Beating the "I do" blues - post nuptial depresion

Article from Irish Wedding & New Home, Winter 2005/6

Beating the I do blues

Your wedding day is supposed to be the happiest day of your life so why do many brides feel so down afterwards? Sara Ryan looks at how post nuptial depression can affect you, and how you can beat it.

The thank you cards have been sent, you've looked through the album and you've watched your wedding video ten times. Everyone says yours was the best wedding they'd ever been to, but still, something's missing. Instead of feeling like a blissfully happy newlywed, you're so down that your new husband is started to get very concerned and it's affecting your relationship. You may be suffering from post-nuptial depression.

Post-nuptial depression (PND) is one of the most common problems faced by newlyweds. In the UK, an estimated one in ten couples is affected by it, and its consequences range from isolation to arguments and in some cases, even separation. In its mildest form, PND can occur simply because the excitement has died down. "No matter how much you enjoy your wedding day it's difficult for it to live up to the excitement and preparation," says Suzanne, 31, who married Cian last summer. "I enjoyed the planning to a certain extent but my family were stressing out so much that it had a negative effect on me, and I began to worry - I wanted everything to be perfect for them." While her wedding day went off without a hitch, Suzanne was also aware that it was passing her by very quickly. "All my married friends had advised me to enjoy every minute of it be cause it flies by," she says. "But even though they'd warned me in advance, I couldn't believe how quickly it really did go. By the end of the evening, you want to stay up until the bitter end because you know that once you go to bed, it's all going to be over - that was a real reality check for me. It never really occurred to me just how short the day was going to feel."

The shortness of the wedding day is completely at odds with the length of the planning process and the anticipation that comes not just from the couple, but also from friends and family. It's often this discrepancy that can lead to a feeling of anticlimax for the couple, and this can lead to depression. " You come back to work, and everyone asks you how it went and makes a big fuss, wanting to see pictures and all the rest of it," says Suzanne. "But once that's done, you sit back at your desk and you've loads of emails and messages and everything is just completely back to normal." And normal takes some getting used to when you've spent the last year being the focus of everyone's attention and excitement. "There was a girl in my office who was getting married three weeks after I did," says Suzanne. So when I came back to work, she was on the high that I had been on three weeks earlier. She was getting all the attention and excitement at work, and rightly so, but it was kind of hard for me to deal with." Feeling jealous of other brides-to-be is common, but most women won't own up to it, and keep it bottled up instead, which contributes to feelings of depression and isolation. "You do get used to being the centre of attention all the time and having everyone making a fuss of you, " says Suzanne. "I felt bad that I was down, and I didn't really want to tell people because I didn't want them to think I was moaning after such a great wedding and all the support and help everyone gave me."

Sometimes the feelings of depression are indicative of a deeper problem. Most couples live together for quite a while before they get married, so there is a tendency to think that nothing will change in their relationship after the big day. But, says couples counsellor Lisa O'Hara, this is not the case. "Getting married needs to be seen as a life changing event," she says. "Not matter how long you've been living together, the act of being married brings with it a feeling of permanence and belonging. For some though, it may also uncover the fear of responsibility or a feeling of being trapped. As most of us know who have been involved in wedding day preparations, the period leading up to the wedding day can be busy and exciting and we may give little or no thought to how we might feel when life returns to normal.

Catherine Keers, a consultant psychotherapist working in private practice in Dublin, agrees. " I think that when a newly married bride becomes depressed, there are often deeper issues being triggered," she says. "Lots of elements can play a part - past experiences of relationships, your parents' marriage and your childhood relationship with your parents." Keers says that all these things link in to your expectations of marriage, and your reasons for getting married at all.

According to Keers, it's important that you and your husband-to-be discuss in detail what it will mean to be married - long before the wedding. "Ask yourself - have you discussed your and your partner's expectations of each other and the relationship, for instance who will do what or play what role within a marriage? One example comes to mind from my practice of a couple who had lived together for years with one partner working abroad and coming home on weekends. They got along fine, each very independent during the time they spent apart, enjoying romantic reunions at the weekends. After they got married they decided he would not work abroad any more and get a job closer to home. they then started facing a lot of new problems, because the reality of living together full-time came as a total shock to both of them. This caused major problems for them and required them to figure out if they wanted to and indeed were able to compromise and re-establish their expectations of each other and of their roles within the marriage. "Knowing what to expect from your relationship after the wedding should go some way towards avoiding feelings of disappointment and depression. Although sometimes it's simply the routine of daily life that gets you down.

In terms of life changing events, the time just after the wedding may be the first time the couple are faced with 'ordinary life' together says O'Hara. "The excitement of moving in together, organising their home and arranging their wedding has passed and there can be a feeling of post-wedding blues or a sense of 'is that it'?". If this is the case, then it's important that rather than bottling it up, you discuss your feelings. "Research has shown that cracks can start o appear within the first two year of marriage and the couple's ability to both talk and listen may be extremely important at this time," continues O'Hara. The belief that marriage is going to transform your life or even your relationship is a dangerous one. There's no doubt that getting married will have an effect, but it's safe to say that if there are problems within the relationship before the wedding, getting married is more likely to draw these out than make them better
"Feeling down all the time put a lot of pressure on my marriage," says Suzanne. "Cian wondered if it was him, and because I didn't know what it was, I wondered that too. After talking it over with my friends though, I realized I was doing it to myself and I was the only one that could change it."

"I tried to be positive," she says. "Before the wedding, I had spent almost every weekend driving to Ennis to finalise plans, so afterwards I had load of spare time on my hands and I don't think that helped. I started filling my time with all the things I didn't have time for before, like seeing friends. Work was something else that I focused on before I got married, planning the wedding as always in the back of my mind, but I decided to refocus all my energies on my job and I got a lot of satisfaction from that and after a few weeks, the fog lifted and I started feeling good again. I just wish that I had expected to feel depressed after the wedding - from what I can see, almost every bride suffers from it but no one talks about it. I think I would have been able to deal with it much better if I'd know what it was."