1. Assuming you have fallen out with your partner through your depression bringing on negative emotions. Which is the best way for your partner to approach you?
The books say the rejected partner should avoid being needy and not mention love at all. Is this correct???????? and if not what which is the best way to approach you when you are depressed????????

2. Sometimes depression needs a loved one to continue with the loving, and othertimes it rejects a loving loved one. Why do some reject proven love. The very person that is prepared to help the most?????

3. It also mystifies me that compassion is shown towards animals and friends but not to relatives that really really care.

It's a know dysfunction that we often hurt the ones we love the most. It's a mystery as to why that happens; perhaps it's because we feel close and safe with them - so close and safe that we believe it's ok to let out our pain on them. I think people reject love because it hurts. It's like someone putting a soothing balm on a cut - the first reaction is often to pull away because any contact hurts.

A good approach for a rejcted partner, or for anyone for that matter, is to honestly and simply state your feelings and your needs.

1. Assuming you have fallen out with your partner through your depression bringing on negative emotions. Which is the best way for your partner to approach you?
The books say the rejected partner should avoid being needy and not mention love at all. Is this correct???????? and if not what which is the best way to approach you when you are depressed????????

2. Sometimes depression needs a loved one to continue with the loving, and othertimes it rejects a loving loved one. Why do some reject proven love. The very person that is prepared to help the most?????

3. It also mystifies me that compassion is shown towards animals and friends but not to relatives that really really care.


1. i wouldn't want to be approached until i felt that i am ready. if i feel that i am no longer in love with you, and told you i want to be alone, i would very much respect and appreciate for you to give me the space i need. i can't say anything for certain right now, because my feelings may change as i get better, and i may want to be with you again, or, they may not, and then it would be nice to have an amicable resolution to our relationship. in the meantime, if you constantly keep telling me you love me, that may be good / bad, depending on how i'm feeling. if i'm working and struggling to get my own feelings under control, and i feel i don't love you anymore, i don't think i'd want to hear from you a lot, even if you keep telling me you love me. it can become irritating after a while. it is me--I-- who has to come to my own conclusions about how i really feel about everything, including you...

2. simply, because they may no longer love them. or, because the depressed person doesn't want to encumber his/her partner. they may feel guilty about their illness; ashamed; unworthy of love; so they want to isolate and withdraw. some do the opposite and engage in extramarital affairs, and other dangerous behavior that can only lead to more depression when all is said and done...

3. it's understandable that pple show their love to animals--because they are most accepting, non-judgemental, uncritical, completely unconditional in their love for us. sometimes friends are also more empathetic than family. many times family doesn't really understand us, and how we truly feel. the family may say that they care, and it's probably true, but at times, it may become suffocating, in a way--their caring may be too much. yes, depressives can feel like that!! they may want some space from the family's constantly watchful eyes. they don't want to feel trapped, and/or really nuts, so they will sometimes reach out to other pple...to friends...
at the same time, we may not want to put the family through the same thing over and over again. we want to let others in on our pain....take it off of the family a bit and share our burden with others, with friends, and especially with those who've been through the same thing we are going through.

Thank you Dakota your explanation. This will help me and others to hopefully understand the illness.

Thank you Skynice too for your contribution.

Both responses have raised more questions in my head.

There is a debate as to whether some SSRIs cause a loss of love

Clearly you can still love and be depressed.
Clearly not everyone loses the propensity to love whilst taking antidepressants.
Clearly love and anger are interchangable emotions.
Clearly lust, attraction and attachment are still there - after all how many with D and taking antidepressants cheat on partners.
Clearly refinding love will remove a depression.
Clearly having a chronic pain enhances sympathetic thoughts towards others with a similar pain and leads to compassion.
Clearly in some circumstances love can be deemed a chronic pain.
Clearly compassionate thoughts towards a partner can be non existant.
Clearly then love cannot be a chronic pain.
Clearly the thoughts are of what is needed and of who else can help towards survival and security?
But if there's no pain and in pain I'm including mental pain what influences the need to survive?
It is because there is a pain but it isn't an at the moment pain.
It has to be a revisited pain from a childhood incident of/and at an age where the response of compassion didn't exist.
It has to be a childhood pain in the subconscious experienced between the ages of between two and upwards to.
Perhaps SSRIs have nothing at all to do with the loss of love.

My thoughts based on a your replies and a few answers I had to a questionnaire somewhere on the board.

These thoughts are personal and just for discussion