I feel so hopeless

[Headintheclouds]

Hi everyone,

I am feeling lost and hopeless lately.

My partner and I have been together for a year and a half and it has been a roller coaster most of the relationship.

My partner suffers from depression and confided in me quite early into the relationship that he has attempted suicide once before and has struggled with his mental health for a long period of time.

Overtime he has started to complain about something I’ve said or done and then follow those statements up with him wanting to end his life. 

This has weighed so heavily on my at times and I can’t understand why he would make me feel responsible for these feelings he has. Sometimes I am so filled with anxiety that I feel physically sick and/or I start to overcompensate and do more for him in hope that things don’t go south that day. If I do breakdown, he withdraws and walks away, leaves the room and tells me he can’t deal with it. I try so hard to be strong and not let things affect me but sometimes it’s overwhelming.

I have constant concerns that he will commit suicide, sometimes he makes jokes about it but the comments stay with me.

I had these concerns and recently I found that he was using drugs, ice. I think finding those drugs finally broke my heart completely. He admitted he was an addict a long time ago and uses irregularly when he needs an outlet as he’s been on every medication there is and ice is the only thing that helps. He minimised his drug use and made excuse after excuse.

When I found those drugs I felt physically sick, shock, anger and then I felt devastated because I didn’t know about is addiction or use of drugs and I feels like it’s a betrayal and he owed it to me to be honest about those matters.

I feel so hurt, I have been reminding him how much he is loved and cared for and how proud of him we all are but deep down I feel quite broken. It’s a strange feeling, I feel fragile and drained. In the moment I found the drugs, it felt like our relationship came crashing down and like I don’t know him. He felt/feels like a stranger to me.

I have been feeling quite desperate so I booked an appointment with a psychologist to talk these things through and I had my first appointment a few days ago but the appointment was essentially me explaining everything. I’m looking forward to my next appointment.

if you have any advice, please let me know.

[therising]

Hi Headintheclouds

Your partner's refusal to seek help and support for the depression is not your fault. His decision to self medicate with ice or whatever he believes works for him is not your fault. His choice of words (wounding ones, upsetting ones, stressful ones and perhaps depressing ones) is not your fault. While I imagine you already know all these things, it's still important to keep in mind what is your responsibility and what is his. I'm so glad you're taking responsibility and seeking the support you need in order to help you navigate such an incredibly challenging time in your life. I can only imagine how hard this must be for you, with so many challenges and emotions involved.

It can definitely be hard to get a sense of whether we're supporting someone or enabling their destructive behaviour. When there is love involved, we can be so desperate to help another evolve through their pain and challenges to the point where we'd do just about anything for them. When love is involved, it can also become a matter of 'How can I manage to become a more loving, more supportive, more open minded person when it comes to making things easier for my partner?'. I speak from personal experience, in a 22 year marriage, when I say that before you know it you're cycling through the same loop over and over. The cycle can look like

• You're both happy together
• Your partner becomes less happy
• You can find yourself disconnecting from them, based on their behaviour and how you're feeling it
• You can enter a period of deep reflection in regard to how everything's going wrong, how any of it is your fault and so on
• You wake up to the kind of difference you can make to your partner and the relationship and implement that difference and
• Then you're both 'happy' together again

Can take a long time to wake up to the fact that you are the only one who's taking responsibility for addressing challenging feelings, for the period of reflection needed, for the problem solving or finding much needed revelations and implementing constructive change. You can be the one doing all the heaving lifting trying to raise them, yourself and the relationship to new levels. When the relationship is bringing you down or when your partner is bringing you down, it is so incredibly important to take time out and raise yourself. ❤️

While your partner's choice of self medicating relates to ice, my husband's relates to alcohol. As I've said to him, after having fully woken up to what he believes works for him (alcohol), 'Your solution to how you manage life is partly what is destroying you and the relationship we share together'. As long as people see their solution as not being a problem, it remains a serious problem for those around them. It can lead to a sense of stress, upset, emotional instability, depression and a lot of other things and these are the very things they are trying to avoid.

[Headintheclouds]

Hi Therising,

Thank you for your reply. 


My partner has seen a psychologist in the past and he advocates for speaking up and getting help but in our case he says he doesn’t have the time or the money. Although he has $1000 to spend on ice however often.

It’s interesting that you mention that’s it’s hard to get a sense of whether you are supporting someone or enabling someone, I remember the feeling when I found the drugs and it’s a feeling I don’t think I’ve felt before. It was only a couple of weeks ago but I keep reliving the situation and it feels just as painful each time. Like I’m in shock. I know that I do not want a relationship with a drug user and he has said he will try not to use but he can’t tell me that he won’t ever use because he doesn’t want to break that promise. It sounds like bs the more I think about it. He knows I don’t use drugs and don’t want drugs apart of my life and he didn’t tell me he was/is an addict or that he was using ice again and he owed me to be honest with me. If I told him that he had to choose, I truly believe he would choose  drugs so I question why I’m still holding onto someone who would choose drugs over me and the truth is, I think he would choose many things over me. 

I wonder if this is a painful life lesson. I hope I can work through the questions I have with my psychologist.

22 years is a long time, do you feel exhausted and drained by all of it or have you become use to these feelings over time? 

The words you said to your husband, 'Your solution to how you manage life is partly what is destroying you and the relationship we share together'. That really resonates with me. In face, so much of what you have written sounds so familiar to me.

I pride myself on showing unconditional support and love but I think we can all only cope with so much without it affecting how we feel about someone and how we see them.

My second psychologist appointment isn’t for 2 weeks, I wish it was sooner. I’m struggling.