Depression and DD

How do you handle DD when your HoH suffers from depression?


My previous posts have dealt with my problems around dealing with DD when my partner behaves in a non-HoH manner, but these have been times when one could say that he made a 'conscious' choice to not behave in that way, e.g. to wind me up. What do you do when your partner is not acting as your HoH when it is not really their fault?

What I am talking about here, for us, is that my partner suffers from depression and has done so since his mid teens, he is now in his late thirties. His self confidence plummets, he considers himself worthless and he stops making rational decisions. He also tends to be extremely 'economical with the truth', lying by omission or telling me what he thinks I want to hear rather than the whole truth. Once I worm out this truth my natural tendency is, of course, to take control of the situation and make the relevant 'sensible' decisions for him. I then 'mother' or bully him in equal amounts to try and get him to snap out of this 'depressive mood'. The trouble is that stepping in negates the very reasons we started this DD journey to avoid.

I know that we are a couple and thus should support each other in all areas, I should be able to step in when he is not able to do something as he does when the situation is reversed. In most areas this is fine and we do just that, e.g. he does not like driving particularly and I do, so in general when we go out I drive, I have great difficulty saying 'no' to people who want my help so he says 'no' for me. But in this one critical area, this HoH role if I step in I feel that this just puts me back to square one, where we were before DD. I do not really want to go back to that place again, the one before DD (it is not nice for either of us when I do). But I cannot stand by while he makes a mess of things, I do not mean small things either, these can be important things which could negatively affect our future. It is not that I cannot step in, obviously I can or we would have had no issues in the power dynamic of our relationship and would not need DD, but should I?

This may seem to be a bit of a whine and I suppose it is, I do understand what depression is like, as I had a breakdown myself a few years ago, but the difference was that mine was caused mostly by external factors rather than Andrew's 'imaginary' internal factors. It is hard when I see a man who is highly intelligent (he is a member of MENSA no less!!), who is extremely well respected in his professional and personal lives and who is most capable in many ways even though he is a tad challenged in the 'common sense' and domestic engineering departments, acting like an angst ridden and sulky teenager.

He has also told me that when he is depressed the only time he actually feels good about himself is when he is giving me my, as he says 'much needed maintenance disciplines' or a punishment spanking.

I know it should not, but it does nevertheless, make me angry and hurt when he acts this way even knowing that depression is all about not acting rationally and that it is not really his fault. It is just that I "need" him to NOT be like this.

I suppose that perhaps I could just ask for a spanking and then lie down and let him 'spank' me until he feels better, but this might be rather a painful solution, at least for me. But this is perhaps the one time that I would be happy to let him spank me when he is not behaving in a true HoH manner.

If anyone has any ideas or experience about how to deal with this complex issue I would love to hear them.

Thanks for listening, I hope I will not whinge so much in the next post but I do need to vent a bit, better to do it here than to Andrew directly even though I know he reads these posts.

Hil