Health / Wellness

With Americans Even More Depressed Than Normal, We Enter A Dangerous Time For Relationships

All of our brains are currently marinating in a thick sauce of despair.

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Do a disproportionate number of romantic relationships in general seem to end in December, right around the onset of winter, or just mine in particular? There was the time I had a fight with my then-girlfriend after my first law firm Christmas party. That was a pretty bad one. Or when I was dating someone (living with her, actually) during law school and she kind of just went to visit her family over the holidays and never came back. Even right now it sort of seems like my current relationship is circling the drain after five years — don’t worry though, smart as I know all my dear readers are I don’t think you know who she is, and she doesn’t read my columns, so we should be good.

Maybe I’m just depressed because I’m writing this on Pearl Harbor Day. That one still stings a little even 80 year later.

There could be something to this December breakups thing though. In a widely publicized 2018 study, statisticians analyzed data from thousands of Facebook posts and found that December 11 had more breakups than any other day of the year. Even without the dreaded December 11, the rest of the days in December leading up to the holidays were still found to be pretty brutal.

Of course, looking at Facebook statuses doesn’t tell you why people broke up. After that study came out, plenty of experts were willing to opine anecdotally about all the reasons you might think for breakups before the holidays, like not wanting to spend money on a gift for someone you were having doubts about, not wanting to introduce someone to family members only to eject them from your life a few weeks down the road, etc. Yet, in my experience dismantling a bunch of marriages professionally, and to a lesser extent unwittingly sabotaging my own relationships, I don’t think people usually actually have one clean, easily articulated reason for ending things. If you ask them after the fact, they’ll usually subconsciously invent one, and then stick to it from that point onward. But really, I think the reason in the moment is just an amalgamated feeling melting pot.

It doesn’t seem too big of a leap to suspect that the unfortunately named Seasonal Affective Disorder, or “SAD,” has something to do with all the relationships torn asunder in December. But seriously, who decided we needed a cute acronym for crushing seasonal depression that affects up to one in 10 Americans in some locations in an average year? That sort of bullshit makes me sad. In addition, the National Institute of Mental Health, on its SAD webpage, says SAD is “also called ‘winter blues.’” Here’s an idea: how about instead of “SAD” or the “winter blues” we call it, “chronic crushing hopelessness,” or “My God, millions of people in this country are living almost half the year in abject pain because of this,” or literally anything other than “SAD” or “winter blues”?

Things are probably going to be far worse than normal this year. A high-quality study from Boston University found that during the first year of the pandemic depression rates more than tripled from their baseline. By March and April of 2021, 32 percent of Americans surveyed were experiencing depression. That’s almost a third! And we’ve had so much more to be depressed about after the study period ended as this pandemic just continues to slog on, and on, and on, with no real end in sight.

Well, I’m feeling better than when I started this piece. Aren’t you?

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Sorry not to have any real answers for you. I think one of the most important things to learn in life is that no one has all the answers, and anyone who pretends to is a cult leader. Not a very comforting lesson though.

I guess just try to watch yourself closer than ever this year for signs and symptoms, be honest with yourself and others, try to get some help if you need it, and maybe cut your partner some extra slack this year in recognition of the fact that all of our brains are currently marinating in a thick sauce of despair. And if your relationship doesn’t make it through this December, hey, at least we can be alone together.

Jonathan Wolf is a civil litigator and author of Your Debt-Free JD (affiliate link). He has taught legal writing, written for a wide variety of publications, and made it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at jon_wolf@hotmail.com.

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