My husband, who is in his mid 70s, is perpetually grumpy and negative. He rarely smiles and always sees the worst side of people and places, including our family and home environment. This permanent negativity and dissatisfaction has reached a peak now that he has retired and no longer goes to work. Any attempt to jolly him out of the gloom makes him more abrasive and defensive. I can’t remember when we last had fun together or a good laugh.
He has some health issues but mostly the usual ones associated with old age. He had prostate cancer, which resulted in a prostatectomy and impotence. This has been a big blow and various remedies such as Viagra have not worked, so sex has ceased. Bad hips prevent him from playing sports such as golf, bowls or even croquet. I’m in my late 70s and really at my wits’ end on how to address the issue of his unpleasantness without being on the receiving end of a rant about everything that’s wrong with us, the neighbours, the family, the world.
Is this depression? He won’t talk to the doctor about it and says he’s not depressed. He has worked hard all his life in engineering/construction and is not a reader. Like a lot of older women I’m desperate for some light relief. What can I do?
Eleanor says: The worst part of perpetual grumpiness is how absorbing it can be to the people around it. Either it makes you feel grumpy, too, puncturing your moments of levity and colouring your days grey, or it pushes you to the opposite end of the spectrum – Eeyorishness turning you into a counterbalancing Tigger, bouncing around with cheer-up attempts. “Look, it’s sunny! Look, a balloon!” Either way you’re responding to their grumpiness: it becomes the organising centre of your domestic life.
This can be a recipe for resentment. It sounds like you experience your husband as deeply influential over you and your shared home; his bitterness is the mood-setter, the attention-consumer. Asymmetrically, though, it sounds like he may experience himself as profoundly powerless. It’s wretched to go through what he has; to be in pain, to not be able to have sex, even just to age and feel the best parts of your life might be over. I’ve written before that this is one of the defining problems of trying to help someone in a slump; they experience themselves as unable to influence anything while we experience them as hugely influential.
I know you’ve talked to him; I know you know I’m going to suggest that you try it again. Does he know how much this is affecting you? Sometimes we can be motivated to change for our loved one’s sake, if not our own. The better angels of his nature might be sorry to hear he felt this miserable all the time, but sadder still to think he was making his life partner feel this way too.
It might also be worth getting qualified help for some of what he’s gone through. Cancer, impotence, loss of mobility – there aren’t many of us who’d take these cheerily in stride. But though they’ve ruled him out of some kinds of exercise and intimacy, there are lots of professionals who can help him find new ones. I wonder if you could insist on physical therapy, hydro exercise, finding ways of touching that will bring you closer. There are lots of resources for people of all ages and mobility levels to prevent a sedentary isolation that will only make us feel worse.
If you exhaust all the ways of engaging with him, though, there does come a point where the next step is to stop engaging. Years of marriage can make it difficult to remember what it was like to be a separate person, but you are separate from your husband, and your emotional experience can be too.
You’re clear about the things you need and aren’t getting: a bit of optimism about the world, a good laugh, some light relief. It’s important that you find ways to have these things, with or without your husband. It could be with friends, in books, in local shows, or simply by taking some time alone outside the house – but you don’t exist to be a bucket for his emotions. If he’s no longer feeling levity in the world, you deserve to find your own.
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