TLDR: LONG post, so sorry. My boyfriend of six years had a nervous breakdown and it all feels too messy to fix now.
I've been with my boyfriend for six years. During this time he was a passive, gentle person who, while he didn't have a steady relationship with his parents due to a rocky childhood, was on speaking terms with them and talked frequently about how much he loved his dad. He moved to my country from overseas a couple years ago and we've been living together since.
Depression hit him during COVID when he became out of work. That persisted... and then, starting in December of this year, when I was away at my parents' home for a couple weeks, he had his first nervous breakdown.
He said he had seen a girl almost get assaulted at the bar he was at. That, within 24 hours, then spiralled into how he had his ass grabbed last summer by a woman at the bar, his rocky childhood ( verbal abuse), his financial woes, how I out-earn him, how "he almost killed me by accidentally giving me COVID", how "this town" reminds him of his childhood... rapidly. In February his grandmother called the cops on him because he went to her at three in the morning in hysterics about all of these things. They left after assessing him.
Since then, this has all only gotten worse. He's in therapy, and yet there's been no difference. He was put on sleeping meds and anxiety medication, and nothing. When I told him last week that I was likely getting sick because my throat was sore, he began acting jumpy and called me "hysterical" and was generally mean, and then turned around and said it was because he was traumatized from when I got COVID (which was fairly mild by the way, as we're vaccinated). When he went out to the bar and saw the guy that had tried to assault that girl, he came back home and was inconsolable until five in the morning.
The bulk of this is that, weekly, he would call his parents to lay in to them about his upbringing. Suddenly, everything was their fault: The fact that he's struggling to get a job now. That he's not successful. That he's unhappy. That they abused him, his dad in particular, even though his dad used to be "his best friend". And then after, when he would get into one of his sad moods, he'd call them and then be in tears that they "refused to pick up the phone to him". As though he hadn't spent the previous week yelling at them.
Other common spiralling thoughts (that have resulted in either fixation, crying, yelling, or a combination) have included, for days or weeks at a time:
-Being drafted
-Confiscating my knives, tweezers, and scissors because I may be at risk of hurting myself (I've never threatened that and never have been)
-Flashing back to his great-grandfather's death over 10 years ago
-Trauma-dumping onto peers, to the point where they will text me to ask if he's okay
-Becoming very hung up on rotating self-diagnoses (OCD, ADHD, psychosis, bipolar, depression, anxiety, etc.
-Being unable to give up on veganism due to a deep-seated fear of doing harm to others
-Calling the crisis hotline so frequently since February that, according to him, they've asked him to stop phoning
During this time I offered to fly him out to see his parents multiple times, went to stay with my parents multiple times to give him space/asked him to stay with his grandma multiple times to give me space, paid the bulk of our bills, put more effort into job-hunting than he did, etc.
It came to a head on Sunday. After waking me up at five in the morning to talk about how he'd been up all night after seeing that guy at the bar again, he spiralled into a trauma dump (which had become at least once every two days) that lasted close to two hours. Then he stood up abruptly and said that he needed to calm down and take a bath. I followed after him and said I felt hurt that he'd ignore the boundaries I'd set about trauma-dumping on me and that I wanted some reciprocation in at least trying to talk to me about something normal, because it feels like months since that was possible. Even bringing up dogs sends him into a spiral about his family dog, who died two years ago.
He lost it. He got volatile. He said that he "needed to go take that fucking bath right fucking now" and when I got upset in turn and told him he wasn't coping well with any of this and that he was kind of weaponizing his therapist telling him to take baths as a cool-down tactic, he started in about how he "isn't doing drugs or cheating on you or an alcoholic, so I'm coping as well as anyone could be asking me to be". He then got into one of his depressive swings and began sobbing, saying that we should move to another city right now or things will never get better, because he just can't handle being here, and that if I didn't sell my apartment to do that "you never loved me."
When things got heated between us (he had gone into another room sobbing trying to phone the crisis hotline and when I followed after him, he smashed the door repeatedly on my knee), I shoved him hard to try to snap him out of things because it was peaking in a way I hadn't seen before (not an appropriate thing to do-- it was completely wrong of me, and I'm ashamed) and he phoned his dad in hysterics saying that I had punched him and that he was going to kill himself because "no one is listening to me". His dad called the cops and they came to take him away for a mental health assessment. It was traumatizing.
On his way out, he texted my mom saying that I had already hurt myself earlier that week (not true-- I nicked my forehead when agitatedly running my hands through my hair trying to calm him down off another ledge) and that I was in urgent danger of hurting myself again. It devastated me. My parents had no idea any of this was happening, and they've found this out in the worst way. Now, because of the way he's postured himself, they're worried he's a danger to me and that him saying that to them was, " A cheap and manipulative thing to do." Which I agree with.
The worst part? I haven't seen him in person since, but I did vent about what a horrible violation of my trust that was on top of everything else I had been put through over the past few months. His response was this:
" I don’t think you understand me and that’s okay. You don’t owe me anything. I just want you to take care of yourself. Your parents can hate me if it’s easier for them. You can hate me if it’s easier for you. In my own way, I felt I’d done what I could to care for you lately. I’ve put you through a lot and I just didn’t want to put you through more. I’m safe, you’re safe… we both have people who love us. I love you, but right now, after having tried to self harm this week… I need a bath and a cup of chamomile tea. If you need me tonight, I’m there in a flash, and I’ll always be there for you."
It reads as so nonchalant, as though he doesn't understand the magnitude of the damage he's done.
Between then and now (about a week), he's been re-committed to the hospital. I hadn't seen him since Sunday. I offered to call his parents to lend some insight/try to see if I could help on this end, they were originally receptive but overnight seemed to change their tone and missed the call time, said it was better if we didn't talk at the moment, that I had to have his stuff out of the apartment same-day, and that I shouldn't have contact with anyone. My questions about his care were also not answered. I felt shut down and manhandled.
Basically I feel like a pedestrian caught in a car crash because it was his breakdown, not mine. I've booked myself into therapy but am so lost and overwhelmed.
Submitted May 21, 2022 at 07:06PM by That-Highlight-1853 https://ift.tt/LBUqVfJ
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