I’ve been with my partner for nearly 6 months now, but he’s been working through a lot of big life things and has been fully in a depressed episode for around 1.5 months.

He warned me when we started dating that he gets affected by SAD really badly, and that in the past he’s ghosted everyone he’s close to and is only able to maintain more superficial friendships until he’s better. That seems to check out, he’d been ghosting his best friend for weeks before he withdrew from me. Neither me nor his best friend are in his country at the moment, and he recently moved so I can’t just go and knock on his door and demand he let me sit with him 🥲

We had a long chat at the start of this episode after he disappeared for a couple of days, and he expressed that he loves so much about me and wants to be healthier with me, but didn’t know how long that will take. I’ve got similar mental health problems and have navigated a new relationship during an episode before, so I told him I wasn’t going to leave him during this.

There was then a couple of weeks of very, VERY bare minimum communication, like often he’d send a good morning/good night and that was it. We’re now up to a detailed text about our days and he’s sharing some of his feelings again, which is great! He’s also been consistently initiating the daily texting for the last 2 weeks.

We had said we’d talk about his progress this month when he was back from Bali, and while he wasn’t able to do that because his job was overwhelming (healthcare is mad as a job and winter is the worst time of year for it, this wasn’t unexpected), he did tell me that he was struggling and what he needed in order to do it (to be in a calmer time, which is fair). He didn’t pull away at all after this conversation, which is positive.

The problem is, I’m now terrified. At the start of this it really felt like he was gone. And then it felt like he was going to disappear. But now that he’s engaging again and we’re making progress (slow n steady wins the race), I don’t know what to do with myself. It’s almost like now there’s tangible hope, there’s something to lose again. I don’t think he’s going to leave, in my mind he would’ve done that by now if it was going to happen, but things being okay is a very foreign concept to me (well, both of us, but I can’t speak for what’s in his head right now).

I’ve worked through a LOT of stuff during this time to be able to meet my own needs, and he’s been insanely respectful and mature and told me that he wants me to do whatever I need during this situation which has helped!

Has anyone got any words of advice for how to handle this?