“Look after your men” part 2

This is an update to my “Look after your men” blog from earlier this week.

This week has been eventful.

I have been on a Mental Health first aid course, which has enabled me to reflect upon my own mental health and that of my husbands. The hidden mental health I had no idea about.

Being a support worker for 18/19 years, I thought I was a mental health guru to be honest! How did I not see what was under my own nose?!

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Looking back I can now see how withdrawn he had become. How distracted he was and how passive he had become.

These things happen so gradually, it’s almost impossible to notice.

Addiction doesn’t cure mental health, it masks it. It also exasperates it. The cycle of addiction is incredibly selfish and self destructive at the same time.

When the knock happened in May 2020, there was nowhere left for him to hide.

I’ve talked in previous blogs about the relief I saw on his face. The relief he admitted he felt, that it was ‘over’.

His deepest darkest secret and his deepest darkest mental health was now out in the open.

My husband was my rock. Clearly I wasn’t his. I thought he knew if he needed me that I was there too. Isn’t that how marriages are supposed to work? Healthy marriages?

I thought we had the healthiest of relationships.

It saddens me to realise that our relationship was not equal.

He was my source of emotional support. I was not his.

I was the support for my clients, my sister’s, my parents, my niece’s, my nephew and my friends.

They would offload on me. I would on him. Where would he take that? Nowhere. He internalised it. He allowed it to pile up into his stress bucket and it came out sideways in the most horrendous of addictions.

The knock has changed our relationship beyond belief.

Despite the pain and aftermath of the knock, in many ways it’s changed for the better.

I have become a stronger and more emotionally resilient person. He has become more open and self aware. He has also learnt to talk to me. His wife. He told me that out of all the talking and the therapy he’s had since the arrest, what’s helped most of all, is talking to me.

Yesterday he had a meeting with his new offender manager. He told her the work we have both done since the arrest. She told him that we are clearly ‘Working as a team.’

“Look what happens when you stop shutting your wife out.” I told him.

So despite him being over 100 miles away from me right now, I feel more connected to him than I have in years.

If you’re reading this and you are a male, shutting out your partner, your family or friends, then please, stop. Get some support. It will help you beyond belief and make your relationships stronger.