Relationship with a depressed partner: would you do it again?

[lounellie]

Hello everyone, first-time poster but I have been visiting Mumsnet for many years (especially this board and the AIBU board!). I signed up specifically to post this thread as I am hoping to gain some perspective and advice from this wise community.

I find myself at a crossroads in my private life where I have to decide if I want to continue a relationship with a man who has chronic depression (MDD). I am 35 and not too bothered about children if that is relevant. He is my age and we have been dating for 8 months.

While he is a lovely, lovely man who clearly loves me very much, he has been suffering from severe depression for his whole life. In the last couple of months, he has had a depression bout which made me reflect seriously on whether I can envision building a life with this person.

I feel selfish for thinking this way, but the last few months have been so tough and I don't know that I can do this again and again for a partner who is likely to have on-and-off depression forever. He takes meds and is in therapy but I would say he still struggles with managing his emotions and moods when his depression flares up. I find that our relationship becomes quite one-sided when he is so down as he doesn't have as much mental bandwidth to show up as a partner.

So my question is: if you have been or are partnered with a lovely person who suffers from severe chronic depression, would you do it again? Do you think it was/ is worth it? I'd love to understand what long-term challenges I might be signing up for if I continue this relationship and hear about other people's similar experiences.

Thank you for your advice!

No I wouldn't. I'm married to one.

I'm in it for the long haul now, but when things are bad I look back and think if I knew then what I knew now I wouldn't have chosen this future.

I have it and so does DH. He also has BPD, PTSD and has had acute psychosis.
I've also severe anorexia and PTSD and we both have chronic anxiety.
So, I think I can deal with it. Just about. But if I had the choice I'd be mentally well and so would my partner. But the good times outweigh the bad. We've been together nearly 18 years now and love eachother very much.

I have mental heath issues myself so probably yes, as we'd understand each other.

I wouldnt. My dad was depressed. My mum was like a tightly wound weasel to us kids possibly because she could take no more. But my childhood was to be supercompliant, go with the flow, have no needs, oh, and be fairly cheerful. Not too cheerful but just a 6 on that scale of 1 to 10.

I know you're not certain about kids but just thought I'd give you the perspective of the child of a depressed dad.

Thank you @ComoSeDicePepinoEnIngles that was a very interesting perspective that I had not considered.

I shall add that I haven't had any mental health issues to date. I am aware that anyone can experience poor mental health and I guess I have been lucky on that front.

No i wouldn't stay with a man who struggles with his emotions and moods and in these periods provides a one-sided relationship. As you say, this isn't likely to improve. And all this in such a short relationship.

I wouldn't. I suffered from anxiety disorder when I was younger and wouldn't have dated myself.

No. Well maybe without kids if I was happy with my own company/doing my own thing. Definitely not with kids.

No. And often leaving the relationship can make the person seek help and get better. You may actually be enabling that person to stay depressed without knowing it

No, I wouldn't. It's all very well when you are fit and healthy yourself but you have no guarantee you won't need a supportive partner at some stage of your life and he won't be it. If you are single people rally around, if you have a partner they expect your partner to be there for you.

Nope. I divorced my ex-h after 2 years of asking him to get help. Wasn't the only reason but was a big contributor

@lounellie there are over 8 billion people on this earth. Why settle for someone who is going to have an adverse effect on virtually every area of your life? As for guilt, you don’t owe anyone a relationship.

It can be really tough- especially when they don’t want to or can’t be motivated to seek help. It can have a huge impact on you unless your own mental health is very robust- it can change the whole dynamic of your relationship

No I wouldn't no

I found it difficult not to feel resentful - being unable to have a bad day because his was always soooo much worse. Tip toeing around not sure what version of him would be there that day.

To me his "illness" became just an extension of his already selfish personality

Nope! Absolutely not! You end up being the emotional punchbag and it just isn’t healthy! Get out while you can!

Hello. No I wouldn’t. It was my mother though and mine and my brothers childhood was spent walking round on egg shells.

I honestly do think ( in some people) they can become very selfish and expect the entire world to revolve around their illness.

It’s exhausting always watching and making sure they are ‘ok’ or if a flare up is about to happen. There was no time for anyone else to be ill or ‘feeling down’. My mum
was sectioned a few times and tbh it’s impacted our lives even as an adult as we are now people pleasers and always ‘reading the room’ or hyper vigilante in other people’s emotions.

It made my step dad depressed. There was whole periods of time where there was no joy in the house as the cloud of doom had lifted over my mother and it infected everything. It was always other people too, everyone got the blame for her low moods.

She tried to hang herself outside my brothers bedroom door and he found her. She is still alive and well now though!

She had a terrible childhood - care homes and sexual abuse but she passed that trauma on to us. She was broken and couldn’t be fixed.

So I would never ever date anyone with mental health problems.

A really good book to read is ‘depression fall out’ it’s about what happens to family’s when a person in it has depression.

He is already in treatment to be fair, so he had asked for help.

However I do agree that he probably would benefit from focusing his attention and energy on getting out of this depressive episode rather than feeling guilty because he can't really show up for me.

That's the thing, I have found being in this relationship a very lonely experience for the last two months.

He can't do much, can't travel, can't do social things, etc etc therefore I am essentially leading the life of a single person except for a weekly get together which is all he can manage at the moment.

That is what led me to start questioning things.

No. You'll never be able to be happy. He'll make your life miserable. You'll be made to feel bad for ever being happy because he isn't. You'll always have to defer to his needs. His needs will always supersede yours. HELL TO THE FUCKED UP NO.

No, I grew up with a parent who was depressed. I've given enough of my life over to keeping plates spinning, hyper vigilant to mood, atmosphere, change of expression, subject to being dragged into repetitive doom spiral thinking, going over and over and over again a normal interaction. Depression is awful for everyone it touches.

I am in a long relationship with a man with “moderate depression” never bad enough to be hospitalised but definitely bad enough to make me on edge, stressed and fearful at times. I honestly wish I had ended the relationship after he had recovered from his first episode. That was linked to a serious work incident if I had known how many episodes would follow not precipitated by significant events but just as a result of his personality/coping mechanisms/thought processes then I would have left.

It really doesn’t sound very fulfilling. Is he doing any work to get better? Any therapy?

@BelindaOkra yes he is taking meds and doing therapy but he started this year after trying to ignore the problem for many years so he has a long journey ahead.

He is really trying his best to get better which js why it feels unfair to question the relationship.

I wouldn’t because in my experience it got contagious and dragged me down. Stopped me living to the full. I don’t want to hear about death every day. Just the amount of stress I didn’t need and I did try hard and for longer than I wanted to.