Can You Keep a Healthy Relationship Going While You're Depressed?

When depression shifts how you see almost everything, your relationship rarely escapes the pull. A frequent complaint among people living with mild to moderate depression is the sense of being cut off: from friends, from family, from the world at large, and from the person they share their life with. The disconnection has a source. When someone can't reach the feeling of caring for themselves, reaching the feeling of caring for anyone else becomes nearly impossible. The thought of love is still there. A depressed person knows, intellectually, that they love their partner. What's missing is the sensation that usually comes with it.

Feeling is the part that goes quiet. The deeper the depression runs, the more muffled the heart gets, and accessing emotion turns into real work. Those feelings haven't gone anywhere, though. That gap creates trouble inside a relationship, because the connection can flicker on and off from one day to the next. Monday you feel bonded to yourself and your partner; Tuesday you feel tethered to nothing.

People in this state tend to read situations wrong. They become convinced that a partner is being critical or cold, when what they're really picking up is their own self-judgment bouncing back at them. Conflict erupts when the depressed person doesn't grasp what's happening inside their own head and takes every message their mind sends at face value. They scoop up the mental clutter, mistake it for genuine feeling, and often say nothing about it. They may nurse a wound over something their partner supposedly did, while the partner did nothing at all.

Talking to a health professional matters a great deal here, and so does talking to your partner. Depression can weigh on the partner nearly as hard as it weighs on the person carrying it. Conversations from a depressed mind frequently come out tangled and short on logic. Arguing over problems built from false perceptions won't get either person very far. The better move is for the depressed person to pull back and watch their thoughts instead of reacting to the noise. Skipping a pointless argument rooted in a misread, and simply accepting where your head is at right now, can itself build a little connection. You can extend that opening with a different kind of closeness, cuddling, for instance.

There are ways to treat yourself with respect and kindness during depression without wrecking a relationship that is otherwise fine. Start by listening to your own mind with some suspicion. Don't swallow everything it feeds you. A depressed mind pushes false negatives, and believing them keeps the depression running. The more practice you get telling fear-driven thoughts apart from the clearer, calmer thoughts underneath, the easier the sorting becomes. In a moment when the weight feels heaviest, slow down, step back, and actually examine what's going through your head. What is happening, really?

Watch your assumptions, too. Catch the negative conclusions your mind reaches on its own, and question what set off the anger or the hurt. Was that truly what your partner said? Or are you supplying the interpretation? Most often you're staring into a mirror of your own thinking. Your mind might occasionally be flagging something real, but if so it will keep until your mood lifts, and the conversation will go far more smoothly once it has.

Connect with your partner over the larger situation rather than the small flashpoints. Be straight about how you're feeling in general. Say plainly that you suspect you're depressed, instead of aiming criticism at them. If something genuine is wrong, treat it the same way as a true assumption: it will still be there after the depressed feelings recede, and it will be much easier to discuss then.

Give the mind its due. It can be persuasive, extremely so. Whatever it generates can feel like the most urgent thing in the world. Waiting is usually wiser, but the choice is yours, and you may go ahead and have the conversation anyway. If you land in a discussion you later wish you'd skipped, don't spiral over it. That's fine. It happens.

And hold on to the fact that the state passes. You may not be able to feel it at the moment, but try to keep hold of the calm, the peace, and the warmth that are still somewhere inside you.

Adapted from Jeff Stein, "How to Maintain a Healthy Relationship When You're Depressed," December 9, 2012.