Dear Anna:

You shared that you (26) have been in a 1.5-years relationship with your boyfriend (23), a relationship with “a lot of up and downs”, including times when he tired to withdraw from you and from his studies because “he didn’t feel like it”. Recently he was diagnosed with depression and has been on medication for the last 3 weeks. H is still withdrawn from “everything and everyone”, including you. It feels to you like he doesn’t see or hear you, that he is stuck in his depression, and you are feeling exhausted and unhappy.

You wrote regarding the depression vs him: “when he tried to withdraw.. from me.. it was the illness speaking… I can’t make the difference anymore between what he really feels for me and when the depression talks for him”-

– his depression is not an entity that is separate from him. It is not like an outside spirit enters him and takes over, canceling who he was before. His depression is only part of who he currently is. Think of it, if you will, this way: there are men who are not depressed and yet, they withdraw from their girlfriends as well,  for a variety of other reasons. Your boyfriend, although depressed, may have more than one reason (depression) for withdrawing from you.

You wrote that he lives with his parents. If you share some of what you know about his relationships with his parents, past and present, it may help me get a clue about one or more other reasons for his withdrawal.

anita

Dear Anna:

“I don’t want to take a decision about continuing the relationship with him or not now.. I  just want to figure out, to understand and how to reach him out”-

– let’s try to understand better:

“His mother is quite strict.. she kind of pushes him to keep studying while he would have wanted to take a  break from school.. and he needs time to rest.. yet, his mother keeps pressuring him about school”-

– when she pushes him and pressuring him while he is tired and needs a rest, he gets angry at her, naturally.

“I feel like it’s more his personality rather than his mental health which makes him withdraw from everything. In the sense that every time things get a bit too intense, that he has to make efforts, it simply becomes too hard for him to deal with and therefore it is easier to stop… he stops talking for days and sometimes for weeks without any reason”-

– seems to me that (1) he withdraws from his studies because he gets tired, and like you said, he “does not feel ok and he needs time to rest both mentally and physically”, (2) part of his depression and his exhaustion is the anger he feels toward his pushing/ pressuring/ bossy mother, (3) projecting his mother into you, he withdraws from you when he gets angry at you. He “stops talking for days and sometimes for weeks” because that’s how long his anger at you lasts: sometimes it lasts a few days, at other times it lasts a few weeks.

anita

Dear Anna:

I didn’t understand your questions in your first paragraph- can you restate them more clearly?

In regard to you not being satisfied, understandably, in a relationship where your boyfriend ghosts you from time to time, for hours and longer, regardless of his reasons and the nature of his depression, you may have to let the relationship go, for your own well-being. If you break up with him, how do you think you will feel and handle the breakup?

*I will be return to your thread in a few hours, or as long as in 20 hours from now.

anita

Dear Anna:

“Why would he project his anger towards his mother on me? Would that mean that he sees me as a kind of partner/ maternal figure rather than a partner/ friend?”- no. People with a deep conflict in regard to a parent, will project that parent into multiple people throughout their lives, male and female, friends,  romantic partners, co-workers, strangers on the street, as long as something about that other person reminds one of his/ her parent in looks or in behavior. It could something minor, like the way a person smiles.

In regard to your second paragraph, I understand better now.

He started anti-depressant medications three weeks ago, that’s recently, but long enough to see if the medication he started made any difference. It often takes a few months before a doctor figures out, with the the patient’s feedback, which medication works and at what dosage. Are you aware of what is happening in regard to his medication, if he experienced any improvement, if he is attending appointments with his doctor and if he follows the doctor’s instructions?

In regard to him ghosting you, not every depressed man ghosts his girlfriend, so that’s not an inherent part of depression. I suggested that he may be ghosting you when he feels angry at you. Did you notice him expressing anger at you in the past, before ghosting you, or at any other time?

* I will be back to the computer in about 14 hours from now.

anita

Dear Anna,

I see now that you’ve explained why he wanted to take a break from the relationship: once was due to 3 deaths that occurred in his family, and another time was because he felt bad about his studies, and I guess pressured by his mother to continue. Perhaps, when he feels bad about his studies, he starts feeling bad about himself too (perhaps feeling like he’s a failure, inadequate – so a strong negative inner critic takes over him), and that’s why he also withdraws from you – because he feels not good enough for the relationship either?

Dear Anna,

good to hear from you again!

In addition, he feels unworthy of being loved, unworthy of my love because I am successful and he is being afraid that I would realize that he wasn’t “worth it”.

Yes, this makes sense. He doesn’t feel worthy because of his mother who made him feel unworthy and not good enough. And now he started questioning his sexuality, probably also because his mother had been questioning it (For a very longtime his mother thought he was gay and trans because he had a lot of feminine habits). She was criticizing him for his feminine traits and his sensitivity, which was another layer of rejection and condemnation. As I said earlier, this could be why he developed depression, as a way to escape his mother’s treatment.

I believe he’d need to work on his mother issues in therapy. Has he been doing that?

Also, it is becoming very hard for me to see him being under anti-depressant for so long and not seeing that many results on a mid/longterm basis.. I mean, 7 months seems to be a pretty long period, isn’t he supposed to see clear results by now?

You may need to accept that a lot of time may pass before (and if) he returns to his old self:

But I also know how he is during his ups. He is amazing in so many ways, we have the same values, he is very kind and generous. Honestly, I couldn’t wish for a better partner when he is at his ups. The way I want to be loved and seen, he is like this.

In fact, he was like that only during his good phases. But there were always bad phases, when he wanted to take a break from the relationship, even from the very beginning. It is you who have been pushing for the relationship to continue. And it’s because you “felt like a complete wreck” without him:

We once decided to take a break around December and it lasted one month, I felt like a complete wreck. I can’t imagine my life without him.

I believe you’d need to work on not feeling so bad about yourself without him. Right now, you are waiting for him to get better, and he isn’t, he is unfortunately getting further away from you, with this new issue of questioning his sexuality. You may need to let go of him, or at least see what letting go of him would mean to you.