TW: mention of suicidal thoughts
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Hello friends. I'm posting here because I (32F) am desperately trying to help my husband (43M) through another serious bout of work-related depression. It happens at the start of a new job usually – and this time, it's been triggered by a promotion.
We subscribe to r/antiwork's ideas and viewpoints, but like many others we are not in a position to be able to give up work fully, unless we got a lottery win. He has briefly mentioned a few times that “ending it” is his retirement plan. This hurts so much to hear, and the pain he's in is apparent.
Last night he came home in a flood of tears, saying 'he doesn't know how to get ahead' and that I 'deserve to be with someone more stable'. He wants us to be able to buy a house and feel secure. He feels anger at the world and how it is.
I would do anything for this man to be happy. I've supported him through this cycle a few times, periods of him not working and struggling with jobs, and it breaks my heart every time it happens. Therapy and meds have been done in the past, and I'm about to approach those subjects again, but I figured I'd ask you – as anti-workers, some of us with this same debilitating depression and anxiety about work and the state of the world, how do you keep yourselves going?
He has his hobbies (he collects vinyl, is obsessed with films and Lego, and has a lot of space for these hobbies to live and take place), we've spoken about alternative work routes and I support him fully but he feels he is too old to start anything new or 'exciting'. We both work full-time currently, and I have been steady in work the whole 7 years we've known each other.