TrinityII

I can relate to this. Not from a break-up, from a break-down - a lot of awful stuff happened to me at the same time & it all got too much, I spent 18 months on sick pay with clinical depression. I went days without eating, maybe got 2 hours sleep a night if I was lucky. Plus a constant knot in my stomach that just doesn't go away. Basically what I'm saying is, I think possibly although the problem started as break-up misery it's manifested itself into full-blown depression. I can only speak from my own experience, but does any of this make sense? Treatment-wise a lot of people find going to see their GP & getting counselling & anti-depressants help. For me it made matters a lot worse; counsellors dredging up issues & the anti-depressants just made me feel like I was constantly halfway between awake and asleep. The best thing for me was to get myself away from everything that had been my daily routine previously - I go & stay with some friends in another part of the country, or jump on a train, go wherever it goes & book into a B&B for a night. Waking up to different scenery in a different room helped put things in perspective a lot. I'm terrible for going over past memories again and again, making everything worse for myself. But going thru this negative routine only attracts more negative energy. Someone showed me a DVD called 'The Secret' the other day that helped a lot (http://www.thesecret.tv).

Thanks everyone all this help & support is invaluable I think I might try to get some much-needed space between us for a night or two sometime soon, go visit one of my girl-friends or something. I've gotta do some xmas shopping at some point so that'd be a good excuse. After posting on here the other night I got home & brought up some of my concerns with my boyfriend - which resulted in an argument during which he told me to leave - but resolved into deciding we've both got to work harder at showing we appreciate eachother's company. We know we both need eachother for support, maybe moreso than in relationships where neither party suffers from depression. Faced with the concept of actually moving out I couldn't bring myself to go thru with it - backing down & compromising seemed a lot easier (& maybe healthier? I keep thinking the problems I have are just standard issues that most people just deal with, am I blowing things out of proportion?) So we're going thru a 'good patch' at the moment. I kinda see relationships like a wave frequency - good patches being the peaks & bad patches being the troughs. When the frequency increases & the peaks & troughs get too close together, I'll know the time has come to get out.

Hi, this is my first post here, this looked like a really great site for advice so thought I'd give it a try. Here's my story: Been in a serious relationship for exactly 3 years tomorrow, but it's starting to feel more like a sentence than a celebration. In the 3 years we've known eachother we've only spent 4 nights apart, that was when he had to go into hospital. Living together from day 1 was great for the first couple of years, but I've started to really need some of my own space - just an afternoon every so often to myself. The few times I've tried to do this he's flown off the handle, basically convincing himself that I must be running off to spend time with another guy - so on the whole I avoid doing anything on my own - and considering our interests differ (I love going to live gigs, he prefers to stay in with a movie etc..) this basically means I very rarely get the chance to stuff that I want to do. It's too much hassle to put up with the mood he gets in if I go off on my own, and taking him with me results in him sulking & trying to make the night as unenjoyable for me as possible. Reading this myself, it looks like a no-brainer - I should break up with him. But we both suffer from depression & I don't think he'd cope with me leaving him, & I'm not strong enough myself to cope either. He's attempted suicide several times before I met him, it's not inconceivable he'd try again if I left him. Currently I have 2 jobs, he's on sick pay for an accident to his arm that'll stop him from working for at least a year, so I'm the only source of income our house has got - eg if I leave him he'll be skint, unable to work, depressed ... etc, etc ... Christ this is hard. I've promised myself that there won't be a 4 year anniversary - I'll break up with him before them. But there doesn't ever seem to be a 'right time' to do it. Can anyone else relate to this/any advice out there? All I can think about is breaking up with this guy - and how awful it would be. Lucie