First time poster here. Context on my situation. I have been in a relationship with my partner for 12 years after we met in university. We both attended uni in wales (where myself and my family are from), him and his family are from Surrey. We hit it off right away, and within 2 years we had fallen (all be it accidentally) pregnant with my now 10 year old daughter. He dropped out of uni after a year and after a bit of back and fore, long distance and even a stint of him working abroad we settled in wales and have been here for 8 years now. We have a mortgage together, a Great Dane, 2 cats, a gecko and even chickens and have built what I thought was a happy life here. My partner has always been irresponsible financially, once he didn’t put his work expense receipts through for almost 2 years and ended up on the sick with stress and with crippling debts. He got paid off by the company and as far as I knew the debts were cleared. He has always been up and down mentally, has been medicated in the past and before we met he had a full mental breakdown and had to go into a rehab centre.
About 4 months ago, he left his job suddenly after having a dispute with one of the other directors. He said he had 3 months garden leave and “something would come up” before that was up. Of course, surprise surprise, nothing did and he has now not been paid for several months. His mental health spiralled downwards. I could see it, his family and friends could see it but he refused all help. It was awful to live with him as I work really hard as a teacher and had to come home every day to him lying on the sofa surrounded by snack wrappers having done nothing. Not to mention the mood swings towards myself and my daughter. I knew it was serious when he stormed out upset after an argument and I genuinely thought he may take his own life.
Anyway, a few weeks ago he came back from the pub and was in floods of tears. He said he had been feeling suicidal for weeks and had tried to take his own life. He had dropped our daughter to school and thought it was the last time he was going to see her. He has written countless wills, letters to family and friends to say goodbye. He felt he had nobody to talk to. It was truly awful to hear and I was relieved he was finally opening up.
Next steps were that he wanted to travel up to his home town of Surrey to confide in his friend and sister. Fine by me. Then even more revelations. I open his mail- he is in £15000 of credit card debt. He has been misusing substances (cocaine) and then coming home to our family! All a lot to take in.
He has been to the doctors and is starting therapy which are all positives.
Little did I know, he had no intention of coming back. It’s been over 3 weeks and he is living a cushty life in his mum’s while I run around doing everything. I have been off work with stress, trying to sort the mortgage and run around after all of our animals and our daughter. I feel like he has dropped all of his responsibilities and run away home to surrey, and nobody seems to think it’s unacceptable other than me.
I am sympathetic to his situation and obviously I want him to get better- but why should I have to pick up all of the pieces here? We have so many responsibilities together. Every little menial task I have to do like pick up a dead mouse that the cat has brought in, walk the dog, iron the uniform, clean out the chickens, I fill to the brim with the resentment that he is living a single life and I am now having to pick up everything, physically and mentally. It is absolutely draining me.
I went up to visit him at the weekend, fully expecting to just walk away from the relationship as some of the things mentioned about are really hard for me to forgive. But when I was there I couldn’t do it. I felt like I owe him the chance to get better and be a good partner and father and then if it doesn’t happen I can walk away knowing I tried everything I could.
Am I being unreasonable for expecting him to come home? His mum and sister think I’m being completely unreasonable and that he should have time to recover. But if we are so important to him, why does he want to be away from us? His mum is molly coddling him and he literally doesn’t have to lift a finger there so it’s no surprise he doesn’t want to come back to this chaotic lifestyle but it doesn’t make it fair. I want him to get better but not to the detriment of my own mental health.