Why would a man do this?

[AmeliaPondsBaby]

I am struggling a bit with moving on with the end of an LTR and wanted to know if anyone can answer me the big "why" over my ex's bizarre behavior so I can try and make peace with it.

Can anyone tell me why would a person would possibly behave like this.

He was not a looker but he was a fantastic boyfriend. Kind, sweet, devoted, loving, attentive, supportive and basically everything I ever wished for and more.

He asked me to move in with him and became the most amazing stepfather to my DCs - kind to them, volunteering for bedtime stories and all that and replacing their own father who sadly disappeared when they were babies. DCs absolutely love him.

He spent years with me in a very happy life where I would have rated the relationship as 10 out of 10 on the happiness scale and he was quite vocal in expressing that he felt the same. He proposed publicly at his parents house with a tearful affirmation of how I made him the happiest he had ever been and he wanted to grow old with me.

Never once did he voice any unhappiness, any dis-satisfaction, any issues at all with me. Nor did he infer them through a reduction of affection or attention. In fact all the way through everything he said or did confirmed the opposite.

Then, very suddenly, out of nowhere, he announced randomly and without any emotion that he'd decided he didn't love me any more and proceeded to turn into the most evil, hideous bastard on the face of the planet.

He moved out and within a week joined every dating site known to man, and while there wasn't another woman he certainly went to great effort to find one and rubbed it in my face.

To make it even worse he started a smear campaign of lies - telling people around us (who were as shocked as I was) that behind closed doors that I was "crazy" and horrible to live with and tearfully told them how he had endured it for so long because of my DCs and he was so convincing that he actually ending up with people feeling sorry for him instead of me!

It was like he wanted to inflict the maximum possible pain and suferring onto me that he could inflict. He seemed angry, viscous, nasty and generally...just evil.

This happened to me a few months ago, and I just really want to find some understanding of how a person can behave like this or why they would want to.

I know people can "fall out of love" and hide it with ease if they choose to - although I do struggle with quite how convincing he was, but what I can't fathom is the cruelty and abuse towards someone who has never done anything wrong to deserve it...are some people capable of pretending to be lovely and then turning incredibly evil? Are they capable of pretending for years?

He has no history of behavior like this. For a long time I thought he had a brain tumour. His behavior since doing this has been very odd.

He started to drink very heavily, seems to not sleep very much, spends all his time on filthy chat sites or playing video games, he tells lies that are quite magnificent, is extremely manipulative and cruel.

I can't really begin to explain how much this is the opposite of the person I lived with for several years. I can't say I ever saw him be even the slightest bit nasty to anyone before.

I'm guessing you and she get on well and that she has found you trustworthy in the past. You're not the one who has undergone a personality change. I think it's worth meeting up and putting her in the picture. She's already worried about him.

Maybe she could suggest he contact Cruse, the bereavement counselling charity, to arrange some counselling as well.

I think you can round the sex stuff into a less explicit format if you're worried she'd be too embarrassed by it - just say he's developed a higher level of "need" in that area and been using images and videos to satisfy it, and looking to pay for it as well. She'll know what you mean without you being completely in her face about it.

Well, the sleeplessness is easy to mention. I'd forget the subjective stuff like lying and laughing at you. Sex chats ... well, plenty of people do it without being ill. The video is the one that shows an extreme lack of public self-restraint, which would fit more obviously with a brain problem (no judgement any more). Maybe bring up the video in a careful kind of a way, e.g. "He's put up a ...private... video of himself that is disturbing, totally out of character and could ruin his reputation. His sense of self-control seems to be completely out of whack." In that context you might mention the verbal abuse, also carefully, e.g. "the c word" (or whatever!!), stressing that this is making you worried because you hear that a sudden lack of self-restraint can be a sign of a physical problem.

If she thinks you are game playing, well, you don't have to go round to hers for tea any more anyway!

We DID get on enormously well, she was like a Mum to me, but when this happenned I was shocked to find the general feeling that she didn't believe me. Or at least she didn't call to see how me or the kids were. Odd as they called her Granny for several years!

It wasn't really until a significant amount of time had passed and it was clear he was abnormal that she started to thaw towards me.

Him creating this situation has actually created a problem because at the time I should have probably most been communicating with his family he managed to get them all to hate me. Still totally unsure what he said about me, but I do know they pretty much cut me off when he did.

I know from other friends that he had said a lot of things that were absolute lies.

Great advice above....thank you. I'll start making notes of what to tell her and how to phrase it. Maybe actually an email would be best to make sure i put it exactly right.

Although I mostly agree with ravenmum I think I would still allude to the lies, verbal abuse and unkindness, because they are a part of his extreme behavioural change. She may choose to think you're being oversensitive because of the break up - but it may help the doctor to form a more accurate picture of what is going on overall, so really, it should be included for that reason.

I have our internet history from his plus account. That in itself tells a story. I was looking at it to find out if there was another woman.

I am sure that no matter what the situation (I know a lot of men split up and go to pron sites) that is must be considered abnormal to arrive home from work at 17:15 and from 17:25 to 03:00am every day to be surfing porno and dirty sites etc, which is what he was doing. He wasn't going for drinks with his mates or doing anything normal you would expect after a split and he must have only been sleeping 2 - 3 hours at the most a night.

I saw some of what he was doing and he was doing totally bizarre things like dressing up in strange outfits and photographing himself and posting them online to public pages anyone could have seen.

Not for a day or a week but for three months.

Surely this is odd! And I was with him for years and he was a perfectly normal person! No weird fetishes or weirdness and we had a fantastic and open sex life.

The annoying thing is that I am the only one who knows any of this!!!!

I think, from the tone of what you are writing here, his mother will realise that you are just naturally worried about him, not carrying on any kind of war of attrition.

I dont feel like I was in an abusive relationship though :( I am in an abusive breakup though! Before that though he was lovely :(

Tell his mum everything, as others have said, no need to be overly graphic but if it was my son and he was behaving in an uncharacteristic way which could potentially jeopdise his career and relationships I would want to know. She can't help him if she doesn't know what she's dealing with.
Meanwhile you need to step away once you've given her the info and focus on healing yourself, you've had a massive upheaval and no matter what the reasons behind his behaviour you need space and time to adjust to how things are now.

No I see that Amelia.
I was trying to explain that perhaps he'd been holding this behaviour in and it had come out too forcefully. But reading more of the thread it sounds like an illness so I hope he gets some help and you get some answers x

Thanks yes, I do know that and am slowly becoming aware that there's no magic fix that is going to give me my life back regardless of the reasons he did this. I do know I need to scrape myself up and sort practicalities and adjust to life without him for both me and the DCs

The issues is that "moving on" is pretty difficult when you;re not sure what you're moving on from. I mean in the sense that I might be either moving on from a relationship with a total and utter bastard psychopath or that I might be moving on from a relationship with someone I love dearly who is ill in some way.

It's not very simple to disregard it and say "onwards and upwards" and work out the best thing to do until you know what you're dealing with. Despite being absolutely devastated, all the way through this (actually since the first day) I have thought there was something horribly wrong with him and obviously the instinct is to help / love / protect.

Friends in RL almost universally think there is something obviously "wrong" with him but I don't think they buy the brain tumour / brain damage story as it does seem far fetched - even to me. My Mum thinks he's had a breakdown and many other thinks he is depressed or Bipolar.

From my perspective though, knowing him so intimately, I instinctively know that his brain is now working correctly. Not just in terms of personality, but in terms of reasoning, logic, memory.

*not working correctly

If you saw my message, sorry, it was on the wrong thread! Had it pulled now though.

Just as an example of the lack of logic and reasoning.. he decided to leave the day he left (no pre-thought) and what he did left both he and I unable to afford to live separately.

I am okay now as I get help being a single Mum but he left himself without enough to pay bills and afford rent on his own and he rented a place out of his budget without seemingly thinking about it.

Being that he already had financial problems, he has now put himself in a situation where he will have no option but to take out an IVA or something drastic and this seemed stupid to make it worse in the extreme by such impulsive behavior - giving us two rents, two sets of bills.

Knowing him, if he'd felt we had some sort of problems, he would have thought about DCs, finances, practicalities and suggested we go to counselling or get some help rather than just abdicating life and leaving himself in really bad financial circumstances. He's always been very practical, careful and slow to act.

It's just a total lack of planning, logic, accountability, common sense.

I'm sorry op but I reckon there was/ is another women...possibly explaining the dating site thing.

Thanks superstar. I'm honestly not being an ostrich with this one as I know it smacks of that (and I thought so myself) but adding it up I really don't think so.

For a start his internet history shows he doesn't actually go out of the house apart from the be at work, for a second why would he be trawling dating sites etc. if he had someone else, for a third his personal appearance and self-care has gone down the toilet and nothing at all about the scenario gives any impression of that.

Definitely give his mum more info so she can tell the gp as much as she can. It does sound very much like it's either brain damage - what kind of accident did he have? What kind of head injury? - or a breakdown/mental illness. He can't have pretended to be someone else for years, he just can't.

Manic phase of bi-polar personality disorder triggered by adverse life events.

He was hit with extreme force on the back of his head. It was so extreme actually that the force of being hit on the back of the head caused the top of his head to burst open. Pretty horrific and no question it would have given his brain an absolutely massive shake. I was watching and was completely convinced at the time there was no way anyone could survive that level of force, but he did.

A lot of people have suggested bipolar to me and in a lot of ways it fits. He has definitely been completely impulsive, self-absorbed, sexually odd, not sleeping, very arrogant, drinking.

There's a lot of possibilities here to think about.

Dear god, that's horrific indeed!
Did someone hit him? Or something? Eek either way. :(

If it were me I'd phone the doctor, and talk to them before he turns up for his appointment, flagging that you are his recently estranged partner and you believe mental health issues have erupted that are going unrecognised.
Say you are deeply concerned about his mental health situation remaining undiagnosed.