Dealing with depression in relationships is incredibly challenging. Depression does not easily lend itself to love. There is a quote that I love which is, “You come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by seeing and imperfect person perfectly.” Nothing could be more true when loving someone with depression.

No one warns you that the person you’ll fall in love with will be someone who wakes up wishing he could just stop living. No one says that you can be madly, deeply, completely in love with someone who is so imperfect. In the fairy tales, the prince and the princess fall in love and live happily ever after. Life isn’t like that. No matter who you fall in love with, there will be challenges.

I remember my mother sitting me down in the week before my wedding and asking if I was sure I wanted to do this. I did. Because love isn’t about finding the perfect person, you don’t choose who you love. If you did, life could be a lot easier. But you’d be missing out on the challenges that make life interesting.

Having depression doesn’t mean you don’t also have a wonderful life. From the outside looking in, people told me Kody and I were perfect, meant to be. They saw the love we had for each other without the darkness that also lived there. We were Soulmates but that doesn’t mean we lived happily ever after the end.

Sometimes loving someone with depression means holding them while they cry and knowing you can’t do anything to make them feel better. Or listening as they tell you all the horrible things in their mind. Dealing with depression in relationships sometimes means feeling like if they just loved you enough, they’d want to live. But depression isn’t rational like that. They can love you, their family, their friends and still want to die. Want to leave it all behind.

I knew when I married Kody that the odds of us living happily ever after were slim to none, but I did it anyway. Why? Because loving someone with depression is still worth it. There were so many good times that made the bad ones melt away. It is worth all the pain and all the grief to have loved someone so deeply.

I know that Kody was imperfect in so many ways. But that never meant he wasn’t worth loving. I am proud to have been Kody’s person.