Men’s hidden depression: the midlife crisis
‘My husband suddenly disconnected between us’
When Stefanie Vermeulen’s (41) husband unexpectedly left their family, she dove into the phenomenon of midlife crisis. Psychologists call it men’s hidden depression. ‘They think their problems will disappear if they start a new life.
It came out of nowhere. At the time, almost three years ago now, I didn’t know that it always comes out of nowhere. At least that’s how it went for me, a colleague, my sister’s friend, an acquaintance in Antwerp and the dozens of women worldwide I met online over the past year.
It went like this. We came back from vacation from France. One of those with three children in the back seat, in which one moment you are sweating while wiping your son’s buttocks on the shoulder of the Route du Soleil, and the next moment you are hopping with happiness over a camping field full of mint and butterflies.
You are hopping, because despite, or perhaps precisely because of those ten thousand young-family crises you have endured with your partner, you enjoy from your toes that family unity, and that you still like each other after all these years.
Space needed
Think. Yes, that liking on your part is all well and good, but what you don’t know then, and chances are he doesn’t either, is that something very different appears to be simmering on his side. And that the boiling point is almost reached. One summer night in August, two weeks after our vacation, it happened. My husband suddenly disconnected between us. He checked out and said, “I need space, I know I love you, but I can’t reach it.”
The fantasy of fleeing is a very active expression of depression
The women I met after that told me that their husbands said exactly such things. “I still love you, but I need space. Or, “I’m not in love anymore. The men packed their bags and went. Suddenly. There was no run-up, there was no relationship crisis, there had been no warnings or serious go-even-sitting conversations. Without consulting, they left, leaving behind their wives and children.
According to John Folk-Williams, the desire to leave the partner you love is an underreported and unmentioned symptom of depression that mostly affects men. Depression involves passivity, the lack of self-esteem, the inability to focus, to do anything, explains the author of the book Surviving Depression Together. But the fantasy of fleeing, this uncontrollable urge to leave, is precisely a very active expression of depression, he argues.
Young chickie
My husband left a month after that rigorous summer night for an apartment on the outskirts of town. He needed space and I wanted to give it to him. I did not know Folk-Williams then, nor did I know the many other experiencers, psychologists and therapists I studied or talked to in the years that followed.
Friends and family who are as shocked as I am drop in the weeks and months after that that it must be midlife and he will be back in no time. Images shoot through my mind of men who dress like adolescents, with a fast car and a young chickie. But my husband has no fast car, dresses like he always did, and the young chickie he denies on high and low.
I do see changes in his attitude and behavior. I know him as a stable rock, a sweet, committed, romantic guy and father, who puts a ticket to New York under the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve and sits under the dining room table on Sunday mornings picnicking with our three children. But this man, who now comes home on weekends and locks himself up in the attic for hours, yes, he looks like him outwardly, but the person who should be in that body there, that is gone. Foetsie.
Stress
In the weeks and months following his departure, he becomes absent and unreachable, superficial and distant. Sometimes he stands in the kitchen shaking his head and says he is so incredibly confused, at other times he acts as if nothing is wrong. He never asks how I’m doing. In bed, he lies so far away from me that he has to hold on to keep from falling off.
And when I am sad, or get angry, he runs out the door yelling that my anger is the reason he left. To then app from his apartment that he loves me, that I am and will remain his girl. The responsibility of family, performing at his job and studying on top of it, it all became too much for him. Really, if I give him a little space, he’ll be back in no time.
All in all, it’s a very confusing state of affairs. I try to hold my own as best I can. And in the meantime, I go looking, because I want to know what on earth is going on.
‘When they are two years along, the stress they had fled from catches up with them again’
Jed Diamond, psychotherapist and author of the international bestseller The Male Menopause, has been researching midlife transformation for the past 20 years and discovered that it is often accompanied by irritation and anger. “One wants to slam a door, another retreats,” he says. “They think their problems disappear when they start a new life. But when they are two years down the road, the stress they had fled from catches up with them again.”
Thoughtless behavior
Looking back, I realize that my husband, who is quite closed-minded by nature, was indeed withdrawing more and more lately, and I had been tiptoeing around him for a while to keep the atmosphere cozy and avoid his annoyances. I do not appear to be seeing ghosts, because when he tells me toward the end of the year that he is not coming back after all, he says it is better that way, because he has been annoyed with me for ages. He feels guilty about it and thinks it would be better for me if he stayed away.
Diamond is not surprised that men deny there is more to it. For his book The Irritable Man Syndrome, he conducted a survey of sixty thousand people. “These men feel unhappy and don’t know what to do. There is hardly any literature about it and you rarely find stories about it in magazines. They don’t want to leave or tear up their family at all; they want to feel good and happy again. They just don’t know how, other than by leaving,” Diamond said.
For VPRO programmer Bram van Splunteren (64), it was exactly like that. “I felt trapped. I just didn’t know how else to do it. Whereas, I love my family, my children.” Van Splunteren had been plagued by restlessness and infatuations for some time leading up to his departure.
“That feeling I had, that while you’re in a relationship where you’re experiencing a certain habituation, there’s a woman who thinks you’re absolutely fantastic, that you’re going after her, decorating, chasing her, that’s just so strong, there’s no reasonable way to talk about that at all. It’s such a strong feeling. It’s totally unthinking, intuitive behavior.”
Cage
My colleague Jan Remie (52) also left. “For over twenty years I had been walking along nicely, had my house, tree, beast. But I wasn’t myself,” he now looks back five years later. “I was trapped in my own cage, did try to discuss my dissatisfaction with my wife, but she didn’t hear me.” Remie left with two garbage bags and began a new life, complete with all the clichés: tattoos, a motorcycle and, after six weeks, a new, young girlfriend.
In our society, it is not manly to say that you are not doing well
“I broke free. Call it midlife, but for me it felt like a liberation,” he says. He does not regret it, but he feels bad for his ex-wife. “I had built that cage myself. I had a bad childhood and fled into a marriage with her. I didn’t want to hurt her, and feel like I dragged her into something anyway.”
With many men, this is how it goes, writes Terrence Real in his book I Don’t Want to Talk About It. Men shove their past and the pain they have suffered under the table. It has to be, writes the family therapist, because in our society it is not manly to say you are not doing well.
Hidden depression
A man must be able to fall back on himself, be a rock. So when his insecurities, his low self-esteem or his pain and sorrow from his youth are pressing in, at a point in his life when his testosterone is fluctuating wildly, his mortgage, his job, his wife and family are demanding, and his children are hanging on his leg or have just detached themselves from him, a man does not run to his partner, a therapist or close friend for advice and counsel, he runs away. Then to start a new life with a new look, girlfriend, hobbies, job, and car.
Real calls it the hidden depression of men. The new girlfriend, excessive spending, partying and hobbies are not a solution to the problem, but rather symptoms. They give a high like a drug. Those highs are needed as a defense mechanism against the cracks in self-image and underlying depression, Real says.
Coincidence or not, my husband also talked about a high. The day he decided to leave he experienced as if he had swallowed ecstasy, he later said. And the crush for the young girl he confessed to after a year was not a real crush, but rather a dazed one, he described.
Helpline
In Holland, I find nothing about this hidden depression. According to the DSM, the manual of mental disorders, it does not exist. Statistics Netherlands says that in 2014, eight percent of Dutch people aged 12 and older said they had depression. The Trimbos Institute, which looks not only at how people feel but also at depression symptoms prevalent in psychiatry, comes in lower, at five percent.
Neither mentioned Real’s hidden depression. “It doesn’t have to be depression either,” says Stefan Bogaerts, professor of forensic psychology at Tilburg University. Bogaerts researches hidden narcissism, which is linked to depression. “Hidden depression is possible,” he says, “but it could also be an identity problem. Maybe these men want a new identity because they are not satisfied with their lives.”
GGZ cites a University of California study showing that we often have blinders on when it comes to depression in men. They advocate including aggression, increased risk behavior and alcohol and alcohol abuse in the list of signs.
“I have tried to keep believing in us, but all the deceit, lies and manipulations have become too much for me.”
At least my husband doesn’t want to know anything about it. A midlife, yes, he is willing to admit. But depression? No way. He agrees that he has felt empty and numb, unable to rely on any feelings, and says that now he doesn’t want to get rid of me, then he does. But he does not feel depressed.
Mirror
We are now two years on and apart. I tried to keep believing in us, but all the deceit, lies and manipulations became too much for me. I enlist help, find a fine psychologist and join an American forum where I find support from dozens of women in the same situation as me. As we learn there what midlife is and continue to be amazed at the similarities, we help each other take steps in our new lives.
We give each other advice when our husbands beg us to come back, when, after months away from home, they suddenly show up on the doorstep because they want to join us for dinner, or clean out the barn, when they empty the savings account, or say they love two women and suggest they move on together.
We hold up a mirror to each other and learn to see our own part. Online we can tell our daily story, because our surroundings, we all notice, find it difficult after all this time. People these days don’t stay together forever, well get divorced then you can move on, with a new man, we hear.
Sociologist of law Bregje Dijksterhuis understands that reaction. “We find it normal for men, and more and more women as well, to leave the family.” Not surprising in itself, she thinks, with a government that since the 1970s has been focused on sustainable disruption, which means that the entire professional divorce industry now helps us get through a divorce primarily as quickly as possible.
But we hardly pay attention to the causes of divorce and also its impact, notes Dijksterhuis, who has a doctorate in judicial alimony standards. “People don’t know in advance what they are getting into. Many mothers end up on welfare, many fathers come off worst in terms of caring for the children, and many people regret it afterwards.”
Too late
Dijksterhuis believes the high divorce rate is a social problem and advocates a new line of government, one focused on prevention. With a helpline, for example, and education from experts by experience, with information about happy marriages or relationship therapy. “Most people who divorce are between 40 and 45 have young children. We could see if the life they lead is a problem.”
For Bram van Splunteren, at least, it comes too late. All in all, his midlife was a confusing, troubled time. “I couldn’t be alone. I didn’t want to let go of my new girlfriend, but on the other hand, I wasn’t finished at all. Terrible it was,” he says. “We had a difficult relationship for eight years and still had a beautiful child. But the tension was so high with the stress of the child added, we broke up.”
By now he is doing better. “I’m not negative, or pessimistic or unhappy, but I can lean toward that. In recent years, things have been better. That may also have to do with age. That I am through the difficult years.”
