Oh… and she doesn’t know that I’m hung up on this issue. I didn’t want to tell her because I didn’t want her to hide her bouts from me.
I told her that I just wanted to take things slowly, and she’s ok with that.
Well… Broomstick’s advice seems to be the most concise in that it may or may not be a “dealbreaker”, but the extent to which it is or is not is going to be based largely on your expectations for the relationship.
You can love a person to pieces, but someone who historically, has a high probability (at some point) of going into a sustained emotional trauma state for a significant period of time, is going to negatively affect the quality of your life in a very concrete fashion despite your best intentions to be caring and compassionate.
Having seen how relationships with chronically depressed people wind up more often than not … well… do the best you can and do not have children until you can get a real feel for the true scope and severity of her condition.
This is not encouraging. She had two suicide attempts six years ago. Why is she neither taking the medication prescribed to her nor going to therapy?
Definitely sounds like that to me. She may never have another bad day in her life, but I’d say that’s unlikely given her history, in which case she has some hard lessons to learn, namely that you have to take special care of yourself when you have a mental illness. Does she accept the possibility that her emotional state may deteriorate again? If that happens, will she seek treatment then? If so, then you may have to see her through some tough times if you stay with her. But it could be well worthwhile if you really care for her.
On the other hand, if she’s in denial, run. Run far away. You can’t help her, and when she descends into the abyss, she’ll only drag you down with her.
I want to say something about this matter, but I’m not quite sure what.
I suffer from dythymic depression (a form of mild depression that can have periods of chronic depression.) For years, I was in remission, after therapy and couseling. I’m having a relapse now, but I think I’m being fairly proactive and am dealing with it. However, if I hadn’t had all the therapy and treatment that I had a few years ago, I think I’d be at a loss.
That said, if she’s not actively seeking treatment, or hasn’t seriously worked through her issues in the past, it could be a problem. When I was depressed I was not fun to be around. I had support from my friends, but it wasn’t a picnic for them. My sister and a friend from high school both suffer from manic depression, and they require a lot of constant support from their significant others to keep level. Manic depression is a different animal, though.
I come from a family that’s familiar with mental illness through generations, as does my boyfriend. We both have our own issues, and have a common bond of having to handle different mental situations as they develop, with ourselves, and with others. The one key factor, though, is that we’ve all sought help. We’re aware of our problems, we handle them, and we seek support. If your girlfriend isn’t willing to do all that, you might have some deal-breaker problems. Not talking about the illness openly and honestly now can lead to bigger issues.
I don’t know if any of that helped. Draw your own conclusions. 
It looks like I’m going to have to confront her with my concerns soon. The “wait and see” approach has been helpful so far, but it may have run its course.
From what I can tell, she is very willing to be honest and up-front about her whole situation. After all, she disclosed all of this stuff voluntarily and answered every question I had so far, even though the answer didn’t put her in the best light.
Depression shouldn’t be a deal breaker. However, I always figured you were gay with a name like bearflag.
This…
… really threw me.
I was really torn about responding to this post but I guess I’m going to. You’ve heard from a lot of people who are living with depression. I guess I’m here to discuss my experience of what its like to be in a relationship with someone who is severly depressed.
It is very stressful. I would never knowingly put myself in that situation again. The late night “I want to die” calls. Feeling responsible for someone who won’t get help (the feeling of relief when they finally do). Arguing with someone who turns their considerable intellect to rationalizing their depression (this is a normal way to feel when the world is so horrible!). Dealing with his parents telling him his medication is a crutch, when he so obviously desperately requires some sort of help to get by. Realizing your own problems Do Not Count and you exist only to give support, never to get any. Being the only person left who is willing to lend support, feeling trapped in the relationship.
Not hearing from him in several years, and concluding that he’s probably dead.
I am a generally upbeat person. I have been in relationships with people who tend to get sort of blue and it has really not been an issue. But with someone who has crushing, incapacitating, suicidal and most of all untreated clinical depression? no way.
I’m sorry to be such a complete downer, but there you have My Humble Opinion.
nods I think that’s a very reasonable stance to take. Your mental health needs to come before someone else’s, and if someone’s dragged you down that hard before, why would you go through that again?
I began dating my current boyfriend about the time I was ending my therapy (about three years ago). I had recovered, and had been pretty stable for awhile. However, my boyfriend was going through a bit of depression, and my therapist made me promise if it looked like it was going to be too bad, that I wouldn’t let myself get dragged down. To cut my losses while I could, and get out of there without hurting myself more. Luckily, it never came to that, and it’s been a great relationship, and I think it’ll be the one that lasts the rest of my life. But I was prepared from the beginning to cut things off early if it looked like it wasn’t going to be a beneficial relationship for BOTH of us.
That’s Bearflag, as in the flag of the State of California, not Rainbowflag. :rolleyes:
[Insert your favorite “California is the land of fruits and nuts” joke here].
Admittedly, the use of the word “fine” in the OP is clumsy, but I didn’t feel like correcting it. I was writing an OP, not a dissertation.
Thank you to those of you providing meaningful input.
:o
[hijack]
My husband likes bears a lot. He’s vaguely bearish in shape (tall, broad, kinda furry), and just thinks they’re neat animals as well. When we were in college, he would occasionally wear a pendant of a carved stone Native American bear ‘fetish’. He had been chatting for a while with a guy in one of his classes, and the guy then asked if he wanted to go see a film together. Light bulb goes on over my husband’s head as he thinks about how it was phrased and other subtle things that had popped up in conversation between them, and he puts it together. He was dating me at the time, so he just demurred, saying he was seeing someone already.
[/hijack]
Bearflag70, she might not be going to therapy currently for insurance or other reasons - maybe she’d worked through it and been fine for so long that she’s on a “vacation”, with the expectation that she will return to therapy ASAP should her depression return. (This is just a wild guess, I am not a therapist and do not know if that would ever be recommended. I do know that it is possible to be “done” with counseling for traumatic events, at least barring any recurrence of depression or anxiety over them.)
What you might want to do is just apologize for prying but express your curiosity about depression, and ask why she isn’t in therapy/on meds/etc. right now.
If you don’t mind, cj, I’d like to see it. Thanks.
Oh, yes. Sorry I didn’t reply to this sooner. send it on to my email address in the profile.
Thanks!
Right. I looked over the essay last night, and I’ll e-mail it to both of you later this morning. I hope it helps.
CJ
Treatment and help are the critical issues here, I think. Lving with a depressed person can be horrendous when it goes on for years and years – I have a friend whose depressed husband has effectivly done nothing except make very short attepts to work, go back to school, get treatment for five years now. It’s killing her inside, because trying to balence “He has a disease and I commited to standing beside him for better or worse” and “for over half our marrige he’s been more my child than my partner” is impossible.
I think you need to be upfront and honest now wiht her and yourself over when it would be acceptable to leave. And for me, that comes when the depressed person refuses to take any responsibility to change that depression.
Here is what I would recomend: she has to recognize that she has a disease, and that it is a disease that impairs her judgement when it flairs up. She has to agree in advance, now, when her judgement is good, that if in the future you think she needs to see a therapist, she will go even if she dosen’t really think it is necesary, and will follow all the therapist’s suggestions to the letter (regarding meds, etc.) She needs to understand that if she refuses to go to a therapist (any therapist) when you are recomending it, that you may have to move on, simply because no one can live for ever with a depressed person who isn’t making any attempt to get better. It does the depressed person no good and it makes the other person miserable beyond belief.
Something tells me Bearflag70 will be requesting a name change fairly soon.
The really sad thing was I didn’t mean for it to be an insult, though, he clearly saw it as one.
My sincere apologies to dorkusmalorkusmafia. I have been educated about an alternate “Bear Flag!”
:smack:
The offense I took was that I percieved you were drawing a seemingly rash unsupported conclusion about me based solely upon my name, which, in my eyes at the time, had no bearing on sexual orientation.
The fact that the conclusion went to sexual orientation is irrelevant. The problem was that I didn’t see any connection between the premise and conclusion presented. If you had said that I must have green hair because I’m called “Bearflag”, you would have gotten the same tone in my response.
Nope. My feelings for California and its emblem, the Bear Flag, remain unchanged. The name is derived from the Bear Flag Rebellion (1846), and is codified by California Government Code section 420, declaring the “Bear Flag” the official flag of the state. On that basis, the name stays.
Will the name confuse some people about my sexual orientation? I don’t care.
Thanks!
BTW, I’m gearing up for a little chat this weekend to try to address the relationship issue raised in this thread. Your posts have been helpful!
Glad to be of service. FWIW, I didn’t know about the other implications of your user name myself. I kind of like it.
CJ
These are general comments and should not be construed as creating a counselor-client relationship, or as an evaluation/diagnosis:
You might want to discuss warning signs or circumstances under which she would decide, or you’d ask her, to go into treatment again. This might involve antidrepressants, psychotherapy, or both. Or there may be a time down the line when the two of you would want to see a counselor together. Studies show that either or both of these approaches are often effective (though I favor a treatment plan that includes therapy).
There are a lot of useful self-help books on depression. You might want to look at a few in order to learn more about it. Burns: Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy is cognitive. The Depression Workbook, and the Relaxation and Stress Reduction Workbook, both from New Harbinger Press, are both good resources.
You might want to explore how well she communicates about her feelings and thoughts, how things go under stress, and what precipitated her suicidality earlier in her life.
I wouldn’t consider depression per se a deal breaker, but it may be something to consider. For example, what will it be like for you, and how will you manage it, if she becomes clinically depressed at some point?
–Psychologist