Dearest,

Now that I think I know what you're dealing with it makes dealing with you a little easier, although living with you is just a little harder. Although I understand your aggression, it's still hard to come home, or to wake up to, a non-stop barrage of accusation over all manner of things, great and small. Bedore I thought about male depression (MD) I would immediately snap back, and feel terribly hurt. Now I don't respond, but when occasionally I ask you to please stop it (because it gets tiring, love) you respond that you aren't accusing me of anything. If I were out to attack you rather than help you I might tape what you say, just to show you. But I understand that in your present state that's just not the smartest approach. What is happening in your head is not about reality but as perception, rather, what you perceive as reality. Everything is going to be distorted through the lens of MD, so there's really no point.

What I have thought might help get you to a place where maybe you'll recognize that there's a problem is helping with basic remedies that will make you feel a little better. So I've insisted that you take every opportunity to exercise, even if it costs me hours in productivity. Yesterday you were gone from 10.30 to 3.30, on a biking trip with your buddies, and you came home exhausted and happy. You told me you'd take an hour-long nap and then take over with the kids but I let you sleep for as long as you wanted (you woke up three hours later), because I fugured lack of sleep wasn't helping you any.

And later in the evening I asked you if there were any bike rides you could sign up for today and you said there were but if you went you'd be gone all afternoon and I said that was fine. So today you will be gone from noon to about 4.30. And that's fine. It will do you good.

Yesterday evening you were charming, happy, you couldn't stop talking and telling me about things that you'd been thinking, things you were interested in. Positive things, interesting things. But then you didn't come to bed with me. Once again you told me at 10 pm you'd be "right over" and you hadn't come by the time I fell asleep at 11.30 pm.
And this morning you woke in an awful mood - we hadn't been awake for more than twenty minutes when you'd already berated me over four separate things, from hair gel to the location of the remote (which you put away last night but which apparently I hid from you later!), to the top of one of the babies's dozen or so bottles, etc. I kept quiet but I forgot about MD so I felt very hurt and surprised.

And now I've remembered. So I know why you are being adorable to the babies and testy with me. Frankly, if you are going to be an ogre to some and adorable to others I'm fine with your being an occasional ogre to me as long as you continue to be lovely to them.

Knowing that you are going through this makes it easier...not to tolerate it, because I won't, but to understand it, and to respond (or not respond).
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Oh God. You've just come in - I am at the computer, have an hour to work after I finish this post - and gone at me again. You called me a liar. In angry tones, you showed me a receipt: "You are a liar! Don't lie to me! You told me Maggie (a friend I went to T*arget with last week) bought this sanitizer ($4, dearest) and YOU did! You are a LIAR!)"
"She DID buy it," I replied.
"You did!"
"She gave me the cash so we wouldn't go through the register twice."

And without a word you threw the receipt on my desk and stomped out.
I don't lie to you dearest. And that you think I would, after 15 years together, after everything we've been through, with as united as we have been...And even if I had (I didn't!!!) your anger was way out of proportion with whatever it was.
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Oh God. You just came back in AGAIN.
To tell me, in a sweet and utterly loving tone of voice that you'd found the remote.
And again in the most loving tone of voice that you wanted me to talk to you about my work, about how my dissertation is going.
And funnily enough it was that loving tone that made me lose it. Or, rather, once again, what I can't seem to handle (yet) are the swift changes in mood, from exasperated and angry to adoring.
I said OK, that we'd talk, but that now I just have an hour to work.
"But it's part of your work," you said. "It's me trying to help you!"
I was crying "I know, darling, and I am trying to help YOU, but you don't always make it easy."
And without a word, you left.
I wish I hadn't cried. It took me by surprise too.