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!

"In the book Gaslighting, the Double Whammy, Interrogation and Other Methods of Covert Control in Psychotherapy and Analysis, the late forensic psychiatrist Theodore Dorpat defines gaslighting as a situation in which one individual "attempts to exert control over the feelings, thoughts or activities of another." According to Dorpat, the gaslighting behavior itself is covert — neither "directly hostile" nor "intimidating."

"In order to be effective, gaslighting depends on first convincing the victim that his thinking is distorted and secondly persuading him that the victimizer's ideas are the correct and true ones," writes Dorpat.

In every gaslighting situation there must be a gaslighter, the agent of the abuse, and a gaslightee, his or her target. "Over time you [the gaslightee] begin to feel like you don't know your own mind or you don't know your own reality. Worse than that, you've allowed someone else to define it for you," says Dr. Robin Stern, author of The Gaslight Effect and a research scientist at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence.
"

From an article in The Week What is Gaslighting

You really need to step back and let him get out of this on his own, and stop telling him how it is. Let him be in charge of his own emotions and his own life.

Horrible for you but it does happen. Stress caused cold feet re wedding. Only you can say if he is worth taking another chance on. Life and Relationships are full of twists and turns and never straight forward.

Join...nooo......you have read that wrong. My Mother emailed ME. Not him!!!!

I then sent HIM and email, explaining that while he was saying he was fine, I felt that he wasn't and asking him to look at the symptoms of depression and anxiety to see if he felt they fitted with how he was feeling or what he was experiencing.

To list the ones he says he had:

Stomach complaints and nausea
Loss of appetite
Poor sleep, waking early and being unable to go back to sleep
Palpitations
Chest pains
Muscle cramps
Shakes
Confusion and poor concentration
Extreme tiredness
Lack of enjoyment in activities previously enjoyed
Sense of disconnect from loved ones
Feelings of hopelessness
Constant irritability
Frequent crying for no reason
Unexplained weight loss
Suicidal thoughts

etc. etc.

He has been diagnosed by a doctor and placed on ADs and he is seeing a therapist for treatment of a breakdown. I didn't make this up and force it on him. He says he was experiencing all this stuff for months before he left and was hiding it from me.

Seeing these symptoms in him and pointing them out is a loving act of support of someone you see who is in trouble. It was obvious to ME he wasn't OK, despite him telling himself that he was. You think I should have said nothing? I loved him..it was scary to see him like that.

Plenty of depressed men have trouble seeing it and getting treatment, I have read lots about this. Nothing about any part of this is fake or imagined by anyone. Have you ever seen someone severely depressed or after a breakdown? You only need to take one look...they look like a zombie or something.

Those posts were really unfair.

In my situation most people would have either turned their back and never spoken to the person again or they would have been round there crying and hammering on the door in tears demanding an explanation.

I did give him space. I haven't seen him since the day he walked out, despite being half an hour away, and I could have gone at any time to see him.

I think I phoned him once and apart from that have sent a few emails and a few texts, usually only replying to his. The amount of self control required to do this was monumental when all I wanted to do was go and see him and find out WTF was going on.

My Mum knew he had a breakdown because
a) her mother had one and
b) she knew how much stress he was under and
c) she knows this behaviour made no sense because she was with us a month before it happened and we were all over each other and totally loved up.

She wasn't being intrusive..she was trying to help. She loved him like a son and still does. Both my parents are not even angry at him (which is hard to do when someone does this to your child) and they just both know this is not him.

As time unfolds, I hear reports from friends that he cries all the time, is thin, stopped working, doesn't go out and is "in a bad way" and in all this time he's given no one an explanation for any of it and you think the right thing for me to do was not to contact him and try and help?

Sorry, that's not right. I am nowhere near him, giving him space. He came to me and asked me to consider hope for the future. I haven't asked for anything at all from him.

As if I invented a breakdown to make myself feel better? Sheesh!

Confused, what would you like to happen ?,

Personally OP I'd take a step away from this and explain to your exDF why (or not) for maybe 3, 6 whatever months.

Travel etc.

Then revisit it. You're much too close to this now I feel and you do want him back despite some on this thread advising you not to go back.

That is what I'd do. Try also to ignore your/his family's advice on this and stick with therapy. You need to figure out what's best on your terms and with your input not your mums well meaning diagnosis etc.

Once you are better sorted on your own mind you'll have a lightbulb moment and feel a million times better.

In your own mind I meant.

Thanks Hello...that's exactly what I am going to do. Three months away and let the meds and therapy work in that time so we can have a proper talk afterwards.

Milly...I don't know. Really. Just some sort of good ending to it all. I don't know what that is because I don;t know what's really going on fully yet.

I know he is ill, but I don't know what his feelings are underneath. I also am not really sure what mine are anymore. I know I love him..but not sure how that works after something like this.

OP that's great but be aware (like rosemary said) you and May both not be over the demise of your relationship and may want to start over. I pushed and pushed my ex re that. Didn't work and would have destroyed both of us.

I know you want the good ending to be like the start but please please don't try to rush, push or change it.

You've been amazing so far and if this doesn't work out with you and exDF I'm certain you'll meet someone lovely in due course. Take care and enjoy your travels. When are you off by the way?

Meant you and him may not be over....

Far East...!!! No chance of nipping round

I meant when but also where!

I'd try if I can not to FB, email etc whilst you're away too.

Oh I envy you! Enjoy!

Oh sorry...I go in three weeks :) Bit nervous...but at the time I felt like I just wanted to get away from life and try and forget.

Yes, I will try and do those things too. Thanks!

3 months in the far east? I thought you had debts and a business to rebuild?

I took a contract job...my business is gone and I felt I had nothing to tie me here. The debts are not so bad since we split and left our house. We had no rent or bills (we stayed with family) so things have improved a bit.

Come to think of it, splitting took all financial pressure of us. Maybe partly why he did it :/ or significantly why

I agree with everything QuintessentialShadows has said through out the thread, sorry. Imho, it is extraordinarily frustrating to be told how I feel, why I feel, and be given a template into which my behavior should fit specific to another individual's judgement. That is a power play.

I agree with the posters who suggest he broke up with you. I know it is devastating, but you can not rewrite history to manipulate him/circumstances into anything, including a scenario that will save face for you.

Weather by design or not, you do realize that handing him the web of reasons/excuses of mental illness you may be walking into a setup as described by a previous poster that he could claim all kinds of needs or space or limitations or conditions that would have you become pretty invisible in your own life? It happens within marriages where one needs to be a carer, but it seems to me that you have progressed your dynamic way way into the future...that is presuming alot.

No, do not take him back. It is over, he ended it.
Let him be...leave him alone.

I am hoping you will answer 2rebecca 's question, too.

x post

So, AndTheBandPlayed on...if your DH or DP was having all the symptoms of depression and anxiety, you'd consider telling him to see a doctor was power play? Not sure I see any logic at all in that one. the fact that he'd just left me is immaterial...I was still the closest person in the world to him and care about his well being.

I've barely spoken to him, contacted him or had anything to do with him.

He is under a mental health team being treated for an illness that is apparently not real and created in my own head to save face, despite me not having been anywhere near him.

Sorry...you're all way off here.

If I was interested in saving face, what I'd do right now is tell him to shove it up his arse.

I did not have to tell him, he went on his own.

I've barely spoken to him, contacted him or had anything to do with him.

Sorry, but why are you posting? You asked if you should get back with him...(presuming he would want to)... The answer is , No, you shouldn't.

I didn't really understand what you just said, but I think it was clear to everyone else why I was posting.

I posted to enquire whether people who had experience of such illnesses felt they might be a cause for his behaviour. At the moment he says they are, and I wanted to know if that was plausible. I posted for opinions on that and most have been really helpful.

For some reason because I was the one who suggested to him that he was ill you have twisted this very quickly and erroneously into me creating an illness in him to make myself feel better, but as I said, he's been diagnosed so that's not the case.