Breakup Advice

If my boyfriend is depressed, what should I do?

This is a question that many people in relationships ask. It is understandable because when you really care about someone and believe that you see them consistently feeling down, there can be mixed emotions.

On one hand, if you are a very compassionate person, you probably feel some motivation to help your partner.

On the other hand, even the most compassionate person can eventually reach their wit’s end and, if the person’s depression seems intractable, wonder if they should finally break up with them.

Let’s take a deeper look at this topic.

First of all, it is important to recognize that the word depressed is often used to describe a variety of different things. When you say my boyfriend is depressed, you may not be quite accurate.

If you perceive your boyfriend as regularly experiencing feelings of sadness or melancholy, it could indicate any of the following:

• Your boyfriend is grieving a loss of some kind
• Your boyfriend is using some substance or substances that are affecting his mood
• Your boyfriend has an undiagnosed medical condition with mood-related symptoms
• Your boyfriend has a history of abuse or neglect that is unresolved

It is also possible that your boyfriend has a chemical imbalance of the neurotransmitters in his brain, which is what many of us immediately think of when we believe a person is consistently depressed. But it is important not to just assume this is the case.

There are some people – and your boyfriend may be one of them – that are just temperamentally less excited and active and seem depressed to others when there is nothing actually unhealthy about them. So make sure to consider this possibility also.

And, finally, you may be misinterpreting the situation entirely and reading in depressed feelings where they really aren’t.

The lesson is not to jump to any conclusions. It can take time and a lot of communication to discover what is really going on.

Once you realize this, you can open up communication with your boyfriend. Let him know that you care about him and that, because of this, you want to understand better how he is feeling and let him understand better how you perceive the situation. Tools like Intentional Dialogue, as described in Getting the Love You Want, can be extremely helpful in facilitating such sensitive discussions.

If the depression you are perceiving is not actually there, if you have been misinterpreting it or if it stems from addressable issues in the relationship itself, this communication may go a long way in getting to the bottom of the problem.

But, if the depressed feelings are real and serious or if you cannot figure out what is going on, it may be best to support your partner in seeking professional help. Love alone does not qualify you to treat what may be a medical condition. So the most loving thing you can do in such a circumstance is stand behind him as he gets assistance from someone trained in these areas, just as you would if he had a broken leg.

The biggest challenge you will have is deciding what role you want to play – or is appropriate for you to play – in your partner’s attempts at recovery. A balanced approach is healthiest. It is perfectly reasonable for you to want to help and to offer support. At the same time, you must realize that you can only help so much. You must be watchful that you don’t use your boyfriend’s problems as an excuse to avoid dealing with your own issues and excessively indulge in feeling needed and wanted, which can signify codependence. And you must remember that you can only really be a healthy support if you are taking care of yourself, as well.

The hardest step may take place in relationships where the boyfriend’s feelings are causing difficulty for his partner, but he is unwilling to respond and make any changes. If this persists too long and you have given all the support you can, then you are well within your rights to consider breaking off the relationship. You don’t have to be stuck saying “My boyfriend is depressed” for the rest of your life. You deserve a healthy relationship or, at the very least, a partner who is willing to work to make it healthy.

A lot of people, when wondering what to do in their love life, turn to relationship advice columns. There are many columns out there and they often give contradictory advice. So which ones should you believe?

The first thing to understand about relationship advice columns is that their writers all subscribe to different schools of thought. There are as many schools of thought about relationships as there are about other controversial topics such as politics or religion. And this can make it confusing to figure out whose words of wisdom really are wise for you to follow.

One thing that can help is realizing that these many schools of thought can basically be grouped, as we have discussed before, into two main categories:

• Symptom-Focused Breakup Advice
• Origin-Focused Breakup Advice

When you just need a quick fix to a superficial problem and are truly alright with knowing you will probably have to face it again in some form later, symptom-focused breakup advice – and relationship advice columns that take that perspective – can be useful.

However, in most cases, we at Breakup-Advice.org favor an Origin-Focused approach for reasons laid out in the blog post linked above.

When you are considering a relationship advice column, you need to think critically. Start by reading a few of the author’s pieces and deciding if they tend to write from a symptom-focused or origin-focused mindset. Some authors may combine the two and, if done well, this can be very helpful.

In the end you will have to make up your own mind about which school of thought on relationships appeals to you – or, more importantly, which one you think is actually accurate. Just know that there are various perspectives and don’t simply believe the first one you read offers the golden ticket to happiness.

Now what relationship advice column do we recommend?

Since we strongly favor the Imago Relationship approach, it is no surprise that we recommend columns by people involved in that community. And there is one in particular that stands out.

Al Turtle is a therapist who works in the Imago tradition and he runs a website where he addresses countless questions about relationships and offers his wisdom. It is appropriately titled Al Turtle’s Relationship Wisdom. We have no doubt you will find it extremely enlightening.

Al’s is the column with which we are most familiar. But if you do some searching, you can find others written by people schooled in Imago therapy. For example, with a quick search we discovered that Stacy Notaras Murphy, a certified Imago Couples Therapist, writes a relationship advice column for The Georgetowner.

Ultimately, the best advice of all is to read a variety of relationship advice columns by people from different schools of thought and, over time, compare and contrast them to find the ones that really have the most to offer.

Here are just some of our favorite quotes on relationships.

• “The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances; if there is any reaction, both are transformed.” – Carl Jung in Modern Man in Search of a Soul

• “Seldom or never does a marriage develop into an individual relationship smoothly without crisis. There is no birth of consciousness without pain.” – Carl Jung in “Marriage as a Psychological Relationship”

• “They say that breaking up is hard to do, but that is wrong. It’s easy to walk away before the going gets tough, to find another dreamboat – until the ship starts to sink again. It’s waking up that’s hard to do. ” – Harville Hendrix, Ph.D. in Keeping the Love You Find: A Single Person’s Guide to Achieving Lasting Love

• “Speculation about that elusive quality known as romantic chemistry has baffled scientists and poets alike. In my experience, ‘chemistry’ is based on a similarity according to where you fall on the emotional dyslexia continuum…People who don’t have adult skills haven’t transformed their childlike needs into adult needs, and they’re more likely to rely on superficial qualities in a partner. Basically, they don’t know what would satisfy them if their needs were ‘grown up.’ So they look for mates through a child’s notion of romance. They don’t know themselves well enough to pick partners with whom they’ll share something deep and lasting. ” – Helen Kramer in Liberating the Adult Within: How to Be a Grown-Up For Good

• “When a child is uncertain or pessimistic about his or her value, the child strives to understand and become what is perceived as pleasing to the parents. The normal need for approval becomes a craving and children take to heart extreme messages they are given about their worth. If a child is told, verbally or nonverbally, that he or she is of little value, young parts of the child organize their beliefs around that premise. They become desperate for redemption in the eyes of the person who gave these messages. Thereafter these parts carry the burden of worthlessness, which makes them believe that no one can love them – a belief they will maintain no matter what feedback is received from others…These burdened young parts exert a powerful influence over the person’s intimate relationships as they constantly seek redemption – the lifting of what feels like a curse of unlovability. They will return to the person who stole their self-esteem in this quest, or they will find someone who resembles that person. Often this results in a history of abuse or unsatisfying relationships.” – Richard C. Schwartz, Ph.D. in Internal Family Systems Therapy

• “Now we arrive at the heart of the matter. Our ‘free’ choice of a mate is, in the end, a product of our unconscious, which has an agenda of its own. And what the unconscious wants is to become whole and to heal the wounds of childhood. To this end, it is carrying around its own detailed picture of a proper match, searching not for the right stats, but for the right chemistry. And what is that chemistry? Nothing more than our unconscious attraction to someone who we feel will meet our particular emotional needs. Specifically, that need is to cover the ‘shortfall’ of childhood by having our mates fill in the psychological gaps left by our imperfect childhood caretakers. How do we go about that? By falling madly in love with someone who has both the positive and the negative traits of our imperfect parents, someone who fits an image that we carry deep inside us and for whose embodiment we are unconsciously searching. ” – Harville Hendrix, Ph.D. in Keeping the Love You Find: A Single Person’s Guide to Achieving Lasting Love

• “Marriage is the most complicated of all human relationships. Few alliances can produce such extremes of emotion or can so quickly travel from professions of the utmost bliss to that cold, terminal legal write-off, mental cruelty. When one stops to consider the massive content of archaic data which each partner brings to the marriage through the continuing contributions of his Parent and Child, one can readily see the necessity of an emancipated Adult in each to make this relationship work. Yet the average marriage contract is made by the Child, which understands love as something you feel and not something you do, and which sees happiness as something you pursue rather than a by-product of working toward the happiness of someone other than yourself.” – Thomas A. Harris, M.D. in I’m OK, You’re OK

• “When partners don’t tell each other what they want and constantly criticize each other for missing the boat, it’s no wonder that the spirit of love and cooperation disappears. In its place comes the grim determination of the power struggle, in which each partner tries to force the other to meet his or her needs. Even though their partners react to these maneuvers with renewed hostility, they persevere. Why? Because in their unconscious minds they fear that, if their needs are not met, they will die. This is a classic example of what Freud called the ‘repetition compulsion,’ the tendency of human beings to repeat ineffective behaviors over and over again.” – Harville Hendrix, Ph.D. in Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples

• “That rage is a vital expression of life energy is readily apparent. If we repress our anger, we become sick or depressed or condemned to a pale, muted existence. But, on the other hand, if we unleash our rage, we inflict physical or emotional damage on others. How can we release our anger and not hurt the people we love? The answer is a process called ‘containment.’”– Harville Hendrix, Ph.D. in Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples

• “The people you are attracted to may not be right for you emotionally, but you’re drawn to them anyway. Something about them – often something less than flattering – reminds you on some level of your father or mother. The person could be rejecting or critical, controlling or domineering, emotionally distant or unavailable. When you encounter someone like this as an adult, it arouses the feeling of longing and insecurity you experienced in your relationship with one of your parents – feelings of emotional hunger that you’ve come to associate with love…The antidote is to recognize this pattern and avoid recreating your emotional past. Your goal is to seek emotionally substantial relationships.” – Susan Anderson in The Journey from Abandonment to Healing: Turn the End of a Relationship into the Beginning of a New Life

• “Fortunately, we do have a choice about what kind of marriage we have. Most marriages fail because of the persistence of the unconscious aspects of the relationship. Any unfinished business we had with our caretakers becomes a compelling agenda with our partners. All too commonly, however, the partners never become aware of the hidden needs that drive their relationship and never learn the skills they need to successfully address those needs. As a single, part of your preparation is to understand and prepare for a conscious marriage in which you and your future partner can undo the damage of childhood and recover your true selves.” – Harville Hendrix, Ph.D. in Keeping the Love You Find: A Single Person’s Guide to Achieving Lasting Love

• “Romantic love is supposed to end. It is nature’s glue, which brings two incompatible people together for the purpose of mutual growth, and enables them to survive the disillusionment that they did not marry perfect people. Though romantic love is a foretaste of the potential in the relationship, that potential can only be reached through the valley of despair that is the power struggle. If we do not use the relationship to finish childhood, our marriages will get bogged down in the same issues we were stuck in as children. When romantic love dies, it clears the way for real love.” – Harville Hendrix, Ph.D. in Keeping the Love You Find: A Single Person’s Guide to Achieving Lasting Love

• “An ability to accept our ambivalence toward others may be an important ingredient in relationships that are healthy and lasting.” – Fred Rogers in You Are Special: Words of Wisdom for All Ages from a Beloved Neighbor

• “Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.” – James Baldwin

We hope you’ve enjoyed and learned a lot from these quotes on relationships!