How to stay sane when your partner is in a depressive rut

People who are in depressive ruts strain the emotional states of the people around them without knowing.

If you’re kinda strained, here are a couple of points that may help:

1. It’s their responsibility — not yours — to get out of the depressive rut. There is nothing you can do if they don’t want to take the steps to address their problems.
2. It’s not your fault they have the problem they’re struggling with. Most of a human’s behavioural patterns are formed by the time they turn 7.
3. You are not responsible for changing their emotional reactions. They are.
4. If they say depressing and/or heartbreaking things to you, know that their patterns are taking hold of them. They are insane in the moment. Don’t let an insane person drive you insane.
5. Walk away to break up intense situations
6. Set agreements on date, time, and duration to talk about and clear up misunderstandings. Keep to the time boundary.
7. If they cannot hear you, try another way. If they still cannot hear you, stop. They won’t hear you because they’re unwilling to hear you in that moment. (They’re insane at that moment).
8. Reminder: Don’t let an insane person drive you insane. It’s not worth it.
9. You’re being driven insane because you care too much.
10. Care is derived from old English Caru, which means sorrow, anxiety, and grief. It’s not your responsibility to take their sorrow, anxiety, and grief.
11. Let them learn to deal with their tension. If you “take care” of them and lift them from the tension they’re experiencing, you rob them of a chance to learn to deal with that tension. And if you repeat that often, they become dependent on you to relieve that tension.
12. Helping someone doesn’t mean you need to help them be happy/without trouble. Unhappiness comes from them and must be resolved by them.

Remember that you have your life to lead. They have their lives to lead. If you and your partner are not in a synergistic relationship (where 1 + 1 = 3), you’re probably in a vampiric one — where one leeches off another.

The only way to get a synergistic relationship is for both partners to contribute themselves into the relationship. Both must be able and willing to be responsible for their thoughts, emotions, and actions.

Lastly, if you don’t set up and enforce boundaries, you are contributing to their sickness in the relationship with you in the long run.

Extract yourself, my friend.

Hope this helps.

From a friend who has a wife who has suicidal thoughts.