Loneliness in Love: Mental Health and the Price of Silence
He had a quiet confidence, a calm presence. I felt safe with him, trusted him enough to share everything—even the parts of me I usually kept hidden.
Before we got married, I was honest about who I was, about the battles I’d faced. I told him about my heart condition and the anxiety that sometimes came with it. I didn’t hide my past struggles with depression; I shared how I had fought and how I had survived. When I opened up to him, he seemed understanding, compassionate. He listened, reassured me, told me I was brave. I thought, This is it. This is love.
But the man I married turned out to be a stranger.
Marriage brought its own set of challenges, the stress of adjusting to a new home, the weight of living in a joint family, feeling cramped in a small apartment, struggling to carve out space for myself. I was overwhelmed, lonely and, slowly, that familiar ache started creeping back in. The anxiety, the panic, it was all there, bubbling under the surface. And as much as I tried to keep it hidden, it was only a matter of time before it took over.
When my first major panic attack happened after the wedding, they rushed me to the hospital. I remember lying there, gasping for air, feeling like I was drowning and wondering if anyone truly cared. The doctor confirmed what I already knew, it was extreme stress and anxiety. I was barely recovering when, just weeks later, it happened again. But this time, no one came. I was alone, in the middle of the night, struggling to breathe, choking on my own fear. I didn’t know if I would make it through, and I could feel my heart pounding like it was giving up on me. I reached out, desperate for comfort, for support… but there was nothing. Just emptiness.
Then, my husband, the man who had once been my safe place, looked at me and said he wanted a divorce. He said I was ‘emotionally unstable’, that he couldn’t handle my ‘overreactions’. His words pierced through me like knives. How can you get panic attacks over such small stuff? he asked, as if my pain, my suffering, was nothing more than an inconvenience. I stood there, shattered, unable to speak, unable to make him see the storm raging inside me. This man, this ‘educated’ man who had once promised to love me, was now condemning me for the very thing I had trusted him with.
I can’t describe the betrayal, the way my heart broke in that moment. I had trusted him with my most vulnerable self, with my fears and insecurities. And now, he was throwing it all back at me, making me feel like I was broken, defective, unworthy. I felt small, ashamed, like my pain was something I should apologize for. Here was a man who had traveled the world, met people from all walks of life and yet, when it came to understanding the woman he married, he was as heartless as a stranger.
This is the reality so many of us live in a world that celebrates mental health on social media but ridicules it behind closed doors. People post messages about ‘being there’ for loved ones, share quotes about compassion, but when faced with real pain, real struggle, they turn away. They call us ‘too sensitive’, ‘dramatic’ or ‘unstable’, as if our emotions are a flaw, as if we’re somehow weaker for feeling deeply.
But the truth is, we are not weak. We are carrying storms inside us, storms that cannot be seen, storms that threaten to break us, yet we go on.
Despite the shame, despite the disbelief, despite the loneliness, we rise every day to face a world that doesn’t understand us. This journey has taught me a painful truth that sometimes, even those closest to us won’t see our pain. And that’s okay. I am learning that I don’t need their understanding to survive. I don’t need their validation to be whole. I have walked through fire, and if I have learnt one thing, it is this: I am stronger than I ever thought I could be.
The world may never fully understand the silent battles we fight. But we know. We know the resilience it takes to keep going, to keep hoping, to keep breathing through the weight of invisible storms. And that, in itself, is a kind of victory.
