Am I being harsh re boyfriend's "illness"?

[SadieSanchez]

I can't decide if I am being mean today?

My boyfriend has been suffering from a sore throat this week and I have lost patience and basically told him I am busy and I will speak to him at the weekend when he is better.

Bit of background...he is genuinely lovely, treats me really well and we have been together about 10 months. But after the first few months of our relationship, I began to notice a bit of a pattern with his "illnesses" and it's doing my head in.

Things will be going really lovely, we are really loved up, seeing lots of each other etc and then every 6-8 weeks, he will come down with something or he'll "feel rough" for a few days.

When this happens, he goes quiet and grumpy, I hardly hear from him and his messages are quite short. I'll offer support, sympathy or even company, which he won't accept. It almost always falls on a day we have plans and it's always an ordeal trying to drag it out of him whether he feels well enough to go or not. So it always ends with me feeling pissed off with him, so we will disagree, things will be off for a couple of days, then when he feels better it all goes really lovely again, I can't fault him in other ways at all, but lo and behold several weeks later, here we go again.

He's done it this week. I knew it would mean we wouldn't be seeing each other as planned last night. I told him yesterday to let me know how he feels in the evening, he didn't. I lost my patience with him and told him illness doesn't excuse rudeness and he apologised, said he felt rubbish, wanted to be alone but hadn't wanted to say it as he knows it sounds selfish.

I understand that some people want to be on their own when they are feeling ill. And sometimes if you are ill, you need to cancel plans. I don't understand why a sore throat or "feeling rough" means you have to stay in bed for two days. Or why you can't text someone just as nicely as you would when you feel 100%. Just get on with it surely?

I also don't understand why someone who would feel ill so frequently wouldn't try to make themselves healthier.

I am now beginning to wonder what it would be like to live with a man like this? Which is something we have spoken about for next year.

Maybe he's an introvert and calmly cope with a certain amount of togetherness . Though I agree he needs to be honest with you about this.
Unless he's not worked it out himself and it's showing up in these vague physical symptoms

Dunno, just a thought

Either he has some illness that's affecting his immune system, or it's social anxiety that he's billing as a physical illness, either because he's unaware it's not or because he wants to hide it from you.

For example, I had an autoimmune illness when I was younger, and whenever I got a virus like a cough, cold, tummy bug etc my immune system would attack my nervous system and I would feel much worse than is normal for a minor ailment.

It could also be for example that's he's had an illness in the past, and it affects him periodically like glandular fever that brings his energy down.

Either way, he needs to look into it or be more honest with you about what's going on.

Who wants to go out when they are ill? I don't is rather be alone wrapped up in a duvet. Seriously give the guy some breathing space. Every body deals with illness differently.

I can get a bit like this sometimes, OP. I have fibromyalgia. Although I'm not generally rude about it, I can get grumpy and refuse to answer the phone/respond to messages or communicate in very short sentences because when I'm having a very bad flare-up people are draining to be around. I have lost boyfriends because they couldn't understand I needed rest time and that couldn't include being around them.

Here's a thought experiment: picture the most irritating person you know, all of their mannerisms that just set you on edge. Now imagine everyone in your life temporarily turning into that person, no matter how much you love them and their company. That's what a bad flare-up is like, on top of the physical feeling of being unwell.

So here are your options:

• Advise your boyfriend to look into seeing a specialist so he can be medicated and cope with his illness better. If it's happening every few weeks, it's a chronic illness and he needs treatment.

• Shrug your shoulders when he says he's ill. say you're sorry to hear that and you'll talk to him when he's better. Don't make concrete plans with him.

• Leave him.

I knew someone like this, turned out he took loads of drugs periodically and then needed time to get over them. Is this a possibility?

I was going to ask this very same question, Doris!

Could it be drugs, OP?

I am probably totally wrong here but putting it out there anyway because of my own personal experience...

He may have Herpes (you probably just laughed, but hear me out)

People who contract herpes get it for life, it's incurable. Sufferers will experience 'outbreaks'... Some people very rarely, but for some it can be almost like clockwork and outbreaks will appear at regular intervals.

I know this because I was unfortunate to fall for someone who was cheating on me, which I didn't discover until he passed this disease on to me. For the first 4 years of having this god-awful problem my outbreaks would appear EVERY 6-8 weeks. You shouldn't have sex during the outbreak to avoid passing it on.

I could be totally wrong, but the regularity of his 'illness' combined with his reluctance to see you and his moodiness could indicate herpes.

He could be too frightened to tell you for fear of rejection - still a lot of taboo surrounding std's - so he just avoids you during his regular outbreaks

Like I say, I'm probably TOTALLY wrong but just something to consider....

This sounds to me like he has depression at some level - people try to keep a lid on it then it surfaces every month or 6 weeks or so ( at least that is my experience) They deal with it by sleeping it off or trying to divert their thoughts. This suggests to me he isn't getting treated for this or if he is, it isn't working. Obviously a huge jump for me to make on one post - just sharing my experience ..

Not every illness comes up in bloods. Not every illness can be treated or cured

I agree with this. I am exactly like your boyfriend if you take what he says at face value. I get strange recurring viruses that come and go and certainly tend to reappear when I've not had enough sleep. I can have periods of a few months when it doesn't happen, but for probably more than half my life I've been like this since the age of about 24. The only symptoms are having a slightly raised temperature and feeling generally unwell.

Blood tests show that when I am feeling ill I do indeed have a raised white blood cell count, indicating the presence of a virus. But all other tests to find a cause have drawn a blank.

I've come to accept it's just how I am.

When feeling ill I can still struggle to do the things I really, really have to do, but anything else has to be shelved, which would include seeing a partner. Thankfully I've not had to work full time for a very long time, and when I did work I was able to shuffle my days around depending on how I was feeling, so it hasn't impacted too much there.

And yes, people often do take it to mean that I'm not interested, or I have some sort of mental illness. When you just go around regularly saying 'I just don't feel well' you don't get much sympathy. I doesn't though mean it isn't true.

So yes, in his case it might mean he's not sufficiently interested, or he's 'flakey' or he's depressed.

Or he could just be like me.

"Maybe he's an introvert and calmly cope with a certain amount of togetherness . Though I agree he needs to be honest with you about this."

This is me. I need time by myself like I need food and drink. It's hard to explain this to a new partner without sounding like a bit of a freak.

Perhaps he is like this, OP, and either doesn't have the insight to recognise it, or DOES recognise it and doesn't know how to say it.

If this is it, he does need to learn how to manage it without pushing you away every couple of months, however.

I think that whether it's illness, depression or 'me time' if it's 'doing your head in' it is probably better to walk away.
Ten months in shouldn't be this hard, and I would imagine you are far too young to subject yourself to a future which continues to play out like this.
Dealing with depression, sickness etc is hard enough when it comes along in already established, long relationships. I really wouldn't be looking to get entrenched in something potentially so draining so early on.
Move on.

Remember that thread about having men in the post natal wards? There was a woman there who said she and her partner had to share the bed and the armchair turn and turn about so that neither of them was tired when they left the hospital (or rather each was tired.) This is the kind of man you are with, OP - you will be the one in the chair after a Caesarean Section and he'll be the one on the bed because he's tired.

So many possibilities:

• He could be genuinely physically ill. He may need to consult a doctor about this if hasn't already done so.

• He is manipulating and/or controlling you for kicks.

• He suffers from depression/anxiety

• He likes time alone, maybe to read obscure Russian novels, maybe to dress in women's underwear.

The only way you'll find out is to ask him.

I'm betting on drugs. Gram of coke takes a day to do it and a day to get over it. Or just binge drinking and hungover.

Even if he is ill or depressed, he doesn't need to be rude. If he was really into the relationship he would tell you what is actually going on with him, instead of canceling plans then falling off the grid for two days.

Drugs was my first thought too. seen this pattern a lot with friends who are into drugs.

In a way, the actual cause is less relevant than the fact he has explained nothing to you, OP, and isn't even particularly polite or nice to you when it is happening. Plus, his reason for not communicating with you about his need to withdraw periodically is essentially that it would be too hard for him and would make him feel bad.

Those aren't very good signs. What else doesn't he/won't he communicate about? How supportive would he be to you if you needed help?

It shouts depression/anxiety to me, but then I speak as one of those people who takes to my bed every few weeks unable to face the world.

I'm lucky in that I had been in my relationship with DH for years before my illness started. I don't think we would have made it past a year if I'd been like this during the 'falling in love' phase.

As it stands though, none of us know WHY he acts like this. If he's not going out on the town getting drunk and laid then it does sound like he just needs to be alone sometimes. If he does have anxiety then it doesn't surprise me at all that these times coincide with when you have things planned.

If it is anxiety or depression, he might be waiting to see if he can get up the courage to go, for example, which might explain why he leaves it til the last minute - combined with feeling embarrassed about not having a "proper" illness to explain his absence.

My DH had this. It took some major discussions to get to the bottom of it -- but it's fine now. We've got a code for him to use if he really, really can't face something. And I have promised that, if he uses that, I won't put any pressure on him. Funnily enough, just having that agreement means that he's never had to use the code.

Oh god. I wonder if everyone secretly thinks I'm depressed or, worse, on drugs as they don't believe my 'illness'.

Anyway even if he is genuinely ill, if it annoys you, and if his general behaviour in not responding soon enough or whatever pisses you off, you are under no obligation to stay with him.