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Just lost. Anxiety ravaged my relationship...

Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
My relationship of three years has been ravaged my my partner’s anxiety and low self-esteem/depression. We got together with him telling me he was a “b**tard” and that it would be bad for me. I totally loved him and didn’t realise the weight of his anxiety. I got pregnant four months in and we planned to move in together (with him moving from the west coast to London). I realise now that the only reason this wasn’t a massive drama was because it was unexpected and couldn’t be a “thing” to worry about. In the mean time his friends, who play on his low self-esteem and anxiety and use him as their scratching pole, started posting horrible things about me and my fake baby all over the internet, I didn’t tell him for fear of messing things up. After I lost the baby I suffered from postnatal depression, only diagnosed this year (2.5 years on) and I couldn’t cope with the harassment from his friends and having lost the baby. I asked him not to see his “friends” who at this point were also writing about my fake cancer (I had been really poorly) all over the internet, and talking about the “Phases” of breaking us up and planning this out in public. In the meantime his friends dragged his somewhat needy and fragile mother into it, and she believed that I was “controlling” him into not seeing her or any of them, when in fact I didn’t want to be abused and threatened by them, and as far as I saw at the time, she was supporting them by chatting with them happily online whilst we were going through all this. My partner became more and more anxious and low and in the end his anxiety about not being liked (this sounds very similar to the post above) by his old ‘friends’ instilled in him a sense of shame, when in fact I think that someone without anxiety would be more ashamed of letting their friends control their relationship, slag off their cancer-ridden girlfriend and desecrate the memory of their dead child. He spent two years telling me I deserved what they were saying if it was even true. I’d show him and he’d avoid and rip it up before he could even read it and hurl a load of abuse at me to avoid the anxiety of having to face standing up to them.

He’d project his anxiety onto me, telling me I have a personality disorder as I love arguing and need attention, when in fact the arguments served to postpone him having to deal with anything concretely.

I noticed that the anxiety of facing something would mean he’s start an argument and then do what he wanted whilst I was away ignoring him out of anger. This year I became a Psychologist and got my doctorate, he put off every celebration of thesis, last day etc etc and told me he’d celebrate with me at graduation, that my last partner was terrible for missing my last graduation. He cancelled a trip away to celebrate finishing training and did so by going out for a meal with one of my harassers a couple of days before and telling me I was to blame. I then read online he would be away for Christmas and my graduation. I realised that cancelling the trip was to save his annual leave and because he was too anxious about missing two days of work. And seeing this horrid guy was the only thing big enough to mean that it could all be cancelled.

Up to this point he told me he couldn’t afford to go on the same holiday with me at a different time (I later found out he was earning thousands in bonuses at work). His friends complained to my employment about me, I became unable to work for some time. He avoided it all.

Meanwhile, he’d reply to people’s comments about “when are you going to propose to her?” by saying “when she starts being nice to me”.

In the end, completely heartbroken about my graduation, the holiday and also atop this seeing his friends saying that he’s met someone else, we had a massive blow up argument, in which he purposely said all the things his friends do. That is the baby was even real I probably aborted it and was thus a murderer, that I probably stuck cannulas in my arm and faked my illness, that it was highly convenient he’d never been to hospital for major things with me. When in fact I knew he was so anxious about having to take time off work for them and about my health, that I’d purposely protected him from it all. I told him “this feels permanent”. He took this as me breaking up, I told him I wasn’t and I desperately love him and only want to be together. But it’s not what he wanted to hear, his anxiety wanted to break up with me, and so that was all he needed.

I begged him to see it’s not what I meant. He asked me to give him space and be his friend “and then maybe something will happen in the future once he’s got all his friends back and can be proud of himself again and I get over my personality disorder”. I left to give him space amid being called the most horrendous things, and got a text saying “you up?” that night. I tried to distance myself over the next couple of months saying each time “I love you and I’m giving you the space you want”. I sent him a video message reading the harassment to lay it all out, I sent him my thesis which was dedicated to him and a list of all the things i loved and wanted between us. When I then started texting again he was furious and told me I’d “ignored him for months”. That he couldn’t face the shame and anxiety of telling people we were back together and so it could never happen, and he’d assumed I’d left him as I said our problems felt permanent and then in his eyes ignored him.

I ultimately protected him from everything, to ultimately be left completely unprotected and raw. He has a hero complex, does first aid courses, bought me vitamins to boost my immune system a week before telling me I wasn’t even ill. It was such polar opposites between dealing with a sad but lovely reality of our love and the fake reality of me needing to be a monster so that he didn’t have to be.

I’ve been given a terminal diagnosis now, and I want nothing more than to spend the rest of my life with him. I’m instead moving abroad to not have to finish life pining after him here.

Anxiety is the worst thing that ever could have happened to him and me.

When we were friends we used to talk about him being there at the end, and I think that made him feel good about himself and gave him a role that lessoned his anxiety about being a rubbish person. But his anxiety has just driven him to being one, when that’s not who he was. And now I’ve lost the love of my life and will not have him there and it sucks.

Eurgh.

Comments

  • *Holly**Holly* Deactivated Posts: 140 Helping Hand
    Hi there and welcome to TheSite boards :)

    It's great that you've reached out and talked about what you're going through. Did you find typing all that out help at all? Sometimes it can just be really cathartic getting it all out. Here on the boards you can post as much as you like about how you're feeling. There's always someone out there who is listening and who cares.

    Our community may help come in and chat through what you've written with you. And you can always post in other parts of the community too, letting us know who you are in the getting to know you section. We also have a relationship advice service that you may want to check out? It's called Ask A Relationship question, and you can ask any relationship question and get a confidential expert reply within three working days. Here's a link to the service: http://www.thesite.org/relationship-advice/ask-about-relationships

    In the meantime, it's worth reading back on what you've written and seeing if you've noticed anything? Sometimes when it's all out there in type, we can spot patterns and make sense of things with a perspective we can't get when it's running round and round in our heads. Has anything come out at you from reading it back?

    Take care, big hugs and a warm welcome

    Holly
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