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!

You’re not a therapist. If his needs exceed your ability or desire to cope then move on. In your shoes (and having suffered from depression myself) I wouldn’t stay unless he was certain to get better. Depression is a curiously self centred illness and as you are finding, can be very constraining. Already you are not doing normal things that you would like to do (e.g. travel) and this will likely continue long term.

My mother was in and out of mental institutions for depression and I was in and out of care

My childhood was horrific. I loved being in care, it was going home and walking on egg shells around my mother because despite all the promises that things would change She never did. I think there was an element of competition in her depression
Almost like she wanted to be the one who had the most electric shock treatments
the one who took the most sleeping tablets to get her to sleep

It’s the selfishness that comes with depression that I struggle with.

Living with someone with depression is hard. I know it varies from person to person, but severe depression can cause someone to be quite selfish.

I recently went through one of the hardest times in my life, in that my whole life has upended, and the response from my depressed family member was they didn't want to hear it and had to protect their own mental health.

Good God, no. Life is too short to waste on someone you’ve known for a few months who will continue to suck you into his misery.

My dh was the love of my life and the father of my child. He was an infinitely loving and gentle person, a perfect husband in many ways. I would never have wanted to miss out on being with him and having our son.

It was also an absolute shitshow because of his chronic illness. He died by suicide leaving my son and I bereaved, following years of suffering. His pain was much worse than mine but those years were hard for me too. I don't know how my son will do in the future. I have the permanent fear that my son will have inherited the illness.

I was very naive when I got into the relationship and had no idea what I was taking on (tbh he was a bit economical with the truth, though not more than most people early in a relationship).

Tbh unless you are so much in love that you are already committed, unless you simply can't imagine not being with him because he makes you so happy, I would walk away. The first year with my dh was blissful, pure love and joy. We had lots of really happy times in between the dark ones. And I always knew he was generous and giving. If you're not feeling that, then it's not worth it.

If someone I was in a relationship with (partner, friend, family) developed a mental illness I would stand by them and give them 100% support and whatever help I could. However, I would never again enter into a new relationship with someone knowing they had mental health problems.

I’m aware that seems callous but I found I didn’t have the wherewithal to be any real help to them or manage the emotional (and sometimes physical and financial) toll it had on me.

Don’t feel guilty about leaving the relationship. You couldn’t really have known what being with them would be like, how hard it could be, until you experienced it. There is no shame in admitting it isn’t how you want to live.

Look at it this way- mental health professionals are trained not only on how to handle patients needs but how to protect their own mental health from the effects of working with people with those illnesses.

I'm comforted by the people who say they were deeply in love with a depressed partner and that still didn't fix it. I wasn't in love with my DH when we married, it was more of a case of us both wanting to settle down and we liked each other. I'd assumed feelings would deepen but the opposite happened, his mood problems, dependency and inertia drained the life out of me until I had mo more to give. I'd always carried the worry that perhaps I just didn't love him enough, but I see here that it's not the case.

No it's an incredibly difficult life of being on eggshells to live. You become all consumed by them, how they're feeling and what they want/need, that you end up losing you.

It doesn't go away, even in well times.

Yes- you lose yourself completely.

Everything revolves around them and how they're feeling. You feel a horrible knot of anxiety in your stomach constantly because you never know if its going to be a bad day or not and if its bad then you end up walking on eggshells never knowing what the best thing to do is. Should you agree with them that everything is shit because then its just compounding the mood further or should you try to be positive but that just irritates them even more and makes them angry.

In all of this, you completely lose yourself and how you feel about anything because then it gets framed as selfish every time you dare to consider your own needs/feelings. You end up dismissing your own mental health needs constantly as if they're completely unimportant and irrelevant.

Never, ever again.