How To Support Your Partner with Depression

Written By Guest Writer Raffi Bilek, LCSW-C

Going through depression is hard. Watching a loved one go through depression is also hard – in

a different way. You so badly want to fix the problem, and it can be so painful having your good

will and offers to help fall flat. So how can you support a partner with depression?

1. Lots of Love

Keep the loving comments and gestures going, even if your partner isn’t super responsive. Let

them know you care about them. Make them breakfast. Give them a back rub. Whatever you’d

normally be doing to show love, keep that up. (If you weren’t doing much of that before, now’s a

great time to up your game!).

If you allow their emotional withdrawal to provoke the same reaction in you, you are losing an

opportunity to keep connection. (According to one viewpoint, the main ingredient in depression

is isolation; the opposite of that is connection.) Don’t give it up!

It’s not personal.They’re not shutting down because they don’t love you or don’t care.

Depression weighs a person down, sucks out their emotions, and makes it really hard to

connect. Keep the door open on your end.

2. Ask if they want help

Wanting to help is a great thing. Offering help is wonderful – but only if they want it.

Countless partners of depressed people have experienced terrible frustration and damaged

their relationships by forcing help upon their partners.

Of course, if the situation is dire, it’s important to step in. If they are expressing suicidal

thoughts, call a therapist, or 988, or 911 if necessary. If they literally are unable to get out of bed

for days on end, that’s another situation where you might need to take matters into your own

hands.

But short of that level of severity, you can’t force them to get better. You can’t make them go to

therapy. You can’t convince them to try medication. It’s a great idea to try these or any number

of interventions; but trying to drag them out of the house when they really aren’t bought in is not

only unlikely to help, it will probably make them more resistant and you more resentful.

Ask if they’re open to some ideas. If they say yes (or shrug or otherwise don’t say no), then you

can give them some of the ideas you already searched up on chatGPT. But trying to help

someone who doesn’t want help (as any therapist will tell you) is an exercise in futility.

3. Keep going

If you are in a committed relationship where your lives are intertwined, then allowing yourself to

get totally sucked in by your partner’s depression means you also aren’t keeping up with what

you need to do. That may lead to more trouble, and it likely will add to your partner’s stress,

guilt, and misery.

They know they’re not holding up their end. They already feel bad about it. You can help

mitigate that part of the problem.

Make sure the bills are getting paid and the kids/dogs are getting fed. Keep up with your job so

that money is still coming in. Do the dishes. All the normal stuff. Keep life going. This, of course,

may be extra weight on you. If you are looking to do something to help, this may be where the

best investment of your energy goes.

4. Take care of yourself

That said, you also can’t burn yourself out. One of the most important things you can do to

support a partner with depression is get your own support too.

That might mean talking to a coach or therapist on your own, or just close friends and family

members who can be there for you. It means getting enough sleep and making sure to eat well

so you’re in good shape to hold things up right now.

It also means doing the things that recharge you – exercising, spending time in nature,

meditating, juggling, whatever it is that fills you up. Of course, this might be easier said than

done. If you are functionally the only caregiver for your kids right now, free time might be hard to

come by. Consider how you can pull this off by perhaps hiring help, or asking mom to babysit

one night a week.

The other problem you may face is guilt – how can you go out with your friends when your

partner is laid up at home in bed, or just sitting at home, blandly flipping through social media?

The answer is that your partner needs this from you. If you’re not in good shape, everything else

is going to come crashing down, too. Your partner may be suffering from depression, but that

doesn’t mean you have to be miserable as well. (Empathy calls for sharing in their pain, but not

taking it on as your own.)

Your partner needs you to feel okay, to have energy, to stay the course for the both of you.

They don’t want to drag you down with them.

Taking care of your partner and taking care of yourself at the same time is a balance to strike,

but it’s an important one to pay attention to.

The Bottom Line

You can’t cure your partner’s depression. You can care about it, and you can be there on the

sidelines cheering them on, but at the end of the day, you can’t make it go away. And that’s

hard.

Give love.Ask if they want help.Keep things going. Take care of yourself. And if one or both of

you is ready for some extra support, reach out to a therapist who can provide it sooner than

later!

Raffi Bilek, LCSW-C provides couples therapy in Baltimore and is the director of the Baltimore

Therapy Center. He’s also the author of The Couples Communication Handbook: The Skills You

Never Learned for the Marriage You Always Wanted – check out the first two chapters of this

couples communication book for free at www.thecommunicationbook.com!