Advise please?

LegacyUser

Hi, I've always found this forum interesting when I've stumbled in here. I'm not one that's for involving my friends or family in my relationships, and I find myself feeling like I could use some outside perspectives. Any advice or angles people have would really be very much appreciated. I'll try my best to keep this as short as I can, apologies in advance if it turns into a pan in the backside amount of text, and thanks for reading.

I have relationship issues and I'm too close to it all to see it clearly. For some background I'm with my partner 5 years, both late twenties, no kids. We met through a mutual hobby and after becoming friends started seeing each other romantically after a few months. They've suffered from moderate depression and anxiety for years, they also have big insecurity and trust issues, and everything that does along with that, which I knew about before we became a couple, and they were very open about from the start. We've had our ups and downs, more good times than bad, but it's been rocky.

Recently they've experienced a very deep period of depression, the worst in the time I've known them. It coincided with a particularly turbulent time in our relationship. I'm not sure if one lead to the other, or the other way around, or if they just coincided. They seem unsure too. It has lead to them telling me they don't feel the same way about me any more as they used to. They've parsed this by saying they believe it's to one degree or another, a symptom of their depression. That they don't feel the same about anything any more, and their feelings for me are encompassed in that. I'm not so sure about that, and I think neither are they. I didn't take that too well. It broke my heart. I'm caught between trying to support them like I've always tried to, and hopefully work through things together, and trying to deal with being in a relationship with someone I love that says, at this point in time, they don't feel love for me, at least not in the way they used to.

Contradictory to what they've said about their feelings for me being symptomatic of their depression, they've made it very clear that some incidents during the turbulent time for us as a couple have effected how they feel about me. There's two main ones, I'll go through them below.

1. Shortly before their deep depressive state took hold they slipped and hit their head on our way home from a work party we had attended. As I've said they are a long time sufferer of anxiety and are prone to worst case scenarios type thinking and can panic at times. It was a bit of a knock, they'd a small bump and they were pretty shaken up, but otherwise fine. They were panicking a bit over it so I did my best to calm them down, and kept an eye on them in on the walk home. When we got back they insisted they couldn't sleep that night as they had heard something about not letting people go asleep if they have a concussion. I didn't want them staying up all night needlessly, so said I would stay awake all night and watch over them while they slept. We got into bed together and talked for a good while and they seemed to have calmed down a lot, and as it was the early hours of the morning I drifted off beside them thinking they'd do the same. This became a very big issue to them. I feel they felt abandoned, and like I didn't care if they might be hurt, and maybe some other things because of this.

Over the next number of weeks they brought this up several times. From my point of view the object of this seemed to be that they wanted me to admit I had let them down or failed them. That they could have been seriously hurt and I hadn't taken it seriously enough or cared enough to stay awake. My view was I had seen, and received, numerous head injuries over the years and this was any way you look at it, a small knock on the head, and my main concern was trying to not let them overreact to it and panic more than they were. This culminated with a big argument where I, after it having been brought up and argued over several times, felt I had no option but to say that we obviously weren't going to agree and that they needed to either accept we just thought differently over it and stop bringing it up, or we'd probably be better just parting ways. They insisted we had to compromise on it and I had to accept their view was equally as valid as mine, or we should break up. I refused and told them I wasn't going to accept their interpretation of my actions, and that as the discussion was going nowhere I didn't want to talk about it any more right then and could they please leave. Their deep depression followed that conversation as well as them telling me they no longer felt the same for me. This was a very big deal to them, that I'd asked them to leave, they tried broaching that several times after to try and get me to agree to never do that again. I refused to make that promise. I don't make promises I can't keep. They have asked me to leave their home during an argument more than once and have also walked out of mine during an argument several times.

2. I lied to them. I've mentioned they have massive trust issues. They were bullied as a child, and the fact that people that would seem to be friendly with them one on one engaged in the bullying when with a group left a deep mark. Their first relationship, although I don't know all the details sounded pretty messed up, possibly abusive. Their second relationship they've admitted they didn't love their partner or find them attractive and it was long term, I think this also contributed, that they now fear that is the relationship they will end up in but in reverse. I was determined from the outset to try to prove that they could trust me. This meant being very very honest in all situations, even things like "have I put on a little weight?" or "am I the best lover you ever had?", although I obviously always tried to be as positive in terms of their self esteem issues as I could. A kind of balancing act between never wanting to be less than truthful with them about anything and wanting to avoid hurting them or making them worry in any way. But I lied to them about something. They were feeling vulnerable and insecure and we had a fun night planned, so I spontaneously said something that wasn't true. And it was discovered. I didn't cheat on them or harm them in any way, or anything like that, it was something they were concerned about for me about a couple of times. In my view overly so and a result of their over worrying and worst case scenario type thinking, so I wanted to just avoid them becoming anxious over it, and I lied. It feels like 5 years of trust building was undone in 2 seconds.

Sorry. I know this is a lot to read. I'm not blessed with brevity.

So my situation now is, they say they don't love me like they used to. They alternate between saying it's just them and their depressive state and it's nothing about me and the relationship, and saying it is about things like the above, that have changed the way they see me. I feel unsure. I am trying to trust in them, to be there for them and support them and yet again take the view of it being something we can work together to get through. But it's hard in a lot of ways. They feel less close to me now and I feel less close to them because of that. I'm trying not to draw away, to protect myself, trying to grasp onto anything that makes me feel close to them and hoping that they'll engage too and maybe we can get back to where we were. But at times it feels like I'm grasping at straws. There's also the worry that I don't feel now like I can challenge them on something if I think they have unreasonable expectations or if I have an issue in the relationship I am unhappy with. As it's started to take on the pattern that when I do this they say that that's another thing that is making them feel less close to me.

This was really meant to be short and to the point. I'm worried it might be one sided or unbalanced so if anyone has any questions that they feel would make it more fair then please ask. I'd really appreciate anything that anyone has to say. I don't know what to think about anything. I love them to bits and only want them to be happy.

ManOfMystery

Have you posted about this before OP? I remember a thread about a partner bumping their head and then having a go at the OP for falling asleep whilst lying with them. There was a lot of good and sound advice in that thread.

njs030

I was going to ask this too, though a lot of the above post has been posted before from the other person's pov.

Op if you are actually the subject of the thread rather than the partner (the opposite person to the one writing the thread) answers would be very different so maybe you could clarify?

LegacyUser

OP here again. No, don't know anything about a previous thread.

LegacyUser

Could someone post a link to the other thread?

Taboola

I remember the other thread and thought that she was completely over reacting and a bit of a drama queen. What you've wrote above has only convinced me she's a headwrecker. Do yourself a favour and distance yourself from her. You don't need that sort of drama.

njs030

Perspective Seeker wrote: »

Could someone post a link to the other thread?

Well no because you're either the boyfriend of the person who wrote the threads or you're pretending to be him, if it's the former you would be better off not reading the threads and if it's the latter you know already.

I agree with the above post and even after reading what you wrote- she sounds like awfully demanding hard work and you'd be better off walking away.

ibarelycare

The overall consensus in the other thread was that the girlfriend completely overreacted and was being a drama queen. I imagine the consensus will still stand given your post OP. What exactly do you get out of the relationship? It sounds exhausting and draining.

ManOfMystery

Perspective Seeker wrote: »

OP here again. No, don't know anything about a previous thread.

This is the thread. Sure sounds like it's written from the perspective of your partner.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057444422

LegacyUser

ibarelycare wrote: »

The overall consensus in the other thread was that the girlfriend completely overreacted and was being a drama queen. I imagine the consensus will still stand given your post OP. What exactly do you get out of the relationship? It sounds exhausting and draining.

I don't want it to seem like there isn't a lot of good in the relationship. By the nature of the forum it might seem like that as it's the problems that are the topic. When things are good they're great. She's sweet and kind and fun and caring, we spend most of the time we're together laughing and enjoying each other's company. They're not a bad person, far from it, they're a wonderful person, and have so many great qualities. She has issues, she's not had an easy life, but she works at them. She's attended counselors, she does CBT. I've always thought of things as something we work together with. She's not just her problems, they're just what she's trying to overcome, we are. I'm not a saint either, I'm sure I've my own issues, everyone does right? I can be a bit closed off. I've been told I can be so laid back I'm horizontal, and maybe that might come across as not caring? I've years ago dealt with depression and anxiety myself, pretty bad, but I got through it. Sometimes feel like I overdid it a bit, ha, and went from getting unbelievably stressed out over little things like work to being someone that'd take finding out I'd a week to live with a shrug of my shoulders and just getting on with things as it just is what it is and worrying won't accomplish anything. It's not apathy, but maybe it could seem like that to people. I think it seems like that to them sometimes. I try to be supportive and understanding when the issues they do have cause problems in the relationship but maybe I don't always handle things as well as I could, I can wind up getting frustrated with things when something is brought up repeatedly. They say I can come across like I don't like them at times like that, and it makes them feel alone.

As an example, they can get quite upset if we arrange to see each other and it ends up being later than usual, or than they thought we'd be meeting up. So more than once this has become an issue. We'd be meeting up on a Friday, but I might decide to give the apartment a bit of a clean or just chill out on my own for a while after getting home from work. And they'd get upset that we could have met up an hour earlier than I wanted to. So last time this happened I finally got pretty frustrated with that, as I just want to enjoy our evening together and felt they were being unreasonable and making an issue out of nothing, which I said to them. They got quite upset by that, as it upsets them if they feel I'm dismissing their point of view. One of their big underlying issues related to their poor self esteem is that they feel people don't respect them, and by saying something they have brought up, or something they want, is unreasonable, it means I don't respect them. So I try to avoid doing that as I don't want to hurt them, but sometimes I feel their expectations or how they react to things simply is unreasonable and they're allowing their issues to cloud their judgement. I sometimes feel caught in those circumstances, where I try to reason with them, but they are upset and set in how they see things and I end up having to say outright that they need to drop it as I feel their expectation is unreasonable and I'm not going to agree to it.

I think I've always felt that we loved each other, and were in it for the long haul, and could try to work through things together. And that we'd get there together. I suppose since they said what they said about not feeling the same about me as they used to, I've struggled with it in a lot of ways. It's hard to keep feeling like above. They say they want to feel like they used to, but I'm struggling to feel like that's enough. Most of the time when it's gone it's gone, right? Am I wrong to feel that it's quite a massive thing to ask someone to accept that and stay in there in the hope that things will change?

I just want to say again that it's not that these issues are the whole relationship, most of the time things are great between us, it's just when things like this surface they can play out that way and become big issues.

Neyite

What I see your issue is when boiled down is that your partner no longer feels they love you. You are wondering if its the illness causing it, or if its the person's real feelings. I get the impression that you'd stick around if it was the former, see if you can ride it out together.

A relationship is supposed to enrich your life, and it sounds like you are doing all the giving here and not getting appreciated for it. Your relationship sounds a bit co-dependant. Depression can be a lifelong illness. Their current feelings towards you, if it was the illness causing it, may never change. This vicious circle of drama may never change. Your feelings will always come secondary to theirs. But, is that the life you want? Is that the life you deserve?

For what its worth, I think you are being way too hard on yourself. We all say little white lies to our partners if the alternative is hurtful or cruel or unnecessary. We all occasionally say or do things that the other finds hurtful or have habits or flaws that drive the other partner daft. It's what makes us human and loveable and its normal.

The relationship from your side seems like such hard work and angst in order to get crumbs of affection from time to time when they are bored being self-indulgent, and can remember to throw a few your way. Maybe a bit of space or time apart for both of you might do you both the world of good and let you both gain perspective.

LegacyUser

Neyite wrote: »

What I see your issue is when boiled down is that your partner no longer feels they love you. You are wondering if its the illness causing it, or if its the person's real feelings. I get the impression that you'd stick around if it was the former, see if you can ride it out together.

A relationship is supposed to enrich your life, and it sounds like you are doing all the giving here and not getting appreciated for it. Your relationship sounds a bit co-dependant. Depression can be a lifelong illness. Their current feelings towards you, if it was the illness causing it, may never change. This vicious circle of drama may never change. Your feelings will always come secondary to theirs. But, is that the life you want? Is that the life you deserve?

For what its worth, I think you are being way too hard on yourself. We all say little white lies to our partners if the alternative is hurtful or cruel or unnecessary. We all occasionally say or do things that the other finds hurtful or have habits or flaws that drive the other partner daft. It's what makes us human and loveable and its normal.

The relationship from your side seems like such hard work and angst in order to get crumbs of affection from time to time when they are bored being self-indulgent, and can remember to throw a few your way. Maybe a bit of space or time apart for both of you might do you both the world of good and let you both gain perspective.

Thanks for taking the time to respond Neyite. Yeah that's the main thing it boils down to for me I think. Is it the illness or is it just how they feel, and I suppose what it means for the relationship. If it's temporary or just how things have become. I've always felt the difficulties we had were things that could be worked out long term, and it was OK even if it took ten years, cause we had the whole of our lives. But I guess things feel a lot more temporary now. It would be hard at times but worth it because we loved each other and the prize at the end would be getting to spend the rest of our lives together happy. Maybe that's a naive way of looking at things.