Moods and Anxiety, Individuality and Relationship

Cucumber seedlings

This is a pretty personal entry.  Both my partner M. and I struggle with mood swings and anxiety.  Thus, each of us not only suffers from our own personal problems of mood swings and anxiety, we each suffer from the effects of our partner's mood swings and anxiety.  This exacerbates the problem for us as individuals, stresses the relationship, and creates a feedback loop that's difficult to break out of.

Something I am trying to understand: on the one hand,  I believe that I am not ultimately responsible for my partner's mental states, in the sense of being the cause of them or being the one who is charged with changing them for the better, nor is my partner responsible for mine.  That is not to say that I am not responsible for managing my own behavior and taking into consideration how that behavior might effect my partner.  I am responsible for treating my partner with respect; if I say nasty things to him, hit him, or mindlessly deflect my own moods into his space, that does not demonstrate respect.

At the same time that we are not ultimately responsible for our partner's mental states, when someone lives in close proximity to another person and they are involved in an emotional and physical relationship, they do effect one another's moods.  When someone close to you expresses a strong emotional state, if you have any sympathy or empathy at all, that emotional state will cause some reaction in you.

But we are each responsible for choosing, to some degree, how to respond to our own and to one another's moods.   For example, when I find myself in a particularly down mood, I can choose to do something about it. I know from past experience that taking a walk outside with the dog or by myself will often elevate my mood and put me in at least a somewhat better mood.  When I see that my partner's anxiety over something I cannot control is infecting my own state of mind, I can choose to do something about this effect on me.  For example, I can leave the room and find another activity that will engage me. 

I can, in some cases, influence my partner's mood by engaging with him, giving him an opportunity to talk about the problem, distracting him with some other activity, or giving him food if it's a blood sugar problem.  But in the end, the mood belongs to my partner--as long as I am treating him with respect, I am not responsible for causing his mood or improving it. 

I am responsible for my reaction to his mood (again, assuming he is treating me with a modicum of respect--if he punches me in the face or emotionally abuses me, it's not unreasonable for me to hold him accountable for producing some reaction in me).    But generally speaking, if his negative mood is effecting me, I am responsible for choosing how to respond, for managing my own mood reaction.