Feeling helpless, upset, depressed

[Poohy]

I have been with my bf for 5 yrs. he is an amazing person. Funny, loving & caring. But he is a recovering alcoholic and has depression and as a result he lapses. He is on anti depressants and goes to counselling etc. but this doesn't seem to be helping. Things will be going great for a few weeks and I think, finally we are getting somewhere. But then out of the blue for no reason at all something will set him off. The problem is he gets verbally nasty and he just takes off and disappears. He will go missing for days on end with no contact. I never know if he is ok. I don't know how much more I can take. I want to be there for him and keep supporting him, I love him to death but in 5 years our relationship has gone nowhere. I'm not getting any younger and want to have a happy marriage and have kids. Is he ever going to change??? What do I do? 

[Neil_1]

Hi there P  (think I’d rather refer to you as P instead of poohy;  hope that’s ok)

Welcome to Beyond Blue and thank you for providing your post.

Difficult situation that you’ve described – you say a recovering alcoholic and that you’ve been together for 5 yrs – has he been off the grog for the entire 5 years or is it a more recent thing?    Just ask that, cause if it is a recent thing, then this could be a reason why he’s having troubles?

Also for him to firstly be verbally nasty to you and then to up and leave and give no news on where or how he is – for me, that would be creating a huge divide in any relationship I was in;   so yes, you must be incredibly in love with him to be “ok” with him doing that.  

You’ve asked a key question:  “Is he ever going to change?”    And just before that you mentioned the words of “happy marriage” and “kids” AND “you’ve been together for 5 years and in that time the relationship has gone nowhere”.     Just my 5 cents worth:    ‘kids’ could be definitely an option;    ‘happy marriage’ may be an option for a short while;  but the key pointer here is that your relationship has gone nowhere in the whole time you’ve been together.   I’m sorry if I’ve stepped over the mark here and sounded too negative, but just wanted to air my thoughts to you on this.

Kind regards

Neil