My long term boyfriend suffers with anxiety/depression and panic attacks. This year has been worse due to the loss of his father. Most of the time he is kind, generous, friendly, everybody likes him. He is great at giving advice and talking to people about their problems and help others need.
He has always overreacted to the smallest things with me and cannot seem to manage any kind of negativity in a rational way, so most of the time when he does something that upsets me or is inappropriate, I just let it slide.
However, every month he will absolutely blow up about something totally innocuous, it will usually be on a friday on weekend when he has his dc and we won't see each other. No matter what I say, how I defend myself, everything is wrong, everything is my fault. He will say, your family love me, I'd never do that, I'm there for everyone and bleat on about how perfect he is and how awful I am. This week I have been really ill, I caught it from him. I fuss over him when he's ill, I get medicine, cook for him, tell him to stay in bed, in the middle of the night, if he woke I'd ask he needs anything, he'd say no it's fine, but I'd go downstairs get him some lemsip or something or coffee and bring it up. He had panic attacks in the night, I'd get up with him, chat, hold him until it passed, told him I loved him. He thanks me for taking such good care of him.
Anyway I ended up really bad with it, with such a bad throat I couldn't talk for 3 days, bleeding throat, I really just should have been in bed. Instead what I did was go with him to a family dinner one night, worked for him in his office for a few hours on a job he asked me to do where I was not 100% myself. Of course I wasn't, I couldn't talk, spoke in whispers when needed and felt really bad, but didn't want to let him down. What I got for that was not thanks and empathy, was a tirade of text abuse about how I acted disinterested, rude and couldn't be bothered with his family, I couldn't believe it. I reminded him how ill I was (how ill he had been), I should have been in bed.
The text abuse has continued all weekend and extended into probably every argument we have had over the last 5 years, every aspect of my personality, how I am at work, with his family, how I am at gym... Anything and everything!?! Every month he does this to me. I walk on eggshells and now I'm paranoid about being ill, paranoid about how I act, the look on my face, what I say to people. My family do love him, but the thing is everytime he unleashes a ton of shit on me, I don't tell them because I want them to like him. I protect his reputation with my family. But this is killing me. I think he needs help. Some days he will say I will go to counselling, I needs some meds, what do you think? And then other days he'll say I'm not going to counselling, I don't need anything, I'm fine. He tells me he tells his family all about our dramas and I worry that they are getting a very unbalanced view of what is going on-I think it's a violation that he tells them tbh.
Sorry if this long and it may not seem like much, he is not physically abusive but I feel so depressed over this, nothing is ever his fault, and he completely ignores anything I say and just keeps repeating the same thing then tells me I've taken it too deep! Two months ago, he screamed 'I'm done, I'm out!' and told me good luck. He let me suffer for days and then told me he hadn't said it. He is a good man, but he has mental health issues and needs help. I think though he would rather destroy me and our relationship than get that help. He doesn't behave this way with anyone else, just me.