By: DESTANEE ROCHA-GARCIA
Staff Writer
The less love you have, the more depressed you are likely to feel. Love is as critical for your mind and body as oxygen. The more connected you are, the healthier you will be both physically and emotionally. The less connected you are, the more you are at risk. It is also true that the less love you have, the more depression you are likely to experience in your life. Love is probably the best antidepressant there is due to it being one of the most common sources of depression is feeling unloved.
Most depressed people don’t love themselves and they do not feel loved by others. They also are very self-focused, making them less attractive to others and depriving them of opportunities to learn the skills of love. There is a mythology in our culture that love just happens. As a result, the depressed often sit around passively waiting for someone to love them. But love doesn’t work that way, to get love and keep the love you have to go out and be active and learn a variety of specific skills. Most of us get our ideas of love from popular culture.
We come to believe that love is something that sweeps us off our feet, but the pop-culture ideal of love consists of unrealistic images created for entertainment. There are always core differences between two people, no matter how good or close you are, and if the relationship is going right those differences surface. The issue then is to identify the differences and negotiate them so that they don’t distance you or kill the relationship.