I recently posted a thread about how my boyfriend of almost two years broke up with me. I suspected he is depressed based on his recent behavior, and have been struggling with the break up ever since. He has always had self – hatred issues, that have gotten worse lately, and also has been more irritable, not sleeping or eating, and just not himself. I’ve been having so much anxiety over why this happened and what I did wrong. He couldn’t explain much of the reasoning for breaking up, other than “His feelings have changed” and “He’s just been so unhappy because of our relationship” which I don’t really believe either statement, because his affection and behavior towards me didn’t change one bit. maybe this is true, but I, along with one of our mutual friends, think depression or something else is playing a role. BUT that isn’t my reason for posting this. I’ve been reading a lot of other posts detailing these same situations or worries, and during yoga tonight, I had a bit of a revelation I guess you could call it. I guess I just wanted to post this for others, as well as my future self when I’m feeling down about it again.

Whether your partner is actually depressed, or is just so unhappy with themselves, that doesn’t reflect poorly on you. I realized that no matter how much love I gave him, how encouraging or supportive I was, or how many times I said how amazing or cute he was, if he doesn’t believe that or see that himself, nothing I or anyone else say or do will change that. I can’t make him love or accept himself. I can’t make him happy with himself. I can’t make him happy in general, at least not in the long run, if he doesn’t have any happiness or love or acceptance for himself. Two people can work together by sharing this love, but both people need to be complete and whole on their own. Both people need to have that inner love and happiness with themselves, before they can truly love and be happy. And I really believe that he did love me, and that I did make him happy, and he made me happy too. But he is never going to feel truly whole or happy if he doesn’t find that in himself first. And eventually he is going to not be able to love and care for someone else completely, not when he isn’t complete himself. And I think that is what happened with us. Which really sucks. Because I really think if he was happy and loved himself, we would’ve been great together, because we were – until this got in the way. And who knows, maybe one day he’ll learn to love himself, and we will find our way back to one another. But in the meantime, he can try to blame this on our relationship, and he can try to find other things or people to make him happy, but at some point (at least I hope) he will realize that is he never going to truly feel fulfilled or happy until he learns to love himself. And I am focusing on growing love and acceptance for myself even more.  Maybe I’m not making much sense, and maybe most people have already realized this, but I wanted to write this because I think realizing this was a positive for me, and maybe it will help other people going through this same situation.