Opening up with depression

People...depression is hard. Just existing with depression feels like playing life on the highest difficulty setting. So whenever you add anything outside the social norm into your life, you know it’s going to make things even trickier. This is especially true for non-monogamy. Generally speaking, more relationships means more feelings to manage. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth it. When you’ve got depression, anything that brings you joy becomes a worthy pursuit.

It’s entirely possible that the title of this article is going to be misleading for some people. To be clear, this is about opening up your relationship while also having depression. However, it is also about opening up to the people around you about your depression and your needs. Because depression will do its best to convince you to isolate yourself from the people around you, even though having a supportive network is one of the best ways to fight it. Is that irony? I can never tell (I blame Alannis Morisette).

Talk to your partner about what you want

When you talk to your partner about opening up your relationship, it’s important to discuss the ‘type’ of non-monogamy you’re both interested in. Whether it’s cheeky one-night stands, an open relationship or the full polyam experience - explore the topic together so you both know what you’re after, what your expectations are and where your boundaries are. Understanding what both of you want can help to prevent any ‘surprise revelations’ down the road, which can become a bit of a minefield if your depression comes with a side order of anxiety.

Another topic to broach with your partner is what kind of people you’re looking for. This discussion can be a really great tool for combatting some depressive narratives you might have.

We all know that ethical non-monogamy is often about finding new and exciting people to have wild, crazy sex with. But it’s also about acknowledging that asking any one person to fulfill all of our needs is unreasonable. It’s better to have a diverse range of people in our lives that fulfill different needs. Talking with your partner about what needs you're both looking to have met reminds both of you that it's not about finding someone who is better, but finding someone who brings something different to the table.

As an example, I have an eating disorder that limits what and where I can eat. My established partner is a huge foodie. When we have the conversation about what we’re looking for, my partner will mention that finding someone to try new restaurants with would be really great. This not only stops my brain from focusing on the sex part (if that’s giving me anxiety) but also gives me permission to think about the kinds of needs that I’d like to have met, the kinds of people that I’d like to have in my life. It also sets me up for some really lovely compersion feels down the line when my partner comes home from a date at a fancy restaurant.

Talk to your partner about your depression

In case you’re not catching on to the theme here - communication is vital. If you’re considering non-monogamy, prepare to do a lot of talking, because it’s an integral part of making it work.

Talking about depression, or any mental illness, can be really hard. But it’s important that your partner understands where you’re at with your mental health so they can act accordingly.

If you’re the partner of someone with depression, it’s understandable that, when they’re feeling down, you want to do everything you can to lift them up. But with non-monogamy it’s easy to fall into the trap of ending your other relationships just to try and ‘fix’ them.

Whether it’s open relationships, polyamory or something else, any kind of non-monogamy can leave us with feelings that we wouldn’t describe as ‘nice’. But if we don’t have the space to sit with those feelings and try and work out where they’re coming from it’s very hard to grow.

When I tell my established partner that “I’m sad” or “I’m insecure” I need them to give me the space to feel that feeling. I need time to work through those emotions and figure out where they’re coming from, what’s causing them and then see if I can address them. I won’t be able to do that if their only response is to close the relationship every time I express any kind of negative feeling.

Talk to your therapist

It’s important that you have a strong mental health support team in place. Your partner might be supportive, but they should never be your only source of mental health support. There’s a couple of reasons for this.

The first is that it’s not fair on your partner. Being someone’s 24/7 emotional support person isn’t great for their mental health and it’s a huge amount of pressure.

It’s also not great for you, because if you’re ever in a situation where your partner is no longer in your life you’re suddenly stuck with a huge emotional hole and no one to talk to about it.

On top of all of that it can also create massive co-dependency issues, which are absolutely terminal for non-monogamy.

So if you don’t already have a therapist, or a counsellor or some kind of mental health support service - get one. Even if you’re not opening up your relationship, you should treat your mental health as a priority and look after it as best you can.

Long term relationship? Use it against your depression

Does your depression brain have a tendency to throw up negative narratives like "my partner is going to leave me for someone else" or "my partner will find someone who is better than me", etc? The good news is, if you’re in a long term relationship you can really easily combat this narrative.

Whenever you start to hear your brain question whether your partner loves you, open your phone or computer. Go to your camera roll or your social media account or wherever you document your relationship moments and scroll back through your memories and remind yourself of every adventure you’ve been on together.

Remember all the lovely things you’ve done for each other, every birthday you’ve celebrated, every anniversary together, etc. Remind yourself of your love story.

Doing this not only helps to remind your brain that your partner loves you and has stuck with you through a lot of different experiences, but it’s also a great exercise for reaffirming your love for your partner, and an important reminder of how loved you are.

Potential partners

When you’re ready to ‘get out there’ and start dating, it’s a good idea to look for people who are at least a little bit mental health literate. You want to find people who ‘get it’.

Making sure the people you date understand mental health means you’re not putting someone in a situation they’re unequipped for. People who have never been exposed to any kind of mental illness often don’t have the coping skills for situations that can arise from depression. Whether it’s basic stuff like seeing you cry and not understanding why, or you have to take a break from social media/online dating/messaging for your mental health. Some people will deal with it well, despite not having experience, but some people can inadvertently make the situation worse purely through a lack of understanding. They might say or do hurtful things because they misinterpret what’s happening (e.g. they think you’ve ghosted them when you’re unable to reply to a message) or because they think they’re helping (I’ve had someone try and eat me out to cheer me up out of my depression).

It also means that you don’t have to play the role of ‘educator’ when you don’t have the spoons for it. Spreading awareness is super important, but not if it comes at the expense of your sanity. Having a partner who requires constant context and information around your behaviours, symptoms, medications, etc can be an exhausting experience. That doesn’t have to be your job.

Dating platforms and support groups

If you decide to date people who are more mental health literate, it can be much harder on the more traditional ‘swipe’ dating apps. These apps often don’t leave a lot of room for text bios, which means you tend to match based on physical compatibility alone and then have to try and sift through all the other stuff in message conversations.

To avoid this situation you can use the more old school ‘profile’ based dating platforms. This is why, despite recent updates that leave me very frustrated, I still recommend OkCupid. The user base is largely ‘woke’ and the desktop version doesn’t limit you to swiping. It lets people create longer dating profiles where you can include all the things that are important to you. They also cater for people who are practicing non-monogamy, which not a lot of other mainstream dating sites offer.

The other thing that can be helpful is heading to your favourite social media platform, and finding a page, group, subreddit, whatever, for polyamorous people in your area. This is not a place I’d recommend going with the intention of picking up. But it can be a good place to be around like minded people who all want to talk about what’s happening in your area. This is usually a good way to hear about events, dating app recommendations, and even good first date places. It helps you feel like you’re part of a community, instead of trying to navigate this new world on your own, with your brain nattering away unhelpfully in the background. Online support networks are great when your brain is struggling.

Expectation management

Don’t go into this thinking that in 2 weeks time you'll be covered in sexy naked strangers and all your problems will be solved.

Regardless of your mental health, it’s always good to set reasonable expectations. But when it comes to depression you need to reign that shit right in. Depression has a tendency to feed on any kind of perceived ‘failure’ in our lives. Often this ‘failure’ looks like a 99/100 on your final exams. So when it comes to dating, there’s a lot for your brain to work with in terms of feeding you shitty narratives about your self worth.

This is why setting low expectations from the outset can help to insulate you a little bit. Dating is hard just on its own. Dating in the non-monogamy world is harder still because it’s a smaller pool of people and you’re operating outside of the ‘social norms’ so you have fewer reference points, support options, etc. And doing non-monogamy dating with depression...well, it’s a lot.

Be prepared for the possibility that your partner might have more dating success than you. Your brain will eat that shit up and feed it back to you as delicious self loathing. And depression being what it is, this will make it very tempting to give up completely. Your brain might tell you shit like ‘My partner is having so much success, I should just leave them because they’ll clearly be happier without me. I’ll go and be alone, like the universe clearly wants me to be.’

Be prepared for that shit. Your brain is a messy bitch who loves drama and will use your situation to try and sabotage your life through narratives like this. Being prepared for it can take some of the power away from it.

Your worth is not tied to this

It’s easy to see our success at dating as a measure of our value as a person. If I was beautiful, everyone would want to have sex with me. If I was charming, everyone would want to date me. If I was intelligent, everyone would want to talk to me.

No.

These are lies.

This is not how dating works.

This is not how people work.

Look, you might be an absolute turd of a person, I don’t know you. Maybe your favourite thing to do is comment on Facebook posts of people’s pets saying “Eh. I’ve seen cuter”. I’m not saying you’re a good person. I’m saying that you’re a whole and complete person as you are. That doesn’t change based on your dating success. Having a million people who want to bang you or never getting a single match - it doesn’t change your value as a person.

So whenever your depression brain starts feeding you anything, please remember to stop, take a deep breath and remind yourself,

‘My worth is not tied to this.’

That is all.

You may go now.