A small little insight

Immediately after posting (twice) last night about how I didn't cry all day, I read a post on Captain Awkward and cried a little bit.  I thought there wasn't more to learn about this relationship but this helped me see his side of things more.  Ten months in a relationship, one month (and counting) to process it...

The letter writer wants to know how to help her boyfriend who is having health problems and depression.  The short answer- you can't.  You can only love him, be positive, take care of yourself, and do what you can.  Offer help, but if he says no, take him at his word.

The reader comments on this site are amazing, just as positive and wise as the advice from the columnist.  This comment hit me like a ton of bricks:

I have a boyfriend who has several congenital heart defects and is unemployable because of them – no health insurance company covers 100% of anything except the medical you get with disability. There are many things he can’t do. I don’t try to do stuff for him because that would just rub it in. I can’t get him a job and I can’t fix him – for political and medical reasons these problems are larger than my capabilities. All I can do is love him the way he is. I used to want to fix things, but then I realized that all I was doing by stressing myself out over his condition was stressing him out, too – and depressing him.

LW, you are not his nurse, his therapist, his social services provider, or his headhunter. When you step into those roles, you are telling him that you are better than he is because you can fix the problems he can’t. This makes disabled people feel like shit. If he needs a nurse, a therapist, a social services provider, or a headhunter, he can go get one – and if he wants your help, he can ask for it. *Be his girlfriend.* Believe me, that’s enough.

Walrus never liked being fussed over. If I force my help on him, expect him to be grateful- how's he going to feel good about that? He'll just feel there's a debt he can never repay. My intentions were good, but my 'help' was also somehow about me. The best way to be in his life would be to love him for him, and have fun with him, and help only when he asked. Anything he asked for, I would have been happy to do. I was always worried he couldn't do things, but I never gave him the chance to fail. Well, sometimes he did fail, and then I never gave him the chance to try again, because I assumed he wasn't capable.
There is a good chance that that still wouldn't have been enough- his problems might have been too big or we just might never have been a good match. I'm just saying I understand what he said about smothering. I was too helpful and I didn't really show much confidence in him.
And just to make the situation more impossible- when I did think he was capable of more, I got angry when he didn't do the things I thought were within his grasp. That meant I was always one of two things- either critical and mean when I thought he could do it, or patronizing and smother-y when I thought he couldn't.
I was really angry at him a lot, that last month together, and it might have been partly because he wasn't the boyfriend I wanted him to be, the boyfriend I'd waited for.
Also- sometimes he didn't mind getting my help. It's a bit complicated, accepting it but not appreciating it... I think I get it- sometimes when we wish we could do things ourselves, we get mad at people who are taking care of us, we devalue or resent their help so that we don't have to feel grateful and in their debt or that we are unable to do it alone.
I should post that stuff his therapist sent me about depression. I think people everywhere need to know how to support people going through bad times. It's not a common skill!
I'm fairly calm. At least I understand a bit better why this happened. I can't be too mad at myself for not knowing how to deal with something this big, especially when he didn't really communicate what he needed. We weren't together long enough to know each other's unspoken needs.