[spunkymonkey]

Hi,
I'm in need of a way to forgive myself for how I let the choices i made while depressed lead to the demise of my relationship with my boyfriend, who i had planned on marrying.

When we met 1 year and 7 months ago, i was fairly happy and working full-time. We fell in love, and he believed early on that i was the love of his life, and we began talking about our future together - he had his eyes set on buying his first house near my family (with whom i currently live) in the next year, with the intention of me moving in with him shortly after. He was the best man i had ever been with and I knew he would be a great husband. We spoke often about our plans together for the future.

However, our relationship ended up having its challenges for the past year. About 7 months into the relationship, i fell into a depression because i had a lot of difficulty replacing my previous job and had not been working for months. That was the beginning of a year of depression for me. During the past year, I have alternated between being periods of feeling good and bouts of depression. During those episodes, i ended up quitting the jobs I had because i would become too overwhelmed and depressed (i know now that those were bad decisions).
He tried his best to understand and offer his love and support, even though my behaviour was straining and frustrating him.
He spent most of his spare time with me, taking me out, trying the best he knew how to help me feel better, but 4 or 5 times he ended up breaking up with me (ranging from 1-5 days) because he felt nothing he was doing was enough for me to get better, and he could not see me an equal partner if we ended up getting married. We would always get back together, because we both loved one another deeply and were optimistic that we would both work harder at overcoming our problems. He had never known anyone else who suffered from clinical depression, and he never could understand it - he mistakenly expected his love and support to be enough to get me through it.

Finally, several weeks after i fell into another depression following a traumatic and painful falling out with my best friend, I quit my most recent job. He had viewed this new job as our opportunity to finally move forward in our relationship, and this would be the first step in building a future together, after him feeling like our relationship was stalled the entire time i was unstable with my jobs. He would now start to save up for an engagement ring. I knew if i quit this job for any reason, he would call it quits for good. But when i experienced that traumatic falling out with my best friend a week after starting my new job, I let myself become so overwhelmed, guilty, depressed, anxious, and stressed that I felt i had no choice but to quit in order to ease my mental and emotional anguish.

That was the final straw for him. I lost the person I thought i would marry and spend the rest of my life with.

I can't stop blaming myself for not seeing the writing on the wall, that he had given very clear signs that he was burnt out (the 4 previous times we had briefly broken up), and yet i was so depressed and blind to think I still had time to show him i could get better and hold down a job. Amidst my depression and anxiety, I believed i couldn't cope anymore and had to quit my job. I made yet another bad decision.

I had always resisted getting professional therapy (other than medication) because I was afraid of getting judged and being told that it was my fault for being depressed. Now i regret not getting help sooner, but it is already too late to save our relationship.

Why did it take me losing him for good to realize i need to take control and seek counseling/therapy to overcome my depression?

Why were our previous 4 break-ups not enough to show me that I was close to losing him forever?

How do i stop blaming myself for taking him for granted and not seeing that i was going to lose him? I put him through so much and feel like i betrayed his faith in me. I know that when i'm depressed, i can't give much of myself because i'm in so much pain. But i still hate myself for not seeing that i had to try harder in order to save our relationship.

The regret is killing me inside.

Has anyone gone through something similar? How did you come to let go of the guilty and regret?

[unaluna]

Monkey, are you in therapy now? it sounds like you wanted or needed this relationship to fail for some reason, perhaps unconscious. I blew my last job this way, just not seeing the handwriting on the wall, all the time I had the crayon in my own hand.

[Ipod1]

Hey, yes. I can absolutely relate because the same thing is happening to me now. Ive been dealing with anxiety, depression, OCD, and whatever else is going on since I was 16. Now 22. I met my girlfriend 3 years ago and she left me yesterday. I saw it coming for about a month and tried to change her mind. I've been pushing her away for probably about a year and didn't even notice it. I feel so terrible I can't think straight. The only advice I can give you IS to seek help. I to found out when it was to late. So you aren't alone. If you wanna talk more about id glady talk to you more about it. Feels pretty good knowing I'm not the only one that pushed what I felt like the only thing that was keeping me "grounded" in life.