Been with my boyfriend over a year. He’s been depressed on and off throughout, and is particularly bad at the moment but isn’t doing a lot to seek treatment.
It hasn’t always been this way but recently I’ve become the initiator of any plans. The last few weeks he’s told me no quite a few times when I’ve asked if he wants to come over. He’s usually got some sort of excuse, he has work to do has to be home in the morning or something random. He’s also cancelled on me last minute when we’ve already made plans saying he doesn’t feel good. I get that he’s depressed but I feel like s***. I can only be rejected so many times. Literally feel awful.
I don’t know what to do anymore. I feel like my self esteem is going down every time he cancels or tells me no to coming over. We see each other about 3/4 evenings a week, never in the day as he’s too busy with work/uni/football. Could do with some advice.
TL;DR my depressed boyfriend keeps rejecting me/not turning up for plans.
4 comments
Advice: tell him that if he doesn’t start doing the work to heal himself and get better, you’re done.
If he isn’t going to get help for his mental health, you can’t let him drag you down too.
>He’s been depressed on and off throughout, and is particularly bad at the moment but isn’t doing a lot to seek treatment.
So in the medium or long run, you don’t have an obligation to deal with more shit from a partner dealing with a major issue (like depression) than they are doing to fix it. In an acute crisis, okay – but you are within your rights to say, “I’m not willing to date someone who lives like this. I want to date you. So you have to get into therapy. I’ll help you find a therapist, you have to do it.”
And if they don’t (and you offer to help and give them a couple of weeks) you leave. Because your obligation to put up with their mental health is not bigger than their obligation to their own mental health, and to the relationship.
That all being said, if you’re seeing each other 3/4 days a week, I wonder if some of this is not depression, but rather, the fact that he’s someone who likes more alone time than you do. This might be worth a serious discussion with him. I can imagine a situation where he doesn’t *want to* say no to you, so he agrees, and it starts to feel like a burden because for him 4 times a week is a lot, so he ends up cancelling. So some of this might just come from adjusting expectations, and making sure you’re on the same page about the amount of time you spend with each other.
5 nights a week is A LOT to ask for from somebody who is on a team sport, in school, working, and presumedly has other friends as well. And so I wonder if some of this is just that you’re asking for more than he wants to give, he doesn’t know how to say no, and depression is the out he’s using. That’s not a healthy dynamic but it gets fixed by having some real talk about expectations – a conversation where he says, “Yeah, three nights a week is about as much as I want to spend with a girlfriend these days,” and it doesn’t spark a fight.
dont drain yourself because of him. you are not an option