I'm exhausted. The roller coaster never seems to stop and, for the first time, I'm questioning if we have a future and whether staying put is sustainable. I don't know how long I can keep doing this, and it's breaking my heart :'(
Boyfriend and I have been living together for a little over two years, together for 2.5 years, and best friends for nearly 10 years. He is a domestic violence survivor, and only recently told me that the abuse he experienced was so extreme that he actually considers himself a torture survivor - I hadn't noticed some scars because they're so faint because he got them when he was so young, and his psychotic neo-nazi step-father was certainly "creative" with how he put them there. Almost worse than the physical scars are the emotional scars left by the emotional neglect and abuse perpetrated by his mother - he called her 18 months ago to reach out for support and she finally got back to him a few days ago via email to announce that she's moving interstate and that he needs to collect his childhood belongings, before yelling at him over the phone and blaming him for their poor relationship.
Boyfriend was managing a team and working his way up through his organisation when we started dating, he was happy and highly functional. And then he was assaulted and had his life threatened by a client on meth, was totally unsupported and pushed beyond breaking point by his organisation, and now hasn't worked in 15 months. He has major depression (which is slowly slowly improving, which I can see because he can leave the apartment and make eye contact most days now), rollicking anxiety and picnic, and increasingly severe asthma and obesity. His psychiatrist and psychologist stopped being useful when they decided earlier in the year that he is an aggressive drug abuser (he is neither), and his first appointment with his new psychiatrist isn't until the end of the month. I'm seeing a psychologist, and we see a trauma-informed couples counsellor. I'm studying my dream course and have been acing it, but think I'm about to flunk out of my final subject because I have finally cracked under the pressure of living with and caring for someone who is so unwell... I also found my best friend during a suicide attempt a few months ago and that definitely didn't help things.
We have an amazing friendship, but I dread coming home to him or waking up next to him at the moment because his symptoms are so exhausting to be around - he's been doing an introductory online course to prepare for returning to university next year, but it turns out that studying is a major trigger for him so he's needed me sitting with him for hours of disassociative panic while he forces himself through it. He is understandably angry and upset about the way he was treated by his organisation and raised, but that means that half of everything he currently says is drenched in bitterness - I'm a naturally optimistic person and I feel like I lose part of that every time he spits hateful words about the state of the world. We want a family, but I'm hitting my mid-30s and starting to lose hope that he will be well and financially stable enough before my fertility dies off. He has no hope, only black grim determination to try and prove his mother and step-father wrong.
I feel like our entire romance has been soaked in pain and I worry that being loved is what is driving him so crazy. I worry that I will have to do what he has begged me to do so often, leave him to protect myself. I worry that if I do, that this will just prove to him that the world is hard and cruel and he will hate me and disappear. I worry that even if he is miraculously pulled together by his new doctor and is able to complete his degree and start a new happy chapter in his life, that I may have worn out my love for him and will have to leave him anyway. I worry that I can only do one of be with him or pursue my dream career, and I don't know how to choose... he tries *so* hard, but maybe he really is just too broken like he keeps saying. I worry that I'm going to really like it when he goes to stay with his biological father interstate for a few weeks to give me a break - what if I don't want him to come home?
I'm so tired. I miss my friend, so much. And I don't know what to do. Are there any other people out there who have successful, supportive relationships with survivors of domestic violence? Or who had to walk away from a relationship with a survivor of domestic violence? Any faint glimmers of hope from the other side, no matter what side, would be heartily appreciated.
And apparently I have been holding all that in for way too long because that is an epic post. Apologies for the verbosity.
Boyfriend and I have been living together for a little over two years, together for 2.5 years, and best friends for nearly 10 years. He is a domestic violence survivor, and only recently told me that the abuse he experienced was so extreme that he actually considers himself a torture survivor - I hadn't noticed some scars because they're so faint because he got them when he was so young, and his psychotic neo-nazi step-father was certainly "creative" with how he put them there. Almost worse than the physical scars are the emotional scars left by the emotional neglect and abuse perpetrated by his mother - he called her 18 months ago to reach out for support and she finally got back to him a few days ago via email to announce that she's moving interstate and that he needs to collect his childhood belongings, before yelling at him over the phone and blaming him for their poor relationship.
Boyfriend was managing a team and working his way up through his organisation when we started dating, he was happy and highly functional. And then he was assaulted and had his life threatened by a client on meth, was totally unsupported and pushed beyond breaking point by his organisation, and now hasn't worked in 15 months. He has major depression (which is slowly slowly improving, which I can see because he can leave the apartment and make eye contact most days now), rollicking anxiety and picnic, and increasingly severe asthma and obesity. His psychiatrist and psychologist stopped being useful when they decided earlier in the year that he is an aggressive drug abuser (he is neither), and his first appointment with his new psychiatrist isn't until the end of the month. I'm seeing a psychologist, and we see a trauma-informed couples counsellor. I'm studying my dream course and have been acing it, but think I'm about to flunk out of my final subject because I have finally cracked under the pressure of living with and caring for someone who is so unwell... I also found my best friend during a suicide attempt a few months ago and that definitely didn't help things.
We have an amazing friendship, but I dread coming home to him or waking up next to him at the moment because his symptoms are so exhausting to be around - he's been doing an introductory online course to prepare for returning to university next year, but it turns out that studying is a major trigger for him so he's needed me sitting with him for hours of disassociative panic while he forces himself through it. He is understandably angry and upset about the way he was treated by his organisation and raised, but that means that half of everything he currently says is drenched in bitterness - I'm a naturally optimistic person and I feel like I lose part of that every time he spits hateful words about the state of the world. We want a family, but I'm hitting my mid-30s and starting to lose hope that he will be well and financially stable enough before my fertility dies off. He has no hope, only black grim determination to try and prove his mother and step-father wrong.
I feel like our entire romance has been soaked in pain and I worry that being loved is what is driving him so crazy. I worry that I will have to do what he has begged me to do so often, leave him to protect myself. I worry that if I do, that this will just prove to him that the world is hard and cruel and he will hate me and disappear. I worry that even if he is miraculously pulled together by his new doctor and is able to complete his degree and start a new happy chapter in his life, that I may have worn out my love for him and will have to leave him anyway. I worry that I can only do one of be with him or pursue my dream career, and I don't know how to choose... he tries *so* hard, but maybe he really is just too broken like he keeps saying. I worry that I'm going to really like it when he goes to stay with his biological father interstate for a few weeks to give me a break - what if I don't want him to come home?
I'm so tired. I miss my friend, so much. And I don't know what to do. Are there any other people out there who have successful, supportive relationships with survivors of domestic violence? Or who had to walk away from a relationship with a survivor of domestic violence? Any faint glimmers of hope from the other side, no matter what side, would be heartily appreciated.
And apparently I have been holding all that in for way too long because that is an epic post. Apologies for the verbosity.
