I've been seeing this older guy. I'm 19 he is 35 . not married nor kids. I've spent nights with him and am always at his house. We have not done anything sexual. Yet at the moment we are on a "break" because he is going thro his depression.and he also has sleep issues and never sleeps so as you see he's pretty stressed yet when we talk and when I'm over he is affionate and calls me cute pet names. I've told him I planed to tell my mom about him and he said to please stop pushing the issue of us being together.And give him time to get better. So what does this mean and why is he messing up my emotions?
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Sure it's messing up your emotions, but his are most likely messed up a lot more. You will have to give him some time to get better, maybe a very long time.
I think there's this pervasive idea that mental illness is just a personality description, as opposed to more obvious medical bodily problems. It's a dangerous thing to conflate mental illness with personality, because we get people telling those who are depressed to "get over it" or something like "yeah, I was depressed like week too, but then I realized it was just all in my head."
I'd argue that chronic depression is potentially as serious and life-threatening as a lot of medical diseases.
What makes it even worse is that describing depression to someone who's never been effected by it is often almost impossible because it's hard for them to grasp the magnitude of the difference between depression and feeling a bit shit one day, because the instantly observable symptoms are the same and the words that can describe it are the same. It all stems from the fact that mental illness isn't often seen in the way that you can see a broken leg or a fractured scrotum.
Even worse still, people see a broken leg/fractured scrotum and can empathise and understand that that must have been pretty fucking painful and traumatising. People see someone with depression and they either can't empathise or try to empathise with the closest thing they have experienced: that feeling of feeling a bit shit which is nothing like depression.
Depression in famous people is fairly common, and it's the sort people most often see. When an average person sees a professional sportsman with millions of pounds in the bank and a job which is idolised with depression, they start to think that it isn't so serious, or that the people who get it must be weak and pathetic. They lose a lot of sympathy for anyone who has depression.
Despite all this, I think people are slowly wising up; compare how mental illness was treated 100 years ago to now and there's no comparison. But the attitude towards mental illness from a lot of people is one of the few things that really, really riles me. I'm not sure what can be done apart from educating people, but I can't see that being effective.
Depression is a serious mental illness and regardless of what you think, he isn't doing anything to "mess" with your emotions purposely.
Get it together woman. Life goes a long time.
You have been warned