Struggling with first relationship, don't know where to go...

[agi904]

Going into college, I had never been in a relationship. I gradually formed a stable friend group and started to spend more and more time with one of the girls. At first, I was treating it as a casual relationship but it was clear that she loved me early on. Over time, I grew to reciprocate her feelings as I found her to be fun and she made me happy. Our relationship was weird because we didn’t meet each other through dates; we were already in our own college friend group bubble. Also, she would spend so much time in my apartment and sleep over that we were practically living together early on.

 

Now that we have graduated college, however, our relationship has been more difficult. She had revealed to me a few months before graduation that she was suffering from severe depression. I had no experience with depression so I was not really sure how to handle that, so I chose to accept it. She meant a lot to me and so I wanted to be there for her. We were accepted in different jobs and had to live a few hours away from each other, across the state. We decided to commit to a long-distance relationship where we would alternate weekends visiting each other.

 

My problem is that I’m having a really hard time figuring out what I really want. I am at weird stage in my life where I have a lot of decisions to make as a young adult who just graduated. I have grown to love my job and want to spend as much time as I can to excel in my career. That is hard to do in a long-distance relationship. I don’t know if it is best for me to break off and completely focus on myself or to continue and commit to my first ever relationship. Also, seeing how this is my first relationship, I always seem to have a thought in the back of my mind to break off and explore other options and gain experience in relationships before settling down, which in turn makes me feel awful because my girlfriend is such a sweet person. Most of all, I am worried that if I choose to break up, she will slip into severe depression again and that’s something I would never want to cause. Please, can anyone help me figure out what’s best?

[Garcon1986]

What is this first career that you are jumping into? Congratulations on snacking your first job. A job is very important, you should think very hard about making any changes to this job because of a relationship, however many people can juggle a job and a relationship as you can see on this forum.

 

Have you spent any time with each other are thinking about if you and your girlfriend have any incompatibilities? What bothers you apart from the depression? Could it be that her depression is her way of saying she wants to explore other people too and doesn’t want to hurt you?

 

I wanted to thank you for coming onto this forum and expressing your thoughts, because many of these thoughts that you are thinking are quite natural and quite reasonable to think of when you have just recently graduated from college. These are big decisions to make, and one team or choosing to deal with depression or being the significant other of someone who is suffering from depression is a very serious ordeal and a very difficult plus time consuming endeavor. If the depression is real, you are very brave to want to deal with it, but know you are battling a big dog here. Remember on the bright side, a man can live relatively well without a relationship, however he cannot live well without a professional life.

[d0nnivain]

Her depression is a medical condition. You have no ability to cause it or cure it. Like anybody else if she experiences a break up she will be sad & unhappy Sadness is not depression. So take her possible worsening depression off the table as a reason to stay.

 

You two have been together for a while It sounds like your college relationship is not transitioning into the real world. That happens. When you heap the distance onto the problems it's worse.

 

Only you know whether you will be better off with her or without her. Think about the future. Can you see yourself married to her? It's OK if that Q seems overwhelming. You don't have to figure out forever in the short term but if the answer is no, well then maybe it's time to move on & see what else is out there