--- title: Family: Letter to the Husband From the Wife Who Has Depression description: Please, if you notice the cloud before I tell you, just hug me tight and tell me we’ll fight it together. canonical: https://time.com/3994048/letter-husband-wife-depression/ author: The Mighty article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-08-12T18:40:10.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:58:11.372Z article:section: Ideas og:title: To the Husband From the Wife Who Has Depression og:description: Please, if you notice the cloud before I tell you, just hug me tight and tell me we’ll fight it together og:url: https://time.com/3994048/letter-husband-wife-depression/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: To the Husband From the Wife Who Has Depression twitter:description: Please, if you notice the cloud before I tell you, just hug me tight and tell me we’ll fight it together twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # To the Husband From the Wife Who Has Depression > Sponsored content. 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A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-inside-2026q3/newsletters?i=fc6b7bdb-2cbd-46de-a0eb-8cc7bb7a1837&cr=time-nl-inside-2026q3-v1) ## Video: What One Woman Learned From Taking a Year Off From Her Marriage [Watch (HLS stream): What One Woman Learned From Taking a Year Off From Her Marriage](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/B3QCkNPd.m3u8) (3:53)  _Published 2015-04-01. Robin Rinaldi did what many women dream of but few actually do: she took a year off from her marriage, made an agreement with her husband that they would both sleep with other people for a set period of time, and threw caution to the wind._ by [Becci Nicholls / The Mighty](https://time.com/author/the-mighty/) ## Becci Nicholls / The Mighty Aug 12, 2015 6:40 PM UTC by [Becci Nicholls / The Mighty](https://time.com/author/the-mighty/) ## Becci Nicholls / The Mighty Aug 12, 2015 6:40 PM UTC Dear Husband, I love you dearly, more than anything in this whole world. I think you already know this. I know you love me too, I just forget sometimes. Depression clouds my mind and fills me with horrid thoughts about how unlovable and worthless I am. Sometimes I believe you, sometimes I believe depression. I know you prefer the good days when I’m happy and not anxious or snappy, and I wish I could have these days every day. But I can’t. I feel the cloud approaching and it petrifies me. Sometimes I tell you and sometimes I don’t. Please, if you notice the cloud before I tell you, just hug me tight and tell me we’ll fight it together. Please don’t ask me if I’m OK — my automatic answer will be yes. In reality, it’s a big no. You see, depression can make you feel ashamed. I know sometimes I overreact about the smallest things and get angry, but please be patient with me. Forgetting the bread will not be the real reason. It’s that I feel like I’m losing control over my mind. Depression is very clever, you see – it builds up a wall of anger piece by piece, and you never notice it until it’s so big it begins to topple over. I’m sorry you get the brunt of my anger on cloudy days. Please forgive me. Please. Just tell me you love me and leave me to calm down. I know it’s hard to help somebody through depression if you’ve never experienced it yourself. I understand. I totally get it. Just listen to me and ask about the cloudy days. I can’t just bring it up in conversation. Depression clouds your mind. I need you to break the silence. There will be lots of times I feel like you’d be better off without me, or that my children deserve a better momma. Sometimes I’ll tell you. Most of the time I won’t. Sometimes I can go for months without those thoughts crossing my mind, and other times I think about them every second of every day for weeks. That’s the scary truth. Depression is vile — a vile, nasty monster. Please always keep an eye on me, but know no matter how many times you tell me I’m worth it I probably won’t believe it on cloudy days – but please never stop telling me. Ever. I love our children more than anything, but sometimes I feel like a failure. I feel like a rubbish momma. My mind nags me and tells me other mommas do things better and love better than me. I feel like I always fall short. I find it so hard being a momma on cloudy days, but I try so hard to not let them notice the clouds. I hope you know I try. I haven’t self-harmed since February 2010, but the urge often consumes me. When the black cloud is here it consumes my mind. I fight it so hard for myself, my children and for you. I know it’s hard to understand why I crave it, I can’t explain it myself. It’s like an old addiction that comes to hurt me when it smells the dark cloud. One day I hope it won’t ever cross my mind again. I know I don’t talk about these black clouds often, but I want to. I hate the silence it forces me to keep. There’s a certain freedom when it comes to talking openly about the monster. Help me find that freedom. Depression makes me feel tired. Sometimes the fatigue is so bad I just want to cry. Every bone hurts. Sometimes I lay awake at night and worry about things that won’t even happen. Squeeze my hand tight if you’re awake too. Sometimes it takes every bit of motivation to get up in the morning, but I never let you in on this. A new day often scares me. I wonder, _will I cope? Will the sky be blue or black? Is the weather nice?_ Every single morning is hard, but seeing you makes it easier. I want to publicly thank you for loving me and supporting me. You are the best. Yours forever x _This_ [_article_](http://themighty.com/2015/07/to-the-husband-with-the-wife-who-has-depression/) _was edited and published on_ [_The Mighty_](http://themighty.com) _with permission from_ [_Swords and Snoodles_](http://swordsandsnoodles.co.uk/) _More from The Mighty:_ * [When We Asked Ronda Rousey If She Had Apraxia of Speech](http://themighty.com/2015/08/when-we-asked-ronda-rousey-if-she-had1-apraxia-of-speech/?utm%5Fsource=TIME.com&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcampaign=TIME%5Flinks&utm%5Fcontent=Apraxia%5FRonda) * [I Let My 4-Year-Old With Autism Use My Camera. Here’s How He Sees the World.](http://themighty.com/2015/03/i-let-my-4-year-old-with-autism-use-my-camera-heres-how-he-sees-the-world/?utm%5Fsource=TIME.com&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcampaign=TIME%5Flinks&utm%5Fcontent=Autism%5FCamera) * [Please Stop Saying ‘Committed’ Suicide](http://themighty.com/2015/07/please-stop-saying-committed-suicide/?utm%5Fsource=TIME.com&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcampaign=TIME%5Flinks&utm%5Fcontent=Stop%5FCommitted%5FSuicide) ## Transcript I saw a headline the other day that said something like Woman Sleeps with Twelve Strangers in a Year and is Shocked, Shocked Shocked, When She Divorced. No, I was not shocked. Who, nobody would be shocked. Good girl seeks experience. I'm a 44 year old professional, educated, attractive woman in an open marriage seeking single men age 35 to 50 to help me explore my sexuality. You must be trustworthy, smart and skilled at conversation as well as in bed. We will first meet in public for coffee or a drink. If that goes well, we'll have dinner. Possibly followed by sex. Our time together will be limited to three dates. As I cannot become seriously involved. When you think about it. A lot of people do this. They don't move out and set up rules and have an open marriage and apart time separation. They just have affairs. I was living in San Francisco. I was in my early 40s. My husband and I hit a marital crisis where I wanted to have children, and he didn't. And he ended up saying that he wanted to get a vasectomy. And at that point, I thought, what do I need to do now before. My life is over if I'm not gonna have children. That's when I realized I really needed to sow the oats I'd never done in my youth and needed a little time off from my marriage to do that if we weren't gonna be having a family. It was the fact that I was gonna let them get away scot- free. After three dates. The three basic rules were safe sex, no mutual acquaintances and, no long term serious relationships. We both ended up breaking two of those rules over the course of the year. I wanted their smells, their stomachs, their grasping hands and hungry mouths. The more maleness I had, the more female I could be. I sought it out despite the warnings of concerned friends, the obvious pain I was causing my husband, the moral code and defining boundaries of the self I'd known for 44 years. Come what may, I would be ravished and then they could All I can say is that it was unlike me to act that way. I'd always been a very cautious and even anxious person. It was something instinctual and something very female driving me. It wasn't really planned and strategized as much as felt. Kind of a calling that I just needed some time to explore this before I went forward in my life. People would tell me this is so brave, and I didn't, I didn't feel brave. I, but I felt I was acting on instinct. [ MUSIC ] Okay. So, Angie. Angie. In that time. I met several people had experience with several people learned not just about other people but about my self. Via these sexual experiences. And I also learned more about my marriage. Expecting your spouse to provide passion and security and purpose. It's a lot. Going through this process gave me all this experience that kind of turned into this awareness and this wisdom that, wow I was asking too much. And so now as a result I don't look to someone else. To, you know, kind if unfairly provide all of those things. And I couldn't have learned it. I don't think unless I actually went through it. 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