It is difficult for men to admit pain, helplessness and suffering. Men tend to disguise or avoid any feelings that incapacitate them, that make them feel weak or dependent or interfere with the forward thrust of their careers. Women are quicker to recognize feelings and seek help and are better able to connect their depression with certain events or relationships in their lives. We have observed that women and men typically respond with depression to different types of losses. Women most often become depressed over disruption or cut off in close relationships.
Depressed women speak in terms of a lack of connectedness, or loss of self.
He's never interested in my feelings. They speak most often of job related failure in the outside world, business failure, poor job performance, competition, lack of status or prestige. The wife experiences these efforts as dominating and controlling. They keep the children quite shield him from his extend family and monitor his medication. Their lives are focused around the husband's depression, and the wife feels overburdened and unappreciated.