New to mumsnet. Not even sure if I'm in the right place, so please bear with me. Sorry for the long post.....
I am 25 and have been with my boyfriend (also 25) for almost 3 years now. I do love him and up until recently was still very much set on marrying this man and spending the rest of my life with him, but I am seriously beginning to consider my future with him as life is so miserable and does not seem to be getting any better for either of us.
We have emotionally been through an awful lot together and our relationship has already been tested past what some marriages have to deal with. Job losses, relocations, serious financial issues, depression and anxiety but one of the worst is my parents going through an ugly divorce whilst my BF was still in business with my dad. And then that business catastrophically failing (due to my fathers lies). A show of my boyfriends character is that he somehow still somehow manages to 'get along' with my Dad after all this, yet I am no longer speaking to my father anymore. So he is a good guy who wants like to be easy and happy deep down, but his behaviour and attitude towards me in our home is spiralling by the day.
In short, my BF is depressed and has been since he lost his dream job 2 years ago. I have tried supporting him in all the ways he asks, but it is never enough. I have tried over and over and over to get him to go to the doctors, therapy or other treatments and he outright refuses to go and insists with my love he can deal with it on his own. I cook, clean, am a supporting ear when he's down (which is literally all the time), I lie with him, hold him tight, make him feel safe and try to organise life so that he is always involved and not sitting around stewing on his own. But whenever my actions don't 'fix' things or make him feel better, the negative feeling around then entirely becomes my fault and nothing to do with the original problem anymore. He blames, points the finger and ignores his part in arguments. He is so insecure, lost and needs constant validation but at the same time has an opinion on everyone else choices and why they are wrong (and why his way would be right).
He has been through several jobs in the time we have been together and aside from the one mentioned previously, has never been happy or even remotely satisfied in any of them. Everyone does it wrong or doesn't understand or doesn't value or appreciate him. He ignores the fact that his time keeping is appalling - he is consistently later for any and everything and his manner can come across as either totally unreadable or standoffish and know-it-all. Even I, the woman who knows him best and his true intentions can see he off-puts people with his directness sometimes.
I am starting to feel like I am going insane with listening to him whine about tiny, inconsequential issues about his job for hours on end every night. He whinges that the girl who is his boss isn't qualified, sits there and does no work all day and expects him to produce. He goes on about how there is no structure in his department. He does on about how the free gourmet coffee they have on tap 'isn't actually gourmet'. We all support and listen to our partners to do with work issues, but the level of detail he gives every single night over such small issues makes me want to smash my own head against a wall. He is moody, miserable, negative and glass half full about everything in life and his constant outpouring of this onto me is seriously starting to affect me.
I have tried explaining this to him, numerous times and in numerous way but it always comes back that I am not being supportive enough and thats the reason that he/we still have issues. I have tried suggesting that we limit work talk to half an hour when we get in and then discuss other things. He agreed to this to only then totally break it in within the half hour and when I pointed this out he responded by mooching around in a slump, basically making the whole environment feel awkward to be able to continue talking about anything at all, job or otherwise. Unfortunately, he also get very angry and at times scares me when I react in a way he doesn't like or doesn't tend to his needs. Even something as small as he's rude to me and I call him out on his behaviour can cause horrible awful downward spirals that last for days, sometimes weeks.
As I think most of his stress stems from work issues, I try helping him find new roles to apply for or new companies to approach. But he never actually does anything about them unless I repeatedly ask him to, and then the problem becomes that I am 'nagging' instead of the original issue of him wanting a new job. I have tried suggesting he set up his own business as this has always been a want and passion of his (thinking he may be happier being his own boss). In the past, I've said how my wage could support the two of us and he wanted to go ahead and do this then I would 100% support him. He tells me he doesn't know what he's doing yet and needs more time to learn - which entirely contradicts his 'I know everything better than everyone else' attitude and confuses me further- but I dare not call him out on it in fear of another huge argument happening over a simple question.
This has been going on for a very long time now, and the constant pressure of it all is getting to me. It wasn't so bad until I lost my job last week. Before then, although my job was far higher pressure than his, I could hold it all together. But now, I am personally going through being unemployed for the first time in 5 years and I am really struggling myself to stay strong and resilient. I think I'd be ok and be coping a lot better if my BF wasn't still expecting me to be his total rock and emotional support.
His attitude to me losing me job on the day was amazing and I thought he might finally cut me some slack and realise I'm weak right now and need some love and support myself. But since the day of me losing my job, he hasn't even asked me how I'm feeling never mind tried to perk me up or make me feel any better. In fact, he has continued to tell me that my efforts to support him are not good enough and has started threatening walking out and that I will lose him if I don't show him more love.
I fell in love with a happy, go getting, enthusiastic, warm, funny and thoughtful man. Now I do not recognise him and no matter what I try, I can never seem to do anything right or big enough to make a difference. I know no one is perfect, and there are definitely things I haven't handled the best way, but 90% of the time that is due to the anxiety and stress that my 'support' is not adequate and fear of what will happen next. I am currently on beta blockers for my anxiety, but sometimes our arguments send me over the edge into full scale, very dramatic panic attacks. More recently, I have actually been going unintentionally further, getting embarrassingly hysterical and screaming. It is only at this point he drops his guard, calms down himself and realises how upset I am and tends to me. The moment my breathing calms down, he is straight back into his making his points again.
If I'm honest I feel like I am stuck in a depressing, 25 year old marriage (we are not married) and starting to feel like I would be better off not being here anymore. But I know for a fact I love him to pieces and would be absolutely heartbroken if we broke up. He is my soulmate. And I know that if he was to really be honest and open up he'd be appalled and ashamed of his behaviour too. He's just so focussed on his own negativity and I don't know what to do anymore.
There has to be more to life than this.