I do think you’re making a lot of assumptions with this. I never said he didn’t reciprocate. I don’t require emotional support because I am very calm, as I said, with a very low neuroticism. …
Thanks for providing this info—this does clear up a lot of things. Updating now. Still, I do have to wonder if a relationship can be sustained in the long term when one of the partners is not engaging emotionally to an appreciable extent, if at all—even if that’s because of their admirable calmness and low neuroticism—and the other suffers from depression, which generally comes with its own kind of emotional withdrawal. IME, this looks more like folks just doing things together, hanging out, than anything resembling an enduring relationship. The fact that you were “providing support” does not really change things much—again, that’s not a good position to be in anyway.
By using the word calm, I think I did a poor job of explaining what neuroticism means and implies. I think the Wikipedia page would be best for this, but my own experience is that I feel the same range and variety of emotions, I just deal with negative emotions in an extremely healthy and productive way, so the duration of negative feelings tends to be shorter and positive feeling tend to last longer. My attachment style is secure and my empathy is unusually strong, so from at least my perspective it wasn’t a relationship of two people just doing things together.
Depression and depression medications both cause emotional blunting, though. So at times I know he felt like he was just going through the motions. The feeling wasn’t specific to the relationship but included other aspects of life: friends, work, etc. People in deep depression tend to perpetuate it by imposing their own social isolation, which is a very maladaptive behavior. This emotional blunting is, in the end, the factor that ended our relationship.
But assuming that a relationship between a depressed person and a healthy person is necessarily of low quality is reasoning that leads in a direction I am strongly opposed to.
I don’t think a relationship with a severely depressed person is likely to last as long (though I don’t have data on this). But I emphatically wouldn’t discourage people from dating for that reason. I’m having trouble explaining why, I feel so strongly about this. Not pursuing romantic love because it doesn’t last forever or isn’t absolutely perfect is… not the correct approach for optimising human happiness. For a depressed person, social support can create larger gains in net happiness because the starting happiness is so low, even if the absolute happiness doesn’t get as high. I certainly don’t regret our relationship, we both gained a lot from it.
Often when I talk someone who doesn’t know my ex, and I tell them I recently broke up, they immediately invent a laundry list of reasons our relationship was low quality. As I give more information, their suggestions become more and more confident and specific, but just as far from reality. I’m happy to share what actually factored into our break up, in the spirit of full disclosure.
In addition to emotional blunting, my low conscientious became more stressful as his energy levels dropped. New relationships are more intense, which means a larger appeal to someone with blunted emotions—the new but non-serious person he was dating reminded him of the possibility. Finally, neither of us had ever planned to make a marriage-level commitment so our threshold for breaking up was probably lower than people working towards that goal. I hope this is helpful for getting a better picture.
For a depressed person, social support can create larger gains in net happiness because the starting happiness is so low …
For the record, I do agree with this. I would never suggest that a depressed person should not be dating—far from it. In fact, I wouldn’t even see such a relationship as being “low quality” in any real sense. What I meant to say is that I would certainly put more effort than usual into keeping the emotional channels open—and yes, this would be separate and in addition to the usual support you might give to someone who’s going thru depression. Because, while social support and attachment are related, they’re not the same thing, and it’s all too easy unfortunately to work towards the former while neglecting the latter.
Definitely! Attachment was the main problem I think. Attachment requires a confluence of a lot of happy emotions at high levels and in connection with a specific person. Happy emotions yes, but not at high enough levels I think.
For the record, after I wrote my last post I realized I had never actually asked him if my best guess of why he ended it was accurate. According to him, mostly accurate but my low conscientiousness was less of a factor then I assumed, but low energy was a factor in terms of me wanting to do things with our mutual friends and him not wanting to.
Thanks for providing this info—this does clear up a lot of things. Updating now. Still, I do have to wonder if a relationship can be sustained in the long term when one of the partners is not engaging emotionally to an appreciable extent, if at all—even if that’s because of their admirable calmness and low neuroticism—and the other suffers from depression, which generally comes with its own kind of emotional withdrawal. IME, this looks more like folks just doing things together, hanging out, than anything resembling an enduring relationship. The fact that you were “providing support” does not really change things much—again, that’s not a good position to be in anyway.
By using the word calm, I think I did a poor job of explaining what neuroticism means and implies. I think the Wikipedia page would be best for this, but my own experience is that I feel the same range and variety of emotions, I just deal with negative emotions in an extremely healthy and productive way, so the duration of negative feelings tends to be shorter and positive feeling tend to last longer. My attachment style is secure and my empathy is unusually strong, so from at least my perspective it wasn’t a relationship of two people just doing things together.
Depression and depression medications both cause emotional blunting, though. So at times I know he felt like he was just going through the motions. The feeling wasn’t specific to the relationship but included other aspects of life: friends, work, etc. People in deep depression tend to perpetuate it by imposing their own social isolation, which is a very maladaptive behavior. This emotional blunting is, in the end, the factor that ended our relationship.
But assuming that a relationship between a depressed person and a healthy person is necessarily of low quality is reasoning that leads in a direction I am strongly opposed to.
I don’t think a relationship with a severely depressed person is likely to last as long (though I don’t have data on this). But I emphatically wouldn’t discourage people from dating for that reason. I’m having trouble explaining why, I feel so strongly about this. Not pursuing romantic love because it doesn’t last forever or isn’t absolutely perfect is… not the correct approach for optimising human happiness. For a depressed person, social support can create larger gains in net happiness because the starting happiness is so low, even if the absolute happiness doesn’t get as high. I certainly don’t regret our relationship, we both gained a lot from it.
Often when I talk someone who doesn’t know my ex, and I tell them I recently broke up, they immediately invent a laundry list of reasons our relationship was low quality. As I give more information, their suggestions become more and more confident and specific, but just as far from reality. I’m happy to share what actually factored into our break up, in the spirit of full disclosure.
In addition to emotional blunting, my low conscientious became more stressful as his energy levels dropped. New relationships are more intense, which means a larger appeal to someone with blunted emotions—the new but non-serious person he was dating reminded him of the possibility. Finally, neither of us had ever planned to make a marriage-level commitment so our threshold for breaking up was probably lower than people working towards that goal. I hope this is helpful for getting a better picture.
For the record, I do agree with this. I would never suggest that a depressed person should not be dating—far from it. In fact, I wouldn’t even see such a relationship as being “low quality” in any real sense. What I meant to say is that I would certainly put more effort than usual into keeping the emotional channels open—and yes, this would be separate and in addition to the usual support you might give to someone who’s going thru depression. Because, while social support and attachment are related, they’re not the same thing, and it’s all too easy unfortunately to work towards the former while neglecting the latter.
Definitely! Attachment was the main problem I think. Attachment requires a confluence of a lot of happy emotions at high levels and in connection with a specific person. Happy emotions yes, but not at high enough levels I think.
For the record, after I wrote my last post I realized I had never actually asked him if my best guess of why he ended it was accurate. According to him, mostly accurate but my low conscientiousness was less of a factor then I assumed, but low energy was a factor in terms of me wanting to do things with our mutual friends and him not wanting to.