You and your partner

When you're depressed, all kinds of things happen in your brain. Depression affects your central nervous system and your psyche.

Since the brain transmits feelings of intimacy and sexual impulses, you may encounter a range of physical and psychological problems in your relationship with your partner when you're depressed.

The major issues you may struggle with include:

• Irritability
• Lack of libido. Sexual issues may be related both to the illness and the medications.
• Withdrawal from other people
• Guilt (due to reduced libido and rejection of partners advances)

It is important to recognize and say "this is because I have an illness not because of you".

Depression makes it hard for you to:

• Desire
• Flirt
• Accept positive attention
• Give out positive attention
• Show an interest
• Persuade
• Make demands
• Set limits
• Escape from an unpleasant situation

The loss of the ability to do these things is generally due to:

• Low spirits
• Negative expectations
• Negative view of yourself and others

Professional treatment

When you receive professional treatment for your depression, this will also cover problems in your relationship with your partner. You will learn to use cognitive principles to examine problems in your relationship.

It may be important to involve your partner in therapy session even if only for the purposes of psychoeducation. Some couples need additional therapy when the depression improves. In some instances the other partner may then become depressed. Never make important decisions about your relationship while you are depressed. Remember that depression impairs decision-making.

Here you can read about:

• Are you withdrawing into yourself?
• Which treatments help?
• How does the treatment work?

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Are you withdrawing into yourself?

If you're depressed, you will often shy away from your partner. The reason is that you lack the ability to welcome intimacy and love.

You also lack the ability to believe that your partner will be good to you. So you don't feel any desire.

But a relationship is a demanding thing, because there will be:

• Problems you need to solve
• Imbalances you need to correct
• Misunderstandings you need to clear up

So your relationship will trigger many negative thoughts:

• You can easily hurt the person you love
• You can easily misinterpret something because you have such a strong emotional involvement

When you're depressed, you may have a tendency to unleash anger and hostility, so conflicts can easily arise. There may even be incidences of violence in your relationship if you or your partner is depressed.

By being aware of the symptoms, you can stop them from destroying your relationship. It is not the relationship that is hopeless; it is your illness that is affecting your ability to function well in your relationship.

It is the depression and its symptoms that are causing the problems. And you can do something about them.

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Which treatments help?

It is often very important to seek treatment for problems in your relationship.

Couple therapy can help you and your partner to identify and resolve your problems. These might be:

• A lack of self-esteem
• Sadness
• Sexual problems

Individual therapy or group therapy can also help you to resolve problems in your relationship, working either individually or in groups to find solutions to your problems.

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How does the treatment work?

Love and intimacy in a relationship requires certain skills. To experience love and intimacy you need to be able to strike a balance between advance and retreat.

• You need to be able to make an advance and actively seek this contact when you need it.
• You should even be bold enough to seek this contact even if you run the risk of being rejected.
• You should also be able to retreat when you don't wish for this contact or need some time alone.

Theresa's individual therapy

Here you can see how Teresa learned useful skills for resolving problems in her relationship through individual therapy.

Example:

Teresa is a young woman whose husband of eight years has left her. They have two children. But he has found another woman. Teresa is extremely unhappy. She thinks it's all her fault and that life isn't worth living.

Teresa is depressed and becomes increasingly passive. Life is something she just can't face.

In therapy she reveals that she misses her partner: he was attractive and sexy, he could make her laugh and he was good to talk to.

Teresa also reveals that he was unreliable: he drank heavily and he never came home when he said he would, blowing all their money out on the town. He had often been unfaithful to her and he had criticized and put her down in front of others.

The good and the bad

Teresa's relationship clearly had both its good sides and its bad sides. When she weighed them up, she saw that there were far more bad than good.

She realized that she would never want to marry a man with those personality traits.

Another chance

After a realistic evaluation of her options, Teresa is more accepting of the end of the relationship. She now has an opportunity to find a new and more satisfactory relationship.

She realizes that she doesn't have to give up on love altogether just because one relationship has failed.

She also sees that it is not her fault that the relationship fell apart. She had believed that it was her fault because she was worthless. In reality the reason was that her husband was unreliable, unstable and unfaithful.

Often when you're in a relationship you feel the strongest of emotions - strong feelings of closeness and intimacy that help to give life meaning.

On the other hand, if you feel rejected, let down and abandoned, these feelings can make life hard - so hard that you end up being depressed.

But when you experience natural grief and despair, these feelings soon pass.

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