i've been with my boyfriend for over a year now & we've recently decided to take a little time to ourselves due to his condition. he needs to get himself better before we can continue on with our relationship. the thing is, he is unwilling to go talk to someone or be seen by a professional to get help with this problem he has been dealing with since age 12. his mother is bipolar & takes zoloft everyday for her condition. i've seen his mother go into extreme lows that really scared me before & i don't know if i'll be able to stand to see him get that bad. i'm not even sure if he will, but i know it's possible. he says the way he feels right now is mixed feelings of remorse, self-pity, hopelessness, & sometimes rage. i know he hasn't been himself for the past 5 or 6 months. He got help when he was 13 or 14 but that didn't last very long. I think he's just lost hope as far as any meds helping him & all since they haven't seemed to in the past, but as a person who's dealt with my own personal mental problems, I know that you must keep trying with the meds until you find the one that works for you. He says that he just needs some time to "get better." But i'm afraid there is no "getting better" for him until he seeks some real help. I guess he thinks he can handle this by himself, and many people think that, maybe some can, but it's become very clear to me that he can't. My birthday is in a few weeks and i don't want to spend it alone. I don't know what to do or say really. I'm just trying to be as understanding and supportive as I can possibly be right now while he straightens himself out. He reassures me that our relationship will be so much stronger after this, and we talk everyday, we're just not seeing eachother & spending time together right now because we both agreed it was the best thing.

As the old saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.

I truly wish my boyfriend would think about getting real help. I've told him this. But for some reason it's my belief that many men out there struggling with problems such as this would like to try to handle it on their own.

Does anyone have any encouragement or advice for me? This is really hard for me because we're used to being with eachother everyday. It's almost like i'm not sure what exactly i'm waiting on because i don't know if he has the power to get through this time of trial by himself or not.