I’ve been feeling really down lately, like a hamster on a wheel or a gray egg avatar on a Twitter screen. My husband is worried about me.
“Let’s just watch another episode of The Wire,” I toss off when he tries to ask me about what’s going on, after he comes home from his poker game around midnight one night.
My face is a flatline emoji. My eyes are cast downward. I’m lying on our loosely made bed in a sea of paperwork, gum wrappers, hair ties, color-coded file tabs, and a label maker. Steeped in self-pity, I ponder making a new folder and printing, in that crisp sans-serif font which makes everything so easily compartmentalized, a new label: “DEPRESSION.”
“Let’s talk a little first,” Pat says, trying to reach out and touch me through a barricade of three stacks of file folders. He slides the fortress sideways, and his hand reaches my leg, just barely. In response, I fall backward, close my eyes and begin to list what is upsetting me.
“I feel sad,” I begin. “I’m sad about some of my friendships that have fallen away. I’m sad because my days are often filled up with way too many transactional relationships. Either I want something from someone else or they want something from me. There’s no love there at all. There’s no sense of history or loyalty. I feel resentful. I feel disorganized. I feel like I’m never going to finish my book proposal. I feel over everything. I feel depleted of joy and wonder and gratitude and authenticity.”
What I didn’t say: I feel like I need more love than he can provide.
And I’m taking it out on him — some days without even realizing it. It’s not just that I’m grumpy and depressed, but also expressing the palpable lack of gratitude that can corrode a marriage when one partner pulls away from, well, everything.
One of the tools that I discovered in order to better check in with my partner comes from the terrific book The 5 Love Languages. The idea (which sounds fairly corny, I admit) involves communicating the level of your “love tank” to one another as if your contentment had a physical dipstick inside of it. On a scale of one to ten, you indicate how full or empty your heart feels in terms of sustenance and support.
While my feelings toward my husband are definitely at a solid ten right now, my overall love tank is hovering around six or seven. And that distinction makes me realize what I’m doing wrong: I’m not relying on enough sources of support and care outside of my partner. I need to figure out how to correct that.
“Okay, so why don’t you just tell me things that are going through your head,” my husband says encouragingly. “Just keep talking. That will help.”
