My partner has withdrawn since the birth. What is going on with him?

If your partner has been irritable, absent or out a lot since the birth, that is more often a sign of his own crisis than of indifference. Around one in ten fathers goes through a depressive phase in the period from pregnancy to one year after the birth. Almost nobody talks about it, least of all the men affected.

This is not a call to be considerate while you yourself are at the end of your tether. It is information that helps you read the situation correctly.

The figures

A meta-analysis by Paulson and Bazemore, published in 2010 in the journal JAMA, combined 43 studies with a total of 28,004 participants. The result: around 10 per cent of fathers were affected by depression in the period from pregnancy to one year after the birth. In the window between the third and sixth month after the birth, the proportion in the included studies was considerably higher.

Added to that is a finding that matters more for you as a couple than the percentage: the strain on both parents was measurably connected. If one of you is struggling, the likelihood rises for the other.

That means it is not an extra problem alongside yours. It is the same one.

For context: for mothers, the figures for depressive phases after the birth are around 10 to 20 per cent, depending on the survey. So it is more common in women, but not rare in men. Just invisible.

Why it looks different in men

That is the reason it is so often overlooked. What you expect as a sign, namely sadness and withdrawal, is often not the first thing you notice in men.

More often it shows up like this:

• Irritability. He is thin-skinned and flares up over little things.
• Escaping outwards. More work, more sport, more phone, more of anything that is not at home.
• Functioning without being involved. He does what needs doing, but he is not really there.
• Silence when asked. Not out of refusal, but because he has no answer available.
• Physical signs. Sleeping badly even though the baby is asleep, headaches, back pain.

To you, all of this together looks like indifference. Or like a man reclaiming his old life while you are stuck in the new one.

Sometimes it is exactly that. Often it is something else.

What may be behind it

In my work, the same things come up again and again as soon as a man in the room starts to talk.

He is not allowed to be at the end of his tether. Not because anyone has forbidden it. But because there is the idea that his exhaustion does not count next to the exhaustion of a woman who has just had a baby.

He does not know where his place is. In the first months everything revolves around a bond he can only be part of to a limited extent. Many men describe feeling superfluous in their own home.

He is doing it wrong if he does it differently. He carries the baby differently, dresses it differently, soothes it differently. For that he gets corrected, usually kindly meant. After a few weeks he stops doing it altogether.

The pressure has grown. Often he works more than before because money is short, and at the same time he hears that he is not around enough. Both are true.

In Turkish and other families where a man is expected above all to be strong, there is an extra layer. There, holding back feelings is often seen as a matter of character, not as a problem. In my sessions the opposite shows up again and again: these men carry a great deal, they have just never had a space for it. They would rather be seen as someone who simply does not talk than open up and be reproached for it.

What you can do without sacrificing yourself

First, a boundary: you are not responsible for pulling him out of a crisis. You are in your own.

What you can do is smaller, and it usually helps more than one big conversation.

Ask about him, not about the situation.

“How are you actually doing with all this? Not us. You.”

Many men are not asked this question for months. Not out of a lack of love, but because everyone involved is busy with the baby.

Do not correct him for a few weeks.

That is uncomfortable, because you do it differently and probably with more practice. But every correction costs him a bit of confidence, and without confidence nobody takes anything on.

Give him a responsibility, not tasks.

An area that belongs entirely to him, including the decisions. That is the fastest way from “I’m helping” to “I’m a father”.

Tell him that you see his exhaustion.

“I can see that you are giving everything right now too.”

This sentence costs nothing, and in this phase it is the most effective one I know. Both of you are waiting for the other to say it first.

When it is more than exhaustion

There is a point at which conversations are no longer enough, and in men it is often recognised late.

If for weeks he no longer feels any joy, not even in calm moments. If he behaves as though he were cut off from you and the baby. If he drinks considerably more than before. If he cannot sleep even though it is quiet. If thoughts come up that frighten him.

Then it belongs in good hands, and the way there is unspectacular: the GP. It is not a big step, and it is the right one.

If he does not go himself, you can bring it up without turning it into a diagnosis:

“I think you’re in a really bad way right now. Not because of us. Please go and see a doctor.”

And if his strain turns into belittling, control or violence, then exhaustion is no explanation for it. The German helpline for women affected by violence (Hilfetelefon Gewalt gegen Frauen) is available around the clock, free of charge and anonymously, on 116 016.

What I would like you to take away

In this phase there is a calculation no couple can win: which of you has it harder.

His tiredness has a finishing time, yours does not. Yours has moments when a small child smiles at you, his has them less often. Both are real, and neither can be weighed against the other.

The only way out of this calculation is for one of you to say first: I can see that you are at the end of your tether too.

Usually the arguing stops after that.

Source

Paulson, J. F. & Bazemore, S. D. (2010). Prenatal and postpartum depression in fathers and its association with maternal depression: A meta-analysis. JAMA, 303(19), 1961 to 1969.