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Something’s not right

missingdarcy
Casual Contributor

Worried for OCD/AVPD partner after breakup

My OCD/AVPD boyfriend of 7 years split up with me exactly 1 month ago, It's been gut wrenching.

Over the last 2 years he had fallen into a bad mental health space with his OCD/AVPD, I'd been trying my best to support him but he has slowly disappeared from me and at the same time I've had to deal with his abusive toxic parents trying to split us up for the past 4 years.

His parents have no awareness of the day to day reality of his Pure-O OCD / AVPD, and turned even our relationship (which was I feel his safest space) into a pressure for him.
Over the last 3 months he finally decided to go back to his psychologist which I was initially really happy about, because I felt like finally he had another person to support him and it wasn't just me propping him up anymore. It had taken 2 years of encouragment from myself, family and friends to get him to go back.

I caught an awful virus in January, and had to go into hospital for a week and I think it finally pushed him over the edge with his intrusive thoughts / obsessions, we had an awful argument about his abusive parents a few days later while I was recovering, which made him angry enough to start smashing things.

I wasn't in the best frame of mind, his parents had forced him to take a holiday to another state and I was afraid because I needed him to help me out and stay an extra day or two. For the past few years I've been so careful to be strong, not show him how much taking care of him was a load on me, not showing how much it hurt dealing with his parents manipulation and toxic behaviour, or how they would get at me using him as a proxy when I finally decided to start ignoring them.

For the first time in a long time I let myself go and screamed at him to take his things and go or I would call the police. I have ptsd and I was so scared when he smashed the pottery and yelled at me that "I didn't trust him", I didn't want him to leave though I wanted him to go somewhere and cool off. Instead he went to his parents and they convinced him to leave me, I got a text 2 hours later that they where bringing the trailer up to get his things. I wasn't supposed to be walking but instead I was vaccuming up the shards of pottery because I'd called my parents to come up and help find him. I managed to ask him on the phone to calm down and go on his holiday, forget about this and just take 3 weeks off from everything.


Since then he's not been the person I used to know.

I think he's seriously unwell and has completely shut me out because I'm the only one who can see how unstable he is. His behavior of recent times has reminded me of my younger sister who has schizophrenia, she's been through a few episodes of psychosis before, it feels eerily similar.

He's had face to face contact with me twice, both times we talked until the morning and it was really difficult because one minute he said that he was unwell, couldn't get better being in relationship or in this house with me (I assumed it was obsession/compulsion related) wanted to be well and get better, get help, then come back to the relationship.
We hugged a few times, he said he'd missed hugging, I was so happy, but then the next minute he wanted nothing to do with me, and that he couldn't even come see me once a week to let me know how he was doing, he didn't want to see me at all. It made no sense, he couldn't give reasons. He didn't sound like himself at those points, it was like talking to 2 different people, one very emotional / crying, like the old him I used to know, and then the other very cold and short sentences.

After those 2 evenings of talking till 5 am, came the day he collected his stuff which I very carefully packed up for him, because I've realized there's nothing I can do and I just want to support him because I still very much love him, I decided to write a letter to his psychologist to explain what had happened from my position and how worrying it is to know that he's running around with people that have no idea he could be in a mania.
His psychologist never replied or confirmed that he'd got my email, and I figured well that's okay I guess, maybe he didn't get it.

Then this week I got a letter in mail box from my ex saying why he's breaking up with me.
It was so hard to read because all I could see where things his mother had obviously told him to write, his best friend had a divorce 6 months ago and cut his poor wife out in exactly the same way and I feel like my partner is just emulating the people he's spending the most time with right now. It's not like him at all to just cut someone out, he used to dependable and reliable, honest, genuine, that's what I loved about him. I feel like if the things he'd listed as issues where genuine issues he would have at least tried to work on them with me, what's even stranger is that he brought these issues up with me the last 2 times we talked and I told him that I was completely willing to get help and work through them, and that I'd actually changed my mind about one of them while he was on holiday.

What shocked me though most was in this letter he said his psychologist had received my email, and that his psychologist had actually let my partner read it.
I'd sent this letter to his psych in complete confidence, I wanted him to know that my partner is very unwell, might need medication to help come back down, and that he might be totally telling his psychologist "everything" in his appointments.
My partner said his psych had explained that he was "Ethically Obliged" to show him the email. Would it be professional of a psychologist to actually do something like that?
I feel utterly betrayed, not that it matters because these things are all thing I've tried to discuss with my partner and the bulk of the letter was that I was very worried for his welfare now that he's living with his parents who don't have a good grasp of his mental health issues.

I'm so broken now, the day I got the letter I tried calling him but he had already blocked my phone number, I tried calling him via facebook and he just refused to pick up. I left a few of those 1 minute voice messages saying that I'd felt suicidal the last 3 days and I can't believe that he can't see what he's walking away from, that he's losing his best friend. I haven't made any contact since because I'm sure he's just going to make out that I'm crazy to everyone around him now, It's all just too much for me. We spent so much time together before this happened, 7 years through thick and thin supporting each other through everything. I thought we were going to spend the rest of our lives together, and he knows I'd support him through anything I don't care how mentally unwell he is I would never leave him even if he was in a psychosis or having really bad obssessions around sex/violence or whatever. He never left his key to our house which confuses me.

I'm so broken I'm not sure what to do anymore, I haven't made contact with him since he sent the breakup letter and I left those voice messages on his facebook. I feel like for him that's that and he's just going to surround himself with people who don't know how truely unwell he is and live this weird lie. I don't know how long that can work until he falls apart, I did a lot of things to help support him with different aspects of his day to day life that people like his friends and family don't know about.

My own family and friends are all just telling me to get over it, but it all feels wrong just forgetting about it. I spent 7 years with this person, I thought I was going to watch him get old and have children and a life with him, I try to stop myself thinking about it but it's so hard. Currently he is living with his parents literally live 5 blocks away from my house so I'm scared to go out in case I see them, I've been shut out and I feel like a mushroom in the dark. I can't figure out what I did wrong or why he would shut me out so hard, what's worse is the things he wrote about as a reason for the split are things we could definitely have fixed if he'd brought them to my attention in more than a passing way, he expected me to just fix things a lot of the time on my own which felt weird, I want to fix things together. I don't know what to do anymore, the worst thing is I just wish he was here despite everything that's happened. I miss talking to him everday, and saying goodnight and feeling safe because he's here. My home isn't a home anymore.
I'm sorry this post is so so long.

3 REPLIES 3

not Re: Worried for OCD/AVPD partner after breakup

This is not spam, I'm looking for help. Please do not mark is as spam 😞

Re: Worried for OCD/AVPD partner after breakup

Wow—this is full on. Hope you have at least one friend who's ready to listen to you and give support without judging. I'm surprised your ex's psychologist didn't treat the letter as confidential, but I don't know anything about the professional ethical guidelines in that situation. 

 

It's easy for people looking at the situation from outside to say "Get over it" but of course it's never that simple. This relationship lasted years, and you expected it would be permanent -- of course you're left feeling empty and broken-hearted.

 

At the same time the kind of situation you describe, with him yelling and smashing things, isn't something you'd want to live with forever. If you stay separated, eventually there will be a day when you're ready to move on to the next chapter -- however hard that is to imagine right now. In the meantime I think the main thing is not to blame yourself for feeling whatever you feel.

Re: Worried for OCD/AVPD partner after breakup

Thanks for taking the time out of your day to reply Gilbert 🙂 Much appreciated.
Your right, living with someone so emotionally volatile isn't really something anyone should consider long term. Especially when they start displaying that anger externally through physical means.
It was really hard to see how bad that was while I was in the relationship and even thought I was on eggshells all the time I didn't see myself as co-depenent, I've just kept a lot of myself hidden away these last 2 years because I thought he was genuinely going to get through this stage and get better.

The times he would get that emotional where sort of frustrating because it would come out of nowhere, and about issues he would'nt really make much effort to fix before they got to the point of upsetting him to that level. I would just tell myself he's unwell, it's okay for him to act this way because it isn't really him, put your own emotions aside and be there for him and eventually he will grow and get better, and maybe even reciprocate and return that love and affection.

I've been trying to take stock of all the "off" kind of moments you don't have time to consider when your in a relationship, especially as a carer.
During the relationship I would shrug them off and keep battling on, but now that I feel sort of like I'm on the outside of his life now it's easier to kind of re-look at them in a new light.

We met in our 20's.. and I'm now in my early 30's, in a few months he's turning the same age that I was the year I met him, 27. He got his diagnoses of OCD/AVPD in his late teens and I feel that maybe the "AVPD" diagnosis might not actually be genuine.
He's seeing the same psychologist now that he was seeing as a teenager, and I've been adding up a lot of his behaviour and symptoms, I have come to the conclusion that he actually probably has Borderline Personality Disorder (and Pure-O/OCD), not AVPD at all.

I've read that many psychologists don't like to diagnose BPD during people's teen years, and when they do diagnose it more often than not, they will make the choice to "not disclose" the BPD diagnosis with their patients.
It's hard to treat and often the stigma attatched to it makes it hard for the sufferer, they treat it by proxy with CBT (or whatever their theraputic practice is) without the patient knowing, and have better results than if the patient had known.

The 0 to 10 with his anger and emotions, no sense of self, black & white thinking, the idealization and then devaluation of people, the list goes on. Even down to the little things like his sleep talking, and prior eating disorder. I love / loved him very much and don't want to cause him any damage so I won't be telling him if he gets in contact with me again, especially if his psychologist is playing some kind of longterm strategy with him. Though I'm still kind of thrown that he showed my boyfriend/ex-boyfriend the letter, it doesn't feel right to me, maybe he thought my partner would re-act differently and it would help his progress somehow, I don't know.

Reading about BPD has helped everything makes so much more sense now, it's like a key fitting into a lock. I know I can't truly know, because I'm not a psychologist or anything, but for me it fits and I guess that's all that matters at the moment. I feel like today I'm having a good day and it's been really nice to read your reply and feel "heard". I'm trying to get in contact with friends I've lost over the last few years as this situation slowly took over my life, I'm very worried about seeing him outside as he lives only a few blocks from me, but I am going to try and get out into the city more if I can get my social network back together.

He still hasn't returned the key, not sure wether I should get the locks changed, or let him feel like he has his little secret place to go as a backup if he needs it. At the moment I'm the crazy ex girlfriend now so I'm sure I won't hear from him, especially after those teary voice messages I left on his facebook after he left the "Dear John" letter in my letter box.
But I'm worried as other people start to realise how unstable he is they'll start to shut him out. I worry that I might come home oneday in a few months time and find him on my couch, thinking it's okay to come unnanounced back into my life.
I'm not sure how to deal with that, after everything we've been through and he didn't even care that I felt suicidal. I've kind of lost a bit of respect for him after that? I feel bad for even writing that, but there it is.

Thank's for giving me a response and some things to consider, I'm sorry my reply is so long.

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