Hi everyone...I'm back on here after about eighteen months...I've still got plenty of problems myself but this time it's not myself I'm most worried about.

My beautiful boyfriend of eight months seems to be depressed. He was at uni doing a course he hated, so he deferred and will start another one in March next year. While he was doing the old course he was very depressed and I made him promise that if he still felt bad after he deferred, he would 'go and talk to someone'. I thought at the time that it was just the new uni, lack of friends and disinterest in the course that was getting him down, but now he's staying at home, where he can relax and work on his TV show and his stand-up comedy, and yet he's still feeling bad. He says he feels 'anxious' and he's often irritable for no reason, and he stays at home watching TV or on the computer most of the time. Last week we had a fight over something fairly small and he was on the phone to me bawling. I'm so worried about him. I never really thought it could be exogenous, as he's had some bad things happen in his life - his dad passed away when he was nine and he was in a bad car accident two years ago in which he nearly died too...he says the car accident didn't affect him at all, but even though I didn't know him back then, I think it made him very cynical and fatalistic.

Anyway, background info. I want him to do something about it but I know if I bring it up again he'll just say he needs to 'relax and sort his life out'. I don't want to nag him or poke and prod him to try and get him to talk to me, but I stand to see him like this. How can we get men to drop the macho act and seek help?

Good question

If I was in a similar position to your b/f, I think someone telling me that I should perhaps seek help would probably end up having the opposite effect (us men really dislike being told what to do, let alone opening up to people! :mrgreen: ).

He needs to realise himself that perhaps seeking help is going to be the best way forward. This needs to be done in the most subtle of ways!

As for how, I'm really not sure (which kind of makes this reply a little redundant - sorry!).