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Managing my mental health and caring for my girlfriend's

exhubrantzebra55
Community Member
I'm in my early 20s and live with my girlfriend who is a year younger than me. I went through very difficult/dark time in my life leading up to when we met, but had my life turned around by her. I finally got a few therapy sessions and learnt a lot about myself, I've felt like myself again in recent times .It hasn't been an easy past few weeks, with the news of Linkin Park's lead singer Chester Bennington passing away i've been in a bit of an emotionally sensitive place and still finding it hard to come to terms with, especially as it reminds me of what it would like to lose the ones I love to depression.

My girlfriend has been living with depression most of her years since her early teens, she used to self harm.. She stopped 3 years before I met her, and hasn't relapsed since.. Which I am so proud of her for.. It's been really hard for her recently.. Her workplace is negative and really drains her, they keep expecting way too much of her for little pay and it's grating at her. Everthing is stressing her out, she has no motivation to leave the house and get groceries after work even we're running out on a day i'm working a night shift, or look for a new job. The smallest things can really affect her and i'm trying to be more sensitive to it as we go on. For example there was a scribble on our kitchen whiteboard I did when i was drunk one night "you're my happy place when i don't feel alright".. I had some negative associations with it because It reminded me of a bad headspace, I tried to rub it out a month or so ago and she said no please don't and that she liked it. Then yesterday I rubbed it off cause it was getting smudged and I wanted to clean it up nicely.. But she saw and started balling her eyes out... I didn't realise how much sentimental value it had to her.. I just thought she thought it was cute. She then hid under her blankets and wouldn't pay attention to me at all, it took about 20mins before we properly talked about it. It happens often, we're about to go out and do something that isn't fun like shopping or laundry and she kind of breaks down and can't deal with anything.. Usually this is at a point where dinner becomes really late if we don't go and do the shopping straight away. I wanna help support her more....
2 Replies 2

white knight
Community Champion
Community Champion

Hi exh, welcome

I get your situation. You are agood friend to her, hats off to your care level.

Two things come to mind. Firstly she has responsinility to communicate more about how she feels eg how precious your white board message is. You are not a mind reader.

Secondly, if she hides under the blankets leave her be. She'll need time to emotionally recover

Thirdly, she might not be emotionally as mature as you or for her age.

In your living situation its like a marriage in that you have to get to know each other better.

Its easier as time goes by.

Tony WK

james1
Community Champion
Community Champion

hello exhubrantzebra

I'm 25 and I'm also semi-living with my partner (she lives 5 minutes walk away and spends half the week at mine anyway).

It sounds like you love each other very much but you're both still struggling with your own mental illnesses. Tony had a good point to make about the responsibility to communicate. Even though you're living together, perhaps even more so, you both still need to communicate as if you are living separate lives because, well, you are. You cohabit the same place physically, but mentally you're both always going to be miles apart because you're two different people.

So in that particular case, it sounds like she didn't communicate clearly what the note meant, and perhaps you could've clarified when she first said she liked it. It's neither of your faults, but just a breakdown in communication.

I think it's fine that she takes the time out herself to recover, as long as she does get there. For her, personally, that might be what works. How do you feel about it though? Is it affecting you?

I know my partner hates when I shut down because she feels like I'm shutting her out, even though I'm just really hiding from everyone. We talked about it and now we have something that works for both of us.

James