At this point, moving would be very, very low on my list of priorities if I were you. For one thing, you don’t have a prayer of it happening at this point, barring some major change in circumstances and it’s not even clearly desirable for your family. Secondly, in my experience, you can only fight one big disagreement with your spouse at a time. Fighting two different disagreements at the same time puts you in the same situation that Hitler was when he was fighting both in France and the Soviet Union–spread too thin and losing on both fronts. One thing at a time–and always choose the more important thing. That would be your wife’s mental health. (And no matter how positive a move might be long-term, in the short term, I would expect your wife to lose a lot of ground in terms of functioning.)
I have to mention that there is a strong possibility that your wife’s mental health will improve spontaneously with time, especially if she gets a break from pregnancy and early motherhood and develops a social life through your kids’ preschool and school. School activities and social life have the potential of giving her social stimulation that will help lift her out of her current rut.
Next time you go to marriage counseling (and I hope it will be soon) and your wife asks for you to start doing something, I’d say, “Sure–and I want you to take your depression medication and be seeing somebody for your depression.” (Or whatever you’ve learned from your reading is the standard of care.) But you need to keep it so it sounds small, reasonable and proportional to whatever she was asking. And you go ahead and fill her prescription for her. Make it easy for her to follow through and do the thing you want her to do. You may also need to make appointments for her and to make sure she goes to them. You are going to need to spoon feed her. I expect that part of the reason she is refusing to do medication is that she is overwhelmed by all of the separate steps involved in obtaining and remembering medication–take over as many as you can until she starts getting better and maybe set up some sort of reminder system for when you are out of town.
There is literally nothing more important you can do for your family right now.
If she says yes to taking medication, great! (Although, of course there can be issues with fine tuning medication, so be prepared that if it’s not working, you need to go back to the doctor for an adjustment, not just give up.) If she says no, here are some options:
–Point out that if her situation is hopeless, there’s no harm in taking medication. She won’t be worse off if she does, and she may be better off–it’s all win. (Of course, it’s a little more complicated than that, but you’re dealing with a depressed lady–she’s not firing on all cylinders)
–If she still says no, make an appointment with a priest she respects. Even if he isn’t friendly to medication, he has probably seen some SAD people, and will probably be encouraging about the value of doing stuff as opposed to not doing stuff. There might even be somebody in the parish who could talk to her about being a mom and dealing with depression that could tell her a story that she would connect with. In fact, come to think of it, there are numerous CAF women who have inspiring stories of coming out of postpartum/SAHM depression.
–If she still says no, share information with her about the effect of depressed mothers on children’s development in your counseling sessions. Tell her that if she doesn’t pursue treatment, she is potentially hurting her children. It’s not just her or you that is affected if she is half the mother that she could be. (Obviously shut up about how she’s not half the wife she could be–the mom card is a much stronger card–so play that one.) You will be able to find a lot of material on the harmful effects of maternal depression. Of course, you don’t want to push her over the edge into despair, but that is the primary consideration here, that depressed mothers are bad at mothering and the longer she is depressed, the more potential there is that her depression will harm the kids.
After that, if it’s still no, it’s a real no man’s land. You could theoretically take medical leave if she isn’t taking medication or following a treatment plan. Also, is there anybody locally in her family or among her friends who is is sensible and discreet and could be your ally? But I realize that both of those options are fraught with problems.
With regard to divorce, I see some big practical problems. Here is the basic range of options:
- You and your wife get a divorce and (best case scenario) you get 50/50 custody. Your kids spend half their time with you and half their time with a low-functioning untreated depressed mom.
You wind up having roughly as much time with your kids as you do now and regard as inadequate, which makes the whole thing pretty pointless.
- You and your wife get a divorce and (because of the untreated depression), you get nearly 100% custody. You have to leave your airline career in order to be home enough and your income is perhaps cut in two. Again, you could have left the airline for half the income without the divorce–so again, it’s pretty pointless.
- You talk your wife into aggressive treatment for her depression, you save your marriage and live happily ever after.
I favor #3 if at all possible. Neither #1 or #2 is very attractive. (I realize #3 is a bit lacking in detail, but there are a lot of different options for living happily ever after.)
