We've been together for 5 years (no shared children). He's highly driven and ambitious. I am....not. But I try to support him in ways I can. He jumps head first into things with no real planning and quickly gets overwhelmed and so stressed out and then ends up taking it out on me. I have to admit I'm exhausted by it all.
Over the summer my mom passed away and ever since I've been struggling with depression and sleeping too much and just a lot of anxiety. I'm on medication and it definitely takes the edge off but I still am finding life difficult at times. I feel nearly zero support from my partner.
He decided to go back to school this fall with a heavy course-load. In order to be able to support this, he's still working a full time job (mostly remote, going into the office...which is an hour commute...two days per week). I never thought this was a great idea (knowing how poorly he handles stress), but I was willing to be supportive of him in ways that I am able to.
It's been a very hard 3 months. I'm still struggling a lot (and there are so many things to deal with after a death and selling a house etc that I had no idea about). He's constantly sleep-deprived and stressed out. He also has bad ADHD (for which he takes medication) and is constantly doing very poorly in both school and at work. To the point that I'm not even sure how much longer work will keep him on (they've mentioned they are concerned about his productivity). He also is constantly late with assignments for school, which of course makes him VERY stressed. At the moment he's pretty much at the bottom of his class. I can clearly see things that I think would help him (for example he spends HOURS writing posts on social media when he should be working, which wastes a lot of time). When I tell him to try putting his phone in another room he tells me not to give him suggestions...that I have no accomplishments of my own so he doesn't want my advice.
He's always trying to get me to help him in ways I am not able to. He wants me to help him with assignments (I have tried and since I'm not in class I don't understand). He'll give me a paper that is 7 pages long and ask me to condense it to 3 pages. Well I don't know what can/can't be removed. He asked me to proofread a very long document in the middle of the night, and apparently I missed several things. He wasn't happy about that.
The other day I said I'd go run a bunch of errands for him (picking up dry cleaning, going to the bank etc). He said: "you just waste time running around doing errands thinking that you're helping me, but you're not actually helping me at all". I don't understand this at all because I CAN do these things for him and they need to be done, yet he places zero value on that. It's not like he has time to do this stuff.
The other day was a day he was going to work, and then that evening he had to get an (already late) assignment in by midnight. On that day, I also had plans. I had to go to my mom's house (2 hours away) and meet with the lawyer, and a friend I haven't seen in 6 months was going to come spend the evening with me at mom's house.
Just as I got done at the lawyer's he asked me to help him that evening (by keeping him focused). I reminded him that I was going to be with my friend that evening, but I'd check in with him. I did check in with him and he was about to start working, then my phone died (oops, I hadn't noticed it was so low) so I plugged it in and was talking to my friend. I checked my phone 25 minutes later and it was FULL of hateful texts from my partner. He was furious with me because his credit card wasn't working so he wanted to use mine to order food and needed the security code. He had called me several times, but I didn't answer because my phone had died temporarily. He was very verbally abusive and called me a bunch of names and told me that I'm useless, he can't count on me and I have zero skills and can't even be there for him for something this basic.
He later apologized, but then went on to tell me that I am useless in life, I have no ambition, no goals, and I can't even support him when he needs my help.
I just feel completely defeated. I honestly TRY to help him when I can, but it's never ever enough or appreciated (or even noticed apparently in many cases). For a long time I've tried to make excuses to myself for him. I tell myself he acts like this because he's so comfortable with me (he wouldn't act like this with an acquaintance). Or that he just can't handle stress and has a temper tantrum like a kid would. Or that he's so sleep deprived.
But this last time really left me feeling terrible about myself. He clearly sees me as a loser. And the fact that he expects me to respond immediately to him (without any thought to the fact that there might be a legitimate reason I don't respond right away) makes me feel that he sees me as his "servant" (for lack of a better word).
I know he's so busy right now, so I wouldn't suggest anything at the moment, but I'm trying to figure out how to suggest that we get counselling. I want him to see that I DO help him a lot (in ways that I'm able to) and for us to learn better ways of communicating. I feel that if you truly love someone you would treat them with more kindness and wouldn't be so angry all the time. But I'm not sure if couple's counselling is the way to go exactly, especially given the time constraints he's under.
Any suggestions for getting through this? He's got nearly another 3 years of this and I'm feeling a LOT of anxiety thinking our relationship isn't going to survive.
tldr: partner is always angry and disrespectful towards me because he's very stressed over something that he chose to do.
Submitted November 18, 2022 at 06:47PM by Wrong-Sandwich-8801 https://ift.tt/mpXQeoD
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