Depression: Is Your Relationship The Cause?

You and your partner are designed by nature to act and work together in a certain way hence the term chemistry usually associated with the automatic feelings a couple experiences when they first meet.

When you first met this is likely to be the reactions you had to each other. You both felt great, and it took little effort, those amazing feelings were automatic. When you were with your partner you felt great about you.

These automatic feelings are proof of natures’ power of attraction in action. It created chemical reactions in you both to feel an intense attraction to each other.

When you feel this way, the drive towards intimacy is very powerful.

So what’s this got to do with depression?

As time passes the relationship is very likely to go through ups and downs and unless the couple understand what created the spark in them, one of both of them will become fearful that a future together may not be the one they wanted.

So to protect themselves from pain they pull love away. Both male and female will do this.

From this place of fear what happens is the couple will start to act in ways that are in conflict with what they believe in and were designed for. If anyone acts consistently in conflict with what they believe in depression is a very real possibility. [Couples in sessions talk about their partners changing almost like they are a different person.]

For example: I will ask a couple how important is love to them. Both will usually say it is important to them. My next question is: Is it important some of the time, or all of the time? Both will usually answer all of the time. So here is the start of the conflict. If love is important all the time yet through fear they are pulling love away this is the start of their conflict with themselves. Their beliefs and behaviours don’t match.

Couples do this all the time and this is the total reverse of what nature created when they first met. You see people are not in control of their feelings and so they are at the whim of what the world throws at them. This is a scary place to be, but most accept it is how life is, of course it isn’t.

We meet someone and feel great, they go with that. They have bad times feel bad they go with that. They never question what is really going on within them. This is a person out of control and depression is very possible from this place especially if depressive patterns have been displayed in their family life growing up.

Now look at how easy it is for a couple to create depression in each other.

If a woman feels that she cannot get through to her partner she could become frustrated and get angry with him. He is likely to reject her outbursts as overly emotional, over the top and so over time she she can decide to stop communicating with him. From this place she will either leave the relationship, or stay and become depressed.

She will cycle from frustration, to anger, to sadness never getting what she really needs so she goes back to frustration and the cycle starts again. She can come off this cycle by getting busy, eating, talking to friends, focusing on the kids some people will drink or self-harm no of these action create a solution for her. So she will be stuck not knowing how to break this pattern.

She has no idea how to give herself what she needs and he refuses to listen to her cries for help.

So now what’s happening is she is holding this pain inside her. The shouting is still going on, but this time it’s inside her head. If this goes on for long enough she will start to feel detached from her real self. She knows the relationship isn’t right, but she won’t leave through fear.

This conflict in her combined with the cycling equals a loss of her vision of the future. All this just escalates her fears and the depression deepens.

She can start to feel that maybe she is not enough for him in some way, too fat to thin, too old, boring, the rejection from him can quickly turn into a rejection of herself.

Men are not immune

Of course men will become depressed too, but they are driven to it differently in relationships. When a man feels like he is not free to be the man he wants to be he will feel that something is wrong. Combine this with feeling he can never please his partner starts to equal failure in him.

The depression happens when he feels stuck, he can’t leave because he loves her, but if he stays he will fail himself and her.

You see couples find it so easy to get stuck with each other and will act in ways which are in total contradiction to their core belief systems and they bring on depression.

Dealing with depression in relationships is part of my day to day life as a relationship educator. Once the couple understand what they have been doing to themselves and each other without knowing. The depression can easily lift and a future can emerge.