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Depression Hurts
I'm pretty sure I already know what you're going to answer because I read your column and I know you give honest concise, smart but sometimes painful advice. But I figure I'd ask anyway because I value your opinion.
I have been with my boyfriend for 11 months now and I have had the most amazing times of my life with him and his friends. He was the sweetest, most amazing and understanding guy when we met, I thought I had hit the jackpot...until he got depression. Our relationship deteriorated since the summer and has now reached a point where I was considering leaving him because I did not know why he was acting the way he was. He was injured in march but has learned how to cope with it and if he stays in the gym he barely feels the pain anymore (back issue). It was hard, through his injury, he was changing into someone else. A person with no empathy that didn't seem to care what I said or how hurt I was by his behavior. I stayed with him during that time partly because I deeply loved who he was before the injury and hoped with time he would be that again, but mostly because I was too weak at the time to leave him and felt guilty because he was hurt and every time I steered the discussion into wanting to leave he professed his love and did everything to get me to stay. Everything except what was needed. To tell me the truth. Because while his back pain has for the most part subsides, his behavior has only gotten worse. He has since summer quit everything he was doing, stopped talking to his friends and would basically only go out with them because I wanted to, and then have a terrible time. He also started being closed off and mean towards me, impatient, would always make me feel bad whenever I did something he did not think was smart. His friends have noticed his behavior too. The other day I was at the point where I broke up with him, and only then did he finally break down.
I told him he was going to end up alone if he didn't change and he told me everything. How hes lost interest in everything, he gets angry instantly, hes always tired, he tries to go out (were only 20) and immediately wants to go home.
When I met him he was experimenting with ecstasy but in a completely recreational and non addictive way and I didn't think anything of it because all of his friends did too. But he now tells me the only reason he did that was because they brought him to a normal level, while everyone else was at a whole different level, and he stopped because he felt like he was living a lie. He says he never remembers a time when he actually felt happy his whole life. He cried to me that it is so hard for him to admit that the happy person I met was a lie. He is severely depressed now, and it was triggered by his injury, but he also admits that the drugs made it so much worse than it was before. I didn't know what to say. I feel heartbroken, like I've fallen in love with a lie. But if he says he actually felt normal when we met, I want to believe that's what he would be like if he didn't have depression. I told him and he agreed he needs to get help but I don't know what to do because I love everything we have experienced the past year together but he was so different before and I'm starting to be afraid that it was all a lie and the real him is how he is now. I want to think its the depression making him act this way and I am willing to stick it out to help him get through it but it puts a serious toll on me. It hurts when you love someone that is in so much pain they cant properly love you back. So there it is....I just don't know anymore. It's easy to leave an asshole. How can you leave someone that is depressed and begging you to stay and telling you they truly are the person you fell in love with and will be again.....
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Alright. Long, difficult, complex question. Let's begin.
First, before was not a lie. My wife was in a car accident a little over a year go. What followed was three months of hell, she became completely unsympathetic and treated me like shit. I had to repeatedly drag her behavior in front of her while being irreproachable myself to convince her that she was in fact acting like a complete asshole.
She recovered, things got better, and we're fine now. Injuries and trauma have real effects on emotions.
Next, your responsibility. In reality, you have none. Sticking with someone who is a fucked up mess and helping them get better or waiting for them to get better is a personal choice that only you can make. Only you can decide if it's time to walk, if you can't take it, or if you want to keep trying.
But you should be aware that sacrificing your mental health and happiness to stick by him is not going to do either of you any good in the long run. He has to be able to meet enough of your needs right now that staying is not a burden beyond your abilities to bear. Again, something only you can honestly evaluate.
Just remember that you aren't Jesus and you shouldn't expect yourself to be. You have limits, and it is not selfish to stop before you are pushed past them. You have just as much a right to be happy as he does, and just as much a responsibility to do what YOU have to do to ensure YOUR OWN happiness as he has to fight for his own and to try to get better.
I will say, though, don't leave conditionally. Don't say "straighten up and we can get back together". If you have to leave, just say "I can't be with you anymore" and follow it with "I've been waiting long enough, I can't just continue to wait for you, whether we're together or apart". That's not saying you can't decide that you want to be with him and him with you later if he gets his shit together, but you don't create that conditional so that he gets better to get you back. He has to want to improve for his own sake. That decision you keep to yourself until it's time to make it.
Last, depression is a self perpetuating condition, in fact over time it grows worse if left untreated. He needs real professional help, he needs it now. If that means getting family involved, get family involved. Whatever has to be done to get him into a therapist on a regular basis.
You can't fix him, he has to fix himself. Whether or not you stick it out, that will not change. But if you want to be there while he is fixing himself, if the toll is something you are ready, willing and _able_ to bear, then you are free to make that choice.
I cannot advise you one way or the other. I don't know you, him, or the situation. All I can tell you is that you should not sacrifice yourself for him, and that it's better to end things before it gets pushed to the point where you hate each other.
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