.
Our main issue is that she is absolutely convinced that I've cheated on her, from one woman to another. I told her I'm not Tiger Woods. She's searched through my cell phone, my email accounts, my chat history, our home phone records, my laptop, and found no hard evidence. She eventually installed a surveillance camera in our home and still found nothing. But she has no doubt in her mind that I've cheated on her.
She doesn't think hard evidence is necessary because we're not going to court. She has lots of soft evidence. For instance, she saw a random fishing video on YouTube titled "The One That Got Away" in the history on our Wii, which our son plays with all the time. She thinks I've been sharing our YouTube account with this other woman, and that's how I'm communicating with her. This is how I'm telling this other woman that she's the one who got away.
That's her kind of evidence.
On top of this, I'm also dealing with the typical PPD stuff that all husbands have to deal with. She thinks I'm neglecting her and don't love her anymore. Everything I do that she asked me to do would eventually be used against me. She asked me to clean the house. I clean it. She gets angry. Why? Because she thinks I'm inviting this other woman into our house whenever she's not there.
I feel like I'm getting verbally abused 24/7.
And yet, she tells me that her psychiatrist thinks there's nothing wrong with her. I can't talk to her doctor because of the law. The law prevents me from helping my wife who's ill. When will they think it's appropriate to talk to me? When my wife decides to take our kids with her and drive through the White House gates and then get shot by the police? This law was meant to prevent companies from abusing people's personal records, not from caring husbands like me trying to help their wife.
I don't know. I'm so confused. I have a lot of questions, but no answers. And angry that I can't do anything about it.
