Dating Someone With Depression
Chester Bennington committed suicide. Just two months after his confidante and close friend Chris Cornell succumbed to mental illness. They were men who had everything from money to fame to family and friends to call theirs. And yet, how were they victim to this awful and most dreaded issue that’s plaguing the world?
But that’s the dialogue we rarely have. Depression or mental illness is not necessarily triggered by the absence of a certain thing in your life. It is a state of seeing no meaning in all that you have. In a world that we are living now, it doesn’t come as a surprise that depression is a real time issue and more people than you’d like to believe are prey to this demon.
This raises one question not a lot of people are asking. What is it like to date a person with depression or anxiety. I actually didn’t want to write this article for I thought I would not do the piece justice. I don’t have any experience so to speak of. But a friend does and I thought maybe her story needed to be heard.
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She was being dragged to the dance floor. God knows she didn’t want to dance at that time, so she walked up to the balcony. The man standing at the balcony smoking a cigarette, turned to her and said a chirpy Hello.
“The music too loud for you?”, he asked.
“The music is fine, it’s the dancing that I am not in the mood for”, she frowned.
He laughed. A throaty laugh. Straight from his heart.
And so it began, a torrid affair.
They looked great together. Him tall, broad, fair. Her, tall enough to reach his shoulder, dark and beautiful. They looked like a divine pair. He was the Greek God and she was an Indian Goddess, who were caught in the web of a lot of differences but a lot more love.
2 beautiful months into their relationship, she noticed he was a little less like himself by each passing day. She noticed it for a few days and it perplexed her but she didn’t make much of it. Until one day he cancelled on her for the third time that week.
“What’s going on!?”
“ I really am not feeling it tonight, can we please not do this today?”
“But it’s the the third time this week, what’s going on!”
“Nothing”, he said quietly.
His inability to tell her what the problem was, drove her crazy. It was a big fight. Their first. The first of many.
Two more months into a tumultuous relationship, he broke down. Yet another first. It shook her. He shook out of it soon enough. Apologised profusely and told her he didn’t deserve her or her love for him. He loved her to bits but he was unworthy of her love. She was confused. Her Hercules was crumbling and she didn’t know what to do. She loved him enough to never think their fights would lead to calling quits. And yet, why was she faced with a day such as this.
She was resolute to get to the bottom of what was bothering him. He got moody after that day. He was unpredictable and it kept getting harder to talk to him. It was almost like her prince charming had now retreated into his cocoon. A shell. Shackled. She kept trying to coax him into talking to her.
And talk he did. A few weeks into realising how much his silence was affecting her, he decided to tell her that he suffered from chronic depression. He had been all along secretly meeting a therapist and he chose not to tell her because he was afraid she’d leave him. She hated herself for not reading some of the signs that were hurled at her once in a way.
She wasn’t going anywhere, she knew that. She loved a man and his mental torment wasn’t going to chase her away. She decided to meet a therapist. YES. She met a therapist for herself. She wanted to talk to somebody about this and understand how she needs to be and how she could help.
This is the first exemplary thing she did. Not something every partner thinks to do because let’s face it, it’s not the first solution one learns to discover. The therapy helped immensely. She had a greater insight into moods and behaviour and how anything she says can aggravate it or ameliorate it. She learnt to not say things like you will be okay or it’s not a big deal.
She gave him enough space to be himself and just be. She knew she had to be there whenever he needed her. She valued their together time and his alone time. She kept reassuring him that he more than deserved her and he was just perfect for her. She never missed on an opportunity to tell him how much he’d changed her life for the good.
There were days he was up and about and excited about every little thing and days where he just didn’t find purpose or beauty in anything. But they have come a long long way.
7 years into the relationship and they are stronger than ever. It’s not all sunshine and roses in paradise even now. But she has created her own meaning for happiness and she knows there is a man who loves her like nobody else ever will and she wants to give it her all.
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I know it’s not an everyone thing and honestly, if you think somebody’s mental health is affecting yours, it’s not selfish but wise to want to call it quits. It’s essential to think about yourself in such situations. But it’s also essential to know that the conventional idea about mental health is close to hogwash and learning to identify it, respect it and genuinely help with it is absolutely necessary.
