I have what you might call “resting sad brain.” Whenever I’m not actively working on something or reading something or watching something or chatting with someone, my thoughts reliably drift toward painful things.
When I’m in a noble headspace, I ruminate over all the ways the Situation is terrifying, all the ways Society is reacting to it inadequately, all the ways We (me, my organization, my community) are bad and failing to do as much as we should. In pettier moods, I ruminate over minor and often one-sided conflicts with people who frustrate me. Really, I’m just walking around with a nameless pit in my stomach; when I’m paying attention, I can practically feel my brain filling in one post-hoc explanation or another.
Sad girls like me abound (especially, in my experience, in EA). Like my husband, you too might have been unwittingly snookered into falling in love with a smart, put-together lady only to find out she’s super sad all the time and you don’t get it.1 Don’t panic!
And that’s basically my advice: don’t panic. Years ago, on Caroline Ellison’s now-defunct tumblr, I ran across her review of tips from some odious late-aughts pickup artist for how to deal with women in relationships. I don’t remember most of them now, but what stuck with her stuck with me: think of yourself as an oak tree.
An oak tree weathers the thunderstorm, neither bending at its onslaught nor battling it. I think this is the foundation of handling it well when your girlfriend is sad. It is not about you.2 And it is not a problem.3 There is nothing for you to solve. It simply is, and you can handle it.
I think being okay must come before understanding and empathy. Yes, feeling understood is a deep emotional need. But let’s face it, you probably don’t understand this part of her very well right now, and you can’t begin to understand her better without feeling okay enough to muster curiosity and patience. And reflexive empathy can easily be misapplied — my husband sometimes gets into a trap where he’s torn between feeling absolutely horrible for me (because if he ever cried as hard as I was crying it would be because his entire family just died a torturous death) and feeling frustrated at me (because I’m crying so much even though not even one person came close to dying what the fuck??).
You need not frantically judge each sentiment she is expressing as logical or irrational, proportionate or over-the-top; there is no decision you face right now for which you need those judgments.4 Try to experience her emotion as something more akin to a natural phenomenon; relax into the experience as if you just jumped into a cold pool. If you find that you resonate with something she’s expressing, it reminds you of something you have felt before, tell her; that’s a wonderful gift you can give her. If you find that nothing does resonate, then respect her alienness and hold onto your love.
And if you’re just starting out in the dating world, you should know: the girls are sadder than they look.
Unless it is about you. Helping you figure out whether it’s about you is mostly beyond the scope of this post, but here’s a basic tip: just ask, early on, with as much calmness and openness as you can muster, whether she’s upset about something you did and offer to talk about that if she is. Then believe her answer. If she’s routinely upset at you but plays dishonest games about it, consider breaking up with her and finding someone else.
Maybe over time you’ll come to think that you should really push your girlfriend to go on antidepressants, or try therapy; that could be helpful. Or maybe you’ll decide that you don’t want to deal with these recurring episodes of sadness and you want to break up with your girlfriend; that would be your prerogative. But you don’t need to figure any of that out while she’s in the middle of an episode of great sadness; it’s exactly the wrong time to excavate patterns and figure out solutions. If you later decide that it’s important to do something specific about it, bring it up proactively in a moment of calm.
Maybe looking at the pattern of how she reacts and relates to many different people and events over time, you’ll decide that you don’t really respect her approach to life. That would be a great reason to break up with her. You don’t need to make that decision now.
as a nonsad girl who has dated a lot of sad boys (there are a lot of those in EA too!), "be an oak tree" is a good visual that i'll have to try out. thanks!
I like the gentle footnotes like "if you decide, rationally, that something here deserves contempt, hit the bricks pal". Nonjudgment and equanimity are a great skills to have, but a hypothetical clueless codependent boyfriend could easily take those too far and make everybody worse off