How Do I Stop Trying to Fix My Girlfriend?

What this episode is about

The discussion addresses the challenges of supporting a partner with clinical depression and understanding the limits of one's ability to "fix" their emotional state. It emphasizes the importance of maintaining personal integrity and honesty, acknowledging that while one can offer support, they cannot control another's feelings or experiences.

Key takeaways

• Love isn't about fixing; it's about patiently waiting for clarity amid the chaos of depression.
• The right response to a loved one’s depression isn't to jump in the hole, but to hold the rope.
• While you rush to help, remember: sometimes they need space, not a fix-it hero. Be the calm in the storm.
• Compassion can sometimes feel like abandonment; balance her needs with your own emotional health.
• Every depressive episode is a chance to redefine how you love; it's a relational game of constant re-learning.

Who speaks in this episode?

• Lucille (Referenced person (addressed by speaker))

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 3:00: Lucille
2. 6:00 – 9:00: our son
3. 9:00 – 12:00: building a non-depressed life

Notable quotes from "How Do I Stop Trying to Fix My Girlfriend?"

• Spend time together and she So, she's not just grouchy or sad. This is the real deal, Lucille.

  about Lucille · at 0:23

• Okay. Can I tell you one of the awesomest things my wife did for me whenever she got pregnant with our son.

  about our son · at 6:41

• And depending on the severity of clinical depression, there's a reason I have not written the book building a non-depressed life because depression works different. It's it's it's there's all different types. It's it's.

  about building a non-depressed life · at 9:20

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• our son — Person · Referenced family member (child of Dr. John and his wife) · 1 mention · first at 6:44
  Appears in an anecdote illustrating the principle of having “one functioning brain” during hard seasons—used as an analogy for supporting a partner with depression.
• Lucille — Person · Referenced person (addressed by speaker) · 1 mention · first at 0:26
  Used as a direct addressee in a brief aside (“real deal, Lucille”), suggesting either a co-host/producer or a named person present, but her function is not otherwise developed in the excerpt.

Books & papers

• building a non-depressed life — Book · Referenced work · 1 mention · first at 9:22
  Mentioned in the context of discussing different types and severities of depression, highlighting the complexity of the condition.

Full transcript with timestamps

0:06 Yeah. How do I respond to when my um girlfriend is depressed? So, I guess I'll give some details. So, you know, recently, like a week or two ago, she started taking medication cuz, you know, she's clinically depressed. She found out and um we've been, you know, we spend time together and she

0:25 So, she's not just grouchy or sad. This is this is the real deal, Lucille. Yeah, like she gets and she gets in these head spaces and sometimes it's bipolar. It be for no reason or if like a little thing like if we have like a little disagreement, it'll kind of she'll overly blame herself and get in a head space and I feel bad and I I say it where I ask her like how can I help and I'm sorry and then sometimes that doesn't even help and she's just stuck there and there's nothing I can do to help her and I feel bad and I'm afraid I'm build I'm building up resentment from it and I feel bad about myself and I'm like no. So I just I just don't know what to do. I want to know what's the right thing to do. How do I properly approach this, you know?

1:00 Yeah, that's a great question, man. Thank you for loving her in that way and for being honest about putting it on the table. That's great, dude. Um, thank you. So,

1:09 I I'll start with the hard truth first and then we'll reverse engineer it. Okay. The hard truth is

1:14 you can't make her feel anything. Okay. The thing you can do is given this context, my girlfriend is struggling with a depressive disorder, which is a very real thing. She's seeing seeking professional help for it and all that. Great. Wonderful. The thing you can control here is am I going to when I begin to feel like I got to not tell the truth? When I feel like I have to walk on eggshells, when I feel like these things, am I going to continue to be a person of character and integrity?

2:00 Okay. When you start to quote unquote feel bad because you told the truth because you she is saying to you through her lens, through her not being like she's she's not well, being able saying you did this or I'm the worst or I'm whatever. The moment you start to go, well, now I feel bad that she is XY. I'm I'm not gonna I'm not gonna choose to go down that road. I'm gonna do the next right thing. Here's how you determine what the next right thing is. When she is feeling well, y'all go come up with a game plan.

2:34 Okay. So that when things um get when she gets low, which is part of loving somebody with depression

2:43 Mhm. Um, I I know the next right thing for me to do. It might be I'm going to back out.

2:49 Okay. And this two shall pass. Okay. It might be I'm going to drop what I'm doing and sit by you for 30 minutes and we're going to watch a cheesy TV show.

2:59 Okay. But I'm not going to grab the rope and go down in the basement with you because I make it all worse by doing that.

3:10 Okay. Okay. You get what I'm saying? Absolutely. And you're a guy who loves her deeply. Is that Is that right? I I hear it on you.

3:18 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And like like I said, I feel real bad because I feel like I want to help her so bad that I feel like I'm doing too much and making it worse. Like you're describing. It's like But you know what I mean? Like it's like

3:29 totally. And so somebody who's struggling with depression, the moment somebody reaches in o overreaches,

3:35 it confirms that they aren't enough. [clears throat] It confirms, oh, you're exactly right. I was the problem. Look how great this guy is. Now he's bringing me breakfast. Now he's And it actually compounds the issue.

3:51 You see what I'm saying? And you are doing an amazing thing. Like, oh my gosh, my girlfriend's not feeling great right now. I'm going to do all of these things that I know would make me feel better if I wasn't feeling good.

4:03 Ah, okay. instead of sitting down and saying not when she's low because she's she's seeing the world through a pair of glasses and those glasses are not telling the truth and those glasses are depression.

4:17 Okay. When she is well, when she is having a a season of clarity okay um what does it look like? How can I best love you in these in these moments? And by the way, this will alter and change. And this has become my favorite part of being married, which is this used to be the way I could love you, what's the new way?

4:38 And instead of me being mad like I can't set it and forget it, now I get to relearn, re get to know my wife all the time. And it's become one of my favorite things in the world.

4:48 Wow. It keeps everything alive, right? It keeps everything from getting stale and boring.

4:55 Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But it for you, a guy who loves her, and I'm overgeneralizing here, but most men are fixers. I want to fix this thing. And if she had fallen down in a hole, you'd be the first guy to climb down that hole and get her out.

5:11 Right. And it might be that what she really needs is to go to sleep. Ah, okay. She really needs

5:18 I didn't think about it like that. A couple of hours to [sighs] I She knows her body. This two will pass. I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to go to bed. I'm going to go eat something. I'm going to go some coffee. I'm going to call a girlfriend. I'm going to whatever. And that's not a that's not a um uh that's not an indictment of how much you love her. In fact, the hardest thing for you to do is to not try to jump down in that hole with her.

5:44 Gotcha. Wow. Okay. You get what I'm saying? I didn't think about it like that at all.

5:50 The act of courage is not jumping, which sounds counterintuitive to guys like you and me. Yeah. Okay.

5:58 Where this becomes hard, and again I'm I'm going to be honest, where this becomes really tough is if part of her narrative that she tells herself is you need to be down there with her.

6:15 You need to be miserable, too. It's not fair that you're not miserable. M and part of healing from anxiety, part of healing from depression and in some cases healing depression depending on the severity and the depth and the type is managing it is knowing let me let me let me take depression anxiety off because those are third rails and those are diagnostics and in our current world they get thrown around a lot. Okay.

6:41 Okay. Can I tell you one of the awesomest things my wife did for me whenever she got pregnant with our our son.

6:48 I was going to be a cool modern bro. If she's going through it, I'm going through it. If she's getting up at 2 a.m. to feed the baby, I'm going to be up sitting right next to her all blurry cuz we're in this together. And she said, "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. We need one functioning brain in this house."

7:05 Wow. You sleep. I will get up and I will feed the kid. This is going to be my magic time with him.

7:14 Interesting. I need you getting up at 6:00 in the morning or 5 in the morning with a clear head.

7:20 Okay. Right. And so part of healing or managing anxiety or managing depression is not that I can't suddenly feel like snap out of it. That isn't that's not real. Right? She's hurting. But part of the management is when I feel like I want him here, I know that the greatest gift he's giving himself and to me and to our relationship is he's doing the things to keep both of us well.

7:49 And if she keeps saying, "I want you down in the hole with me." And you know, being down in that hole, she knows being down that hole actually compounds it, makes it worse. That's when you have to have bigger, harder conversations about the nature of your relationship. Okay. Huh.

8:09 How does that all sound? I threw a lot at you. Yeah. I'm just processing. Um, no, that's really how I did not think about it cuz that's exactly how I feel. Like when she gets in those like states, I'm like, "Wow." Like I I just like don't know what to do. And I feel like like I said when the first instance I'm like, "Let me try to" And I'm like, "That makes it worse." And then sometimes I'll like act dumb and make her laugh and that'll help too. But usually it's not enough and I just like I just like feel bad like you know like I didn't think about it. Like

8:39 I want you to stay on that line right there. Okay. I want you to really work hard to avoid the phrase I'm not enough.

8:51 Okay. It's hard for you to metabolize her depression is not about you. Okay. It affects you.

8:59 Mhm. It affects y'all. But it's powerful and painful inside of her heart and mind. And it's hard to think this has nothing to do with me.

9:11 Okay. Okay. Okay. She has a different mind and brain than you have. And depending on the severity of clinical depression, there's a reason I have not written the book building a non-depressed life because depression works different. It it's it's it's there's all different types. It's it's there's severity differences and whatever. And I'm always really careful with depression because it it's that depression can be a like a gnarly demon.

9:41 Okay. But you being honest with her when y'all are having open and honest dialogue in a place where she can hear it of, hey, I would love to come to one of your counseling sessions one day so that the three of us, you and her, and the therapist can come up with a game plan on how you can best love her when she's feeling low.

10:02 Okay? That would be a way that you could really reach across the aisle for her. But you see that she's getting to decide how she can best be loved, not you coming over and saying, "I'm gonna rescue you.

10:17 Okay." And probably she's going to say, "I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know."

10:28 Yeah. And that's it's hard to keep waiting through that. And that's what love looks like. I'm going to keep waiting through it. M okay. Wow. Okay.

10:40 I'm going to make you a breakfast and then I'm going to disappear for a while. Or I'm going to bring you bagels and coffee. That's your favorite thing. I don't know what her favorite thing is, but I'm going to bring that to you and I'm going to come back the next day or at 5:00 p.m. and it's going to be uneaten on the counter. And I'm not going to immediately go, I screwed up,

10:57 okay? Because it might never have been about the bagels. It might have been a tiny glimmer of light in the darkness that that guy shows up for me. That's what I needed more than the bagel. You get what I'm saying?

11:09 Yeah. Guys are really taskoriented and problem-solving centric. And this, let me say it this way. The thing she might need more than anything else in the world is you.

11:23 Okay. Not your solutions, not your advice, not your stuff. Yeah. Yeah. It might need to be that there's a steady anchored presence in my life even if he's not right next to me.

11:33 Okay. And most men really have a hard time believing they're enough without their advice or their solutions.

11:43 I guess how does that resonate? That's it's really helpful. Yeah. Because Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

12:00 Let me tell you this, brother. Yeah. I didn't Yeah. Okay. You're a um and this is for the men listening and this is for the women listening who have men in their lives. Men are told you need to go in guns ablazing, swords drawn to protect and provide. And I like that. I like I do believe that men need to be ferocious when they need to be. but often protect and provide in the modern context where women are earning women have economic viability. There's medical support systems. There's all sorts of other contexts that have never existed before. Sometimes often protect and provide means I'm going to protect your space.

12:46 I'm going to provide boundaries for you, not answers. protection looks like. I'm going to make sure that our buddies don't reach out to you when you just tell me you need a night or a weekend off. I'll send the text message. Not I'm going to come in and with swords drawn. And that's a that's a different it's a it's a it's a nurturing. It's caring. And it's a new way of of being masculine in the 21st century. It's a both end. Can we hold that tension of I could go in there, swords drawn, and the thing that we need right now is silence. The thing we need right now is rooted presence. The thing that we need right now is me.

13:32 And that's a shift. That's a skill set men need to learn moving forward. And especially with somebody who's hurting. And I bravo to her for going to get the care she needs. Bravo to you for wanting to love her the best way possible. This is amazing. This is awesome. this is how relationships are going to move forward in the 21st century. It's awesome. She's lucky to have you, brother. But it's you saying, "Okay, I've got this one skill set and it will serve my buddies. It will serve me, but right now she needs something different." And let's all sit down and discuss that. Well done, man.

14:03 You call me anytime. I love talking to guys like you who want to get this thing right and not just force their will. You want to get this right because you love her. It's awesome.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "How Do I Stop Trying to Fix My Girlfriend?"?

Lucille (Referenced person (addressed by speaker)).

What is "How Do I Stop Trying to Fix My Girlfriend?" about?

The discussion addresses the challenges of supporting a partner with clinical depression and understanding the limits of one's ability to "fix" their emotional state. It emphasizes the importance of maintaining personal integrity and honesty, acknowledging that while one can offer support, they cannot control another's feelings or experiences.

What is mentioned in this The Dr. John Delony Show episode?

3 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including building a non-depressed life, our son, Lucille. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "How Do I Stop Trying to Fix My Girlfriend?"?

The episode runs 14 min; the transcript is about 2,563 words in 51 timestamped sections.

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