Hi, I have been with my partner for 2 years and to me everything is great within our relationship. The connection has always felt very strong and I love him a lot. We do not live together, he still lives at home with his parents for financial reasons. Throughout our relationship there have been five occasions where he has shut down and I have not seen him for 3 - 5 days. He has had some bad things go on in his life with a brother having cancer and understandably he struggles a lot with this. When he gets very down and shuts down he says things like "there is nothing good in my life" and has a very negative outlook towards life.
He brother is still fighting the cancer and 3 weeks ago he found out 2 more members have a type of cancer. Since then he has become more and more distant from me. He has not made any effort to see me. I would keep asking when i am seeing him and he would just say he has to work and put me off. So after not seeing him for two weeks i was getting frustrated and not understanding why he is acting like he doesn't want to see me. I asked via text if it bothered him that we hadn't seen each other and does he miss me. He said he understands my frustrations and has been busy with work and has a lot of stuff on his mind (his family and work).
He came around a couple of days later and was very cold and didn't seem to be himself. He looked withdrawn in his face. He was coming around to break up with me. He said "i deserved better" and that he didn't know how long he was going to be like this. He says he has been this way since he was a kid and shuts people out when things are on his mind. He seems to know this isn't normal and i mentioned that it sounds like depression. He said he was too proud to get any help. I said how good our connection was and that there were no problems within our relationship and that i was willing to work on it with him. That when he shuts me out that i take it personally and I need to know when he needs space for other reasons. He told me that maybe we should just have a break so he can sort out whats going on in his head. It has now been a week and there has been no contact and its killing me, I miss him so much. I am so confused as to how the love/connection we had can just disappear like this for no reason to do with us. Is it just the depression? Should i just give up and walk away? Or should i stay and wait until he comes out of this and try and help him/sort things out?
