I love my boyfriend but he is depressed!
Hi, this is my first post and the reason I joined this forum. My boyfriend is depressed and I have no one to talk to about it since most of our friends are mutual friends and I don't want to break his privacy.
I am 18 and he is 22. We have been dating for about 4 months but have been very close friends for about a year. We used to always joke around and have fun and never an awkward silence or anything.
Recently, he has been getting depressed. It has been getting worse and worse. When he was younger he was on Zoloft (anti-depressant) but decided to get off of it on his own and has been fine since until recently. He also just got laid off from his job. He never wants to go out any more, just sit around and smoke and drink and watch TV. I'm fine with drinking and whatever but he's just using it for the wrong reasons I think.
I've talked to him a lot about it and he admits that he is depressed but says he's okay and doesn't need therapy or anything.
This morning he told me that he doesn't trust anyone except for me and he doesn't feel good enough about himself to be around any one, including our close friends, except for me.
It makes me happy that he can open up to me a little but I don't think it's healthy that I'm the only person he wants to be around, I love him very much and it hurts to see him hurting and I just would like some advice as to what I can do about this?
It's hard for me to always be cheery when he is so depressed. It's really affecting both of us and I just want to do whatever I can to make him happy.
He constantly reminds me that it's not my fault and he doesn't know what he would do without me but when he's clearly feeling so bad it's hard to believe that!