Depression, anxiety, trauma, and poor mental health are some of the words we often hear among the people we know. Some are genuinely struggling through it, and some are faking it for the sake of attention. But the people who are actually struggling know how adversely it is impacting their life and relationships. When in a committed relationship with someone, be it romantic or family, we tend to share our life with the other person. That person becomes the very major part of our everything and therefore starts to get affected by our every move and action. Whatever we do directly has a significant impact on how our relationship grows. Therefore, our mental health also plays a crucial role in this growth. If we struggle with poor mental health, it will negatively affect the relationship and vice versa. Healing from trauma, depression, and anxiety is imperative if you want to grow healthily with your partner. Read on to learn how mental health can affect your relationships.
How Does Your Poor Mental Health Affect Your Relationships?
With such a hectic and hustling lifestyle, no one has the time to take care of their mental health, leading to many relationship issues, poor quality of life, low productivity, job loss, and sometimes bad physical health. A mental illness can result from any trauma you faced in your child or adulthood or any significant medical condition that led to anxiety, depression, or alcoholism. These issues are pretty severe and result in negative growth and screwed relationships. Following are some of the ways in which poor mental health affects your relationships:
Bad Communication
When one person in a relationship is struggling with mental illness, it’s very self-evident that they will have a hard time communicating and openly expressing their feelings to each other. The anxiety and depression will cause mistrust and misunderstandings in their relationship. The other partner will start to make their own interpretations of the struggling person’s indifference, and this will lead to the couple slowly getting isolated. Every relationship needs some communication to make it move healthily. Therefore both partners must make sure they have open conversations about what’s bothering them. If your partner is dealing with mental illness, you can help them by taking them to a counselor or trying couple therapy.
Feeling Of Shame Or Guilt
We are very much aware of the stigma associated with mental health conditions. People suffering from such conditions feel shame, embarrassment, or guilt about being in the condition, which obviously shouldn’t be the case. No one who is struggling with mental illness is to be blamed for their condition. They may be forced to act normal, hide their symptoms, and even feel embarrassed about asking for help. They start to avoid discussing their problems with others and feel like a burden to others. This can cause frustration and further communication gap between the partners, and hence the relationship will start to rot.
Codependency
Another common problem in couple relationships where one partner struggles with mental illness is codependency. It is something that originates naturally without the partners even realizing it. For example, if your partner has a bad phase, what are you entitled to do? Take care of them, right? But being a human, keeping your partner’s needs ahead of you will definitely start to bother you at some time. You will begin to feel irritability and anger, which can sometimes lead to infidelity. On the other side, when the affected partner gets the help they seek without even asking, they get dependent on that person, and this dependency starts to bother them when they don’t get the support anymore. Therefore to prevent this from happening, both partners need to have some boundaries.
Disrupted Intimacy
Intimacy is very crucial for every relationship to work. Be it physical or emotional. But when one partner deals with mental illness, they are more likely to be disinterested in getting intimate with their partner, which can lead to many trust issues or insecurities. If your partner consumes antidepressants, that will affect their sexual drive negatively. Your partner might feel ashamed or guilty about discussing this with you, but if you think it can be the issue, you must have a conversation with them and get them help.
More Arguments
Relationship conflicts are natural and expected, but everyday conflicts can turn the relationship toxic and make the experience awful for both partners. If any of the partners is suffering from any mental illness can indeed affect the relationship negatively. It will result in more and more arguments and increased tension between them, which isn’t healthy. Although it is understandable that it’s nobody’s fault but can’t deny that mental health issues worsen the relationship experience for both and lead to toxicity and, eventually, break up.
Conclusion
Every relationship needs effort, time, and love, which a partner with mental illness is definitely incapable of giving. No matter how much you deny this and say that your relationship is far more robust than this you know in your heart that you can never get past this if you don’t find a solution. Two healthy partners lead to a healthy relationship, and if your partner isn’t healthy, it definitely is going to be hard for both of you to survive it. Trust me, giving isn’t easy. You can give it today, tomorrow, or maybe for a month, but after a certain period, you will start feeling neglected and lonely in your relationship. Therefore it’s imperative that you know when to stop or how to find the solution. To find the solution, you can visit the Premium Legacy Healthcare website and explore their services. Good luck!