Jilted at the alter...is there ever an "excuse"?

[ConfusedLady8]

I posted in MI too for a more medical perspective on this, but please ladies can I have an emotional viewpoint on this also. I am so confused.

My DP of 3.5 years and I were in a very happy, loving relationship where I really did feel like I had found my other half. We just got on really well and and enjoyed being together and there was still sparks flying all over the place. He proposed, and our wedding was due to go ahead in October.

In September, he sent me a text to say he was sorry but couldn't go through with the wedding. He moved out of our house and would not see or talk to me to even discuss it. I was completely devastated and still am. I cry all the time and can't seem to let go.

Before this happened, he had previously been kind, thoughtful, unselfish, loving, supportive and dedicated all the time really. I wouldn't have had a bad word to say about him. I had no idea why this happened at the time but I suppose I had presumed there was an OW and I had just been blind to it.

It transpires now, 5 months later, that he has a stress induced nervous breakdown. He was very stressed out in the months before the wedding because my business had failed leaving us with debts and he was worried about the wedding costs. He took on a second job to help with costs and he was tired and frazzled. He's under treatment for a major depressive episode right now.

After treating me like complete crap for 5 months, he has now contacted me and said he is coming out of his depression and realises he made a massive mistake. He said his actions weren't "him".

Does anyone think that being MI is an "excuse" for saying nasty things, behaving very coldly, emotionally withdrawing, behaving very selfishly and causing a lot of pain to others without seeming to even care? He wants me to give him another chance.

I am so confused.

Half of me loves him still as much as before, I miss him, I can't imagine being with anyone else and I do believe he has had a breakdown as I know from friends that he has been signed off work and has not really left the house for months. I want to try and remember him as the man I thought he was and I really want that man back in my life.

On the other hand, months have passed, I have started to move on and gained some acceptance and I am terrified of being hurt any more than he has already hurt me. I feel like (MI or not) he did something really unforgivable to me and caused me so much hurt that I feel like I am no longer confident of his feeling towards me and also feel like I don't know him.

Please tell me if how much of a role an illness like this can play in relationships, and if you feel taking him back would be a bad idea. I am very, very confused.

He has said he will fix the humiliation by writing a public letter to all our friends and family to say he had a nervous breakdown and stuff but I still feel embarrassed when I see people. A lot of people don't even know the wedding never happened and they keep congratulating me.

Please help and try and give a balanced view. I am a serial lurker on here and know there is a lot of LTB advocates here, but please consider that we had an otherwise great relationship and I really wanted to marry this man. if there's any way to excuse his behaviour I'd like to do that but don't want to marry a man who doesn't love me as much as I love him.

The reason I am worried about this is because he said and acted also like he didn't love me anymore during this situation!

Speaking with some experience of MI and all the joys they can wreak on a relationship:

Don't jump the gun. In the same way as you wouldn't push him to run a marathon a short time after breaking his leg, don't push him into an emotional marathon when he's still getting his brain and sense of self back together, or set timescales by when he 'should' be ready to commit again. It doesn't work that way, and can be one of the crappiest things of the other person. Just be a friend, if you can. Going in hot and asking for more is just going to fuck everything up.

I get that it's really tempting. If you can just go back to how it all was - the relationship, the love, the physical affection - then it almost seems like it negates the split, that it was an abberation, a pothole on the road to being 80 and singing Gangam Style in the retirement home. But it doesn't work like that, and I think you do know that.

You do still need time to get your own head back together, and you need that time apart to do it. If, to stretch a metaphor to breaking point, he's got a broken leg, then you at the very least ended up with a nasty sprain when he wiped out. Your feelings, particularly your feelings of anger, are valid, and you shouldn't swallow them down. What he did to you, even if it was triggered by a breakdown, was incredibly painful, and properly rebuilding that trust will take considerable time. As Book said upthread, all your posts here have been about him - what he needs, what you can do to facilitate that, what decisions he might take in the future. Sod all about what you need in order to feel secure in a relationship again.

My Dh did not want to know about my (planned & hoped for after years of infertility) pregnancy - never came to a scan, never felt the baby kicking never asked about it at all. He was under severe stress at the time and overall was not himself. He absolutely adores our son now and we rarely talk about that difficult time but I totally accept now - and accepted then - that he was not himself. I would absolutely forgive your dp in your situation and if I loved him would give him a second chance.

Thanks to the three of you for those really helpful posts. Kerosene..that was really helpful for me to get a better understanding of why I need to learn patience right now. Thank you

IMO jilting at the altar like this is a very strong sign that something in that person just won't let them complete the union with you.

I'd need a huge amount of convincing - and over some time - that the situation would change in any way subsequently.

IMO it's very probably a lost cause and you are better off moving on OP.

I agree with Lazyjaney when she says::

:(

So he might have had the breakdown because he wanted to break it off with me? Not broke up with me because he had a breakdown...

Hmmm

It's a sad possibility :(

I might be getting to the point of realising that I won't actually know the answers to these questions until he's well and gives them, although everyone is coming up with good possibilities there is no answer until he gives it (of sound mind).

I know right now he might be nostalgic, lonely or guilty. Maybe he just didn't want to be with me forever and ran out on that. It IS of course more than possible.

Yesterday and this morning I was so up for working on this and had total faith, but after the last few posts here I feel disheartened and feel maybe like I never knew him at all. I'm not usually so easily influenced so it must be my vulnerability and complete lack of confidence in my own judgement (post this happening) that are showing through.

I used to go off my gut, instincts etc. and thought I was soooo amazing at reading people and situations.

Now...WTF do I know.

I went out with someone myself who sounds very similar to your ex Confused. There is another poster here who had a similar situation to you (there is a thread about someone's Fiance turning into a monster overnight). Not sure if it will help to hear any of my short tale, but my caution would be some people who appear generally very nice, loving, "harmless", can actually still hurt us, behave very badly, cause us great pain and basically be bad for us.

I thought the person I was with was lovely and it would never have occurred to me that he would hurt me as he did. It felt afterwards like he had 2 personalities. So basically the "good" one was his regular, and more prominent personality, and who I thought he was, but then when it all got too much, he would behave in almost an extreme way and be an arse in terms of his behaviour and cut people off. I wonder if some of the behaviour is a bit passive aggressive in someone who doesn't know how to express themselves? I had very little relationship experience at the time, and wasn't on mumsnett so didn't have the benefit of learning from other people's experiences or getting their opinions. This was a factor in me not spotting some red flags in terms of his poor coping skills.

So my ex-boyfriend was under extreme stress the extent of which he was hiding. Even though it did make sense for him to split with me and focus on sorting out his issues (custody and ex issues), and this had crossed my own mind at the time, he gave me the impression he didn't want to split with me, wanted me to be there for him, but then he still dumped me in a way that felt out of the blue (no lead-up arguments between us, he was behaving normally leading up to it, going away on a holiday with me, talking about more long-term plans, and then dumping me a few days later).

He then played the "lets be friends" card and then dropped me from that as well without even telling me (I had to figure it out myself when he didn't respond to communication. And he wasn't the best communicator so it wasn't immediately obvious).

I was all over the place mentally, between being hurt and confused myself, and added to that he told me at one point that he was suicidal, he had a definite plan, and I felt he was at high risk or carrying it out. And I was 99% sure I was the only one he told this to so I felt responsible (bit of co-dependent behaviour there on my part, learnt that term from Mumsnett!). I was a bit panicked he had done something when he didn't respond to texts initially.

It was mostly all about him in my head initially, and like you I blamed myself to some extent, felt I should have known how bad he felt, should have pushed him to talk more (even though I hate when people do this to me which is why i behaved as I did) etc. But looking back he had a history of cutting people off, even after seemingly very small arguments, or sometimes possibly after no argument at all. This seems to be his stress based coping behaviour.

Anyway now I look back on it, still miss him in some ways, but I now think I had a lucky escape as we didn't live together and the relationship was not that long-term (though in some ways it had moved quite fast - another red-flat possibly as I think he found it hard to cope on his own). When I look at the havoc other people have experienced with this sort of person I consider myself lucky that it wasn't worse. I am glad as well that he cut me off as a friend (not the cowardly way he did it though) as I think I would have ended up as his counsellor in the friend role, and it would have been all on his terms. It took me until recently (almost 3 years!) to get to this more accepting point of view, and to also see him more clearly for who he really was.

If you can go no contact for at least 6 months-1 year I think it would help you heal and maybe see him more clearly for what he is. I don't think it is realistic to expect him to be substantially better after 3 months (mentioned in one of the posts). I have known quite a few people to have had breakdowns. To be honest, I don't think any of them fully recovered (or at least they still have very dysfunctional behaviour and issues sometimes decades later) but it took them all quite a while, over a year, to get to some half-decent level of functionality.

Thanks rosemary...but really..I can't see how he can fit this sort of profile. I do have a major narcissist ex who acted really nice for a while and turned into a twat. This guy was not like that. I've known him intimately for 15 years and have never seen him act anything like this before. It's like the polar opposite of everything he usually is. He is the kind of man who would not propose unless he was bloody certain about it. He's also the kind of man who (if he wanted to break and engagement) would think about it for ages before making a decision and would then do it in the kindest possible way. Without being cheesy, picture Noah from the Notebook and this is the man he was.

Thinking on the previous posts too...I had offered to cancel the wedding, to postpone, to elope. He didn't want to do any of these things so it doesn't really add up that he was looking for an "out".

He's also not faking being ill..he's stopped functioning in normal life completely. He looks ill. I could show you a photo right now and you'd say "shit that guy needs a doctor". His voice even sounds screwed up...it's a lot deeper and really monotone.

I think what happened is that he was having a breakdown at the time he left (felt unable to cope completely with anything) but that the breakdown itself multiplied in magnitude 1000 times because he reacted the wrong way by running off instead of asking for help.

Running off meant that in the middle of a breakdown / severe depressive episode he a) had to leave me , b) had to leave his house and move into another one and c) had to face public shame of what he had done which are all probably things you don;t want to have to handle in a fragile state.

I think he made his own breakdown worse by the way he handled it, which is why I think it went from mild to extreme since he left. He's definitely gotten much, much, much worse to the point that he was unable to work, see his child or even function.

I do agree thought with everyone there is every possibility he didn't want to marry me. He might have just been being nice and unable to say so.

I just don't believe he knew it until 72 hours before this, because honestly...the guy was bring with excitement. He got a countdown the minutes app for his phone. He was telling me he couldn't wait to see me walk down the aisle. He was throwing a white towel over my head when I was cooking dinner and humming here comes the bride. I just can't look back on all that and think it was fake.

I think he was averaging 4 hours sleep a night in that last month, and he was under so any pressures from deadlines at work that he was so, so far behind. There were a lot of other pressures on him from various sources. I should have seen it was too much. He told me he was suicidal and hiding it :(

I posted that last post before seeing the last 2 before it. Confused, it doesn't mean you did anything wrong or that there is anything wrong with you. He might have some deep seated issues about marriage, or commitment, or even something else he has been hiding from himself for a while and that a few extra stresses brought it all out. You probably do need time for yourself to think about things and probably counselling will help you. It is an awfully difficult situation to be in and I would be confused in that situation as well.

I don't know whether it is worth commenting on this or not, as in some ways it is a side-issue as a relationship is not on the cards in the short-term, but some people are talking about mental illness being the same as a physical one, and basically therefore Confused should forgive his behaviour if it was as a result of his condition and stick with him (this is the impression I am getting from some of the posts). But I am not sure how relevant that argument is to this situation. I think we do have to judge whether we want to be in a relationship with someone based on their behaviour towards us. I personally think if someone is behaving badly, whether they have a physical or mental condition, then we can judge whether their behaviour is tolerable to us or not. But in my (quite extensive) experience people with mental health conditions are more likely to be emotionally draining, less able to cope with normal stresses and strains of life (so not ideal in a partner), and even more frequently emotionally manipulative, in a way that people with physical conditions are generally not (unless their personality is like that anyway).

I personally do think there is a difference between the strains in a relationship between someone with a physical or mental condition, though a lot would probably depend on severity and coping skills and different people might find one or other type of condition easier to deal with in a partner.

Anyway I hope this won't result in a derailing argument with people taking it personally. I think it is fair to make the above observation based on my own experience, if people are going to make the claim that a physical condition is the same as a mental one in a relationship context.

Well, he had a lot more stress on him that I outlined. If we look back over time.

He'd been in a legal battle for 3 or 4 months with his ex for some time as she wanted to emigrate to Australia with his dd and she was withholding visitation to be spiteful, this went on for a year and had only been resolved 9 months before this episode. Incidentally over this period he had some signs of anxiety (palpitations, problems sleeping, weight loss, IBS) and frankly his hair turned grey over this period. When he telephoned me a couple of weeks ago he says that he believes this was the "trigger" and that since this episode he hadn't felt fully normal.

A few months before he left they found a lump on his Mum that caused a fair bit of stress, and his Dad was due in for a heart bypass a few weeks after our wedding.

We had moved house three months before he left which was upheaval. He hates upheaval and change.

My business went under six months before and left us with debts that wiped us out - all savings gone and then some. Not that we were rich, but we went very suddenly from being comfortable to being very worried about our future. He had to do a lot of embarrassing stuff, like cancelling his pension payment with his boss because we couldn't afford to pay into it. He had to deal with me being upset and very stressed and he says now that finances were the worst stress on him because he felt that as the man he was responsible.

For the month or two previous he and I barely saw each other because I was working nights to help with money and he took on an extra contract job out of hours. We went from spending lots of time together to hardly having any time at all.

The contract job meant he was leaving the house at 6am, getting home 7pm and then having to work 3 - 4 hours every night and he could hardly sleep. He had constant deadlines that he was always behind on and he felt like it was out of control.

There was a lot of little daily stresses involved too having moved house and having a wedding upcoming too. It was a really, really high stress environment. I was ok because I shared my feelings with him, but he bottled it up

He talked to me about all of this when I spoke to him, but it took him months to identify the pathway of stress that led to his brain just locking down like that. At the time though, he acted like it was all fine and it was me who was freaking about it.

Go with your heart , personally I would take it slowly and give it a go. You clearly still have feeling for him and quite frankly , we could all be let down and hurt by our partners at any stage of our life . Don't live your life regretting what could have been . There is only one way to find out .

Incidentally...if my parents had a lump and a heat bypass coming up the whole family would be crying, sad, terrified, talking about it.

His parents and him barely reacted. His Mum went and had the lump removed for biopsy and didn't even tell anyone!

If I asked him if he was upset, he just said he was sure it would be OK.

This is how repressed he was about stress. Looking back I can see it was an accident waiting to happen if he was put into the wrong conditions.

Hi Confused, sorry I didn't explain it very well. Mine did not say anything nasty to me, or even do anything nasty other than drop me in the way that he did (but what yours did to you was a lot worse). He does sound to me very similar to how you describe your ex, even though I have expressed it badly.

When I said mine behaved like an arse I am talking about this bizarre way of cutting people off totally instead of talking to them if he had an issue. I think it sort of went from looking like everything was fine to suddenly not talking to them. I just find it a weird and hurtful thing to do, so in that sense it is arsey behaviour. I would not have phrased it like that initially, as in my head he was nice and not the sort of person who would do something hurtful.

I don't think yours is faking it or anything, it is just hard to know what to think as he possibly doesn't even fully understand himself. I think sleep deprivation is a big risk factor for breakdowns (not sure where I saw this).

Broken there is a chance there is something like that in my case, though I think with mine that he probably ended up going back to his ex in the end (would explain the cutting me off), may they live dysfunctionally ever after

Ok from that information he was under a lot more stress than I previously though so breakdown sounds more plausible explanation for not going through with the wedding. I'd be a bit more optimistic then for you, though he would really need to have a dramatic change in how he deals with stuff. Would still be worried about how he cut you off though. Did he somewhere in his head blame you for the problems? Will he do this again when under stress? Or take it out on the nearest person?

He said at the time, yes, he totally blamed me and lashed out at the person closest to him but he sees now that was insane because nothing was my actual fault.

He just sent me an email tonight which was quite long and really positive just about his progress and to ask how I was. Just friendly, but up until now he's usually only managed one sentence. He also said he was exercising again since we talked, so that sounds amazingly good. I know I am too focussed on him :/

I have organised a girlie night out on Saturday. I cancelled my date tonight though. I just couldn't face it it felt so fake. Maybe if I tell myself the best way to get what I want is to make me better it will help motivate me to not be so inert in my own recovery.

My Mother wants me to go to a psychic and get my hair done ???

IMO things like jilting at the altar are "moments of truth" events - you dont know exactly what you want, but as the deadline day approaches all the jumbled pros and cons swirling around come to a head, and something inside just snaps and - the outcome is the real truth.

And now that the dreaded day has been kicked well down the road again, he is happy that normal low-pressure service can continue. Maybe the extra time will tip matters towards matrimony, but I'd not bet a lot on it.

:(

Does anyone real still believe in psychics?

My dad had a heart bypass. We weren't all crying. We were being positive and upbeat for him, after all the alternative is sticking with your crap furred up cardiac arteries. The lack of weepiness doesn't necessarily mean they are repressed, maybe they're just more realistic and optimistic.
I had a breast lump appointment and didn't tell my extended family. If I'd been found to have cancer I (probably) would have told them but worrying them needlessly seemed pointless and I hate being fussed over.
I find your psychic believing mother nuttier than his relatives!

My Mum believes in Santa still I think

She is nutty...but she's Spanish and emotional and she is very open and loving and taught me to be that way so I can cope with life's ups and downs and am not afraid to express what I feel.

Being "realistic and optimistic" is being taken to far when you can't express any weakness, sadness, fear, anger or doubt to your DP or even acknowledge it to yourself.

I always thought his family were better than mine in a way (not being horrible) but they are so normal and mine are so colourful. When you go in his house it's all very civilised and the dinner table chat is like an episode of the Dalton Abbey or something. My family are embarrassing. Loud, everyone sings, everyone kisses everyone. The women scream at their husbands and try and force everyone to eat when they're not hungry (think My Big Fat Greek Wedding) and my Mum believes in psychics.

That said, when this happened, his family were totally useless. All they said to him was "well, all right son, if you're sure" and sent him off to go and have nervous breakdown all on his own. When I emailed his mother to say I thought he was really ill and needed help, I got a clinical reply to tell me not to worry and that he would spend Christmas with them (which was three months AFTER when I was emailing).

My "nutty" mother on the other hand, without even seeing him said "he must be having a nervous breakdown and within 24 hours had emailed me snippets off the internet to support her theory and she helped me to send these documents to him which is how he (eventually) identified he was ill.

What I am saying is, sometimes I think being a little nutty is OK. On a day to day basis maybe being optimistic is a good thing (I could use a dose of this myself) but when it becomes a pathological need to avoid facing reality then I think this is what causes people to flip out.

I think everyone sometimes needs to really express negative, childish, selfish, angry, horrible, pessimistic, whiny or whatever feelings because we all have them and if you don't acknowledge them you are being fake. And I think to a degree he must have been.

So have you and your family been trying to convince him he has a nervous breakdown, like they try convince people who are not hungry to eat? Maybe you just like the thought of him having a nervous breakdown, as the truth, him simply not wanting your life together and you, is too horrible to bear? Maybe his family was cold about it because he was not having a breakdown, he just wanted to break up with you? What you see as two approaches could in fact be because there are two realities, his and yours and you view it as a a breakdown and he as a break up.

Maybe he does not need counselling, and therapy. Maybe he just needs to get on with his life and not have people telling him he is sick, or what he should feel?

My "nutty" mother on the other hand, without even seeing him said "he must be having a nervous breakdown and within 24 hours had emailed me snippets off the internet to support her theory and she helped me to send these documents to him which is how he (eventually) identified he was ill.

That is quite nutty and really not an OK thing to do.

So he broke it off with you and said he didn't want any contact and instead of accepting that you and your mother bombarded him with material telling him he was having a breakdown?

I really think you need to leave him alone for a while. He sounds very confused and like he needs some space from you.

Even if he was having a breakdown, the very last thing he needed was the ex he was trying to get space from and her crazy mother e-mailing him information about what they thought was wrong with him.