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!

No it isn't like that at all. Yes I do know about mental health problems

joni, it is actually irrelevant. OP has a choice, she does not have to care for somebody, arm twisted on her back, who is cruel to her, just because he is "ill".

He's not going to be the same man he once was, too much has happened so you can't get back together & expect to go on as it was before.

If you want to carry on healing & moving on then that is a very healthy thing to do & nobody would think worse of you.

^It's not implausible to me that someone working two jobs and having big money worries and planning (an expensive?) wedding might, if severely exhausted, just break down. In those situations 'fight or flight' can kick in and he just ran away.

I'm not saying he handled it well, or that a breakdown is an excuse to treat people badly. But surely you must give some weight to the situation he was in? That doesn't mean you have to take him back, of course. But yes I would have sympathy for someone who had a nervous breakdown due to stress and exhaustion. I would feel bad things got to the point where that happened.^

It wasn't an expensive wedding, but the circumstances meant we weren't in the best position. Unfortunately we'd set the date and paid deposits etc. so it was a shit situation. I did offer to cancel and elope...I never cared about the wedding..I just wanted to marry him. Of course I do honestly give weight to it, but the part I can't and don't understand is why he didn't talk to me before bolting and this is quite concerning because he gave no signs. I don't want a lifetime of wondering if my hubby is going to bolt on me. He says eh is getting therapy to work on these issues in himself.

He didn't talk to you, I think, because he isn't at the stage with you where he would be capable of marriage.

But were not his money worries also yours? Could it not be said that you were under the same strain with the wedding, and having the same financial troubles?

gah x-post again!

Don't get back together with him.

You have a date on Thursday, clearly you are moving on already.

He may just be wanting you back out of a desire to fix things, he has a long way to go in therapy and possibly by the end he will have figured out that actually he does not want to be with you. You shouldn't put your life on hold for that.

Quint he is not "ill", he is ill. Do people really not see a proper nervous breakdown as being ill?

gah, I did not notice, the " was meant to be , so not "ill" but ill^

Well I think I'd still go on the date you had planned.

It might be fun and it sounds like you deserve some fun.

Go on the date! Yes. You need fun. Good food. Wine.

I have never said she should go back to him because she sympathasises with him so I'm not sure why offred is suggesting said that.
Quint I have also said she has a choice. If I were her I'd speak to him, find out more about his illness, speak to an expert on this condition and work out the options. If she knew something about the prognosis and the liklihood of further episodes she could make an informed choice. Then, she is is a posotion to decide whether (a) the illness is an actual excuse for his behaviour when he dumped her (b) she can see a future with him.
This seems better to me than the 'are you sure he doesn't have an ow' or 'he has a mental health problem so get out now while you can' advice the OP's been given.

I think 'jilting someone at the alter' is always an acceptable thing to do unless it's the day if the wedding itself! No one should ever go through with a wedding if they are unsure just to save the feelings of their partner or other people

So I don't think you're ex did anything wrong in calling it off. However it is the way in which it is done that causes the problems, cutting you off like that must have been awful for you, I'm so sorry you had to go through that

If it were me and he had been properly diagnosed and was willing to seek ongoing treatment and was prepared to go to counselling and do whatever else needed to reassure you,I'd give him one more chance to start slowly and maybe try to build something new

But I wouldn't blame you if you felt there was too much water under the bridge or if you were worried about how his mental health might affected your life

Please take your time thinking this through and if you do decide to try again don't ever feel pressured into continuing things if you change your mind

When someone has a major breakdown in their MH they are unable to see past their own crisis. I can understand his actions totally in this scenario.

That said, choosing to have a long term relationship with someone with MH issues is a big decision. He may relapse in future and have further crises. There is no knowing.

I don't think the issue is whether or not MI is a valid excuse. I think the issue is whether you have enough love/patience/self confidence to get back into a relationship with someone with a MI.

Yes. For him, I do. He's my best friend, my partner...everything to me. Can't imagine life with someone else.

I have no doubt he is having therapy to deal with the communication issues that meant he couldn't see this coming in himself and that he couldn't talk to me. I am sure it won't happen again if I take him back.

My problem is really this in a nutshell..

If I was in the worst situation of stress imaginable (And I have just been through that after what happened to me), leaving him EVER would just simply not even be an option on the table for me. It would never even enter the realm of possibility. We were a team for life in my eyes. The fact that he was ABLE to leave me makes me feel like fundamentally he loved me less

That is the fear I can't seem to imagine living with. I suppose I don't understand what a breakdown feels like and I want to believe he was incapacitated and his actions have no bearing on his actual feelings and commitment.

Quint except he was the one working two jobs and exhausted all the time. Exhaustion is a huge trigger for a breakdown.

OP if he was tired and frazzled all the time, then those were the signs. There is not always some big dramatic event. It's possible he didn't even realise how bad things were getting, if this is the first time he has ever had mental health problems.

Yes, he should have discussed it with you and gotten help. You have every right to not forgive him for that. But it's pretty common for people NOT to do that -- after all, if everyone did, then no one would have nervous breakdowns in the first place.

Expecting completely rational behaviour from someone undergoing severe mental stress is a bit foolish. It doesn't mean he didn't love you. He just couldn't cope.

Joni So, a doctor has made a diagnosis and he's receiving treatment. What if he'd broken his neck and the wedding couldn't have gone ahead because he was in hospital? No difference between a physical and a mental illness imo. (Really? my addition)
If you really love him you'll accept it. My DP is seriously ill in hospital and there's nothing I wouldn't do to help him and I don't give a fuck we don't have a perfect life because of it. I love him so I accept the rough with the smooth.

This is very different from the OPs situation. She did not think she HAD a relationship. Only a cancelled wedding to deal with. He never gave her a chance to sit at his bedside or find out what the prognosis was. He dumped her and went incommunicado on her.

Is it possible he's heard about your date and that's why he's back in touch?

I think you need to talk to an expert. They may shed some light on why he did what he did. Equally you may conclude he's using mental health as an excuse but I think you need to find out more before you can make that decision.

Good Luck Confused!

Yes, mental illness is the same as physical illness imo.

Also, everyone handles stress differently. You may feel that you would never leave him no matter how stressed you were. But everyone is different, his reaction will depend not just on how he feels about you, but on his whole psychological profile -- how he tends to handle stress (does he talk about it openly or put on a game face all the time?), what his family was like growing up, the expectations he puts on himself, even gender-related differences.

So no, I would not assume he bolted because he didn't love you. But I think it's entirely fair that you would not want to get back together and always have those doubts.

Joni, try telling my schizophrenic aunt, with OCD that, and she will laugh in your face. Her son, who has had to be parented by her, will not laugh, I can assure you of that.

Out of curiosity, which mental illness do you think compare to what physical illness exactly?

No, he's not back in touch because of my date :) He knows I have been on a few. It sounds bad but I want on one a month after. Cried to the poor guy the whole time but I just felt so rejected and worthless that I acted out to try and make myself feel better. Didn't work.

I have talked to a MH expert about it, and am told that during a severe stress related breakdown of this scale, person is capable of behaving in such as way as to deal only with their immediate needs (ie: to escape the cause of the stress) and I was also told that severely depressed people can feel like they no longer love their spouses or see anything positive for the future.

It's just hard to understand if you've not been there.

He is the same person...just talking to him or 20 minutes and I fell in love all over again, but he is weak and needs a lot of time to be strong again.

Yes, I was under all the same stress (maybe more as it was my business that failed and I was doing all the wedding planning). The difference was he kept telling me it would be OK and comforting me and he tried to hide that he was as worried as me.

He is 37 and has never had any stress or illnesses like this before. He's really easygoing...I am the worrier...so he says he literally had no idea what was happening or what to do and he says it was like someone else took over his body. He's mortified.

And to answer that question he always bottles up stress and puts on a game face. All his family are the stiff upper lip type. All very English and proper.

Op, I know in a correct state of mind, you'd think that you would never do things to another person.

That's the difficulty with mental illness. It's why totally normal functional women with PND consider driving their car into walls at full speed to kill themselves and their child, because they feel it's a better option than any life they could give them.

Sometimes for your own sanity shutting out the world is a self defense mechanism. When my depression kicked in i used to go for weeks without speaking to anyone. I could just lie in bed, not speaking, not sleeping. Why? Because if I don't hear anything, or say anything, then nothing can harm me anymore.

At the moment he isn't asking to marry you, is he? He isn't even asking to go out with you, just to talk about forgiveness and friendship. Thinking about his actions and the cause and effect is probably part of him coming out of the "fog" and learning to be strong and dealing with this.

You seem to be rushing down a tunnel of thought that doesn't exist at present, and if I were you I'd hold back a bit. Just ask yourself what you can give at the moment. Are you strong enough to be his friend, without reading anything further into it?

If you are, then there is no reason why you couldn't openly date, you don't have to rub it in his face, but you are entitled to a life while he builds his.

If not, there is nothing wrong with telling him you just aren't strong enough to do this, and if you have - you've forgiven him (and I'm not entirely sure you have, or not as you haven't said) but you need to move on.